Betty's Pub 20.1
Main Menu => BETTY PEARL'S PUB FOR SISSIES => Topic started by: Betty on June 28, 2015, 08:35:14 AM
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Map of recent visitors to Betty's during the past 40 minutes.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 27 days. The circled dots are people who were currently here at the time this screenshot was taken just a few minutes ago (Sunday morning E. USA time).
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Close-up high contrast view.
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Map of the world at night. It's probably no coincidence that the pattern looks very similar to our visitor map of the past month. Areas that can reliably keep their electricity on, & can afford to leave some lights on most of the night, also have the most reliable & affordable internet access.
There are a few exceptions though. There are some areas where many of the ISPs also serve as paid or free proxies, or have poor security, that are always heavily infested with spammers & hackers, so get blocked & banned. Also there's some areas where a place like us are strictly taboo, so we are blocked from their ISPs, google searches, or there may be severe penalties & harassment for being caught visiting sissy & ABDL sites.
Did you know that even many UK libraries, universities, schools, public ISPs, & government owned ISPs block access & google searches for Betty's or our story site? But that hasn't stopped most of our UK visitors, because just like the rest of western Europe & the USA, we have many ways to get online than just public & government ISPs.
On the other hand, I block most government & military ISPs. There's no reason for them to be here. If a legitimate user works for them, for their own safety, security, & privacy they should find another connection to get to Betty's. Most government, military ISPs, or ISP they sponsor & use, monitor your traffic with close scrutiny.
Due to the spam & hackers from some areas, most of China, the Ukraine, Romania, Iran, & some parts of Russia, S. America, Africa, India, & Malaysia are blocked too. There are even 3 ISPs from my area (owned by Russians) blocked from Betty's because they're spam companies. The same company also owns a few in Chicago, & throughout the USA. Because they operated within the USA borders for a long time, I don't see why the law hasn't shut these obvious spam farms down, even if they are owned by companies or people from other countries.
Even the majority of traffic from some big popular international "hosting" companies & ISPs, like OVH, Cloudflare, Colocrossing (under many sub-names), & Trend Micro (yes the popular security company) is from spammers & hackers or malicious bots. Of course they always say they're innocent, & as soon as they're aware of spammers or hackers using their system, they shut them down. That's an outright lie. Any host or ISP where 75% or more of their traffic is spammers, hackers, & scammers, they know they're using their system & are making lots of money on it.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 40 minutes.
Some of the world was cropped out because we had no visitors from those areas at this time.
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Map of 41 days of visitors to Betty's.
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Full worldwide view. The Sissy Empire.
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Map of visitors to Betty's in the past 40 minutes. Surprisingly busy for a weekday summer morning in the USA, & summer afternoon in Europe.
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Map of all visitors to Betty's during the past 2.5 months.
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Map of visitors during the past 40 minutes.
The morning crowd. Most in Europe have finished their breakfast a while ago. It's still the pre-dawn hours here in the Great-Lakes area, & the middle of the night in the Western Americas. Evening prime time in Australia & New Zealand.
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Operating systems & browsers of our visitors during the past 40 minutes. The graphs on Pale Moon, a Firefiox derivative, & Firefox are off. If you visit with Pale Moon in Firefox mode, it counts you as a Firefox user, & not Pale moon.
International stats are off for the 2 browsers as well, because companies like Google refuse to recognize Pale Moon as a separate browser, even when not running it in Firefox mode. So google is ranking our Pale Moon browsers as Firefox users.
I'll estimate 1/3 to almost half of all people listed as Firefox users are really using Pale Moon.
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Well Betty, the weather in Southern Ontario today was 82 F and they say it will get warmer by mid-week. How are you coping with weather in Buffalo? September already and school starting next week. It will be Fall pretty soon and Halloween so get out your best dresses for Trick or Treat night.
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I am starting to see little girls in the Malls shopping for clothes and even when I see any with dresses on there are no little ruffled panties underneath, just boy-shorts. Takes all the fun out of being a girl and teasing boys I would think. I have seen a few this week trying on the jumper style uniform dresses but they are at or below the knee length so no fun there and some of the skirts are actually skorts with built in shorts.
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Browsers & OS used by our users during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors, their browsers, & OS, during the past 30 minutes. They sure change a lot every hour or 2.
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Map of visitors, their OS, & browsers during the past 40 minutes. 2:30am Eastern USA time. Boy, you kids like to stay up late or get up really early.
Lots of variety in OS's used this morning/tonight. Still a lot of people on XP regularly visiting. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm working on a custom modified XP & 98SE to use a an alternative to Linux, but I still use W7 the most unless they try to muck it up again. But I use it in a custom XP style & mode. If you didn't know you were on W7, you'd swear it was XP. I keep Linux on both machines too, but just as a back-up & secondary OS, not as something I use a lot.
Linux users on the graph include Kindle users. Betty's is very Kindle, mobile, & portable friendly without having a separate mobile feed or code like other sites have to. The same version you get on your PC & laptop has been specially designed to work well on mobile devices too.
I surprised how many visit or read a story here on a small phone. I enjoy Betty's on my 32" LED/LCD TV. I got it almost for free with a blown power supply & fixed it. It looks & works like new & I love it.
I got it backwards though. Most people these days keep getting their TVs bigger & bigger, & are getting on the internet with small phones & tablets more. I'm almost always on the web with the 32" TV connected to my PC. (W7, dual core 3.533ghz, 2gb of RAM, dual internal hard drives), & watch TV on a 26" Vizio LED/LCD TV.
I got the Vizio for free with a blown power supply too & fixed it up. It also looks & runs like new. It's also a little more sensitive to off the air TV through an antenna than the others. It's one of the few modern TVs to still have front-firing speakers instead of bottom or rear speakers. So it sounds good, but not as good as any old TV. Sound on modern TVs seem to be a bare minimum afterthought rather than a necessity. Modern TVs make great monitors, & pick up TV signals too.
With it just a couple feet from the bed, where I watch most TV, it looks just as big as a 48" TV would across the room. Seriously, even my 15.5" laptop screen looks huge when it's right on my lap just a foot or 2 from my eyes.
I don't travel much anymore since I got COPD, so I keep the laptop connected to the Vizio TV, & play my pre-recorded movies, TV, & video downloads through it. With W7 on it too, it plays HD video, & surfs the net just fine with only a 1.8ghz single core, & 1.5gb of ram. I bought it in 2005, & rebuilt it after the fire (my PC was rebuilt from the fire too). Before a recent RAM upgrade, it did fine with only 0.75gb of RAM too. No graphics cards so they don't suck up lots of electricity either.
The 15.5" screen automatically shuts off when I run it through the TV so I'm not wearing down it's built in screen & wasting energy on it. Those older screens have florescent back-lighting, not LED so I don't want to wear it out.
Still have my 27" Olevia/Syntax LCD TV that I rebuilt after the fire. It has front speakers that sound great. But built in 2001, in very dark scenes, I can see faint dark patches on the screen showing the LCD screen is aging. So I keep it stored away now. I have a beautiful 24" 1080p LCD/LED monitor I got about 6 months before I got laid off too. But when I got the Vizio, I don't use the smaller screen for anything anymore.
I visit Betty's on my 4" Samsung phone, but just to test it. I usually just use my phone for texting, calls, & to play my favorite music. Because I'm online a lot. I can go all day without ever using my phone.
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Map of visitors during the past 13 weeks.
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Map of visitors during the past 40 minutes.
It's a few hours before dawn at my house, but past breakfast time in Europe on a Saturday morning.
Boy, you folks sure like to get an early start at the sissy sites. Traditionally, most people try to sleep in late on weekends because they stayed up late the night before.
If I didn't own this place I don't think a sissy or ABDL place would be one of the first things on my mind in the morning or during my lunch hour. It would be the type of place I'd like to go in the evening after work, college, at night before bedtime, or late weekends.
It's not like it's gonna be a rainy day so Europeans may be staying in today. I just checked the weather. It's going to be a nice day for most of Western Europe. Maybe that's it... being a nice day, they want to get their sissy urges out of the way early so they can go out later & enjoy the nice weather.
Hmmm... breakfast in a pretty dress - I haven't done that in a while.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 20 minutes. Lots of American visitors for 3:15am eastern USA time. Many Americans don't sleep much anymore. They just drink lots of coffee & stay grumpy all the time. Of course, most in Europe have already had breakfast by now.
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Map of recent visitors during the past 30 minutes. Also a month's worth of hits statistics. Sharp dip in traffic over a week ago as we had database failures at stories, which accounts for almost 2/3 of our traffic. Database fixes continued to fail then. I suspect it was a drive failure at the server company. As people switch to SSDs for faster loading & response, they wear out & die real fast under heavy usage, compared to regular hard drives. If it wasn't for external backups at home or the other servers, stories would have been totally lost about twice a year.
I would gladly give up the speed of an SSD for the reliability of a regular hard drive, with less headaches & grief, or worrying about losing data & sites.
Stories never went down. I had it use a backup database of stories up & running right here at this server. But connecting databases between separate independent servers is slower than a database being served on the same server... esp. when the stories server was failing to start with. But it did lighten the load on the server until they could fix it proper.
Another reason for the dip in traffic, is as soon as there's a problem of any kind, I restrict access to member's only to lighten loads, & make it easier to fix problems. With no public access to the entire site, traffic dips, but works the server less hard during problems & repairs.
Quite a recovery this weekend. We had a near-record breaking 19,533 hits Sunday, 15,653 hits Saturday, & 14,154 Friday. Yep, that's a lot! A year ago I considered 10,000 hits in a day too much, & feared overloading servers at around 11,000. In July we had 20,000 hits one day. That's twice the traffic that was considered too much a year ago.
Many of the changes & expenses over the past 6 months were to accommodate the extra traffic.
Please donate! This stuff ain't free!
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes - closeup of Europe & the USA. There's a visitor from China & one from New Zealand too. It's breakfast time at my house, but aready the afternoon in Europe.
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Map of visitors during the past half hour. Lunchtime in my town, but people are already done with work & school in Europe by now, while most in Australia are asleep.
We seem to be losing some of Europe, except we still have a strong following in the UK - especially from London & the surrounding area.
As VPNs, proxies, & cloud hosting become more popular & cheaper many of the European ones are getting used to spam & hack people or sites in an effort to hide the attacker's location. So those corrupt ISPs end up getting banned. We get over 500 attacks a day at each of our sites from just Ukraine ISPs, hosts, VPNs, proxies, & clouds. The Ukraine is Russian mob headquarters, so almost all the Ukraine ISPs are banned & blocked because they host a lot of spam & hacking. Because they're blocked at the front end of our servers or sites, they don't show up on the map or counted in the counters.
There's a lot of these corrupt ISPs throughout Europe that get blocked for regularly hosting spammers & hackers. Most of China is banned & blocked for the same reasons. Except in China it's not done by the mob, but is government sponsored as a regular source of revenue for the government, or is used for espionage.
But they're not alone. There's a few ISPs owned by a Russian in my town that regularly spam & hack a lot worldwide. I don't know how they get away with it. They've been around doing their internet crimes for years, & everybody knows about them throughout the world. Some officials must be taking bribes or blackmailed to ignore them, because if most up us did the same crimes in my town, we'd be in prison for the next 6-15 years.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes (Here & Stories).
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Visitors during the past 30 minutes
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Map of visitors during the past 20 minutes.
I miss the days when this free service would show a full hour of visitors on the map. It was much more interesting. These days they only show the past 10-30 minutes, depending on what they feel like that day or hour. They have a pay version that shows & does more, so this is a ploy to get people to sign up for the pay version. Although the map is a handy service to have, it's not worth paying for to get more. The pay service offers other features & services too, but any of those extras that I would want, I already built into our servers or sites for nothing, so don't need them.
Plus it's not entirely accurate. Depending on my browser or settings, I don't always show up on the map, or when I do, I show in Buffalo, Lockport, Niagara Falls, Toronto, or sometimes somewhere in Europe even though I was still at home the whole time. Some visitors on Time Warner show up on the equator, when our sites show they are not, or I know them so know they're not.
So out of those who actually even show up on the map, I think it's only 75-85% accurate.
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Map of visitors over the past 5 1/2 months. The Sissy Empire. 143 countries visited Betty's since May 30th 2015. 36 countries visited in the past 24 hours.
The bright big dots are people that were actually at Betty's when the screen shot was taken about 10 minutes ago.
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Operating systems used by our visitors during the past 20 minutes.
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Recent visitor's browsers & OS during the past 20 minutes.
I see no real trend. Every hour or 2 the graphs change dramatically. We get more users from the eastern half of the USA & the western half of Europe than anywhere else by a far margin, with the story site still being the busiest. During weekday business hours in those areas we may have more visitors on mobile devices. That indicates people will visit Bettys on small devices when they should be busy at school or work.
Windows 10 users come in waves & then disappear. It seems MS forces or initiates the upgrades in bunches, & after people use it a while, they switch back to something else. MS has forced the W10 upgrade on many unwilling participants who suddenly noticed one morning that their machine is running W10 without their permission & no knowledge that they were going to be forced to change to it. MS said it was an error & mistake... yeah right, that's why they tried to load several GB of the W10 OS into most windows computers without your knowledge too?
Later, MS released a statement they do intend on forcing everyone to upgrade to W10 after the new year. It seems the amount of computers on W10 isn't growing fast enough for their liking, so they will force it down our throats more next year.
Updates that many blocked, that would nag users to upgrade to W10, load the OS, install their spyware, or force us to upgrade have recently changed. So now there's a whole new bunch of updates to block to prevent MS malware from infesting our machines with bad stuff.
I'm keeping them blocked in some registry edits, but MS can change that whenever they want to. By MS's own admission you cannot entirely shut off or disable MS spyware once you got it. Any shutting off or disabling it is purely cosmetic to make it look like you did.
Apple has got to love this stuff. Did Apple bribe some high-level staff at MS to pull this crap on it's loyal users?
Meanwhile I see a trend of people totally fed up with these forced upgrades & nagging so have appeared to switch to XP & Vista, which won't accept these upgrades. XP appears to be the choice operating system for the military, governments, & science labs today. Windows 7 is off my laptop, & I put XP on it.
If this nonsense continues, I will put a stripped down bootleg version of W7 on my PC even though I have a legal version currently on it. I have a legal version for the laptop too. It's a shame they have to ruin everything so I don't want to use it for the laptop anymore. It's enough crap to deal with just to keep their MS crap off the W7 PC.
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It's about dawn here in the Beautiful Allentown Arts district of my town.
Here's a map of our visitors, what browsers they used, & what OS they were on during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. Just before 4am eastern USA time.
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Map of visitors during the past half hour. A couple hours after lunchtime, E.USA time.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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;D Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. We usually get the most traffic around the weekends, but the map shows very little difference.
Although we get a few more visitors on weekends, we get a lot more hits on weekends because visitors tend to stay around longer, & click around the places more.
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Map of visitors during the past 20 minutes.
They start to all look almost the same after a while.
Once again by the time we're getting the most from Australia I'm either sleeping or busy doing other stuff, so don't get an image of it. Also reliable broadband that doesn't block Betty's there is concentrated in the large cities. So when we're getting the most from there, we can be getting 1/2 dozen or from the same city. So on the map, visually, it appears as only 1 dot/visitor per city, unless it's zoomed in real close.
We get the same thing with visitors from big cities like London, NYC, & Toronto. Visitors appear as 1 dot when it can be many.
Although visitors from the UK have increased & are steady, we seem to be getting less from the rest of Europe compared to a year ago. Of course we could expect less from non-english speaking countries, but they used to be around a lot before. There are a lot of proxies/VPNs around the world & Europe that are heavily used by spammers & hackers, so get blocked by Betty's, but that can't account for all the loses in Europe.
Could some countries, or their ISPs be blocking Betty's again, or blocking searches to us or our topics? I have read some ISPs in Australia also block Betty's or searches for our topics. Many public Wifi connections, universities, schools, & libraries in the UK block Stories & all searches for them. It's like we don't even exist through those connections.
I've noticed vast areas of the USA & Canada where we get very few visitors. I don't think it's a conincidence that these are the exact same areas where most of the population or local government is extremely conservative. Could their local connections & communities be actively be blocking Betty's or blocking searches for places like us & or topics?
I remeber during the president Clinton era, one could find almost nothing on the news or on online searches about Clinton except bad stuff in those conservative areas. If a community, state, or ISP could block or filter so much to their users in those days, what's going to stop them now?
Or perhaps people in very conservative areas are so brainwashed into thinking crossdressing or sissies are so bad, that they are in denial, & terrified to visit a related site? I am absolutely certain there are just as many crossdressers & sissies in a conservative community than in a liberal one.
The government of Iran proudly proclaims there are no gays or lesbians in their country, and they believe it! Nope. They just don't want to be tortured, killed, or imprisoned for life so hide well or in denial about it even to themselves.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
A little after lunchtime here in the eastern Americas, but almost dinner time for those in the UK.
Hello Europe!
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. A little less than usual from Europe for this time of the day on a Sunday. I'm surprised to see so many from N. America, up, online, & already at Betty's early this morning.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. It's the pre-dawn hours in Europe. I'm surrounded by sissies tonight.
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So near, yet so far.
We're coming very close to 5 million hits for 2015, but we won't quite make it by the new year. We traditionally get less hits through the holiday season, but would need 16,000 hits a day for the next 6 days in a row to hit 5 million for 2015 by the new year. Oh well, I guess "almost" 5 million in one year is almost as cool.
We've already broken our 21 year record.
2015 has been the busiest year ever at Betty's.
Our previous record was 4,695,966 hits for 2007. We already have 4,914,245 hits for 2015 & growing, with 6 days left in the year.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. Less than a half an hour until midnight & the new year in the UK, so many of our UK users are currently busy & missing. Big USA crowd so far. It's still before 7pm at my house.
It's already several hours past dawn, Friday, & the New Year in Australia.
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I was chatting earlier with cousins in England and Australia wishing them Happy New Year even though theirs had already passed. Of course everyone hopes the new year will be better than 2015 was for some.
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Yeah, they're a half a day ahead of us.
Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 45 minutes at almost 5:30am eastern USA time.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 45 minutes. Almost midnight E. USA time.
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Maps of our visitors to Betty's over the past 7 1/2 months.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes this morning. Boy, Europeans sure like breakfast at Betty's. It's a little less than an hour before their lunchtime in the UK, while it's just before down at my house. But by their dawn we already have a large wave of people from the UK here.
We always have a lot here from the NE USA & SE Canada 24/7 because we hardly ever sleep enough. We just drink lots of coffee to stay awake & cranky a lot.
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Morning at Betty's. Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. Almost 7am here in the colonies, but almost lunchtime in the UK.
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Visitors during the past 60 minutes.
Almost 2am at my house. Lots of people staying up past their bedtime.
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European visitors during the past 30 minutes. A little after 5am here in the beautiful Allentown Arts district, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allentown,_Buffalo) but it's already a little after 10am in the UK.
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The Sissy Empire.
Maps of visitors to Betty's since June. 161 Countries.
As usual, about 2/3 of them are visitors to stories.
The white circles are visitors here just a few minutes ago during the screenshot. Not exactly our peak time right now, & some people have some types of blocking apps that prevent them from showing up on the map.
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I'm always surprised to see so many in or near my time zone visiting Betty's after 2am on a weekday.
Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes, plus their browsers, OS, & statistics:
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This kind of traffic is unsustainable on a single simple web server or web hosting plan. It rivals the traffic a big business site would get, not the traffic of a typical free, "just for fun site".
Indeed, we are on THREE hybrid business server plans to sustain & deliver Betty's to your screen & speakers. That doesn't include all the software, designing, tweaking, managing, maintenance, & security that I do all by myself for free, with backups & support from my home computers.
We've grown very big in 22 years (we turn 22 next week). 2015 was our busiest year ever with 5 million hits in one year, beating our former busiest years way back in 2005-2007 of around 4.5 million hits a year.
Please donate so we can continue to deliver to everyone interested in our hobby. There's just no cheaper way to do this well & reliably.
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Page views (or hits) - Total page hits. A single person may click around & generate an average of 2-6 hits.
Unique Visits - Actual individual visits not page hits, including those who left, closed their browser, but came back again within a day (California time).
First Time Visits - Actual different people who visited in a day, not including if they visited again later in the day (California time). Can you imagine if they all came up with just a dollar for me? I could retire. But we still only have a very small handful of people who ever donate.
Returning Visits - Those who individuals left, closed their browser but came back again one or more times in a day.
On average we get 12,000 hits a day. But that's from a little over an average of 4,000 different people a day. About 800 of them visit more than once a day. Our typical visitor stops in about once every day or 2, but we have many that just visit just a couple times a week, or just every week or 2. A lot just visit on weekends.
You'd think with 12,000 average hits a day, that means only a little over 8 hits a minute, so any decent single server could handle it good enough. But that's not how the real world works. The traffic is not spread out even over the day or even over just an hour. We can get dozens of hits per minute for a few minutes that the servers have to handle without crashing, then later we may get only 1 hit every 3 minutes.
And all that traffic doesn't include attackers, relentless, persistent crawlers, spiders, pinterest hits, bandwidth theft attempts (directly trying to feed our material to their severs at our expense), & all sorts of weird stuff trying to get in or do stuff. The security alone works the servers so hard it almost needs a server of its own.
So in the real world, plan on servers about 3 times bigger what the numbers say you'll need, just to squeeze by without too many failures or crashes.
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Good morning Europe! It's almost 6am here on the eastern part of the American continent, but we already have quite a crowd from western Europe gathering as it's almost 11am in the UK, & almost lunch time in Germany & France.
Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes. 2/3 of them are at stories.
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Operating systems & browsers used by our visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of recent visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. About 4am my time, 9am UK time.
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Map of visitors to Betty's in the past 30 minutes, their browsers, & OS, at almost 1am E. USA time. Most of Europe is asleep, but it seems a lot of America never sleeps.
I'm impressed that there are so many Pale Moon browser users tonight... the most safe & secure browser in the world, but they're only as safe as you make them. Pale Moon, is based on Firefox, with a little added extra security, & all the useless fluff BS removed. PM & FF aren't the safest by default, but because they're the most customizable browsers, you can set them the safest too.
I also see tonight, wise users are using the best OS in the world too, Windows 7. Granted, if you're more used to touch screen portables, & your primary computing or inernet needs/skills is to play games, music, youtube, visit Facebook on a toy, or email Grandma, then PM, FF, & W7 may not be for you. They're most liked by people who need their machines to actually accomplish something, or get some critical work done quickly, efficiently, secure & safely. But we can have fun with them too... one of the advantages of a customizable system. We can have it our own way.
However, most windows users not on W7, are on something else because Microsoft, it's partners, & sales people want them to move onto something else. So they tell you something else is better, & a lot of the sheep follow. It's sort of like the commercials on TV telling you need a new car & phone every year. Besides, Windows 10 was forced on most of us as an unwanted & uneeded update, that we were constantly nagged to up date to, or just discovered one day it had converted to Windows 10 without their knowledge or permission.
They say PC sales have been down for the past year, & claim PCs are old fashioned as the reason. But my numbers show they're still getting used a lot in the home & office. Perhaps PCs sold less during the past year because the store shelves are full of Windows 10 machines that most wise people don't want. So are just keeping their old machines, or using their mobile devices more instead. In the daytime or some afternoons, sometimes more than half our visitors are on a mobile device. But they still use their PC or full laptop when they get a chance to sit at home or at a desk.
You can visit Betty's on a $30-$60 android phone or tablet, or a $250-$10,000 computer, or on a device you already own, or on a used one that works fine. Some people will not buy new, or spend, just because the sticker on the box says, "New & Improved."
Did you know government, military, & corporations pay $400 a year in Microsoft support for each machine to still use XP on their machines? XP is supported in China until 2020. So if they're smart there are ways around $400 a year. Just type the XP install is for China, but you want it to be English, & you get the same XP that costs everybody else $400 a year in support. But if you're that smart, you're already using W7 tweaked your way anyway so don't need XP.
Microsoft did not stop supporting XP. They just figured out how to charge $400 a year to keep using it, or force people to buy a new OS or machine. They're still making millions off XP. It's a very efficient OS that will run on almost everything.
W7 will be supported until 2020. With a few clicks & tweaks we can have it act like W10, W8, XP, any OS X, or android. If you shut down a few useless services, & remove some pointless fluff, it can be almost efficient as XP. But make system restore, backup, & get an install disk (free & legal if you know where to look, if you machine has a license stamp on it), just in case you make a boo boo poking with it.
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Windows 10 update nagging, ruins the weather.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMPeTrHNX1U
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
Europe awakens as America sleeps, but some of us never sleep or sleep when we're supposed to.
I'm still amazed that we get more people from Europe during their mornings than any other time of the day. What is the morning fascination with Betty's in Europe rather than afternoons, evenings or nights? Sissies for breakfast?
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Map of visitors to Betty's over the past 30 minutes, with the OS, & browsers they used.
I guess vacation time is over for most, as we had over 16,000 hits to Betty's Sunday, & over 17,000 on Saturday. Going by averages, anything above 11,000 hits a day is a lot for us.
The map looks almost like normal again after a rather quiet summer compared to last year. It's not unusual for summers, especially July, our typically quietest month to be slow, but we experienced almost no slowdown last summer for the first time ever.
I see more of our regulars back from vacation, as clearly shown by the increased usage of Pale Moon & Firefox browsers, plus the usage of Windows 7 & Linux... a favorite among our most seasoned users.
Damn shame about all those people forced to use Windows 10, or who ignorantly switched to it. Don't use it! Betty's don't support Windows 10, Edge browsers, or explorer browsers & NEVER will. But most of Betty's will work good enough if you insist on using them. However, if your privacy & security setting is Windows 10, Edge, or Explorer are set to their default settings, your device is too insecure & intrusive to visit Betty's & you may accidentally get yourself temporarily or permanently banned.
Betty's carries some underground or hidden pages not intended for the general public. We can't have people with an OS or browser operating below internationally established web standards running rampant on our sites & servers without creating problems for us, our other users, & you.
Ironically, you can visit Betty's with the cheapest andriod phone or tablet, or an iphone without any problems. We even have a separate & independent feed of Betty's for them specially designed for portable devices that works great. It's not exactly what you would see on a real computer or laptop (a chromebook is not a real laptop or computer), but it's easier to use our special feed for your portable device, rather than our normal web site for everybody else.
Our system automatically knows when you're on your portable device, & automatically sends you a version of Betty's specially designed for your device. I made that all by myself. It was not software downloaded or out of a box that installed in a few clicks, I had to write the mobile device feed personally, & install it manually.
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I just noticed we've have 2,936,430 hits to Betty's so far for 2016. That's very busy, but a little down from this same time last year. Last year was our busiest year ever with a little bit over 5 million hits for 2015. Things always slow down a little over our summers, as more people get out, or take their vacations. Last summer, we didn't get our traditional slowdowns in traffic like we get every summer. Perhaps being a cooler summer, people stayed in more on their computers, or used their portables more. Or perhaps the mindless sheeple are too busy with Pokemon on their portables this summer to visit us as much.
We had 359,597 hits to Betty's in the past 30 days. At that rate, along with the typical slower summer traffic, I don't think will hit 5 million for 2016.
At our current averages, we'll get about 4.5 million hits this year, which will be a busy year, but we've had that many in a year, often before... In the late 1990s, 2005-2007, & 2012-2014 we always had around 4.5 million hits in a year. To break 5 million this year with only a little over 4 months to go until the end of the year, we'd need about 110,000 hits per month above our normal average.
When you figure in that our servers do their bi-annual big upgrades/updates somewhere between Nov.-Jan. which slows Betty's down, I don't think we'll get 5 million this year. We've also spread out onto 2, YouTube channels, & special private feeds from my google drive this year, which don't have our hit counter, so their hits aren't included. But hey, 4.5 million is very busy, & we can't break a record every year.
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Love your post about showing the Windows 10 airplane.
Unfortunately, according to something I saw on Slashdot, Microsoft is planning on making their monthly updates a single bundle -- update everything or don't update anything, with each monthly bundle including all the previous bundles so they only need to make the current bundle available. Easier for them, I guess.
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That is to stop people from disabling W10's telemetry, spyware, adware, data mining, turning on your microphone/camera, etc.
I swear, for the high level of spying, telemetry, & data mining in Windows 10, they must have been paid by the NSA, CIA, or something. It's most certainly NOT very secure in any way. You don't see high level government officials, scientists, & NASA using that crap, golly many of them are still using XP. And they're trying to dump that garbage onto other versions of windows too.
People been disabling all that crap only to find it is re-enabled by the next windows 10 update. So there was a community that was checking the updates, so we can block the offending ones. By putting them in a single bundle, they stop people from blocking their offending updates.
Since they started to force people to upgrade to W10, & install nagware to constantly harass you to upgrade, many people have just cut off updates entirely, except for their third party security like antivirus, their browser updates, or driver updates directly from their hardware manufacturer.
Then they started downloading W10 into people's machines without their knowledge, while installing a lot of the same telemetry, spyware, & data mining that's in W10 into W7 & W8 machines through their updates.
All my machines are running W7 & Linux in dual-boot except for an old laptop which I downgraded from W7 to a commercial & military version XP that is supported until 2019.
I have had all windows updates disabled since the end of January because it became too much to bother with anymore. Their updates were constantly trying to convert my machines into something I don't want, & dump garbage into them. It just got to be too much of a pain to keep track of which updates I want, & which to block. And the ones I blocked would become mysteriously unblocked the next month, or replaced by another update just as bad. How dare they meddle in my computer, & unblock items that I made a decision to block for very good reasons.
With no more windows updates, I haven't got any viruses, malware, & haven't been hacked. I do tread in some more dangerous territory than an average user, & test all sorts of strange software, even some that I know had embedded malware. No problem! There are a few experts out there who insist they don't need any microsoft updates ever.
My newer "used" laptop is running a version of windows 7 with updates in it no newer than December 2014. It's running excellent, safe, & secure, without a hitch. It's more secure than any Windows 10 machine, android, or iphone. I may never get new windows updates for it. Browsers & antivirus are up to date though. Even those aren't on auto-update. I update them about every month or 2, & I'm fine.
I have Linux Distro Astro on it too, for dual boot. I've started a new habit with Linux too. No updates. It pisses me off after I spent days or weeks getting a Linux version I actually like, & getting it to work the way I want it to, that after a Linux update, it's broken or all phucked up again.
I used to be a Linux Zorin fan. But with updates, or their new versions, it's nowhere near as great as it used to be. Why do software writers insist on taking something great, that everybody loves, & screw it up just for the sake of a new upgrade or update? I see IT critics whine about software that hasn't been updated in a year or 2. Well, if the software runs great, & everybody likes it, why the hell would any sensible person decide to change & update it for no good reason?
Firefox used to be the best browser in the world for years when it got updated about twice a year. Now with updates every week or 2, it's become bloatware.
Everybody's become update/upgrade crazy. Here's a lesson I learned way back in the mid 1990s: Every Windows update would break something, slow the machine down more, & I'd lose something or some feature I really liked.
Can you imagine artists going into the art museums every month to upgrade the art by painting over or touching up the old art? How about if Ford came to your house once a month in the middle of the night just to change things around in you car? One morning you get up to find they moved your turn signals switch to under the seat, the steering wheel into the back seat, & the switch for the headlights has been placed in the trunk.
Then they offer comfort by giving the lame excuse that everybody resists change, & that we'll get used to it if we try. No, I want my steering wheel in the front seat, & I will not go to my trunk to turn on my lights.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Betty,
i also had too block all windows updates as they were driving me mad,and i have no intentions of going to windows 10 as i do lots of market research on my computer and most will not accept window 10 anyway.
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W10 is so malicious, that this will be the first time in history, since the usenet days that started in the 1980s, that some sites & services have blocked an OS, or blocked some sections & features from an OS. I will not have them put that crap on my other windows machines. If I have to, I'll go all Linux, android, & hackintosh & just give up my favorite windows compatible software. More likely though, if it becomes to difficult to keep their W10-style malware & spyware out of my windows machines, I run them all in XP or even a modified version of terrible Vista for 64 bit. Tweaked & hacked versions of Vista aren't all that bad.
I see there's a few browsers that won't support XP or Vista anymore. Considering there's millions of machines still running XP, & more still running Vista, that's just plain nuts. A good updated browser is one of the best ways to make those old machines more secure. Your browser, antivirus, other anti-malware, firewall, & their settings will be your best security, not the OS itself. Any OS can be attacked & hacked, no matter how old or new it is. The most popular ones, or the ones most likely used by careless & stupid people are the ones most targeted. Clearly, clicking on ads, pop-ups, or email offers from places they don't know, or sites offering movies, porn, & pictures that seem suspicious or seem to be spending too much time loading stuff, cookies, or scripts is dangerous.
I noticed MS started drifting away from mainstream standards over 10 years ago with their Explorer browser. They would design their browsers whatever way they want, then expected every website & server in the world to rewrite their software so it was compatible with explorer & every update, rather than design their browser to conform to international web standards.
It's not like it was a better design or something. Explorer, & now Edge browsers have consistently been one of the world's worst, least secure, & dangerous browsers.
Here at Betty's we gave up trying to support Explorer over a decade ago. It got to be about every month or 2 a windows update would change explorer, & every website in the world had to research & write pages of code to make the site compatible with the latest explorer update again.
Explorer & edge probably work good enough to get by here, but when it gives you problems, it's because the browser does not conform to well established international web standards, not Betty's. We will not re-write our entire sites every month or 2 just to get it to work well with Explorer, & Edge or their latest updates. They're not the center of the universe, & are terrible, unsafe browsers.
If you're not getting windows updates, you're also not getting Explorer & Edge updates, which make them even more un-secure. All the more reason to not use it & get another browser.
Explorer & Edge are also an integral part of Windows. Windows can't function without it, so you can't fully remove it. It's very dangerous to surf the web with an integral part of your OS. Don't use it on the web.
I stand corrected. My primary machine hasn't got a Microsoft update since Christmas eve. There is a recent C+ update. That was packaged with some video software required to make it run. I have several types of media software, they each run best with a specific version of C+, so there's several versions of it on the machines. There is also other software I manually update directly from the software company, not from MS. MS updates stay off these days. I don't even manually update from MS anymore for now.
Beware if you download & install any of the progams in the list below, some of it may contain some type of malware, that you must remove afterwards with your antivirus or malwarebytes, then clean up the registry with CCleaner. Even AVAST antivirus will try to install a google browser that you may not really want, that you will have to manually uninstall. I use a very old version of uTorrent (2009 or 2011 I think). New versions have adware, unless you get the paid version. The old versions are identical to the adware-free paid version, except it's free.
Always manual or custom install your software, never use the default or automatic installation. They will almost always try to install something you don't want. Read the wording of the installation carefully, they will try to trick you into installing something you don't want.
Format Factory & Freemake-Audio will always install malware even if you deny it (adware, toolbar, & data mining). So if you use them, you must be able to remove the malware yourself after installation. Almost any software you download from download.com/Cnet, they put malware into the packages. Download.com & cnet cannot be trusted anymore. Even their reviews & articles are no longer useful because they're paid for & bribed by their advertisers. Whenever possible try to download your software directly from the maker. If you must download from a service, Sourceforge, Filehippo, or even torrents are a bit safer than Cnet.
Screenshot - primary computer:
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Meanwhile in China, they had banned windows 8 because they say it collects too much data & sends it to Microsoft. It was determined that W10 is even worse, so it also is banned. I imagine if they install this data mining & spyware on W7 too, it will also get banned.
Ironically, microsoft still supports XP in China until 2019, but in the lands of the free it is no longer "officially" supported. However, if you can fool your XP into thinking is a business or financial transaction machine, or a government machine, it will also be supported until 2019. My workaround was just to make XP think it was a "visiting" Chinese machine. About 1/4 of all PCs in China still run XP, & they're not getting infected or hacked any more that the newest OS out there. The machines aren't crashing either, & seem to last forever.
Since 2015, 40% of all new Dell computers sold in China are now running Chinese-made Linux, "NeoKylin". It looks like & imitates XP. The OS is gradually replacing the OS's on all their government machines, as China's official OS. It boasts privacy & security far beyond most western computers. They may not offer much freedom there, but they do place a high priority of privacy. I guess in a land of strict government control, even the people in control don't want microphones, cameras, & trackers in their home, office, & computers watching their every move.
Good news for China though. Microsoft has released a version of Windows 10 without any telemetry, spyware, adware, & tracking just for China, called Windows 10 Zhuangongban. But they won't release this good, friendly version to us in the land of the free. Just like with XP, they'll give China whatever they want, but screw the rest of us over. So I guess if I'm forced off of W7 someday, & XP no longer works but still need windows for some stuff, I'll have to make my computers think they're Chinese again, to get a good version of Windows or Linux.
But the fun didn't last long for the Chinese. Many of them were happily using W7, or illegally having W8 on their computers. It's illegal to sell W8 or a W8 computer in China, it's not illegal to have one or order one from outside the country. As soon as the Chinese approved the good safe version of W10, MS immediately started forcing or tricking the Chinese to upgrade just like they did here. Many did not know they were being upgraded using up all their internet bandwidth, wiping out their files, & sometimes crashing or bricking their computers (bricking-turning a device into dead weight to be used as a door stop, paperweight, or brick). Within a week, they racked up millions of complaints about forced W10 upgrades.
There's still a push to ban W10 in Russia.
In France last month they ruled that W10 violates their privacy laws. Microsoft has 2 more months to comply with their privacy laws, or risk getting sued, fined, & banned.
What happens when they find out MS is trying to infiltrate W7 & W8 with the same crap?
A realtor in the USA just successfully sued microsoft for $10,000 for damages to her computer, files, & lost business because of a forced W10 upgrade. But reports say the attorneys got most of the money. 3 men in Florida just filed a similar lawsuit.
MS insiders, "off the record" claim MS is deliberately trying to wipe out W7 & W8 in favor of their spyware, adware, & cloud-computing W10 model. The updates are designed to gradually erode, ruin, & infect older versions of Windows. They will deliberately make them MORE vulnerable too. Over time you'll find most of what you use in W10 will only be available by a subscription paid by the month or year. Even the cloud based computing will cost more to use.
I hate to say it people, but the best thing so far that you can do for your non-W10 windows machine is to not get any microsoft updates until MS stops this insanity, or governments & lawsuits intervene enough to knock some sense into them. When MS updates primary goal is to degrade W7 & W8, render them obsolete, & load you up with spyware or crap you don't want, the only sensible choice is to disable & block all MS updates, & probably remove most of your recent ones.
To keep secure, use a good anti-virus, anti-malware program, firewall, & some common sense. I am using windows firewall, but with no more updates, I may consider disabling it & getting a third party one in the future. Windows built-in defender anti-virus is useless. Disable or remove it. I'm connected through a router, routers offer some firewall protection too.
If China can force them to make or support a better OS why can't we? Why is France the only free country willing to stand up to MS & say this ain't right? Could all these other governments in the free world be so ignorant about this outrage, or could it be that they just love the ability to excessively spy on everyone with a push of a button?
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)
They're pushing W10 to get several monthly checks from you in the future. Big corporate & goverment contracts are backing the adware & spyware too. This has been a long time in planning since W8. We didn't like it back then, so they're way behind schedule. So now they're pushing like hell, harder than ever to get W10 down our throats, even if they have to destroy W7 & W8 to do it.
I wonder if these geniuses ever considered that many would just drop them, go to mac, google, Linux, or Android instead?
Among their other plans was to break into to phone & portable device market. But the geniuses tried one OS for all & failed. Who wants the OS to turn their PC or laptop into a giant phone, or have their phone try to be a PC? Besides, who wants a phone or PC that imitates an android, when android already does it better, more reliably, & efficiently (android is also Linux)?
A recent survey conducted by OnePoll reveals that two-thirds of the Windows-based population would consider switching to a Mac due to the privacy concerns over Microsoft’s latest platform, Windows 10. I wonder how many would consider the cheaper route of Linux, android, or a chromebook, if they knew the transition would be easier than they thought. Some may already have. Some hours of some days, we have more android users here than any other OS. More people on an older ipad, & iphone than a more expensive mac too. Let's not forget when the new model of macs & iphones come out, the price of the older models drop considerably.
Take note that my 2005 Acer laptop currently sells quickly used, in working order for $125-$150. A 2005 mac ibook in working order sells for $50-$65 with no offers. A status symbol, is no longer a status symbol after the new model comes out.
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Windows updates, including W7, which install telemetry are, KB3125574, KB3118401, KB3080149, KB3075249, KB3068708, KB3022345, KB3021917, KB2999226, and KB2952664. Either uninstall them, or opt out of installing them. Some of these updates gather telemetry about EVERYTHING which you do on your computer. In other words, these updates will still record a deep and detailed history on your computer of everything you do. There were professional tests done on windows "telemetry" for a half hour. After a half hour, over 300 separate telemetry data transmissions were sent from the computer to several dozen servers located around the world. MS has actively participated in the NSA's PRISM program for years. This is a KNOWN fact!
Thanks to the miracle of data compression, they can collect tons of data, store it in a small space, & send it around the world, in bits at a time, or when the machine is off, unattended, or in sleep/hibernation. If I can compress a 2-3 hour movie down to 200-300mb in size at 24 frames per second, with audio, that is still watchable, don't you think MS, & spies can too? Shrink that movie down to 6 frames per second, at VHS quality, with low-fi sound, & they can collect or transmit 3 hours of video with audio in a 50mb package. If there's cameras, & microphones in your computer, phone, tablet, or house, this "telemetry" can tap into it, & broadcast it to whoever they like.
I can broadcast 40 minutes of music in a 4-5mb package. 2 hours of "voice only" phone quality voice in a 5 mb package. Your conversations can be easily recorded, saved, & transmitted in an insignificant space that you wouldn't even notice. An easily recognizable snapshot of your face, or scratching your butt can be only 1-5kb in size.
Most shrug this stuff off saying, "Let them watch, I got nothing to hide". But do you? If you get a tax audit, will something you jokingly said or do, not realizing MS turned on your camera or phone microphone, be used to prosecute you for a crime you didn't commit? What if, you, a relative, or friend was going through a divorce, & some recording of something you said in jest threw the case?
You had a neighbor down the street who was a drug dealer or molester, but you had no idea. Seemed like a nice guy. You got along with him & try to get along with all your neighbors. But MS recorded you having conversations with them, exchanging an email, or chat with him, or perhaps borrowing his weed whacker. Suddenly when he's arrested, they claim you were involved, & as a co-conspirator. Something you innocently said or did, taken out of context, lands you in jail with him.
Even if later found "not guilty" you're still shamed by your neighbors & town for being "involved" & arrested. It may even be difficult to get a new job, or girlfriend because of it.
Apply for a job & you can get turned down by something you said in jest 5 years ago. Maybe you can't pass security clearance for a job, service, or opportunity because you said something bad about a politician or something in the government you didn't like a couple years back.
Even a recording or evidence of a discussion about your financial situation, taxes, or assets can get you rejected for a loan, mortgage, or insurance. You can get cheaper insurance or lower interest credit if they think you're a reliable nice safe person. What evidence will they use to determine that, & how was it collected? And who decides what is nice & nasty? Something you feel you is innocent harmless, safe behavior, someone else may determine is very bad behavior in their eyes, or may look very bad when taken out of context.
You may have had a heated discussion about a politician you hate. But if the politician is attacked the next day, suddenly you're a prime suspect who has to go bankrupt to pay a lawyer, & lose your job before you're proven innocent. What if the attacker was someone involved in the conversation? Suddenly you're nailed as a co-conspirator.
We all think we're innocent, & have nothing to hide, until someone comes to your door with a summons, warrant, or to take you away. Read the news. All too often, the wrong house was raided, the wrong guy shot, or the wrong guy went to prison. Many times the mistake isn't discovered for decades. How many times has the mistake never been revealed or discovered?
All this spying may be a great tool for law enforcement or security, but more often than not, the evidence collected is taken out of context, then twisted around to suit the needs & desires of the spies or prosecutors rather than to reveal the truth.
This is why most free countries have strict privacy laws.
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I see facebook posted a banner on most people's "recent" page saying "25 years connecting people", which at first glance it makes people think FB has been around for 25 years. Nope, FB is relatively new to the internet. Newer than twitter, myspace, & google. Google only came around this century.
Then after misleading people who tap around & go on their portable devices, it goes on in small print to say the internet is 25 years old. Nope, that's wrong too.
I was on the internet on a computer at work in the late 1980s, & on the usenet since 1981. In the late 1980s the internet websites were mostly provided by universities, & some media giants. I remember visiting the Star Trek NG website on a friend's computer in the late 1980s.
Except for Yahoo, Betty's, & a few university run sites, I'm not aware of any other sites that still exist from even the mid 1990s anymore.
Don't believe everything you read on the internet, especially if it's hype, from a fad site, or facebook. The internet has been around a lot longer than 25 years kids, & the usenet was around even longer. You can see in the graph below there were 1,000 internet hosts by the mid-1980s, & 10,000 just before 1988.
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Hi Betty,
I uninstalled the updates and I've also convinced my employer not to accept Windows 10.
Thanks for your help with this.
Andy G.
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Unfortunately if they combine all updates into one big update like they said they will do, even in other versions of windows, you will no longer have a choice as to which update to accept, block, or remove. You'll have to accept the whole update package as 1 update, or deny it. Then in a few weeks when they come out with another update package, it will also include all the other updates you denied before. Already many of the updates you choose to remove or block, they try to unblock, or reinstall the next month. Or, they just rename the update & give it a new "KB" number so you don't know it's one of the bad ones you blocked before.
Just when you thought your windows machine was finally safe again, when they stopped nagging & forcing you to upgrade to W10 at the end of the July, It turns out Microsoft will continue to be relentless to get you to off W7 & W8.
They will ruin your W7 & W8 machines by loading it up with so much spyware, malware, & bloatware through their updates, you'll have no choice but to give up the OS & switch. In another words, many of the things people hated the most about W10, they will now try to dump into your W7, & W8 machines. They're under agreement to support W7 until 2020, & W8 until 2023. To get out of that, they'll just ruin it for you so you get to hate it.
If anybody else were to try to dump this kind of extreme spyware, data mining, trackers, & adware into our machines, we'd immediately block them or remove the malware. But it's supposed to be OK if it's from Microsoft? MS is not your friend & does not care about you or your older machine.
They & Apple have come right out & said that they expect people to get a new computer & device every 2 years. Can you imagine the size of the landfills if we were supposed to throw out all our devices every 2 years? But that is their goal. Can you imagine all the pollution generated, & resources wasted to make all those replacement devices for everybody every 2 years? It's not economically or ecologically sustainable to throw out everything every 2 years, & buy new. But that's what MS & Apple feel you should do, & now base their business models on it.
To refuse all updates on a company or corporate computer may cause some risks. There will always be some staff member doing careless or stupid things on the company computer. People visit porn sites, file share, or even read a dirty story at Betty's on their company computer.
Updates are supposed to make machines more secure & run better. But the largest source of malware is coming directly from Microsoft updates. Some of their other updates may ruin or break the computer, disable or remove features. It is far safer to block or shut off all their updates which are already known as malware dangers & risks, even if it means that without those updates, there's a small remote chance you may get malware those updates are "supposed" to protect you from.
MS insiders off the record claim that MS plans to get you off W7 & W8 at all costs, even by spoiling & ruining them with their updates. They say some updates are deliberately designed to slowly erode, ruin, & destroy W7 & W8. I wouldn't be surprised if some of their security & other patches are deliberately flawed to make the machines less secure, & less reliable. With the ruthless game they've been playing this past year, it would fit into their plan well.
I see no difference in the amount of computers getting infected, attacked, or hacked between people who regularly get MS updates & those who don't. Most infected & attacked computers are running W8, W10, windows servers, or Linux servers that were updated.
There are millions of people still using XP. Over 90% of the ATM machines & automated financial machines are using XP. When was the last time you read about just one of these XP machines getting hacked or infected? Sure, people have attached skimmers on them or other external devices on them to steal with. But we're not getting people hacking the machines themselves. Surely if they were as un-secure as the hype told us XP is, somebody would be making lots of money hacking them by now.
Yet, we still read on the news that if you're still using XP, you're at risk.
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Interestingly, Microsoft makes a special veresion of (pre-Windows 10) Windows for China, and China has actually outlawed the use of Windows 10 because it sends too much information to "a foreign power" (the US). And I understand some European countries with strict privacy laws are getting ready to sue Microsoft. It may be that they will release a European version of Windows 10...which one might be tempted to try to sneak across the border. :-)
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Yep. I give full details about that & the lawsuits above,
http://buffalobetties.com/sissyboys/index.php?topic=860.msg10681#msg10681
Sorry about being missing for a few days.
Earlier in the week it got cooler & drier (before it got sticky hot again). It made me breathe a bit better. So I had to drop everything to do physical projects I was falling behind on, like house chores, while my breathing was still good enough. I can't really schedule anything physical, or even sleeping with COPD. When my breathing improves, I have to drop everything do as much as my physical chores as I can because I don't know when it will get worse, or how long it will last.
If I'm breathing best in the middle of a cool night, that's when I get some chores done, & take a nap in the heat of the day.
Checking the weather helps predict my breathing, because hot humid or damp days are the worst, even inside with air filters & AC. But sometimes it's bad for no obvious reason. The AC & air filters helps compared to outside air, but it isn't a perfect solution. The AC & air filters are small, so don't do enough on the worst days. But over time, the indoor air gets stale, O2 depleted, & must be refreshed with outside air, or eventually gets as hard to breathe as the outside air. Yep, even in the winter, I have to crack open a window to refresh the air at least a couple times a day.
Basically you can't use/recycle the same air over & over again, or it eventually becomes bad air.
Anyway, after a few days it got hot & muggy again. Although I said I don't get microsoft updates since Christmas eve, & even stopped Linux updates because they would cause problems, I decided to update my Linux OS's... all at the same time.
Just like last time, the Linux updates screwed up the Linux OS's. After days of trying to fix them, & get them back to the way I liked them, I gave up & decided to wipe all Linux out, & do a clean install of them just the way I like them.
But to do a clean, proper install of Linux & not have problems crop up later, you literally have to remove every bit of the old Linux, & the previous drive partitions they were on.
I have all my Linux installed alongside or Windows. In a dual boot configuration. It's the normal & easy installation to have Linux installed as a second OS on a machine alongside of windows, rather than installing it on the entire drive & wiping out windows.
In dual boot, Linux controls the boot-up to choices of which OS you want. Once you get rid of Linux on the machine, it won't boot to windows anymore. So then you have to put in a rescue or the original install disk, to try to repair windows boot (MBR)... which may work. What always works with a rescue or install disk, is you're able to get into command prompt, to fix MBR, just by looking up what to do on google on a second machine or tablet.
This why I always insist that everyone has 2 real computers, even if the old one is used or made around the turn of the century. It gives you a way to get online look up solutions, download software or repairs, access your files, burn repair or install disks, or get at your externally saved files.
So, after fixing that, I did a clean install of the Linux OS's. But this time I had burned the newest versions of my favorite Linux onto the install disks. I thought that would make them more compatible with new Linux updates. During the installs they downloaded & installed some updates, like when it discovers it needs drivers for the hardware.
After the installs, they say they need updates, about 330mb of them. I let them download & install the updates. After they were done, I rebooted them. Damnit! The updates broke them again! Linux would still run, but I was getting lots of error messages & bugs.
I am not willing to spend weeks writing code, typing tons of instructions in console, & tweeking to get an OS to work well. This is what scares people away from alternative OS's.
I decided to wipe out the linux installs again, fix windows MBR again, & do clean installs again. I still allowed it to download & update during the install. But after the install was complete, I will not allow it to download recommended updates. I will download some WINE, some other essential updates, & download some cool gadgets though.
The Linux I'm using took years for scientists & astronomers to perfect. It was written ontop of Ubuntu 12 & 14. Recommended updates try to install bits made for Ubuntu 16.1 or replace 12 & 14 with 16.1. The newest version of the custom Linux I use, isn't designed for 16.1 or 16.1 apps.
16.1 is also still pretty new. It is still chock full of bugs & problems. It shouldn't have been released except in Beta form for testing. Indeed, if you must use Buggy Ubuntu, I recommend sticking with latest versions 12 or 14, because they had lots of time to fix problems in those. They seem to run pretty smooth in my tests. They are also likely to run better on older or smaller machines.
All the more reason to keep a couple cheap older machines around. It gives you something to poke around & experiment with, plus gives you a back-up machine. If something goes wrong, you can just wipe it out on the old machine, do a re-install, or install something else.
Don't have a windows install disk? If your machine is licensed for windows, just download it from a torrent & burn it on a DVD ISO disk. It's NOT illegal if your machine is already licensed to have it. If your machine rejects it or windows won't approve the installation, many of the downloads come with a file to work around that, or you can download the workaround separately.
I used to like Linux Zorin. But all their new versions aren't as good, & are too resource hungry. But even the older versions will not run on a 1.8ghz single core. You need at least 2.5ghz & 2GB of RAM for Zorin.
Linux Disto Astro is my current favorite. But you can delete the science programs & change the background, if you don't like that kind of stuff. After it's updated itself during the install, do not auto update with the recommended updates. Choose only the ones you want, google about any problems with them, or just don't update them at all. There is no system restore, or undo in Linux. If you screw it up, & you may not be able to fix it. You may have to save your essential files externally, & do a clean install all over again.
If you are not installing it on a machine by itself, but installing it alongside windows, do back up your important files. Make sure you have a windows repair disk, & a windows install disk in case something goes wrong. Even without linux, something can & usually does eventually go wrong. Familiarize yourself with how to repair your booting software (MBR), or know how to google for it & find the best way.
For very old or small machines you want a lightweight OS. Light versions of Ubuntu 12 or 14 will work good on them, & best for beginners. I find Xubuntu 12 or 14 works pretty good on most old or small machines, & is easier for beginners. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu because of their design, & bugs, but many love them. The version of mine, Astro, built over Ubuntu 14.1 & tweaked by scientists does well for me on dual core machines. But 16.1 updates, & other updates breaks all the work done to the OS. Ubuntu 16 was not ready yet. It should still be in Beta, & not for the general public. 12 & 14 are the reliable versions.
I had some of my own Linux tweaks too. I manage to install .net framework, C++ visual, to my Linux, along with a few .dll files I copied right from a windows OS, & put in a Linux WINE folder. With that, I can run many windows programs/apps, & software right in Linux. Even Irfanview ran perfectly on it without any bugs.
I believe I am the only one in the world to successfully run Freemake video converter in Linux. I don't use it often, I usually prefer other programs. But it's nice to see I can run it in Linux. It was a challenge because the Linux wizards said it can't be done except in VM (virual machine). VM for Linux is very buggy though, so I don't use it. I guess someday I'll have to modify a version for macs to use in Linux.
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It is pretty cool tonight in my part of Ontario and I am loving that I can open the windows again. The A/C has been running quite a bit this summer and my hydro bills are huge but like you Betty I need to keep the humidity out of the house or I get sinus headaches that cripple me for days. It is also a bit bad for my arthritis some times. I was out today for awhile and got caught in a rain shower but it was over in about 45 minutes. I was sure it would get more humid again but not so for now anyway. If it isn't cooling bills, it is heating bills so I can't win either way. I just need to be more frugal in my spending habits.
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We've started getting some cooler evenings, nights, & mornings too. But at those times the humidity was way up to 83-96% being downwind from the warm lakes, so didn't help my breathing much. So I still need to run the AC to keep the humidity down.
I'm opening the windows for a time at night & in the mornings to refresh the air. But after, it takes hours for the AC & air filters to get the air dry & clean for me again. The AC is a small window unit, which stays installed year-round to dry out & help filter the air. The filter on it it isn't that good, & is not for trapping small particles or pollutants. But it does draw out some pollutants while it's condensing out the humidity, as they get caught on the damp cold core, & dribbled to outside.
My 2 air filters, are small tabletop units. They're only designed for a small bedroom. The disposable filters, designed to last 30-60 days, are prohibitively expensive. Those paper pleated filters cannot be washed & re-used. They'll just fall apart. They can make a paper filter that can be washed & reused a few times, or a synthetic filter that can be washed & reused many times at no additional costs. But it's more profitable for companies to force you to buy overpriced paper filters every 30-60 days.
I figured out a way to get those paper filters to last over 2 years. But they finally wore out & got too clogged this spring. Now I use an elaborate homemade filter in them. I use the original re-usable/washable foam pre-filter, behind that is a cloth filter I cut out of old t-shirts. Behind that for fine particles, I used the thinnest toilet paper I could find, so air can pass through it good enough. I scotch tape, "Scotch -1,000 sheet" toilet paper behind the cloth filter.
It seems to work as good as the store-bought filter, plus increased air flow - - it blows harder now. I see it definitely traps more dirt, particles, & even cat hair than before. I replace the paper every 4-6 weeks when I notice the air flow decreasing due to dirt clogging the filter. The foam & cloth pre-filters should need cleaning out about every season.
Being run almost all day & night almost every day for over 2 1/2 years, the units exceeded their life expectancy. By this spring, if they were left off for an hour or more, they would start up running slow until warmed up for a few minutes. They would make a whine or whirr like the bearings were shot or dried out until they warmed up.
I managed to take apart the motors, clean all the old goo out of the bearings, & pack them with high temperature lithium grease. That's a little too thick for a small high RPM motor, so I added a couple drops of 3 in 1 oil to thin the grease down a little... the oil can version, not the spray can oil.
Wow, they got up to full speed faster than they did when they were new (almost instantly), & they're quieter than new too. The high quality lithium grease made a big difference. Maybe it's almost time to do the same overhaul to my window fan motors too. They're 9 years old.
I'm afraid of new machinery. Many top brands have even gone to plastic bearings. Even Briggs & Stratton small gasoline engines have gone to plastic bearings, plastic cam hubs, & plastic gears/ timing gears. Your Sears weed whacker may only have a 50 hour life expectancy. Many shops won't even rebuild small gas engines newer than 10 years old because they're all built like crap these days. That $200-$500 generator may only get you through 1-3 power failures, while my father's generator built in 1963 still runs fine.
It seems most manufacturers, even Apple & Microsoft claim we should be replacing all our gadgets every 2 years. That may be very profitable to them in the short term, but is not economically & ecologically sustainable for the world in the long term.
My 2 recent model TVs I got almost for nothing because they died shortly after their warranty expired. I replaced their power supplies with ones that had capacitors designed to last longer than a year or 2, & they still run as good as brand new. The one has been going strong for me for 3 1/2 years, while it lasted the original owner only around a year. The other is working great over 5 years for me while it only lasted the original owner under 2. They both double as my monitors so are on longer than they're off every day.
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I had one of those little air filters but the filters were costly and then hard to find after a few years. After buying the house the furnace had an Electronic Air cleaner on it that worked pretty good with permanent washable filters. Last year I rented a new furnace/ A/C unit and humidifier with a UV light air purifier also. The air filter on that is 5 inches thick and replaced by the heating company every four to six months. The first few years in the house we had two small window air conditioners to help with the heat and humidity and then I bought a central A/C unit from where I worked (built it myself on the line after work) so I knew it was a quality unit and then installed it with some help. After 36 years it was failing and the R22 freon it was charged with was now illegal to use and hard to find anyway.
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They still make r22 until 2020. Production has been cut back though, & reclaimed r22 is almost expensive as virgin r22. The "drop in" replacements for r22, like r422, r410, & r38 (mo99) aren't quite as "drop in" as advertised. The oil won't circulate properly in them so you have to change out the oil to something more compatible called ester POE oil I believe, or you'll grind up your compressors. Those replacements also eat away worn gaskets, seals, & valves, so you have to replace all of them before using the new gases. You will also lose about 8-15% efficiency with the replacement gasses.
Watch where you get reclaimed r22. Some of it is old & contaminated with acidic old oil, particles, & other hydrocarbons if it wasn't cleaned up properly. Some had even "topped off" low freon with propane! Propane works good as a substitute, but I wouldn't want it circulating around in the hot parts of an AC unit, or leaking near those hot parts, sparking relays, & switches.
Many of those brand new Chinese window AC units still use R22, but they'll never admit it.
Modern units are a lot more efficient than a 36 year old one though. 30-40 years ago a simple 10,000 BTU window unit would draw around 1,5000-1,800 watts. A modern $89, 10,000 BTU unit only draws 350-600 watts after it's been on a few minutes, & warmed up. But their compressors no longer come with a 3-5 year warranty.
Beware that UV air purifier units are ozone (O3) generators, just like coronal discharge purifiers. But the UV ones usually generate less ozone. Ozone (O3) is very bad for your lungs, pets, & plastic or rubber objects in your home - - including your modern TV screens. It is very corrosive, which is how it kills germs & odors. Also you should not run them in high humidity. Using them in combination with a humidifier or on a humid day stops the ozone & purifying process. With humidity, it generates dangerous nitrous oxide & other bad gases instead. They should be used in a dry environment, to clean the air in a room, while no people or pets are in the room.
As far as replacement filters, look to see what you got around the house or in the hardware store to make your own filters cheaper. They have "cut your own" filters in stores cheap. Much pool filter & large pro fish tank filter material will do the same job filtering air, but can be washed in soap or bleach, then rinsed, & re-used.
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Yes r22 is available and used in the U.S. but illegal in Canada for a few years now, so we sold all our supply to our parent company in Phillie. They would use it in the repair shops and their small manufacturing plant. We had large tanks of it outside our factory and deliveries were always at night because it took some time off load and interrupted our charging stations. We had just taken delivery when the government inspector showed up and told us we had a week to arrange for it to be taken out of our tanks. We also had many smaller tanks around the factory in repair stations of reclaimed r22 that we loaded on our finished product trucks to go to the U.S. I managed to save a small tank to refill my A/C unit after I fixed a leak in the system.
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Thanks for the info on my UV unit, I did not know any of that. I must check with the heating company that installed it and it is mounted in the plenum above the on board humidifier. It mainly runs in the heating season as I had turned it off for awhile recently before getting a replacement lamp. it has been in a couple of years now and I did not see any adverse effects on the TV's or rubber items in my workshop. Wow, that is where my rubber and latex pants are stored in a container under the workbench.
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I used to use a UV filter that emitted low but "safe" levels of ozone. With COPD, & knowing the dangers, I used it in an unoccupied back room I use for storage. When I moved to a smaller place, there was no room for my stuff. So I use the bedroom to store my stuff, & live in the rest of the place "studio apartment" style.
It's sealed up most of the time, because I only go back there to get something or pack something away. So the air gets a musty smell, & stale, even with the window cracked open. Maybe it's from the old carpeting in there, or all the stuff stored in there.
So about once a week or so, when I'm not in there, I'd run the UV filter for a few hours or the day, while the room was unoccupied. It worked. It made the room smell fresh again for a week or so. My sissy clothes, & my less used clothes are stored back there.
After close to 2 years of using it about once a week or 2 back there, I noticed almost all the elastic bands on underwear, & sweatpants stored back there lost their elasticity. The elasticity of the arm openings of my puffed sleeve dresses was shot too. Rubber bands in a drawer back there would break when stretched. Some plastic bags in there were becoming stiff or brittle. Radios stored back there got static in the volume controls. All ozone damaged.
The LCD TV in there got faint dark patches on the screen when turned on, especially near edges of the screen. The low level of ozone, over time ate away the seal around the LCD panel, so that the panel layers were separating, deforming, & corroding.
The bad effects of high levels of ozone may not take too long to notice, but low levels from those "safe" filters can take a long time or years for the bad effects to be noticed. But the damage done to your stuff, equipment, clothing, & lungs it causes will be permanent.
It took almost 2 years for the damage it did back there to be noticeable.
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Map of visitors to Betty's since May 2016.
You can see a similar map by scrolling down to the bottom of most of our pages, if you aren't using ad & script blocking. Many of our features will not work or work properly if don't set those tools to make an exception for Betty's.
But the dots are too big so cluttered & lacking fine detail. In this map the dots are tiny so show a better view of the cluttered areas. The light circled dots are people who were currently here during the screenshot about 10 minutes ago.
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We've had 389,601 hits to Betty's in the past 30 days. Our busiest day in August was 17,062 hits on Sat. Aug. 6th. Our quietest day was last Tue. with 10,134 hits. We've had 3,132,218 hits to Betty's in 2016 so far. At this rate, we won't break our 2016 record, as the busiest year ever at Betty's with over 5 million hits. More likely it will be one of our typical busy years though, at around 4.5 million hits for the year. Our busiest month for 2016 was in April at 444,577 hits for the month. Our quietest month for 2016 was July at 345,588 hits for the month. For 22 years, July is almost always our quietest month as most of our visitors spend more time outdoors, traveling, & on vacation.
We are currently carrying over 30,000 pictures, & hundreds of stories at Betty's served directly from our servers. That doesn't include thousands more cool pix at our PSK/UncleGadget site.
These huge numbers of traffic, enormous content, security, & privacy that we provide cannot be carried on a small or cheap server. During peak times, & busy days, it would even be difficult or impossible to handle it all on a single large, expensive dedicated server.
So please don't forget to donate to keep all that content flowing, & continue to serve it to everybody who wants it. As we're getting more traffic than ever before, it has become an expensive project to keep running continuously, reliably, 24/7.
Below, is some of our current stats in graph form, like recent visitor browsers & OS's used during the past 30 minutes. I'm still surprised on how many users are still using that nasty-ass Windows 10. Don't you people ever read the news, or do you just listen to the ads & reviews sponsored by their advertisers?
I have to admit though, if I was getting free computers, software, gadgets, or making $200-$1500 a month in ad revenue from my sponsors & advertising while reviewing stuff, it would be very tempting to write a good review about their product, or at least avoid saying too much bad about it.
I see Pale Moon & Firefox are still getting used here more than the average public. I guess we have more users concerned about their privacy than your average fool on the internet. They are much more private & secure than any other browser. And no matter what you set your privacy settings in Google Chrome, it's still not very private.
Of course, if you're using Windows 10, you're throwing all that privacy out the window anyway. Any no, contrary to popular reviews from Windows fan boys, or those who have corporate sponsors, you cannot shut W10 spying off. You can change some setting to make it look like you shut it off, but it's still always on. Plus, no matter what your settings are, MS will reset your W10 settings to their liking with the next update.
I still see a slow rise of Linux users, as W10, & MS telemetry/spying, & jerking around their customers, slowly is making people move to something else. Let's not forget, that Android, Chrome books, & Kindle devices are also Linux. Some people are just not tech savvy to move to a traditional Linux, or not want to bother with the fuss of it. So are transitioning to Linux powered easy, cheaper android devices instead.
I have not seen any increase in apple product usage during this recent Windows/MS year-long scandal though. I'm sorry apple fans, but even if someone could afford an apple product, many still consider them way overpriced for what they're getting. I was shocked the first time I had an apple laptop in for repairs, it was a 2005 ibook. It was all technology from around 1998 & 1999 inside, & also put together rather poorly.
And for long time apple users, now they're stuck in a rut. After years of doing things apple's way, they find it almost impossible to change to anything else because they've grown too used to it. It's not better, you've just grown too comfortable with it, so anything else seems wrong. It's like if you only drove the same car for 20 years, you almost have to learn to drive again when you get a new one.
It's ironic though, because those who have grown too used to apple stuff, would find it easier to switch to some versions of Linux because many are quite similar. Linux is a friendlier interface built on Unix. Apple is a friendly interface built on Unix.
Unfortunately the ones that would consider switching to a different OS are windows users who recently have been getting forced to switch to W10, or discovered they're getting MS spyware sneaking into their older windows OS's.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes.
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes, browsers they used, & the OS they used.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past half hour.
Pretty busy for the morning. It's the pre-dawn hours in my town, & still dark as night. But already there's a lot of people visiting Betty's from my time zone.
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Remarkably busy at Betty's for the day before Christmas Eve, on a Friday afternoon.
Can we assume a lot of people got the day off today, or are some just slacking off a lot at work & school before the holiday?
Perhaps everybody's squeezing in as much sissy stuff as they can before they get busy with other stuff for the holiday.
Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 40 minutes:
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The "active" map at the bottom of all Betty's pages has been reset to zero today. If you scroll to the bottom of our pages you'll see a map with dots. The blinking dots are people currently at Betty's. The other dots are people who have visited Betty's. It used to show all visitors since May 2016. But it got to be just a massive confusing jumble of tons of dots, with hardly any map showing anymore.
I reset the map about an hour ago. So the dots are all the visitors we've had since 11am E.USA time on Feb 1st, 2017. Blinking dots still show people currently here. However if someone is just parked here, reading, listening to a mix, or watching video, & didn't click on anything at Betty's for a couple minutes, their blinking dot will disappear until they click on something again.
We have different spam, bot, & trash filters, now. Some of our pages are on different addresses, domains or servers too. So it will be fun to see how the map dots multiply this time from a fresh start. Last time, it took a few months for the map to be overly cluttered with dots, but over the past 24 hours we've have visits from over 50 countries. So I'm expecting lots of extra dots daily. Some of our regulars only visit a couple times a month, others, a couple times a day.
If you don't see a map on the bottom, your browser settings are wrong or you have a crap browser. Also if you have ad or script blockers, it may be blocking the view. There's a good chance it's blocking a lot of Betty's features & functions too. Many blockers block a set of scripts but do not notice that some of the scripts it's blocking may just be blocking the features or functionality of the site.
Always set an exception in your blockers at Betty's or turn it off. All sites at Buffalobetties.com, Buffalobetties.net, Unclegadget.com, & Pearlcorona.com are Betty's sites. There are no ads, malware, spyware, or nasty scripts at Betty's to block. I built these places myself, they are highly secure, & regularly checked. If there was something bad here, I'd know about it rather quickly.
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It only took a few hours for the active map at the bottom of our pages to fill up with dots of visitors from W. Europe & America.
Here's a map of all our visitors during the past half hour -- about 12:45-1:15am E. American time.
Most of W. Europe is asleep or just getting up if they're an early bird. It's already the middle of Thursday in Australia & New Zealand. We never sleep in the USA. We just drink lots of coffee, which keeps us awake & bitchy.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes (6:45-7:15am E. USA time).
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Map of visitors during the past half hour (11:45am-12:15pm E. USA time).
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Close-up. Recent visitors to Betty's from Europe during the past 30 minutes.
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Close-up. Visitors to Betty's from N. America during the past 30 minutes.
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Close-up. Map of visitors to Betty's from the UK during the past 40 minutes.
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Map of visitors to Betty's for 30 minutes this morning. About an hour ago 4:45-5:15am E. USA time, & 9:45-10:15am UK time.
I'm still always amazed at the amount of traffic we get in the mornings from the UK. You wouldn't think of a sissy site as one on your morning surfing schedule, but but is. Few of our USA visitors are even up yet, & it's still the middle of the night in California. However, 90% of our USA vistors are from the eastern half of the USA -- mostly east of the Mississippi River. Many of them stay up way past normal bedtime to visit here, so won't be getting up earlier than they have to, or have much time for Betty's early in the morning after spending a late night here.
We hardly get anybody from Europe after 1am European time, while at 1-2am E. USA time we're still getting floods of people from my area. I guess we have more stargazers, & Europe has more early bird-watchers.
Recently we're getting more visits from Australia than from Canada. What's up Canada, have you found somewhere else worth skipping Betty's entirely most of the week? I notice we get a significant amount of people visiting on small portable pocket devices where many of our Canadian friends mostly visit on laptops & desktops. So maybe they're just waiting to get on a big screen than visit much on a pocket device.
I see many on old or low-end pocket devices with only 480x320p resolution on 3.5-4 inch screens. I can see checking a site for updates on something that small, but can't see reading stories, browsing pix, or watching our movies on something that tiny, but many are. The only thing I can think of is that it may be their only device to get online with, or get online privately where friends & family won't know that they are here. I see many of the same people always visiting through a google links rather than save a link to Betty's. So many are visiting secretly, covertly, on portables with limited data limits.
A big attraction of Betty's is that we can deliver a lot of stuff on low bandwidth for people with data limits/caps -- even full movies & music. So it makes sense we'd get more visitors on portables than any of our competitors. I can actually visualize people on the bus or train in London while visiting Betty's on their phone -- our stats support that is happening a lot. I certainly hope you're not driving while visiting here.
People poke fun that we try to keep our bandwidth & file sizes to 1990s standards. But these days people are on portables a lot or rural areas (we travel a lot too), & have to pay dearly by the gigabyte for data usage, or don't have much speed/bandwidth.
One can visit Betty's for hours, watch a movie, & listen to hours of music, & still use up less bandwidth/data than visiting yahoo, facebook, those "bottomless" flickr, tumblr, pinterest, & overloaded Kiss sissy pages just a couple times. And if you have more than one device using your same connection, or at a wifi hotspot, you'll never slow those other devices down by visiting Betty's.
You can watch a full movie at Betty's in at least DVD quality & use up no more data/bandwidth than visiting Facebook or youtube just once!
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Oops. I'm mistaken. As of 7:30am E. USA time this morning, most of our users appear to be on regular laptops & desktops right now. Maybe they're on their office or school computers at this hour, rather than commuting with their portable or having breakfast. Most companies, labs, universities, military, & governments still use W7 -- a few still use XP too. A lot of people I know still prefer a laptop or large tablet rather than a pocket device for travel/commuting.
I see for a change, Windows 7 & better browsers are dominating our users this morning, instead of that horrid windows 10 with junky Edge browsers or Explorer. Maybe some of our users actually paid attention to all the blogging I did about that stuff a while back -- or learned on their own after getting screwed & fed up with W10.
At home, my shop gets mostly W10's in to fix, or they bring in their old W7 & W8's to fix as a spare after they got new machine with W10. Ironically, after I get their old W7 working, they use their W10's as a spare, or if it's still under warranty, they return their W10 & demand their money back. A couple weeks ago a girl dropped off her 2009 W7 laptop to restore after getting a new $1500 quad-core DELL laptop with 32gb of RAM & 120gb SSD (Dell is crap, get an HP business computer-- built to last & upgrade). Her old W7 HP laptop was a 2.4ghz dual core with 4gb of RAM, & a 160gb 7200rpm Western Digital drive. After I fixed it up, it ran circles around her new Dell. After 2 days of using her old laptop she returned the Dell for her money back. I cleaned it up too, so everybody thinks her 2007 laptop is her new laptop.
I should have charged more. I did the work in trade for her old broken 2005 single core XP laptop. Got that one all fixed up with W7 too. Works better than it did new, but nobody want to buy something that old with a single core & 32 bits anymore. She's an external foster home for the SPCA (local animal shelter), mostly for their cats -- my kitties came from her. She was on a tight budget & got that new Dell on monthly payments/credit -- Talked into it by fast talking sales hype. You should have seen her jaw drop when she discovered that I made her old 2009 laptop run lots better than her brand new Dell.
I get a kick out of Microsoft's spin on how many got W10. Half of them were forced to get a W10 upgrade on their old computer, & they forced retail stores not to sell any windows machines without W10 on them, so most people didn't have a choice if they were familiar with & needed windows to run their apps. Those millions of numbers for W10 don't include how many didn't keep their W10 unit, or rolled back their old OS. It also don't include that those numbers are for people who just bought a new laptop or portable, but still use their W7 or W8 for their desk, work, or at home.
Visitor device stats during the past 30 minutes:
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Busy in Europe this Sunday.
Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes. 2:45pm London time, 9:45am E. USA time, 6:45am in California.
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We've had 342,475 hits to Betty's in the past 30 days, but that was generated by 95,533 visits... a visitor clicks around more than once while they're here, so on average, each visitor generates 3-4 hits.
We had an average of 11,048 daily hits from an average of 3,082 different people per day. That's about the population of 2 large city high schools or a large university visiting Betty's every day. Some visit daily, a couple times a week or month, or just once a month.
Only 6 people donated to Betty's during the month of May, & the month is 3/4 over.
Here's the real kicker. We serve an average of 4,818gb (4.8TB) of data per day from our servers to our visitors in the form of stories, posts, pictures, & multi-media. That's an average of 144540gb (145TB) per month! Even the most expensive dedicated web server hosting plans at $240-$650 a month only allow 40-100gb of bandwidth per month. We use 40-100 times that much in a single day! About 2/3 of that is used up just by stories, not pictures, movies, or music.
There are some server companies who claim to offer "unlimited" bandwidth... They lie. Once you use up 40-100gb within a month on an "unlimited" server plan, they severely limit the speed, & response time of the server to the point it's almost unusable. They send you a nasty letter for you to cut back usage, tell you to pay for a second or third server to handle the load, or just cancel your account & kick you off the system.
Good luck trying to upload or download the large database or backups for a large site or network. Most of those server plans can't even handle downloading or uploading large databases & backups, because they exceed their size, loading, or packet limits. So it would be extremely difficult just to move a large site intact to another ordinary server.
This is why we use multiple servers for various pages & tasks. It spreads the loads over several instead of just 1 or 2. That's how the big boys do it. They use an array of servers, not just one.
Stories still remains shut down because of lack of support, but it used up about 2/3 of our resources. Our typical Stories visitor are the biggest leechers on our system. They are 2/3 of our traffic, use 2/3 of our resources, but are the least likely to donate, click on an ad, share a link to us, or mention us at other related sites. I see them visiting other sites where the site, mods, or their fanboys clearly say we closed down years ago, or that I'm dead, but they never disagree or say anything about it to let them know the truth.
UncleGadget's PSK research only gets 56 visitors per day but got about $900 in donations since July. We ran ads here at Betty's for a test for 30 days. PSK research got 200 times more ad clicks, & made 200 times more money than the ads here did that month -- with an average of only 56 daily visitors... I don't know any of them & they don't know me. The PSK YouTube channel also generated about 40 times more ad revenue than our Betty's YouTube channel.
When it comes to support, ad clicks, or donations, per percentage of users, sissies are sure really sissies when it comes to supporting us. If I put up pictures of Pluto, a star chart, or an old B&W Japanese Sci-Fi, I make money on it at PSK. If I put up 30,000 sissy pictures, or a dozen crossdressing movies here, & do a lot of work, I get hardly anything for it.
And let's face it, many go to stories just for J/O material, but almost never support us. You know, in the real world if you expect to get laid, you're expected to pay for dinner & the ride on a date. Where's my bed/laid money or dinner for keeping stories up for 23 years? Our authors & I feel raped. It's like, bang-bang, then they leave & forget about us until the next time they're horny.
Those guys probably spent more on Vaseline, K-Y, & hand lotion to beat off over the past 23 years during visiting stories than in support for Betty's. I'll bet if they donated what they spent lubricants for J/O & sex while visiting stories, it would support Betty's for several years.
A $1.69 bottle of hand lotion or K-Y lasts a couple months. At least 2,000 people are beating off at stories per day. That's at least $20,000 they spent on lubricants for sex while visiting Stories in a year. And when they run out, they quickly get more, but never consider supporting the site they used it at.
Ad clicks don't cost anything, but most people at Stories couldn't even be bothered to do that when I ran ads.
Very small donations or only a little pocket change would be much more than enough if only 10% of our visitors donated. But only 0.002% of our users ever donate. Those people bitchin' about me mentioning being broke & the lack of donations have no right to complain since almost all of them never sprung a single penny in donations, or tried to support us in any way after years of visiting us.
Suddenly I'm a real bad person because I became disabled & elderly so can no longer afford to pay for all of this out of my own pocket??? Go to those other "free" sites to get data-mined & tracked up the yazoo. When you get turned down for that job you wanted, get your security clearance rejected, or lose your divorce or other legal battle, thank the data mining & tracking at those other "free" sites for putting too much bad info about you out there.
With just your email address or ISP ID number, & the time of day you used it, I can look up if you were a regular or member of just about any sissy & ABDL site in the world, & just about any other site or store that you regularly visit... in minutes! But I could not track you back to here at Betty's thanks to our security, & that we don't data-mine. How much more can they find on you when you apply for a job, or an attorney, law enforcement, government or security wants to look you up? They're paid to dig much deeper, & are professionally equipped to do so. But they won't track you to Betty's.
Windows 10 is probably the worst OS ever. So why did the make it? It's a data mining, tracking, & ad generating system, & not a true OS. They're making a fortune selling your private & personal data.
Ad revenue on the internet is old news. People use ad blockers or have become ad-blind. Data-mining is the new big money maker on the internet. They want to get anything & everything about you, your habits, associates, friends, & family to sell to the highest bidder. The data collectors/wholesalers sell your data to governments, advertisers, attorneys, law enforcement, corporations, & sometimes hackers. Some website owners/builders are totally innocent by not realizing the software, or scripts they use on their site, or their web server is collecting their user data without their knowledge.
Here at Betty's we don't use "out of the box" software & site builders full of tracking software. I know how to read & write scripts & code so can spot suspicious or tracking codes. We don't use that nasty stuff here. We truly are free. We don't data mine & sell your info. Our software, code, & servers don't either.
Map of visitors to Betty's & Unclegadget during the past 30 minutes. We're the busiest on weekends these days, & we lost a lot of users by Stories still being closed down due to lack of support. Still, this isn't too bad without it, so far:
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I'm always surprised to see so many from the UK visiting Betty's early in the morning. I guess they like breakfast at Betty's. Of course, now it's the middle of the afternoon there, but we had a lot here during their morning too. This morning, & this afternoon we also have a lot more than usual for a Sunday afternoon from other parts of western Europe too.
It's rare we get any Canadians early in the day. They seem to reserve Betty's for evenings or late at night.
We're in our slow season right now, as most people in the northern hemisphere spend more time outside or traveling during the warmer months.
Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 20 minutes:
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Map of visitors to Betties during the past 30 minutes, browsers & operating system they used, & graph of daily traffic to Betty's from 2005-2019.
Please donate to aupport Betty's!
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Daily traffic graph for the past 30 days.
We're currently averaging about 4,000 different people visiting Betty's per day, & they generate an average of around 10,000 page hits to Betty's per day.
Please donate & support us!
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Map of visistor's to Betty's during the past 30 minutes -- closeup of North America. Where are all the Canadian visitors this weekend?
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Map of visitors to Betty's early on a Sunday morning during the past 30 minutes. Just after dawn here in the eastern USA, just before lunchtime in the UK.
Please donate!
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Gosh. I see we had a few rare visits from Linux users this morning. They're not a common OS these days except on Kindle & for web servers, so we usually only get a few Linux users a day.
OS & browsers used by our visitors during the past 30 minutes:
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Visitors to Betty's during the last 30 minutes, their OS, & browsers. They just finished lunch at Betty's in Europe, while it's still early morning at my house.
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Quiet Saturday afternoon here at Betty's. I see our Linux visitors are back this weekend. It's not me. I haven't been on Linux since around dawn.
Contrary to the news, IT reports, & promotions, I still don't see Windows 10 winning here. Indeed, during work-days, especially near work & college hours, I see more people here on android devices than any other single OS. By Microsoft pushing unstable, buggy, spyware infested Windows 10 down our throats, which mostly just imitates a giant android phone, it seems all they did was push more people to use android devices rather than like windows 10.
Map of our visitors during the past 30 minutes, with the OS & browsers they used:
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Map of visitors during the past 30 minutes, at 1:10am E. USA time.
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Christmas morning at Betty's
Map of visitors & what OS they used, on Christmas from 10am-10:30am eastern USA time.
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Map of recent visitors to Betty's (Here, Stories, PSK, & Unclegadget) during the past 30 minutes, along with what browsers & OS they used (middle of a late weekend night here in the eastern USA). 2/3 of them are just going to Stories, as usual.
Have we lost our Canadians or got banned from there? It seems we only get mostly Canadians from Ontario, & just a few from Quebec these days.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes, Thursday afternoon, eastern USA time. Almost 3/4 of these are visiting Stories.
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Map, browsers, & OS of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes. Saturday morning 2:15am eastern USA time.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes, on Saturday morning, 7:15am eastern USA time. Almost 3/4 of them are visitors to our Story site.
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Map of visitors to Betty's (including Stories) during the past 30 minutes, on Saturday, 2am eastern USA time (breakfast time in the UK).
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Quiet, slow time in the pre-dawn hours (E. USA time today) during the middle of the week at Betty's.
But already western Europe is enjoying breakfast with Betty's. Meanwhile in eastern & the western USA we never sleep enough, so drink lots of coffee, get grumpy, & have high dental bills as we grind our teeth, or shoot somebody for getting in our way.
Map of just 30 minutes of traffic to Betty's during these slow hours & days (3:15-3:35am eastern USA time Thursday), combined from Stories, Betty's Pub, & UncleGadget/PSK Research... but about 3/4 of that traffic is just from Stories:
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Please remember to donate. We have dozens of people at Betty's at the same time during our slowest, quietest times.
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Map of visitors to Betty's during the past 30 minutes, on Sunday 4:55pm eastern USA time.