It seems to be endemic in certain US circles to confuse Communism with Authoritarianism (which is what that link does). Yes. Stalin was an (evil) authoritarian, and his massacres were done under the banner of communism, but so was Hitler (and so is Drumpf) neither of whom were (are) Communists.

Why are the two things so regularly conflated by Americans ?

That is a little unfair the final paragraph sums up the argument it made throughout the article which is:

“Our research shows that while governments across the UK have introduced a range of measures, too many local authorities lack the dedicated resources, funding and strategic framework needed to deliver meaningful change. Financial penalties alone will not solve the problem. What works is sustained local engagement, professional advice, and properly funded empty homes teams that can support owners through the process of bringing properties back into use.”

In other words, there are powers that exist that could partially address it, more funding and focus on it would have an impact, they also highlighted areas where more / new measures could be added.

Thanks for the input. I do a lot of remote work over a VPN for work (Azure one I assume as they’re an MS house, I’ve not checked), which they don’t block, but they also only blocked the always on VPNs myself and the rest of the household had in place for that 12 hour window on a Sunday. It is currently working fine for the personal VPNs. I didn’t think to test the work laptop given I’d tested 3 VPNs by that time, but I’ll try next time

Ahh. That’s bad. What exactly did they do that made it feel like a data collection scheme ?

Yeah, I hope it’s not deep packet inspection, Mullvad has dropped support for OpenVPN (wireguard only), the other two still support it, I’ll have a bit more of a dig, my network skills beyond the basics are getting rusty. Disguising it as https should just be putting it on port 443 and making sure it’s TCP only I would have thought ?

Great questions.

I’m reasonably confident the DNS requests are not going to the ISP but I wouldn’t bet parts of my anatomy on it. The router is set to call Mullvad’s DNS with quad 9 as the fallback (which is obv for unencrypted traffic and the initial call to start a VPN session), the Mullvad client definitely calls to their dns and they have tests on their website for dns and rtc leaks which they pass.

The other two have similar setups, although the minor one I might just carefully check.

There is unfortunately only 1 ISP in my area (Virgin), and I would really love to not be using them - they have an awful reputation for a very good reason. Their support team is truly atrocious, and from previous experience I’ll get an answer like

“I’m sorry, we don’t support VPNs, is there anything else we can help you with ?” “Yes I appreciate that, but are you throttling my VPN ?” “I’m sorry, we don’t support VPNs, is there anything else we can help you with ?”

Continue loop until you hang up.

Hostinger were very dear (double) compared to most of the other options at the lower/middle end (2cpu/4gb-ram/50+gb), but thanks very much for the suggestion, appreciated.

Thank you

Thanks very much

Thanks very much, I’m going with OVH and really appreciate so many options.

Focussing on the important things I see. Jesus.

Am I the only one who read that headline and thought “an art teacher told a student to dial down the feminism ? An art teacher ? Bullshit they did”

Nice art but the backstory is utterly fake

So it’s really Mango Mussolini behind the curtain - there is no Google AI ?

Insert Scooby Doo unveiling pic here

Press X to doubt on that headline.

The article doesn’t support it. My teen son’s response (we’re in the UK): “bullshit”

Clickbait imnsho.

Thats because it takes years of practice to get the motor skills for writing trained, remember how bad you were in kindergarten at writing ? If you practised with your left your writing would improve.

Out of curiousity (because I’ve not met another ambi in real life) do you also have things you do left handed and things right ? I play tennis left handed and write right handed for example.

It doesnt really matter what his approval numbers are, only the party faithful will be allowed to vote in the mid terms, so the GOP will win all the elections

Yup. Said the exact same thing on the day. A 30-06 would have made a fist sized wound (bigger if it hit bone). The wound is consistent with a 5.56 or similar. Much smaller bore lower ft/lb projectile is more likely.

The UK is more water stressed than Australia ? That seems…unlikely ? Counter intuitive anyway

Because its an “inglourious basterds” three raised fingers giveaway that tje poster is not American, probably Russian

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/major-hellstrom-sees-three-fingers

Russians care about warm water ports because they have few of them and the ones they have are inconveniently located.

Americans don’t even think about specifying that a port is warm water because they all are in the contiguous 48.

Ergo the poster is probably a Russian bot.

It’s the same how certain spellings give away Yanks trying to Larp as British

Australia will be left with no submarines regardless of whether it does or does not leave AUKUS. It is not getting any through AUKUS regardless of wishful thinkng. The US has no intention of fulfilling its end of the deal, and the UK are not capable