Straight pride.

I don’t disagree with your opinion that war is newsworthy in general. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons why you don’t see the stories you expect to see though. Chief among them the fact that search on the fediverse is absolutely unreliable. It ain’t Google when it was still good. Also, other news outlets may have different standards in terms of what they can report. They may need more sources, more eye witnesses. A search for “Iran” may be the wrong search term because there is a certain US politician who loves a headline and the media kind of like him for that. So there is a spam of stories about his unsuccessful deal making that will algorithmically obscure any other Iran content online. Or it might relegate military strikes by other but much smaller nations to a subordinate clause in paragraph #13 of a story with an orange headline. It also stands to reason that local news sources would be better, especially if this is a developing story, and that it’s possible that it simply hasn’t filtered through to English language media.

And more generally, war or senseless loss of life in general and the reporting thereof are not mildly infuriating content.

You are making this up.

I don’t think I am. I was in at least two threads where people just referred to them as Nazis and in a stage of outrage weren’t open to other interpretations. However, my post can be taken as all users who got mad called them Nazis. Some got mad and didn’t call them Nazis. That’s why I said assholes are still assholes.

It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.

It’s mathematically correct to say a portion of your fees in the past may have ended up in the coffers of the Örebro Party. It seems likely that continuing payments to the company may filter through Daniel to them as well. Facism is traditionally associated with right-wing extremism. This party is a Frankenstein monster of traditional associations and they lean further to the left than to the right, except on immigration. With “remigration” as the de rigeur pipe dream corner stone. Xenophobia alone doesn’t fascism make. The Soviet Union wasn’t exactly a hit destination for immigrants. So we either enlarge the definition of fascism to include these horseshoe loonies. Or we need a new word. Or we just agree to call them assholes and any continuing payments to Mullvad carry a mathematical risk of further financing assholes, more than one.

Daniel is one of the founders of Mullvad and part owner. He took a big chunk of change from his private wealth and donated it to a horseshoe loonie party. Horseshoe because they try to marry ideas from the extreme left to immigrant hateful ideas from the extreme right. Loonie is self explanatory. His donation made it possible for that party to run a nationwide campaign.

Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly. Which isn’t true. How much of this donation truly came from VPN fees is also a matter of debate. They aren’t strictly Nazis, more xenophobic communists. But assholes are still assholes and people choose labels differently. There is a lot of kneejerk reacting going on.

The company seems to want to ride it out. They correctly point to this being a decision by a private citizen who may exercise his free speech by donating to the loonie party. But they either don’t recognize the PR hell of being guilty by association as a company or they know the subscription drain isn’t as bad as the online outrage makes it look like. They publicly say this is all about free speech, which is their DNA, yada yada yada.

The report also seems not to realize that it is being written by the Trump administration.

There are a few delightful digs like this in this article.

The only thing that’s golden is the tacky veneer on the White House walls in the picture.

As sad as it is having to bring this up in regards to US immigration: how Caucasian looking are you? I unfortunately feel this will have bearing here.

You can create another profile on your phone, make it look lived in but sanatize it. Your laptop will be tougher but encrypted cloud services exist. Any country you enter will get the biometrics of your passport picture on the chip. Additionally, they take fingerprints, I think, and there is nothing you can do about that.

Most people don’t have problems getting in. If you haven’t been to Iran lately…

Your first question is answered by the article you linked. And therefore the answers to the two-part second question are no and no.

“Rogue” is a questionable choice of vocabulary. It went rogue when compared to the intentions and expectations of the testers. It didn’t do Mr. Burns hands and released the hounds on a whim. It was told to do a thing and did the thing in a way the researchers thought it wasn’t possible. It boils down to human error in how this test was set up. It’s worrying that the researchers underestimated the agent’s abilities or overestimated their ability to properly contain the agent. But the sky isn’t falling just yet.

A positive side aspect is that they didn’t try brush this under the carpet.

If you want something European, I’d throw AirVPN in the mix. I went there and never to Mullvad. And now I’m glad I didn’t and at the same time I’m looking forward to hearing inevitably what corpses my current provider has in the cupboard.

I dislike Proton, which I quit after the CEO praised 47 on his big tech regulation and before they handed the email account of some environmental activist over to the authorities, in France IIRC. They want to be your replacement for Google and keep pushing more services at obscure subscription levels at you. In terms of VPN, they were good though.

They seem to be on the inertia as a strategy train. Most users won’t have heard about this so they’re not in danger of losing them. A few who have won’t abandon ship because it’s a pain. And the rest they seem to tolerate losing. That’s unfortunate, say I who isn’t even their customer. I would have thought they do more but maybe another two weeks of ended subscriptions can lead them to reason and get rid of Daniel.

Album ≠ album. There are certainly ones worthy of listening to them as a whole. But there are plenty of albums that are just utter garbage too. The war on the single by record companies in the 90s produced a number of albums that were at best a couple of okay singles plus 8-10 pure fillers. Name another Chumbawamba song, you can’t without googling.

In a way we are reverting back to the 1950s where the single reigned supreme and albums were an afterthought. Now the single song does better than an album again. Some musicians release every streamlined Spotify curated 2 minute song as a “single.” Since most of it is done digitally only why not?

Dogma is useless.

Fast food is slop anywhere.

I have a feeling it will necessitate a change in all the wall and counter outlets of every coffee shop on the planet though, right? I don’t think you can run 230V through those old connectors, can you?

But that is precisely why I picked it here.

All these plugs were standardized 70 years+ ago when no one imagined one day you’ll be able to buy a Switch from Kazakhstan on something called the internet. In a probably accidental version of regulatory capture, the bean counters at the manufacturers kind of like it that way because they have control over what merchandise goes on sale in what market.

It’s also now cheaper to build 50 different plugs in some factory before we ask the whole world to switch to one type of plug. Picking a standard will also be impossible if everybody gets a vote in the process.

USB is the only hope for truly universal stuff but that won’t do for a kettle.

Do you feel the cartoon was based in reality much? A cat is a mouse’s predator too, yet the mouse lives to see another day again and again. It would be a real golden age of television finale if an owl flew into the sunset with Tom in one talon and Jerry in the other.

You may disagree but have a read through the rules. Attempted murder is enough to ruin somebody’s day. This one falls at the first hurdle. It’s also getting more political as you reply here. Find another outlet for your outrage. Outrage > mildly infuriating.

This will not be the final chapter on VPNs. People in government change - the UK is ushering in the 100th PM in the last decade this week. Somebody is going to scream “think of the children” again and all reason dissipates faster than you can say “haven’t we been here before?” It’s like chat control on the continent. These zombies are eternal.

Nothing mild about that. Wrong community.

How would this be different if the other guys were in charge and you wore a MAGA hat? Wouldn’t the law work the same?

As a caveat, I understand that the GOP presents a greater threat in being vindictive towards those they perceive as not on their side. I don’t mean to diminish that threat. And good luck with the work you are doing. If we take that threat out of the equation, this could just as well be a “TIL FOIA can work” post in general.

The distinction between defensive and offensive weaponry is a bit of political theater. Like the first boots on the ground in Vietnam were “military advisors.” Sure, a missile shield is more defensive in nature but its rockets or drones would not refuse to go on the offensive, if so ordered, on philosophical grounds. A rifle may aid in repelling an attack as well as participate in it. So the premise of your strategy is on shaky ground.