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<description>Rants, thoughts, and more</description>
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<title>My rant about normies in this world</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-01</link>
<pubDate>2022-06-09</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Normies are everywhere in this world, and I hate it. Their sheer incompetence and lack of understanding of the technology that they use every day is enough to make you want to pull your hair out and kill yourself.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Always flexing the fact that they have a new shiny piece of proprietary tech in their hands, or the fact that they have an instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc., fucking proprietary cucks. No one gives a single shit about your accounts on some proprietary service.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">And another thing, the next time someone comes up to me and says that all these companies that are part of big tech care about the user, i'm going to slap them silly. It's honestly infuriating and disgusting how little normies know about the monster that is big tech.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I also tend to notice that the average normie is pretty fucking stupid with everything in general. I tend not to point this out while speaking or interacting with them in order to be polite, but holy shit is it hard to keep my mouth shut. It's like your speaking to a fucking idiot, and its so hard to contain yourself and not say anything that would be considered "mean".</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Also, whenever you try to talk to anyone about who big tech really is and the horrors that lie within it, these people look at you like you have three heads, like what the fuck? You can't tell these people shit because they look at you like your crazy and have no idea what your talking about.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This world is honestly so sad and pathetic, and the way big tech and other large groups of corporations have emcompassed so much power on the users is insane.</p>
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<title>Stop feeding into the "cOnTeNt CrEaToR" dream</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-02</link>
<pubDate>2022-06-09</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Stop feeding into the stupid "content creator" dream. Whenever I hear someone say the words "content creator", I physically cringe in disgust.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">All content creators do is feed into the conSoomE culture that is so deeply embeded in today's world. Endless fucking consuming of content that just never stops, leaving you preoccupied, and leaving you tired and stoopider than before you began your endless binge. The question I ask myself over and over again is "Why?", "Why do this?".</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Consooming content for hours on end does nothing for you, and contributes zero to your life. Its counterproductive, and in my opinion a very stupid use of your time.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I also hate it when I hear people say that they want to become a "YouTuber" or some other kind of content creator on a similar platform. All these people will end up doing is wasting their time, trying to rise to the top and please the algorithm gods, creating content for big tech who will pay them literal fucking peanuts to create content for them. It's essentially free labor, and by continuing to feed into the "content creator" dream, you are supporting this monstrosity.</p>
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<title>GNU+Linux users are based and elitist and im not ashamed of it</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-03</link>
<pubDate>2022-06-10</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Normies always seem to be complaining about how elitist GNU/Linux users are, but honestly that doesn't offend me in any way. In fact, I take it as a compliment. I just can't help but look down on the world around me, looking at how stoopid and dumb everyone is.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">It may seem like a very mean and narcisistic way of viewing the individuals that are a part of this so called "world", but it's true. I honestly feel like i'm one of the few "smart" individuals left in the sea of idiots all around me, strapped down by the chains of big tech and big government.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">As you stay further and further away from what is considered common concensus, you feel more isolated, and you feel more and more out of place.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I do have to say though, that it is a sacrifice I am willing to make for knowledge and freedom. I'd rather live blackpilled on the shit that goes on in my world, rather than be bluepilled and live under the chains of big brother and big tech.</p>
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<title>Corporations and Pride Month</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-04</link>
<pubDate>2022-06-12</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">It's that time of year again, where big corporations voice their support for the queer community and change their social media account profile pictures to rainbow! But before you voice your praise for them for supporting pride month, really think about why they're doing it. It's all too often I see people saying how they love *insert big corporation name here* for "supporting" the queer community.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">In reality, this is far from true, and the only reason that these corporations are pretending to support the queer community is because it's good for public relations (PR). All they want to do is gain your loyatly, and get you to spend your money on their products.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">The end goal is not to genuinely support the queer community, but rather to generate more profits from sales, and make their stonks go higher.</p>
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<title>I HATE CELL PHONES</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-05</link>
<pubDate>2022-06-15</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Cell phones are nothing but proprietary, mobile surveillance devices. I fucking hate them with all of my heart. They do nothing but send your location to your carrier, and other third parties.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Unfortunately, I have to carry around one of these pieces of shit because my mother HAS to know where her daughter is. If it was up to me, I wouldn't carry around a cell phone AT ALL.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">When I get my own place of residence, I am going to set up a landline, and have that be my primary number. If i'm not home, anyone whos calling can leave a message and i'll get back to them later. Landlines tend to be WAY less expensive than spyware cellular service anyway (at least in "freedom" land, aka the US), so I think it's a better option for a person like me.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Normies use cell phones to entertain themselves whenever there is a time gap, no matter how small, throughout their day. It makes them stoopid, and shortens their attention spans significantly.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Cellular technology, no matter how C00L it may seem to the average normie, is insecure, spyware bullshit that forwards your location data, sms data, call data, etc. to your carrier, the government, and countless other third parties.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Moral of the story, DON'T USE CELL PHONES.</p>
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<title>How I went from normie apple shill to gigachad GNU/Linux elitist</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-06</link>
<pubDate>2022-07-22</pubDate>
<description>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Believe it or not, I used to be your typical normie apple shill, with products such as the iphone, ipad, macbook air, and so on and so forth. At this point in time I didn't really care about free software, or computer security in the slightest.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I basically had a blindfold over my eyes. I was actually sold on the marketing point that apple actually cared about user privacy and security, how pathetic.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">As time went on, I started seeing the holes in apple's siren song. I "wised up" if you will. I started seeing apple's claims for what they really were, absolute lies. The whole apple ecosystem started to fall apart in front of my face, and I was kind of lost on what to do about it.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Lucky for me, a friend of mine who goes by the name of speedie, was into free software and GNU/Linux around this time. I didn't immediately jump ship though, as I waited at least several months before I took action.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Fast forward a couple a months, I sold off my m1 macbook air, and bought myself a nice little ThinkPad T460 to use. As soon as it arrived, I installed Linux Mint on it. I never looked back from this moment, and it was liberating to finally have a system that didn't run a proprietary spyware operating system, and did what I wanted it to do.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I spent some time learning more about GNU/Linux, and tried out some more advanced distros such as Gentoo and Arch Linux. After trying out Gentoo, I loved how much control it gave me over the internal workings of my GNU/Linux installation, but I decided it would be too much of a pain for me to maintain.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I then tried out Arch Linux, which was significantly easier for me to manage compared to Gentoo, while still giving me a lot of the control that Gentoo did. I then decided to move from Linux Mint to Arch Linux as my daily driver. I love using Arch Linux, and have gotten aquainted with it quite well. It's what I run on all of my machines that I actively use.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I suppose I may have rambled a bit too long back there, but thats the story of how I went from normie apple shill to gigachad GNU/Linux elitist in a nutshell. If you'd like to share your own story of how you got into GNU/Linux, i'd love to hear it. Feel free to send it to 'primrose@snowcake.me'.</p>
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<title>Social media is social control</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-07</link>
<pubDate>2022-07-31</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">I see so many people on popular social media platforms these days, such as facebook, twitter, instagram, tiktok, etc. I find this very disturbing because I believe that mainstream social media is nothing but an instrument of unjust power over its users, social control.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">On all popular social media platforms, there is always an algorithm that controls what users see and don't see, what political views are shown or hidden, etc. And guess who controls those various algorithms on these platforms? Big tech, thats who.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This is particularly dangerous because it allows for mass censorship online of anyone who doesn't agree with the same ideals as big tech and the masses. It also allows for specific big tech approved ideals to be boosted to the top where all users can see, effectively molding and shaping a users ideals into what big tech wants.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">It is a massive violation of the freedom of speech that people have within the United States, and other countries. We should not allow this to continue, and people should learn how to say no to big tech and what it wants.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This dystopia that we live in will continue to evolve into something far worse if we don't take action today. So, if you are a user of these popular social media platforms, I urge you to stop using them, and delete your account.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">We cannot let this massive abuse of users continue any longer. If you continue to use these social media platforms after knowing about these issues, you are part of the problem, and I urge you to become part of the solution for everyone's sake.</p>
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<title>Why I use free software, and support the free software movement</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-08</link>
<pubDate>2022-08-02</pubDate>
<description>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">I once was a normie, who didn't care about privacy and security, and that used apple products. But, this changed when I became aware of the evils of proprietary, non-free software, and the significant risks that come with using them.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I then discovered the free software movement, and have been trying to limit the amount of non-free software I use in my day to day life. Free software is important to me because, the chances of free software being malware and doing nasty things are significantly lower compared to non-free, proprietary software.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This is because, for a piece of software to be considered free software, the source code (the human readable form of software that programmers edit to make changes to the software) has to be freely available for anyone to view, modify, edit, and/or redistribute. This allows lots of members from the community to audit the code, and verify that the program in question is actually doing what the developer claims that it does when you run it, and not some nasty stuff behind your back (such as unauthorized data collection).</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I have lots of respect and appreciation for the many community members that work on and audit free software for primarily that reason. I try to stay far away from proprietary, non-free software because it's source code is not auditable by the public, meaning that the potential for that piece of software to have malicious functionality baked into it is incredibly high.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">For those who try to defend proprietary, non-free software and claim that this is for "security reasons", think again. What good is it for a company to audit itself, or for a government to audit itself? Same case here. The original developers could be lying about what their program does, and because it's proprietary, closed-source, non-free software, no one would ever know for sure. I personally do not want to take that risk when it comes to my computing, so I stick with free software wherever possible.</p>
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<title>Is spying on your own citizens really necessary to neutralize the "domestic terrorist" threat?</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-09</link>
<pubDate>2022-08-24</pubDate>
<description>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">I was looking into what the 2013 Edward Snowden NSA leaks revealed, and it revealed quite a lot about the kind of information that the NSA is collecting from users of big tech giants services, such as Google and Microsoft, through their "PRISM" mass surveilence program.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This data includes, but is not limited to: emails, chat logs, videos, "cloud" storage data, phone call records, etc. All of this without a warrant or other legally justifying document, mind you. This is highly invasive for end users, and is absolutely appalling.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">The worst part of it all is that it's not just data from other countries outside of the US, but the US itself too. That means that the NSA is SPYING on it's OWN CITIZENS, all in the name of "counterterrorism" and "protecting your freedom and the homeland". It's all just a load of bullshit, and an excuse to attempt to justify these huge invasions of privacy, and the rise of mass surveilence.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Ever since 9/11, we've seen a steep increase in mass surveilence from our favourite three letter agencies, such as the NSA and the CIA. All our government has done is take advantage of our fear after 9/11, and exploit it for their own interests, not the interests of the people.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">It's only continued to get worse year after year, and add that on top of the massive amounts of tech companies that surveil you for their own interests. It's just a privacy nightmare alltogether, and I believe it needs to be stopped. We shouldn't let governments and companies control us in these absolutely nasty ways, and we should always be ready to fight back.</p>
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<title>I HATE SHITGLE CLASSROOM</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-10</link>
<pubDate>2022-09-16</pubDate>
<description>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">I hate google classroom for many reasons, including, but not limited to:</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">1. The fact that it injects 20+ privacy violating cookies into your browser, just like every other frigging google service on the web.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">2. The fact that it runs proprietary, non-free javascript code in my browser that's responsible for injecting those 20+ privacy violating cookies I just mentioned.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">3. The fact that it provides a convenient excuse for teachers to make assignments due during the weekend and during after school hours on weekdays.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">My school uses google classroom as it's assignment and class information distribution platform, so I unfortunately have no other choice but to swallow my (very valid) reasons for hating shitgle classroom and use it.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">It bothers me so much that even when there are libre alternatives to platforms like google classroom (such as moodle, just to name one off the top of my head), schools still end up using the proprietary, non-free solution because it's "convenient". I'm so sick and tired of people not caring about how disgusting proprietary, non-free software is, especially when it affects others.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">If you don't care about your own freedom and privacy, then fine, but don't sacrifice other people's freedom and privacy for your own convenience.</p>
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<title>My school doxxed 440 students</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-11</link>
<pubDate>2022-10-11</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">My school was making preparations for an event this month, and as part of those preparations, asked that students pick what group they'd like to be placed in for a certain activity. Students submitted a survey online with that information, and they were placed into groups shortly after.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This is where things get absolutely stupid however, as someone in charge of the planning for this event thought it would be a great idea to publish student group placements on the school's public facing website. They embedded a spreadsheet onto a page which contained 440 students first and last names, grades, and school email addresses. That's right, a nice little fucking doxx by the people you'd expect to doxx you the least.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Whoever published those changes onto the school website should lose their job, because if students personal information is in the hands of someone like that, I fear for what their next little "fuck up" might bring.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">As far as I know, students were too stupid to realize the severity of the situation, and parents did not see, only because I let school administators know of this little "fuck up" early on. That's right, a student, me, let them know of their mistake, not a staff member. What a joke.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">[2022-10-16] UPDATE: I have spoken with a few invididuals, and it has come to my attention that the person responsible for this error was the only one working on this big event.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I no longer believe that she deserves to lose her job, and I no longer believe she deserves 100% of the blame for this incident. I believe my school's upper administration deserves some, if not most of the blame for this error for it's poor coordination in preparing a team for the event in question.</p>
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<title>I hate ISP routers</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-12</link>
<pubDate>2022-11-18</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">I hate ISP provided routers with a passion. They're always locked down, bloated, and always allow the ISP to remote into my fucking gateway.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I know that this is mainly for remotely assisting with any issues a customer may encounter, or for remotely upgrading firmware on the router, as my ISP does. For most people, especially residential customers, this is a very good thing. But, as someone who knows more than her fair share of networking stuff, this has become an annoying pain to deal with.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">What makes this worse for me is that I don't have a static IP address at home, nor do I have an option to as a residential customer, so when my ISP decides to remote into my router, upgrade it's firmware, and reboot it, I get an entirely new WAN IP address, which is a pain in the ass, because since I host a web server from home, it means that I have to go into my registrar's DNS configuration and update my A record, which can be really annoying once you've had to do it enough (I know that you can use things like dynamic DNS to ease this issue, but my stupid ISP router doesn't support custom dynamic DNS providers, and I don't want to use any of the ones that are pre-selected for me in the web interface).</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Hell, I can't even close off the ports that are used for remoting into my gateway, since the firewall is very basic and only allows for custom allow inbound rules, not deny rules.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">As a network administrator at home, i'm just not okay with my ISP having remote access to my gateway, arguably one of the most crucial parts of my network. I'll be rectifying this issue soon enough though, so stay tuned.</p>
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<title>I got a cell phone (again)</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-13</link>
<pubDate>2022-12-23</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Yeah yeah, I know what you're all thinking, "BUT LILIUM_SNOW, DIDN'T YOU RANT ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU HATED CELL PHONES SIX MONTHS AGO IN POST #05?!?!?!?", but hear me out.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I spent serveral months without a cell phone, and for a while, it was fine. But not having a phone number was starting to get to me.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I don't have a landline, nor can I get one at this point in time. I wanted to be able to make phone calls again, and be able to have a cell phone for two factor authentication and OTP 2FA for some of the online services that I use for extra security.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Overall, not having a cell phone was pretty livable for some time, but it's not realistic in this day in age. As much as I HATE cell phones, I have to admit that having one is a necessity for most people at this point in time, unfortunately.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I still value privacy and freedom very much, so no, I will not be using a shitty apple iphone like I did before. I have ordered a google pixel 6a, and will be rooting it to install an operating system that respects my privacy and freedom, such as CalyxOS or GrapheneOS. There is no way in hell I am using stock android with all of its stupid google dependencies and spyware.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">As much as I like to throw shade at google for their shitty business practices, i'll give them credit where it's due. As far as I can see, they make really good cell phones for rooting and modifying.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Unfortunately, I'll still have to deal with inherently flawed cellular technlogy giving my cellular provider the ability to triangulate my location, but i'll probably keep my cell phone at home most of the time anyway.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I'll be picking up the google pixel 6a soon, so stay tuned for more I guess.</p>
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<title>My attempt to upgrade my home network</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-14</link>
<pubDate>2023-01-16</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">All of this started as a simple plan to just swap out my ISP provided gateway for another off the shelf home router. But, things quickly grew from there, and by November of last year, the plan started looking like a whole home network overhaul.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">My plan was to swap out my ISP provided gateway for a thin client that ran OPNsense, plug in a bunch of USB 3.0 to ethernet adapters with an ASIX chipset, which from what I had read, worked well with FreeBSD, the OS that OPNsense is based on, and hook up a wireless access point and network switch to those adapters. It was a bit janky, but I thought it should still work.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">When all the pieces came in December, I installed OPNsense on the thin client and set up the network switch and wireless access point, and all seemed to go well.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">This was, of course, until I did some speed tests, and saw that I was getting a horrible 200 MB/s down, and 80 MB/s up. I should have been getting at least 950 MB/s both ways, since I have a gigabit WAN link. Something wasn't right, so I took the whole setup apart and put the ISP provided gateway back into service.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">What followed after was hours of configuration tweaking with OPNsense and iperf3 speed tests. In the end though, the culprit ended up being those USB 3.0 to ethernet adapters I was using for LAN. Turns out, they weren't as reliable as I originally thought. After some more research, it looks like they can be quite flakey in fact.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I felt pretty stupid for making this oversight. I guess I was so focused on the power efficency of the whole setup that I completely missed this crucial flaw. But alas, at least I knew what I did wrong, and I can now focus on creating a setup that will actually work at full speed.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I will be buying a dell optiplex 3040 or 3050 in the SFF form factor, and an intel gigabit PCIe network card with 2 or 4 RJ45 jacks. These SFF optiplex systems only accept half height cards of course, so i'll have to swap out the bracket for a half height one if it is not already present on the card that I purchase. Intel gigabit PCIe cards work the best in OPNsense, and this is the setup that is typically seen in use with home OPNsense boxes.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I'll update all of you on the new setup when I get around to getting it put together, so stay tuned.</p>
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<title>I found a laptop with a boatload of personal data still on it</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-15/</link>
<pubDate>2023-03-04</pubDate>
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<pstyle="text-align: left">Last Sunday, I was downstairs in the basement of my apartment building, where I stumbled across two laptops. Both looked fairly old, and upon closer inspection later, were from 2012-2013.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I decided to take them with me just to tinker around with them and see if anything was wrong with them.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">The HP machine was in pretty good condition, so I decided to take a look at that one first. I went ahead and inserted a USB with Linux Mint on it, and booted the machine up.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I then went ahead and mounted the internal drive, and to my surprise, it was not wiped.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I was able to go through the documents and downloads folder of the previous owner, and oh boy, was there a LOT of personal data on it.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">Documents such as passport applications, scans of drivers licenses, bank statements, and more could be found RIGHT THERE on the drive. I was in awe at how someone could just toss a machine out like this.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">The previous owner didn't even bother taking out the hard drive, even though it could have been taken out by removing two screws on the bottom of the machine.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">I was planning on contacting the previous owner about their very stupid mistake, but by the time I tried to access the data on the drive again, the drive started failing on me and giving me a bunch of input/output errors, so I wasn't able to.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">The Dell machine on the other hand, was in poor condition, and looked like it was used by a child judging by the stickers on the machine.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">When I tried to look through it's internal drive, it was already dead, so there's that.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">To wrap this all up though, I would like to close with this:</p>
<pstyle="text-align: left">WIPE THE DATA ON YOUR MACHINES BEFORE YOU THROW THEM OUT, THANK YOU</p>
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<title>Why do so many apple shills buy poorly made accessories for their devices?</title>
<link>https://snowcake.me/posts/post-16/</link>
<pubDate>2023-03-07</pubDate>
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<