Random phone security 101, unlocking methods, please boost:
Biometrics: prevents casual unlocking by someone just picking up your phone, but otherwise no real security. A cop (or other assailant) can force you to unlock your phone easily (often even without a warrant)
Pin Code: Slightly more secure, prevents anyone from accessing easily without knowing the code. But anyone with access to your phone, time, and skill can get in. Can be significantly improved by turning on Keypad Scrambling and Distress Codes (most devices do not offer either feature without a Custom ROM, see below) and Lockouts (available much more often).
Password: your security is proportional to how much a pain in the ass it is to unlock your phone.
Two-Factor (Custom ROMs Only): by combining Biometrics and Pin Code you get security that rivals a secure password while still being almost as convenient as a pin code.
Pattern Unlock: Just don't, it's honestly probably better to use just Biometric over this
Explanations:
Keypad Scrambling: This feature re-arranges the keypad on your lock screen. Downside is you can't unlock from muscle memory, but upside is that no one can unlock your phone from smudge patterns.
Distress Code: This is a second pin code that when entered will instead erase your phone instead of unlocking it. They can't tell which is which until your phone is being erased. Also increases security on brute forcing as there's a chance they accidentally erase your phone in the process.
Lockout: This is where your phone prevents access after a certain number of failed login attempts. It significantly slows down brute force attacks. Phones with this feature will usually either force you to enter a more secure password after this limit is hit, but some offer the option to automatically erase your phone.
Custom ROMs: these are alternate systems you can install on your phone, usually variants of Android. They often offer more features and security than your phone normally has, but there are unfortunately some tradeoffs due to Google's demand for control (example is you can't use tap-to-pay with a Custom ROM)
Random bit of trans vocabulary as I've recently seen people rejecting a phrase because they were confused by it.
"Socialized male" and "socialized female" aren't synonyms for someone's sex, they are experiences and culturally relevant.
People are confused because the term "socialize" has multiple meanings.
One is something done by you: "I was socializing with my friends"
One is something done to you: "I was socialized as a man"
To summarize Webster respectively:
The first is "to participate actively in a social group"
The second is "to fit or train for a social environment'
We say someone is "Socialized Male" or "Socialized Female" not to indicate what their sex is, but to indicate that in their formative years they were saddled with the expectations and treatment associated with "male" or "female" in our society.
The trans women getting confused think it means something like "grew up as men" or that our social groups were men, and that's not at all it.
It means we were treated as men.
We usually grew up with more women in our social circles than men, even if we didn't know we were trans yet. We were often seen as an exception, which means even our acceptance was flavored by it.
What "socialized male" means to me is that I grew up being labeled a predator and a threat by default.
Even if I wasn't specifically raised such, I was still affected by the fact that so many men were raised to believe it was okay to lie, cheat, and manipulate to abuse women. And because of that there was literally nothing I could say or do to convey that I was being genuine because far too many were dishonest about it.
I had to build entire patterns and routines of behavior around how to behave around women to make them feel safer, almost always to my personal detriment.
I to this day am still anxious and hesitant in so many interactions because for decades of my life they were forbidden to me because they were far too likely to make someone I care about feel unsafe.
When I say I was "socialized male" it means that was something done to me. I had to figure out how to navigate life and survive while being forced into a traumatic box by society that didn't remotely fit me.
This is a good and useful reminder: the word "socialize" is context-dependent. Would it be productive to try and use "enculturate" instead for the second meaning (training somebody in acceptable social behaviour)?
@Charlie Stross enculturate might be more accurate in some ways, but it feels much less familiar which means it requires more explanation.
But I do think the lack of context is probably what's throwing people off, particularly in that they're so many steps removed from the definition.
"Socialized male" is basically shortened from "they socialized me male" (transitive verb form) vs people are confusing it with "I socialized with men" (intransitive verb form)
"Indoctrinate" is a pretty good word and pretty close, but I honestly think it's too dramatic and is way more active than what we're talking about.
"Socialization" in general is a process we all go through in which we're introduced to and steeped in our cultural norms and values. Not all of it is accepted, not all of it takes, but it all affects us. Like how as an american I was steeped in US propaganda far more intensely than someone in the UK.
The term is talking about how during socialization we were also immersed in the expectations of manhood and masculinity.
@cstross Off-topic, but this reminds me of the way you sometimes hear younger journalists confusing โthis is in the public interestโ with โthe public will find this interestingโ.
@Tattie That's why I pointed out that it's non synonymous with assigned sex and is a perfect example!
Most trans women unfortunately are, at least in western society. Many if not most of us don't even realize we're trans until adulthood, so we grow up being treated as men by society.
For those like yourself who were treated otherwise, I'm grateful knowing that not all of us did.
This is in response to people who were interpreting "socialized male" as them socializing as men or primarily socializing with men, neither of which being the meaning of the term. If it meant that, it would be accurate to push back against it as we were never men and we very often socialize primarily with other women.
In it's accurate meaning, it's an important term and important to understand especially for cases like yours to define what makes your experience different. But also so that between our two experiences we can highlight what parts of our experience is inherent to being a trans woman and what parts are specific to being socialized male.
ok but I'm confused why you're grateful I wasn't socialized male? Being treated as a girl is grim. Being talked over, expected to do emotional labour for your male peers and for adults, having to work harder for less recognition. Being sexualised by adults at a young age. Being denied agency.
there was like this pattern where I'd go somewhere new and for like half an hour people would treat me as a boy, and it would be weird and confusing for everyone, and then there would be this "click point" and they'd switch to the way that everyone always treated me, as a strange boygirl creature.
I think maybe I went thru a phase of "male socialisation" for a few years during university? And it didn't bring me any more happiness than my childhood had. But then slowly I started hanging out with more and more woman-dominated friendship groups and being treated as an "honourary" one of them. And then I transitioned.
@shiri, this looks very much like โ$ITEM is releasing on $DATEโ vs. โ$ITEM will be released on $DATEโ to me. I'm quite sure that people just don't see or possibly even understand the difference.
I'm never quite sure why, exactly, $ITEM is holding on to $DATE, and I'm never quite sure what happens if $ITEM doesn't release $DATE โ do we just skip that day?
@shiri, โฆ hmm. Rereading, I see that I didn't properly account for having put โonโ in both. Too used to Americans (in particular) omitting it, I supposeโฆ regardless, it's intended to show doing vs. being/having done to.
@shiri, ah. No subject (or object; I always get the two labels confused). โWith othersโ doesn't half do a good impression of being one, thoughโฆ IT'S A TRAP!!!1!!one
I don't think people reject that phrase because they misunderstand it. One big reason to reject it is because transphobes, especially the TERFy sort, use it as a way of saying that trans women act like men, particularly that they are entitled, violent, and dangerous. More broadly, socialization is not a simple unidirectional process. Not just how society treats you and what expectations it has, but also how you respond to that treatment, and how society reacts to your upholding or failing to uphold those expectations. Trans girls don't have the same socialization as cis boys. They don't have the same socialization as cis girls, either. You could say that we are "socialized trans female", I suppose. Of course, no two people have identical socialization, so we are talking about consistent patterns of similarity. Are there similarities between trans female and cis male socialization? Certainly, but I believe there are also consistent differences that make it worth drawing a distinction there. The end result, at least, is very different.
@Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ In regards to the transphobes, any term or phrase about our experience will get used in that way. Not because the term in any way implies it, but because they will bend over backwards to make that claim about us any way they can.
So I don't see any point in dancing around transphobes, all we get down that road is a semantic treadmill.
And yes, how we respond to it varies greatly. The term is unidirectional because it refers only to what was done to us, not how we responded to it.
We all have wildly different responses and experiences, same as anyone else.
The phrase is talking about how we were treated and what expectations were put on us by society.
And "Socialized Trans Female" is a step backwards because not all trans women dealt with male socialization, just the vast vast majority. (Example: a girl who transitions at a young age and is supported in her transition is socialized female)
This is an all too frustratingly common case of people complaining that a simplified phrase doesn't perfectly encompass a whole paragraph's of concept.
If we throw out this term we simply lose a tool to explain and describe our experiences, nothing gets improved.
If someone can come up with a better term to mean "Grew up with society/guardians treating you with the expectations it associates with <gender>" then we'll all hop on board.
you are writing as though this phrase is commonly used by trans people in this sense. That has not been my experience. I have known far more trans people who actively reject the idea that they are socialized as their AGAB. Your experience may be different, but that is where I am coming from. And I don't think that this is dancing around transphobes; in my experience it is primarily used in a transphobic way, so that is the first way I expect it to be understood. My objection is not that the phrase is insufficiently descriptive, but that it is actively inaccurate.
I was not socialized male. Coming to understand that has been a significant part of my transition. I spent a long time with the self-conception that I was "not like other guys". Realizing that I am actually a pretty standard trans woman has been a trip. And I've also come to realize that I was not treated or even seen on the same way as the cis boys around me. I remember my mom saying once (not to me), after she had babysat her nephews for an afternoon, that now she understood what it was really like to have boys. This fits a pattern that was present throughout my childhood: people did not quite see me as a boy, even though they thought they should. And consequently, they didn't quite treat me as a boy, though they certainly didn't treat me as a girl.
I don't entirely understand your objection to using " trans female socialization". Certainly it is true that trans girls who have their gender recognized young will have a different experience of socialization than those who do not. But trans girls also have a significantly different experience of socialization than cis boys, and putting them into that box is more harmful than having a concept of trans female socialization that is not 100% universal. (No such concept will ever be completely universal. It will certainly differ along other axes like race, region, and socioeconomic status.) 1/2
So overall, saying that trans women have male socialization is inaccurate and harmful. It ascribes a similarity to the experience of cis boys that does not exist, and it gives license to treat trans women as being really or essentially men. I think that what you are talking about fits better under what I understand as gender assignment rather than socialization. I think it is common to treat gender assignment as something that happens in the moment when an M or an F is recorded on our birth certificates and then is done. But really in just about every social interaction we have (there may be some spaces, particularly queer ones, where this happens less), the people around us will try to figure out what gender box we fit into. They assign us a gender. From that assignment, they will derive expectations of how we will act and how they should treat us. Because most people's gender boxes are a strict binary, many trans girls will have the experience of being assigned male across many interactions, same as cis boys. But they will often not react to this assignment in the way that cis boys do, so they will not receive the same socialization as cis boys. 2/2
@Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ ugh... socialization has absolutely no reference to how we respond to it.
This is an actual academic sociology/psych term and is entirely about the environment we were raised and the expectations we were raised with.
For instance, someone who grows up in a conservative household and community is socialized conservative, this is regardless of whether they ever accepted any of it.
If you're assigned male across the majority of your interactions growing up, that's what this means. It doesn't mean you are a man, it means you had to deal with the traumas of being treated as one.
And yes, this is something that's shared with cis boys, because it's not about how we responded to it.
Like I've said elsewhere, if we transition early and are accepted then we don't deal with it because we get socialization that matches our real identity.
Saying trans female socialization literally means that we were raised with the expectations that we would act and behave as other trans femmes.
I'm American, I was socialized hyper-capitalist... does that make me a capitalist? No. It means I dealt with the expectations and trauma of hyper-capitalist expectations being put on me.
What about being socialized Christian (which basically means growing up in a Christian, even non-practicing, home), does that make me not Jewish? Nope. Do I get "Christian Privilege" for it? Hell no. Does that mean people can call me Christian? Still no.
And we do end up with many of the traumas of cis boys/men, the difference is for us is that it's in stark relief as we move away from those expectations and re-socialize ourselves.
Socialization is explicitly the expectations that were put on us and not how we responded to them.
If you want to talk about socialization specifically in how we responded to it? It's failed socialization, they wanted us to be men and we rejected it, they failed. But failure doesn't mean we didn't deal with them trying, it just means it didn't take.
Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update Update introduces two ways for the fridges to show ads. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/1โฆ
Hey, the Python Software Foundation (the people who make the Python programming language and the standard interpreter for it) just took a big hit to support those of us being targeted by hate.
If you're in a position to do so, maybe consider giving them a donation for being apparently one of the few tech organizations that have our back: psfmember.org/civicrm/contribuโฆ (if you want to verify the link it's the donate button on python.org/)
I almost cried given how many brands and organizations turn their back on us when they're not even standing to lose money.#FOSS #LGBTQIA #TransRights #Trans
Dear god my life is cursed with technology right now...
Brand new bullshit issue: my android phone refuses to accept that the wifi is connected to the internet, I can open up pingtools and confirm the dns and ping work fine, even check the URLs it uses to check access and those are fine...
But it won't accept that it's connected and as such tells all the apps there's no connection... despite it being confirmed as working.
This morning I had intermittent network issues on my phone, but my laptop has been fine all day... and now my laptop is still fine but I'm getting this nonsense with my phone...
I once had a router that did a horrible job of automatically managing 5ghz and 2.4ghz home Internet. The advice given was to have the router treat them as separate wifi connections.
@Arcanasphere (Andrew Arcana) it's openwrt, I've got a second SSID that's only 2.4ghz and it still does it on that one... no joke I can't even figure out why it's saying it's limited... I use ping tools and test everything and it's all working, but because Android throws up the flag saying there's no internet access then practically all the apps fail
Suggestion, seeing someone on youtube talk about adding an anti-ai logo on their product:
Someone needs to set up a non-profit org to just to have these logos be a reliable thing.
For those unaware, a lot of certification logos are not governmental, they're organizations licensing the logos (in many cases for free) and defending their usage via trademark law.
Basic gist of the process: * You design a logo * You establish the terms under which the logo can be used (ie. has a basic audit trail to prove that no AI was used) * You trademark the logo * You advertise the certification * You start suing people who misuse the logo
It's not a nothing process... but it just takes time (paperwork, court cases, but also just accepting and dealing with reports) and money (money primarily for registration and legal fees)
If someone does do this, I honestly suggest multiple marks for best effect: * No AI - everything is generated by them from scratch * Best Faith No AI - you may have used stock images or the like and as such can't guarantee they didn't use AI * AI assisted - as much as people complain, it helps to have because it increases adoption and recognition, basically they can prove that all important bits of the content are human created (ie. maybe they used AI for a texture or a background in images, or they wrote most of the text but used AI to fill in small portions) * AI edited - provably human generated content, but then it was fed through AI to modify it (ie. hand drawn art cleaned up and colored, or written text that used AI literally as an editor) * AI content, while there's all sorts of ethical debate, many who use AI do believe it should be labeled. And a recognizable label of such could help with recognition of the no AI label
And then a sort of secondary mark for those who pay this org to proactively verify the work (good way to generate funds for the lawsuits against those who falsely label)
Ugh... media server died again... at this point it's a money issue more than anything else, the hardware I have just isn't handling it. Pretty sure the drive arrays are failing, and the drives themselves aren't doing great as well...
Whelp, server is back online with only one tiny hitch... for some reason my router (OpenWRT) isn't sharing IPv6 addresses and I've literally changed nothing in the move...
Sharing this story from @Cory Doctorow because it's so much of what I've been saying.
Shipping a model that runs badly โ that needs more data-centers and energy to run โ is a way to convince investors that it's doing something really advanced (after all, look how much compute and energy it's consuming!).
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •For those familiar with dog training:
Your dog socializes with other dogs.
You socialize your dog to teach it how to behave in public.
One is something the dog does, the other is something you do to the dog.
Quixoticgeek reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross enculturate might be more accurate in some ways, but it feels much less familiar which means it requires more explanation.
But I do think the lack of context is probably what's throwing people off, particularly in that they're so many steps removed from the definition.
"Socialized male" is basically shortened from "they socialized me male" (transitive verb form) vs people are confusing it with "I socialized with men" (intransitive verb form)
reshared this
Charlie Stross and Elyse M Grasso reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
pixelbandito
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Charlie Stross reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to pixelbandito • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross @pixelbandito I mean I think more people than can spell socialization correctly...
"Indoctrinate" is a pretty good word and pretty close, but I honestly think it's too dramatic and is way more active than what we're talking about.
"Socialization" in general is a process we all go through in which we're introduced to and steeped in our cultural norms and values. Not all of it is accepted, not all of it takes, but it all affects us. Like how as an american I was steeped in US propaganda far more intensely than someone in the UK.
The term is talking about how during socialization we were also immersed in the expectations of manhood and masculinity.
Isaac Freeman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Tattie
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •in no context or meaning was I socialised male.
I accept that some trans women were. I accept that you may have been.
But I was treated closer to a girl than a boy, growing up.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tattie • •@Tattie That's why I pointed out that it's non synonymous with assigned sex and is a perfect example!
Most trans women unfortunately are, at least in western society. Many if not most of us don't even realize we're trans until adulthood, so we grow up being treated as men by society.
For those like yourself who were treated otherwise, I'm grateful knowing that not all of us did.
This is in response to people who were interpreting "socialized male" as them socializing as men or primarily socializing with men, neither of which being the meaning of the term. If it meant that, it would be accurate to push back against it as we were never men and we very often socialize primarily with other women.
In it's accurate meaning, it's an important term and important to understand especially for cases like yours to define what makes your experience different. But also so that between our two experiences we can highlight what parts of our experience is inherent to being a trans woman and what parts are specific to being socialized male.
Tattie
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tattie • •@Tattie I'm not grateful that it sounds like you were socialized female, tbh it kinda sucks for everyone all around.
But at least it sounds like you were socialized in a way that aligns with your identity.
Also I'm just generally grateful that it's not a uniform experience.
Tattie
in reply to Tattie • • •there was like this pattern where I'd go somewhere new and for like half an hour people would treat me as a boy, and it would be weird and confusing for everyone, and then there would be this "click point" and they'd switch to the way that everyone always treated me, as a strange boygirl creature.
I think maybe I went thru a phase of "male socialisation" for a few years during university? And it didn't bring me any more happiness than my childhood had. But then slowly I started hanging out with more and more woman-dominated friendship groups and being treated as an "honourary" one of them. And then I transitioned.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@shiri, this looks very much like โ$ITEM is releasing on $DATEโ vs. โ$ITEM will be released on $DATEโ to me. I'm quite sure that people just don't see or possibly even understand the difference.
I'm never quite sure why, exactly, $ITEM is holding on to $DATE, and I'm never quite sure what happens if $ITEM doesn't release $DATE โ do we just skip that day?
Shiri Bailem
in reply to lp0 on fire • •@lp0 on fire ... that's the most confusing way I could imagine someone saying "I can't tell the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs"
merriam-webster.com/dictionaryโฆ
"socialize" in this context is definition 1 of the transitive form of the verb. People are confusing it with the definition of the intransitive form.
Or if you want to dive specifically into the word socialization itself: merriam-webster.com/dictionaryโฆ
They're confusing 1a with 1b.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to lp0 on fire • •@lp0 on fire transitive/intransitive is not about the relationship to the subject.
Both "doing to" and "being done to" make a verb transitive. Which is the what you were showing.
Intransitive on the other hand is simply "doing" with explicitly no subject beyond the person doing it.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?)
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?) • •@Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ In regards to the transphobes, any term or phrase about our experience will get used in that way. Not because the term in any way implies it, but because they will bend over backwards to make that claim about us any way they can.
So I don't see any point in dancing around transphobes, all we get down that road is a semantic treadmill.
And yes, how we respond to it varies greatly. The term is unidirectional because it refers only to what was done to us, not how we responded to it.
We all have wildly different responses and experiences, same as anyone else.
The phrase is talking about how we were treated and what expectations were put on us by society.
And "Socialized Trans Female" is a step backwards because not all trans women dealt with male socialization, just the vast vast majority. (Example: a girl who transitions at a young age and is supported in her transition is socialized female)
This is an all too frustratingly common case of people complaining that a simplified phrase doesn't perfectly encompass a whole paragraph's of concept.
If we throw out this term we simply lose a tool to explain and describe our experiences, nothing gets improved.
If someone can come up with a better term to mean "Grew up with society/guardians treating you with the expectations it associates with <gender>" then we'll all hop on board.
Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?)
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •you are writing as though this phrase is commonly used by trans people in this sense. That has not been my experience. I have known far more trans people who actively reject the idea that they are socialized as their AGAB. Your experience may be different, but that is where I am coming from. And I don't think that this is dancing around transphobes; in my experience it is primarily used in a transphobic way, so that is the first way I expect it to be understood. My objection is not that the phrase is insufficiently descriptive, but that it is actively inaccurate.
I was not socialized male. Coming to understand that has been a significant part of my transition. I spent a long time with the self-conception that I was "not like other guys". Realizing that I am actually a pretty standard trans woman has been a trip. And I've also come to realize that I was not treated or even seen on the same way as the cis boys around me. I remember my mom saying once (not to me), after she had babysat her nephews for an afternoon, that now she understood what it was really like to have boys. This fits a pattern that was present throughout my childhood: people did not quite see me as a boy, even though they thought they should. And consequently, they didn't quite treat me as a boy, though they certainly didn't treat me as a girl.
I don't entirely understand your objection to using " trans female socialization". Certainly it is true that trans girls who have their gender recognized young will have a different experience of socialization than those who do not. But trans girls also have a significantly different experience of socialization than cis boys, and putting them into that box is more harmful than having a concept of trans female socialization that is not 100% universal. (No such concept will ever be completely universal. It will certainly differ along other axes like race, region, and socioeconomic status.) 1/2
Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?)
in reply to Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?) • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ฒ (baking?) • •@Juniper ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ ugh... socialization has absolutely no reference to how we respond to it.
This is an actual academic sociology/psych term and is entirely about the environment we were raised and the expectations we were raised with.
For instance, someone who grows up in a conservative household and community is socialized conservative, this is regardless of whether they ever accepted any of it.
If you're assigned male across the majority of your interactions growing up, that's what this means. It doesn't mean you are a man, it means you had to deal with the traumas of being treated as one.
And yes, this is something that's shared with cis boys, because it's not about how we responded to it.
Like I've said elsewhere, if we transition early and are accepted then we don't deal with it because we get socialization that matches our real identity.
Saying trans female socialization literally means that we were raised with the expectations that we would act and behave as other trans femmes.
I'm American, I was socialized hyper-capitalist... does that make me a capitalist? No. It means I dealt with the expectations and trauma of hyper-capitalist expectations being put on me.
What about being socialized Christian (which basically means growing up in a Christian, even non-practicing, home), does that make me not Jewish? Nope. Do I get "Christian Privilege" for it? Hell no. Does that mean people can call me Christian? Still no.
And we do end up with many of the traumas of cis boys/men, the difference is for us is that it's in stark relief as we move away from those expectations and re-socialize ourselves.
Socialization is explicitly the expectations that were put on us and not how we responded to them.
If you want to talk about socialization specifically in how we responded to it? It's failed socialization, they wanted us to be men and we rejected it, they failed. But failure doesn't mean we didn't deal with them trying, it just means it didn't take.