The Guy Who Wrote The Page As A Passion Project For Fun made a simple, efficient thread about it.
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This is the ad they ran. If you’re not a Wiki admin or editor, maybe you don’t understand the horror of your Wiki pages being removed, even temporarily, by corporate for an advertising campaign.
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^I absolutely could. I’m glad I missed it but I absolutely do believe you. And as it happens I’m on this server and too curious not to take a quick look.
This is the most recent result when looking up “Grimace.” Like yeah people are reacting normally to this. (Also did someone get banned because advertisement looked too much like semen? That’s my best guess.)
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Oh cool, Fandom also Tweeted about this.
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Literally why aren’t more of us running away from Fandom? I have no words for how much this is not okay.
Fandom isn’t a trustworthy Wiki host anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time. This shit wouldn’t happen on Wikipedia for a reason.
As this user points out, one of their violations was to change the Wiki’s CSS in ways forbidden to regular administrators. Rules for thee but not for me.
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I’m understanding that before this user complained, the light theme had a theme that didn’t respect Fandom’s new-ish and current rules on contrast. This is ridiculous when it was forced on admins who suddenly had to rework their themes to adhere to the rules. (And there were users acting like this person’s tone was soooo aggressive… like no bestie I think they should have been meaner. Fuck corporations ruining everything we like and not even understanding their own accessibility rules.)
I’m not going to spend much longer on this but it was a fun ride. I’m so sorry that the Wiki admins and the contributor who worked hard on a page had to endure this. This contributor wasn’t even warned and it seems that it was the community who wrote a reassuring note that this was temporary in the change logs, not Fandom.
Just in case this is unclear: this shouldn’t be allowed. Wiki pages and communities, which are curated by regular users, shouldn’t be overtaken by corporations.
Use other Wiki platforms. Fandom isn’t trustworthy and doesn’t deserve your support.
Officially licensed 1993 Super Mario Kart plush of Toad, from Japan. For an unknown reason, the plush’s head is angled so far back that he appears to perpetually be looking upwards instead of at the (implied) road in front of him.
Is there a fandom term/trope name/whatever for this?
I’ve often seen it postulated that, when something crosses over with a totally separate property (for example: the Batman and Ninja Turtles crossover), that means that every single character who has ever crossed over with those involved characters now ALSO share a universe.
So, by that logic: Since comic-book Batman crossed over with the IDW comic incarnation of Ninja Turtles, and comic Batman has ALSO fought the Predator creature multiple times + the IDW Ninja Turtles have crossed over with the Ghostbusters… that means that the Ghostbusters and the Predator now share a common universe. See?
This concept is basically a smaller version of the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis… but I don’t know if there’s a term for such a thing?
Can anyone help?
I call it the Fortnite Theorem of Relatedivity
You cannot escape
I wonder how many cartoons are connected because Weird Al cameos in them.
On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) – these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.
Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.
Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: “.zip” and “.mov”.
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This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it’s in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.
What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.
Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.
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This is what we’re seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.
What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you’re on, don’t enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.
I’m seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company’s internet, and that’s probably wise.
Be cautious out there.
I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks.
A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc).
Scenario.
Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this.
Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor’s website without them having to send you anything.
Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud’s tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that.
These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn’t the the same as clicking on the promised attachment.
They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it’s from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn’t the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware.
Another Scenario.
An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip.
The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source.
Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials.
These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated.
Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites.
Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You’ll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you.
Yes, a lot of users aren’t going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out.
In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk.
It’s an unnecessary and risky can of worms that’s been opened up.
Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.
Bit of a long post but the e-mail example made me click how this could be a major issue.
Nowadays, even Firefox defaults to automatically downloading files. In the top right, you can go to Settings -> General -> Files and apps -> Always ask me where to download files. This parameter should open your files and allow you to cancel a download you weren’t expecting.
On Chrome, top right, Settings -> Downloads -> Always ask me where to download files.
I use Chrome sometimes and was surprised to find out this was not toggled. (Vocabulary may differ slightly.)
Please let me know if there exists a more efficient way to avoid downloads starting on their own, but hopefully this should be one way to stop them before it’s too late.
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