erin

I've been continuing to go for a run three times per week since the 5k. At this point, it's starting to feel like just a habit I've picked up. I like it.

I like it because it's something I can do myself with minimal requirements. And for the time when I'm running, I'm completely alone. I'm the kind of person who is most comfortable alone. It's not that I dislike people, in fact, some of my best friends are people. I just find that when no one is around, I stop observing myself. I stop making sure my gait is normal, I stop thinking about what my hands are doing, or what face I'm making, and just exist. It's really relaxing.

But I wasn't talking about being alone, I was talking about running.

I like to listen to audiobooks when I run. So far since I've started training, I've worked my way through Hiking With Neitzsche by John Kaag, Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, and Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom. I'm currently listening my way through What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. All provided free of charge by the local library, which I am ever grateful to since I've been broke.

Hiking with Neitzsche and Sophie's world were both visits to things I read in the past. In the case of Sophie's World, it was one of the assigned texts in my very first Philosophy Class. The others have been new to me, even if the authors are not. I don't feel I absorb as much in an audiobook as I do reading it, but it does often serve to reinforce something I've already read. I plan to actually sit down and read the new ones when I find the time.

I think I'll continue exposing myself to new ideas and revisiting old ideas, all while challenging myself physically and competing only with myself. Who knows, maybe I'll try to do another 5k sometime, or even something bigger than that.

So I've recently started migrating all my blog posts over to a self hosted Known. Writefreely was fantastic for what it was, and in some ways this is a downgrade, but Known is closer to what I want in a personal publishing platform. I want to have a single place for all my long form articles, status updates, photos, and links I want to share. And I want to be able to import all my old posts from past mastodon and pixelfed instances as status updates and photos, respectively.

Known isn't quite there. Development doesn't have a lot of velocity. But it's written in languages I know well and uses tools I'm familiar with. I'm pretty confident I can start to fill in the gap by making plugins, and who knows, maybe even contributing to the main project.

So here goes, all my stuff is slowly going to start redirecting here. I'll be setting up webhooks to cross post things I put here elsewhere (POSSE). I'll have more info to share on that as I set it up.

But before I do all that, I'll be making my very own theme, and ideally this wont just look like every other fucking website in 2024.

I've had a Microsoft account for a long time, since back when I worked in Xbox customer support. As an open source nerd, I have no love for them, but since I had some things that would cost money to replace on that account, I kept it alive.

I haven't logged into it since I transitioned. Today, for the first time, I had an excuse to. Some friends have a Minecraft server, and I hadn't touched Minecraft in years. But I was bored, so I thought "eh why not?" Apparently, Minecraft requires a Microsoft account to use now. So I thought "fine, I'll use my old MS account, better than making a new one" and did the account migration.

While I was in there, I figured it would be best to do all the name updates I hadn't done. Changing the name, email, phone number, et al on the parent MS account was easy enough. Same with the Xbox account, where most of the aforementioned purchases lived. But then I saw my Skype profile.

Skype

My Skype account was from long, long ago. I had to use Skype professionally in exactly one job. I don't even remember when I connected it to the main MS account, but apparently I did. And the thing about Skype accounts is, they are unchangeable.

Specifically, the Skype ID is unchangeable. I tried. I could not get my picture to change without installing Skype, and the Skype ID, which was my deadname, was greyed out. Sometime in the past, they changed it so Skype IDs were just some sort of generated thing, but legacy accounts like mine still had a Skype ID which was set at account creation. My deadname.

I checked support articles, and everything from 2019 and earlier said you could "unlink" a Skype account and remove it from your Microsoft account. This changed in 2020 apparently. Later support articles said that the only option was to delete your Skype account, but they all linked to an article for deleting your MICROSOFT account, not Skype. Articles around deleting a Skype account without deleting a Microsoft account all said it was no longer possible. I even searched for "deadname" to see if that had come up, and sure enough, every trans person who has asked about this has been told that no, the deadname in their Skype ID is unchangeable.

Clearly it was time to talk to a human.

There Are No Humans At Microsoft Anymore, Apparently

All the links to "talk to an agent" or "contact support" on any Microsoft site no longer give you contact information. They all seem to send you to some elaborate "help you find an article" system which recommends completely useless articles. Asking their help bot "How can I talk to a person" causes them to link to the support forum, the same forum that has told several other trans people that there is nothing that can be done.

I tried to game it, chose many different options over and over again, to no avail. I did all this work to keep my Microsoft account, because I would prefer not to lose my purchases.

Once I realized that there was nothing to be done about this. I marked the account for deletion.

"Diversity and Inclusion"

Microsoft has a Diversity and Inclusion page because they are apparently so progressive. So progressive that they will never let a trans person remove their deadname from their account. I think it's safe to say that they are full of shit. Microsoft does not give a shit about trans people.

Farewell To My Microsoft Account I Guess So in order to say goodbye to my deadname, I was forced to also say goodbye to my Minecraft license, as well as my Xbox account, friends, and purchases. And one thing is certain, I won't be giving them any money again.

#trans #deadname #microsoft #skype

The other day @rose@503junk.house posted this thread about Firefox and how she likes to set it up. It got me thinking that I should share my Firefox setup in full, for those looking for a privacy respecting, simple, comfy browser experience. Some of my opinions will differ from hers, and honestly she's smarter than me so maybe listen to her, I'm just old and set in my ways. But if you're curious, join me on a journey into about:config.

A Tale of Two Browsers

To start, I tend to run two copies of Firefox at a time. Not two profiles, two copies. One is vanilla Firefox as it comes from Mozilla's website. I do the bare minimum to it to ensure it will work on any website no matter how terrible. Most of the time that's to buy Amtrak tickets.

Then, I install Firefox Developer Edition. This is my daily driver. This one will be set as strict as possible, and I'll jump into about:config to fully disable features that are just clutter to me like recommendations, pocket, Firefox accounts, sync, etc.

This same setup could be done with standard Firefox as a daily driver and Firefox ESR (extended support release) whenever I need to buy a train ticket. I prefer dev edition for the most superficial of reasons, some slightly shinier developer tools and a blue icon.

Firefox Developer Edition - My daily driver

Miscellanea

Before I get into settings, I clean up some things. Right click on the "Firefox View" icon in the top left that looks like a pinned tab, and Remove from Toolbar. Then delete "Import Bookmarks" and "Getting Started" from the bookmarks toolbar. Open Bookmarks Manager (hamburger menu -> Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks, or Ctrl-Shift-O), click on Bookmarks Menu, and delete the "Mozilla Firefox" folder.

Settings

General

Browsing

• Uncheck "Recommend extensions as you browse."
• Uncheck "Recommend features as you browse."

Home

Firefox Home Content

• Uncheck everything but "Web Search."

Search

Default Search Engine

• Change to DuckDuckGo.

Search Suggestions

• Uncheck everything.

Search Shortcuts

• Remove every entry that you can.

Privacy & Security

Enhanced Tracking Protection

• Set to strict.
• Do not Track - leave default as there's a strong argument that websites ignore it and can use it for fingerprinting.
• Logins and Passwords
• Uncheck everything and use a password manager.

Forms and Autofill

• Uncheck everything.

Address Bar

• Uncheck everything but Bookmarks.
• Untoggle Suggestions from the web.
• Untoggle Suggestions from sponsors.

Permissions

• Make sure "Block pop-up windows" and "Warn you when websites try to install add-ons" are both checked.

Firefox Developer Edition Data Collection and Use

• Uncheck everything.

Deceptive Content and Dangerous Software Protection

• Make sure everything is checked.

HTTPS-Only Mode

• Enable in all windows.

DNS over HTTPS

• Max protection. I have a DNS sinkhole on my network so I choose custom for my provider and do all of that. If you don't have that going on, just use NextDNS.

Add-ons

• uBlock Origin - the best light-weight ad and tracker blocker.
• KeepassXC-Browser - I use KeepassXC as my password manager and this is how I access it.
• Multi-Account Containers - cookie isolation into containers, useful both for keeping cookies away from invasive websites, and managing multiple accounts on websites that don't support account switching
• Progressive Web Apps for Firefox - I found out about this from @rose@503junk.house and PWAs are a big improvement over electron apps.

Intermission

You could stop right here and have a pretty good privacy respecting browser. I like to go into about:config and do more, and also disable some features in Firefox that annoy me. That said, sometimes more settings is not better, as everything you customize could be used for additional fingerprinting. Some of these settings may cause unexpected issues with certain websites. Continue down the rabbit hole with me at your own risk.

About:Config

Now it's time to dive under the hood. enter about:config in the address bar and click the big scary button that says "Accept the Risk and Continue."

To change these settings, enter the setting in the search box and then use the toggle on the right to change the value.

Disabling Annoying Parts of Firefox (I don't want my web browser to upsell anything)

• identity.fxaccounts.enabled false - this will remove/disable "sign in to sync" and all other firefox account stuff. I want a web browser, not an account.
• extensions.pocket.enabled false - this will make pocket go away entirely.
• browser.preferences.moreFromMozilla false - Removes the "More from Mozilla" section of settings.
• extensions.getAddons.showPane false - Removes recommended addons pane on the addons page. This preference will have to be created as a boolean and then set to false.
• extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled false - Removes recommended addons on the extensions pane.

Privacy Settings

• privacy.firstparty.isolate true - isolate cookies to the first party domain, thereby disabling tracking across multiple domains.
• network.dns.disablePrefetch true - yes DNS prefetching can offer a slight speed increase, but it carries risks.
• network.prefetch-next false - stop firefox fetching pages it thinks you'll visit next.
• dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled false - don't let websites know when you copy, paste, or cut.

Other Things I Just Think Are Neat

• browser.compactmode.show true - add a compact view to the customize panel. more info.
• browser.urlbar.suggest.calculator true - make your url bar a calculator.
• browser.tabs.tabmanager.enabled false - only show the tab list when there is overflow.

A Note on privacy.resistFingerprinting

I don't enable this one, though many recommend it. It causes two issues with me for sites that I use daily. On Nextcloud, some apps cannot determine my timezone and at this time there is no workaround or way to set it manually. On mastodon, the favicon ends up messed up, as does any website with a favicon that updates when I get a notification. Since most of my internet time is spent in these two web apps, I choose to keep it disabled.

Vanilla Firefox

I could write all of it out like I did above, but I tend to just change the search engine to DuckDuckGo, turn off recommendations, and disable Firefox Data Collection. And since I don't use this browser for much or often, I set it to delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed.

Conclusion

With this setup, I have a mostly-private browser and a backup browser to buy train tickets. My mostly-private Browser is just a web browser. It doesn't try to sell me anything, or get me to create accounts I don't need. I handle syncing my bookmarks myself, and I manage my passwords myself.

If your threat model calls for even more protection, add Tor Browser to your list of browsers. Oh hey, it's also based on Firefox.

Further Reading

If you want do more research on configuring Firefox for privacy, here are a few guides that have helped me:

• Privacy Respecting Web Browsers for PC and Mac from Privacy Guides
• Firefox Privacy – The Complete How-To Guide for 2023 from Restore Privacy 
• Betterfox about:config tweaks 

#web #browser #chrome #firefox #privacy