Just found my Vivaldi update contained a little more than just bugfixes... it now has Proton VPN built in.

It's actually part of the browser, not an extension, so I'm in two minds whether I like that... or not.

You need either a Vivaldi account or a Proton account, so it's not completely anonymous, but it's a start.

The free-tier of Proton VPN also appears to be bandwidth limited and your exit point is randomised, so... yeah, it's ok...

Original link: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/a-quarter-of-britons-now-disabled-jhjzwcvbs

The number of children living in poverty across the UK has reached a new record high, according to figures from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Some 4.45 million children were estimated to be in households in relative low income, after housing costs, in the year to March 2024.

This is up from the previous record of 4.33 million in the 12 months to March 2023. It is the highest figure since comparable records for the UK began in 2002-2003.

A household is considered to be in relative poverty if it is below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9780943

cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/53784

I signed up for an American Express preferred Blue card and got approved for a limit of $25,000. I have a 830 credit score. I realized that the places I shop don't accept that card and you have to pay for it yearly so I canceled it.

Then I decided I was going to get a Costco Visa. Once I signed up the credit limit was only $5,000. So I canceled that one. So I stupidly signed up for a Wells Fargo Visa and that was $4,000.

Don't leave yet and please don't make fun of me but I'm not done being stupid. I decided I wanted a different American Express card and when I signed up for it the credit limit was $2,000 so I canceled that one.

Again I know I'm fucking stupid but how bad did I just fuck up my credit?

'Is it worth anything?' 'I dunno, is the answer to that question worth another $5?'

https://explainxkcd.com/3068/

cross-posted from: https://poliverso.org/objects/0477a01e-4267-e55d-042f-69d193263777

Can Twitter X control journalists and politicians? The shocking revelation from Musk's Italian trustee gives pause for thought

The story of Andrea #Stroppa who, as a shareholder of X, boasts of being able to read its private messages, is told by @claudiagiulia
The journalist noticed Stroppa's "gaffe" during a "space" live broadcast and reported it to the Italian Data Protection Authority

It’s Saturday, March 22, 2025. I’m getting ready to head out and take one last look at Twitter. At the top of the screen, I spot a Spaces session featuring Andrea Stroppa, a key figure in Elon Musk’s orbit, with a prominent role in Europe, especially Italy. I hesitate, but then I notice some journalists I admire - people I’ve connected with on the platform - among the listeners. Curiosity wins out, and I join. Nicola Porro is interviewing Stroppa: they’re talking about Twitter X, Musk, and Tesla. Then my connection drops, I have to leave, and I close the app. The next day, I return to the audio: it’s still there, recorded on the platform, now heard by thousands. I pick up where I left off. At the 32-minute mark, Stroppa says something that stops me cold. I rewind and listen again. I can’t believe it. In a fleeting moment - maybe a lapse - he drops a bombshell: thanks to his role as a shareholder, he can uncover the identity of any user on X, specifically mentioning anonymous accounts that criticize him. It’s a stark claim, impossible to brush off.

A revelation everyone ignores

claudiagiulia.substack.com/p/c…

@technology

Following the announcement on 15 January that TikTok would be banned in the United States on 19 January 2025, hundreds of thousands of TikTok users migrated, and continue to migrate, to XiaoHongShu (‘Little Red Book’, or ‘RedNote’). XiaoHongShu is a Chinese app with a format similar to TikTok, which became the #1 most downloaded app on the Appstore, with 700,000 Western users joining in just two days. On 24 January, 4 days after President Trump repealed the short-lived ban, XiaoHongShu remained at #8 on the Appstore, evidencing its enduring popularity even with the return of TikTok.

This Insight investigates how Western extremists, including neo-Nazis, white supremacists and participants in Saints Culture, capitalised on the migration to XiaoHongShu. They rapidly started sharing extremist content, and even using Chinese language text to pose as Chinese netizens or be understood by a Chinese audience. Chinese netizens’ responses were largely negative, including some grassroots activist reporting of offensive content. Additionally, many monitored far-right extremist accounts and posts were removed within the first week of the migration, indicating that Chinese moderators were aware of and restricting the extremist activity, despite the unprecedented surge in English-language users.

I've used proton for a year or two now and it is fine. Great for use on my phone when I want to use public/airport wifi and it sort of kind of works with gluetun (the rotating port is annoying but it still is a forwarded port).

But I've increasingly been annoyed with Proton as a company and am looking to migrate my email/domain to fastmail in the very near future. I COULD continue to just pay for the vpn (60 USD a year is pretty reasonable) but also feel like this is a good opportunity to "shop around"

Checked the wiki and other FAQs (which all basically crib from said wiki) and they all basically boil down to proton or mullivad... except that mullivad apparently stopped allowing port forwarding which is a bit of an issue for any torrents and the like.

So are there any other good options?

Thanks

Some text from a constructed world I play around with that leans into an 80s tech aesthetic. FTL communication exists, but the data rate is comparable to a dial up modem. Vibrant multimedia experiences like we see on the modern web do exist, but isolated to planet-wide internetworks. Interplanetary communication is a purely text-based affair.

The text is read from right to left, and is just the word for operating system in one of my conlangs.

I’ve been on a journey today trying to understand the fediverse better.

I’ll be mindful to not start bitching about certain instances.

Here’s my example:

Is it technically possible that posts or comments still get downvote-brigaded by an instance that is technically defederated from the instance of the OP?

So let’s say instance A and B are defederated from each other, but both are federated with instance C. After a user from A posts something on C does every user from B get to downvote everything?

I’m trying to determine if the Fediverse has recourse against an r/TheDonald scenario, where one toxic element is allowed to flourish for too long and - in the case with the other site - eventually takes over and destroys everything.

If this debate has been had somewhere else, please feel free to point me there, otherwise I’d love to understand this better.

Weird question maybe, but I don't think I ever liked the taste of fish, except when I was young. I vaguely remember eating fish fingers and (I think) plaice. But then I stopped and never went back to it. I dislike the smell, I find salmon bland (although that may have been the salmon I tasted once). Are there any particular fish that would make the crossover from chicken to fish easier? Or any recipes that don't disguise the taste of the fish too much, but make it more palatable for somebody that isn't crazy about the taste? I see the health benefits and would love to just get stuck in, but there seems to be a block with the associated smell and I guess a one off bad one that put me off eating it. I picked up cod in the supermarket today, and then decided I should ask here first...😁 So hopefully I get a mixture of answers, but mostly some helpful. Thanks for reading.

Edit. Wow, wasn't expecting to see this many replies. I have already seen some great ideas that I'm definitely going to try. I have to go through them all.

Deepseek v3 0324 is the first open-source model to match SOTA coding performance

• Understands user intention better than before; I'd say it's better than Claude 3.7 Sonnet base and thinking. 3.5 is still better at this (perhaps the best)
• Again, in raw quality code generation, it is better than 3.7, on par with 3.5, and sometimes better.
• Great at reasoning, much better than any and all non-reasoning models available right now.
• Better at the instruction following than 3,7 Sonnet but below 3.5 Sonnet.