Super Secret Extra Special

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

"Smooth edges of screen fonts"

My computer was running hot before I turned everything off; the office I'm in is very warm, I could feel the heat of my CPU through the keyboard. The fans were going, not as loud as they usually get, but they were still blasting.

Y'all.

I can barely feel the warmth through the keyboard now. It's been like 2 minutes. The fan is nearly silent.

Click the Windows key and start typing "System settings", and "View Advanced system settings" will pop up. Then click "Settings" under Performance:

Then you'll see this:

TURN IT ALL OFF.

10AppsManager lets you uninstall bloatware. Winaero Tweaker lets you disable crap like Cortana/Copilot, ads, telemetry, internet search results when you search from the taskbar, and all kinds of other stuff, plus it gives you lots of other little options that are just nice to have (like, it can restore the old MS Paint program in place of Paint 3D). Both are totally free.

Oh, and check your startup programs in the Task Manager tab to make sure your computer isn't automatically starting eight million programs every time it boots. But I think people mostly know about that. (Unless this is me going "they only know one or two feldspars... and quartz of course.")

Over a year ago, National Public Data (NPD), a search site for people, earned a place in privacy infamy for a security breach that revealed the personal data of 3 billion individuals (that's billion with a "b"). Now, after disappearing, NPD is back. As ZDNET sister publication PCMag reported, NPD is open for snooping again under a new owner, the rather mysterious-sounding Perfect Privacy LLC.

Oh boy. Better head over to nationalpublicdata.com and see if your profile is there. Then follow the handy instructions in the ZDNET article to have yourself removed:

How to remove your information from NPD

Search your name on nationalpublicdata.com.

When you find your profile, click "View Full Profile."

Copy its URL.

Go to nationalpublicdata.com/optout.html.

Drop the URL into the "Your Profile Link" field and click "Request Removal."

Enter an email address, and the site will send you an email requesting that you click to confirm deletion. 

Well played Merriam-Webster.

There's literally no other megafauna on earth that spends the entire day lounging around in water, mostly just socializing, only to come onto land to feed at night.

I remember when I used to do education programs on hippos, most people assumed they ate aquatic plants, and that that's the whole reason they were in water. Meanwhile, hippos are basically just giant nocturnal cows that eat only grass.

"i must grow my bones lighter and less dense so that i don't get trapped on the bottom and may float easier in this new environment"

hippos: "denser. heavier bones. MOAR dense. Make sink the most."

mother nature: but how will you get off the bottom when you sink?

hippos: Make muscles more too, give all muscle.

mother nature: and to stay warm in the water? a big layer of fat?

hippos: no! no fat only muscle.

mother nature: o....kay. And, you eat aquatic plants, that's why you spend so much time in the water?

hippos: lol no. eat land grass, like cow.

mother nature: i see. right. You eat mostly grass, so, flat grinding teeth?

hippos: hell no. big spike teeth. sharp big teeth. Biggest

mother nature: what, like lions? 3 inch fangs?

hippos: course not. giant fuck-off teeth, 18 inches. Also, not just one pair, three pairs of giant sharp teeth. give

mother nature: but you eat... grass?

hippos: yeah. lol. Sometimes eat a zebra tho. Or a antelope. Maybe eat a crocodile, you don't know. Give all teeth, giant fuck-off teeth. Most bone! most muscle! most teeth! Me.

mother nature: y'know what? fuck it, sure, here you go

hippo: ...

so idk about layers, and they are not all the same size, but they have three pairs of large sharp teeth on each side of their mouth, or you could say six pairs of ...? anyway they have a bunch of molars you can barely see through the gums, and then they have these teeth:

looks like this in the mouth

10h

Droodles by Roger Price (from his 1953 book). Droodles (a blend of “doodle”, “drawing”, “riddle”) are simple drawings with a witty, often absurd, caption. The first one, as some of you may know, was used by Frank Zappa for his 1982 album, Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. (Zappa, a fan of Price's work, lived just a few miles from the artist and personally sought permission to use the image.)

Wave in Backlight - Peter Witt

German , b. 1966 -