Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
It's not just remote work. All our manufacturing sites use to VPN connections data centres. It would cripple manufacturing on an epic scale if they were instabanned.
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I'd argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Also, what if I just connect to a vps overseas and set my exit point there? Will they ban vps too? This is gonna be so much fun to see from the outside
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I'd argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Feature, not a bug.
They want people back in offices to help landlords and property prices. This way they can say that remote work is not banned and it's just companies choosing not to buy a permit and offer it.
I work from office and i regularly use a vpn at work to connect remotely to devices that are not physically with me. Not to talk about companies that provide remote assistance and use them to connect to their customers devices.
Remote work is just a byproduct of vpns, but not the real reason why you use them at work.
Absolutely not, of course. I'm just hoping they try to enforce this so a shitstorm of proportions only seen in the brexit will ensue.
One thing we must acknowledge to these idiots is how much effort they put on showing the world the consequences of extremely stupid acts so the rest don't have to do it.
I could definitely see myself setting up a Wireguard VPN only allowing connections to a bunch of porn sites here on my home fiber in Sweden. Should make a nice little side profit.
It's something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.
A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.
It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I'm not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian's Firewall?) will take some time.
In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like "This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets."
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
Just to fast-forward this dumb cat-and-mouse thing, the next step is people go back to torrenting their porn and deeper down the rabbit hole of garbage "free" websites skirting the rules.
As always, the UK is useful on the international stage because sometimes you need to be able to point at some idiot trying dumb stuff to explain to people why dumb stuff is dumb.
It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.
Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.
Neoliberal political class implementing fascist surveillance capitalism laws — masquerading as child protection — because they are owned by a fascist oligarchy.
It's probably true that a few anti-porn people exist somewhere in the world. It's certainly true that fascists love adding in new tools to keep the general population from using the internet freely.
I am pretty sure they would consider tor as using a VPN.
Probably they would demand ISPs to run lists of known VPN addresses and if you connect to them, they will forward the information to the anti-terrorism unit and you will get SWATed.
Don't the people in those countries use a proxy to access tor first? probably that means cycling through the proxies regularly as they become known. I have no doubt that it is impossible to prevent truly tech savvy people from access. Also Russia, Iran and China all run state sanctioned hackers, so the governments have a vested interest in allowing these groups to obscure where they are coming from.
But i am not sure how much that transpires to a broader public.
That's what things like snowflake and bridges are for. Because, at least with snowflake, it just looks like a webRTC phone call. But it's actually tor traffic. And snowflake proxies are ephemeral, since you can just run them in your browser and help anyone connect.
I believe China can stop any kind of access at any time, they just choose to allow a certain percentage of folks to get through above a certain bar of sophistication and need.
Come on UK, just skip all the boring parts and make unremovable collars for everyone fitted with GPS, cameras and miniature bombs that can be remotely detonated. After all, that's the only way to make sure nobody is doing bad, very bad illegal stuff and to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, isn't it? Fucking hell, these fucks really are trying to create a bloody dystopia...
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Will the next step be banning VPS then? Because that's what will happen: if you ban VPNs (good luck with that lol), people will just connect to a VPS in a less stupid country and exit from there.
I hope they start looking at TOR too, that should be really fun.
Show me a ban that didn’t came with 10x problems. People have their needs even the filthy ones. Especially the filthy ones. Hence will find a way to fulfill it. If there’s no legal way to do so the demand will create an alternative market for it to match the demand…more trouble on the way if that’s the lane the UK choose
Hey now, that's a lot of animosity for a statement that doesn't do much to make a good point.
The original question was
Show me a ban that didn’t came with 10x problems
I posited a conjecture based guess with some basic reasoning and as i said , it was opinion more than provable fact.
By "worked out" i meant the overall situation is better after the ban, despite the negative consequences.
It seems that was lost on you, but now you know.
So let's address your reasoning, such as it is.
People died from tainted drugs before the ban, probably a lot from tainted drugs of the type in the ban.
Unless you have any evidence those numbers changed significantly after the ban, I'll chalk that up to your opinion.
Not a very reasonable one to my eyes, but such are angry people on the internet.
I was not aware i needed to provide an example of a ban that resulted in everything being completely fixed after the fact (mainly because that's not how the question was worded) but if that was, in fact, the requirement, my bad.
If I'm a monster (in your opinion) because i think the reduction in access to terribly addictive drugs might have overall brought down fatalities and other negative consequences, then i can live with that.
What would be defined as a VPN and even then there are other options to get access to content as if you where in a different country or ways to bypass the age restriction. A lot of companies and governments also use VPN's to get people to work on their servers, so how would the UK function.
It always baffles me that they try shit like that.
Edit: heck proper sex education is a way better solution to reduce unhealthy sex habits
Maybe it and maybe it isn't, but kicking against it trying to change won't help because there is a certain amount of the population who believes that it isn't for control, but it is actually for sex or protecting the children or what not.
If you want to get those people over to change their behaviour, you want to work on compromises or in this case you want to deflect them into fixing something else.
Trust me, I have a lot of right and even some mildly right people around me and with going hard against them you will just confirm their bias.
That sounds a bit like fear mongering from Reform: a VPN is safety 101 when using public networks, and most businesses make use of VPNs to secure their data. They are also a key component if WFH (you use the company VPN).
If Labour are stupid enough to go after VPN usage, I suspect it would guarantee their loss at the next election.
Eh, I dunno. The vast majority have no idea what a VPN is. If a VPN ban benefits Rupert fucking Murdoch then the tabloids will wang on about how they're used by paedophiles and people smugglers and that'll be that.
It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the "child" "violent pornography" etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.
Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.
Yeah that's the point of the license from Ofcom, to approve the endpoint address used for the VPN. Most work places don't use some random IP address but a small pool of known DNS entries for their endpoint. Just because you are using a VPN doesn't mean nobody can see which endpoint you using.
If this comes to anything I'm moving to somewhere in the EU and pursuing citizenship there. This is clearly not about protecting the children anymore (not that it ever was).
Proton, the Geneva-based encrypted email provider founded 11 years ago by three scientist who met at CERN, will freeze its investments in Switzerland, its chief executive Andy Yen told Le Temps on Wed
I saw this news and I guess it’s good that privacy is being discussed somewhat soberly over there in the wake of this investment decision.
Personally I have recently been exiting out of the UK, a much more invasive country, so Switzerland for now does seem like an improvement for me. Norway is further out geographically and has less Mullvad servers, would seem like the less favorable option for me unless the proposed laws actually pass.
The UK government doth protest too much about protecting the kids. It’s obvious that this whole thing is just an attempt to increase the surveillance of the UK population.
For starters, the whole "Progressive" thing is an American concept born out of the American environment (with its very deep religious moralistic strain amongst a large fraction of the population) and does not really applicable to Britain because, at least until recently, they didn't really have regressive tendencies.
Beyond that Labour hasn't been Leftwing since Tony Blair took over in the 80s and started talking about it being New Labour - they're Neoliberals and quite strongly so, so pretty rightwing.
What they did was performative Identity Politics like in the US: theatrics in the Moral space to make them seem different from the other mainstream party, rather than actually having genuine Liberal Principles.
Of late they even ditched that and seem to be trying to outfascist the Fascists.
All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.
Do you know what's smarter and more talented the the UK government?
I started using a VPN after my friends/classmates told me about them in my Sophomore year of HS, mostly to get around the Wifi banning us from accessing certain apps (social media). Now, like all the other dumb kids, I used whatever they recommended, which was some shitty "Free" VPN that was probably stalking my data. But by Senior year, I smartened up and learned about online privacy and got myself a Proton VPN subscription after using the free version for a bit.
So yeah, I could totally believe middle-school and up are using VPNs, cause that's what we literally did.
Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist
Couldn't people just hire a VPS in another country and VPN with that using Wireguard etc, or even use RDP etc to it? Is it even a VPN if you're remotely operating a computer in another country?
WireGuard would be illegal. ISPs would monitor for encrypted traffic streams. All remote workers must now come back to the office. ofcom can see any and all traffic. Your loyalty to the king shall be examined. You choices of media will be scrutinized. The threat of losing your children will be used to force compliance. Welcome to the machine.
Pretty much every single website uses HTTPS these days which means all traffic is encrypted anyway. Instead of a VPN you could use an encrypted proxy that connects over HTTPS. I doubt the UK is just going to completely cut itself off from the rest of the world’s internet (because all it takes is one path out).
I remember in Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (Great read, Free e-book here.) they had an insider at the ISP who just encrypted all the traffic that came through, so it just became the "new normal".
Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.
Refer to other comment. They don't see "VPN traffic", they see encrypted tunnels between two ports to some offshore vps. At best, they see a header saying "openvpn". The article is alluding to the country effectively wanting to crack down on encrypted tunnels (because you cannot discriminate VPNs from them). At best, maybe they're just christofascist idiots.
I don't think it's that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
apparently having a functioning brain isn't a requirement of being an mp
but of course we knew that when she did this in 2019:
On 16 July 2019, Champion stated: "If my party comes out as a remain party rather than trying to find a deal or >rather than trying to exit, I can't support that, it goes against democracy". She said she would rather support a "no-deal Brexit" than remain in the EU, as she believed Labour had to deliver the result of the 2016 referendum.
I’d email my MP to ask why this Labour Government is using the BBC to promote Reform talking points and implementing brain dead Reform policies, but I don’t expect anything other than the blandest party line response.
All this pandering to Reform voters is completely useless, people will still vote for the original rather than a shitty knockoff. Despicable behaviour from Labour.
When encryption is legal, they can't know what is going on between two points. They going to make is so we can only have encryption to nodes they trust?
It is dangerously technologically illiterate to wage war on encryption.
Easy enough to do when it's mega corps. They don't really care about anything but money. If everyone had self hosted services with e2e, be far harder. Encryption is everywhere now.
So they will go after the end points. Which again, is a battle they can't win. All very Cory Doctorow's "Unauthorized Bread".
There will be others too, those are just in my head's cache.
Some how we need to get governments to listen to us serfs instead mega corps and authoritarian police/spooks.
The world they want is not only terrible for digital and political freedom, but competition, thus functioning markets. It's terrible for making developers and makers instead of dumb consumers, which in turn, is terrible for technology and progress.
The Collective Shout Out must feel envious of such power... Think about all what they could ban, you know, for you and your children protection of course.
I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn't even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
To be honest, I've found WireGuard's performance is harmed more by replay attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
What's a reply attack? Do you have people activity MITM-ing your connection? Personally I've found Wireguard performance to be significantly better, especially on spotty mobile Internet
Man in the middle can be part of it. It's just basically recording and sending stuff back. Generally I use WireGuard, but on unhygienic networks, were OpenVPN is warning about possible replay attacks, WireGuard doesn't work as well. Could be something else of course, but I've got one end. It's not constant or always.
Oh replay attacks, that makes a bit more sense. Honestly I've never been on such a poor network to run into that. I don't know your situation, but I'd be doing anything I could to get away from that ISP if they're actively manipulating your traffic
It's doesn't fall over, it just slows down. Or appears to much more than OpenVPN. There could be something else going on, but for what ever the problem was, OpenVPN was coping better and just spitting out errors about a possible replay attack and continuing like nothing was wrong. I've not looked again as OpenVPN is working fine. For everything else, I'm using WireGuard.
It would have been my go to. But they can detect openvpn and other protocols. I would just use a ssh tunnel with squid proxy. The squid wont cache ssh traffic unless you run your own cert and set up the squid that way. It will however seamlessly allow you to connect through a ssh tunnel with one port forward.
I've certainly happily used SSH tunnels --- on Linux it's great in that it's readily available wherever you already have OpenSSH installed --- but one downside of OpenSSH as a general-purpose tool for tunneling is that it is intrinsically TCP and thus forces packet ordering across multiple tunneled connections, which may not be necessary for whatever you're doing and can have performance impact. Part of the reason mosh exists is to deal with that (not for the SSH-as-a-tunneling-protocol case, but rather for the "SSH-as-a-remote-shell" case).
Wireguard is UDP, and OpenVPN can use either TCP or UDP, depending upon how it's configured.
If we were going to move the world to a single "tunneling" protocol, SSH wouldn't be my first choice, even though it's awfully handy as a quick-and-dirty way to tunnel data.
I used putty for tunnels on windows machines. As for mosh I forgot it exist. I use wireguard now. But if they ban VPN it will be harder for them to prove the SSH is being used for the purpose evading their stupid law. The high bandwidth usage could be a lot of things... right?
While in the hospital ten years ago I did get a visit from the IT dept. They didn't have any qos on ssh and I was moving a lot of data through it. They just asked me to limit my high usage to late night.
Just adopt a CCP style social credit system already. Why all of this pussyfooting around being a totalitarian, censorship focused, surveillance state? Just do it. Give the good people of UK a solid reason to be a little bit more French again.
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[4][5][6] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.
People can be banned from airlines but they get banned for the same reasons they do in the US, like getting drunk on the plane and punching someone. Or like how the US bans people who owe child support from getting a passport, judges in China are allowed to ban people with unpaid child support or big enough unpaid fines from state owned airlines until they pay.
As an American, it always made me laugh when we made fun of China's "Social Credit Score" when we literally have one already that determines whether we can buy houses/cars/etc lol
Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements, which has riled up a lot of right-wing politicians here. The reason for these protests is that the previous (Conservative) government had been paying exorbitant amounts of money to house asylum seekers in hotels, effectively lining the pockets of hotel chain executives - all while we deal with a massive housing and cost of living crisis.
This was meant to be a measure to give asylum seekers temporary accommodation which was put in place at the start of COVID, but has been government policy since 2020 with no end in sight.
Labour have also done jack-shit to resolve our skyrocketed (legal) immigration levels since they got into power, except for scrapping the Rwanda Deal which would have deported any illegal migrants to a third country for processing (which as the name obviously suggests, is the East African state of Rwanda.)
Britain is now a country which you can enter illegally without ID, but need photo ID to watch a protest against people entering without ID.
Let that sink in.
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they've handled this legislation, that they've straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
If Labour don't get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election...
It would have been smarter for the UK to mandate that every ISP must provide a family filter for free as part of their service. Something that is optional and can be turned on or off by the account holder but allows parents to set filters (and curfews) if they want. They could even require that ISPs require new signups to affirm if they want it on or off by default so people with families are more likely to start with it enabled.
The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)
SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.
Hopefully the US and UK both will recognize why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.
The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.
They know. The "think of the children" angle is just cover to enrage the tabloid readers and to be used as a straw man against anyone criticisng the law ("you're a pedophile"). The real purpose is "let's enumerate the IDs of everyone who uses the internet for anything we don't like" and "let's censor anything we don't like starting with LGBTQ content"
Crazy because every (isp provided) router I have used has these options. They probably aren't 100% correct all the time, but it would be good enough for children (even though you shouldn't rely soley on filters to replace watching your kid).
Enterprises will love that. A perfect excuse to end wfh. However, this will cripple business travelers. I'm sure there'll be some exception for corporations where they can exercise maximum control over their employees while still being allowed to generate capital.
Ive got a few UK coworkers that will be out of the job if anything disables VPNs. They voted for that mess now they can sleep in their 1/3 salary local jobs too.
They couldn't switch off VPNs for businesses. I work in a hospital and we use VPNs to create secure tunnels to other third party health care companies as well as NHS adjacent health services amongst other things. This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things. This would cripple our service and go against NHS england and government requirements for the secure transfer and sharing of data.
This would have to be public VPNs only. Despite the fact that it would be complete bullshit either way.
If they outlaw VPNs then all internet-connected businesses will flee and everyone will just move to the dark net. Then you’ve got a whole other problem.
Damn near every business uses VPN technology. They literally cannot exist in the modern world without it. It would be incredibly expensive and impractical to do without.
VPNs are one of the core security measures of all large companies.
VPNs aren't just a "hide your IP" tool, they're a way of giving someone access to an organisation's internal network. Sensitive servers such as databases, wikis, scheduling tools etc don't have publicly exposed IPs, they only have connections that are accessible from inside that VPN. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_…
Not only that, but they are crucial for network security. VPNs allow all network traffic (with a few necessary exceptions) to be routed through the company's network and benefit from its security measures, mainly monitoring traffic for suspicious and malicious behaviour. Without it, finding compromised PCs is much harder and enforcing company policies regarding web use would be impossible outside the office.
it's both hilarious and sad how this is coming from a "please think of the children!!" perspective meanwhile gender affirming care for trans kids got banned pretty recently
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.”
When I was a kid, Reddit and general public Internet access weren't things, but I sure managed to get my hands on pornography. I'm pretty confident that even entirely killing Internet access isn't going to stop kids who want to get ahold of porn from getting ahold of it.
They can come and pry TOR from my cold dead hands lmfao
this law can eat shit. i ain't gonna dox myself and feed my personal info to companies. maybe they should take this as a hint that most people care about their privacy
if you don't want kids seeing NSFW stuff be an actual parent and don't raise your kids on the internet??
Yeah I'm Australia we have just decided to ban all social media for people under 16, i think it's great honestly because screw from insta etc but I don't think it's the government ls job to prevent kids from using social media.
I really think it's a way to force adults to register their id to accounts not about protecting kids.
Parents should monitor what their kids are doing not the government
I agree that it should primarily be a parents responsibility to keep kids off social media. But the big problem with social media is that a large proportion of young children don't want to be on social media and recognise the detrimental impact it has on them, but the fear of missing out or being excluded is what keeps them on it. it then becomes a collective action problem, to get them off it you need to get a lot of their peers off it as well. There are movements where groups of parents try to do this, but reaching the critical mass necessary to do it is difficult.
Hopefully the ban keeps a large number off to reduce the pressure on kids to be on it and at the same time the parents can do their bit as well.
Parents should monitor what their kids are doing not the government
While I agree wholeheartedly with this, it's often not that easy.
Back in the days of 28.8 modems my parents found my little bro's downloaded porn stash. It was in a Zip disk in his underwear drawer. They then locked down both of our AOL accounts so we couldn't see that stuff.
I thought this was bullshit because I kept my Zip disk full of porn next to all the other ones and labeled it "Homework." Why should I get punished if I didn't get caught?
So I downloaded a keylogger, stole my dad's password, and unlocked my account and continued to download porn.
However, I don't think government regulation would have worked in my case.
Someone should start a bussiness near the border of Republic of Ireland and get two antennas pointed at each other across the border, with the RoI side having connected to the free internet, then the UK Northern Ireland side connected to the Intra-net. You pay a "Club Membership Fee" to get access to the proxy network.
Its not a VPN, its a Nerd Techie Club, just with a free proxy service as part of the club membership 😉
Possible? Yes. Probable? No. LTE would work wonderfully for such usecase, but the firmware to it is never shared. Wifi would work theoretically, but the distance would get in a way. Bandwidth would go down all the way to a rounding error.
just do what the chinese do to get around thier great wall. use proxies and anti-detect browsers, its the next step after VPN.. you might want to look around how to set these up.
Proxy is a step below VPN since it doesn't tunnelise data.
Anti-detect browsers. Do you mean Tor? It's a decent solution, albeit the slowest one.
What people use to bypass the great Chinese firewall is VPN with VLESS protocols. Unlike usual VPN protocols, those are specifically made to bypass censorship.
I'm looking forward to the next UK election where the headline will be: Labour has lost the election in a landslide that left them with dozens of votes total
Every single person who didn't think this would affect them who watches porn in any capacity is very likely highly pissed off and will continue to be for as long as this draconian bullshit is enabled.
I don't think it's even possible to get rid of VPNs without outright banning encryption. If I set up a VPN that uses an obscure port and the traffic is encrypted, how are they going to know it's even a VPN?
They're going to know it's VPN fairly easily because it's fairly obvious what you're doing when all or most of your traffic is encrypted and is directed at one or two addresses. Even more obvious if those one or two addresses happen to belong to known VPN or VPS providers or something.
The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:
Labour rules out VPN ban in UK but issues warning to UK households
Labour won't ban the use of Virtual Private Networks
And the story begins:
Labour has ruled out a possible VPN ban after reports thousands of UK households were at risk following the Online Safety Act kicking in under the government. Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is "not considering a VPN ban" - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.
Most conventional VPNs, e.g. OpenVPN, WireGuard, AnyConnect, PPTP/L2TP, IKEv2/IPsec, etc., actually don't work in China. Technology-wise GFW is quite sophisticated and conventional VPNs are not designed for censorship circumvention anyway.
You'll have to use things like Shadowsocks or V2Ray, which is out of the reach of most people.
This makes me feel like they were in a bind here. The so called "online safety bill" was a tory concoction that took years to pass through the courts because of how invasive it is and how anyone could easily bypass it.
If labour want to stop it, they'll be accused of not wanting to protect children.
Whatever anyone thinks of labour, I'd ask people to ask themselves, if you were in that position, what option do they have other than to let it play out as the spectacular failure it was always going to be and making sure everyone knows who's fault that was afterwards?
Picture this: it’s January 19th, 2038, at exactly 03:14:07 UTC. Somewhere in a data center, a Unix system quietly ticks over its internal clock counter one more time. But instead of moving fo…
I don’t understand why people always say that. Pentium Pro could handle 64 GB even though it was a 32 bit CPU. It had a 36 bit address bus. Later models are the same.
People say it because it was a Windows limitation, not a computing limitation. Windows Server had support for more, but for consumers, it wasn't easily doable. I believe there's modern workarounds though. The real limit is how much memory a single application can address at any given time.
What does a 64-bit system and 4GB RAM have to do with using 64bit timestamps?
32bit systems can use 64bit values without issue. In fact, even an 8bit system can handle 256bit values or even longer ones without issue.
The bittiness of a CPU and its address space have nothing to do with the length of usable data unless you end up with data longer than the RAM volume (and even then there's swap).
There is also the fact that during Y2K, we didn’t have as much reliance on computers.
And we still shouldn't.
Uniting the reliance upon long-range electric connectivity (radio, PSTN - but that now depends on computers too), the reliance upon computers (like mainframes), the reliance upon microcontrollers, the reliance upon personal computers (like Amiga 500), the reliance upon fast encryption helped by computers, the reliance upon computers used for mining cryptocoins or some beefy LLMs, the reliance upon computers capable of running Elite Dangerous, and the reliance upon computers capable of running devops clusters with hundreds of containers, - it's wrong, these are all different.
An analog PSTN switching station shouldn't care about dates. A transceiver generally shouldn't too. A microcontroller doesn't care which year it is, generally.
With an Amiga 500 one can find solutions, and it's not too bad if you don't.
The rest is honestly too architecturally fragile anyway and shouldn't be relied upon as some perpetual service.
I was at Pepsi for Y2K. In 98, we started with MSMail, W95, and Netware2. We had to also replace all 40k desktops. We worked like dogs for those 2 years and only barely had everything ready in time. Without that work, we would not have been able to continue any business operations. Nothing about it was overhyped.
It only depends whether the app and its OS/kernel interface use a 32-bit value to store the time information.
32-bit architecture or OS has nothing to do with this bug, for example 16-bit architectures must've used 32-bit time, too (otherwise they'd be able to only count up to 32-65 seconds).
It's a problem with the internal represensation of a C/C++ type alias called time_t, mostly. That's the thing that holds the number of elapsed seconds since midnight on Jan. 1, 1970, which is the most common low-level representation of date and time on computers. In theory, time_t could point to a 32-bit type even on a 64-bit system, but I don't think anyone's actually dumb enough to do that. It affects more than C/C++ code because most programming languages end up calling C libraries once you go down enough levels.
In other words, there's no way you can tell whether a given application is affected or not unless you're aware of the code details, regardless of the bitness of the program and the processor it's running on.
Y2K wasn’t overhyped. It was just successfully planned for. This reeks of the paradox of IT. “Everything is broken, what do you even do” vs “nothing is broken, what do you even do?”
Linux kernel has had support for 64 bit time for years. On Debian, packages for the upcoming release were updated to 64 bit time earlier this year. I'm fairly sure the other distributions have done or are doing the same. So basically you now have 2 years to upgrade your OS and to pester the vendors of commercial software to do the same.
Like someone else said, it will be 2 very busy years, but we can survive this.
Yeah it only felt like it wasn’t a big deal because it became a big deal early enough for there to be plans made. And because good people doing hard work to prevent a problem wasn’t newsworthy after the fact.
It's mostly just 2 or 3 MAGA zealots trying to pretend to be a, "disinterested third-party denizen that doesn't believe the mainstream, so they can't make a solid judgment on Trump or his actions until they have a dinner conversation with him in private."
Fun fact! I'm studying for my amateur radio technician license and learned that ham came from calling amateur telegraph operators' sloppy work 'ham-fisted'. The amateur radio community decided to lean into it, and thus the ham radio operator was born
Fun fact! I'm studying for my amateur radio technician license and learned that ham came from calling amateur telegraph operators' sloppy work 'ham-fisted'. The amateur radio community decided to lean into it, and thus the ham radio operator was born
I'll assume FCC Technician license; it's a fun hobby. I have had a General license since the 1990s when the FCC still required a proficiency in morris code. At a cost of $35 to renew and the ability to have a cellphone alternative while traveling long distance by car, it's worth keeping.
Have fun, find your Ham niche and enjoy it for the rest of your life!
That's the one, and thanks! My son and I got into Meshtastic as a hobby, and I guess ham radio was the next logical direction for our interest. It's fun learning the science behind how it works.
The lower house of the Russian parliament approved legislation imposing fines on people searching online for content that the authorities deem "extremist." Protesters are calling the bill "something out of 1984."
Well I mean if Putin wants you gone he doesn't need a rule to permit it, but his sort of law is about pushing that oppressive power down to lower levels of the chain. You dont need to catch the attention of anyone important, you can be oppressed by an anonymous low level clerk on a power trip.
Russia's Ministry of Justice's list of extremist materials spans more than 500 pages and contains over 5,000 entries. These include songs that praise Ukraine and blog posts by the feminist rock band Pussy Riot.
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Come previsto, il kernel Linux 6.16 è stato promosso a stabile. Linux 6.16 ora accoglie il mondo con diversi miglioramenti delle prestazioni, il supporto per i driver GPU open source NVIDIA Hopper e Blackwell in Nouveau, la preparazione per Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) e molti altri interessanti miglioramenti.
On June 4, during a meeting with government officials, Vladimir Putin stated that all public services must be moved to the national messenger app called Max
If Greece was doing what Israel is doing and my fellow Greek electors were responsible for electing for 20 years in free and fair elections the government that does it AND they were polling the government coalition responsible for doing it first for the next election AND in opinion polls overwhelmingly supported the genocide and I was one of the few brave souls doing the protesting, not only would I be ok with the conflation, I would be encouraging.
Holding autocracies to account is easy: send the dictator to the Hague.
Holding democracies (even flawed ones like Israel's) to account is harder.
That's what I've been saying this whole time! Watch people find a reason for racism :/ genocide is abhorrent, but can we really say we should hold everyone accountable by association?
Interact with real people from Israel and suddenly there's a lot more to it than "Israeli bad"
I remember from history class that a boat of Jewish refugees was turned away from several ports during WW2. Wild to have lived long enough to see that reason completely flip and have a decadent cruise turned away for supporting genocide.
Well, yeah. But the Israeli population is 75% Jewish and their leadership even more so. I'm holding my neighbor responsible for genocide, I'm holding Israel responsible for genocide. A critique of Israel is not an attack on Jews.
Israel exists because there wasn't anywhere in the world that would grant Jews asylum in WW2. Rejecting boatloads of Jews is continuing the strong case for the need for a Jewish state.
And you can't call Jews living in Israel "colonists" as if they can "go back to Europe" now. They can't leave Israel now,
On one hand there's a large number of people that want to "wipe Israel off the map" and on the other hand we have European countries not allowing Jews to enter. So what is the meaning behind "wipe Israel off the map" now?
I used to think a Jewish state wasn't necessary, though I didn't have a problem with there being one. I figured we'd never go back to a to the dark times of the past. But now I'm absolutely convinced that a Jewish state is 100% necessary. So... congratulations, protesters?
I'm 70 years old and have always supported Israel until now, but I am starting to believe that the world would be better off without Israel. They function with a complete absence of honor and humanity, and completely lack the ability to compromise fairly. Israel is an irritant to a peaceful world.
The thing is with dog whistles is that the people that use them think they're being clever and fooling everyone. But it doesn't really fool anyone, and those that use the dog whistles pretend to be offended when you start talking about the subject they're really talking about.
Seen it hundreds of times with the MAGAs and y'all are no different from them.
We're in a thread under an article celebrating how Israelis aren't welcome in other countries.
So that indicates eliminating Israel isn't just about ethnically cleansing Jews from the area, since you don't want there to be anywhere else for them to go. So what does "eliminating Israel" mean now?
Who said eliminating Israel required ethnically cleansing Jews? There were jewish people living in Palestine before Israel, there will be Jewish people living in Palestine after Israel.
Who cares about what you think, you're a genocide denialist. There's zero point in wasting time talking with pedophiles about the merits of fucking kids.
Israelis are very welcome to turn themself in to international justice and get trialed for their war crimes.
They are called colonists because they are litterly colonizing land in occupied territories. The government consists of parties that openly call for this.
Refugee ships also still get intercepted and turned away from various countries. It is nice seeing the violent bigots turned away for a change, though.
I hear this a lot, but I don't think it's the gotcha people claim it is. Most genocide in the modern day tries to aim for economic strangling by eliminating/stealing what few opportunities exist for some populations. See, for instance, the IDF's efforts to starve Gaza rather than shoot every single Palestinian. Or fascist America's efforts to deny jobs (even the ones that are not in competition) to disabled or minorities.
I don't see it as "I'ma move and get rich", I see it as "I'ma move and not starve on the street".
That's sadly not true, at least in Europe: since most people cannot enter legally, they have to resort to illegal way, and smuggler know this, and strangle them with bribes, extra fees etc. Most "trips" to enter through Italy for example for this reason cost thousands of dollars, not something a poverty stricken family can afford. Most economic migrants are from middle class in their own countries, who are attracted by the false promises of TV shows about how everyone in Europe or other countries depict themselves, but again, are decently well of on their own countries. Source for prices: International migration and illegal costs: Evidence from Africa-to-Europe smuggling routes - ScienceDirect share.google/YgcY5iFUeuZLvPmPH
For the US, on the other hand, since you have a river vs a desert + sea, can be a lot cheaper
I mean, Euromaidan was a result of the Ukrainian people being frustrated with the rampant corruption. I think it’s likely many are upset. I don’t even see a justification for the need to put these departments more closely under the control of the executive in this article.
I don’t even see a justification for the need to put these departments more closely under the control of the executive
False corruption charges are frequently used by insurgencies and foreign influence operations to undermine legitimate governance. I'm not saying it is or isn't a legitimate concern in this case but, if it were, we definitely wouldn't know the exact reasons. Given Russia's history of using foreign influence as a weapon of war and, in particular, their history of doing so in Ukraine, I can definitely understand the concern.
Of course real corruption can't go unanswered because of the possibility of trumped up charges. It's a tricky bit of business to get right.
very. there's mass gatherings in Lviv and Kyiv even with the elevated risk of death by shahed. Ukrainians ars making it clear: they genuinely will fight to the death for their freedom. using one authoritarian to justify another authoritarian will not be allowed.
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Did not read the article but of course they did. Fear not our government will do nothing to remedy the situation, wouldn't want to upset those in real power.
Bummer. I'll hop on a redeye Amtrak train tonight and bark at the moon in his honor. Silliness aside, he always seemed like a genuine good guy. Hope he's able to find peace and his family solace in the kind words that will be spoke of him in the coming days. If nothing else I'll always really enjoy his hits when they come up in my playlists.
He was the guest and performer at a final concert just weeks ago. Anyone connected to the metal scene in any way knew about it. They raised almost 200 million for charities.
It already was the metal concert of the decade, now with his passing just weeks after, this will be remembered as a once in a century event in the metal world, how I wish I could have been there !
Lost any ounce of respect I might have had left for him (which really wasn't much) and his wife when they started pushing Genocide propaganda for Israel.
Nothing says "rock and roll" like supporting Israels right to genocide I guess.
True rock and roll would be pissing on his grave. Maybe Kneecap can do the honors.
Sharon Osbourne denied a deepfake video of Ozzy Osbourne suggesting he was going to die soon and also disputed her mother's statements about assisted suicide.
I woke up with a bad feeling. I knew exactly one thing. And it reminded me of December 26th 2015. Remember the year of death that was 2016? Celebrities were dropping like flies and our entire childhoods' were going into graveyards?
That started December 2015, the day after Christmas. That was the day that Lemmy of Motorhead died. His death ripped a hole in the universe. Two weeks later David Bowie died. And after that famous people kept dying for a year. Reality TV star Donald Trump would be elected into office by people that kept saying celebrities had no role in politics. 2016 was the first year of the world we know today. And trying to describe the world before 2015 to someone who never witnessed life before that would become difficult.
I loved Black Sabbath. I didn't care for Ozzy Osbourne. I didn't care for a Black Sabbath without Ozzy. It was that combination of the two that I liked. I used to tell people this and they would shrug and then I would tell people this after the Osbornes show came out and people would react the same way as when I told them I didn't like cake. It meant I wasn't human. Who can trust somebody who doesn't like cake or like Ozzy Osbourne?
But I had to be honest with myself and them. I didn't like Ozzy Osbourne and no amount of crazy antics was going to solve that.
But this morning I woke up knowing exactly one thing. Ozzy Osbourne was dead. He can't create chaos with his death like Lemmy did because the chaos is already here. But maybe he can fix it. Maybe Ozzy's death well mend the hole in reality. This agent of chaos, with his passing, might be able to restore sanity. A sacrifice. For Satan. Who so loved the world he gave his only avatar so that everyone, believer or not, could have peace everlasting. We should know in two weeks if he is the herald of a brighter new future.
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WOW. Ozzy is a Rock legend. The world will not be the same without him. People can say what they want about him, but he was an artist. He and Black Sabbath were the epitome of Rock & Roll.
Honestly, that he lived this long, given his drugs and party lifestyle for many years, is pretty impressive. Now Keith Richards, on the other hand, will likely live to be 200 years old just because he's indestructible.
I got to see Ozzy once at Ozzfest. I'm glad for that.
Police in Tokyo say they have found that English proficiency test examinees involved in suspected group cheating had been given miniature earphones and other devices prior to the test.
They suspect that there may be other collaborators in Japan in addition to a Chinese national arrested in relation to cheating on the Test of English for International Communication, or TOEIC. ……
They say they have learned that the examinees in question had been given earphones measuring 3 millimeters across, a pendant-type repeater and a video guide in advance. ……
Those are very tiny earphones (you can see one in the video around 0:45). I wonder if there are any electronics inside or if they are just tiny magnet balls driven by the pedant repeaters.
Music sharing platform Bandwagon adds the ability for artists to sell albums, create paid channels for exclusive content, and announces upcoming premium subscription tier for artists
@Bonfire Social is getting close to release, and team already working on other features as well
some good articles on what its like to be a moderator, and the impact of LLMs on small communities on the fediverse
Bandwagon is a fediverse platform for artists to share their music, similar to platforms like Bandcamp. Artists can now use Bandwagon to sell their music albums with the latest update. Bandwagon has added support for Stripe, and does not charge a payment fee for albums sold via the platform. Selling albums via Bandwagon will not be completely free however: once Bandwagon Premier launches at the end of the year, selling albums will only be available for this premium subscription tier of $10/month. Bandwagon promises the platform will always be available for free for artists to upload and share their albums. Another new feature for Bandwagon is Circles, which allows users to share content with specific people. When you add accounts to a circle, you can create content that will only be visible to people within that circle, similar to how Bonfire’s boundaries system works. What is different about Bandwagon’s circles is that access to a circle can be put behind a paywall, where people can pay a monthly subscription fee for continued inclusion in that circle and to see exclusive content by the artist.
The upcoming premium subscription will give paying members the ability to sell albums, sell access to circles/memberships, and get higher quality streaming. Some further thoughts:
With circles, Bandwagon is placing itself in competition with Patreon. It is not the first project to try to put fediverse content behind a paywall: sub.club tried to make this work last year and had to shut down due to a limited uptake. Sub.club focused on microblogging and Mastodon, will targeting the music sector make a difference for Bandwagon?
Platforms on the fediverse has historically struggled with becoming financially sustainable, with most relying on donations, grants and volunteer labour. Bandwagon has a clear story on how it plans to become a financially sustainable platform. The big question is: can they pull it off?
One of the major challenges in building a new social network is in getting critical mass on the community size to made sure there is enough interesting content to keep users interested in visiting. Projects like Radio Free Fedi show that the fediverse has a dedicated community of musicians and other artists on the fediverse. Bandwagon also already has over 200 artists who are sharing their music on the platform. It indicates that music and artists might be a worthwhile direction to look for when building critical mass in communities.
How much will the connection to the fediverse matter for artists on Bandwagon? Bandwagon is open-source and encourages self-hosting, and that it uses ActivityPub provides clear value for creating a network of interoperable Bandwagon servers. But will people use the native connections with the rest of the fediverse as well? For artists, having a wider reach is beneficial, especially if they are selling albums. But will people use the interoperability of microblogging platforms like Mastodon to follow artists on Bandcamp, or will these interoperable networks stay mostly separate in practice?
Bonfire is an upcoming modular social networking platofrm that the team is working on getting ready for an official release. In the launch version (‘Bonfire Social’) the platform focuses on features that are more familiar to microblogging and long-form writing, but the platform is highly extendable and customisable: Bonfire is also experimenting with adding geodata and Mosaic, a bridge to connect other datasets to the platform. Bonfire also reported that they have their first organisation that will build their community on Bonfire: CrowdInBlue is a platform that wants to “connect water projects with funding sources”, and they will build this platform using Bonfire.
The Links
“The upside is that moderation gives me some control. Watching a fascist autocracy unfold before your eyes is terrifying. Everything is collapsing on a massive scale in myriad ways. It’s enough to make a person feel helpless. While it’s not monumental, I do get to curb some of that fascism through moderation. I get to push buttons with labels that read “delete post” and “suspend.” When some ignorant sociopath is harassing people, I get to wave a magic wand and make them disappear. At least from our corner of Mastodon. That’s empowering. And meaningful. It does make a difference because I get to silence them. I can’t begin to describe how good that feels. Just a little tiny bit of justice.”
An excellent writeup of what it’s like to be a moderator for Mastodon. It explains what the day-to-day experience of being a moderator on Mastodon is like, and what some of the main challenges are, such as dealing with targeted harassment and getting exposed to traumatic content. The quote above highlights why people put up with these challenges, and indicates the value of a social network that gives people agency.
“I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community. I do not know how to determine whether someone’s post about their new bicycle is genuine enthusiasm or automated astroturf. I don’t know how to foster trust and genuine interaction in a world of widespread text and image synthesis—in a world where, as one friend related this week, newbies can ask an LLM for advice on exploring their kinks, and the machine tells them to try solo breath play. In this world I think woof.group, and many forums like it, will collapse.“
A worrying account of how LLMs make the current systems of keeping spam out of closed social networks unfeasible. There are communities who need some form of anonymity of their members to function, such as the queer kink community woof.group. These communities ask for some form of applications by new members. The ability of LLMs to cheaply generate bullshit on a grand scale is being used spammers to join these private communities and use it for spam. There is a clear need for new ways to build and maintain communities while keeping spammers out, and it is currently unclear how such a system would look like.
“My goals now are more modest: planting seeds in people’s minds that another way to interact online is possible. And when people ARE READY and willing, help them set up an account on the Fediverse software best suited for their needs, helping them out and acclimatizing them to the culture of this place.“
Elena Rossini writes about how her thoughts on the fediverse and growth have shifted, and her plans for the next year of her blog. It echoes a trend I wrote recently about as well: the previous conceptualisation of growth for the new social networks does not hold up anymore, and we need new stories on how these networks can be used to build new communication structures.
Kim caught up with Andy, Mastodon's new comms lead, for a chat about the Fediverse's poster child. Find out more about the future of the project, how they feel about Bluesky, and how you can get involved.
Bandwagon Premier launches at the end of the year, selling albums will only be available for this premium subscription tier of $10/month.
This is kinda stupid? I don't see anyone wanting to use this. If you don't sell anything, you still have to pay. Also, as time passes, your older releases are sold less. If you don't release anything new in a while, it makes little sense to keep being subscribed until your next release. Fees are way better, especially for small / little known artists. I think it makes more sense to host some free stuff here for advertisement, and then post a link to your Bandcamp in your profile to let people buy there, because their model is better.
Yeah... I'm not sure that's a good monetization model... I feel like even the standard taking a small cut of every transaction is a better idea than that :/
It feels really overly punishing for small artists while being very reasonable for established larger artists, which sucks
Nearly half of Chin State’s population has been displaced since the military coup, according to a new report by the Institute of Chin Affairs (ICA), released on 16 July.
Since May, more than 1,000 people have died while seeking food from the centres and other humanitarian convoys, according to the UN.
Mahmoud Alareer, a 27-year-old living in a tent in western Gaza City, says the opening time announcements for the aid site he uses – Wadi Gaza – have become useless, because of the distance from where he is living. Instead, he travels to the edges of the site in the middle of the night and gambles on it opening at 2am, as it has on every visit so far.
First he climbs on to the back of a truck for the long ride south from Gaza City through the militarised Netzarim corridor. Then he waits in the dark until Israeli forces allow him to enter. “You get there and you slowly, slowly advance,” he says. “You always know that it could be you who gets shot, or it might be someone next to you.”
Alareer says chaos always ensues when the aid point opens, as people start running towards the packages, which are left in the middle of the distribution zone. People trip over craters and tangled wires.
Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, says night-time distributions are particularly dangerous because so many roads in southern Gaza have been made unrecognisable by Israeli bombing, making it hard for Palestinians to stick to routes designated by GHF.
Zabalgogeazkoa is scathing about the GHF system. “This is not humanitarian aid,” he says. “We can only think that it was designed to cause damage to the people seeking aid.”
Hundreds of people have died while seeking food since delivery was taken over by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in May. But Palestinians facing extreme hunger have no choice but to take the risk
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after Donald Trump threatened to hold up a deal for a new football stadium in the nation’s capital if the Washington Commanders did not go back to the name Redskins, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president’s comments were not a joke.
“The president was serious,” Leavitt told reporters Monday while answering questions on the White House driveway. “Sports is one of the many passions of this president and he wants to see the name of that team changed.”
Asked why he’s getting involved, Leavitt called Trump a “nontraditional president” and said sports fans are behind him on this.
“I think you’ve seen the president gets involved in a lot of things that most presidents have not,” Leavitt said. “He’s a nontraditional president. He likes to see results on behalf of the American people and, if you actually poll this issue with sports fans across the country, and even in this city, people actually do support the president’s position on this and the name change.”
"President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name-our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not nonsense," Trump wrote in an October 2013 post on X (formerly Twitter).
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Hundreds of students protested Tuesday near the site of the crash of a Bangladesh air force training jet into a school in the nation’s capital, demanding accountability, compensation for victims’ families and the halt of training flights.
The ongoing unrest over Monday’s crash shut down traffic in parts of Dhaka, a city still recovering from last year’s student uprising that ousted the prime minister as the interim government seeks to restore order and organize elections next year. Some students entered the country’s administrative headquarters and were dispersed with tear gas and stun grenades.
The death toll from the crash rose to 31, including at least 25 students, a teacher who died from burns she sustained while helping others escape the two-story building, and the pilot on his first solo flight. Officials said 171 people, mostly students at Milestone School and College and many with burns, were rescued.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Police in Jamaica say they have filled five men suspected of plotting to kill someone as the department on the Caribbean island comes under fire for a surge in fatal shootings.
Authorities said in a statement late Monday that police were investigating an alleged murder plot that led officers to the location where the men were shot. The shootings occurred Monday afternoon in St. Andrew parish, where the capital, Kingston, is located.
“Officers came under heavy gunfire and responded to the threat to their lives,” police said.
Authorities noted that no officers were injured, and that they were looking for a sixth man nicknamed “Bloodstain” who escaped.
Police said that they reported the killings to Jamaica’s Independent Commission of Investigations, a government agency created in 2010 to investigate complaints against Jamaica’s police, military and corrections officers.
Mali’s armed forces and the allied Russia-backed Wagner Group have committed dozens of summary executions and enforced disappearances of ethnic Fulani men since January 2025.
Sixteen-year-old Vladislav builds UAVs that the Russian military uses for testing electronic warfare systems. Sasha, 13, teaches soldiers how to pilot drones and develops equipment for troops at the frontline.
Sending in troops without proper equipment, needing to change recruitment policy, attacking the enemies homefront (civilians), children making weapons on the assembly line. Their special military operation looks a bit like major power about to lose WW2.
The United States on Tuesday announced it has left UNESCO, saying the UN cultural and education agency, best known for establishing world heritage sites, is biased against Israel and promotes "divisive" causes.
Thats the plan, yes. Trump has been wanting to edit the poem on the statue of liberty's plaque for years and theres a bill in congress now to carve his face on Mt Rushmore. He's also renaming the Kennedy center to be the "first lady melania trump opera house", and renaming mt denali in Alaska.
The USA don't have a Ministry of Education, their country has barely any history to teach, and they deny climate change and vaccines effectiveness. They elected a pedophile and a convicted felon as president of their country, which has the largest military budget and the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Sure, leave UNESCO, leave everything except Israel, both are in the same class of State.
"UNESCO's decision to admit the 'State of Palestine' as a member state is highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce said
"UNESCO's decision to admit the 'State of Palestine' as a member state is highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce said
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In 2025, USAID cut funding for a rainwater harvesting initiative designed to improve water access at cyclone evacuation centers in one of the country’s most remote, drought-prone provinces, said Vomboe Shem, climate lead for Save the Children Vanuatu. The materials had already been shipped and distributed, but the project was halted.
Someone told me that “the global elites” wanted to chase a policy of reducing the worlds population (vaccines came up as one way) as part of environmental policies and that was why they needed to support Trump (neither of us has any material attachment to the USA, naturally).
It’s ironic, because that’s actually what Trump is doing. painfully ironic, as people are being hurt and killed by the policies. Not to say that a different president wouldn’t move in their own interest.
Makes no sense on the face of it. Depopulation causes economic depression. Guess you could say they were reaching for environmental action, and fewer bodies would be the main fix, but if they're such environmentalists there are easier ways to fix this shit if you're rich and powerful.
For more than three years in Mali, Wagner mercenaries have detained and tortured civilians in secret prisons located in military bases, according to Forbidden Stories’ investigation.
Is this supposed to sway eco conscious genocide supporters? "Think of the environmental harms!" Rather than focusing on the immediate horrors currently being inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian population
Is this supposed to sway eco conscious genocide supporters?
This is not the way I understood this article. It seems to me it is one more argument for the case of continuous ethnic cleansing for so many decades.
If we agree that
most frequently, however, the aim of ethnic cleansing is to expel the despised ethnic group through either indirect coercion or direct force, and to ensure that return is impossible,
then by bombing all buildings, homes and infrastructure, they force people to go somewhere else and in the same time restrict them from coming back, since there is nothing to come back to.
So in this study, they actually measure the not coming back for decades part
At this point, clearing it and re-building will have to happen regardless of the outcome of the genocide, so what point are they trying to make here? The only green choice is to leave Gaza a destroyed wasteland?
It needs to be cleared, re-built, and returned to the Palestinians. Ideally funded by the Israelis.
The point of this study, to my understanding, is to calculates some of the aftermath of this ongoing genocide, concerning debris, carbon emissions, time frames, and implications for rebuilding. No?
Well, sure, recovery from incredible devastation will take decades and the energy required to clear and replace all the structures will not be environmentally friendly, that should all be obvious to anyone who knows anything about construction projects:
"To create Portland cement, limestone undergoes a calcination process, which releases large amounts of CO2 from the chemical reaction. This is the concrete industry’s dirtiest activity, releasing up to 50 per cent of the cement industry’s carbon emissions.
Additionally, to transform raw materials into clinker, cement's intermediate product, large amounts of energy are required to heat, mix and cool the ingredients in giant kilns.
It is estimated that, in traditional kilns, one tonne of cement produces one tonne of carbon dioxide, although modernised factories have found ways to reduce these emissions.
Water Use
Cement creation is also highly water intensive, particularly during cooling after materials are baked at extremely high temperatures.
Nature Magazine estimates the concrete industry is responsible for nine per cent of all water withdrawals from the sector. Approximately 16.6 km squared of water is used annually for concrete production, and this figure is expected to soar as the demand for concrete continues to rise."
So, again, what are they trying to argue here? The only environmentally responsible option is to leave Gaza destroyed?
So, again, what are they trying to argue here? The only environmentally responsible option is to leave Gaza destroyed?
From the study itself (4. Discussion & 5. Concluding remarks), this is not what I got. On the contrary, it seems to me like they try to make some calculations/estimations/evaluations so that this is something that takes place.
Lawmakers voted on Tuesday in favour of legislation that would, in effect, eliminate the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and its partner organisation the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo), according to four lawmakers and officials familiar who spoke with the Financial Times during the vote.
The move to bring Nabu under executive control is the latest in a series of manoeuvres against pro-reform activists and anti-corruption campaigners that have prompted warnings of creeping authoritarianism in the president’s wartime administration, raising concerns among Ukraine’s western allies.
Keep in mind that this is positive for foreign business interests like the ones that would get to mine those minerals, or foreign Big Ag that's buying up farmland. All of those would have easier time to acquire more of those resources for cheaper and extract higher profits, offloading more negative externalities on the majority of Ukranians.
Also accession to the EU would require reforms in the opposite direction from this. The vested interests making these changes are making Ukraine's EU prospects more difficult.
Amazing idea, but if the wiring in that second picture is anywhere near commonplace, you're going to want to put a bit more budget into power grid maintenance. That rats nest of cabling is bad enough from a low voltage IT perspective, I can only how terrifying that would be for HV engineers.
Charging the battery for a moped is not nearly as demanding as charging the battery for a car.
I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that Vietnam is one of those countries where most people get around on a moped, and also one of those countries that has already been shifting towards electrifying their moped fleet. If that modal share doesn't change they might not need major infrastructural investment in order to strengthen the grid.
Edit: Battery swapping stations are also quite common for mopeds in countries like Taiwan. Those can be trickle charged rather than fast-charged.
Gogoro Network® is the world’s largest battery swapping, we’ve built a coverage that spans across Taiwan, with Swap and Go, you can ride how you like, go wherever you want.
What? You didn't add 73,250 different disclaimers and qualifiers to your internet comment to make sure that your opinion includes all possible sets it applies to and none of the ones it doesn't? How problematic of you.
edit: to the person who had a problem with this, you are part of the problem.
Is your commute>60 miles? If so, then you're only using the scooter to get to the train station. If not, there's VN scooters for <2K that can do that in an hour, and chinese scooters that are even faster.
My commute includes interstate travel, unless I want to make my commute even longer. Escooters and Ebikes are non-starters. Not even taking into account the assortment of tools I have to carry with me for service calls.
All I'm getting at is the comment that I originally replied to "Ebikes and electric scooters should be the transportation" simply isn't compatible with a whole lot of people's situations, not just mine.
It's far less horrible than it looks, a lot of it is slack for repairs and re-routing. You see this across much of the world where they can't afford utility boxes under every post.
This is a policy which will hit the poor first and hardest. That's contrary to all realistic and beneficial climate action. How about banning cruise ships docking at ports in the country?
I don’t know enough about Vietnam to speak to the transportation options there but in most parts of the world there are good low-carbon alternatives now. E-bicycles in particular are an affordable transit revolution that should be affordable to anyone who can afford a motorbike.
People who burn fossil fuels are not the poorest of the poor. The real poor are the ones who will suffer and die if we don’t get off of fossil fuels immediately.
I would personally go a lot further than this narrow policy but given the current emergency I can’t really be critical of any move in the right direction.
I think you have no idea how polluting motorbikes are in the 3rd world. And if any are still 2 stroke, yikes. As with any electric vehicles, there is a up front cost but the lower maintenance, longevity, and electricity instead of gas is much cheaper. And we're talking scooters, the price Delta is a lot lower than for cars.
When I lived there 6-7 years ago many people didn’t even stop at red lights. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone wearing a cooking pot as a helmet. It will be a while before any policy is actually followed
It wasn’t uncommon to see someone wearing a cooking pot as a helmet
So you're saying that people there are actually trying and making an effort to do the right thing instead of getting all bent out of shape that head protection makes them "less masculine"? I say the country has more hope than the US for lasting, effective change in policy and lifestyle.
Teenagers who take part in video games tell of being headhunted to work on technology used against Ukraine
Russian authorities have systematically involved children in the design and testing of drones for the country’s war in Ukraine through nationwide competitions that begin with innocent-seeming video games and end up with the most talented students headhunted by defence companies, an investigation has found.
The revelations, part of an investigation by the exiled Russian news outlet the Insider, are the latest to show just how much Russia’s leaders are dragging the country’s youth into the war effort in Ukraine, with “patriotic” and militarised education often spilling over into outright participation.
“The kids are actively involved in modelling components of systems for various drones,” one of the teenagers involved told a journalist. “I know of several people at least who were modelling UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] components for major enterprises.”
Not really. A normal thing for most functional states 50 years ago. A comprehensive pipeline of training and preparation for various industrial and military roles.
From first aid to orientation on terrain to radio knowledge to flag signals. Flight clubs, other relevant sports, small arms disassembly and assembly. What to do in case of an emergency. Chemistry, electric engineering, mechanical engineering.
Computer games weren't a thing, and cheap small drone planes too. But this is pretty normal, except nothing is official, because today nation-states prefer gray schemes.
This is all true. If the teens are found out, hopefully any punishment will not be too harsh as also the reporters posed as state media, which the teens can say they thought was sanctioned by the government. (Maybe they even believed that themselves.)
Its leader is a former supermarket manager who created his political party on YouTube in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic and campaigned on the Trumpian message “Japanese First.”
Now Japan’s burgeoning right-wing populist party Sanseito has emerged an unlikely winner in parliamentary elections this weekend.
Inspired by other populist right-wing groups that have sprung up in recent years, Sanseito bagged 14 seats in Japan’s upper house, according to public broadcaster NHK – a dramatic increase from the single seat it had occupied previously.
Traditional parties are consistently failing their nations all over the world. The only ones offering any kind of hope for the future are snake-oil salesmen like this.
The Fediverse is something that you should know about! (P.S: I am not an expert) If you want to break free of traditional social media in control of big tech companies and people you don't trust, t...
All tech lobbies associated with the e-commerce giant — including DigitalEurope, CCIA Europe and ITI — could be barred from Parliament in major escalation of fight over warehouse working conditions.
Because lobbying is also done be environmental groups, neighborhood groups, consumer activists, ... Ban lobbying would deprive a large set of the population of their voice
That would outlaw scientists lobbying the government to stop things like global warming and pollution. It would stop mom and pop shops from lobbying against things that are good for massive corps but bad for them.
So what defines corporate? What defines paid? You’re excluding mom and pop shops and even medium sized businesses from your definition. How are lawmakers supposed to know if their law is gonna harm specific industries if businesses can’t tell them?
Paid is by definition anyone paid to do the lobbying. Corporate is definitely harder to define, but let’s say you’re only allowed to lobby on behalf of your own organization (or self)
And, better yet, let’s make every single lobbying effort public - Times, dates, people involved, and the subject raised (but perhaps not the outcome). Good legislation should happen in the open
Flamekebab
in reply to themachinestops • • •Technology reshared this.
Damage
in reply to Flamekebab • • •kingofras
in reply to Flamekebab • • •neon_nova
in reply to kingofras • • •like this
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Darth_Lemmy
in reply to neon_nova • • •als
in reply to Flamekebab • • •like this
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in reply to Flamekebab • • •like this
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Digestive_Biscuit
in reply to then_three_more • • •snowfalldreamland
in reply to Flamekebab • • •AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor
in reply to snowfalldreamland • • •How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I'd argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Also, what if I just connect to a vps overseas and set my exit point there? Will they ban vps too? This is gonna be so much fun to see from the outside
then_three_more
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •Feature, not a bug.
They want people back in offices to help landlords and property prices. This way they can say that remote work is not banned and it's just companies choosing not to buy a permit and offer it.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor
in reply to then_three_more • • •I work from office and i regularly use a vpn at work to connect remotely to devices that are not physically with me. Not to talk about companies that provide remote assistance and use them to connect to their customers devices.
Remote work is just a byproduct of vpns, but not the real reason why you use them at work.
then_three_more
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor
in reply to then_three_more • • •Absolutely not, of course. I'm just hoping they try to enforce this so a shitstorm of proportions only seen in the brexit will ensue.
One thing we must acknowledge to these idiots is how much effort they put on showing the world the consequences of extremely stupid acts so the rest don't have to do it.
then_three_more
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •Kinda sucks to be the world's policy alpha tester though.
JcbAzPx
in reply to then_three_more • • •Darth_Lemmy
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •Ilovethebomb
in reply to themachinestops • • •troed
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •like this
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Jimbabwe
in reply to themachinestops • • •Jerkface
in reply to Jimbabwe • • •palordrolap
in reply to Jerkface • • •Darth_Lemmy
in reply to palordrolap • • •those who understand binary
and those who dont
palordrolap
in reply to Darth_Lemmy • • •Archangel1313
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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Maxxie
in reply to Archangel1313 • • •It's something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.
A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.
It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I'm not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian's Firewall?) will take some time.
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allywilson
in reply to Maxxie • • •Maxxie
in reply to allywilson • • •mannycalavera
in reply to themachinestops • • •The government: Parents have you tried being a parent to your children?
Parents: Oh lord no that's too difficult can't you just, I don't know lol, ban it or something?
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Saleh
in reply to mannycalavera • • •In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like "This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets."
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
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JcbAzPx
in reply to Saleh • • •Wooki
in reply to mannycalavera • • •MudMan
in reply to themachinestops • • •Just to fast-forward this dumb cat-and-mouse thing, the next step is people go back to torrenting their porn and deeper down the rabbit hole of garbage "free" websites skirting the rules.
As always, the UK is useful on the international stage because sometimes you need to be able to point at some idiot trying dumb stuff to explain to people why dumb stuff is dumb.
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saltesc
in reply to MudMan • • •It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.
Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.
Whostosay
in reply to saltesc • • •There has to be a logical next step for the information age. Old school government is not fucking working, and we can all see it.
The fact that there aren't large scale riots already is astounding.
Bubbey
in reply to saltesc • • •He tries his best...
kingofras
in reply to MudMan • • •lath
in reply to kingofras • • •like this
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WhatAmLemmy
in reply to lath • • •cyrano
in reply to kingofras • • •dyathinkhesaurus
in reply to kingofras • • •like this
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fodor
in reply to kingofras • • •It's probably true that a few anti-porn people exist somewhere in the world. It's certainly true that fascists love adding in new tools to keep the general population from using the internet freely.
So the answer to your question is yes, and yes.
🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖
in reply to kingofras • • •0x0
in reply to kingofras • • •deafboy
in reply to kingofras • • •phutatorius
in reply to kingofras • • •neon_nova
in reply to MudMan • • •like this
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Saleh
in reply to neon_nova • • •I am pretty sure they would consider tor as using a VPN.
Probably they would demand ISPs to run lists of known VPN addresses and if you connect to them, they will forward the information to the anti-terrorism unit and you will get SWATed.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to Saleh • • •Saleh
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Don't the people in those countries use a proxy to access tor first? probably that means cycling through the proxies regularly as they become known. I have no doubt that it is impossible to prevent truly tech savvy people from access. Also Russia, Iran and China all run state sanctioned hackers, so the governments have a vested interest in allowing these groups to obscure where they are coming from.
But i am not sure how much that transpires to a broader public.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to Saleh • • •Tiger
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Ek-Hou-Van-Braai
in reply to MudMan • • •like this
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vithigar
in reply to Ek-Hou-Van-Braai • • •k0e3
in reply to vithigar • • •Default Username
in reply to Ek-Hou-Van-Braai • • •PlexSheep
in reply to Default Username • • •OwlPaste
in reply to MudMan • • •thatonecoder
in reply to MudMan • • •krigo666
in reply to themachinestops • • •MCasq_qsaCJ_234
in reply to themachinestops • • •0x0
in reply to MCasq_qsaCJ_234 • • •Luouth
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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themachinestops
in reply to Luouth • • •Vinstaal0
in reply to themachinestops • • •But what if I work for Proton and I am in the UK?
Edit: it's hypothetical
palordrolap
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •like this
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Darth_Lemmy
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •then_three_more
in reply to Luouth • • •MonkderVierte
in reply to then_three_more • • •then_three_more
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •Oh that makes it easier for the government.
Maybe that the end goal, force people back into the office by banning vpn
MonkderVierte
in reply to then_three_more • • •Destide
in reply to themachinestops • • •This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥
in reply to themachinestops • • •RejZoR
in reply to themachinestops • • •Buffalox
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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doctortofu
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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0x0
in reply to doctortofu • • •Oh, wait, no, that was about the evil communists.
Zoldyck
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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Mac
in reply to Zoldyck • • •Can't do it all at once or the ~~peasants~~ populace might catch on!
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Saleh
in reply to Zoldyck • • •The anti-terror unit needs to fill its new vacancies first. Do you know ho many enforcers it takes to arrest a single man in a wheelchair?
- YouTube
www.youtube.comAbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor
in reply to themachinestops • • •Will the next step be banning VPS then? Because that's what will happen: if you ban VPNs (good luck with that lol), people will just connect to a VPS in a less stupid country and exit from there.
I hope they start looking at TOR too, that should be really fun.
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thenose
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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Pup Biru
in reply to thenose • • •let people live life is more than just good for individuals… it’s just safer for everyone
focusing on harm reduction rather than abstinence and bans
ajoebyanyothername
in reply to thenose • • •Thorry84
in reply to ajoebyanyothername • • •Senal
in reply to thenose • • •I'd tentatively say, casually available heroin, morphine and laudanum/opium.
It obviously caused problems and pushed the market underground but it seems to have worked out.
I'm not aware of any studies in to this though, so it's only conjecture/guesswork.
I'll also clearly state I'm not putting them on the same level as this current dystopian bullshittery.
UltraGiGaGigantic
in reply to Senal • • •"Worked out" is people dieing from tainted drugs of a unknown potency? Youre a fucking monster.
Senal
in reply to UltraGiGaGigantic • • •Hey now, that's a lot of animosity for a statement that doesn't do much to make a good point.
The original question was
I posited a conjecture based guess with some basic reasoning and as i said , it was opinion more than provable fact.
By "worked out" i meant the overall situation is better after the ban, despite the negative consequences.
It seems that was lost on you, but now you know.
So let's address your reasoning, such as it is.
People died from tainted drugs before the ban, probably a lot from tainted drugs of the type in the ban.
Unless you have any evidence those numbers changed significantly after the ban, I'll chalk that up to your opinion.
Not a very reasonable one to my eyes, but such are angry people on the internet.
I was not aware i needed to provide an example of a ban that resulted in everything being completely fixed after the fact (mainly because that's not how the question was worded) but if that was, in fact, the requirement, my bad.
If I'm a monster (in your opinion) because i think the reduction in access to terribly addictive drugs might have overall brought down fatalities and other negative consequences, then i can live with that.
Vinstaal0
in reply to themachinestops • • •What would be defined as a VPN and even then there are other options to get access to content as if you where in a different country or ways to bypass the age restriction.
A lot of companies and governments also use VPN's to get people to work on their servers, so how would the UK function.
It always baffles me that they try shit like that.
Edit: heck proper sex education is a way better solution to reduce unhealthy sex habits
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0x0
in reply to Vinstaal0 • • •It's not about sex, or protecting the children.
It's about control.
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Vinstaal0
in reply to 0x0 • • •Maybe it and maybe it isn't, but kicking against it trying to change won't help because there is a certain amount of the population who believes that it isn't for control, but it is actually for sex or protecting the children or what not.
If you want to get those people over to change their behaviour, you want to work on compromises or in this case you want to deflect them into fixing something else.
Trust me, I have a lot of right and even some mildly right people around me and with going hard against them you will just confirm their bias.
HexesofVexes
in reply to themachinestops • • •That sounds a bit like fear mongering from Reform: a VPN is safety 101 when using public networks, and most businesses make use of VPNs to secure their data. They are also a key component if WFH (you use the company VPN).
If Labour are stupid enough to go after VPN usage, I suspect it would guarantee their loss at the next election.
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Darren
in reply to HexesofVexes • • •like this
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tankplanker
in reply to HexesofVexes • • •It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the "child" "violent pornography" etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.
Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.
JcbAzPx
in reply to tankplanker • • •tankplanker
in reply to JcbAzPx • • •JK_Flip_Flop
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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Perspectivist
in reply to JK_Flip_Flop • • •ggtdbz
in reply to Perspectivist • • •LeFrog
in reply to ggtdbz • • •Proton freezes Swiss investment over surveillance fears
Le Newslike this
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ggtdbz
in reply to LeFrog • • •I saw this news and I guess it’s good that privacy is being discussed somewhat soberly over there in the wake of this investment decision.
Personally I have recently been exiting out of the UK, a much more invasive country, so Switzerland for now does seem like an improvement for me. Norway is further out geographically and has less Mullvad servers, would seem like the less favorable option for me unless the proposed laws actually pass.
Frankly I’m scrambling after the UK’s ID thing.
Perspectivist
in reply to ggtdbz • • •sun
in reply to ggtdbz • • •No1
in reply to Perspectivist • • •assassinatedbyCIA
in reply to themachinestops • • •OrteilGenou
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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peoplebeproblems
in reply to themachinestops • • •towerful
in reply to peoplebeproblems • • •They pivoted quite hard a few years ago to try and win an election.
They are just Tory Lite now.
Aceticon
in reply to peoplebeproblems • • •For starters, the whole "Progressive" thing is an American concept born out of the American environment (with its very deep religious moralistic strain amongst a large fraction of the population) and does not really applicable to Britain because, at least until recently, they didn't really have regressive tendencies.
Beyond that Labour hasn't been Leftwing since Tony Blair took over in the 80s and started talking about it being New Labour - they're Neoliberals and quite strongly so, so pretty rightwing.
What they did was performative Identity Politics like in the US: theatrics in the Moral space to make them seem different from the other mainstream party, rather than actually having genuine Liberal Principles.
Of late they even ditched that and seem to be trying to outfascist the Fascists.
MonkderVierte
in reply to themachinestops • • •floquant
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •like this
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slaacaa
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •hisao
in reply to themachinestops • • •KonnaPerkele
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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Electricd
in reply to KonnaPerkele • • •Bluewing
in reply to KonnaPerkele • • •All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.
Do you know what's smarter and more talented the the UK government?
14, 402, 544 kids............
themachinestops
in reply to KonnaPerkele • • •A lot more than you know, I knew how to use it since middle school.
And if they don't know they will use Reddit to find out how to access the sites:
reddit.adminforge.de/r/teenage…
redlib.baczek.me/r/teenagers/c…
Don't underestimate kids.
Turns out it's comically easy to bypass Reddit's new age verification - r/teenagers
redlib.baczek.meNovaling
in reply to KonnaPerkele • • •I started using a VPN after my friends/classmates told me about them in my Sophomore year of HS, mostly to get around the Wifi banning us from accessing certain apps (social media). Now, like all the other dumb kids, I used whatever they recommended, which was some shitty "Free" VPN that was probably stalking my data. But by Senior year, I smartened up and learned about online privacy and got myself a Proton VPN subscription after using the free version for a bit.
So yeah, I could totally believe middle-school and up are using VPNs, cause that's what we literally did.
Anivia
in reply to KonnaPerkele • • •Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist
KonnaPerkele
in reply to Anivia • • •Where there is a will there is a way, I guess.
Still, a possible ban on VPNs affects way bigger group of business and adult users than the number of tech savvy kids.
Where should the line be drawn? How much rights should everyone have to give up so that little techie Billy can’t hack his way to see some titties?
LumpyPancakes
in reply to themachinestops • • •Lyra_Lycan
in reply to LumpyPancakes • • •4am
in reply to LumpyPancakes • • •like this
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chonglibloodsport
in reply to 4am • • •warm
in reply to 4am • • •like this
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ouRKaoS
in reply to 4am • • •Download Little Brother For Free | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com
craphound.comtankplanker
in reply to 4am • • •moseschrute
in reply to 4am • • •Cricket [he/him]
in reply to moseschrute • • •Eximius
in reply to LumpyPancakes • • •Elvith Ma'for
in reply to Eximius • • •boonhet
in reply to Elvith Ma'for • • •shalafi
in reply to LumpyPancakes • • •No1
in reply to shalafi • • •Netherlands is part of the Nine eyes. They know exactly what your activities are.
Whether they choose to chase you down is a different issue.
kemsat
in reply to themachinestops • • •like this
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rottingleaf
in reply to kemsat • • •I don't think it's that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
kemsat
in reply to rottingleaf • • •katy ✨
in reply to themachinestops • • •apparently having a functioning brain isn't a requirement of being an mp
but of course we knew that when she did this in 2019:
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NigelFrobisher
in reply to themachinestops • • •ordnance_qf_17_pounder
in reply to NigelFrobisher • • •samus12345
in reply to ordnance_qf_17_pounder • • •jabjoe
in reply to themachinestops • • •This ends with just another war on encryption.
When encryption is legal, they can't know what is going on between two points. They going to make is so we can only have encryption to nodes they trust?
It is dangerously technologically illiterate to wage war on encryption.
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DacoTaco
in reply to jabjoe • • •DeathsEmbrace
in reply to DacoTaco • • •jabjoe
in reply to DacoTaco • • •Easy enough to do when it's mega corps. They don't really care about anything but money. If everyone had self hosted services with e2e, be far harder. Encryption is everywhere now.
So they will go after the end points. Which again, is a battle they can't win. All very Cory Doctorow's "Unauthorized Bread".
If you care about this stuff:
UK: action.openrightsgroup.org/mak…
US: eff.org/pages/donate-eff
EU: my.fsfe.org/donate
There will be others too, those are just in my head's cache.
Some how we need to get governments to listen to us serfs instead mega corps and authoritarian police/spooks.
The world they want is not only terrible for digital and political freedom, but competition, thus functioning markets. It's terrible for making developers and makers instead of dumb consumers, which in turn, is terrible for technology and progress.
Donate to EFF
Electronic Frontier Foundationslaacaa
in reply to themachinestops • • •slaacaa
in reply to themachinestops • • •PushButton
in reply to themachinestops • • •NigelFrobisher
in reply to themachinestops • • •samus12345
in reply to NigelFrobisher • • •Digestive_Biscuit
in reply to samus12345 • • •0x0
in reply to themachinestops • • •samus12345
in reply to 0x0 • • •ftbd
in reply to themachinestops • • •HubertManne
in reply to themachinestops • • •Konstant
in reply to HubertManne • • •like this
onewithoutaname likes this.
samus12345
in reply to HubertManne • • •SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to themachinestops • • •MehBlah
in reply to themachinestops • • •Derpgon
in reply to MehBlah • • •I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn't even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
jabjoe
in reply to Derpgon • • •To be honest, I've found WireGuard's performance is harmed more by replay attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
Edit: missed the a in replay.
xthexder
in reply to jabjoe • • •Personally I've found Wireguard performance to be significantly better, especially on spotty mobile Internet
jabjoe
in reply to xthexder • • •xthexder
in reply to jabjoe • • •jabjoe
in reply to xthexder • • •Ah, I see it. Sorry. Corrected.
It's not really an issue with OpenVPN as it seams to cope. It's the only time I use OpenVPN instead of WireGuard.
Derpgon
in reply to jabjoe • • •Protocol & Cryptography - WireGuard
www.wireguard.comjabjoe
in reply to Derpgon • • •MehBlah
in reply to Derpgon • • •tal
in reply to MehBlah • • •I've certainly happily used SSH tunnels --- on Linux it's great in that it's readily available wherever you already have OpenSSH installed --- but one downside of OpenSSH as a general-purpose tool for tunneling is that it is intrinsically TCP and thus forces packet ordering across multiple tunneled connections, which may not be necessary for whatever you're doing and can have performance impact. Part of the reason mosh exists is to deal with that (not for the SSH-as-a-tunneling-protocol case, but rather for the "SSH-as-a-remote-shell" case).
Wireguard is UDP, and OpenVPN can use either TCP or UDP, depending upon how it's configured.
If we were going to move the world to a single "tunneling" protocol, SSH wouldn't be my first choice, even though it's awfully handy as a quick-and-dirty way to tunnel data.
Mosh: the mobile shell
MoshMehBlah
in reply to tal • • •I used putty for tunnels on windows machines. As for mosh I forgot it exist. I use wireguard now. But if they ban VPN it will be harder for them to prove the SSH is being used for the purpose evading their stupid law. The high bandwidth usage could be a lot of things... right?
While in the hospital ten years ago I did get a visit from the IT dept. They didn't have any qos on ssh and I was moving a lot of data through it. They just asked me to limit my high usage to late night.
tal
in reply to MehBlah • • •Fair enough, and come to think of it, I think I have too. Just was pointing out that not all SSH implementations have tunnelling functionality.
Yeah, that's true.
WhyJiffie
in reply to Derpgon • • •Derpgon
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to Derpgon • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to Derpgon • • •update: I think not only the handshake packets contain a recognizable pattern. look at "Subsequent Messages: Exchange of Data Packets"
wireguard.com/protocol/
especially if the receiver/sender_index and the counter are what I think they are.
also have a look at this page: wireguard.com/known-limitation…
Protocol & Cryptography - WireGuard
www.wireguard.comUltraGiGaGigantic
in reply to MehBlah • • •DoucheBagMcSwag
in reply to themachinestops • • •ragas
in reply to DoucheBagMcSwag • • •PumpkinSkink
in reply to themachinestops • • •abbiistabbii
in reply to PumpkinSkink • • •Farage: Gets elected.
Everyone: At least you'll abolish the OSA!
Farage: Nah, I said that because it would make me popular. Amma use the OSA to ban things I consider "woke".
Darleys_Brew
in reply to abbiistabbii • • •abbiistabbii
in reply to Darleys_Brew • • •SoftestSapphic
in reply to themachinestops • • •MangioneDontMiss
in reply to SoftestSapphic • • •JustTheWind
in reply to themachinestops • • •plyth
in reply to JustTheWind • • •en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social…
national reputation system being developed by the Chinese government
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Uriel238 [all pronouns]
in reply to plyth • • •Limonene
in reply to plyth • • •yogurt
in reply to Limonene • • •Bubbey
in reply to plyth • • •PortNull
in reply to themachinestops • • •Crozekiel
in reply to PortNull • • •MU5T4N6
in reply to themachinestops • • •Clbull
in reply to themachinestops • • •(NOTE: Any links to politician tweets in this comment are from Nitter mirrors, not direct links to Elon Musk's nazi bar.)
The Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, pretty much called Nigel Farage a paedophile in a news network interview earlier today because he opposed the Online Safety Act, by saying he's on the side of sex offenders like Jimmy Savile.
He then went to Twitter and doubled-down on this stance:
This of course generated a lot of fury among the site's users.
For context, the Online Safety Act has been used to censor and age-gate anything and everything deemed "illegal content" under Ofcom guidelines. Any social media platforms must comply, else risk getting fined up to 10% of your annual global revenue. This is so broadly worded that it includes anything related to illegal immigration and people-smuggling (literally quoted in the GOV.UK page I linked.)
Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements, which has riled up a lot of right-wing politicians here. The reason for these protests is that the previous (Conservative) government had been paying exorbitant amounts of money to house asylum seekers in hotels, effectively lining the pockets of hotel chain executives - all while we deal with a massive housing and cost of living crisis.
This was meant to be a measure to give asylum seekers temporary accommodation which was put in place at the start of COVID, but has been government policy since 2020 with no end in sight.
Labour have also done jack-shit to resolve our skyrocketed (legal) immigration levels since they got into power, except for scrapping the Rwanda Deal which would have deported any illegal migrants to a third country for processing (which as the name obviously suggests, is the East African state of Rwanda.)
Zia Yusuf (head of Reform's DOGE division, yes they're ripping off Trump and Elon Musk) had this to say about the OSA on Twitter:
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they've handled this legislation, that they've straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
Also, if you're thinking of voting Reform UK in 2029 (and it has honestly crossed my mind because age verification checks are a major sticking point for me), then you should take the pledges from Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf with a grain of salt. Richard Tice (the party's deputy leader) openly tweeted support for pushing through mandatory ID checks on social media four years ago.
If Labour don't get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election...
Online Safety Act: explainer
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (GOV.UK)Bubbey
in reply to Clbull • • •arc99
in reply to themachinestops • • •archiduc
in reply to arc99 • • •Uriel238 [all pronouns]
in reply to arc99 • • •The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)
SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.
Hopefully the US and UK both will recognize why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.
obvs
in reply to Uriel238 [all pronouns] • • •DefederateLemmyMl
in reply to arc99 • • •The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.
ErmahgherdDavid
in reply to DefederateLemmyMl • • •dogs0n
in reply to arc99 • • •febra
in reply to themachinestops • • •Uriel238 [all pronouns]
in reply to febra • • •Every society has its pathway there. TERFs are one of the last milestones.
GB has really wanted to go fascist autocratic since Germany looked over in the 1920s and saw a like minded kin.
BeardedGingerWonder
in reply to Uriel238 [all pronouns] • • •Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her)
in reply to febra • • •MangioneDontMiss
in reply to Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her) • • •some_guy
in reply to themachinestops • • •Enterprises will love that. A perfect excuse to end wfh. However, this will cripple business travelers. I'm sure there'll be some exception for corporations where they can exercise maximum control over their employees while still being allowed to generate capital.
Hey UK: suck it.
atticus88th
in reply to some_guy • • •gaiussabinus
in reply to atticus88th • • •Mr_Dr_Oink
in reply to gaiussabinus • • •Mr_Dr_Oink
in reply to some_guy • • •They couldn't switch off VPNs for businesses. I work in a hospital and we use VPNs to create secure tunnels to other third party health care companies as well as NHS adjacent health services amongst other things. This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things. This would cripple our service and go against NHS england and government requirements for the secure transfer and sharing of data.
This would have to be public VPNs only. Despite the fact that it would be complete bullshit either way.
muusemuuse
in reply to Mr_Dr_Oink • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to muusemuuse • • •muusemuuse
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •Aceticon
in reply to WhyJiffie • • •Unless things have changed massively in the UK in the last 5 years or so, in my actual experience you don't unless you make a profit.
The yearly baseline costs of opening and operating a Limited company in the UK are pretty low (less than £100 if I remember it correctly).
UltraGiGaGigantic
in reply to Mr_Dr_Oink • • •Its 2025, we no longer need such silly things. Don't worry, its for the greater good.
badbytes
in reply to themachinestops • • •ReiRose
in reply to themachinestops • • •UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to ReiRose • • •You're literally being Jimmy Salvile right now
~ Guy who posed for photo ops with Salvile twenty years ago
muusemuuse
in reply to themachinestops • • •If they outlaw VPNs then all internet-connected businesses will flee and everyone will just move to the dark net. Then you’ve got a whole other problem.
These ancient tyrants are in over their heads.
LinyosT
in reply to muusemuuse • • •muusemuuse
in reply to LinyosT • • •3dcadmin
in reply to muusemuuse • • •PastafARRian
in reply to muusemuuse • • •UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to muusemuuse • • •Pacattack57
in reply to muusemuuse • • •itsprobablyfine
in reply to Pacattack57 • • •Mamdani_Da_Savior
in reply to Pacattack57 • • •muusemuuse
in reply to Pacattack57 • • •ArtVandelay
in reply to Pacattack57 • • •skisnow
in reply to Pacattack57 • • •VPNs are one of the core security measures of all large companies.
VPNs aren't just a "hide your IP" tool, they're a way of giving someone access to an organisation's internal network. Sensitive servers such as databases, wikis, scheduling tools etc don't have publicly exposed IPs, they only have connections that are accessible from inside that VPN. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_…
in information security, the placing of multiple layers of security controls throughout an IT system to provide redundancy in the event a security control fails
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Blemgo
in reply to skisnow • • •Wooki
in reply to themachinestops • • •"Safety" meanwhile these same mp's can't budget can't run critical public services like bloody hospitals.
But don't worry, your thoughts and activity are policed.
Democratic failure to prioritise and run a country at its finest on display for the world to see. The waste is astounding.
dubyakay
in reply to Wooki • • •Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her)
in reply to Wooki • • •MangioneDontMiss
in reply to Wooki • • •tal
in reply to themachinestops • • •When I was a kid, Reddit and general public Internet access weren't things, but I sure managed to get my hands on pornography. I'm pretty confident that even entirely killing Internet access isn't going to stop kids who want to get ahold of porn from getting ahold of it.
ThePrivacyPolicy
in reply to tal • • •Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her)
in reply to themachinestops • • •They can come and pry TOR from my cold dead hands lmfao
this law can eat shit. i ain't gonna dox myself and feed my personal info to companies. maybe they should take this as a hint that most people care about their privacy
if you don't want kids seeing NSFW stuff be an actual parent and don't raise your kids on the internet??
Aussiemandeus
in reply to Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her) • • •Yeah I'm Australia we have just decided to ban all social media for people under 16, i think it's great honestly because screw from insta etc but I don't think it's the government ls job to prevent kids from using social media.
I really think it's a way to force adults to register their id to accounts not about protecting kids.
Parents should monitor what their kids are doing not the government
magickrock
in reply to Aussiemandeus • • •I agree that it should primarily be a parents responsibility to keep kids off social media. But the big problem with social media is that a large proportion of young children don't want to be on social media and recognise the detrimental impact it has on them, but the fear of missing out or being excluded is what keeps them on it. it then becomes a collective action problem, to get them off it you need to get a lot of their peers off it as well. There are movements where groups of parents try to do this, but reaching the critical mass necessary to do it is difficult.
Hopefully the ban keeps a large number off to reduce the pressure on kids to be on it and at the same time the parents can do their bit as well.
Boomer Humor Doomergod
in reply to Aussiemandeus • • •While I agree wholeheartedly with this, it's often not that easy.
Back in the days of 28.8 modems my parents found my little bro's downloaded porn stash. It was in a Zip disk in his underwear drawer. They then locked down both of our AOL accounts so we couldn't see that stuff.
I thought this was bullshit because I kept my Zip disk full of porn next to all the other ones and labeled it "Homework." Why should I get punished if I didn't get caught?
So I downloaded a keylogger, stole my dad's password, and unlocked my account and continued to download porn.
However, I don't think government regulation would have worked in my case.
MangioneDontMiss
in reply to themachinestops • • •MangioneDontMiss
in reply to themachinestops • • •DeathByBigSad
in reply to themachinestops • • •Someone should start a bussiness near the border of Republic of Ireland and get two antennas pointed at each other across the border, with the RoI side having connected to the free internet, then the UK Northern Ireland side connected to the Intra-net. You pay a "Club Membership Fee" to get access to the proxy network.
Its not a VPN, its a Nerd Techie Club, just with a free proxy service as part of the club membership 😉
ThePrivacyPolicy
in reply to DeathByBigSad • • •Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In
in reply to ThePrivacyPolicy • • •Illecors
in reply to Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In • • •CheeseNoodle
in reply to Illecors • • •NotANumber
in reply to CheeseNoodle • • •socialsecurity
in reply to themachinestops • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to themachinestops • • •Mistic
in reply to Tollana1234567 • • •Proxy is a step below VPN since it doesn't tunnelise data.
Anti-detect browsers. Do you mean Tor? It's a decent solution, albeit the slowest one.
What people use to bypass the great Chinese firewall is VPN with VLESS protocols. Unlike usual VPN protocols, those are specifically made to bypass censorship.
possumparty
in reply to themachinestops • • •I'm looking forward to the next UK election where the headline will be: Labour has lost the election in a landslide that left them with dozens of votes total
Every single person who didn't think this would affect them who watches porn in any capacity is very likely highly pissed off and will continue to be for as long as this draconian bullshit is enabled.
falynns
in reply to themachinestops • • •null_dot
in reply to themachinestops • • •I love watching politicians try to understand the internet.
VPNs have loads of vanilla use cases.
It would be infinitely more productive to regulate the predatory practices of stream providers and reduce the incentive for piracy.
Ronno
in reply to themachinestops • • •notarobot
in reply to Ronno • • •DragonTypeWyvern
in reply to themachinestops • • •Reddit already tried to block VPN users.
Expect the corpos to bend the knee.
NigelFrobisher
in reply to themachinestops • • •TheOrionArm
in reply to themachinestops • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to TheOrionArm • • •ohshit604
in reply to TheOrionArm • • •Ironfist79
in reply to TheOrionArm • • •Kokesh
in reply to themachinestops • • •wrassleman76
in reply to themachinestops • • •Ironfist79
in reply to wrassleman76 • • •herrvogel
in reply to wrassleman76 • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to themachinestops • • •That's the only source? A far-right conspiracy website?
Rob T Firefly
in reply to themachinestops • • •The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:
And the story begins:
Phoenixz
in reply to Rob T Firefly • • •This shows that this bill has shit all to do with the protection of children, it's just again the over reach of religious zealots
Can we please ban religions instead? This would ACTUALLY protect minors and just in general make the world such a better and more beautiful place.
Convert churches into museums for art and displaying the horrors of religion
HalfSalesman
in reply to Phoenixz • • •Not all of them have pretty art. Just turn the boring looking ones into secular club houses or even just regular housing.
Bubbey
in reply to themachinestops • • •brucethemoose
in reply to Bubbey • • •imouto
in reply to Bubbey • • •Most conventional VPNs, e.g. OpenVPN, WireGuard, AnyConnect, PPTP/L2TP, IKEv2/IPsec, etc., actually don't work in China. Technology-wise GFW is quite sophisticated and conventional VPNs are not designed for censorship circumvention anyway.
You'll have to use things like Shadowsocks or V2Ray, which is out of the reach of most people.
Phoenixz
in reply to themachinestops • • •Your law is the difficult problem you daft cunt
WaffleWarrior
in reply to themachinestops • • •inkrifle
in reply to themachinestops • • •undergroundoverground
in reply to inkrifle • • •This makes me feel like they were in a bind here. The so called "online safety bill" was a tory concoction that took years to pass through the courts because of how invasive it is and how anyone could easily bypass it.
If labour want to stop it, they'll be accused of not wanting to protect children.
Whatever anyone thinks of labour, I'd ask people to ask themselves, if you were in that position, what option do they have other than to let it play out as the spectacular failure it was always going to be and making sure everyone knows who's fault that was afterwards?
HertzDentalBar
in reply to inkrifle • • •ZeroOne
in reply to themachinestops • • •