Things you should know by now, but only just discovered

ClockworkHouse wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I just realized Clock’s avatar is a frog. I never really paid attention before and always thought it was a weird smiley face frosted on a cookie.

It's foam in a cup of coffee that looks like a frog.

Farewell, Peachomp. You will be missed.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

That's it! Also, that's a much less compressed version of the image.

I linked his current profile image. Turns out both are wrong though. It's two wolves fighting.
IMAGE(https://a.wattpad.com/cover/61739535-256-k318875.jpg)

I’m not convinced that isn’t a wolf shadow-boxing. Or shadow-biting. Or whatever wolves call it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I just realized Clock’s avatar is a frog. I never really paid attention before and always thought it was a weird smiley face frosted on a cookie.

It's foam in a cup of coffee that looks like a frog.

I see that on my nice monitor, and a bearded cookie man on my small tablet.

Stengah wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:

That's it! Also, that's a much less compressed version of the image.

I linked his current profile image. Turns out both are wrong though. It's two wolves fighting.
IMAGE(https://a.wattpad.com/cover/61739535-256-k318875.jpg)

AHHH!! GIANT DEMON FISH HEAD!

Squint your eyes and man, there it is.

oilypenguin wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I just realized Clock’s avatar is a frog. I never really paid attention before and always thought it was a weird smiley face frosted on a cookie.

It's foam in a cup of coffee that looks like a frog.

Thanks for the clarification, ClockworkHorse.

CloakWarehouse?

Mixolyde wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Thanks for the clarification, ClockworkHorse.

CloakWarehouse?

WarHorcrux?

Spoiler:
GWJ Employee Profile wrote:

Q: What is the story behind your handle?
A: I misspelled "ClockworkHorse" which was, in turn, a misremembering of the Magic: The Gathering card "Clockwork Steed".

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.

IMAGE(https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1546965711398-microbilt2.jpeg?resize=1050:*)

Info is getting resold to companies that don't follow the rules of the sellers. And of course the resellers jack up the price for massive profits.

Motherboard discovered that resellers use the data for tracking wives or girlfriends, for example, and that other stalkers have been known to purchase the data.

When asked, every company in this chain told Motherboard that they take their customers' privacy very seriously, and that the reseller has been barred from future access to data.

Why do I not believe a single word of that?

I guess remember this the next time law enforcement insists they need some sort of personal data to do their jobs, because the end result is that pretty much anyone will eventually have access to that data.

Can’t say I’m surprised.

I had no reason to know this as I don't drink or drive, let alone and, but I just found out while researching for work that the user 100% pays for interlock devices (understandably) and it is really expensive, something like $2,200 per year. And they have cameras on them that snap a picture of who's at the wheel.

Not mandatory, optional if you want your licence back faster than it returns from the disqualified period.

I am just tired of the fact that I can't make money off the sale of my information. These jackholes are making pennies on me and I want a cut!

Hobear wrote:

I am just tired of the fact that I can't make money off the sale of my information. These jackholes are making pennies on me and I want a cut!

Agreed! That is part of the reason I bought a lifetime membership for a VPN, alomost 2 years ago, that I run on my PC. If I can't make money from the unconsentual datamining of my own information, I'm sure as hell not going to let my ISP do it.

MeatMan wrote:
Hobear wrote:

I am just tired of the fact that I can't make money off the sale of my information. These jackholes are making pennies on me and I want a cut!

Agreed! That is part of the reason I bought a lifetime membership for a VPN, alomost 2 years ago, that I run on my PC. If I can't make money from the unconsentual datamining of my own information, I'm sure as hell not going to let my ISP do it.

I feel like if John Oliver has not started a segment on this then he should and he should start his own datamining group we all sell our shiz from.

You kinda can if you sign up for surveys that pay you. One of the ones here pays mostly supermarket gift cards I think, but you also have the option to take it out as some minimal amount of cash.

There's also the Google Rewards app, not sure if it's still going, but you answer brand surveys in exchange for tiny amounts to your Google Play wallet.

MeatMan wrote:

Agreed! That is part of the reason I bought a lifetime membership for a VPN, alomost 2 years ago, that I run on my PC. If I can't make money from the unconsentual datamining of my own information, I'm sure as hell not going to let my ISP do it.

(This is not necessarily directed at you, MeatMan, but in general, an FYI for people thinking of getting a VPN...)

All a VPN does is trade your ISP for the VPN vendor's ISP. It is up to you to trust where your VPN provider's endpoints come out. It *is* still a layer of misdirection, so it can be useful for hiding your traffic, but that is not to say the companies your VPN provider rents servers from aren't selling your data instead.

Ranger Rick wrote:

(This is not necessarily directed at you, MeatMan, but in general, an FYI for people thinking of getting a VPN...)

All a VPN does is trade your ISP for the VPN vendor's ISP. It is up to you to trust where your VPN provider's endpoints come out. It *is* still a layer of misdirection, so it can be useful for hiding your traffic, but that is not to say the companies your VPN provider rents servers from aren't selling your data instead.

Understood, but my ISP is Comcast, so yeah... f*ck them.

Also, as I understand, my VPN's ISP will only have access to my IP address but no way to match that to my identity without being provided that information by my own ISP.

Speaking of which, this just came out. Yowzers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/BXW7pQr.png)

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/fa...

Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August.
Mermaidpirate wrote:
Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August.

As far as Facebook's removing it. It's way too late...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gSG1E7m.gif)

If Apple really cared they would remove all Facebook apps from the App Store.

Squeegees work better if you pull them fast. Going slow and trying to be careful will leave more streaks behind. Moving quickly pulls the water away from the glass and gets it drier.

File that under “lessons I couldn’t learn until after I stopped caring.” There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t tell if it’s a good one.

WizKid wrote:

If Apple really cared they would remove all Facebook apps from the App Store.

It's not quite all Facebook apps, but it is all of Facebook's internal iOS apps:

The Verge: Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps

Apple has shut down Facebook’s ability to distribute internal iOS apps, from early releases of the Facebook app to basic tools like a lunch menu. A person familiar with the situation tells The Verge that early versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other pre-release “dogfood” (beta) apps have stopped working, as have other employee apps, like one for transportation. Facebook is treating this as a critical problem internally, we’re told, as the affected apps simply don’t launch on employees’ phones anymore.
Gremlin wrote:
WizKid wrote:

If Apple really cared they would remove all Facebook apps from the App Store.

It's not quite all Facebook apps, but it is all of Facebook's internal iOS apps:

The Verge: Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps

Apple has shut down Facebook’s ability to distribute internal iOS apps, from early releases of the Facebook app to basic tools like a lunch menu. A person familiar with the situation tells The Verge that early versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other pre-release “dogfood” (beta) apps have stopped working, as have other employee apps, like one for transportation. Facebook is treating this as a critical problem internally, we’re told, as the affected apps simply don’t launch on employees’ phones anymore.

I love when a big company tries to make its own rules and gets slapped down for it.

Vargen wrote:

Squeegees work better if you pull them fast. Going slow and trying to be careful will leave more streaks behind. Moving quickly pulls the water away from the glass and gets it drier.

I thought you were making an analogy to Facebook trying to gobble up data quickly before their app died. But no, looks like you sincerely believe this, which is weird to me, because I have always found squeegees to work much better at a careful speed. Pulling fast just means there are more lines of droplets that slip under the rubber. Maybe me using gas-station squeegees on my car windows a few times per year is different than your use case?

Keithustus wrote:
Vargen wrote:

Squeegees work better if you pull them fast. Going slow and trying to be careful will leave more streaks behind. Moving quickly pulls the water away from the glass and gets it drier.

I thought you were making an analogy to Facebook trying to gobble up data quickly before their app died. But no, looks like you sincerely believe this, which is weird to me, because I have always found squeegees to work much better at a careful speed. Pulling fast just means there are more lines of droplets that slip under the rubber. Maybe me using gas-station squeegees on my car windows a few times per year is different than your use case?

You gotta push hard enough that there isn't room for it to go under. This is much easier to do on a flat window with a decent squeegee than on a curved windshield with a beat-up public one.

Gotcha, that explains it. My best gas station car squeegeeing is by using one hand to pull the strokes and my other to apply force to press the squeegee into my windows.

You know those windshield wipers that, on their own, are strongly curved? That's why they work so well...

Keithustus wrote:

Gotcha, that explains it. My best gas station car squeegeeing is by using one hand to pull the strokes and my other to apply force to press the squeegee into my windows.

+1 This.

On road trips I like to stop at Love's Truck Stops because they almost always have squeegees that are in good shape and because the water is usually blue and soapy instead of the very liquidy mud you get at many other places. Of course I also carry Invisible Glass in my trunk.

Robear wrote:

You know those windshield wipers that, on their own, are strongly curved? That's why they work so well... :-)

Love those things. They tried to swap them out for regular ones one time when I was getting my car serviced. Don't you dare.

I never lived near New York City until December so didn't know that the mayor of New York governs all the boroughs, and not just Manhattan. The mailing addresses threw me off: "New York, NY" versus "Bronx, NY" or "Brooklyn, NY" doesn't naturally imply to me that they have the same local government.