Wandering Adventure Party

I've personally grown to hate the security theatre of rotating my bank passwords every six months, especially because of requirements like "must contain one uppercase, one symbol, one lowercase, one special case and the blood of a unicorn."

When mathematically, a simple, grammatically incorrect sentence of 25 characters is much harder for a machine to crack than a gibberish 8-character password with symbols.

Entropy loves length.

I love the idea that the most secure key to your digital life could just be a weird little poem or an inside joke that only you know. Security doesn't have to be painful.

#infosec #passwords #cybersecurity #UX #security #sysadmin #programming #foss #linux #privacy #enshittification #reading #finance

@cratermoon I appreciate you!

Search on YouTube is at its worst right now. You type "how to make apple pie," and the algorithm gives you three ads, a viral cat short, and a "For You" video about gaming.

It is what @pluralistic rightly calls enshittification.

I spent the last month refactoring the core script for search fixer. Big improvements:
> A new settings UI that doesn't look like an airplane cockpit.
> Improved anti-shorts protocol: Revert shorts to the normal player.
> Fixed the filters for those annoying auto-generated "mixes" that clutter the results.
> Optional grid view for search.
> Experimental keyword matching.

homepage:
https://phoennix.gitlab.io/youtubesearchfix/

update and new features:
https://phoennix.gitlab.io/youtubesearchfix/update.html

Reclaim your feed and I hope you give it a try

#opensource #enshittification #firefox #chrome #mozilla #browser #youtube #distraction #adhd #mentalhealth #cooking #reading #tumblr #art #design #nature

On YouTube, for example, you can do so by not clicking on recommended content from search results. This includes sections like "For you" and "People also search for".

My extension helps with this and lots of other QOL improvements. It's open source, privacy friendly and Mozilla recommended.

Extension : Search Fixer

YouTube Search Fixer is an extension designed to fix YouTube search and de-clutter your search page to make it less distracting. It removes suggestions like For you, People also search for, Related to your search, etc from your feed. Install this to remove Shorts and much more from Search Results as well.

(phoennix.gitlab.io)

@Su_G @TheoEsc it never ends

@77nn that's very kind of you! Thank you ️

@Beldarak that last example reallllly confuses me. You bought X once, so you must need 10 more of it! Who thought of this?

@Saket I appreciate you

@craignicol @uep I hadn't so thanks for sharing, @pluralistic is usually spot on!

The most annoying thing about corporate surveillance to me is the arrogance of the prediction mechanisms.

These algorithms build a model of me based on my clicks from three years ago and then try to trap me in that loop forever. They show me music they think I'll like, and news they think I'll engage with, and videos they think will enrage me enough to keep me hooked to their platforms. They are actively trying to flatten my personality into something easy to monetize.

As most people I've seen say out loud, "Privacy as a concept is way beyond hiding secrets. A part of it also means preserving your capacity to change. To be surprised. To be inconsistent."

If I could tell every human one thing, it would be to actively refuse to be a predictable data point. Mess up their metrics. In whatever way you are capable of.

#socialmedia #algorithmicbias #privacy #dataprivacy #quotes #foss #facebook #linkedin #llm #noai #enshittification #reading #books #baking #art #philosophy #adhd #depression #cybersecurity

Sometime around the 2020 era, we lost the right to be mediocre at things we love.

No longer can you just bake bread...you must start a sourdough side hustle lol. Wanna stay fit and go jogging or running? Nah, you gotta optimize your biometrics for a marathon. What my point is that every hobby has been enshittified and gentrified into a brand opportunity.

This strange infatuation with optimization culture is killing the human spirit.

So this new year, starting tomorrow, one of my resolutions is to do something bad but fun. Maybe I write a terrible poem. I like to draw and paint, so perhaps I will draw a horse that looks like a table or sing off-key in the showers or in front of my loved ones. The algorithm driving the mainstream social media wants me to be a polished product, but my humanity lives in these messy, unoptimized, cringe-inducing joyful failures.

I will try to reclaim the right to be an amateur. Will you join me?

#creativity #hobbies #art #depression #socialmedia #newyear #resolution #happynewyear #MentalHealth #Culture #enshittification #creative #design #writing #reading #books #drawing #music #gardening #nature #running #fitness

I miss when buying technology meant you actually owned it. Now...

Your car needs a subscription for heated seats.
Your printer won't print black text because you're out of Cyan.
Your OS serves you ads in the start menu.
Your "Smart" home stops working if the company goes bankrupt.

I don't need more AI features. I need "dumb" tech that just does what it’s told and lasts for 10 years. But where's the share holder value in that right?

#RightToRepair #techbros #enshittification #privacy #technology #noai #electronics #linux #capitalism #windows #Firefox #writing #books #art