When to use a VPN

VPNs are not magical fixes for privacy and security on the internet. However, there are some specific situations where they are useful tools.

Network blocks and internet censorship. VPNs can help you access sites and services that are restricted by your local network or government. That’s why downloads of VPN apps in Russia skyrocketed in 2022, after the country’s invasion of Ukraine and more services became blocked. The same trend happened in Virginia and other U.S. states after they passed laws requiring photo identification for adult websites.

Piracy. Internet service providers can sometimes detect when you are pirating movies, TV shows, music, or other media and send you angry letters. You can avoid that entirely by using a VPN when you download or torrent copyrighted material. Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free… but use a VPN.

Region-locked content. This is a popular selling point for VPN companies that is actually true: VPNs can help you access online content that is officially restricted to a certain region. Switching your VPN server to a different country can change what movies and shows are available through Netflix, and UK-based VPN servers are frequently used to access BBC iPlayer content in other countries. However, this is not always reliable, as service providers will usually detect VPN servers after a while and block them.

Accessing your home network. Setting up a VPN server at home is one way to access devices on your home network (such as self-hosted security cameras, media servers, and remote desktop) without opening up more of your network to the rest of the internet.

There are other more niche use cases for VPNs, but those are the most popular ones that aren’t completely made up.

Hasn’t that already happened? Why not use Threads or any Mastodon federated services that aren’t paying for and promoting neo-Nazi content?

What would it take for you to leave the platform?

Were the startups manufacturing vehicles or were they purchasing from companies like BYD?

I feel like simply knowing that X, formerly known as Twitter, paid for neo-Nazi content and promoted it is all I need to know about their content moderation policies.

The law does seem like a generally good thing, but I doubt that anyone who would care hasn’t already abandoned the platform.

I felt like I was the only one that liked Tales From The Loop.

Look like Tidal pays 4x more than Spotify on average. For small artists, it’s likely hundreds of times more.

To give one example. It puts a link on paywalled Medium.com pages to view the page’s content on another site since a block list will no longer be able to bypass the paywalled content on Medium.com.

This seems like an extremely rare, high level of service and I’m still not convinced this would be the difference between EVs and ICE vehicle reliability if it was the standard at every dealer and independent shop over the past 10 years.

I attribute it to Tesla being a manufacturer that doesn’t care about the manufacturing process.

We need to wait until Monday to find out what IBM did?

Mechanics generally don’t inspect vehicles that are in for routine maintenance unless the customer is paying for inspections.

I don’t think you’re following the hypothetical being presented.

In this hypothetical, many people will view Amazon as unreliable for future purchases after their deliveries didn’t show up in time.

Almost anything seems to qualify as appropriate for this Technology community. It’s hard to think of something that’s not “technology” making this a general purpose community. Which is fine if that’s what people want, but I’m probably going to unsubscribe if there isn’t more focus here.

Mozilla is implementing Manifest V3. They plan to implement it slightly different than Chrome: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/

They have published a guide for extension developers: https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/manifest-v3-migration-guide/

More background on Manifest V3:

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2019/07/googles-plans-chrome-extensions-wont-really-help-security

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-politics-sheeps-clothing

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Shouldn’t this be in a political community and not Technology?

Network effects are always what drive online services.

Tenants have more legal rights as well compared to those that simply agreed to whatever terms an online service made up.

Mastodon is not a one to one replacement for Twitter and doesn’t intend to be. Mastodon is nothing like what many (or even most) people who use twitter want.

Mastodon has a lot of issues that it is still working out that make it a worse experience than pre-musk Twitter.

Why?