- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I switched to windscribe last month because the proton CEO starting spewing politcal BS, and I wanted port forwarding that wasn’t locked behind a shitty GUI.
As far as I was concerned setup was super easy, the VPN speeds were great, and port forwarding worked really nicely. The whole price for a fixed server and port forward, + unlimited data was a bit much (at $95/year) but for the ease of use and speeds I was getting, I was happy to stick with them.
My setup is a always-on server with a 1gbps connection, where yes, I fucking seed my shit, all of it. I have about 30TB of linux ISOs and counting, and it’s rare that my combined upload speed is less than 1MBps, ever.
Which lead me to getting banned from windscribe with no notice or warning in the middle of last week. This lead to me having to spend tracker points to avoid HnR, and i’m also unable to grab any new ISOs until I find a new VPN provider that won’t ban me for actually using the service full time.
I did shoot them an email (after talking’ with their AI bot first), and they were actually helpful enough. The offered to restore support, so long as I promised to not torrent with them again (which, I honestly did promise not to. I’m not sticking with a VPN service that can’t handle me actually using it for what it’s advertised for) and they did unban the account. Whole email chain took about three days to get resolved.
My sticking point is that they still have instructions on setting up torrents on their own website, and that they specifically allow for unlimited data (with the plan i paid for) so long as it’s just one user. I did not break those rules. After clarifying that in the support email, they still said that I was using too much data (despite the unlimited data advertisement) and that torrenting was not allowed on their service.
TL:DR: Windscribe bans you if you use a lot of data, and support says torrents aren’t allowed, despite their website advertising such. Proof in the attached images.
If y’all have any other suggestions for a VPN that allow port forwarding i’d really appreciate it.
Goddamnit, I just made an email with them, trying to get out of google’s monopoly. Does anyone know an email service that doesn’t suck?
The most popular alternative seems to be tutanota, though there should be a lot of alternatives though they may be very niche
(it seems tuta has some technical limitations if you want to do automated emailing, and the UI is a bit clunky, but it’s not a privacy or security problem)
Posteo, but also this question is asked every week on lemmy.
The whole “scandal” is bullshit.
Look at the linked tweet, mate. Trump appointed Gil Slater as Assistant Attorney General or the Antitrust Division.
Slater was known for being anti-Big Tech.
Yen is famously anti-Big Tech.
He calls the appointment a good choice.
That’s it. He doesn’t say “Trump is great”, he doesn’t say ANYTHING about Trump himself, he just comments that “appointing this person (who we know is anti-Big Tech) to a high position in the Antitrust Division is a good choice”.
But since we live in the world where saying “Trump, maybe, potentially, accidentally did something good” means you’re in a cult because you didn’t call to hang him for everything he does, we are where we are.
I am not American, but this doesn’t sound particularly convincing.
Irrespective of where you stand on the political spectrum, you can reasonably state that Trump and his regime are extremely corrupt and are unlikely to have any good faith interest in targeting American technology oligarchs via anti-trust.
Yen almost certainly knows this. So there had to be something else going on. Doesn’t necessarily have to be support for Trump, could be an attempt to gain favour.
At any rate, Yen clearly disrespect his customers by engaging in faux-anti-trust polemics.
NOW you can.
In 2024, you couldn’t, because his previous admin, as bullshit-filled, corrupt and dishonest as it was, DID do some good things (mostly in a bad way - if it was all good, it was usually by accident). The anti-trust stuff was some of those good things.
And don’t get me wrong - I know full well that Trump never intended any of that stuff to benefit the “Average Joe”. I’m willing to bet my life’s savings that he and his admin did it to show “who’s the boss” to all the “tech bros” (who were famously anti-Trump at the time). I guess you could say it worked, considering how they all sided with him now.
But, again, we NOW know what the true intentions were. In 2024, looking at the first term, you COULD honestly say that Trump did some good in a fight against Big Tech.
And, again, all Yen said was that appointing someone known for being anti-Big Tech into such a high position in the DOJ was a good move, and stated the obvious (at the time) fact, that Dems were very much siding with Big Tech, which did not benefit the average citizen.
From a purely tribal (“us vs them”, “Republicans vs Democrats”) perspective (“anything they do is wrong and evil, anything we do is correct and good”) - yes, you’re right. From a more saner perspective of just looking at facts of life (anti-trust work, the appointment to the DOJ, Dems’ stance on Big Tech), I don’t see any disrespect at all.
The disrespect I am referring to has nothing to do with US politics or tribalism.
It’s disrespectful because he think his customers are stupid enough to buy his ruse about “genuinely” thinking that a Trump admin would be concerned about anti-trust.
In a global context, skepticism of oligarch groups is not “minority position”. In many countries, if you start spouting random polemics about how “Oligarch X actually cares or might do some good”, people will think you hit your head or you’re trying to launch a new career as a standup comedian with a focus on politics.
You referenced the current US admin assigning someone who is allegedly anti-trust? So what? What does this have to with anything? This is not some sort of silver bullet and it’s a bit sophomoric to claim this is of any significant importance.
This is not at all convincing. There are multiple examples of two-stage oligarch/authoritarian takeovers in flawed democracies (I can come several of the top of my head). This is not unique to the US. An oligarch regime is not going to suddenly have a massive change in heart.
What exactly were the good things? Which major company was broken up? Which executives went to jail?
Try and look at what I am saying outside the lens of internal US politics. As I said earlier, I am not even necessarily saying that the Proton CEO is a Trump supporter, that doesn’t make the situation any better.
But… He never said that?
He said that “democrats used to stand for the little guy, but tables have turned”. Again, in context he’s 100% correct - Dems went to bed with a lot of big business while Reps started a lot of anti-trust anti-BigTech moves (which, due to tribalism, Dems criticised).
He doesn’t say anything else - nothing about him “thinking the Trump admin is concerned about X”, he just states a simple fact.
And we live in a time when stating a fact makes you “the enemy of the people” because, apparently, “my feeling are more important than facts” rings true on both sides of the political divide… And that’s shameful.
Well… only just the fact that this is precisely what he was commenting on?
What do you mean “what dos that have to do with anything”?? It’s got literally the entirety of it.
DOJ Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google (2020)- Focused on Google’s deals with Apple and others to maintain default search engine status, thus harming competitors.
FTC Antitrust Lawsuit Against Facebook (December 2020)- To potentially break up Facebook by forcing it to divest those companies.
DOJ Antitrust Review of Big Tech (2019)- Laid groundwork for later actions, like the 2020 Google lawsuit.
FTC Tech Task Force (2019)- Re-examined acquisitions like Facebook’s of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Trump’s Executive Order on Section 230 (May 2020) to weaken legal protections that shield social media platforms from liability over user content and moderation decisions. - didn’t get much done as actual change would require Congressional action. But it intensified scrutiny of Big Tech.
And indirectly: Trump supported conservative-led Congressional hearings and investigations into Big Tech’s political power and influence or pushed the idea that companies like Amazon were harming small businesses and exploiting USPS.
Obviously, most of these were fuelled by his pettiness (he always complained about social media having anti-conservative bias and wanted to hurt them in retaliation), but you cannot look at these and go “all of this is shite” and not be considered either insane or a fundamentalist.
Don’t be childish. We’re not talking about completely redefining the tech landscape, we’re talking about reining a couple of “too big” companies in.
What you seem to be saying is: “he didn’t criticise Trump, therefore he went against his client-base’s belief system, and that’s a bad thing”.
Am I getting this right? Maybe elaborate on what’s your exact stance on Yen if I’m getting something confused?
He literally said that they are now the party of the little guys. That’s what “the tables have turned” means. That says a lot about how he feels about Trump, and a lot about how much you can trust his judgement on anything.
Yeah, if you cut up his Tweet into single sentences and then read each one completely outside of any context, then you could argue that Andy Yen got brainwashed into being MAGA.
But that’s not how language works.
HERE’S the full Tweet. For your convenience, I’ll quote it in full:
Nothing he wrote here are lies. The antitrust actions against Big Tech were started by Trump’s administration. The whole thing about banning Tik-Tok was their idea.
Appointing someone who’s known to be “anti-Big Tech” to the second highest position in the Antitrust Division at the DOJ objectively sounds great and is a good move.
So, with the Dems fighting to stop Trump admin’s moves against Big Tech, the tables were turned at the point in time the Tweet was written - in 2024, before the inauguration and the swearing-in of Trump!
I’m assuming that if you asked Yen today what he thinks about Trump and his administration, he’d have a vastly different opinion. But calling him a “Trump supporter” based off of that tweet is just… either ignorance, or some silly form of fundamentalism.
If anyone thought Trump’s party was the party of “the little guys” at any point in time now or before the inauguration, they shouldn’t be trusted with a pair of blunt scissors, much less a key piece of IT infrastructure.
And if you’re gullible enough to think that’s a reasonable defence, I’d put you in that category too. I’m not really interested in anything else you have to say, that was just a disqualifyingly vapid argument you just made.
Bye.
I just find it sad that we came to a point where any public discourse is this tribal.
There are things the Trump admin did objectively right (often for all the wrong reasons), but people like you will not only not allow themselves to acknowledge that, you’ll put people like me, who do, to the “Trump supporter or gullible fool” basket without giving it a second thought.
We blame the right-wing for creating a massive divide in society, and then this happens? The left-wing is equally as responsible for this divide, it seems. At least for maintaining, if not deepening, it.
He says Trump supports the little guy and prefers him to democrats who he says are the party of big business.
I’m sorry you want to support people who support fascists.
Not “Trump” but “Republicans”, via the “tables have turned”.
Considering the actions of the Democrats at the time (viciously pro-Big Tech just on the basis of “let’s criticise everything Trump admin does”), and the actions of the Republicans at the time (last administration started a lot of the anti-trust moves against Big Tech), he’s right.
OK, quote that part of the tweet. I posted its entire content in another comment in this thread.
He’s right. They vehemently criticised all the anti-Big Tech actions from the Trump admin during his previous term.
I’m sorry your fundamentalism blinds to simple English.
Self hosting
That is in the back of my mind. God help me I may just do it.
It is actually quite a lot of work if you’re not already familiar with the ideas, I’d only suggest it if you personally want to develop the skills.