This article below, from #DuckDuckGo's official #privacy #blog, is about the difficulty of changing the default search provider on #Android devices.

Title:

Search Engines Should be Able to Guide Consumers to Search Preference Menus

URL:

spreadprivacy.com/one-click-preference-menu/

A direct quote from the article:

"Right now, for example, Google’s search preference menu in Europe is shown to consumers just once, on initial device setup. Believe or not, the only way to get back to it thereafter is to erase all data on the device through a hard “factory reset,” returning the device to an initial device setup state."

#weblog

My #thoughts:

I absolutely agree that users should be able to exercise total control over what search provider they use on their devices. It should be as simple as changing a setting. The setting should be easily accessible, user-friendly, and unintrusive.

On a separate topic, the main operating systems that everyday people use, #macOS, #Windows 10, and #iOS have been integrating search features into the operating system itself so you don't have to open the browser to search something.

On iOS, what you type into Search feature is automatically sent to #Apple servers, with no way to disable it.

This is obviously a risk to user privacy. The iOS Search feature does not say where it fetches its results, either. I use it to access my #iPhone's built-in dictionary. Unfortunately, there's no way to access its dictionary without sending information to Apple servers.

Basic Steps to Understand Difficult Writing

1. Read the piece of writing
2. Summarize the piece of writing
3. If you have trouble, look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary and try again
4. If you have trouble summarizing a paragraph or a longer piece of writing, summarize a sentence or a word
5. Look up unfamiliar concepts with a search engine. Putting the concept in quotes, such as "focal length" will make the search engine only return results with that exact phrase
6. Read in a quiet place, free of distractions

1. Know the purpose and difficulty of the writing. Not all writing is meant to be understood by a general audience and not all writing is written clearly.
2. Find writing that is suitable for your level of understanding
3. If you're unable to understand something, ask someone who knows

#GeneralGoodAdvice

Note:

Summarizing is when you explain a concept to yourself in the most basic way, so it's easy to understand.

🕵🏻‍♀️ 1. Do things that make you proud of yourself and are memorable. What would you want to tell someone about "what you did today?" This question is crucial to having a "good life." If you're "not sure what you did" this is a bad sign. It means that your life isn't meaningful to you.

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2. Even if you "don't feel like it" do it anyway. The benefit of doing it far outweighs the suffering that not doing it causes. There are strategies for "getting into something" such as the Pomodoro Technique.

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3. Don't waste your day. There are only a limited number of hours in a day to do things. Take note of how many there are, write down a list of things you "might" want to do. The list should have as many things as you can think of. You can make the list smaller in the next step. Once you have around 20 ideas (ideally you want as many as possible. It will be more accurate the more ideas you have), write your favorite ideas on a new list. The new list should be smaller than your first list. It doesn't matter how large it is, as long as you're eliminating some options. Get the list down to 3 - 5 things, then choose which to put on a schedule for you to do. The schedule should look like:

Before breakfast, walk a mile.

Before dinner, write ideas for a project.

Before going to sleep, read 20 pages of a book.

This list you make will boost your self-respect if you complete it, and it's what you can answer the "what did you do today?" question with.

If it's still not memorable, come up with a new list using the beginning of number 3. The location and context you do the task in affects how memorable it is, so aim to do things outside of your house because things are less memorable in a familiar location.

"Where do I get ideas?" This is a good question. URL to Wikipedia, "List of hobbies:"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hobbies

Wikipedia should be your go-to if you don't know where else to look. It encourages critical thinking by making you ask questions about what you want to know then finding it.

An alternative name for number 3 is, "have hobbies."

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4. Like Loren Dias @lorendias said, do not neglect your wardrobe. How you look affects you feel and how you behave. What you're doing also affects this. If you're unoccupied, you might be more irritable, for example.

#GeneralGoodAdvice

⭐️ 1. Go to bed at a reasonable hour when you're actually tired.

2. When you start to get tired, finish up whatever you're doing and go to sleep in a cool, dark place. The ritual of preparing to go to bed helps your brain shut down at night. Everything in life is much harder if your sleep is bad.

3. Don't use an alarm 🚨. The rude awakening messes up your whole day.

4. Eat a healthy breakfast in the morning. Your brain functions worse if you don't feed yourself adequately. If something is "quick food" it's probably not adequate. Eat a variety of different types of food with different textures and tastes.

5. It's critical that you prepare for tomorrow the day before. Everything you do now affects how tomorrow turns out, and everything you do now affects what your life will be like next year and the years that follow it. Things do not magically get better. If there's something you're doing now or not doing that you know is bad for you, stop doing it now. I repeat, it will not actually go away on its own. You actually have to make changes now. If you don't do it right now, you will put it off indefinitely and then your future will change because of it. What you do right now directly impacts your future (Repeat that 1,000 times).

6. Shower every day. Use soap. Armpits, ass, feet, and behind the ears especially.

7. If you need help, ask someone. Don't interact with people who make you feel bad, even if they don't mean to. Be aware of what's making you feel bad and do something about it instead of ignoring it.

I think this is the longest post I've made on Mastodon. I would be 803 characters over the limit if I posted this on my normal account.

⭐️🛁 ⭐️🛁 ⭐️🛁 ⭐️🛁 ⭐️🛁 ⭐️

#GeneralGoodAdvice

Re-drafted because I messed up.

This is my (third) Mastodon account I've created. I made this one so I could write longer posts. My main account is @vital876@mastodon.social.

qoto.org's theme looks awesome. I feel like I'm on a spaceship of some kind. The character limit is 65,532? That's crazy high!

@strawberryfieldsforever I made the account! Oh my goodness. That character limit is nice to see! 🎉💃