Oh, and don’t use tor. Well, unless you want to get caught.
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This has been my choice for decades. Not because I’m lazy or an authitarian but because I know what I’d be up against.
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why? the privacy laws are getting worse with every year (Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten! - I am not even mad at the conservatives, I know they have not my interests in heart. But it’s still painful to see the state of the social-democratic party…). I would choose a country with European levels of privacy but outside of the EU, like Norway or Switzerland. The laws are not better, but with less international automated data exchange.
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Pretty much. I just use my phone 99% of the time. If I have an adversary, I take all the right steps (if I have an advesary? I already know who they are). But in general I just play it cool.
Plus, hey Vlad at the fsb, tired of my puns yet? I got more for ya.
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Bouncing traffic off of Germany is still one of the best tradeoffs between legal protections, interconnect speed, and hiding in plain sight. It isn’t perfect, Estonia or (if you are feeling dangerous) Cypress also work. But bang for the buck, it’s Germany.
Never use Russia, New Zealand, Taiwan, or even contemplate China. Luxemburg is interesting, but the latency is alarming.
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“it has to be Germany” vs “okayish compromise” is different, though.
Of all the encrypted traffic I track, a whopping 10%+ globally originates from a node in Germany. If you want to hide in plain sight, that is the place to be.
A couple years ago I put together a map of what was coming from where. Red is just plain malicious traffic. The blue is encrypted or obfuscated, and needed manual inspection.
Notice Germany.
(Yellow is crypto currencies)
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When you say discord do you mean discourse? I’m confused…
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Yes! I’m sorry. As an active user of Discord as well, my brain has turned to mush. Too many chat systems that start with “Dis”!
The one that matters, of course, is Discourse, and I apologize for calling it otherwise.
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Ooh, don’t call Discourse chat software. @codinghorror doesn’t approve of chat.
Is there really a commenting system called Discord?
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Yes, There is.
It is, however, more a slack competitor than say, Disqus to Discourse, and gamer-centric.
TOO MANY DIS’s!
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I knew exactly what you meant. I figured it was autocorrect being finicky, which is where nine and ninety luft balloons of my spelling mistakes come from.
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Disqusting.
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Just going to wander in and say, don’t bother VPNing to the US. I had to in order to purchase pizza for an American friend, and it worked only once. Absolute pain in the ass, and it will not protect you from three letter agencies or an evil ISP.
I used to use VPNgate in order to access american content, but now I just use random pirate streaming sites in a burner VM on burner hardware.
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I fully appreciate and respect this. But, it does fly in the face of one of bb’s main themes, that of “the inherent right to internet privacy technologies,” which, let’s just say, are often presented in relatively black/white, right/wrong dichotomies. I will refer you to many of the works of a Cory Doctorow, and a large chunk of the published articles on this site over the past many years.
Just sayin’… 
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Yes. Considering I also host all of Cory’s Websites and email, lets just say I have an intimate knowledge of the subject at hand. 
We don’t block all IP addresses. We don’t block all VPNs. We don’t block Tor. We do block malicious IP addresses that attack the site, because if we didn’t, we’d literally have more spam accounts than legit ones.
We can both acknowledge that privacy tools are useful and protect the BBS from bad actors at the same time. We do this by being light-handed in IP banning, and using the awesome features of Discourse to auto-remove these IPs when bad actors are no longer detected.
You seem to suggest there’s some sort of bias against VPNs or Tor or other privacy tools, and there just isn’t. There is a bias against malicious IP addresses, and nothing more.
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Wait, this is potentially an option? I HAVE YOU NOW, FA
[this post has been flagged for imminent deletion by the moderators]
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Doesn’t that suck? Hate that shit. People all licking my Zig Zags and shit.
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Actually none of that, and as I said, I completely respect and appreciate your policies. If you didn’t get the hint, that was me saying I support them. What I was commenting on is the irony, because these nuances you speak to are not often projected into the site’s content itself.
And yes, I kind of assumed you were familiar with the site’s and Cory’s content, silly. That was what we call “rhetoric.” Ya dig? 
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I don’t think I agree with that. I don’t think Cory’s ever said (or linked to anyone who said) “All VPNs should be whitelisted and no amount of bad behaviour should cause them to be restricted” (or anything similar). I know we’ve had more than one article discussing how Tor and VPNs are important for protecting privacy in some cases (for example, VPNs likely won’t stop a state actor looking for you, or even a large corp willing to subpoena your VPN provider), but it is effective in keeping your ISP from tracking you.
i think we can all agree that the site’s stance is “Use privacy tools. They will help you stay safe”. I assure you Cory doesn’t run around without a firewall on his laptop just because he believes the net should be open. In fact, if he did that somewhere like Defcon, I think I’d have to subsequently lock him out of his own sites. 
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