Yeah, I used almost exactly the last method you described.

It’s the same kind of advice that used to float in the Tech Startup world before it became dominated by money men and frauds: the best project is one that scratches an itch you have.

If you’re to the left of Kissinger, you’re a “leftist” to the kind of people who think secret shadowban lists which are dynamically fetched from an external server are a good thing.

Name fits!

Judging by their push for things like Civil Society Surveillance and making Money and those who have most of it be a higher Power than a state controlled by democratically elected representatives (i.e. to turn Democracy into Oligarchy), I would say it’s actually Fascism-adjacent.

It’s not paranoia when somebody was, in fact, watching you.

It’s a way much bigger PITA to do it in Windows than in Linux.

I had to fetch the damn original list from their server, then (on my frigging Windows work PC) BASE64 decode it and gunzip it (something stupidly simple on Linux, less so on Windows).

On the upside I did get the warm feeling of finding my nick on the list.

Thank you.

Also thanks for mentioning NymVPN - it looks an interesting replacement for Mullvad.

Two points:

• Danegeld refers to paying the Vikings not to raid your lands, something that has nothing to do with Colonization
• Groups of have been invading other groups of people’s land and taking their shit long before Europe had enough technological dominance for it’s nations to do it to other people outside Europe.

Tribalism and all the shit that comes with it (including the whole “steal from and kill the other tribe for the good of your own tribe”) is way older than “Europe” as a collection of nations and seems to be and inherent human trait.

American style “liberalism” (aka Neoliberalism) is exactly the opposite of that:

• Everything must be behind a money-gate (everything must be private, nothing public) and only if you have enough money can you pass such a gate
• Unless you’re born on the right side of the gate or from parents with enough money, you can only get the money to pass most money-gates (even just the ones for food and for shelter) by working for the people with enough money to pass ownership-of-means-of-production & land-ownership money-gates.

It’s a structure to heavilly reduce freedom in the most important aspects of one’s life including things necessary for survival (like food and shelter), not to increase it, so it’s the very opposite of increasing Liberty or Freedom.

I reckon that’s the kind of “Liberalism” (which is the only one with political power anywhere in the World at the moment as far as I can tell, since there sure aren’t any politicians in power anywhere which both claim to be Liberal and are against core liberty-reducing legislation such as Private Land Ownership) that the previous poster is talking about.

Mainstream politicians out there who call themselves “Liberal” are 100% liars and frauds.

That’s exactly what concerns me.

I would love to find a No Logs VPN with anonymous payments outside the legal jurisdiction of at least the US, UK and EU.

I mean, even the fucking Nederland which used to be pretty pro-personal rights is now a member of the 14-eyes.

You clearly have never owned a business if you think the very legal system which makes that company a legal entity with all the rights it entails (i.e. they’re registered there) can’t force them to do whatever the local laws say they have to do.

They can literally strike that company down of the Company Register and seize its assets because a company did not obey a lawful court order there (such as one from an Information Court).

The rest of your post is even more ignorant bollocks. This is not Privacy Legislation, this is Surveillance Legislation: the stuff that enables and backs the giant civil society surveillance systems revealed by Snowden, not the stuff that makes it a bit harder for Google to know what kinds of Porn you watch.

I’m seriously worried about what’s going on around this.

There is quite the push here for people to move to VPNs under the legals jurisdiction of surveillance heavy states, not just the US and UK but also places like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands which are British Overseas Territories with the same laws as Britain except were they passed specific local legislation that overrides British Law.

We’re talking about places with Information Courts which issue secret mass surveillance orders to companies based in or operating there and it doesn’t mater if that VPN is no logs because for all you know they’ve been forced to install realtime surveillance equipment/software and they can’t even tell you because BY THE LAW OF WERE THEY OPERATE if they did so they would end up in jail.

I would expect that the kind of people who would leave Mullvad because one of it’s owners is a far-right nutter are also the kind of people who don’t want everything they do and say tracked by the likes of the US or UK.

Further, the push is pervasive. For example https://vpn.techlore.tech/ is supposed to help you choose a good VPN, only if you look at those VPNs based in British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, BVI) they’re listed as “Not 14-eyes” which that’s bullshit - I was actually curious and went and look at how Legislation works in Gibraltar and, as I wrote above, they have the same as in Britain except were they wrote their own legislation that overrides British legislation, which means that (unless somebody can point me out the legislation in Gibraltar that overrides it), the very same legislation that support the mass surveillance activities in Britain as a member of not only the “14-eyes” international surveillance agreements but the actual “5-eyes” one, applies to Gibraltar and hence to the likes of IVPN.

Frankly, looking for a replacement for Mullvad whilst having some awareness of the mass surveillance shit in supposedly democratic nations is scary as fuck, since most VPNs, for all their (possibly theatrical) “No logs” and whatnot, are actually in places with Information Courts which can issue secret court orders forcing them to install mass surveillance equipment.

Absolutely, if all you care about is avoiding lawyer letters because of pirating stuff, any “No Logs” VPN will probably do, but if you’re worried about the rise of the Far-Right then it makes sense that you’re not into there being a real risk that all you’re doing over your supposedly “No logs” VPN is in fact being logged directly into NSA or GCHQ systems (in the kind of country whose governments think being a leftwinger is “extremism” or even “terrorism”),

IVPN is based in Gibraltar, which is a British Overseas Territory and whose laws are the same as Britain except were Gribraltar passed their own laws to override it.

Unless proven otherwise (by finding actual laws passed in Gibraltar to block it) treat any VPN based in Gibraltar as being subjected to the same kind of secret mass surveillance orders from Information Courts as those based in Britain.

Lets not deflect the blame away from the political forces which have been subverting Democracy for decades.

Go look at the Chat Control vote in the EU Parliament: it wasn’t the Far-Right that voted for that shit (well, at least not in my country), it was the big “moderate” “center” parties that voted for it whilst the rest voted against it.

The push for authoritarianism is coming from the well-entrenched, big, mainstream, neoliberal parties, the very people who believed the Power of Money should not have to obey the Power of the Democratically Elected State (using slogans like “Do not interfere in the Free Market” to justify having Money as as the top Power).

(Notice how in the US the Democrats are and have been for decades just as much into widespread civil society surveillance and zero privacy as the Republicans)

Mainstream, Neoliberal parties are the people who have shifted Democracy in most of the West towards Oligarchy, with billionaires and even trillionaires holding immense real power.

In most of the West the return of Fascists to politics is still pretty recent and as they’re not the ones entrenched in power, it’s not actually in their interests for widespread civil society surveillance to be in place since such mechanisms are meant to detect and stop challenges to those in power, not to put fringe movements in power.

Are you sure about that?

Think about it: only the people of a single one of all participant countries will end up happy (because their team won it) whilst everybody else will end up unhappy (because their team lost).

Granted, there are a few cases of a bit of happiness, like for the people of Cape Verde, without actually winning it but following unexpected very good positions, but those are a minority and tend towards smaller countries (which usually don’t have enough population to have enough World-class players even if they’re football-crazy, hence why any good result is a surprise).

I would say that logically, all in all at the end of it big single sport world cups like this generally end up with far more people unhappy because of it than the people which are happy.

Download the offline installer and now you have possession.

Further, because GOG enforces no DRM or mandatory sign-ins, so that means that you also have control over that copy of the game - you can install it and play it however and whenever you see fit.

For GOG games were you downloaded and kept the offline installer, the only way that the rightsholder has of stopping you from installing and playing that game is to sue you, which is:

• Almost certainly not worth it for then due to the cost of taking somebody to court for it versus what they would gain if they won.
• They actually have to have an actual legal basis for unilateraly changing the licensing agreement with you and hence be allowed to block you from continuing with the activity you have a license for (installing and running that game), which they almost certainly do not have in pretty much the whole World since EULAs aren’t valid there (they’re considered an attempt at, after a sale is completed, forcing unilateral changes to the implicit contract which is the sale, so have no legal validity)

With other stores they can just force the store to take down the game and now it’s up to YOU to sue THEM to get restitution and the “not worth it” is now something that goes against you (unless you have access to a Small Claims Court in the jurisdiction you’re in, are you really going to sue them for a 50 bucks game?)

In fact, physical media is worse than digital GOG games, because the former can have phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins so you have possession but not control.

PS: However if the point you were making was about resale, then it’s a valid point. Mind you, physical media with phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins can also be de facto unsellable if that’s what the game maker wants.

How about you and your strawman find a room, since you seem really into it.

Is there a Near-Darwin Award?