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Vanishing In the park

@vanishinginthepark / vanishinginthepark.tumblr.com

Musings on life in general  -  33 - MN - she/her - ace/bi/queer (i don't use romantic orientation terminology) ig: kristin.k.y background from mayabeeillustrations.tumblr.com/

Do you ever eat popcorn out of the palm of your own hand with such ardent desperation that you feel like both a wild horse and the gentle schoolgirl feeding it treats to gain its affection 

Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2022, commenting on this post from 2016. There’s been a lot of people on this site lately being like “oooh no don’t make viral uwu I’m so pathetic, little, and defenseless and my poor notifications can’t handle 10k reblogs” well first of all ALL of us are pathetic, little, and defenseless and secondly none of our notifications can handle 10k reblogs and thirdly I’m not a coward and I think this should have a million notes. Not because of its own merit as a post, I just think it’d be funny if when I turn 30 this year and I reflect on the greatest accomplishments of my life thus far, I have to at least consider putting “famous tumblr popcorn post” on the list

Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2023, in May specifically, I’m 30 and for the record it rules, I had a lil aging crisis and now I’m past that and I’m just like goddamn it is great being in my thirties and I had a wonderful birthday NO THANKS TO YOU GUYS

actually, much thanks to you guys. Some of you were inspiringly crazy about this post. Frankly you worked harder for this than I did, and your efforts were touching and inspiring and funny and yet we STILL FAILED. GUYS WE GOTTA PUT OUR EYES BACK ON THE BALL. We have ehhh about six months before I turn the big three-one, which is actually the most important birthday because now you’re in your thirties For Real, and I personally can’t think of a better way to ring in my 31st year of life than by trying and failing to do something that I was hoping to knock out in my twenties.

Like, cis in a way that I am still my assigned gender at birth, but I also don't identify with my assigned gender, you know?

It's like "My hair is brown" vs "I am a brunette", you know? One is just a thing that describes me, the other carries a sense of identity. When I check the "female" option for my license, it feels the same as checking the "hair: brown" box. It's just a trait. It is a description, but not one that I feel any sort of kinship with, nor resentment of. It's just a check box.

Gender? Yeah, sure, that one. Now lets go get some waffles.

I feel similar, but I add a sprinkle of : your cultural gender categories are not useful to me and I don't wanna fit in one of your prescribed boxes. So think whatever you wanna assume, I'm gonna go get some tacos.

My pronouns are “I/Me/My” and everything else sounds like a you problem

Sounds about right. Wanna go get some cornmeal waffles made into tacos?

honestly this sums up how I feel pretty perfectly

I want this to be an actual poll, so I'm gonna need a REALLY big sample size, so do ANYTHING you can to get this around! Reblog it! Kung-pow-penis me, if you have to! Wreck my notifications! Just do ANYTHING!

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You deserve software that doesn’t hate you, switch to Firefox <3 🦊

Other good extensions:

Privacy Possum is an anti-tracking extension that not only blocks commercial trackers, it also fucks with them by generating nonsense data.

Forget Me Not is a cookie management tool that lets you choose whether/how sites can store cookies on your computer on a site-by-site basis.

Bypass Paywalls Clean does exactly what it says: allows you to bypass paywalls on news sites and the like.

SponsorBlock uses crowd-sourced data to block sponsored segments on YouTube videos. Now you never have to hear about NordVPN or Raycon ever again!

Breakthrough Twitter Login Wall is another “what it says on the tin” extension. It stops Twitter from trying to force you to log in, so you can browse anonymously in peace.

I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."

"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.

"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?

"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.

If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.

You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.

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New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

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I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks.

A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc).

Scenario.

Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this.

Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor's website without them having to send you anything.

Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud's tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that.

These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn't the the same as clicking on the promised attachment.

They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it's from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn't the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware.

Another Scenario.

An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip.

The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source.

Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials.

These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated.

Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites.

Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You'll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you.

Yes, a lot of users aren't going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out.

In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk.

It's an unnecessary and risky can of worms that's been opened up.

Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.

Peer reviewed. This is such a colossally stupid move that makes the internet way less safe for no good reason— the people who make high level decisions at Google are a lot of things, but stupid is not among them.