>First, We’ve Discovered That About A Quarter Of All The Internet Connection In Or Out Of The House

My son has set the house up with a Pi-Hole. It’s a raspberry pi running Ad blocking on the whole house’s network. 

We’re a few hours in and we’re seeing effects, as well as some teething problems.

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 11, 2022

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

For you can do it too!https://t.co/l1SLzPrzp6

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 11, 2022

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

They show your your stats on a neat little dashboard. pic.twitter.com/RQB39IvnKD

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 12, 2022

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

There’s a handy explanatory video from Dr. Johnny Ryan which sets out how we could end up with Just So Much ads.

Each webpage load can potentially run an auction (with you as the prize pig on the block) sending data to loads of different brokers. https://t.co/wUosBLjM3f

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 12, 2022
Privacy International has a short and clear guide to what hardware you can use for setting up a Pi-Hole as well as some setup instructions. 

Ad-blocking (home surveillance thwarting) is a human rights issue too!https://t.co/1vphCsaug1

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 12, 2022

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

This has proved a popular thread. I have no soundcloud, and the things I sell are not of general use. 

But you can always follow & support Digital Rights Ireland (who once knocked down a state surveillance law for half a billion people) @DRIalerts https://t.co/vrAPYsxjP4

— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) August 13, 2022
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More Posts from A-mess-of-links and Others

1 year ago
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):
Favorite First Time Film Watches Of 2021 (in No Particular Order):

Favorite First Time Film Watches of 2021 (in no particular order):

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006) dir. Tsai Ming-liang The Third Part of the Night (1971) dir. Andrzej Żuławski Sonatine (1993) dir. Takeshi Kitano The Wayward Cloud (2005) dir. Tsai Ming-liang Pokkuveyil (1981) dir. Govindan Aravindan Tropical Malady (2004) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul Hana-bi (1997) dir. Takeshi Kitano Hole in the Sky (2001) dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri Mermaid Legend (1984) dir. Toshiharu Ikeda Arrebato (1980) dir. Iván Zulueta


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1 year ago

psst, tumblr just quietly rolled out collaboration with ai training models, and it's opt-out, not opt-in, go into your blog settings to fix it [on desktop, anyway, dunno where you'd look on mobile] keep fighting the good fight <3

I don't see an option for it now, so it may not have rolled out for everyone yet? Unless I'm just missing where it is


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1 year ago

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?


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1 year ago

tumblr allowing titties again is cool and all but are they gonna do anything to un-blur all the accounts that have been blurred for things like titties.


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1 year ago

Stardew Valley Character Creator

So for the past while, I've been working on this project with Poltergeister (whose art you've definitely seen if you play with Expanded and/or Seasonal Cuter Characters), and I'm really excited to finally be sharing it with you guys!

itch.io
Make a character (or yourself) in the style of a Stardew Valley character portrait!
Stardew Valley Character Creator
Stardew Valley Character Creator

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4 months ago

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.


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1 year ago

what are some good learning resources or advice for folks who wanna know how to do low poly 3d stuff in blender? i personally really wanna one make some stuff to maybe use in godot and your work is very cool to look at!

Thank you! For starting out with Blender, I really recommend giving Cherylynn Lima's YouTube channel a look-through. Specifically, this series on making low poly characters from scratch. It's made in an older version of the program, but it's one of the first video tutorials I ever followed along with back when I first started using Blender, and it's extremely beginner-friendly.


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6 months ago

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a-mess-of-links - some useful links
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