Potato, potato. MAGA and MAGA-aligned oligarchs are bankrolling and pushing the European far right, which is deeply illiberal and keen to return Europe to a balkanised landscape of isolated nationstates. That amounts to the destruction of the EU as a whole since which was designed around the very ideas of freedom and supranational unification.
It could only happen if the EU breaks its dependence on the US.
This needs to happen regardless. Not only has the U.S. proved to be an absolutely unreliable partner: under MAGA, it’s an enemy to Europe. The U.S. fascists and oligarchs want to see Europe fail for the same reason Putinism does: if your next-door neighbour enjoys liberties and a reasonably good life in a stable democracy, at some point your own impoverished and downtrodden populace will ask why they cannot have that too. The U.S. under Trumpism wishes to destroy Europe just like Putinism. Thus, if Europe wishes to survive in its current form, all dependence on the U.S. needs to be eradicated.
I did read that part, but like you, I haven’t been able to independently verify it yet.
This right here. KeepassXC (PC) already had passkey support for a while, KeepassDX (Android) recently implemented support. If you use FOSS implementations, vendor lock-in and potential future corporate enshittification are non-issues.
If fElon truly cared about fuel prices, he could tell the Mad King to stop setting fire to the Middle East. But alas, he doesn’t. He’s just playing mouthpiece to the Trump regime’s latest spin and tries to blame rising prices on Ukraine. What a pathetic attempt. Use your big mouth for something useful and go suck a fat one, fElon.
What’s missing from this report is more detail on how exactly this attack went down. Did the attackers compromise supermarket networks and manipulate the fridges through lateral movement within the network; or were the fridges accessible from the open internet? If the latter is the case (and there’s a non-zero likelihood they were): why the fuck?
Fine. Now that the obvious things have been stated, can we please also identify the figureheads of Brexit, Johnson and Farage, as Russian assets, and proceed accordingly?
If the CEO of a privacy company supports political forces that are deeply anti-liberty and anti-privacy, that does constitute a “need” to switch, don’t you think?
people just hold on to the CEO bullshit take on US politics
…echoed and reinforced by Proton’s business account. That’s not a nothingburger. Trust is a privacy company’s greatest asset - and an asset easily destroyed if the company is found to have political leanings that are inherently adverse to privacy and freedom.
would self hosting be the way to go then in this case?
Absolutely. 👍 Running your own Nextcloud (+ calendar + contacts addons, + office if you like) gives you most of what Proton has to offer: docs/filehosting, calendar and contact sync (via calDAV/cardDAV). You can even tack on notes, photos, a password manager and more if you like, although I think there are better specialised tools for each of these. (For me, that’d be Joplin, immich and keepass + Syncthing.)
also how good is using proton solely for mail and vpn? or should i diversify more?
Personally, I would always separate my e-mail provider (which is prime real estate for identifying me personally) from my VPN (which is supposed to make me harder to identify). Whether that’s true for you (and worth the little bit of extra cost) is up to you.
Hello, Animal Protection Services? Yes, this guy right here.
"Happy birthday! And may you every day keep my not-so-wonderful secrets.
In the bigliest adoration and gratitude like the world has never seen before
Agent Krasnow"
US President Donald Trump said Friday that
You can stop reading right there. 47 is full of shit, and we need to stop taking anything he says serious unless an adult has confirmed it and there’s corroborating evidence for it.
They did the Maths! 👏 Thanks for saving me the time.
It [IVPN] just seemed like the most similar choice
A lot of things are similar indeed, with one essential difference: the raid on Mullvad did prove their no-logs policy was no bullshit. I haven’t found anything similar on IVPN.
Nym seemed interesting, but I don’t believe they offer Wireguard configs?
Good call, they don’t. When is that relevant, though? When you want to connect a headless machine, such as a server?
I’m still running out a mullvad subscription but I’ll be switching that to IVPN when it expires.
I’m in the same boat: still on Mullvad, but eager to switch due to… things. May I ask what your main reason is to consider IVPN above all others? I’m still stuck choosing between IVPN, Proton and Nym.
Tips hat. That’s some cleverly painful poetry, good Sir!
I’ll keep it short, but provide links for further reading. First off, I don’t think proton is “bad”, or anyone is trash-talking them legitimately. Both their jurisdiction (Switzerland), dedication to FOSS and good audit results make them a solid choice.
Diversification is my main reason why I’d never go all-in on Proton. Over the years, they’ve grown an ever more complete suite of apps (e-mail, calendar, VPN, password manager, docs, AI) that does share some similarity with the Google app suite in that you’re essentially putting all eggs in one company’s basket - and a lot of trust with that. If Proton got hacked, got subverted by a three-letter agency, or just got taken advantage of by a rogue employee, the effects would be much more impactful than if it had just been your e-mail provider, just your VPN service, just your…
Also, Proton’s official social media account echoing CEO Andy Yen’s private statements on U.S. politics haven’t helped convince people that the company is, indeed, politically neutral and solely focused on privacy.
Actually, it’s also the someone that makes the distro controversial. (Spoiler: poorly veiled bigotry in link.)
At times, it feels like European leaders are caught in a defensive loop, merely responding (and weakly so) to whatever Putin or Trump throw their way. This makes the two despots seem tall, their power a force of nature to which Europe must either bend or break.
In this climate, ideas and texts like this are a breath of fresh air. They do not merely suggest responses: they develop an agenda, a vision of where we want to be, and a path on how to get there. And they allow us to leave our defensive stance and get back on offense.
Talking over Putin’s head is smart in two ways: first off, if pokes a hole into his strategy of keeping the West busy with fake “negotiations”, which, so far, have all been poorly masked efforts to play for time. Secondly, it’s a power move that makes Putin look weak - and that weakness precisely the signal that potential candidates for regicide are looking for.
That said, we must somehow mitigate the orange elephant in the room who might want to protect his pal. As a narcissist, he knows the pain of people talking about you, but not with you too well.