Frustration

With era 3 on the horizon(in several years) I thought it would be cool to try and apply earth-like technological developments up to the 1980s and see how it might impact metalborn on Scadrial. 1. Camlebaks for those of you who aren't into mountain hiking camlebaks are backpacks that carry water bottles inside. A straw allows the wearer to drink while leaving their hands free and also not impairing their movements. Needless to say lining the bag and straw with aluminum and filling the water with metals allows for massive advantages in combat, especially if nicrobursts or duralumin comes into play via hemalurgy, advancements in medallion technology, or mistborn returning. 2. The development of bulletproof vests, Kevlar offers great protection with little weight against small arms fire, which makes it extra effective against aluminum bullets as the soft and light metal doesn't have the density needed to punch through standard kevlar. 2.5a Steel plates in addition to kevlar allows Lurchers to once again be useful pulling bullets away from their friends, while also giving them greater protection as they can wear armor specifically reinforced above where they pull the bullets to. 2.5b Ceramic plates in addition to Kevlar give all soldiers some level of high caliber bullet resistance while also not requiring them to wear metal. 3. Night vision goggles nerf Tineyes as now anyone can effectively see in the dark 3.5a Infrared vision adds another nerf to tineyes, as well as to general metalborn stealth as it makes it far easier to see someone hiding in the air or the mists if you can see their heat signature 3.5b Bronze ferrings get a needed buff because of the above 4. The easy availability of adrenaline allows Electrum ferrings to store quite frankly ludicrous levels of life or death determination. I do not envy the first person who gets to face them. I'm actually really excited to see some of these, but this is far from an exhaustive list. What other fun technology should we expect to see?

Forgive me for the late reply, but I cannot stay silent Yes, Medieval helmets did have large amounts of padding. Not in the way the Hollywood shows them off, but like motorcycle style padding. Linen was layered on top of itself repeatedly until the helmet fit snuggly over the person's head. Now brute force was still effective, there's a reason maces existed after all, but our ancestors were well aware of the threat that blunt force impacts had.

Word processing software marketed for book writers. I'm thinking about getting it.

Question: does anyone here have scrivner?

He blew up. You're curse is that anything you put your head on while trying to sleep turns to stone until you remove your head. I wish for a girlfriend

Because after the Nicaean Council mentioned above Emperor Constantine 1 had all of the Bishops and other ecclesiastical leaders who opposed the council's decisions removed from their office. When the Protestant reformation happened over a thousand years later they mostly followed in Catholicism's footprints and a vast majority of Protestant Churches kept the Nicaean creed. Since the majority hold to it some churches/individuals will claim that those who don't agree with the Nicaean creed aren't Christians as a result. It isn't any sort of dogma, it's just something that naturally comes from the following beliefs. We reject the Trinity, accepting the Oneness of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to be in purpose, attributes and powers, not a oneness in person. We accept the declarations that we are children of God to be literal and not figurative, making us all brothers and Sisters. However even then almost no one actually calls them brothers. The only times I think I've ever heard it has been in reference to the council in Heaven before Satan fell. So that's part of why I'm wondering why it causes such a strong reaction, as it's a statement I might hear once or twice a year in an offhanded way and yet it's leveled as a terrible accusation. I guess that works, but it still confuses me. The belief in the Trinity was of course held before, coming especially from the Alexandrian schools, but non-trinitarian views were common beforehand among both the general practitioners and the clergy. I guess that makes a bit more sense, but just to clarify, can I ask if saying that Satan and Michael the Archangel were brothers would provoke a similar response?

Small sidenote, the Trinity didn't become a common part of Christian doctrine until the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. In fact the council was called in large part due to disagreements within the early church over the nature of Jesus and His relation to the Father. This has next to nothing to do with the topic, but I wanted to point it out. Not really, as that's mostly just boils down to us rejecting the Trinity, but most of what I see lists this as a separate argument, as if it were an additional affront on top of rejecting the Trinity.

So I have a question for my Protestant friends out there. For context I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we have a lot of detractors and they have a lot of reasons for why they don't like us. In particular one of the accusations I've seen more often recently is something along the lines of us believing that "Jesus and Satan are brothers," which isn't how we phrase it at all but regardless. I'm just genuinely curious as to why so many people have such a visceral reaction to that idea, because I don't understand it.

Just because the story doesn't contain them doesn't mean the world doesn't. It's heavily implied that there are dragons on Nalthis for example. Not that I'm trying to say that it is Valor's world, because I believe that it isn't. I'm just saying we can't rule out the possibility.

And we've seen less than 1% of the planet in only a few chapters. Chasmfiends hadn't even shown up this early in WoK.

Wake up on time, study your scriptures daily, go to bed on time, and pray like crazy. And don't stress, it's not scary, and once you make it to the MTC you'll feel fine.

You're welcome! Entirely fair, and honeslty I don't love that either. I'd probably move to Mullvad if it weren't for a few small things I can't get past.

So unlike most of these, I haven't used the DDG browser. What my research indicates is that it doesn't block trackers or ads the way all the other browsers listed here do. I'd give it a level 0.5, but the devs seem to indicate that they are moving towards a level 1. You listed some other questions on the other blog, did you get answers to all of them?

Considering that at fourth ideal Radiants can ignore the suppression of the Sibling, I say TLR doesn't stand a chance of using emotional allomancy on them.

Well I'm back again. This is where my guide stops being theory and starts becoming practice. It's also the first one where I hope everyone who reads this gets to the end not only more imformed, but also with easy steps to impliment in their day to day lives. First up are the very tools we use to access the internet. Web Browsers and Search Engines. If any of you are like me you've heard those terms before but don't know the difference between them. Don't worry, the two are meant to work together, and I'll explain the two of them. Web Browsers are what displays websites to you. They determine things like window size, store cookies, and how websites interact with you. Search Engines on the other hand are what finds websites when you put something in the search bar. Both are essential to using the internet, and having the two of them be privacy focused is a must. Web Browsers I'll start with Web Browsers as they were the first that I focused on, and to do that I will first review my levels of privacy, and listing browsers for each one. Level 0: "I don't like hackers" Privacy isn't a concern, only security. Level 1: "I'm doing nothing wrong, but also nothing you need to know." Level 2: "Data collection is theft." Level 3: [Error 404: Not found]. The goal is to be a ghost online. Level 0 Google Chrome The web browser I'm certain most of you are using now, and statistically the most popular web browser in the world. Kept up to date, this will protect ypu from most hackers. It's also sending everything you do to Google. Microsoft Edge This one is only here because I can't figure out how to delete it. It's slightly slower than Chrome, but at least it turns on. Looking at you Internet Explorer. Level 1 Brave Built as an offshoot of Chromium(the seed for Google Chrome) this is a clean and simple web browser designed to give you privacy with as few inconveniences as possible. It works with all chrome extensions, blocks trackers and ads by default, and is highly customizable. Of all the browsers I will talk about this is probably the easiest to pick up and start using. User friendliness is on maximum. Brave is open sourced, and has an interesting marketing scheme. Unlike Chrome, Brave has no third party ads, with first party ads only shown on the homescreen. These ads are the same for all users, and not based on individual data. Additionally Brave sells extra services such as Brave VPN and firewall. Additionally if you are into crypto, Brave will pay you to watch ads if you want. On iPhone however, it is built around Apple's browser WebKit, so it isn't running chromium. Here's a link to try it yourself: https://brave.com/ Firefox Perhaps the most well known alternative to Chrome and Edge. Firefox unlike most other web browsers isn't based off of Chromium, but rather a different seed called Gecko. Firefox is open sourced, and funded largely through deals with Google, where in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars a year Firefox makes Google the default search engine. Remember this, it will be important later. Firefox on its own is alright, but you will want to manually adjust settings, and install the uBlockOrigin extension. As extensions are unusable on mobile I only recommend Firefox as a desktop browser. Download Firefox: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/ A guide to fixing Firefox settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aULplHUYNNE Level 2 Here's where browsers will start to sacrifice your daily browsing for the sake of privacy. If you want, you can have multiple browsers installed, and use one for general purposes, and another for when greater privacy is needed. If you love customizing your browsers, you should probably stick to Level 1. Librewolf Librewolf is based off Firefox, but with a bit of a different philosophy. Librewolf is opensource, and made entirely by volunteers, to the point that they won't even accept donations. Librewolf blocks all third party ads, and has none of its own. Librewolf is also the first browser on this list employ a deep anti-fingerprinting technique. Normal fingerprinting in this sense refers to using unique identifiers to tell users apart. Librewolf and others turn this on its head. The idea being that a website is unable to tell two librewolf users apart from each other, creating a herd immunity. As a result of this while Librewolf technically has access to all of Firefox's browser extensions, using them defeats the purpose of Librewolf as it makes you stand out. You also have to log in to websites with every visit, cannot set websites to dark mode as a default, remember which sites are in dark mode and the browser window size may be smaller than your screen resulting in a border to fit your screen size. In addition to the general anti-fingerprinting difficulties, I will also note that during my experimentation that Librewolf had some bugs, like Youtube audio playing while the visuals were frozen. Other than that my overall experience was largely positive. In addition, there is no Android version of Librewolf and it struggles with MacOS. Get Librewolf: https://librewolf.net/ Mullvad This browser will feel fairly similar to Librewolf, for a number of reasons. Firstly, they are both open sourced, modified versions of Firefox that block all ads. Secondly they both employ the same heavy anti-fingerprinting strategy. This means that just like with Librewolf, any two users of Mullvad are impossible to distinguish. However from here there are some differences. Mullvad was made as a joint effort between the TOR project and Mullvad VPN. Where it comes to funding, the TOR project is a non-profit and does the work for free. Mullad VPN is a paid subscription, and part of the reason behind the browser was to convince users to use their VPN. I'll talk more about Mullvad VPN in a different entry, but for now it's enough to know that no one profits from you using the Mullvad browser. Just like Librewolf the recommendation is to not modify the browser, meaning you have to log in, switch to dark mode, minimize screens and whatever else, to each website everytime you use them. Mullvad also does not save your search history, or give search suggestions. However unlike Librewolf, I didn't notice any performance issues. The browser looks a bit odd, but if you can get used to that it's a pretty seamless transition. There are no mobile browser versions for Mullvad. Get Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/en/browser Level 3 There is only one Browser here. This is it. The king of private browsers, the undisputed champ. Part of the reason that the Mullvad browser was designed was to be a more user friendly version of this. The step beyond privacy and to anonymity. The Tor Browser. TOR stands for The Onion Router, and when you set it up on your computer you have all searches made through it are tripple encrypted and sent through various other Tor users before being sent out to your desired website. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry, I barely understand it myself. If Librewolf and Mullvad are using gloves to avoid leaving a fingerprint the Tor Browser is putting your hands in acid to burn your fingerprints off. With Librewolf and Mullvad it was heavily recommended not to modify. Here it is an order that comes with a very explicate "or else." The Tor Browser is the open source brain child of the Tor project, a non-profit aiming to bring internet privacy to everyone. It comes with all the downsides of Mullvad but it's also slow. However, it also has some benfits. Anyone watching your internet traffic, such as a school, employeer, or ISP(Internet service provider), can see you are using the Tor Browser, but nothing else. Not what sites you visit, nothing. The websites you visit are likewise clueless as to anything about you. It is also probably the safest way to access the Dark Net, though if you want you can also use Brave for that(though I do not recommend). I may make a blog entry on the dark web later. I haven't actually taken the time to use this one yet, so check back in a few weeks and I might update this with more information. While available for Windows, Linux, and Android, there is no iOS version of the TOR browser. The TOR project has an iOS browser called the Onion Browser, but I have no idea if it's good or not. Get the Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/ I know this has been long(so please let me know if these should be shorter), but with Web Browsers out of the way I want to move on to Search Engines. Unlike browsers I won't have a leveling system here, rather I will talk about three main points with search engines. 1. Privacy 2. Quality 3. Bias Privacy is pretty obvious, does the search engine store and sell your searches? Quality is how relavant the responces are to your queries. Bias is how the Search Engine filters your results. This is generally only really noticeable for politics, but I believe that it is something important to keep in mind, because even if you agree with what the Search Engine shows you, it's good to be aware of how it may color your perspective. I will not say whether any particular biasing bad or not, just point them out. The importance of choosing the right search engine cannot be overstated. We tell them things we wouldn't tell our best friend, and as stated above, Google will pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year in order to be the default(not even only, just the default) search engine on another browser. I also want to quickly list what each of the browsers uses as their default search engine, though you can usually change it pretty easily. Google Chrome and Firefox: Google Search Edge: Bing Brave: Brave Search Librewolf, Mullvad, TOR: DuckDuckGo In general you can change the default search engine by going to the browser homepage, going to settings and clicking search engines. Google Search Privacy: Not only is everything you search cataloged, but everything ypu type into the search bar is stored and sold to advertizers Quality: Google Search, admittedly, has perhaps the best quality of results of any search engine Bias: Google admits to actively promoting large corporate news sites it deems "trustworthy" over independant sorces. Wonder why large corperate Google would do that? It also tends to skew results to the political left, though that's an obervation and not something Google admits to. Bing: Privacy: Bing respects privacy as much as Google does. Quality: You're kidding right? In all seriousness, Bing is better than it was a few years ago, but it still isn't as good as Google. Bias: Bing shows many of the same biases Google does. Brave Search Privacy: Solid respect for privacy, and funded the same way that the Brave Browser is. Quality: Unlike the rest of the search engines here, Brave doesn't source its results from Google or Bing, but rather it built it's own web crawlers to deliver its own results. It's generally pretty good, unless you need an image search, then it has problems. Bias: Unlike any of the others Brave has a toggle at the top between left and right news sources, which I honeslty appreciate. The openness is kind of refreashing. It does still have a corperate bias regardless of affiliation. DuckDuckGo Privacy: A private Search Engine. They are funded through ads, but those ads are only sourced from a single search. For example of you search for: "computers," you might see computer ads. But when you search for "mac n' cheese," later the ads do not know that you searched for computers earlier. Quality: All responses are sourced from Bing, so the results are the same. Bias: Along with having the same biases as Bing, the CEO came out and said that they were going to pioritize information that they believed to be true. This may improve on Bing's initial biases, it may make them worse. That entirely depends on how much you trust DuckDuckGo. Startpage Privacy: Startpage is a private Search Engine, funded the same way DuckDuckGo is. Additionally, Startpage offers anonymous viewing of websites, allowing you to look at(but not interact with) webpages while completely hidden. Quality: Startpage sources its results from Google, so you get excellent quality. Bias: Sourcing from Google, Startpage has all the same biases Google does. SearX This one is interesting as SearX is really just a moduel that you either build youself, or use someone else's. I'm not tech savey enough to do it, but apparently it works amazingly. Ecosia Privacy: This thing sells your data, but it uses the money to plant trees if you value that more. Quality: Results are sourced from Bing Bias: See above. I hope everyone could get something from this, including easy ways to improve their daily browsing. Please respond to the poll up top it will help me improve these in the future.

We support you brother!

Well, I'm guessing she reacted positively.

Don't worry, you aren't missing much. That's awesome, and I am happy for you. My statement still stands.

What did you originally quote me for? Also Eragon is mid and a shameless Tolkien rip off.

If you keep it at home it's probably fine. If you bring it with you, you risk losing it.

Depends on the individual one. If they are stored only on your device it's probably fine. I don't trust them, but it's up to you. Why thank you. I'm working on that myself. I estimate I'm about 90% of the way there. I highly recommend. Not only is my data more private, but my general experience has improved. My next entry will go over a few easy steps to take in that direction. There are some downsides to it, as it does in theory make it more vulnerable as well. It's one of the trade offs.

Well I have another entry for you here on my journey to internet privacy, though this one will focus a bit more on security. As this is also the basics, I think it's something that everyone should know. Therefore it is the only time in this blog where I will ask you to share this information with everyone. The more people who know the better. Factors of Authentication The number one priority both with cybersecurity and privacy is that only the intended individuals have access to certain information. Now one way to do this very easily is to simply keep all information stored locally on a single device. Nothing comes in, and nothing goes out. However that prevents any form of communication between computers. So in order for us to do banking, use social media, or countless other things we have certain factors in order to recognize certain individuals. Largely speaking there are three ways to identify someone. Knowledge Characteristics Possessions Knowledge Knowledge is the first of these. You can see this in real life by asking someone something only they would know, such as when you first met, when your birthday is, important events and so forth. However that requires you and the person to both be thinking human beings. Online we give one another passwords that enable us to quickly find and confirm one another's identity. The problem with this is that if either party is irresponsible with the password then it's gone and there's no way to know who has access to it. There's nothing you can do about how other services save your passwords, however there are some easy tips to making safer passwords. Use different passwords for everything. That way if one website or app is compromised you don't lose everything. This does risk you forgetting your passwords and so you want a way to remember them. Don't write down your passwords, or at the very least not the whole thing. That may seem odd after I just said you risked forgetting your passwords. However, if you store them online such as with google sheets or with cloud storage some company out there has all of your passwords, and there's no telling who can look at them. Likewise if anyone gets their hands on your password cheat sheet they have access to everything. I recommend writing down only hints or coded messages that will help you remember without actually being your passwords. If you speak multiple languages this can be very helpful. Don't store your passwords online. See above. Of course if you don't use a website that often, or don't care if the account is compromised you can disregard some of these, but they are still good rules to follow. Characteristics Characteristics is a different kind of thing altogether. These are things unique to you, such as fingerprints, facial structures, voice, anything that allows close family to recognize you from someone else. Online these serve a very similar purpose, and in theory biometrics are the perfect solution, because they are immutable. You won't find someone suddenly wearing your face. Unfortunately, the inability to change them makes them a vulnerability online. If someone gets a digital file of your fingerprint or face they can use it in your place, or to access your account and there isn't a way for you to change it. Possessions Using something in your possession to authenticate yourself is pretty simple. In person we use keys in a similar way. If you have the key you are allowed in. Online this takes a different approach. Certain apps or other features will send specific signals to each other, with randomization codes stored on your device. The way they work would take a long time to explain, but basically using the almighty powers of MATH you can take a really long sequence of letters and numbers, mix it with the time and create a six digit code every thirty seconds. When you establish these authenticators you set up a single code, and from that time forward. That's the secret behind authenticator apps, like google authenticator and whatnot. I'll talk more about encryption later. However, this does mean that if someone ever got access to that string of letters and numbers they could get your authentication codes. Phishing Phishing is basically the act of trying to get you to give up your username and password to a website. This is often done through email, either by asking for the information, or by sending a link to a website owned by the scammer that looks like the target website, often a bank. When you try and log in that information goes straight to the scammer. Always be alert, read the URLs carefully, and don't click on suspicious links in emails. Two Factor Authentication Basically everything right now uses passwords, and it is becoming increasingly common to use 2FA, or two factor authentication. Which is to use passwords with one of the other factors, commonly text(SMS) messaging or an authenticator app. This is great for security, as it is a lot harder for someone unwanted to get ahold of both your passwords and your phone. There are a few things to be aware of however. The first is that SMS messages are not secure. In transit they aren't encrypted, and your cell service provider can read them, as can others. And as I will speak on shortly they can be compromised. However, if you use an authenticator app this is largely resolved, with a few other caveats I don't feel like getting into right now, but if someone wants I will explain in the replies. SIM Fraud For those of you who don't know a SIM card is a component in your phone that allows it to connect to cell towers. It's where cell phone companies store your phone number and other information. One of the reasons that SMS messages or phone calls don't work really well as 2FA is that it is really common for scammers who get access to your information(another great reason to want both security and privacy online) calls pretending to be you and has your number transferred to a different SIM card. They are now in possession of your phone number and receive all texts meant for you. Security Keys I found out about these recently and haven't had the opportunity to use them yet. I will let you know how it goes once I do however. Security keys are physical objects that look like thumb drives, and they take everything that authenticator apps try to do and turn it up to eleven. Basically instead of using the time and a string of numbers and letters to create a code the key shares a code with the host website/app, and then keeps track of a whole bunch of information, such as the number of times you've logged in, and a lot of other math that my brain doesn't entirely understand to generate a unique code each time you log into a website. With that done, it becomes next to impossible to log in without having that physical security key, even if someone gets your password. As most of these keys use your fingerprint in order to work, and that scanner is reliant on a physical input, not just a scan, even if someone steals the key, or it gets lost they can't get access to your accounts either. On top of that the key will remember what websites you've been to, and won't allow you to give the code to the wrong one, even if they look legitimate. It is highly recommended however that if you use security keys you set two up at the same time and leave one of those keys in a secure location, because if you only have one and it gets lost, you are locked out of that account and there is no way to recover it. The success can be demonstrated by google making them mandatory with zero successful phishing attempts after that. Privacy Now having gone over that I'll move to more of a privacy focused angle. Nothing is Free Shocker, but things cost money. That is true on the internet as well. Any service that is being offered requires someone out there to be spending money to make it available to you. As a result, with few exceptions, they also have some way of making money off of that service. In privacy circles this has taken the form of the adage: "If you don't pay for the product, you are the product." Take Facebook for example, the ordinary user doesn't pay anything to use Facebook, yet Facebook is a company worth more money than most of us can even comprehend. How? The answer is simple, Facebook sells its users to other people, in this case to advertising companies. Something to always keep in mind is, how are is this service being funded. When I get to offering alternatives to big tech I'll go out of my way to point out how they get their funding. Ads and their problems Many people today will say that ads are the problem with privacy. Some more politically minded individuals will blame capitalism. Neither of those statements are true. Targeted ads however, are a big part of it. Ads unto themselves are just a way for companies to show you products they have that they believe you want to buy. This can be a very helpful and mutually beneficial relationship. However, when a middleman enters the picture with the ability to spy on your data and is willing to sell it to advertisers to optimize their ability to find people we have trouble. This is why if there is a weakness in your privacy, the first place you will see it is in personalized ads. You can easily see this if you are traveling. Watch ads in New York and then fly to Colorado. Immediately political ads will change to local candidates without you ever doing anything. Fingerprinting The way that companies make and market these ads is though what is called fingerprinting. This is basically the ability for them to identify who you are and link it to what you are doing. With enough information they can even do this across different platforms, so that multiple websites, accounts, and profiles can all be tied back to you. That is mostly in the realms of government agencies, and should worry us all. Websites over Apps Apps have a lot of permissions and access to data from your phone or computer. Generally if at all possible you should use webpages rather than apps. Ecosystems A common saying is "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Realistically speaking however, most of us do this all the time. How many of us have at one point or another been in the google ecosystem? Writing in google docs, recording information in google sheets, Gmail, google chat, google hangouts, google chrome, google search engine, google, google, google. Other ecosystems like Microsoft office also exist. This allows them to build large records of your past behavior and if that account gets hacked, or deleted everything is gone and there's nothing you can do about it. Open Source Everything online runs on code. Most large companies don't let anyone anywhere near their code. Try asking google how the YouTube algorithm works sometime. They won't tell you. Other companies and organizations have a different approach. The full code is open and on display for all to see. This means that anyone can look at, improve, or build their own off brand version, basically for free. It also means anyone can inspect it for potential problems or spyware. Open source providers are thus highly trustworthy, and I will say which of my recommendations are open source or not. Third-party verification This is basically when one company pays another to look at their products and try and break them. If the hired hackers can get in then they fail the inspection. If they can't the product passes the verification. Third party reviews are also highly valuable. Trade offs Just like as I said above nothing is free. That also often means that few things are universally better. In exchange for more privacy you also have to give something else up. This might be money, or convenience, but there is always a price. That's why I don't think there's a one size fits all for privacy. Everyone has to make their own decisions. Starting here soon, I'll give more step by step tips on improving your personal privacy.

Adding to this we have several non-native English speakers on the shard. Are they forbidden from using AI translations, or would that use be permissible?