Onto the topic, now that they’re off our trail

Ok, now that the feds have been bored to tears, let’s discuss the real topic of this article. The real topic of this article is the 2007 PC game by Valve Corporation, commonly known as Team Defense Fortress 2. In tf2, there is a common portrayal of the character “Scout,” a fast-running character with a shotgun. He is often portrayed as a kid, often getting into all kinds of trouble (shown below). There is also a character named “Soldier” who can do long jumps by shooting towards his feet and jumping. This is impossible in real life and will get the person attempting to do this killed.

Now onto the actual topic

Now that all the women are gone, we can move on to the topic. The actual topic of this article regards economies of scale. Economies of scale, to put it loosely, can sum down to the fact that the bigger a company is, the more material it can produce and, therefore, the more money it can make. Larger factories can pump out more materials faster than smaller factories. In addition, fixed cost becomes variable in the long run, as long run businesses need to pay out fixed cost many times to expand, which does not happen in short-run microeconomics. With economies of scale, if expansion occurs to quickly, a company could be inefficient to expand that quickly, and would incur losses.

Okay this time for real

Okay, now that anyone who does not understand how the world works is gone, let’s discuss the real topic at hand. The real topic at hand is insanity. Specifically, the fact that we can no longer use the metrics we used to use to determine the sanity of an individual. I am not talking about how psychologists see it; instead, I am referring to how the general public sees a person.

Onto the Real Stuff

We can no longer say that someone who thinks the government is watching them is insane because the government is watching them. In fact, many of the things that people have been incredibly scared about for years and years are beginning to become true.

Consider the following: social media has gone a long way since the old days of MySpace. Social Media companies design social media to be addictive. This does not make sense to a lot of people and it seems like mind control. However, it really is rather simple. I’ve created a thought experiment to help people visualize it.

Imagine if you enter into an argument on the internet. If you were to put the phone down, then the other person would say something, you wouldn’t respond for a while, and they’d get the last laugh. This could result in the general public being turned away from you, in turn could have disasterous consequences, but in reality that is only what the human mind percieves. If you were to put the phone down, you could forego imaginary internet points. However, imaginary internet points are just that. But by creating said points, it creates a scenario of mutually assured destruction, in which neither party would put the phone down, and truly the only people who win the argument is the platform themselves.

By creating such a situation, people become upset at each other without truly recognizing the enemy in the situation. The enemy in the situation is not you; it is not the person you are arguing against; it is the social media platform. I will direct you towards another article of mine, The Deadly Problems With Social Media, if you wish to read more.

Getting to the Point

We often define insanity as too much distrust in a concept or specific organization. I would rather define it as too much trust. Many concepts are amazing concepts but may not necessarily work 100% of the time. A good example of this is open-source software. It is great on many occasions, but proprietary alternatives are sometimes better. Sometimes, people who truly drink the open source kool-aid may claim that software that is open source is better than the proprietary alternatives, even when they’re not.

Extreme Idealism

If you accelerate this concept further beyond open source, or really any ideology that generally works well, but not always, you may find people with trust in an ideology that never works. Say, for example, communism. “Communism has never been executed properly,” some say, but communism can’t be executed properly.

The only thing worse than having too much trust in an idea is having too much trust in an organization. Every government that has ever come to power has experienced at least a little corruption. Every government has done awful things to the detriment of its citizens at some point or another.

Corporations

If you think governments might be bad, at least they are elected. Corporations are even worse. Anyone simps for any major company should be what we define as insane. While many, if not most, corporate behavior is good, there will always be times when financial incentive does not match the right thing. In economics, this is called an externality. Externalities are far from uncommon. Any hardline libertarians who believe there are no such things as externalities are themselves insane.

Allow me to point out a number of externities, some of which will come into use later on:

• It is not always necessarily economically the right thing to do to be good for the environment.
• Sometimes it is beneficial to make items unhealthy or even addictive to get people to consume your product (digital or analog) a second time.
• Sometimes it is beneficial to market the above products to children or people who may not necessarily be capable of self-control.
• Lawsuits are the cost of doing business, not a punishment.

The Raw Data

See the full results of the survey here (you WILL lose your braincells): Survey Responses

In writing this article, to verify some conclusions, I performed a survey where 23 people, ages 15-26, were asked a number of questions regarding insanity. Below, you see the portion of people who stated they did not trust their own government.

Below, you see the levels of distrust in large corporations:

Generation Z and Addictive Chemicals

When doing this article, I had some rather interesting results with regard to addictive chemicals. Below is a question that asked young people whether they have access to addictive chemicals but choose not to use them.

In addition, I asked a question about which substances people abstain from, and the results were shocking:

This gets on a perfect idea. Caffeine is an addictive chemical. Even though it is addictive, it won’t kill you or really do anywhere near as much harm as the other substances, but over half of the people from Generation Z choose not to drink it.

“Mind Control”

People from Generation Z do not drink caffeine, not because they do not like it, but because they don’t want to be addicted to anything. In fact, this other question proves why.

Generation Z and Social Media

Examine the following. People from Generation Z know that social media is addictive. In fact, many of us likely laugh at our parents when they use social media and inform them that they are addicted.

Understanding the Data

Considering the normal way people define insanity, over half of the young people between 15-26 are insane. I would rather define insanity as they are not out to get you. Anyone who clearly fails to think critically about any ideology and understands that nothing is perfect and works all the time is insane.

The people that have political beliefs that trust the government or either party the most are the people who are current threats in today’s society. People who many believe to be absolute nutjobs speak the truth. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

The post We Need to Redefine Insanity appeared first on Info Toast.

The Corporate Understanding

I’m going to get into fairly basic economics for a minute, so bear with me. To understand companies that track people, you must understand supply and demand. Because being spied on, like anything else, has its supply and demand. Contrary to popular belief, supply and demand are curves on a graph, not specific scalar values. The demand curve on one end is the users who want ads that are most relevant to them and don’t care about privacy at all. On the other end of the curve is the die-hard tinfoil hatters.

The supply curve recognizes the point of view of companies. One side of the supply curve is no spy at all. On the other side of the curve is pouring out so much money to get every possible user imaginable into tracking that the company goes bankrupt.

If you see where this is getting at, it is not economically viable to track beyond a certain point. Now, the chart I have given is more of a simplification. In reality, the curves are more complex and will appear logarithmic. Also, notice that I did not give specific dollar amounts. The point of this article is to get you not to become a tinfoiler but instead to put you beyond companies such as Google and Microsoft’s equilibrium. That way, it will no longer be financially viable to spend the R&D effort and put forth other costs to create ways of tracking you.

At the end of the day, the end goal is to turn a profit. Anything beyond equilibrium will not make you a profit.

Privacy Myth vs Reality

Firstly, I would encourage you to read another article critically discussing VPNs: The Truth About IP Addresses.

Regarding VPNs

If you do not have time to read, here’s the takeaway. VPNs won’t save you from tracking companies such as Google and Microsoft. They are far more useful for getting around firewalls and if you believe whoever provides your internet is spying on you. They are also useful if you wish to circumvent any potential IP bans, including country filters. As that market is a smaller market that is often looked down upon by society (e.g. kids in schools getting around filters), VPNs often advertise that they will protect your privacy.

The issue with this is that while they advertise privacy protection, people actually looking for genuine privacy protection may be led down the wrong path. The primary way that Google and other trackers operate is not through your IP address but through cookies stored on your browser. Those cookies will be recognized regardless of your IP, and Google will always see them as you.

Don’t get me wrong; Google likely does use your IP address in some capacity. However, it can often be limited in effectiveness to do so considering home IPs change, anyone living under the same roof shares the same IP, and if you live in a college or university dorm, or are at a coffee shop or anywhere other than home, IP addresses on their own are a rather inaccurate method of tracking that may cue Google in part to who you are but must be combined with other variables.

Regarding TOR

TOR is an option that does exist. However, as I’ve said before, TOR is a machine gun used to solve a shotgun-sized problem. While TOR has made efforts to not lure their users into a false sense of security, it is still possible to get one.

However, I think the primary problem with TOR is the ease of use. TOR is a hassle to use. It’s made to protect you against the government, not against companies. It’s extremely slow, and if you decide to use TOR to solve your problems, chances are you will be returning to Chrome in no time.

All of this being said, TOR is amazing at protecting your privacy against outside forces. However, the outside forces are not the ones you need to be exclusively worried about. If there is an app on your computer, or G-d forbid, your operating system itself that is phoning home the websites you visit, TOR did nothing. Also, the second you log into your Gmail account, Google knows you’re a TOR user.

Apple and TOR

Believe it or not, Apple has its very own version of TOR. It requires a small monthly iCloud subscription, but it’s not that much. iCloud Private Relay runs entirely off of Apple’s own servers, so there’s no worrying about using some random guy’s basement computer. However, it employs the same technology that TOR does. It goes through one server, which only sees your IP, and sends the request to another server that only sees what website is being accessed. Right now, it only works on Safari, but if you’re using an Apple device, it does exist, and as far as I can tell, when I have it on, I see zero changes in site speed than when I have it off. This is because, unlike TOR, iCloud Private Relay attempts to only use servers in your general area.

Regarding Linux

It’s spouted by many of the popular tech people that if you want privacy, Linux is the way to go. And, while, yes, Linux does a very good job at preventing the Operating System from phoning home, your apps may not be doing likewise, and if they don’t, Linux does nothing to protect against that. It’s a common joke among the community to “Use Linux and then Install Google Chrome Immediately Afterwards.”

The fact is that Linux does absolutely nothing to protect your privacy. There is zero app sandboxing whatsoever. While many distributions may include Snap or Flatpak, which are two marketplaces that allow for sandboxing, the simple fact is that any app that wishes to spy will merely not provide a snap or flatpak version of itself, and users will not think twice before installing it.

Complex Talk About Permissions

An app that wishes to do harm to your computer may need to have write access to certain things, but any app that wishes to spy neither requires root nor requires to write permissions and basically, every file on your system is given read permission. While many distributions fix this issue, Linux on its own allows any program, root or not, to have full read access to the entire system memory. Your discord tokens, your sessions on various websites, all of this secure data can be read and leaked by any application, with or without root.

Besides that, the data that should be kept private is not the data that is kept in different locations on the system. It’s the data that’s stored in your home directory. Any program that you run has full access to everything within that directory. Furthermore, by default, Linux allows anyone who wishes to read anyone’s home directory full read access. This can’t be changed unless you manually change it yourself. You will also need to change your umask to do likewise with other files in the future. This means that in both a single-user and multi-user way of thinking, Linux is terrible.

Many people ask “Why hasn’t Linux made it to the desktop in big-time yet, when it has for every other use of a computer?”. Linux on the desktop is barely any more secure than MS-DOS, which had zero security as a base whatsoever. The ability to modify the file structure and change the philosophy slightly is there for Linux. The only thing in the way is that every distro in existence has failed at doing so.

Final Note Regarding Background Processes

The final nail in the coffin regarding Linux’s security on the desktop is something Mac and Windows both have in some form or another, but Linux lacks. On Windows, at the bottom-right of the screen, there is a system tray. Any application that wishes to run in the background is kept in that tray. On Mac, they are lined up as menus on the top right of the screen. Those are the apps that spy. Not all of them do spy, and most have a legitimate reason to be there. But, if there is one that is up there and shouldn’t be, it is easy to identify.

On Mac and Windows, rules exist that enable those apps to do certain but not all root-level activities. Different apps may request different things. However, let’s look at Linux’s horrible solution from the 1970’s. What Linux has is called a daemon. Daemons were originally created as servers. Apache HTTP is often called “httpd” or “HTTP daemon”. Daemons are started as the computer powers on. They are initially given full root access and may choose to fully or partially change themselves to an unprivileged user in the interest of security.

However, from a desktop perspective, Daemons suck. Consider the fact that you, the user, give root access to every app at install time. While Windows requires administrator access, they make it a little more complex. In the case of Mac, you just drag your apps into the Applications folder, and you’re done. Any application could potentially make itself a daemon at install time. Daemons are invisible to the desktop and can run in the background without any visible sign to the user unless the user opens up the full list of tasks. Applications can not only spy on the user this way but can also receive full system access and spy on every user.

Regarding Firefox

Many people regard firefox as the most privacy-protecting major modern browser. And Firefox is good at protecting your privacy. However, in everything that Firefox does, Safari does better. If you are not using an Apple device, you really don’t have a choice. However, I would urge you that if you are intending on using Firefox, to instead consider something based on Firefox, such as Librewolf: https://librewolf.net.

First of all, Firefox isn’t entirely secure by default. There is telemetry that is sent to Mozilla, and given the foundation’s history, should be disabled. Mozilla, while in the past may have been amazing, they have sold out a good bit recently. You can do more research on the matter if you wish, but let’s just say they’re not quite as non-profit as they used to be.

Firefox from a Non-Privacy Perspective

If you’re reading this article, while privacy is on your mind, you likely wish to have the most privacy with little sacrifice. However, you are making a pretty significant sacrifice by using Firefox, as opposed to Safari or other Chromium-based browsers. The time of writing this article is 2022, and the link below will take you to a list analyzing the speed of browsers taken in April 2022: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, or Safari: Which Browser Is Best?, PCMag

There are three benchmarks that were included. HTML5Test measures compliance with existing web standards. Safari bites the bucket more than anyone on this, although the cause may be because some standards may not be complied with or may be done differently to protect the user’s privacy. The second benchmark is called JetStream 2. JS2 measures the actual speed in which the browser renders the pages. Finally, there’s a memory use benchmark, which looks at how much memory different browsers use.

As you can see, Safari comes in well beyond all other browsers in terms of speed. Firefox does the worst out of everything on the list, unfortunately. It is significantly slower than Chromium-based alternatives.

As you can see here, although Google Chrome is commonly famous for using a ton of memory, it actually isn’t that bad. Firefox uses an inordinate amount of RAM, while Safari is incredibly lightweight and far faster.

Finally, the Reality

Now, we’re past the myths, so we should talk about what you should do. The key is that you want your computer to be secured from prying eyes on both the foundation level and any apps that may be running on your computer. And, thankfully, that isn’t that hard.

Your Phone Must be Just as Secure as your PC

One of the most common mistakes people make is they do everything they possibly can to keep their computers secure, while they neglect their phones entirely. However, your phone is the thing that’s always looking at your location. You leave your computer at home. Your phone is also where you do likely the majority of your searches you may not want Google to know about. The fact is that your phone’s search history is going to be far more valuable than your computer’s. Your phone is where you search things up that pertain to real life. Your computer is where you do searches that pertain to video games.

One of the reasons that this may be is your phone’s settings may seem more difficult to sift through than your computer. When people get their computers, they often immediately configure everything for their liking. However, with a phone, your previous phone might have broken. Or, something else might have happened, and the user’s initial priority is to see what conversations happened while they were gone and get everything working before they fully configure the operating system.

Android-Specific Advice

It is possible to recover from this though, even on Android. If you’re on Android, one of the first steps to do is remove the Google widget. Androids have a Google widget. That widget circumvents the use of an actual browser. Actual browsers let you configure whatever non-Google search engine may be preferred and better protect your privacy. You may not be able to uninstall it, but all you really need to do is get it off the screen, so using it is not convenient.

After doing that, sift through the settings. This may surprise you, but Google made a good bit of privacy options. You will never be safe from tracking that comes from apps installed on your phone, but one good way to know how certain apps might track you is to go to the website of the App Store and just look at Apple’s list of what the app is doing on iPhones. Some apps that exclusively exist on Android are likely there to spy on you. If you look at an App that exists in both stores, and you see that it’s free on Google Play on the App Store, when you look at Apple’s privacy summary, it looks pretty good, but then you see that it costs money on Apple, it’s probably spying on you.

Also, this should go without saying, but consider using the DuckDuckGo browser or other privacy-focused browsers on your phone instead of Chrome. Android does actually allow you to set a default browser.

iOS-Specific

iOS protects your privacy a lot better than Android does. However, you still should give your settings a look. Obviously, use Safari and don’t install Chrome or something onto your iPhone. However, it is highly advisable to look through each of the settings for every app you install.

Also, watch the location icon on the top right. If it’s hollow, your location isn’t currently being scanned, but a running app possesses the capability to do so. Assuming it is full, an app in the background is obtaining your location. If there are no apps other than the current one open, it is probably something like Find My or another Apple service, which you can either disable or keep open.

For Both OSes

Moreover, this is going to be a big talking point later on, but uninstall any and all apps you don’t use. If it doesn’t need to be there, it shouldn’t be. Just uninstall it.

Furthermore, if swiping up and quitting apps as soon as you no longer need them is not an OCD and a habit for you, make it one. Those apps are still running. If they’re running, they could be spying. This includes closing browser tabs, as mobile browsers do not remove tabs when quit, and tens of websites from weeks or months ago could be open without your knowledge. Do this not only for privacy but also to extend battery life.

App Use Advice

As I’ve said previously, ideally the best browser you can use is Safari, for both privacy and speed. However, with knowledge of the speed issues with Firefox in mind, I would recommend DeGoogled Chromium instead for anyone without an Apple device. I highly recommend using an Apple device for privacy. And as I’ve said before, Apple has nothing to gain from spying on you. It’s not their business model.

Additionally, same as with phones, go through every part of the settings and configure everything on your computer to maximize privacy. And then, ensure you’re removing everything off of your computer.

However, there are a number of reasons why someone may not want an Apple device. They’re still far behind Windows in gaming. Also, while Apple Silicon’s graphics has gotten far better with the advent of the more powerful Apple processors, the graphics units continue to be optimized more for video rendering and arts than gaming. Also, many game devs, especially valve, would make games for Linux sooner than Mac.

The Case for Windows

Previously I mentioned that Linux does nothing to protect you from the apps you install on your computer. From a privacy point of view, if the primary problem is not your OS spying on you but instead the apps, I would highly recommend remaining on Windows. And while yes, there is no option to completely turn off telemetry altogether at setup, it is, in fact possible to update the registry and/or Group Policies manually to remove telemetry entirely: How to Disable Telemetry on Windows 10 and 11, MakeUseOf.

Edge is a lot faster than Chrome, but Edge sends a lot of data home (far more than Chrome). Therefore, it’s advisable to use DeGoogled Chromium.

Tracker Prevention

Regardless of whether your browser has built-in or not, I recommend installing DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. This will change your search engine to DuckDuckGo and block any trackers. Also, just for good measure, I would advise you to install it on both Safari and Firefox as well. DuckDuckGo has a far more complete list of trackers. If DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials does not exist, I would recommend uBlock Origin. This is also a very good ad blocker, although I personally opt not to block ads. I believe website owners should be entitled to a certain amount of money to make a living. The important thing is making sure the ads don’t follow you around not them not showing altogether.

In my opinion, DuckDuckGo is simply the best option for search engines. One issue, though, is that it does use Bing. Because of disputes we’ve had with Microsoft in the past, Info Toast is not on Bing. So, in the future, if you’re searching for something that Info Toast wrote or possibly something that we’d be likely to write about, I would encourage you to use Google. After all, we don’t tend to write about the stuff people are often self-conscious about anyways. DuckDuckGo has bangs, which enable you to search specific sites or be redirected to sites. To use Google, just type !g <search>.

Normalcy

One of the most used but least discussed methods that trackers use is device fingerprinting. This involves what hardware your device uses, the OS version, the browser being used, the screen size, and other things. It is possible to fake your user agent, although some browsers make it more difficult to do so than others. Tor always opens its windows the exact same size to prevent javascript from making assumptions about screen size.

In general, if you’re willing to spend at least a little money, make your computer as “normal” as possible. Building your own PC might be a good idea for performance and money-saving. However, it also means that nobody else in the world likely has the same hardware. As far as privacy is concerned, you should buy the most purchased prebuilt PCs and screens around. If you purchase a Macbook, you will be among the millions of other people who have that exact Macbook. A commonly purchased Windows laptop such as a Thinkpad is also a good choice. Laptops are also better than desktops as with desktops you have to buy your own screen.

This may be one of a few reasons that technically-savvy people have to buy what everyone else is buying.

Conclusion

In this guide, I didn’t set a path for you but instead gave you loose guidelines on what to do. I also displayed what pitfalls and false senses of security exist. The way you choose to follow this guide is entirely up to you. I would advise that you generally stay within the guidelines I’ve given you.

The post How to Easily Live an Untrackable Life appeared first on Info Toast.

Onto The Story…

Yesterday, I had my weekly zoom meeting with my parents. I was an only child, and going off to college in Boston has made them lonely with little to do. A long time ago, I once admired my father for caring so little about politics. This persisted even during the Trump presidency (and he was definitely not a republican). However, something had changed when we talked, and this wasn’t new, but this was definitely the most noticeable it had been. He kept bringing up politics.

As a teen, I once delighted in the works of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. In fact, I went through many political phases. I started out as the only democrat of my mostly-republican Louisiana school. Then, I switched to an anti-trump “traditional values” republican. Later, that emerged as many things, anything from socialist to communist to anarchist to libertarian. I was definitely the “edgy teen” that was just finding myself, and I believe that this is a staple of growing up in the modern age. Even during my more conservative phases, I was still capable of enjoying liberal pundits like Colbert, because at the end of the day we all kind of want the same thing.

An Important Distinction

Now, there was one thing that separated my teenagehood from many others. I didn’t particularly care for social media. At least not on public ones, which is prone to many of the problems with social media I’ll talk about. I’d always just find it silly that people wanna talk to all these people that they do not know at all. And while I certainly did talk politics, it only fell upon the ears of my friends who had already decided their own convictions and weren’t going to change.

When my Teenage Years Ended

When I moved to Boston, I suddenly found myself too busy to care. I’m still too busy to care even during summer vacation when I have less workload. I rarely discuss politics on this site, and when I do, it’s always related to technology, like this article. Even when I have nothing better to do, I’d rather go somewhere and touch grass than talk politics with strangers: How to Turn Off Your Computer and Go Outside. And if I don’t have time to do that, at the very least I would rather browse through apolitical memes about stupid stuff like a wide bugs bunny or a bottle of urine that’s “actually still kind of warm”. There are many problems with social media, but if done right it creates beauty such as this:

Yesterday was the first day that I pointed out the difference between my father and me on a zoom call. In fact, I consider my political affiliation as “radical centrist.” On most issues, I simply choose not to have any opinion whatsoever. I understand the fact that even if I had one I would not convince anyone of anything. The difference between radical centrism and being apolitical or just centrist, is that when people have views that are too strongly to the left or right, and I see them as incapable of change, that’s a problem for me. In fact, in my mind, polarization is the primary issue affecting us today.

My Ethos on the Matter

Nothing says more about the fact that I care about this so much that I’ve already written two end-of-semester research papers on the matter of problems with social media, and I’ve only been through two semesters of college at this point! I will leave links below to both of my essays:

Should We Be Teaching Students to Participate in Online Public Discourse?

Social Media Can Improve Meaningful Connection – But Only if Done Right

Understanding that There Is No Longer “Truth” Anywhere

We live in a post-truth era, where practically every news source, albeit may not outright be false, will spin the story in some way or another. While there are a few news sources that prevail as some of the most trustworthy platforms, anyone and everyone else seems to be stretching the truth at least a little bit. (Examples of platforms that you can just about always trust are the AP, Reuters, BBC, and Snopes).

In our conversation on zoom yesterday, we were discussing some of the supreme court rulings. My mother said something along the lines of “it’s only Christians causing this”. I responded with “Over the past several years, the supreme court has ruled in favor of Jewish people, Muslims, and Buddhists.” They said “I’m not too sure about that one, where have you been getting your news from.” My reply was “Reuters Mom, I got that from Reuters.”

Article in question: U.S. Supreme Court takes aim at separation of church and state, Reuters

Application of that

The fact is, many of the conservative news sites completely spun this in a different direction, whereas the more liberal news sites omitted that much-needed information altogether. However, even so, the issue can be misremembered and only the heart of it could be understood, or perhaps it could be misinterpreted. While this information could be interpreted to mean that the supreme court actually isn’t “biased”, actually it could be more along the lines of the fact that the supreme court would happily rule in favor of someone from another religion if it could set a precedent that could later be used in cases involving Christianity.

What am I getting at with all these points? Public Information Can No Longer Be Seen as Reliable. Period. Now that we’re done with that point, let’s move on to where this involves problems with social media.

The Three Types of Social Media

While social media takes a variety of different forms, they all seem to boil down to three categories:

• Centralized Public Forum (e.g. Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, the primary culprit of the problems with social media)
• Decentralized Public Forum (e.g. Reddit, any number of bulletin board sites)
• Chatroom/Decentralized Private Forum (e.g. Discord, Matrix, Zoom, all kinds of stuff fall under this category, and this is the most debatable as to whether it even constitutes “social media” in the first place)

You may have noticed that I ordered that list from worst to best, or that may be your theory. That’s because I did. I believe that centralized public forums ought not to exist entirely, decentralized public forums can exist but with a serious amount of reform, and chatrooms need little to no reform.

Problems with Social Media: Chatrooms

One of the main reasons I’ve never really been active on any form of social media, other than platforms like Skype, and later Discord, and later Matrix, as well as Zoom calls during the pandemic is simple: Chatrooms emulate an actual conversation. In a chatroom platform, there is no such thing as a “share” button. People don’t attempt to give brilliant responses to things and broadcast their own loyalties, because at the end of the day, once 10 more messages go across the screen and the message will be lost to time and likely never spoken about again, except in rare cases. This gets rid of many of the problems with social media today.

Not only is there not a share button, but there’s also not even a “like” button either. Odds are, your message will never reach those who are not in the same group chat as you. There is no algorithm. Messages are spoken, only get to the intended audience, and then are near-instantaneously forgotten about.

How Social Media Should Be

This is how social media should be. The end goal is to stimulate conversation over the internet and to socialize with people anyway. Everything other than a chatroom is not natural human conversation. When you stop having natural human conversation, it becomes more of a “game”, which causes addiction.

This being said, one chatroom platform does need a little attention, and it’s Discord. The basic idea of discord is fine, however, the problem arises when they have their “partner program” and a “server lookup”. This is less of a problem with social media in and of itself, and more of leaking into the “decentralized public forum” sector, which comes with problems in and of itself. When Discord was first created, servers simply weren’t supposed to be public. They were supposed to be a few friends, or at most a community with no official support from Discord.

Problems With Social Media: Decentralized Public Forums

While there are a number of online bulletin board sites for various purposes, one of the most relevant and prevailing ones is Reddit. Reddit is a large group of subreddits, some being echo chambers, but most are fairly innocent. Some even make a mockery of politics in general. (Example below)

Now, Reddit does seem to have been actually attempting to get rid of some of the politics on the platform. However, it’s been fairly one-sided.

We’ve already mentioned Aaron Speedy, a notable character in Info Toast twice today, but I’m about to mention him a third time. On Reddit, he said the following:

Abortion shouldn’t happen after the brain of the baby develops to the point of a newborn baby

– Aaron Speedy

This is actually the opinion of many if not most pro-choice people as well, who believe that it shouldn’t happen in the third trimester, except in cases of the life of the mother. However, for that comment, Aaron received a LIFETIME ban from Reddit SITEWIDE.

How to Fix These Platforms

Many of these political bans are being listed under what’s classified as “hate speech,” when that’s clearly not the case. If you ask me the rules of Reddit should be altered to the following:

• No politics whatsoever
• No personal attacks on other Redditors
• The ability to share posts from one subreddit to another should be removed

Beyond that, individual subreddits can employ their own rules. In addition, rather than fully deleting bad subreddits, moderation teams can be replaced with more reliable people that Reddit themselves trust.

The Worst Problems with Social Media: Centralized Public Forums

These forms of social media are the ones that are neither fine on their own nor can they be reformed. The discourse of our most important people is no longer held in legislative chambers. Now, it’s mostly being done over Twitter. TikTok may soon be banned in the United States once again over concerns about national security caused by the developers sending data to the Chinese Communist Party. However, consider the national security implications of discourse between politicians of many countries and the US, as well as just ordinary people being held on one singular platform, and it’s Twitter.

The current administrators of Twitter seem to be mostly not so bad. However, recently Elon Musk almost acquired the platform. If he had done so, damages to the national and international community at large could have been tragic. Musk could’ve not only been capable of deleting people and posts, but he could’ve also easily edited posts to make people say what they didn’t say. If Musk wanted a war, he could’ve easily gotten one.

Musk isn’t the only threat. As a private company, not only can Twitter be hacked fairly easily by foreign countries with large cybersecurity forces, but could also be bought out.

Twitter: On the Ground

While billionaires, diplomats, and politicians battle in the skies, a far more gruesome, terrible conflict from the problems with social media is happening on the ground. I shouldn’t need to mention “cancel culture,” so the one thing I’ll say is to set straight the fact that the right cancels people too.

Social Media and Addiction

Social media is addictive. Everyone knows that’s one of the primary problems with it by now. In fact, while this isn’t necessarily “social media”, the Swedish Youth Foundation stated, “World of Warcraft is the crack cocaine of gaming.” Out of 2,000 addiction-related calls they received, 170 of them pertained to World of Warcraft. We can probably say a fairly similar number of calls placed regarded crack cocaine. (Source: World of Warcraft: The ‘crack cocaine’ of gaming)

Addiction is addiction. If WoW can be compared with crack cocaine, we can reasonably compare Twitter to the same amount of addictiveness as cigarettes. I’d say TikTok is not much better, if not worse. The reason these platforms are so addictive is that when you start a debate, they become impossible to put your phone down. After a certain amount of that happens, you become highly addicted to it. You hate it when people respond to you with disagreement, but you keep posting and posting your own opinions searching for the one rare “I agree” or a small amount of satisfaction that keeps you going.

What if Social Media is Worse Than Smoking

Now, this may be a long shot, because smoking kills a lot of people. However, when you smoke, it’s not like your cigarettes insult you constantly and tell you to kill yourself. However, cigarettes kill you when you’re old. Social Media has pushed a growing number of young people each year to commit suicide or harm themselves in other ways.

Where It All Came to a Head

The “final straw” that caused me to write this article in the first place is an article I read where many people on TikTok have been bullying men for being short, which actually has been causing some shorter men to undergo surgery to make their legs longer.

He Was 5’7″. After Surgery, He’ll Be 5’10”, BuzzFeed News

Now, I’m not someone who has to deal with this affliction. I am actually 6’2″, and although I stand to gain from women being shallow about men’s height, it’s simply not right to live in a society where any body modifications like that are being done to anyone. The people who make themselves taller, as well as the people who perform these surgeries, shouldn’t be seen as the ones at fault. The person the article was about cited TikTok as one of his primary reasons.

In fact, in order to make the $75k needed for the surgery, not only did the man have to just about empty his own pockets, but he actually created an OnlyFans account where he defamed himself in order to earn the rest of the money to afford the surgery.

Social media is not only a danger politically, it is causing a massive public mental health crisis.

Conclusion

The fact is that the centralized public forums that exist online are destroying the mental health of millions, if not billions of users. When the discourse that causes damage to mental health happens to concern politics, it not only destroys the users, but it threatens our most important institutions.

The answer to these problems with social media is simple. The users are not to blame. The users are captives. The only way to set them free is by deleting these social media platforms altogether. If we can pull off getting rid of TikTok, then certainly we can pull off getting rid of numerous other social media platforms that seek to trap us in a cycle that ends in the inevitable destruction of democracy.

I fear for the future. If there is anyone who will kill us, it’s ourselves. And at this point I highly doubt that climate change will be what will eventually be our end. Maybe climate change will kill the last of us remaining, but the beginning of the end will be from the problems with social media destroying the world’s political landscape and removing all truth, as it’s already done. This is the 11th hour, and if we don’t drop all other parts of politics now and focus on getting rid of polarization and get the population out of the rut that we’re in now, then I fear we will eventually be made slaves and destroy ourselves.

My Offer to Do What I Can to Help

If you are currently using any of these platforms, and have trouble stopping yourself, I am willing to extend a helping hand on the info toast discord (we can talk about it in DMs if it’s private): https://discord.gg/infotoast

I am not a therapist and do not claim to be one. If the problem is bad enough you should probably see a real therapist about the problem, and I will not hesitate to recommend one if it is.

If you are having suicidal thoughts please call +1 (800) 273-8255, do not speak to us.

The post The Deadly Problems With Social Media appeared first on Info Toast.

• If you wish to run the current version that is being used by most Minecraft mods, 1.16.5, follow the tutorial here: How To Optimize Minecraft for M1 (Java Edition).
• If you wish to optimize Minecraft 1.17-1.18.2 for M1, follow the tutorial here: How To Optimize Minecraft 1.17-1.18.2 for M1
• If you wish to optimize Minecraft 1.7.10-1.12.2 or for M1, go here: How to Optimize Minecraft 1.7.10-1.12.2 for M1
• If you are not on M1 Mac, but instead using Arm Windows, go here: How to Play Minecraft on Arm Windows

Thankfully, new tooling has been released by now that makes optimizing Minecraft for M1 much easier. It’s an app called “ManyMC”. It’s basically MultiMC like we used previously, except all the scripts and things have been automatically bundled.

If you go to the PolyMC GitHub, they will recommend using Homebrew to install it. DO NOT use Homebrew. The reason is available here: Homebrew is a Major Security Flaw — Install MacPorts Instead.

Step 1: Installing A Native Java 17 for optimizing Minecraft 1.19 on M1

Minecraft 1.17 requires Java 16. Minecraft 1.18 and 1.19 require Java 17, the latest LTS version of Java. As we have done previously, we will be using Zulu JRE rather than Oracle’s JRE, even though Oracle’s JRE is now available for M1 Mac. Zulu is much faster, therefore we will use Zulu to optimize Minecraft 1.19 for M1. Click on this link and download the latest version of Zulu JRE for arm macOS: https://www.azul.com/downloads/?version=java-17-lts&os=macos&architecture=arm-64-bit&package=jdk. Once you have clicked there, download as a .dmg:

Once you have downloaded the .dmg, open it and see that it has a .pkg file. Double click on the .pkg file:

Go through the wizard. It should be simple to install. Once it is installed, it is time to install ManyMC.

Step 2: Install ManyMC

Click the button below to download ManyMC:

Once the ManyMC zip is downloaded in order to optimize Minecraft 1.19 for M1, double-click on it, and you should get an application. Double-click on the application. It will tell you it comes from an unidentified developer. Open your System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Open Anyway

This will launch ManyMC. Select your language. Then, at the next screen, select the Zulu JRE you just installed:

Press “Finish”. Now, you must log into your Minecraft account. Go up to Profiles > Manage Accounts on the top right:

I’m fairly sure by now that there are no longer any Mojang accounts in existence, or at least ones that are not locked, so go ahead and click “Add Microsoft” at the top right.

Next, open https://microsoft.com/link. Place the code provided by the app there:

Now, log into your Microsoft account.

Step 3: Creating a Minecraft 1.19 Instance Optimized for M1

Finally, now that you are logged into Minecraft, you will want to create an instance. Press Add Instance at the top. You will see the following menu:

At this point, it’s up to you. Play how you want to play. You’ve optimized Minecraft 1.19 for M1! Use whatever mods you want to use. I may create a tutorial on how to play with some common mods such as OptiFine in the near future, so be on the lookout for that. But, for now, keep in tune. If you need any help, feel free to join our discord: https://discord.gg/infotoast.

The post How to Optimize Minecraft 1.19 for M1 appeared first on Info Toast.

I took a 40-day break from Discord for lent recently, and it was a much-needed social media cleanse. In this article, I shall tell you, yes, you. How you can get off of discord and possibly get a girlfriend during the time off.

Step 1: Threaten Yourself with the Power of Eternal Hellfire

What has kept people in line and made sure they didn’t mess up for thousands of years, and definitely hasn’t resulted in millions of killings worldwide? Religion. It’s rather simple: believe that after you die you will fall into a pit of eternal fire if you use Discord for the next 40 days.

Don’t believe in God? Just believe! Close your eyes, and trick yourself into believing. The more ridiculous the religion, the more fun it is to believe! Wanna believe the Norse gods? Just close your eyes, and make yourself. It’s not hard. All it takes is a little determination.

TOP TIP: You can do ANYTHING. Stop making excuses. “Oh, I’m blind. I can’t drive!” Do you lack vision, or do you lack VISION? “Oh, I’m a man, I can’t get pregnant!” Have you tried? Have you really genuinely tried?

Step 2: Go Somewhere

The world isn’t too far away. Go on a trip. Don’t have a car? Just walk. You can walk anywhere if you put your mind to it. Wanna walk to China? Just start walking in the direction of China and soon enough you’ll be there. The moon? Just walk upwards. Climb the ceiling and keep going from there.

Step 3: Get a Girlfriend

Now that you’re off Discord and you went somewhere, how about getting a girlfriend. It’s really rather simple. Start by approaching a girl, then tell her a pickup line such as:

• If women were boogers, I’d pick you first.
• Are you an applet, because you make me feel all GUI inside?
• Baby, are you programmed in Java, because all women are objects.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk enjoy the feeling of grass and dirt.

The post How to Turn Off Your Computer and Go Outside appeared first on Info Toast.

1) Stop Telling Beginning Linux Users to Use Arch or ANYTHING Arch-Based

A person just starting to use Linux likely has zero experience with the terminal. Arch says themselves that they are “targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user” (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux#User_centrality). Distributions that are based on Arch such as Manjaro are often prone to heavy breaking. Although they might be easy to use, they break frequently. If your beginning Linux user has their Operating System break, they are 95% of the time going to go back to Windows.

I HIGHLY recommend Pop!_OS for beginning Linux users. A Review of Pop! OS

2) Do not Switch Beginning Linux Users to Linux Alternatives Such as BSD

While BSD is certainly more stable and less prone to breaking before the user’s very eyes than a Linux distribution such as Arch, BSDs are incredibly complex. New Linux users do not know how to operate these extremely complex and rugged systems. In addition, the vast majority of BSDs are aimed at the server market. Using them on the desktop oftentimes simply doesn’t work out, even for the more advanced users.

NOTE: BSD is an excellent Linux alternative for advanced users, see here: FreeBSD: Linux’s Linux)

3) Don’t Tell Them About WINE

This one may seem like a controversial one, after all, many people such as Linus Tech Tips mention WINE all the time. (https://youtu.be/_Ua-d9OeUOg?t=494) The unfortunate truth is though, WINE only works about 30% of the time, and when it doesn’t, the user may opt to go back to Windows and never go back to Linux. In addition, winehq (https://www.winehq.org) is prone to lying, so don’t trust it as a source. I HIGHLY recommend showing the user alternatives to the application and stopping telling beginning Linux users to use WINE. If that is not possible, show them how to dual boot. And yes, this applies to Proton too.

4) Stop Telling Beginning Linux Users How to Use Tools like Vim

Vim is an amazing program. I prefer it to nano tenfold, but it’s not user-friendly. It requires extensive knowledge, and even some extremely smart people I know never bothered to learn vim. I recommend learning vim if you don’t know how: How to Write in Vim on Linux or other OSes (Tutorial), but it’s not for beginners. Don’t try to shove information like how to use vim or how to do all sorts of insane terminal commands down their throats. If they’re smart enough, they’ll figure it out for themselves.

The post Stop Telling Beginning Linux Users These Things appeared first on Info Toast.

NOTE: I recommend following this tutorial as well before following this one: First Things to Do to set up FreeBSD

What Is Synth, and How Does it Work?

Synth is made for people who want to use ports, but they don’t want the hassles that come with it. They want everything to suit their needs. Synth multithreads port compilation. That way not only does it require less configuration, but it also compiles ports faster than you would get with portmaster.

I will note that the less configuration you have to do with synth comes at a cost. I recommend using portmaster for a few months on a FreeBSD machine before going directly to synth. That way, each of the ports will be configured for your needs first and you can speed up FreeBSD port compilation later. Otherwise, you don’t have much use for ports. So if this is a brand new install, save this article, and come back in a couple of months.

Synth also looks extremely cool while it’s working. It is sure to impress your friends! (Don’t use it to impress a random girl at a bar, of course :p)

Setup to Speed up FreeBSD Ports with Synth

Synth requires some initial first-time setup, and will take longer the first time it’s used compared to other times. First, you will want to of course install synth itself. Run the following as root:

pkg install synth

Now that synth is installed, configure synth itself. Type the following:

synth configure

For most use cases, the default options are fine for speeding up FreeBSD ports with Synth.

Run the following command to build the ports that need to be built:

synth upgrade-system

That is the command you can run each time to upgrade the FreeBSD system.

BONUS: How to Know when Packages Need to be Updated and Make it Easy to Update Packages:

On my server, I always want to know when packages need to be updated. This is why I’ve configured the .zprofile (or .bash_profile, or any .profile) to run the following at startup:

echo Packages to upgrade:
/usr/sbin/pkg version | grep -v = | wc -l

alias list-updates="pkg version -vIL="

That code looks at how many packages need to be updated. Type “list-updates” to find out what needs to be updated. Perform a cron job every day that updates the ports tree. Run the following command as root:

crontab -e

Type on a new line:

@daily portsnap auto

Save and quit the file. That installs the new crontab, so FreeBSD updates the ports tree daily.

The post How to Speed up FreeBSD Ports with Synth appeared first on Info Toast.

NOTE: My new fork of OpenTerrainGenerator is now in active development for Minecraft 1.19 and can be downloaded at the website

I had enjoyed TerrainControl, and later OpenTerrainGenerator a lot as a kid. The worldgen defines pretty much everything about how a game is played, and it was my favorite thing to mod. After getting upset from the post-1.13 worldgen options since OTG failed to update, I eventually gave up and created my own, and you can see how to do so at the tutorial here: How to Make a World Generation Algorithm in Bukkit/Spigot. PG85, the lead OpenTerrainGenerator developer, reached out to me from that article and asked if I wanted to help out with getting it updated to 1.16. I accepted, unknowing that I would waste the next 9 months on a project that was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Meet the OTG Team

Once I became part of the team, I quickly realized the “social dynamic” that was going on behind closed doors. PG85 was a reasonable person, but that was his primary issue. He wasn’t stubborn. Everyone else on the team was. On the internet, you simply need to be stubborn to survive, and PG would often find himself getting pushed around by the team’s “project manager”, Wahrheit.

Wahrheit’s day job was as a lawyer. Wahrheit expected “professionality” out of every member of the team. Slight mess-ups could lead to extremely charged, heated words. You couldn’t make a single joke without him badgering you. He never even contributed code for the team, and when brought up about his contribution, he would say “I’m sorry my work is invisible, but that’s the way it has to be.” I only believe a single team member was actually using him for “project management”, and that team member had stopped contributing pretty much entirely by the time I joined.

Then there was MCPitman. MCPitman had somehow made himself the “official” preset developer. He had created a number of qualifications of “preset quality” that the team abided by, but they were simply excuses to create qualifications that only his presets abided by, and others didn’t. When Pit worked on his presets, he was “benefitting the community”. When others did they were “creating something to benefit themselves”. Both MCPitman and Wahrheit realized they could play PG85 like a fool, and they succeeded.

My Contributions

One of my primary contributions to the project was the “illusion of progress”. When nobody else was interested, I would often do a bunch of work to help out the project, so that people reading the git logs would not think the project was dead. Just before the 1.16 release, I authored a lot of code to the project, because the other developers hadn’t figured out that the project was ready for release. Then, I contributed a lot for several months after the developers had all suddenly lost interest.

I would often fuss at the rest of the team for not doing any work developing the project. They claimed they were busy, but towards the end, it became abundantly clear that was a lie. Their last commit except for two others I forced out of people was on December 15th, 2021. The other developers had simply lost interest in the project. I had realized I was taking this alone. Just a couple weeks ago, I fussed at them one final time. I gave them a list of tasks to complete before I came back from lent. I’m still off of lent, but the tasks haven’t even been started yet. (I am giving up Discord and coding for lent).

Admittedly, I was somewhat rough in the way I would talk to them towards the end. However, that was because my favorite mod of all time as a teenager was dying off and I was witnessing it. I had a “maternal” mindset and saw them as negligent babysitters. I would always mask my frustration with their negligence with humor though, so it would not upset them too much. However, this would be their justification for kicking me off the team. Yes, their justification for kicking me off the team was because I was trying to get them to act like a team.

My “Invisible” Contributions to OTG

I too, like Wahrheit, had “invisible” contributions. Unlike Wahrheit, my invisible contributions were real. I took it upon myself to become a “developer of the people”, per se. One of the first things I did was I got NLBlackEagle, the author of Dregora, to release Dregora for 1.16 in expectation of OpenTerrainGenerator’s Minecraft 1.16 release, which happened several days later. Had I not done that, OTG for Minecraft 1.16 would have never been noticed by anyone. Because of Dregora’s early release, swarms of people from all sides of the internet came to take beautiful screenshots and feature OTG presets all over the place.

In addition, incognetis, the developer of Far From Home, and LanToaster, the developer of the popular tool bo3_bulkedit, had been banned several years ago because they dared to become competition for MCPitman. I ensured that the news of whatever changes had been made that they could use had been delivered to them timely so they could take advantage of it. Without me, their presets would be outdated and they would not know all the new features that were being added or the things that they needed to update.

MCPitman even fussed at one of the screenshotters that were building the community back up for featuring presets other than his more often than his own. (That wasn’t the reason he gave, but it was pretty obvious). I then became the middle-man for posting these people’s screenshots and crediting them, because they were afraid of posting anything.

The reason people like Wahrheit and MCPitman didn’t like me was simple: I was doing everything I could to ensure that they couldn’t continue to be the puppet masters of the community. I told the truth. We all know what happens to those who tell the truth.

Conclusion of OpenTerrainGenerator

1.18.1 will be the last update the OpenTerrainGenerator lives for. I attempted to start the development of 1.18.2, but Mojang yet again changed basically everything in a 1.13-level change. They haven’t quite recovered from 1.13 yet, they still haven’t fully recovered from 1.17 and 1.18. The project is as good as dead. Not a single person has authored a commit since my last commit before I was kicked off.

NOTE: They have released OTG for Minecraft 1.18.2 in a messed up form that regularly crashes, however, my fork, available at the otg website maintains a 1.18.2 release that is not broken.

When they kicked me off the team, they entered a competition of who had the high ground. While they may have had the authoritative high ground, I was the one who had the moral high ground. Ultimately, that authority they had was built on top of a pillar of sand. That sand is in the progress of collapsing as we speak as all of them neglect the project since they do not seem to care. When 1.22 rolls around, years from now, all that will have mattered was the moral high ground. OpenTerrainGenerator will be long dead.

When I informed them that they were going to kill the project one last time, Wahrheit said “This project has been around long before you and will outlive you.” However, everything must die at one time. Nothing is immortal. Projects that have survived for much longer have died of neglect by their authors, and they have been far too complex for anyone to take up for themselves. The only people alive who can understand the OpenTerrainGenerator code are the OTG dev team, and none of them are interested.

There’s been talk of a “ReformedTerrainEngine”, where I fork the project and take it under my wing. I did want to do that, however, after the horrible mess that I witnessed when I attempted to port it to 1.18.2, that simply isn’t going to happen. Some things are better as memories than constantly being kept in a more and more broken state. Sometimes you just have to let go. OTG truly died in 1.12. Everything after that had been constant work simply to continue presets that were dated anyways.

A Few Words to my Friends in the Community

Our journey doesn’t end here. The friendships that I have made with you guys don’t have to rely on OTG. NLBlackEagle, I hope to continue to be your “only good American”. JDaddy, I’m sure you can find plenty else to render in your free time, and I might write a tutorial soon on getting Chunky to work so you can make better renders, even if they can’t be done with OTG. LanToaster, I suppose this means you can finally be free from developing bulkedit. And, if you’re interested in talking to me in other places, feel free to join the Info Toast Discord server here if I haven’t invited you already: https://discord.gg/infotoast.

To anyone else who is sad to see OTG go, I wish I could truly recommend you to other good WorldGen mods. However, my initial recommendation, Terra, appears to be swamped with 1.18 just as much as we were. From looking at their GitHub, it doesn’t look like they’ve even started yet! If you’re on Paper, I would suggest TerraformGenerator to you. Hex and his code are what taught me how to code worldgen in the first place, and it’s a beautiful mod. However, if you want my real recommendation, and this might sound rude but it’s true: https://www.tripadvisor.com. Go see some irl worldgen. It’s 1000 times cooler.

I hope to talk to all of you guys again when I return from lent. Stay based.

The post OpenTerrainGenerator: The Death of an 11-Year-Old Minecraft Mod appeared first on Info Toast.

The post How to get to the Farlands in Survival appeared first on Info Toast.

Step 1: Installing Fabric for Minecraft 1.19 or 1.19.2

To install Baritone for Minecraft 1.19 or 1.19.2, you need to use the Fabric loader. You will want to start by installing the Fabric mod loader. Get the installer from this page here: https://www.fabricmc.net/use/installer/. If you are on Windows, download the .exe installer; otherwise, download the Universal .jar file on Mac or Linux.

Installing Fabric Loader on Windows

Once you have downloaded the exe file, run the exe. (the download should look like this):

The following should be good options for installing Fabric. Use the most recent version of the loader, which may not be the version in the screenshot. Then, press Install.

Installing Fabric Loader on M1 Mac

If you have followed our previous tutorials regarding running Minecraft optimized for M1 Mac: How To Optimize Minecraft 1.19 for M1, you will want to follow this method for installing the Fabric loader. First of all, follow the above tutorial. Once that tutorial is completed and everything works, click “Install Fabric” and select the latest version from the popup:

Installing Fabric Loader on Intel Mac or Linux

Use the same procedure as the Windows tutorial, except download the jar file. If you do not have a Java installation, you will need to install a JRE/JDK. Java 17 is recommended. You can get the JDK I recommend for Intel Macs here: https://cdn.azul.com/zulu/bin/zulu17.30.15-ca-jdk17.0.1-macosx_x64.dmg. On Linux, Java installation will depend on the distro and package manager.

Step 2: Installing the Fabric API

NOTE: Fabric API is not needed for Baritone on Minecraft 1.19. This is for 1.18/1.18.2 only. Please skip to the next step.

Next, you will need to install the Fabric API. Fabric on its own is just a Mod Loader, and it requires an additional API for many mods to interface with it. You can download this API via this link: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/fabric-api/files. The Fabric API is necessary to install Baritone on Minecraft 1.19. Make sure you download the latest version for 1.19.

Installing the Fabric API on Windows

First, you will want to go down to your Start menu. Type %AppData%. Then press enter.

Once you are there, go into the “.minecraft” folder. If there is no “mods” folder in existence, create one. Place the Fabric API jar file you just downloaded inside the mods folder.

Installing the Fabric API on M1 Mac

On M1 Mac, it’s a lot easier. Just take the Fabric API jar, and drag it to your “Loader Mods” section of your instance settings.

Installing the Fabric API on Intel Mac or Linux

On Intel Mac, in order to get to your .minecraft folder, it’s a little more difficult. Open your finder, press COMMAND+SHIFT+G. Type the following and press ENTER:

~/Library/Application Support/minecraft

On Linux it’s the same process, except your .minecraft folder will most likely be located in the folder:

~/.minecraft

Once you are there, create the “mods” folder if it doesn’t exist, and drag and drop the Fabric API in there.

Step 3: Installing Baritone for Minecraft 1.19 or 1.19.2

Finally, you can install Baritone for Minecraft 1.19 or 1.19.2. As Baritone for Minecraft 1.19 technically hasn’t officially been released yet, we are hosting an unofficial alpha build on our site. Press the button below to download (thanks to wagyourtail on GitHub for putting the work into updating it):

Baritone’s source code for 1.19 is available at: https://github.com/wagyourtail/baritone/tree/1.19/1.19.

UPDATE FOR 1.19.2: If using Minecraft 1.19.2, use the download below instead:

Source Code For Baritone 1.19.2

Now, all you need to do is follow the same instructions you did for the Fabric API but with the Baritone jar.

Step 4: Running Baritone for Minecraft 1.19

Once you’ve installed Baritone on Minecraft 1.19, you will want to run it. If on M1 Mac, run the instance you just set up. Otherwise, you will need to start or restart your launcher, and then go to the dropdown on the bottom right and select Fabric.

Once that is done, you should be good to go. Just press Play, and join the game. Follow the command suggestions in the original tutorial Baritone: The Automated Minecraft Bot (Installation Tutorial), or just type #help in-game and find commands from there!

The post How to Install Baritone on Minecraft 1.19/1.19.2 appeared first on Info Toast.