Interesting Things That Interest Me

[shoe20]

I know a lot of you are upgrading to Win 10 this summer..... be warned it is loaded with a bunch of tracking options.... for some of you it may not bother you that all your computing experience is being reported to MS centra .... Some people may not mind that, others will find it to be profoundly sinister.  It's not just your browser anymore. lol  It's all done in the spirit of making your computing experience better, or so we're told.
Conceptually it’s another story entirely: a large corporation is gathering and storing vast amounts of data on your computing habits, and not simply what you do in a browser.

here are some tips on how to turn some of it off (the tips were written by Alec Meer)

How to opt out
OK, here’s how to take control of this stuff if you’re worried about it. No, opting out is not especially simple, although if you take an absolutist approach it doesn’t take at all long to set everything to ‘no.’ If you’re yet to install Windows 10 and are concerned about all this stuff, you can head most of it off at the pass by declining Express settings and choosing options yourself, refusing any request to let the OS or apps access your location and turning the Cortana search assistant off. If you missed the boat there, you’ll need to do any and all of the following. Even if you were super-cautious during setup, be sure to follow step 3 below if you’re concerned.
1. Go to Settings – Privacy and go through the 13 different screens there and turn anything which concerns you to off. The biggest, most universal settings are under ‘General’, while the other screens let you choose which apps can and can’t access your calendar, messages, camera, mic, etcetera. There may well be stuff you want to leave on – for instance, I do actually want Windows’ Calendar app to access my calendar data (obv), I just don’t want it to sell that data on because I don’t want to be bombarded with flower ads when it’s my mum’s birthday.
2. Depending on whether you’ve been finding it useful or not, you may want to go to Cortana’s settings and turn off everything there. It’s just working as a basic file search for me now, as I didn’t want its ‘suggestions’, I didn’t want it to lock me into Bing and I didn’t want a tiny part of my processor to be forever dedicated to listening out for voice commands I will never use.
3. This is the crucial one, and so fundamental to Windows 10’s tracking that Microsoft have stuck the setting on an external website, which they say is so that it’s on one easy dashboard, but I find it hard not to wonder if it’s in the hope that we don’t easily stumble across it while browsing Windows 10’s own Privacy menus. Said website is colourful and cheerful and can play a video at you talking about how wonderful targeted advertising is. Ignore the bumf and instead go directly here and set both options to Off. It’s the innocuous-sounding “Personalised ads wherever I use my Microsoft account” which is the likely root of all this, because having that on means Windows 10 itself becomes a hub for targeted ads. You’ll probably have set up Windows 10 with a Microsoft account, because it heavily encourages you to do so with talk of synchronised files and settings and a OneDrive cloud account during installation, but this means the OS is signed into that account all the time. As a result, Windows 10 itself has it spyglasses on, not just apps or pages that you’re signed into with your MS account.
I notice that every time I go back to that page, the “Personalised ads in this browser” setting has silently turned itself back on again. This is concerning, but I’m not yet sure if it’s a bug or if it’s exploiting sessions as an excuse to reset regularly. Judicious ad and cookie control with your plugins and browser options of choice can change this, however. Again, do remember that many websites are dependent on advertising revenue to survive, but opting out of targeted advertising – and having that opt out be respected – is another matter entirely.
4. You may also wish to remove your Microsoft account from Windows 10 and use a local account instead. This will double-down on restricting what’s harvested, though you’ll lose out on features such as settings synchronisation across all your PCs and will suffer more nagging from stuff like the Windows Store and OneDrive. Probably not a big deal for many people, I suspect. Go to Settings – Accounts – Your Account within Windows 10 (or just type ‘Accounts’ into haha Cortana) to get to the relevant options.
If you have multiple PCs already running Windows 10 you’ll need to do all of this on each of them, although your Microsoft account opt-out should be universal.
None of these options mean you’ll see fewer ads, but they do mean that not quite so much information about you will be gathered and sold, and also that the ads you do see won’t be ‘relevant’ to what algorithms have decided your interests are. It is worth noting that some folk find the latter to be preferable to entirely irrelevant ads, and in some cases even useful – but certainly not everyone. Hopefully you can use the information here to make an informed choice about what happens. Again, in many respects it’s not wildly different from what already happens on your smart phone or your browser, but it’s important that you should know about it, and that Windows now has something of an ulterior motive.
More options, or clearer options, may become available in time, depending on how much of the world frowns at Microsoft about this. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything else that needs doing in order to  

[Deleted]

Chvrches is one of my favorite bands (I posted a few of their songs in the "What are you listening to?" section), and I was sad to hear of the abuse the lead singer goes through. She talks about being sent blatant sexual comments and threatening messages through the band's social media accounts and how much of a toll it has taken on her. She even wrote a post in The Guardian addressing those same issues. Now I'm no saint when it comes to anything, and I've made comments about women in the past (usually about how hot some of them are), but I don't think they were at the level of vitriol she experiences. And certainly not to their personal accounts. Yes, she's very pretty, and I know how her "look" (I'm emphasizing that because she has a sort of cute, doll-like appearance which is like catnip to most men) appeals to a lot of guys, but it doesn't give them the right to barrage her with sexually explicit commentary just because they can't keep it in their pants or because they think it's funny. There's a time and place for everything, and her account is not the place for that sort of locker room mentality. Guys know better than that and should behave accordingly. You can have your opinion about something, but there should be limits to what you should say or do about it. Especially in certain areas.



Here's the post she wrote in The Guardian Newspaper:


www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/30/chvrches-lauren-mayberry-online-misogyny

I am in a band that was born on the internet.



Although Chvrches formed and began writing in October 2011, we made our first wobbly steps into the public realm by posting a song on Neon Gold music blog in May last year. Since then, the blogosphere and social networks have arguably been the key reasons anyone knows about us at all – labels, media and members of the public included. For that reason, it has always been important to us that we communicate directly with people who care about our band through the social networking sites we run.



There are, however, downsides to being known on the internet. Last week, I posted a screengrab of one of the many inappropriate messages sent to the band's social networks every day. After making the post, I sat back and watched with an increasingly open mouth as more and more people commented on the statement. At the time of writing, Facebook stats tell me that the post had reached 581,376 people, over five times the number of people who subscribe to the page itself, with almost 1,000 comments underneath the image. Comments range from the disgusted and supportive to the offensively vile. My current favourites from the latter category include:



"This isn't rape culture. You'll know rape culture when I'm raping you, b***"



"I have your address and I will come round to your house and give u anal and you will love it you twat lol"



"Act like a slut, getting treated like a sluy [sic]"



"It's just one of those things you'll need to learn to deal with. If you're easily offended, then maybe the music industry isn't for you"



But why should women "deal" with this? I am incredibly lucky to be doing the job I am doing at the moment – and painfully aware of the fact that I would not be able to make music for a living without people on the internet caring about our band. But does that mean that I need to accept that it's OK for people to make comments like this, because that's how women in my position are spoken to?



I absolutely accept that in this industry there is comment and criticism. There will always be bad reviews: such is the nature of a free press and free speech. When you put your work out there, you are accepting the fact that people will comment on it, but it is your choice whether you read it or not. (Kathleen Hanna sums this sentiment up nicely in this interview.)



What I do not accept, however, is that it is all right for people to make comments ranging from "a bit sexist but generally harmless" to openly sexually aggressive. That it is something that "just happens". Is the casual objectification of women so commonplace that we should all just suck it up, roll over and accept defeat? I hope not. Objectification, whatever its form, is not something anyone should have to "just deal with".



Since we began the Facebook page, I have seen every message – good and bad – that has come into our inbox. Many people involved with our band argued that we should give up maintaining this routine as things got busier and Chvrches' schedule got tighter, but it is important to me that our fans know we value their interest in us by giving things a personal touch. Perhaps people assume we have a team of fancy PAs who deal with our social networks for us. Maybe the men – and I'm sorry, but they are all men – sending the notifications of impending unsolicited "anal" bothering don't realise it will actually be me who reads the emails – or maybe they don't care either way. But in order to get to the messages from people who genuinely wish to share something with the band, I must filter through every condescending and offensive message we receive.



I read them every morning when I get up. I read them after soundcheck. I read them, as we all do with our emails and notifications, on my phone on the bus or when I have a break in the day. And, after a while, despite the positive messages in the majority, the aggressive, intrusive nature of the other kind becomes overwhelming. During this past tour, I am embarrassed to admit that I have had more than one prolonged toilet cry and a "Come on, get a hold of yourself, you got this" conversation with myself in a bathroom mirror when particularly exasperated and tired out. But then, after all the sniffling had ceased, I asked myself: why should I cry about this? Why should I feel violated, uncomfortable and demeaned? Why should we all keep quiet?



Women are spoken to like this every day, and not just those deemed to be in the public eye. The depressing reality is that campaigns like the Everyday Sexism Project would not need to exist were casual sexism not so startlingly commonplace. I should note here that I have never said that men – in the public eye or otherwise – do not receive such comments. I can, however, only speak of what I know, which is that the number of offensive messages directed towards me, "the girl singer," compared to my bandmates is undeniably higher. I should also clarify that this has nothing to do with hating men, as some have suggested. I identify as a feminist but subscribe to the pretty basic definition of a feminist as "someone who seeks equality between the sexes". I am now, and have always been, in bands with smart, supportive guys, and have many amazing men in my life as family and friends. For that I am incredibly grateful.



But maybe it's the personal side to online interaction that these men fail to grasp. It seems almost too obvious to ask, "Would you condone this behaviour if it was directed at your mother/sister/daughter/wife/girlfriend?" but maybe going back to basics is what the trolls or 4chan addicts need. To learn a little empathy. To have a little respect for other people. To think before they speak.



Of my numerous personal failings (perpetual lateness; a tendency towards anxiety; a complete inability to bake anything, ever), naivety is not one. I am often cynical about aspects of the music industry and the media, and was sure from the off that this band would need to avoid doing certain things in order for us to be taken seriously as musicians – myself in particular. We have thus far been lucky enough to do things our own way and make a pretty decent job of our band without conforming to the "push the girl to the front" blueprint often relied upon by labels and management in a tragic attempt to sell records which has little to do with the music itself.



I am almost entirely sure that the comments underneath this article will be as varied as those underneath my original post. I am not a martyr, nor am I attempting to change the world in any revolutionary way. I am only in a band, not one of the many wonderful people in organisations striving for change. My involvement in this discussion is not motivated by a self-righteous or self-pitying urge. My hopes are that if anything good comes out of this, it will start a conversation, or continue the conversation which is already happening, encouraging others to reject an acceptance of the status quo, and that our band can continue to do what we are doing in our own way and on our own terms. For us, this has always been – and hopefully will always be – about the music, and that is what we will be getting back to now.

[Deleted]

Here's some car accidents that might make you consider not owing a car in the first place! I'm pretty sure no one died, but yikes are they brutal!

[Deleted]

I just watched this really nice German vampire movie called "We Are The Night" ('Wir sind die Nacht' in German). It's about an all female group of vampires in Berlin that decides to take in a new member, and everything sort of falls apart after that. It has a Lost Boys feel to it, with them practically eating whomever they want, driving fast cars and enjoying the nightlife. It's an interesting take on vampires, cause in their world all the male vampires are gone, so that gives the film a certain perspective. There's a romance in there between a cop chasing them and the new vampire recruit they took in. It's kinda nice, and it definitely has an impact on the group and the movie at large. It was a lot of fun, with some poignant, heartfelt moments thrown in too. If you love the vampire genre, definitely check it out. It's pretty good. There's a German version, as well as an English dubbed edition. I Definitely prefer the German version, but the English version is pretty decent as well. It's available for 2.99 on YouTube, but there's "other" ways to get it for free online. If you're interested, send me a message. Here's the trailer for it:

[Deleted]

Check out this amazing yacht that doubles as a "private island." It's unbelievable, and you have to be pretty rich to afford it. Wow!!!

www.businessinsider.com/mobile-private-island-ups-the-ante-on-billionaire-toys-2015-9?utm_content=buffer51792&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Deleted]

16 reasons Android phones are better than iPhones.

www.businessinsider.com/android-phones-vs-iphone-2015-9



I'm an android fan, and I definitely agree with this. Hilarious cartoon though. lol

[Deleted]

50 things no one needs to buy anymore in 2015.

www.businessinsider.com/50-unnecessary-things-no-one-needs-to-buy-2015-9?utm_content=buffer6aac3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I pretty much agree with most of them.

[Ruby]

@dman24 that was a pretty good list.

I was just redoing my bookshelf n I was looking at my books and then looked over at my nook and wondered how many bookshelves would I have needed if they never created the electronic book haha.

Also I can never do without bottled water. Only in ny can you drink from the tap n not worry. Everywhere else, bottled water it is.

Workout clothes right now is a huge trend. Stores are coming out with their own line of workout clothes.

Sent from my SM-G900T using proboards

[Deleted]

 

Sept 27, 2015 12:40:04 GMT -5 Ruby said:

@dman24 that was a pretty good list.

I was just redoing my bookshelf n I was looking at my books and then looked over at my nook and wondered how many bookshelves would I have needed if they never created the electronic book haha.

Also I can never do without bottled water. Only in ny can you drink from the tap n not worry. Everywhere else, bottled water it is.

Workout clothes right now is a huge trend. Stores are coming out with their own line of workout clothes.

Sent from my SM-G900T using proboards

That's sort of a bias view of everywhere else. I understand if it were other countries, but most places in the states the water is perfectly safe to drink.

Bottled water is fine, but it's completely unnecessary. The only way I would buy bottled water is if I had no access to other sources of water. It's a waste of money I think. Just buy a filter and bottle your own water. Or just drink it from the tap. Everything else is just scared tactics and marketing hype.

I don't know about workout clothes. Some of my clothes are pretty versatile, so I use them a lot for that. But if you have the money, why not? I'm sure they probably fit better since they are geared towards that purpose. It never hurts to have options.

I like the list too, cause it shows how much crap we all have that are totally unnecessary. That wasted money could be spent somewhere else, or saved, for more important things. Nice to hear from you.

[Ruby]

Sept 27, 2015 15:42:38 GMT -5 @dman24 said:

 

Sept 27, 2015 12:40:04 GMT -5 Ruby said:

@dman24 that was a pretty good list.

I was just redoing my bookshelf n I was looking at my books and then looked over at my nook and wondered how many bookshelves would I have needed if they never created the electronic book haha.

Also I can never do without bottled water. Only in ny can you drink from the tap n not worry. Everywhere else, bottled water it is.

Workout clothes right now is a huge trend. Stores are coming out with their own line of workout clothes.

Sent from my SM-G900T using proboards

That's sort of a bias view of everywhere else. I understand if it were other countries, but most places in the states the water is perfectly safe to drink.

Bottled water is fine, but it's completely unnecessary. The only way I would buy bottled water is if I had no access to other sources of water. It's a waste of money I think. Just buy a filter and bottle your own water. Or just drink it from the tap. Everything else is just scared tactics and marketing hype.

I don't know about workout clothes. Some of my clothes are pretty versatile, so I use them a lot for that. But if you have the money, why not? I'm sure they probably fit better since they are geared towards that purpose. It never hurts to have options.

I like the list too, cause it shows how much crap we all have that are totally unnecessary. That wasted money could be spent somewhere else, or saved, for more important things. Nice to hear from you.

I did not mean the water is not safe to drink in other states, Im just saying the taste is different. If i drink tap I prefer NY Tap water. Filter water im ok with.