You Should Know

IG

For some reason whenever someone posts any news about Pixelfed one of the top comments is usually along the lines of “no dark mode, no use.” Boy do I have good news for those users!

Like the rest of the Fediverse, and unlike corporate media, there are multiple apps you can use! Examples:

• iOS has Impressia (fka Vernissage)
• Android has Pixeldroid

This is also useful for users who have qualms about the Pixelfed dev’s more… distasteful? behavior (example I found today) and don’t rock with rewarding it, kind of like how a lot of Lemmy users might block or defederate the flagship .ml instance.

Charles Lindbergh was a hero for his feats of aviation but ultimately lost that goodwill once he started pushing bigoted conspiracies to keep America from fighting Hitler.

Lindbergh would spend the years leading up to World War II actively campaigning to “protect the white race” and for the U.S. to maintain strict neutrality toward Nazi Germany. He even flew to Germany to receive a medal in person from Hermann Göring, the infamous commander of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe, on behalf of Adolph Hitler himself.

According to the unpublished galleys of American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., some Republicans even urged Lindbergh to run for President against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940 to keep America out of the war.

This dark night for the American soul became the subject of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America. Now an HBO series of the same name, the story explores an alternate future where Lindbergh does challenge Roosevelt and wins Presidency — with disastrous consequences.

Some phones, you have to manually swipe on the screen, other phones, it automatically calls after a 5-10 second cooldown (varies by phone)

Some of you might already know that, this is more like a reminder that it exists.

Why YSK: If you don't think you'll ever need to make such calls, you should probably disable it to prevent accidentially dialing (or if it doesn't let you disable it, change the default emergency number to 0000000000).

OR If you are in an abusive household and think you might need to quickly call for help, you might wanna have it enabled, set to automatically call after 5 presses, and set it with the shortest possible timer, and remember this option in case you ever need it (and hopefully, the people with guns don't point them at you when they come).

I didn't know this until recently, but there is a national do-not-call list you can register your canadian phone number to through the government of Canada:

https://lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/en

Additionally, if you're already a customer with the company calling or have been within a year, they are allowed to call you; HOWEVER,

Next time a company -- like rogers for example -- incessantly calls you, ask them to add you to their internal do-not-call list, and enjoy your peace knowing that if they call you again, you can report them to the government of Canada. They face possible financial repercussions if this happens.

The goal is to combat addictive sites with educational content.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25202993

This was Likely Recently Auto-Installed on your Phone.

This morning I noticed that an app was silently installed on my device. Android System Safetycore.

So what is this app for? Supposedly it is designed to blur any images that are sent to or from you the user.

Android Authority Article Snippet

Sensitive Content Warnings is another new Google Messages feature that Google is announcing today. It’s a feature that gives you more control over seeing and sending images that may contain nudity. Sensitive Content Warning blurs images that may contain nudity before viewing them, and it then prompts you with a “speed bump” that contains “help-finding resources and options, including to view the content.” When it’s enabled and you try to send or forward an image that may contain nudity, Google Messages will also show a “speed bump” that reminds you of the risks of sending nude imagery. - Android Authority

The feature seems to be geared towards google messages.

However why this needed to be a seperate app isn't really known. Why not just a feature within the google messages app? Google gives no explanation.

Another Android Authority Snippet

Warnings check runs entirely on-device, it didn’t mention that it will actually be powered by an entirely separate app and not Google Messages itself. - Android Authority

Google claims it runs entirely on your phone. Whether that's true? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

According to my device, the app can have internet access restricted to it (via phone settings) implying that the app does have internet access. Any apps that dont have internet access wouldn't be in my settings list for restricting network access.

Here's the developer page. Not much in terms of detail going on there.

Here is the app on Play store with its further lacking detail and currently plunging reviews. Interestingly it seems the app has many good odd sounding reviews. Furthermore, all the new reviews are very negative. The app was 3.8 this morning. Plunging.

The whole concept of the feature isn't a bad one. However, I certainly dont wish for it to be automatically installed on my device as a seperate app. A feature that is supposedly for a messaging platform that I don't even have activated on my device.

I removed it myself as it can be uninstalled. It doesn't show up on play store by search, however you can look up the app link online and get a direct link to it. Which I put here.

Spyware? A helpful feature? I don't want it on my phone anyways.

(Yes this is a repost, I hope it isn't considered spam. Yes I did also delete the original one :/ . Goodnight 🥱!)

With the U.S. government now in total control by a political party clearly displaying fascist traits that appear to be dissolving the federal government and de-stabilizing the economy, this CIA field manual for sabotage tactics may be of interest to many individuals.

I do not condone violence or illegal acts.

Elon Musk's action are not his own and there are clear intentions behind them. They were planned over the last decade by Silicon Valley megalomaniacs, most notably Peter Theil (JD Vances mentor) with the intended goal of collapsing US democracy and replacing it with an autocratic system where its run like a corporation.

Elon is doing the dirty work and putting his face on it but there is a wider network of people behind it. His intended goal is not to cut government funding. It is to literally collapse the federal government.

Please watch and Share:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

With a substitution ratio of 65g of blood for one egg (approx. 58g), or 43g of blood for one egg white (approx. 33g)

How hungry are ya?

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) published a paper in 1995 suggesting how outside mirrors could be adjusted to eliminate blind spots. This article expands on that paper.

I switched a few months ago. It took a while to get used to it, but I feel like I have a better picture of what's happening around me.

Have you tried this? Did you switch back?

Was curious about the foundation I donate to. Turns out about 80% of the donations go to pay the executive director...

Why YSK: Because if you are like most people, you also store your email's password in your Bitwarden Vault and not bother remembering it, causing you to potentially get locked out (since you wouldn't be able to log in to your email to get the verification code, because your email's password is in the vault itself 👀)

(Imagine leaving your key in your house, lol)

Source: https://bitwarden.com/help/new-device-verification/

Excerpt:

To keep your account safe and secure, in February 2025, Bitwarden will require additional verification for users who do not use two-step login. After entering your Bitwarden master password, you will be prompted to enter a one-time verification code sent to your account email to complete the login process when logging in from a device you have not logged in to previously. For example, if you are logging in to a mobile app or a browser extension that you have used before, you will not receive this prompt.

Good thing I noticed, otherwise I might've had a bad time next month 😖

Edit: Updated title to clarify that people who have 2FA are not affected.

Why YSK: There is a lot of cortisol going on right now. A lot of people are stressed, angry, and afraid. Those emotions all deserve to be felt, but over time, cortisol becomes neurotoxic (inflicting permanent damage on the hippocampus).

Oxytocin (responsible for feelings of love, attraction, affection, etc) is a perfect foil to cortisol. If you notice yourself feeling angry or afraid for an amount of time that bothers you, adding some oxytocin to the situation might be helpful.

Luckily for us, our biology makes oxytocin pretty easy to come across. Different activities work better for different people, but cuddling with a pet or loved one, watching cute cat videos, or having sex work for a lot of people.

Here are a few interesting sources for further reading, if you are curious.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33632072/ https://www.nature.com/articles/srep30187 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5619133/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33632072/

I was going to post this as a comment, but it was in an anarchism community, and I figured some sections of it might be unacceptable there. Hence, new post.

Here's a guideline of how to interact with cops. There are more or less three modes, depending on your read of the situation. Cops are not always the enemy or the maniacal whole-job-is-making-evil thugs that Lemmy sometimes makes them out to be. It really is bad for people to get mugged or their cars broken into, and they're the solution our society has come up with to minimize the amount of it that happens. It's not always a bad thing.

If you find yourself talking to the cops, there are more or less three ways:

• They're there to solve a real problem. Someone's car got broken into, someone got beat up. Just talk with them. Tell them what you know, help them figure out the situation. In almost all of the US, their effect on the problem will be positive, and it'll be a lot more positive if they have a good grasp of what happened. If, in your opinion, the person they're trying to catch really did do something that warrants a law enforcement response, then give them a hand. Use your judgement as to whether that's warranted of course, and your impression of the justice level in your local area, since it varies quite a lot in the US.
• They're there for you. Shut the fuck up. Don't say a goddamned word. It doesn't even matter if you didn't do it. Don't explain. Shut the fuck up. Be polite, obey lawful orders, definitely don't fight them or you'll get a felony and might also get injured or worse, but tell them that if you're suspected of a crime, then you'd like to talk to a lawyer, and you have nothing else to say. And then, shut the fuck up and cooperate. Maybe you want to go as far as "Were you shoplifting?" "What? No. That wasn't me, man." But any further explanation than that, just leave it alone. Definitely don't make something up on the spot, to make yourself sound innocent, if you did do it. For the love of God, don't do that.
• They're there for someone who didn't do anything wrong. The reason for this post is, anything and everything with ICE and immigration falls into this category. Some things with local cops will, also. Just be unhelpful and simple. No, I didn't see anything. I don't know. I'm not sure. Be vague. Don't get creative, keep it simple, don't refuse to give your ID or otherwise antagonize them or commit minor crimes of obstruction, but just do your best imitation of someone who just fell from the sky. "So you've NEVER MET your neighbor. Your neighbor across the hall." "Nope." "Are you sure?" "Yeah, I don't know." "I mean, she gave us your name, she said she'd talked to you." "I don't know, I don't remember that." Don't embellish. Don't explain why. Just calmly let the silence linger and the pressure build up, without adding extra words.

Like I said, everything with ICE or other immigration authorities falls into the third category. No exceptions. Everything. The same applies with any type of federal law enforcement, I suspect, for the next few years.

YSK as this allows the telecom regulator to investigate scams attempts

Why YSK- Even if you're already knowledgeable on these things, it never hurts to reinforce something that could save someone's life. Also since there's lots of little things to be mindful of when responding to an emergency, it can be easy to forget. I first went through the series a decade ago when it came out and after going through it again today I got a few things wrong. That's not to say it's a fault of this series. I feel like I retained a good amount of info, it's just like anything, you don't practice something, you can forget. Also there was a randomized controlled trial done that shows this is comparable to face to face training. This is the study published by the European Resuscitation Council. Even if you disregard that, I think it's fair to say it's better than just consuming info from say a youtube video.

If you're on your PC you can use the site https://www.lifesaver.org.uk/

or if you're on mobile there's the lifesaver app Google Play , iOS

Why YSK: Certain topics are stressful and tend to spread all over the site, including to unrelated communities. Blocking communities can be overkill and ineffective, and likewise for blocking individual users.

To do so, open up the uBlock Origin dashboard, go to the 'My filters' tab, and add this filter:

lemmy.world##article.row:has-text(/word1|word2|word3|word4/i)

For example:

lemmy.world##article.row:has-text(/Trump|Elon|Musk|nazi/i)

Then apply the changes and reload any open tabs, and all posts which contain any of your filtered words will simply not show up.

You'll have to change "lemmy.world" at the start to whatever your actual instance is. You can filter as many or as few words as you want, just keep the / at the start, the /i at the end, and separate words with | pipes. What's actually being filtered is a case-insensitive regex, if you want to get fancy with it.

Here are equivalent filters for reddit and Ars Technica:

reddit.com##div.thing[data-context="listing"]:has-text(/word1|word2|word3|word4/i)
arstechnica.com##:not(:not(head>title:has-text(/^Ars Technica/))) article:has-text(/word1|word2|word3|word4/i)

As a disclaimer, I made these myself, and I'm not particularly familiar with creating uBlock Origin filters. There may be better ways to do this. Also the reddit one is specific to old.reddit.com, and the lemmy filter is made to work with the default lemmy.world web UI and may not work on other UIs without tinkering.

Yes, I know I'm just hiding my head in the sand.

Down Dog makes really neat Apps that chain together smaller video snippets into cohesive workouts. So you don't have to follow the same video tutorial every day but get a different workout with whatever length or difficulty you want.
I personally really like their Yoga App, but they've got stuff like HIIT and Bodyweight Workouts too.

Who counts as a Student/teacher? Anyone with a .edu email address. They re-confirm the email every 2 years.

Completely unrelated YSK:
There are throwaway email generators that have .edu mails.

They're actively engaged in and expressed desire in increased levels personal surveillance. With AI on the rise we can't be too careful. Don't make it too easy to find posts by you containing their names, or allusions to them. In a few years, posts like these could be considered illegal - even retroactively like the Nazis did!

I work in IT, specifically education. I know how easy it can be to passively and actively monitor thousands of people with one station. It's probably already too late for us, but we can try.

Use metaphor, don't use the direct spelling, don't make your intentions completely clear.

There are many reasons you might have unclaimed funds (abandoned accounts, uncashed checks, misspelled names, incorrect addresses, misplaced inheritance and trusts, etc), and your state is required to hold your property until you claim it.

They will not seek you out, and most people are completely unaware they may have lost funds or property being held by the state.

Every state has an official (.gov) website where you can check whether you have unclaimed property and submit a claim. Just search ‘[my state] unclaimed property’.

e: make sure you go to the official state website; I just noticed some state search top results aren’t the official (.gov) website.

e2: also, check every state you’ve lived in. Moving state is one of the major reasons this happens, and your unclaimed funds will not move to a new state with you.

e3: if you find unclaimed funds, please comment! I’m fascinated to know, no matter how large or small.

I just learned this too. It was never anything I thought about, but some dogs can be trained to hear for situations that a deaf person can't hear. I can't explain why I didn't know or think about this, but it's kind of awesome to me.

They can be trained to notify their person about different alarms and situations that their person might not hear. A good contrast would be a seeing-eye dog for blind people. Dogs are the greatest

Paws With A Cause seems like a good organization to use

He generally shows most of the signs of the misinformation accounts:

• Wants to repeatedly tell basically the same narrative and nothing else
• Narrative is fundamentally false
• Not interested in any kind of conversation or in learning that what he’s posting is backwards from the values he claims to profess

I also suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this is happening just as the Elon Musks of the world are ramping up attacks on Wikipedia, specially because it is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others, and tends to fight back legally if someone tries to interfere with the free speech or safety of its editors.

Anyway, YSK. I reported him as misinformation, but who knows if that will lead to any result.

Edit: Number of people real salty that I’m talking about this: Lots