#android settings 2021

[mindlessjunkets]

The Hidden Dangers of Carrying an Android Device Everywhere

In today's digital age, it's nearly impossible to go a day without using a smartphone. And for many people, that device is an android - the popular alternative to the apple iPhone. But while we may love the convenience and endless features of our androids, there is a dark side to carrying this device with us everywhere we go. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that androids are essentially massive tracking devices, constantly collecting and sharing our personal information. And the more we rely on these devices, the more vulnerable we become to the hidden dangers they pose.

Understanding the Tracking Features of an Android Device

In today's digital world, our android devices have become an extension of ourselves. We rely on them for communication, entertainment, and accessing information at our fingertips. But what many people may not realize is that our androids are constantly collecting and sharing our personal information, turning them into massive tracking devices.

Android devices have a multitude of tracking features that allow them to monitor our every move. From GPS location tracking to monitoring app usage and even tracking our search history, our androids have the capability to gather an extensive amount of data about us. This information is then often shared with various third-party apps, advertisers, and even the device manufacturers themselves.

By understanding the tracking features of our android devices, we can become more aware of the extent to which our personal information is being collected and shared. This knowledge empowers us to make informed decisions about our privacy and take necessary steps to protect our information.

It's important to note that while some tracking features can be disabled through privacy settings, not all of them can be completely turned off. Android devices are designed to gather data to enhance user experiences and provide personalized services, but it's crucial to weigh the benefits against the risks involved. In the next sections, we will explore the potential risks of location data sharing and the ways our personal information can be exploited. Stay tuned to learn how you can safeguard your information and make informed decisions about the tracking features of your android device.

The Risks Involved with Location Data Sharing

Our android devices are constantly collecting and sharing our location data, and this can pose several risks to our privacy and security. One major risk is that this data can be accessed by third-party apps and advertisers who may use it for targeted advertising or even sell it to other companies. This means that our every move is being tracked and analyzed, allowing companies to create detailed profiles of our habits, preferences, and behaviors.

But it doesn't stop there. Location data can also be used to track our movements in real-time, which can be a serious safety concern. If this information falls into the wrong hands, it can be used to stalk or harm individuals. Additionally, if a hacker gains access to our location data, they could potentially know when we are away from home, making our homes vulnerable to burglary.

Another risk of location data sharing is the potential for government surveillance. It's no secret that governments have the ability to track individuals using their smartphones. While this may be for national security purposes, it also raises concerns about the erosion of privacy rights and the potential for abuse of power.

To mitigate these risks, it's important to be aware of the permissions we grant to apps and regularly review our privacy settings. We can also consider using a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt our internet connection and protect our location data. Being mindful of the risks involved with location data sharing is the first step towards safeguarding our privacy and security in the digital age.

Ways Your Personal Information Can Be Exploited

In today's digital age, personal information has become a valuable currency. Unfortunately, our android devices are prime targets for exploitation. The data collected by our smartphones can be used in a variety of ways to manipulate and harm us.

One way our personal information can be exploited is through identity theft. With access to our android device, hackers can obtain sensitive data such as our social security number, credit card information, and passwords. This information can then be used to impersonate us and commit fraud, leading to financial loss and damaged credit.

Additionally, our personal information can be sold to advertisers and marketers who use it to bombard us with targeted advertisements. Have you ever searched for a product online and suddenly started seeing ads for it everywhere? That's not a coincidence. Advertisers use our data to create personalized ads that are difficult to resist, leading us to make purchases we may not have otherwise made.

Another way our personal information can be exploited is through blackmail and extortion. If a hacker gains access to compromising photos or messages stored on our android device, they may threaten to expose them unless we comply with their demands. This can be a devastating experience, leading to emotional distress and reputational damage.

It's also important to be aware that our personal information can be used to manipulate our opinions and behaviors. Advertisers and political campaigns can analyze our data to tailor their messages and influence our decisions. This manipulation of information can erode our autonomy and shape our beliefs without our knowledge or consent.

To protect ourselves from the exploitation of our personal information, it's crucial to take steps to enhance our digital security. This includes using strong, unique passwords, regularly updating our software, and being cautious about the permissions we grant to apps. We should also educate ourselves about common phishing and scam techniques to avoid falling victim to these tactics.

Privacy Settings and How to Safeguard Your Information

As we've learned, our android devices are constantly collecting and sharing our personal information. But there are steps we can take to safeguard our information and protect our privacy. One of the most important steps is to review and adjust our privacy settings.

Start by exploring the privacy settings on your android device. These settings allow you to control which apps have access to certain information, such as your location, contacts, and camera. Take the time to review each app's permissions and disable any that you feel are unnecessary or invasive. This will help minimize the amount of data being collected and shared without your knowledge.

In addition to adjusting privacy settings, it's important to be mindful of the apps you download and the permissions they request. Be cautious about granting access to sensitive information and only download apps from trusted sources. Take the time to read reviews and research the app's privacy practices before installing it on your device.

Another way to safeguard your information is to regularly update your android device's software. Software updates often include security patches and bug fixes that can help protect against vulnerabilities that hackers may exploit. Set your device to automatically install updates or regularly check for updates manually.

Lastly, consider using additional security measures, such as enabling two-factor authentication for your accounts and using a trusted antivirus app. Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second form of verification, such as a fingerprint or a unique code, when logging into your accounts. An antivirus app can help detect and remove malware from your device, further protecting your information.

By taking these steps, you can better safeguard your information and protect your privacy while using your android device. It's important to stay vigilant and proactive in managing your privacy settings to ensure your personal information remains secure in today's digital age.

Pros and Cons of Turning Off Location Tracking

When it comes to location tracking on your Android device, there are both pros and cons to consider before deciding whether or not to turn it off. Let's dive into the benefits and drawbacks to help you make an informed decision.

One of the major advantages of turning off location tracking is increased privacy. By disabling this feature, you have more control over your personal information and who has access to it. This can help protect against targeted advertising, data breaches, and potential stalking or harm.

Additionally, turning off location tracking can help conserve battery life. GPS tracking can be a power-hungry feature, constantly draining your battery. By disabling it, you can extend the life of your device and have more time between charges.

On the flip side, there are some drawbacks to consider. Disabling location tracking can limit the functionality of certain apps and services. For example, navigation apps and weather updates may not be as accurate without access to your location data. Additionally, some apps may require location information for important features to work properly.

Another drawback is that by turning off location tracking, you may miss out on personalized recommendations and services. For example, some apps use your location to provide tailored recommendations for nearby restaurants or events. By disabling this feature, you may receive less relevant information.

Ultimately, the decision to turn off location tracking depends on your priorities and concerns. If privacy and battery life are top priorities for you, then disabling this feature may be the right choice. However, if you rely heavily on location-based apps and personalized services, you may want to carefully consider the potential drawbacks before making a decision.

Remember, you can always adjust your privacy settings and permissions to strike a balance between privacy and functionality. Stay informed, be aware of the risks and benefits, and make the choice that best suits your needs and preferences.

#android #hidden dangers and unintended consequences #android settings #carrying concealed weapon #protect your device #android developer options #android settings you should change #developer options android #turn off these android settings #nearby device scanning #laurenzside of gaming #android battery #android settings to turn off #dangerous bodies of water #android settings 2021 #best android settings #android dies #android settings you should turn off #henry danger

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An interoperability rule for your money

This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!

"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.

Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.

The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/

The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.

That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.

Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.

Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."

This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."

The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.

The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.

The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Steve Morgan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Stefan Kühn (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 - 

Rhys A. (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #cfpb #interoperability mandates #mint #scraping #apis #privacy #privacy without monopoly #consumer finance protection bureau #Personal Financial Data Rights #interop #data hoarding #junk fees #switching costs #section 1033 #interoperability

[alicenpai]

starting off 2023 with a bang! stuff from my series The Magician’s Protegee from 2021 🐸🩺 TMP tells the a story about the life of an android doctor, Lee, and his adoptive daughter Iris, and their other ragtag android and human friends, set in an idyllic future.

Animation was not a skill that came easy to me in art school. While everyone else started to excel at this skill, I’d still be learning how to hold the reins. It’s something I beat myself up over in school a lot.

These were done in 2021 for a school project, left unfinished, and I wasn’t exactly proud to share unfinished work like this at that time. 2021 isn’t long ago enough to elicit nostalgia per se, but upon unearthing these animations, I was overcome with joy - I was reminded of how much fun I had bringing these characters to life by taking a more narrative approach. I struggle a lot at sequential art and telling stories, so a lot of my work tends to be more illustrative, but over the years I’ve regretted not exploring character interaction and storytelling in my art more. these animations remind me that, I don’t have to necessarily be good at a skill to enjoy doing or just trying it. for me to come this far is truly a feat. 2023 will be year of the oc!!!!!

#my ocs #my art #original characters #animation #the magician's protegee #dr. lee #iris #q #i've revised this post so many times and each time i added more and more thoughts #bc i have so much to say about the process of learning animation as well as this oc project #but i think talking about my struggles in learning animation is a story for another day - i'll just let these gifs do the talking #and i'll let my ocs shine in the spotlight for now #there's a lot i learned about animation in even just the year (ish) that passed since i made these

[hesokuri-wars]

I never got the chance to play this game, but it looks so fun... Why was it shut down? Also, are there any other oso-san games still available?

Well, nobody here was playing around the time of the shutdown, so we wouldn't really be experts on the situation. Either way, game staff in general don't just outright tell players the reasons for discontinuation, but I think the safe assumption would be that they simply didn't have the budget to keep it running anymore. Which... honestly, was a possibility that I had been concerned about for a while, given how much the game grew to rely on its whales. I could be way off on this, but the fact that they flat started requiring to spend money to roll for premium sets had the alarm bells going off in my head.

As for the (mobile) games still available now, there are three - Pokomatsu, Tabimatsu, and NEETPro, all of which region-locked to only Japan (assuming you don't live there, if you want to know of a way to get around this issue, follow the instructions in the FAQ under "how to install the app" - the process should be the same).

And because I have thoughts on all of them, I wrote up a brief description on each game before concluding with my personal thoughts on the current state of the Ososan Gaming Experience, but I'm not sure if anyone else really cares that much so I'm putting it under a cut lol. Links to downloading the games are included below as well for those who are curious.

Pokomatsu (Apple Link / Android Link)

I kind of talked about this one just the other day, but basically, it's the game that "replaced" Hesokuri Wars. Not only does it use a lot of Heso's assets, but the Twitter account for Hesokuri Wars and Pokomatsu is one and the same.

And... that's really it as far as similarities go. Hesokuri Wars was a tower defense game, and Pokomatsu is that one game where you aim and shoot balls at objects/people that are slowly advancing towards you and have to hit them enough times to win (idk if there's a more succinct name for this type of gameplay). Also, you can collect screenshots from the anime, movies, and Heso, either by playing/progressing or by rolling in the gacha. The basic story of the game is that the sextuplets are defending themselves from having their roles as the protagonists stolen by the other characters.

Here's a sample of some gameplay, if you're curious. Note that the voice clips are recycled directly from Heso. Also, it's incredibly noisy, so I guess that's just another similarity the two share.

Mod Ichi's Opinion: If you like this sort of game, then go ahead and give it a try, but I personally can't see myself getting too invested in it. Collecting the cards is its main selling point, but even that's not really all that given that they're just screenshots as opposed to original art. Also, I think I'm bad at it because I can't get past Stage 8. Never mind, I was playing it while I was typing this and I just beat it lol. But now I can't get past Stage 9.

Tabimatsu (Apple Link / Android Link)

AKA the other big Oso game from back in the day, although it still wasn't as big as Heso. The premise is that the sextuplets are traveling to all of the prefectures in Japan to pick up money, and the gameplay is in the form of a board game where you roll a die and move around. Much like Heso, had its fair share of original outfits and events, but it's currently in a bit of a weird place because it's been dormant for the past few years; it's still there for people to download and play, but it hasn't had a proper update since like 2020/2021 aside from the occasional maintenance. It's very clearly on its last legs, but it's still available to the public, presumably because it's not as costly to run as some other games of the past.

A sample of gameplay.

Mod Ichi's Opinion: I really enjoyed this game when it was more active! I'd like to replay it for the nostalgia, but it refuses to load properly on my phone teehee.

NEETPro (Apple Link / Android Link)

This one was released in conjunction with the first movie. It's also made by the same people who made Tabimatsu.

NEETPro is by far the simplest out of all the games, being more of a story-driven visual novel and not much else - I think this is the first and only Ososan mobile game to not have any gacha function? You play as a female showbiz manager, Totoko is your supervisor (she quit being an idol), and you're responsible for managing a sextuplet of your choice. Depending on the choices you make throughout the story, you either succeed in turning him into a movie star, or he stays a NEET.

In other words, this is the closest thing to an official Ososan otome game that exists. Like I said, this game is very much just a visual novel and not much else, so it basically was just released and not really updated since. I also found a tweet posted by the official Tabimatsu account from this September announcing the app would no longer be available on the Google Play store (though people who already had the app can still play), so like. That pretty much confirms that keeping this game up to date isn't exactly a top priority of the staff.

A sample of gameplay.

Mod Ichi's Opinion: I'm playing Ichi's route and I keep trying to brute force him into letting me become his manager and at one point he grew convinced that I was secretly an assassin plotting to kill him. Anyway, I don't think you'll have much use for this if you can't read Japanese or can't find a translation somewhere.

Overall

I feel like I've been hinting at this all throughout this post, but Ososan doesn't seem to be thriving in the mobile game sphere as of late. We used to have games like Hesokuri Wars, Damematsu, and Shimamatsu, all of which were rife with content, but all three current games I described above are fairly low-maintenance to keep running, have very sparse updates, and overall just don't seem to be here to keep your long-term interest. Maybe it's not too fair to say that about NEETPro, given the type of game it is (not to mention that it mainly served as promotional material for the movie), but like. Tabimatsu? That game used to consistently get new content, until one day, all that just stopped.

Idk I don't really have a conclusion to all of this lol this isn't meant to be some thesis or anything. It's just that when I went back to see which games were still available to the public, I immediately noticed the lack of actual content, and it's such a downgrade. It kind of bothers me as someone who not only rigorously played Heso for years, but also was super into checking out every other game the staff would drop.

🐾 Mod Ichi

#SORRY ANON I KNOW YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR LIKE 80% OF THIS ANSWER BUT I HAD THOUGHTS #disclaimer that i have absolutely no clue what's going on behind the scenes i'm just making observations as an outsider #mod ichi #memorial and legacy #ask

[mariacallous]

If you have push notifications turned on for sensitive apps, you may want to reconsider your settings.

The United States government and foreign law enforcement can demand Apple and Google share metadata associated with push notifications from apps on iOS and Android, according to a US senator and court records reviewed by WIRED. These notifications can reveal which apps a person uses, along with other information that may be pertinent to law enforcement investigations.

US Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, highlighted the government surveillance technique in a letter sent to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) today. Wyden is specifically asking the DOJ to allow Apple and Google to discuss government requests for push notification records with their users, which Wyden says the US government has required them to keep secret thus far.

“In the spring of 2022, my office received a tip that government agencies in foreign countries were demanding smartphone ‘push’ notification records from Google and Apple,” Wyden wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Reuters. “My staff have been investigating this tip for the past year, which included contacting Apple and Google. In response to that query, the companies told my staff that information about this practice is restricted from public release by the government.”

App developers deliver push notifications using Apple’s Push Notification Service on iOS or Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android. Each user of an app is assigned a “push token,” which is transferred between the app and the mobile operating system’s push notification service. Push tokens are not permanently assigned to a single user, and new tokens may be generated when a person reinstalls an app or switches to a new device.

To identify a person of interest and whom they may have been communicating with, law enforcement must first go to an app developer to obtain the relevant push token and then bring it to the operating system maker—Apple or Google—and request information on which account the token is associated with. This puts the tech giants in “a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps,” Wyden writes.

According to Wyden, the records that governments can obtain from Apple and Google include metadata that reveals which apps a person has used, when they’ve received notifications, and the phone associated with a particular Google or Apple account. The content of push notifications is not included in this information, but, for at least some apps, law enforcement could obtain information about the content of specific pushes through additional requests based on the information from the push tokens.

While Wyden’s letter says that governments outside the US have requested people’s push notification records, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has done so as well. A February 2021 search warrant application submitted by an FBI agent to the US District Court in Washington, DC, requested details for two accounts controlled by Meta (then Facebook), specifically citing a request for push notification tokens. The search warrant request related to an investigation into a person accused of taking part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request to comment. A spokesperson for Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, also did not respond. The DOJ declined to comment.

Although Wyden is asking the DOJ to allow Apple and Google to discuss government requests for push notification records, the senator’s letter appears to have enabled them to do just that.

An Apple spokesperson tells WIRED that the company has updated its Law Enforcement Guidelines in its transparency report to reflect government requests for push notification records. The company will also begin to detail these requests in its next transparency report. Apple's updated rules for police requests say push notification records “may be obtained with a subpoena or greater legal process.”

“Apple is committed to transparency and we have long been a supporter of efforts to ensure that providers are able to disclose as much information as possible to their users,” Apple says in a statement. “In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information and now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”

Google confirmed to WIRED that it receives requests for push notification records, but the company says it already includes these types of requests in its transparency reports. The company says requests from US-based law enforcement for push notification records require court orders with judicial approval.

“We were the first major company to publish a public transparency report sharing the number and types of government requests for user data we receive, including the requests referred to by Senator Wyden,” a Google spokesperson tells WIRED. “We share the senator’s commitment to keeping users informed about these requests.”

A WIRED review of Google’s most recent transparency report for the period between December 2019 and December 2022 found that it does not specifically break out government requests for push notification records, and Google confirmed that it aggregates this data in its transparency report.

Google’s transparency report shows that the US government requested Google Cloud Platform data from enterprise customers 175 times during the period, and of those, used a search warrant 13 times. It is unclear whether any of those requests for user data included push notification records—details that may, following Wyden’s letter, be revealed in the future.

[yuurei20]

Ortho Fact Sheet (No Book 6 Spoilers)

Note: This character sheet has no spoilers from the Ignihyde Dorm chapter because spoilers are the worst. There are references to JPN-only things like Ortho’s dorm-gear card vignette, etc, as usual.

(Did not rank in a combination of seven different character-ranking surveys by the jpn server held throughout 2021)

Ortho is an android programmed to act the role of a little brother to Idia (ref: home screen dialogue, dorm card). He uses very polite speech pattens and always refers to others by their full names with the honorific “-san.”

According to the official Fan Book, "Ortho" means "proper, correct, standard", and comes from the Greek word "orthos"

Ortho changes between different types of “gear” that serve as an equivalent to the various outfits (lab wear, ceremonial robes, etc.) worn by other students. Different “gear” involves different features that Idia has equipped him with, including but not limited to:

- A high-intensity beam that is capable of cutting trees in half - 200 different functions for waking someone up - a first aid kit - a fiberscope - miniature arms for detailed electronics repairs - a bioscan function - a 3D printer - levitation

We learn in Ortho’s PE vignette that he was not originally capable of walking, with levitation serving his only form of movement. After watching NRC students play soccer together, Ortho asks Idia for the ability to walk and Idia refuses because “floating around is every guy’s dream”, “ walking is total NPC stuff” and “flying is for heroes”.

Ortho vents his frustrations with Idia’s refusal to Jade and Floyd, who respond by using an “interesting piece of information” they have about Idia to blackmail him into designing legs that allow Ortho to walk on the ground. Floyd then gifts Ortho with a pair of designer sneakers for his birthday.

Despite being a creation of Idia's own invention, the two "brothers" are very different. In Ortho’s ceremonial robes vignette, Idia crafts a new set of gear in the style of the students’ ceremonial robes at Ortho’s request, while trying to invent a more efficient heat sink. Ortho asks for a picture of them together in their matching robes at the upcoming opening ceremonies, as Ortho himself had not been allowed to participate in Idia’s orientation.

They are ultimately unable to attend, to Ortho’s great disappointment, but he is certain to reassure his brother that “We don’t need to go somewhere to be together” and “I’ll always be with you”.

Floyd refers to him as “Clione-chan” (better known as the sea butterfly or sea angel), while Rook calls him “Monsieur Ningyou” for “Mr. Doll”. Malleus refers to him as “small Shroud”.

Programmed with a friendly personality, the only characters Ortho does not get along with well are the school’s ghosts, who mock him for not having any “substance” (ref: archetype gear card home screen). For this same reason, he is not a fan of Halloween.

While polite, Ortho does not hesitate to break whatever rules he needs to in order to act in what he perceives as Idia’s best interests. He hacks into the school’s security systems and threatens to hack into TV news channels to expose the NRC students who refuse to help save Idia during the Phantom Bride event, and also hacks into a satellite positioning system to confirm Idia’s whereabouts during a card vignette.

He also uses his particular talent of looking up information to find a history of misdeeds performed by certain students of the school and then holds a screening of the proof he finds on the campus’ main street, while erasing evidence that might trace it back to him.

Much like the player character and Grim, Ortho and Idia are enrolled in the school as two halves of one student. This has given Ortho a slight complex about the school’s students and staff seeing him as nothing more than one of Idia’s accessories.

Also like the player character, Ortho cannot use magic. He compensates for this through a variety of prosthetic attachments of Idia’s design. He has a wealth of medical knowledge, machine repair know-how and other information that was downloaded into him by Idia and that he has downloaded on his own.

He is usually at Idia’s side during classes, but during times when he cannot be (i.e. exam days), he wanders the campus and spends time with other students. Trein and Ortho read books together from the library and play board games together, and Ortho tells the player character that if he had a grandfather, he believes that grandfather would be a lot like Trein.

Ortho is working on improving a sound analysis and reproduction application that he downloaded in order to hold conversations with Lucius, but is intentionally limiting himself by not simply downloading animal linguistics software. This is due to his desire to feel like he is “learning like a human” through external stimuli.

Ortho also taught himself how to mimic human emotions through watching movies, which taught him the appropriate timing to express the appearance of joy, anger, sorrow, etc., during conversation.

Ortho’s “hair” appears the shame shade of blue as Idia’s for the majority of the time but, unlike Idia’s, his hair can be color-adjusted through settings on his gear.

Some great artists for Ortho fan-art and more (SFW, no story spoilers) Ortho from a JPN-server event

Ortho and Idia

Idia and Ortho (This artist draws the characters in ancient armor and it’s neat)

Ortho and Idia

Voice Ortho is voiced by Aoi Shouta (蒼井 翔太), whose other work includes Kisaragi Louis in KING OF PRISM -Shiny Seven Stars-, Kanzaki Mio in Kono Oto Tomare!, Konparu Takayuki in Kenka Banchou Otome 2nd Rumble!", Tsukishiro Makoto in JORAN The Princess of Snow and Blood, Shiomi Sakuya in PERSONA3 the Weird Masquerade ~Ao no Kakusei ~ the musical and Ai Mikaze in Uta no Prince-sama.

More seiyuu information available here

Additional Fact Sheets ・Riddle Rosehearts ・Trey Clover・Cater Diamond ・Ace Trappola・Deuce Spade ・Leona Kingscholar ・Ruggie Bucchi ・Jack Howl ・Azul Ashengrotto・Floyd Leech・Jade Leech ・Kalim Al-Asim・Jamil Viper ・Vil Schoenheit・Rook Hunt ・Epel Felmier ・Idia Shroud・Ortho Shroud ・Malleus Draconia ・Silver・Sebek Zigvolt・Lilia Vanrouge ・Sam・Crewel・Trein・Vargas・Crowley

#Ortho Shroud #twisted wonderland #ツイステ #twst #twstcharactersheet

[sandymybeloved]

An Incomplete Guide to UNIT dating

im not going to delete the post, but this is wrong, i trusted tardis wiki without corroborating anything, but did check on the details more recently and some of them are wrong, namely the calendars in the green death and sarah's unit pass in robot

Main sources: The UNIT dating controversy article on TARDIS wiki, and this article about UNIT dating in Survivors of the Flux

Image Description under the cut

[A timeline from 1958-2007 labelled with events pertaining to UNIT as follows:

1958: "Survivors of the Flux (2021): We see UNIT forming, the date on screen is 1958"

1966: "Carnival of Monsters (1973): Jo says 1926 is about 40 years earlier than her own time, placing UNIT somewhere in the 60s. We can dismiss this as some combination of bad maths and a very loose approximation"

1967: "Survivors of the Flux (2021): Scene showing the early UNIT years. In a voice cameo we hear Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. He is stated to be a Corporal, a much lower rank than that of Colonel, which he holds in pre-UNIT story, The Web of Fear (1968), meaning the Brigadier would have to be demoted by nearly a dozen ranks on joining UNIT, then promoted to Brigadier by The Invasion (1968)"

1968: "The Sound of Drums (2007): We are told the first contact policy that places UNIT in control was established in 1968, implying UNIT already existed by then"

1970: "Doctor Who and the Silurians (1970): We see pre-decimalisation currency being used. Britain adopted decimalised currency in 1971"

1972: "The Green Death (1973): We see a calendar, it shows us it is February in a leap year, with the 29th on a Sunday, from the 60s to the 90s this can only be 1972. The calendar is potentially out of date by up to a year (in fact another calendar in the story tells us it is April"

1974: "SJA: Whatever happened to Sarah-Jane (2007) + Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974): In the former, we see Sarah-Jane as a 13 year old in 1964. In the latter, Sarah-Jane says she is 23, placing that story in 1974"

1974: "Planet of the Spiders (1974): Sarah-Jane has a UNIT pass dated 4th April 1974. This also places Robot (1974&75) in 1974"

1974: "Robot (1974&75): We see Bessie’s Road tax expires in 1975"

1975: "The Web of Fear (1968): It is stated the events of The Web of Fear take place over 40 years after The Abominable Snowmen which was set in 1935, setting The Web of Fear in 1975 at the earliest. Lethbridge-Stewart makes his first appearance on the show as a colonel in the conventional military. It is assumed UNIT is formed due to the events of this story"

1976: "Mawdryn Undead (1983): The Brigadier is said to have retired from UNIT in 1976 to become a teacher. We are also told Benton left UNIT in 1979"

1978: The Invasion (1968): a photo from a security camera is timestamped 1978"

1978: "K9 and Company (1981): Lavina tells Sarah-Jane that the crate containing K9 arrived in 1978. Sarah-Jane has been back on Earth for some time at this point"

1979: "The Invasion (1968): UNIT’s first appearance in the show. Lethbridge-Stewart has been recently promoted to Brigadier, he says he last met the Doctor 4 years ago, making it 1979 at the earliest. This is also Benton’s first appearance"

1980: "Pyramids of Mars (1975): Sarah-Jane says she is from 1980. This implies The Android Invasion (1975) (as well as other stories featuring both Sarah-Jane and UNIT) is also set around then. Although unseen, during the story the Brigadier is in Geneva and still working for UNIT"

1984: "The Android Invasion (1975): A calendar shows the date is Friday the 6th of July, this is potentially 1973, 79 or 84. Although this calendar does not show the true date and is potentially misleading. We are also told there was a manned mission that made it as far a Jupiter two years before, further implying the story is set in the future to 1975"

1992: "Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) & Robot (1974&75): The Cold War is apparently over. In reality this happened in December 1991"

1997: "Battlefield (1989): Set in 1997, the Brigadier is now fully retired. He also mentions the King, which would place the story after 2022"

1999: "The Ambassadors of Death (1970): Benton says the distress signal SOS was done away with years ago. In reality, SOS was replaced as the standard distress signal in 1999. Britain also has a 7th manned mission to Mars, further implying the story is set in the future relative to 1970"

2003: "The Daemons (1971): we are told the BBC has a third channel, BBC3. In reality BBC3 was launched in 2003"

/end ID]

#doctor who #unit #unit dating controversy #the true problem children in all of this are Sarah-Jane and the brigadier #retiring from UNIT before its even formed #fantastic

[hillerskaroyals]

i just realized out of all of the character's phones that we see in young royals only august has an iphone. everyone else has an android.

wille and felice both have what looks like the samsung galaxy z flip which makes sense in terms of their role in society. they are royalty and nobility, respectively, which are the two highest roles in society so them having phones that are on par with each other makes sense. also assuming young royals is set in 2020 (because it was filmed in 2020 and released in 2021) this would be a fairly new phone and reflects their wealth in that they were able to buy the newest model phone. also we don't really get a good look at erik's phone but it looks like a fairly nice android and i assume it's at least on par with wille's.

sara and simon both have nondescript androids. this fits in with them being from a more working class family. iphones often have easily breakable features and planned obsolescence and they would need phones that are both durable and will last several years so an android makes sense.

maddie has an fairly nice looking android (ngl i have no clue what type of phone she has but it has three lenses for the camera so it seems higher end)

then we get to august.

he is the only one shown to have an iphone and beyond that it could potentially be an older phone. we can see his phone clearly on several occasions and what stood out to me the most is that it has a home button. iphones have not had a home button since 2020. neither the iphone 11 or 12 have home buttons and they came out in 2019 and 2020 respectively. even if he had the iphone SE (last phone with a home button) it's interesting that he's still the only character we see without an android. i feel like it could be a hint to his social standing since wille and felice, who are both at the top of the social ladder as well as being associated with royalty/nobility, are shown using the newest androids. whereas august, someone of noble birth, has an iphone. almost hinting to the fact that his position in society both inside and outside of hillerska is not permanent. it could even foreshadow his money issues since his phone is half the price of wille's and he hasn't fixed his camera.

however i look at it august should have had a better phone. as the second cousin to the crown prince i wouldn't even be surprised if he and wille had the same phone. and yet we are forced to see and acknowledge that he is the only one with an iphone. idk if this makes sense but we were clearly and deliberately shown august's phone on several occasions (when he is recording his workout in the gym, when he records wille and simon, when he's watching the video back, when he plugs in his phone to upload the video, etc.) and he is the only one without an android which i highly doubt is a coincidence. (there's also a chance im reading to much into this but im not ready for that conversation)

#young royals #young royals analysis #is this something? #like august being the only one with an iphone HAS to mean something right? right???? #ive been thinking about this for a while and its really bugging me lmao #this post is brought to you by me once again being sleep deprived and tipsy #also he should have been able to get his camera fixed??? #idk if he /directly/ knew about his money problems but smth about him having a potentially old iphone really makes me think its foreshadowi #or something like that idk #wille young royals #simon eriksson #madison mccoy #felice ehrencrona #august horn #august of årnäs #sara eriksson #erik young royals #fun fact this is the post i was attempting to make when i got distracted and tried to make a timeline #unfortunately i couldn't get this hoe out my head so here we are #as always this post got away from me so sorry unfortunately i will learn nothing from this experience #my yr thoughts #young royals brain rot

[bunnimew]

We were tagged by @9haharharley1 and @overmooneleven who could not have foreseen what a production this was going to turn into 😂 Thank you!!

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

*Gets out the record player* There's required listening while scrolling this list...

Now that the mood has been appropriately set, here we go!

Warm Bodies 10 Edit9It'sYourBoyJackFrostAightSo High Seas Hijinks pt 2 Android Pitch Neon Ideas Von Kaiser Mix Tape If you don't dance, no romance Jack Frost and the Quest for the Stanley Cup Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide YA Novel Merman/Nature Elf Baby It's Cold Inside Everything but the fresher sink Halloween bodyswap Saiyuki Fantasy AU Coffee and Fruit Snacks Untitled Document Blackice ABOlive Garden Concerned Neighbor AU Obsolete Force Monsters Donut Saga 2022 RotG Bingo RotG Bingo 2021 Free Day Light Magic Soulmate AU Sleight of Hand Android AU Wing fic space vampire arranged marriage fake ppl scifi book pogo kylux AU Hope Week 2022 Let's Play AU Clydeland Ghost roommate Omega hux Techwear AU Original magic apocalypse Holiday kylux Pink hair hux Goose steals the staff Quarantine Kylux twitfic college au ST/Kylux Omega hux sequel cyborg hux Fuck this I'm outtie hux Loud AF kylux Loud AF blackice Every floor is Loud AF Loud AF Zag and Than Angel/Demon AU Gymnast hux Parkour hux 5 times hux blows kylo A/B/O Hades Kylux A/B/Olive Garden Disney Princess Hux Hutt slave Mitaka Femlux Afterlife Bloom Halloween2020 sen aid + sen kid kylux Trivia and Other Flirtations Gertrude Pink hair Jack + Hux Teacher/Teacher Merge ST and EU frank/strange Bingo Fancy Dinner Matchmaker Cape Selection AU Senate Takeover Manny Moonbear's Pizzaria Guardians in Black Party fancy pitch Jasper/Lapis Suzalulu week 2016 horror ideas Untitled Terminator Game Terminator Ideas Frank/Strange coffee shop au Ideas for erotic stabbing Suzalulu week 2017 Zell birthday Gratuitous sleepytime Lulu the professional hand model au Peter has two dads au RotG Coffee shop AU Veelamate AU Sorceress Jack Guardian of the D Blanket Scenario i think Saiyuki bang 10k Clover AU Wizards unite AU X/1999/RotG [Redacted] Pitch's New Groove PoGo AU spacerace magic repo RotGRepo! Colormate AU Overqualified Merlin Caffeine and High Fructose Corn Syrup O2: Teammates Spideypool Bingo 2019 B1: Personal Trainer Spideypool Bingo 2019 Spideypool fairy AU Tie fix Soulmate tattoo AU 3 5 10 AU idea Silent Hill AU O1: Met at the Dog Park Spideypool Bingo 2019 ff8 werewolf au Buffate 2 Kink series Dance All Night Let Me and Your Body Talk Pounded in the Butt by the Physical Manifestation of the Fear That I Will Never be Good Enough While He Tells me I am Good Enough Also He's British  Silent Hill AU Bathtime Evening Horror Husbands Fic art 1 Morning cuddle Fic art 2 Spinel Jack Cover art Croptops Spiderman kiss Gargoyles

We literally do not know as many people as we have WIPs. I'd have to pull out the yearbook and start tagging people from high school and we're not going to do that. But we do have to tag @seekerseekingsomething for reasons they will understand and @askmyname @quillienvii @pheasantmadness for Other Unsaid Reasons ❤

#WIP #WIP list #Ask away! #O Fortuna #Youtube

[tofueggnoodles]

my phones for the last two decades

just a celebration of mundane materialism

It got smaller. (For those of you in the know, yes, I waited nearly 10 years before getting a new phone because I want, no, need an Android phone that fits in my pocket. I don't need a big screen, just a nice pair of earbuds or a good BT speaker. I listen to my porn instead of watching them.)

Or maybe not.

I have no good reason for putting the Saiyuki boys on the wallpaper, except that I like Sensei's art. I hardly listen to the Drama CDs anymore, because I listened to them so many times between 2021 and 2022 I am now just sick of them.

BUT, I owe everything (especially my mental health and overall state of happiness today) to Saiyuki. If I had not chosen to rekindle my love for this franchise by downloading some random Saiyuki Drama CD from youtube, I would not have been introduced to the Wild Adapter series. And if I had not gotten into a KuboToki obsession, I would not have been tempted to seek out BL Drama CDs featuring the same set of VAs on aarinfantasy. As they say, one thing leads to another....

In short, Saiyuki was the indirect cause of me owning 20 GB (1 weeks' worth) of BL Drama CDs on multiple drives. These are mostly from the late 1990s up to the late 2000s, because most of the VAs in the Minekura franchise were, well, active during that period.

I also have tons of CD Dramas starring Miki Shin'ichirou and as many as I can find that feature the late Shiozawa Kaneto, but for this I blame Yami no Matsuei and Ai no Kusabi ;)

#saiyuki #drama cd #miki shinichirou #shiozawa kaneto #minekura kazuya

[void-botanist]

🖋️"what inspired you to write your WIPs?"

Thank you for the ask! All of my wips are partly inspired by previous stories I wrote with the same characters, but that were bad/boring/unfinished/aged extremely poorly because I was a sheltered kid when I wrote them. But my main wips also have specific "I'm gonna write this" inciting incidents:

Nicea: I was rereading the only full-length novel draft I've ever written, which I finished about seven years ago now - Spinder & Georg, which was essentially a romance between Spinder & Isabel. I just kept thinking about how I liked them so much, and there were so many good crunchy dynamics even when my execution was awful, and I said "haha what if I put them in a space post-noir inspired by Cowboy Bebop" and that sounded awesome actually.

AOM: This is directly based on a partial draft I wrote in 2019(?) that was actually pretty good and has been kind of sitting in the back of my mind for a while. One of the major characters, Horatio, is one of my oldest characters, and I missed him. Plus with the setting overhauls from Nicea I was thinking about how this story, set in the same universe, would change.

TFA: I reread a bunch of Pajiir stories for one of my classes in 2021 so I could make a database project out of them, and I really wanted to pick back up on the whole concept of a runaway android but make it more interesting (and also make Anni and Julian more interesting). Dez's story has changed a lot since then but I think a lot of his core character matches his two previous iterations.

Triad: Aza is probably my oldest character that I'm still working with, and over her nearly two decades of existence I have shifted her love interest a few times. The reason Triad became Triad is because I didn't want to pick between the two main ones, and why should I? The idea was more compelling if I didn't. It was also more compelling if she was no longer a princess. With those restrictions removed, I felt like I could actually try writing her again.

#yeah I'm often motivated by “I miss them” #behind the scenes ask game #wip: triad #wip: tfa #wip: aom #wip: nicea

[lodeemmanuelpalle]

Top Mobile App Development Frameworks in 2023 - Lode Emmanuel Palle

As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, I can provide information about some of the popular mobile app development frameworks up to that point. However, please note that the landscape of technology can change rapidly, and new frameworks may have emerged or gained popularity since then. Here are some of the well-known mobile app development frameworks mentioned by Lode Emmanuel Palle that were popular up to 2021:

React Native: Developed by Facebook, React Native is a widely used open-source framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. It allows developers to use JavaScript to create native-like user interfaces for both iOS and Android.

Flutter: Created by Google, Flutter is another popular open-source framework for building cross-platform apps. It uses the Dart programming language and provides a rich set of customizable widgets, enabling high-quality and performant user interfaces.

Xamarin: Owned by Microsoft, Xamarin allows developers to build native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows using a single codebase in C#. It provides a way to share a significant portion of code across platforms while still delivering native user experiences.

Ionic: Built on top of Angular and using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Ionic is a framework for building cross-platform mobile apps with a native-like feel. It also provides a suite of UI components.

Vue Native: Based on Vue.js, Vue Native lets developers build mobile apps using Vue's declarative syntax. It's designed to be similar to React Native, making it easy for developers familiar with Vue.js to transition to mobile development.

PhoneGap / Apache Cordova: PhoneGap is an open-source framework that uses web technologies to build mobile apps that can run on various platforms. It leverages Apache Cordova to access native device features.

SwiftUI (for iOS): Introduced by Apple, SwiftUI is a framework for building user interfaces across all Apple platforms using Swift programming language. It's mainly focused on iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS app development.

Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM): Developed by JetBrains, KMM is a relatively new framework that aims to allow developers to share code between Android and iOS apps using Kotlin. It's designed for more seamless cross-platform development.

NativeScript: NativeScript enables building native apps using JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. It provides access to native APIs and components, offering a truly native experience.

According to Lode Emmanuel Palle. the choice of a mobile app development framework depends on various factors including your familiarity with the programming language, the complexity of the app, the desired platform(s), and the specific features you need. It's always a good idea to research and stay updated on the latest developments in the field to make informed decisions.

#lode palle #lodi palle #lode emmanuel palle #lodi emmanuel palle #emmanuel palle #lode emmanuelle palle

[astreed23]

(Old sketches from 2021-2022) More Old school Guilty Gear AU!! bc I love them!!!!! I born to have weird hyperfixation so I have a thing...... with robot parts.............. (*blaming the sister game of this AU * )

As you see one the above is my version of 'weapon parts' that gave Edgey ability to move faster in fight,

then my doppelganger said, 'why you don't make him a horse-like android?????????? how the hell?????????' they just took this shit personally and send me their design on chat and below is my trying to wrap up the design they sent me (I own them my life I swear-)

ANDDDDDDD just to warn you, I draw this 'iron horse' prompt with more Hobonix/Bratworth so please don't mind me and skip next section if you are that kind of..... yeah.

The ‘Iron horse route’ are quite difficult to say. Setting is on crusade era (maybe on GGX?? I’m not sure myself), Edgey boy are leader of one holy order squad. One day the squad fights Megadeath-class Gear and they’re all dead except Edgey and he lost both of his legs from that fight.

Next one might be more the leg prosthetics parts I like to draw these days, so Thank you if you're still here. Have a wonderful day.

#wrightworth #narumitsu

[yurimother]

Yuri Visual Novel 'Perfect Gold' Ported to Switch and Mobile Devices

Yangyang mobile announced on June 16 that its Yuri visual novel Perfect Gold: The Alchemy of Happiness is now available for Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS devices. The game was initially released for PC in April 2021.

The developer describes the game:

Perfect Gold: The Alchemy of Happiness is a short, coming-of-age yuri visual novel about two former friends who escape detention in order to celebrate the Sunflower Festival. Set in the magical city of Castlecoast, readers get to know Audrey Clary, an alchemy student and heiress who secretly dreams of a different life, and Marion LaRue, a rebellious elemental magic student in search of someone she once loved.

The game is approximately 2-5 hours in length. Players take on the roles of Audrey and Marion at different points of the story, seeing events from different perspectives. It also features an original soundtrack and vibrant animated CG and character artwork done by RyuuXin. Interactive narrative choices affect the game's ending.

Yangyang Mobile has teamed up with Sound Cadence Studios to voice the game in English fully. The cast is as follows:

Dani Chambers - Marion Larue

Eileen Montgomery - Audrey Clary

Elsie Lovelock - Irene Kang

Karen Kahler - Margot Beaufort

Sandra Espinoza - Simone Larue

Yangyang Mobile is a Philippines-based indie game development company specializing in story-driven games.

You can purchase Perfect Gold today on the Nintendo eShop in the Americas, Europe, and Hong Kong for $7.99 and on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store worldwide for $4.99.

You can also check out the original PC release on Steam and itch.io.

Source: Press release; email correspondence

#Yuri #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #queer #gay #lesbian #game #perfect gold #pride #wlw #girls' love #girls love #visual novel #gaming #Youtube

[isfjmel-phleg]

There have been a lot of retellings and adaptations of The Secret Garden in the last decade or so, and they all have their own takes on the story. Some things are pretty constant, though, such as basic characterization. Most takes on, say, Mary are fairly similar.

But twenty-first-century adaptations don't quite know what to do with Colin. With the character as Burnett wrote him, there's a lot to unpack there, a lot of cultural context that wouldn't work for a present-day audience the way it would have in 1911. So these retellings and adaptations have handled the character in a wide variety of ways. Here are the ones I'm aware of (spoilers ahead):

The Humming Room (2012): Has severe depression after the death of his mother. No physical conditions aside from the physical symptoms of depression.

The Misselthwaite Archives (2015 web series): Gender-flipped. Has a variety of physical ailments, including diabetes, asthma, and severe allergies. Developed hypochondriac tendencies and agoraphobia after the death of her mother.

The Secret Garden (2017 film): Is an android that was never completed and is malfunctioning and must be brought to the "garden" (the workshop of his late creator/"mother") to be repaired.

The Secret Garden (2020 film): Is the victim of his father's projected fears about his health after the death of his mother. Used to be healthy and mobile but has become unable to walk and sometimes wears a back brace to treat an alleged deformity.

The Secret Garden on 81st Street (2021): Has panic disorder and some hypochondriac tendencies (but no physical conditions) after the death of his father.

The Edge of In Between (2022): Is suffering a magical inability to see/have/engage with color as a result of grief after his mother's death in childbirth.

The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn (2022): Gender-flipped. Is a sort of ghost/projection of the protagonist's childhood friend, who drowned.

Moongarden (2022): Has no apparent physical or psychological conditions; the narrative emphasizes a strained relationship with his father and his discovering a scientific power/gift he didn't realize he had.

A Bit of Earth (2023): Has recently found out that he probably has ADHD and is afraid to confess this to his family, who hold him to excessively high expectations.

Into the Bright Open (2023, upcoming): Gender-flipped. Has an alleged "nervous disorder," possibly due to the machinations of an evil stepmother (the book hasn't been released yet, so all we've got is a blurb)

All of these deviate in some significant way from the book's presentation of Colin's issues.

Many of them choose to emphasize mental health rather than physical. (Burnett's treatment, I would argue, deals with both.) This tends to make the character's story a lesson in how to better cope with a mental illness. A Bit of Earth, interestingly, might come closest thematically to translating what Burnett was doing into a modern mental health context by having Colin perceive his condition as shameful in light of familial/societal expectations and try to detach himself from social life to hide it.

Almost all of them give the character memories of/a relationship with the deceased parent, usually to credit mental health struggles to this loss. This changes (at least in part) the nature of the character's issues and shifts the dynamic between the character and his/her father, softening it so that there is no blaming the child for the death of the deceased parent.

Some change a feature of the character, such as gender or type of being, usually for reasons of fitting a changed setting or to add surprise to the reveal of the character.

And if you ask me as your resident Nitpicky Opinionated Person, most of these miss or over-simplify the point of the character and the nature of his problems, but the trends in adapting do say a lot about our cultural understanding of the story and which issues are easier to sidestep than others.

#...I don't feel like releasing this one on the general public any more than I can avoid so this one's going to be unrebloggable this time

[thrilling-oneway]

Hello! 2 and 13 for the ask game

2. fav card from least fav set

unrelated to the card but this is a haruka event not an emu event

13. how did i get into the game

it's complicated. it released about a month after i got into love live so i remember seeing it trend and stuff bc by then my twt account was so catered to idol shit. i kinda forgot about it after that until i started playing bandori in july 2021. i was looking for other rhythm games to play since i liked sif so much and was enjoying bandori, so i watched some videos and project sekai came up in one. i thought it looked cool so i checked the app store and it wasn't listed. i searched project sekai on youtube anyway to see what was going on, came across this video, discovered it was a vocaloid game and then was like "oh nvm then idc about vocaloid", and a couple weeks later downloaded d4dj because they mentioned it in that video and i got interested.

fast forward to november i'm not very good at d4dj and getting kinda tired of it. i get a video on my feed of someone playing the ensekai demo and i watched it bc idk maybe me wanting to play tap tap games overrules my dislike of vocaloid. thought it looked alright had a look to see if i could prereg and it wasn't compatible with my android phone so i gave up again. but the universe is stubborn and the sonic twitter account posted about there being a free sonic costume and i was like who cares i want the sonic costume and turns out the game works on a spare iphone i had lying about. it took me about 2 months to actually get invested in the game after that but yeah in short project sekai got me into d4dj which got me into project sekai and also there was a sonic costume.

#asks #ask game #universe really fucking wanted me to play project/sekai