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| {{comic | | {{comic |
| | number = 2432 | | | number = 2432 |
− | | date = March 3, 2021 | + | | date = March 4, 2021 |
| | title = Manage Your Preferences | | | title = Manage Your Preferences |
| | image = manage_your_preferences.png | | | image = manage_your_preferences.png |
− | | titletext = Manage cookies related to essential site functions, such as keeping Atrus and his sons imprisoned within the page. | + | | titletext = Manage cookies related to essential site functions, such as keeping Atrius and his sons imprisoned within the page. |
| }} | | }} |
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| ==Explanation== | | ==Explanation== |
− | This comic illustrates the complex dialogues often employed by webpage or software designers to hide settings from the user. Many pages provide controls to set privacy-related preferences but make those settings opaque in an attempt to dissuade users from using them. The idea is that a user will become impatient by the confusing options and select the defaults, which provide the site or software with more access or information. This situation is compared to ''{{w|Myst}}'', a 1990s puzzle video game.
| + | {{incomplete|Created by a CONFUSINGLY-LABELED COOKIE MANAGER. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
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− | Companies which collect or process personal information are required by privacy legislation to give their users the option to withhold personal information, although regulations vary depending on the region-specific laws. The operators of such services usually want to collect as much personal data as they can in order to target advertisements or sell their information to someone else, and wish to incentivize their users not to activate those features. One tactic that is frequently used to accomplish this goal is to provide the user an option which enables all the data collection, but to make the process of disabling the collection time-consuming or difficult. This type of action is generally illegal under the same privacy legislation, but regulation of it has been lax so many companies still try it.
| + | This comic is likely a play on how browser configuration settings can be very esoteric for some people. Often things need to be changed inside a browser to view certain websites correctly: clearing or changing some cookies, changing scripts settings, installing and correctly configuring a plugin for an overlay network, running or configuring a proxy, enabling experimental features, restarting the browser with special flags passed, installing a fork of the browser such as with the tor browser bundle to access onion sites or the beaker browser to access dat sites, or installing and configuring a secondary gateway app such as with freenet, ipfs, or i2p. |
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− | "Atrus" in the title text is the main non-player character in the ''Myst'' series. In the first game these people were imprisoned within books. Pages needed to be collected to complete the books, and it was incredibly hard to find a single page, involving extensive laborious navigation and exploration, and the finding and solving of hidden puzzles. In the ''Myst'' mythos, the books open portals to other worlds, a little like web hyperlinks. Some sites' privacy settings are similarly labyrinthine. For example, some sites will run scripts from a variety of providers but will only allow users to disable them one site at a time without an explanation of what each one does.
| + | Additionally as deep learning models rapidly spread, configuration settings may get more human. |
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− | The black background possibly shows how many sites are providing tools to switch between light and dark backgrounds now. For a long time white backgrounds were the usual default style, and only people who understood esoteric browser configurations could redisplay many things with a black background - possibly to help with perceived eyestrain ''or'' power usage in certain displays. More recently, it is a fashionable setting for content providers to compose as a selectable option. It is out-of-place for Randall to show a black background, as many of his comics take place in technical computer systems that often have a black background anyway, as most computer terminals still do.
| + | "Atrius" in the title text may refer to Atrus, the main non-player character in the Myst series. In the first game these people were imprisoned within books. Pages needed to be collected to complete the books, and it was incredibly hard to find a single page, involving extensive laborious navigation and exploration, and the finding and solving of hidden puzzles. In the Myst mythos, the books open portals to other worlds, a little like web hyperlinks. |
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− | Some browsers and websites do have actual games embedded within their various configuration interfaces. {{w|Google Chrome|Chrome}}, for example, has the famous {{w|Dinosaur Game|dinosaur game}}. | + | Some browsers do have actual games embedded within their various configuration interferes. Chrome for example has a well-known dinosaur game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_Game . |
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| ==Transcript== | | ==Transcript== |
− | :[Cueball is sitting in an office chair at a desk in front of his laptop computer. A black zigzag line points to the screen, and above this is shown what is displayed on Cueball's screen. This is shown as a black rectangle, with a white box, with black frame, overlaid over the top of the black section, extending half way above it. The text in this white box is in gray font. Inside the black rectangle are two gray rectangles, with white borders and black text. A small rectangle at the top has "Manage your Preferences" inside it, and a large rectangle below has 6 lines of text.]
| + | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
− | :Agree to whatever | + | |
− | :Transport me to an immersive Myst-like game where I click confusingly-labeled toggle switches, only some of which work, perhaps never to find my way back to the page I wanted. | + | Text box: Manage Your Preferences |
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| + | Text box: Agree to whatever |
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| + | Text box: Transport me to an immersive Myst-like game where I click confusingly-labeled toggle switches, only some of which work, perhaps never to find my way back to the page I wanted. |
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− | ==Trivia==
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− | The title-text originally said "Atrius" instead of "Atrus". A few hours after the comic's release, this was changed.
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| {{comic discussion}} | | {{comic discussion}} |
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− | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
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− | [[Category:Video games]]
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− | [[Category:Internet]]
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