Best Of

Looking at the last thread, HYUFD seems have gone full Stasi...the government will get somebody like GCHQ* to monitor who downloads VPNs. Crickey.

* I mean GCHQ aren't busy at the moment....nothing going on in the world that slightly more important.

The fact we even having any discussion that VPNs could be restricted in a Western liberal democracy is bonkers to me. It is actually why the likes of Proton with their VPN / Email etc is so important.

Growing up in Gloucestershire, I knew several people who worked at GCHQ.

With one exception, they all had in common that they didn't understand the first thing about actually running computers. They were experts in coding and data analysis, not technology. They used them but if they broke they had to get somebody else to fix it.

It may have changed - very probably has - but that doesn't inspire confidence that they would be any good at monitoring and understanding VPNs.

I mean, despite Hyufd's claims, even the Chinese government can't do that (can't even begin to do that) and they spend enormous amounts of time and money on it. Even North Korea found it near impossible which is why they set up a completely sealed intranet.

Actually if I remember correctly one of the smaller revelations from Snowdon was that GCHQ had a zero day into OpenVPN protocol that had been used effectively.

An illustration of what happens when you criminalise half the population for what was once perfectly legal activity.

This guy now has a criminal recorded for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

If you're ever arrested, do not talk to the police on any circumstances until you have a lawyer. And probably not after you do.

Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/28/man-allotment-gardening-tools-arrest-armed-police-manchester
...“[I had] to explain in very basic terms what an allotment is to this guy,” he said. “So it didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence that I was going to be let off.”

“I kept explaining that they’re gardening tools, none of the blades were on show,” Rowe added. “I said that I don’t leave [the tools] at my allotment because it’s not secure, people can break into the allotments and easily get into your shed in five minutes … they were just constantly not listening.”

Rowe said he was interviewed without legal representation as officers had been unable to reach a solicitor, and after spending several hours in custody he said he accepted a caution so he would be released...

Never accept a caution.

He should have demanded they charge him or release him.

They want a conviction to up their "detection" and "clear up" rates, and rely upon self-incrimination or you accepting a caution.

People don’t realise that when you “accept” a caution you end up with a criminal record.

I've heard that, sometimes, kids get hurt by cars.

The sooner we ban these vile child-slaying Machines of Death the better.

Anyone who disagrees thinks Anakin Skywalker should be in charge of every nursery in the country.

That's an interesting intervention.

No - it's about appropriate regulation, and in one (amongst other) particulars making our road network fail-safe not fail-dangerous. And that is both the environment, and the operators of the machines.

A key measure is to institutionalise alternatives as practical options (ie can walk without being forced out into the traffic).

Bonus as the timer ran out:

If you want a good example, I can point you to a fairly recent incident where a car followed another car into one of our dangerous "maximum throughput and speed" 40-50mph traffic islands, where a block of small trees had since been grown on the verge (no joined up thinking), so the sight line into the first exit was obscured.

So when the guy came round the corner, and could not stop, he said "I was forced to go up the pavement; I had no choice", where he killed someone on the pavement.

Of course the stupid fuck had lots of choices.

He had the choice to drive at a safe distance behind the car in front, at a safe speed for the distance he could see, to hit the car in front rather than careen up the pavement. IIRC he was still over the stupidly high DD limit from the night before, so he had the choice not to get pissed-out-of-his-brain when he knew he would be driving the next morning.

Referring to the bit about sightlines, I always wonder why traffic planners are apparently unable to spot the hazards that we are all trained for when we learn to drive. "Can you reduce the speed limit as there are blind bends/blind humps/lots of kids on the pavement and drivers are incapable of driving to the conditions?" "No, there haven't been enough accidents yet, we need to wait for a couple of you to be killed"

Given how safe the roads are, it is likely that a statistically significant number of accidents on any stretch of road will be only one or two, and might be obscured by accidents that are nothing to do with road conditions eg drunk driving or inattention. Or there might be lots of near misses where both drivers think "shit, that was close" and drive on, and traffic planners never get to hear about them.

The problem is everything I use has a VPN. Any company of any size uses VPNs to restrict who can access systems on their networks.

In this day and age, any business or organisation that doesn't enforce their use them to enable offsite access to log in, their IT admins need the sack. Same as 2FA.

As we've seen with The Co-op, M&S, and Knights of Old, some companies really have poor IT staff/don't have a grasp of what they need.

About twenty years ago I had a client whose idea of IT security was buying new laptops/desktops every 18 months.

About five years ago I had a prime minister whose idea of IT security was hosting a remote Cabinet meeting on a Chinese service and tweeting the Zoom meeting ID to the world along with the private email addresses of several ministers.

But he got all the big calls right.