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VPN is a scam~ 🥰🥰🥰
Yes and no. A lot of VPN ads are full of lies and misleading garbage, and they’re also often pretty overpriced, but they can be a genuinely useful service for a lot of people as well. Just don’t get the ones in the ads.
If you are fine with torrenting using your real IP, then yes. However, here this can easily lead to high legal bills as rightholders can demand pay for damages even if a tracker just returned your IP as a participant of a swarm. There is no first strike here where you just get a mean letter. It goes into the thousands straight away.
Personally, I wouldn’t do that, especially here with law firms that specialize in that kind of behavior. I rather pay some bucks for that rare case where I want to get something from BitTorrent than risk all that hassle.
VPN, as it is sold by YT sponsorships, is a scam.
All the big VPN companies advertise on YouTube
Where is “here”? Germany? Italy? Most other EU nations don’t give a fuck though. I’ve been torrenting straight from tpb proxies for over two decades without a single hitch.
feddit.org is a German instance. The fact that they’re on that instance makes it pretty safe to assume they’re German, just as my instance makes it safe to assume I’m Australian.
(And incidentally, torrenting is pretty safe here in Australia. A court case years ago heavily restricted the ability of copyright owners to go after torrenters, requiring them to have reason to go after one individual in particular, blocking them from the sorts of mass attacks that make it commercially viable in the US and, seemingly, Germany.)
anytime “here” is not defined, it’s the us. Hope this helps!
There is no first strike here where you just get a mean letter. It goes into the thousands straight away.
That doesn’t happen in the US, at least, not yet. OP said they were referring to Germany.
Germany, but also Spain AFAIK.
Sweden also, in some cases
If you’re only interested in torrenting don’t use a VPN, just get a seedbox. You can get one with minimal stats (1TB storage, 2TB/mo upload on a 50Gb connection) for like $6/mo. You use it to run all of your torrents and handle seeding (handy for getting access to private trackers) and then just download everything via SFTP/rsync/whatever. Or, you can spend a bit more and have them host the *arr suite and Plex/Jellyfin so you have your own private streaming service. Split between a few family members, this is a very affordable alternative to commercial streaming services.
If you’re looking for a VPN for privacy concerns, don’t use a US-based provider. You have no guarantee of privacy, just a flimsy ‘guarantee’ from the company. Use a provider located in a place that has strong privacy and secrecy laws, like Switzerland.
The seedbox I looked into requires you to provide VPN details, it did not allow using it without one.
Edit: also as far as I know Switzerland doesn’t have that strong privacy laws as providers claim in advertisements, but they’re not a member of five eyes.
Not being five eyes isn’t nothing :P
Of course, any traffic leaving the US is going to be hoovered up by the NSA for their SNDL program so make sure your VPN is using something quantum resistant. That being said, I wouldn’t be too worried about law enforcement from the perspective of pirating digital media for personal use. As long as you’re not selling pirated media then LE has more important things to worry about.
If you’re in a country that has criminal ‘contempt of corporation’ laws where they actively pursue personal-use piracy, yeah you’d probably want both a VPN and a seedbox. Of course, now you have the problem of paying for it without linking it to your person. Unfortunately, a big part of the online digital surveillance push in western countries has been expanding KYC and AML laws that make it much harder to pay anonymously without linking your identity to a seedbox.
Big brother is always expanding his reach :/
they’re misleadingly advertised, but still provide a useful service at a decent price
some vpns are scams, yes, but that happens in every industry. Ignoring illegal shit, my Internet speeds are faster when I use a vpn vs not, and that’s reason enough to have one.
I used mine for a similar case because my previous provider had shitty peering which caused YouTube etc to not work well, especially Saturday evening (search for Telekom peering of you want to know more). VPN circumvented this. However I have since switched to a better provider
This is how I felt when Bambulab started giving all creators printers.
To be fair, the hardware is pretty phenominal. The whole trying to lock customers into their ecosystem after they felt enough people had purchased their products was a whole next level of scummy though. We must be vigilant as a community in not letting them creep in antifeatures now they’ve backtracked. I keep mine in LAN only mode and will be switching to Orcaslicer as soon as the flatpak hits Flathub which should be soon.
I’m concerned how they’re now trying to normalize not having control over the things you own. Especially since their printers are popular with influencers
I have a rule if they sponsor on multiple youtubers they are probably a scam and avoid. If i find the service interesting i search up alternatives that spend their money better
yeah, the only good sponsorships are the sponsors of small niche channels, like a lens sponsorship on a photography channel.
Me with Sponsorblock: gremlin noises
To this day, I will never ever ever touch any Mazda products. All thanks to their dumb fucking zoom zoom advertising campaign about 20 years ago that involved their adverts playing twice during every ad break. Plus they were sponsoring shit, so it was everywhere. I feel like I still have PTSD from it. Fuck Mazda.
I’d say it was TV that gave you the PTSD. I bailed on TV at about 8 years old (28 years ago…) and every time I’ve been with people watching it since I was always amazed just how awful it all really was. But I guess it’s just what becomes normal if you grow up with it
Oh yeah it’s definitely TV. But this was before the days of Netflix and shit and before I had uncapped wifi. I don’t watch standard TV anymore either and when I do see it, same reaction as you. It’s probably a bit different from country to country but I think standard TV is mostly geared towards older people now too because most under 40 have unplugged by now.
I can’t speak for modern Mazdas but I got a lowest trim manual, power nothing, in the mid naughties and it was still going strong 15 years later. So for all of their marketing annoyance it was absolutely a good product.
Lol yeah they seem like decent cars actually. But I made myself a promise back then to never give them a cent and I tend to stick to my principles (or at least like to think I do). It’s just a personal thing though. And also kinda funny, I think.
Fair enough
You got it when they were still creating rustbuckets then. The newer ones have much stronger bodywork and don’t oxidize within 3 minutes upon seeing salted roads. Can’t speak for the long term reliability though, don’t know anyone who’s owned one for too long (only friend who owned a newish Mazda traded it in for a Volvo V90 after a few years because space)
I am tempted by new Mazdas because they now have some real nice engines available and they don’t do the whole “everything is touch” thing because apparently they actually care about safety… BUT… I’m salty that they don’t sell the CX90 here, only the CX80. I could really use the extra space nowadays.
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t get another Mazda. I have a 70 pound dog that goes nearly everywhere with me. I needed actual cargo space and Mazda does not do cargo space. I can’t speak to the rusting, the snow place I lived in used cinders instead of salt. I can speak to normal ass sedans with manuals driving right past fancy 4 wheel drive vehicles in the snow. That was hilarious.
I can speak to normal ass sedans with manuals driving right past fancy 4 wheel drive vehicles in the snow.
That’s always been more about skill and tires than drivetrain I’d say. The excess weight of a 4 wheel drive SUV actually puts it at a disadvantage in most situations that don’t involve acceleration, too. They still have the same amount of braking wheels, but more weight to brake, etc.
The problem usually was acceleration though. Specifically way too much gas and spinning their tires until they’re on an ice patch instead of snow. But yeah, definitely a skill issue. Still hilarious.
Your manual transmission might also have helped there tbh. It gives more granular control of acceleration at low speeds if you know what you’re doing - which, if you drove a manual transmission for years, you probably do.
It’s a great general policy to have, but there are exceptions. NordVPN and ExpressVPN are both great VPN services, and Nebula has been absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, but the creators advertising Nebula also make the content, and there’s definitely VPN providers I distrust less than those two.
and there’s definitely VPN providers I distrust less than those two
I find that a weird way to phrase it. Both Nord and Express are perfectly good. So is PIA, and probably more besides, but I didn’t mention others because those are the two I’ve frequently seen advertised. Both Nord and Express have passed security audits with flying colours, and Express even had a case where their servers were seized but the seizure was unable to be of any value to the authorities, because their claims of not keeping logs were true.
I am generally distrustful of anyone who takes money to hide potentially illegal activities. I don’t think they shouldn’t ever be used, but they do have the potential to be a massive weak point, and the way they’re set up to avoid censorship laws also means you can’t really hold them to account, should something go wrong. Ever tried sueing anyone in Panama?
I’m not sure I buy this logic. It smacks of “if you haven’t got anything to hide, you don’t have anything to worry about” reasoning, to me. There are numerous reasons to use a VPN. For most people, that’s circumventing region blocks. Which is not illegal activity, though it may be against a company’s terms of service. For others, it’s to hide behaviour from snooping ISPs or—worse—governments, especially surrounding sensitive topics like GSM status, especially for people in less LGBTI±friendly countries.
And yeah, some people will do things that are actually illegal. Copyright infringement is probably the most popular, which I think most people on here would probably agree is not a major crime. But some smaller amount will use the privacy enabled by a VPN to do more severe crimes. I don’t know how you prevent that without limiting the privacy rights of the much larger number of users.
I’m not saying they aren’t providing a valuable service to many people. They are to me. But they also have the potential to cause great harm to their users, and are very hard to hold to account, should they ever do that. So I try finding the one I distrust least, and use that.
I don’t really see the parallels to ‘nothing to hide’. It’s just a bit of, in my eyes not entirely unjustified, paranoia.
they also have the potential to cause great harm to their users
What harm is that?
The only harm I can see is either:
(a) by associating their users with those who use VPNs to do illegal things. Which is a nonsense association and shouldn’t be given any weight, or
(b) if they do keep logs and turn those over to authorities. Which is why companies that have been audited and shown not to collect logs, or, even better, companies that have been tested in court and unable to comply with requests for information, are the VPN providers that should be preferred.
The second. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, for a vpn provider to be compelled to keep logs, either selectively or for everything.
Can’t remember the specefics, but Express used to be good. Something happened a few years ago and people stopped recommending them. But anything I see in an ad or sponsor can fuck right off. I refuse to use it unless some very reliable source backs up the claims.
When I was shopping for a VPN I skipped those two specifically because they advertised on most podcasts I listened to (I know they are good now but that made me skeptic back then)
You’re right to be skeptical of a VPN that spends that much money to advertise themselves. Especially when they fill the ad sections with lies about unencrypted content ans snooping your data.
Nebula is a creater owned abs controlled coop isn’t it? Way different beast.
Yeah, more or less.
But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Just because something’s being advertised in a lot of places, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad deal.
NordVPN and ExpressVPN are both great VPN services
Nord is absolutely not trustworthy. They have sleazy tactics like trying to charge you after cancelling your subscription, and also have had a lot of controversy in the past, revealing their no-log policy is likely a lie. I didn’t do as much digging on Express VPN but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have the same issues.
VPNs you see in Ads will always be less trustworthy than the ones who are… well… well known and Trustworthy. Ones like Mullvad which make an effort to protect and respect your privacy.
I tried Nord VPN and realized three things: 1: The “limited time specials” they boast are completely misleading. You pay more per month than what they make it sound like in their sponsored messages. 2: They try to automatically renew your subscription and charge your credit card for a significantly higher price with the hope that you wouldn’t notice. 3: Unsubscribing is made to be a frustrating pain in the ass. You have to talk to their sales representatives and they will make you argue for it. And then you’ll have to do it all over again because even though they said they cancelled your subscription it won’t be because " technical problems".
VPNs rely entirely on trust and Nord has proven to be completely untrustworthy.
I use Mullvad now and it uses none of those deceiving tactics to lock you into an expensive contact. It also goes long ways to keep you anonymous and has periodic audits to prove they don’t collect your data.
This is the rule I live by when being forced fed ads. I will actively go out of my way to not use whatever product it is.
If they have the budget to mass advertise then that means they’re earning probably 100x that, most likely directly from users.
Or they’re burning through their VC funds because they’re out of ideas and have no customers.
Nothing feels worse than seeing ads for shit you’ve already got, too. That’s when you know you’ve fucked up
This is me when I see mullvad ads on the subway. Still think they are a great product but I’m starting to question their marketing.
Oh hell. I literally left Nord for Mull and was thinking of that specific example when I made this joke
There are other comments here talking about Nord vs Mull and as someone who just bought one I hope I made the right choice
I’m happy so far, my only cause for complaint is that they advertise at all - not necessarily a reasonable complaint perhaps.
yeah, the best time to advertise at me about a thing is while I’m researching thing to buy.
Advertising at me after I bought the thing is useless, I already bought it!
Bought a gift for a babyshower, I was getting ads for baby stuff for the following 3 years
It does have a purpose. I found the name of it once, but it’s basically choice confirmation. When you buy something and then shortly after see lots of ads of other people who bought the same thing and are really happy with it/it appears popular, it confirms to you that you made the right choice and should make it again if given the chance. This kind of “confirmation after the fact” advertising is especially used in larger purchases like a car. It reinforces the choice you made in your mind so you feel more satisfied with the brand itself.
I actually appreciate this, even knowing how it works. After a big purchase I tend to be conflicted about it having spent that much money. I like to have it be confirmed that I made the right choice, even if I know it’s just manipulation. 😅
Like, recently I bought a BambuLab P1S 3D printer (with the multi-material combo). I did my research, knew it was an excellent value for money. I knew the competing options were not worth the added features for the higher cost, or the reduction in features for the savings. It was basically exactly what I wanted at a good price point.
And yet every time I see a suggested YouTube video recommending that printer, or an ad talking about what a good value it is, I get this little happy dopamine burst for having made a good choice.
Lol nah I feel you. If it makes you feel any better, I have an A1 and a X1C. Love them both. Had an Ender before and hated it. Some guy was printing a life sized T-Rex and his recommendation is what pushed me over the edge. Haven’t regretted it.
Had an Ender before and hated it.
I had a Maker Select Plus (i3 clone) and it was great…but extremely limited. I’m really looking forward to what I can do with an enclosed printer that doesn’t sling the bed around for the Y axis.
Some guy was printing a life sized T-Rex and his recommendation is what pushed me over the edge. Haven’t regretted it.
Damn. Lots of printing in pieces and then acetone fusing to get the parts together? Or glue? Sounds like an awesome project.
As for my ender: the quality control isn’t great. Sometimes you get a bad one and I think that was most of my issue. It had a nasty habit of diving straight into the heat bed. Might’ve been the autoleveler… I dunno. I just know I spent more time tinkering with the printer itself than actually printing. With my Bambus it really is “set it and forget it” for the most part.
As for the dino: Lots of bondo and glue, yes lol. I’ll see if I can find it later. It’s on makerworld and you can find it in the Bambu app as well if you search around. He mentioned how much faster it was to print the pieces on his Bambu vs his ender and with the multicolor support, I was sold. My X1C currently runs 2 AMS so I rarely have to swap colors out too.
Heh…you may wanna stay off the major YouTube 3D printing channels for a bit nowadays friend. :)
Everyone hates BambuLab now right? Something about firmware blocking other slicers? Seems shitty if true.
There was a few big dumb moves they recently made involving the next fw update, a new piece of “security” software that was supposed to sign all connections to the printer and would prevent 3rd party slicers etc from connecting, and then gaslighting everyone by redacting statements previously made on their website about it. It’s dumb, anti-consumer, and pissed off a community that’s pretty much made up of giant nerds with the smarts to call them out on the bullshit.
There’s about a billion videos about it, but the one from Zach Freedman sums it up best without blowing it out of proportion IMO.
But yeah, it was reason #187 I ordered a CORE One from Prusa at a much higher price vs BL models for my next printer.
Hey, totally fair. I was looking at the CORE One, looks like an awesome printer! And a buddy of mine has a Voron he loves.
I’m not overly concerned, I’m not enough of a hobbyist to bother with alternate slicers or firmware or anything like that yet. Maybe someday I’ll get there. For now I’m just going to be thrilled to have an enclosed multi-material printer for under a grand. 😅
except i usually get ads for a thing that’s both more expensive and worse for my use case than the one I bought.
This was exactly how I felt about the Honey scam. xD
Very first thought was “how the fuck are they making money enough to advertise??”I heard about it, downloaded it, tried it. Then i googled for other coupons and found a better one. Deleted Honey right away for being shit.
Im surprised so many people would just trust the app immediately and not try to see if there were better coupons.
I tried it but never got coupons, so I made 10$ in honey gold, then I forgot about it until I saw the controversy
Maybe I’m just bad or slow at queries but I almost never found working coupons when I’m ready to purchase. When I used to have honey (when it somewhat worked), I got a few token percentage off compared to entering codes that were expired or otherwise no longer valid.
Granted, once Honey moved to a rewards based model I dipped out since something didn’t sit right with me about it.
Yeah same experience here. Googling for a code at best gets me the promotions already happening on the retail site with the code sites affiliate link.
It may be because when I’m looking for codes I’m already buying high price low margin products like TVs.
Most people are lazy, or don’t even come up with the idea to do a web search. When they do, most non-techies don’t know or struggle to write an effective search query
Same thing here. I’ve been using “everything” for long enough to know not to trust… anything… an app is going to get the best discount available for me? Yeah, we’ll just see about that. I just wasnt ever going to not search for coupons myself, so I removed it.
This is partly why I don’t trust Ground News. They’re putting way too much money into advertising for me to believe they’re genuinely interested in providing an unbiased factual categorization of news sources.
I also simply don’t believe it’s possible to be unbiased, so anyone claiming to be is immediately suspect to me.
Is it perfect? no but it is the best way to be able to read the news from multiple POVs. They also include every single news outlet I’ve ever heard of and then some
I mean I get my news here on Lemmy and from other individuals on lotteries social media. I think awareness of local and world events no longer needs to be meditated through a news organization. As long as you don’t sit in an echo chamber and have some level of literacy it’s not too hard to stay up to date.
I get that it offers a bunch of features that you can’t get anywhere else, but I just can’t shake the uneasy feeling that it’s all a trojan horse for something more sinister. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and see it suddenly explode in controversy after someone exposes something not quite kosher going on under the surface.
It’s just too good to be true.
Well most of the features aren’t free so I’m not too worried
They also reinforce seeing liberal and conservative as opposites. The only good service they have is showing who sponsors which sources. However, the whole “blindspot” system seems designed as a both-sidesism
Exactly! It’s really disheartening to me to see so many youtubers who are otherwise insightful be so uncritically supportive of Ground News because they “like what they’re trying to do.”
Usually they’re science channels who just don’t know any better. They’re still too trusting of the system
SponsorBlock FTW!
also also, firefox on android supports extensions. never go anywhere without ublock origin and sponsorblock.
If you’re on android I’d recommend viewing youtube videos through newpipe as it strips out everything except for the stream. Only downside is that it doesn’t have replacement functionality for sponsorblock.
I’ve tried newpipe, but it won’t work if my phone is connected to wifi, no idea why.
or just get tubular from f-droid, which has sponsorblock built in
I’m sure that’s better, but my way is doable for normies (my friends) and the extremely lazy (myself).
Unofficial Freetube for Android is an option as well.
No need for the clumsy browser experience. Just download ReVanced.
Newpipe > revanced IMO. Newpipe also supports a few other media streaming services outside of youtube, and when stuff breaks due to google interference they usually have a fix out within a few days.
The problem with NewPipe is that it breaks the YouTube experience. ReVanced lets you use your YouTube account to get all the normal YouTube functionality such as liking and commenting, viewing your subscriptions (including syncing if you make a change) and, most importantly, syncing playlists such as the Watch Later playlist.
I’ve only had ReVanced break once since I started using it, way back when Vanced first died. So I don’t consider the “stuff breaks” element to be especially relevant.
Yeah that’s a fair point. I use newpipe specifically to get away from the youtube experience and keep only the videos. Newpipe does let you create local playlists and subscriptions that live only in the app, which I do utilize a bit.
I’ve gotten reVanced a couple times. It usually works for a week or two before something breaks.
Do you have microg integration set up? Usually the root cause of issues when something there is broken from my experience, assuming you have stable from the official revanced manager.
Huh, weird. I think I’ve only had to reinstall it once since Vanced died and I switched to ReVanced.
How exactly does it break for you? I use vanced and then revances constantly since the day one of its existence, and don’t remember it breaking once.
Huh. I update my revanced YouTube app every 6-9 months
I’ve used it for couple years and it has never broken so I don’t understand what you are doing with it
This, but applied to all ads.
Huh, this company is spending a lot of money on marketing. Guess I’ll buy from a company doing less marketing so I’ll get it cheaper.
Or that is so good, they don’t need anything more than word of mouth. And I mean real word of mouth, not the fake influencer shilling that relies on parasocial relationships “word of mouth”
I exclusively buy from brands that are engrained in folk lore. Unless it’s literally the stuff of legends, you won’t see a penny from me
This is exactly why I prefer ThinkPads
Be careful though because the newer ones aren’t as good
I guess it is true: You either die a hero, or live long enough to become shitty.
I quit those when Lenovo showed they don’t care about Linux, and switched to Framework
hmm enough profits to sponser all youtube. sus
Especially if it’s a free to play game
That just tells me “you will definitely spend money to get what you’re looking for in this game”
No fucking thanks
a free thing with suspicious amount of advertising requires a lot questioning at the least
