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

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

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

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

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

Dogma is useless.

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

But that is precisely why I picked it here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing mild about that. Wrong community.

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

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

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

If you can’t read Japanese, one of these options disqualifies itself. You used euros a a currency so you’re probably on 220V or thereabouts and the Japanese one will not be. But I don’t know if you could recycle older switch 1 cables and the dock if you have those already.

The EU model will probably not be hot swappable and what I heard on the rumor mill you’ll still need to unscrew the back of the console. The idea is that users can replace the battery so the manufacturers can’t drown it in glue or use proprietary fastenings unless they provide you also with the tools. But it won’t be like mobile phones when Nokia was the shit.

In the interest of longevity of the device and to save yourself a possible inflated battery replacement bill in the future, I’d get the new EU version.

There is an etymology section in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honky-tonk but it will leave you disappointed unfortunately. It’s a lot of could be this or could be that but mainly eff knows.

A word of warning about Ente: I chose them as what I thought would be a good alternative to Google Photos based on a thread like this about a year ago. I’ve had nothing but trouble with them to the point where I can say the only thing that works is the automatic backup function. That’s not nothing but also none of the fluff on top they say they can do. Sharing is a nightmare, especially if it includes videos. They don’t have the server capacity of a multinational tech conglomerate so they offload a lot of processing onto your devices. If you don’t always get the latest and best phone and use older laptops etc. I would not sign up for them.

From my Monday morning armchair, I think it’s a fair assumption that their business was already in a downward trajectory. The automobile industry used to be the plow horse of the German economy and plenty of businesses down the supply line have suffered for their inability to move with the times and ditch internal combustion engines. Automobile gets a mention in passing but thanks to various more or less elected madmen doing their mad things in various crises on this planet I doubt any of the other fields mentioned were putting them in a better position. So either they were dumb about their IT security or the diminished security was due to their economical situation in a confounding clusterfuck.

I find it fascinating to think that you could ruin a competitor now simply by hiring a ransomware as a service outfit. If you know they’re on the ropes, they probably cheap out on IT. Send the bitcoin fueled North Koreans in and soon you can buy it up for cheap. I don’t think that’s overly paranoid to consider today.

Wait a minute… ಠಿ⁠_⁠ಠ

It’s probably worth paying attention to this to see what information they release eventually. However, if there was indeed a hacker attack of some sort, it was probably illegal to do, and it’s also very possible that their infrastructure wasn’t up to par and they were aware of that - these are just two legitimate reasons why they were counseled to be tight lipped about this at this time by the police or their lawyers respectively.

The gained advantage in your theory lies in drivers being unaware that they’re being “scanned.” They are not doing a great job at hiding this then, are they. A motorcycle could evade this all together, a car might also be able. And the solar panel could better be used to power a camera and/or a license plate reader if they wanted to know who is passing.

I’m sure if we put enough lab coats on the task they can come up with a system that can ID a model by the reaction in the coil. But at what cost? A light switch is cheap. A light switch that can tell who is using it surely isn’t. And why go to this length and not just do the cameras? Ockham’s razor.

For an immediate fix try “00” in place of “+”

In North America it may be “011”

And either way, followed by the phone number omitting any leading zero on the area code.

and they’re also easier on the eyes

I found that’s the ultimate decision criterion for me. If you’re fine reading on your phone, i.e. you don’t lose sleep because of the extra light spectrum you beam into your face, just stick with the phone. It’s always there and you are already trained to keep it charged around the clock.

Reading ≠ reading; people have different concepts in their heads. There are people who need the haptics of an actual book. Some may think reading on your phone kind of cheapens the experience. It’s where the diarrhea stream of social media also comes through. Or work emails. I’ve talked with a colleague once and she insisted on a reader device because she didn’t want to give the impression she was on Instagram while reading at the airport. So you need to figure out these preferences as well.