June 2022 archive

Before I forget to post about this, another post!

We’ve opened up registration to more people! But before I get any further into that…

I am now the official help desk (“onboarding manager”) for re-AOL! This makes me a member of the staff, although I do stress as needed that I am not a developer or moderator. I’m responsible for introducing people to the Discord server when they make themselves known as a new presence, pointing them in the direction of installing the re-AOL client and helping them out with it if my assistance is necessary, helping them through the rest of the steps on the server (reserving screen names as re-AOL allows more and more people to register), and generally being the Help Desk™. I love this server, and I love these people. I grew up with a lot of these people. I love being able to hang with the homies and being able to do something this productive!

If you use Tumblr, please find another blog platform.

I can confirm that Tumblr has not patched the security breach that has now allowed more than one hacker access to the back end of their site, and… well, let’s be real, everything that they could ever want if they wanted to mess their whole site up. These people are expertly able to hide their tracks so that Tumblr does not know that they are there (aside from me having attempted to report a possible, probable, now actual security breach to Tumblr that they ignored). The passwords were not hashed by SHA-1 protocol like Tumblr claimed (“they were a mess, let’s just say that”), nor were they salted, but it was possible for the hackers to brute-force them into plain text… and it’s been possible for the hackers to find out what they are if the person changes them. I was told that Tumblr’s “security”, term used loosely, is more than a decade old (“if that”, person reiterating that it is a mess), easy to get into and do whatever they wanted with, even easier to hide their tracks so that Tumblr had no idea they were even there in the first place, and the easiest to get back into if Tumblr ever even patches it in the first place… which seems doubtful since I reached out to them as many times as I did to let them know that this was a potential problem, and then it became an actual problem for them when it was actually exploited. They gave no indication that they ever listened to me.

These hackers can also permanently take someone’s account from them by changing the e-mail and password on it. They’ve told me this. I have no reason in the world to doubt them given the screenshots that I’ve already been shown. But this is no longer my problem. I did what I could. The rest is up to… whoever.

But for the record, I can say with confidence that I literally don’t care what happens to them now.

If the equivalent of the Red Wedding happens to them because of their own overconfidence, let it.

If it’s not one thing it’s another, but we make do.

Bub’s Steam Deck came in the mail yesterday!

I’m in the process of setting that up for him. I need to get a microSD card for it so that he has access to all of his games, and I’m in the process of having one shipped to my house now. It’ll get here when it gets here, and then I can finish putting this thing together and give it to him for his birthday. The theme of this year’s birthday is (probably what it has always been, but with a bit more oomph this time) games, because Bub loves games. That’s one of the ways that we’ve bonded over the years, and I see absolutely no harm in it.

I also got my formal assessment results in the mail, and I am autistic! Not that I wasn’t told that I was after I completed testing, and I don’t see it as a disability (I do have mild adaptive deficits, but a lot of those come from anxiety, and I have generalized anxiety disorder largely caused and exacerbated by… well, my mother, who I’ve written about, and who I’ll probably continue to touch on in subsequent posts to flesh this out a bit further). I have the results kept in the bottom dresser of my drawer where I tend to keep important things that I’m not going to need to grab on a regular basis, things that I’m probably not going to need to grab at a moment’s notice for some reason, so it is what it is. I mean, I already knew that I was autistic, so… yeah…

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