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

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

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

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

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

Dogma is useless.

Fast food is slop anywhere.

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

But that is precisely why I picked it here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing mild about that. Wrong community.

I encourage it to a point. I try to avoid it as much as I can. But it’s like you’re a vegetarian and sometimes there is only sausage on the menu. I like the idea of using established feedback channels to complain especially about slop. I will try to copy that.

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.

I would say be careful about your tactic of vandalism. Especially if it’s only you doing that but also in general. I think you are looking to close a barn door as the horse traverses the horizon.

Art, like water, will find a way to survive. Some streams will sadly dry up, new unexpected ones will spring up elsewhere. Illumination painters went out of style after the printing press. A lot of painting got taken over by photography and video. Etc.

In the meantime, in my view, the best way to protest is not to give money to the offenders and to tell them why you refuse to. But I’m also afraid that if you are quite rigid in your stance you’ll not be spending any money at all.

We are at the beginning of this supposed r-AI-volution. So far it costs several arms and legs and the results overall for the massive investment of limbs are rather unimpressive. I live in hope that economical restraints along with the anti-datacenter sentiment will course correct this quite a bit.

And every trend breeds counterculture. High usage of generated imagery will undoubtedly lead to a made by humans trend in a couple of years.

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.

Why does anybody have to care about this story? The so-called-AI aspect is at best ornamental, the rest is all irrelevant to this community.

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.

Or only allow YouTube links in the post text so we can all be spared the dumb thumbnail images. It’s funny how on YouTube the silly facial expression leads to more views whereas here it makes me want to spend much less time on YouTube.

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.