Tag Archives: Web Sites

Science & Health, Times They Are A-Changing, Web & Technology

If you care about your privacy, you need to change these browser settings right now – CNET

Google Chrome is the worst privacy offender, but all browsers can use settings tweaks. Make these adjustments ASAP in Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox and Brave.

By Rae Hodge Sept. 5, 2021 4:30 p.m. PT

James Martin/CNET
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Privacy is now a priority among browser-makers, but they may not go as far as you want in fighting pervasive ad industry trackers on the web.

Here’s a look at how you can crank up your privacy settings to outsmart that online tracking. Problems like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal have elevated privacy protection on Silicon Valley’s priority list by showing how companies compile reams of data as you traverse the internet.

Their goal? To build a richly detailed user profile so that you can become the target of more accurate, clickable and thus profitable advertisements.

Source: If you care about your privacy, you need to change these browser settings right now – CNET

Web & Technology

Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health | WIRED

Photograph: Joel Sorrell/Getty Images

Checking your phone for an extra two hours every night won’t stop the apocalypse—but it could stop you from being psychologically prepared for it.

It’s 11:37 pm and the pattern shows no signs of shifting. At 1:12 am, it’s more of the same. Thumb down, thumb up. Twitter, Instagram, and—if you’re feeling particularly wrought/masochistic—Facebook. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic left a great many people locked down in their homes in early March, the evening ritual has been codifying: Each night ends the way the day began, with an endless scroll through social media in a desperate search for clarity.

To those who have become purveyors of the perverse exercise, like The New York Times’ Kevin Roose, this habit has become known as doomsurfing, or “falling into deep, morbid rabbit holes filled with coronavirus content, agitating myself to the point of physical discomfort, erasing any hope of a good night’s sleep.” For those who prefer their despair be portable, the term is doomscrolling, and as protests over racial injustice and police brutality following the death of George Floyd have joined the Covid-19 crisis in the news cycle, it’s only gotten more intense. The constant stream of news and social media never ends.

Source: Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health | WIRED