• 5 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use.

    It didn’t take long before people saw that energy was a major factor in cost of operations of the network.

    It was a poor design decision

    One that is fiercely defended by people who invested into the implementation. So it may not have started with it being anticipated, but not it is and people are actively choosing to perpetuate this use of energy.



  • Republican voters are never going to change their preference to a democratic candidate based on who the Democratic candidate is. The people who have potential to vote for Democrats aren’t undecided in who they prefer, they’re undecided if they even care enough to vote at all. Getting more people motivated to vote who didn’t vote in the prior election is the only way to gain votes. That’s true for any Democratic or Republican candidate for president. Presidential candidates need to make sure that people who voted in the last election for their party’s candidate don’t become disinterested in voting in the current election.

    The tough on crime reputation Harris has may demotivate otherwise likely voters for a Democratic candidate.












  • When to use a VPN

    VPNs are not magical fixes for privacy and security on the internet. However, there are some specific situations where they are useful tools.

    Network blocks and internet censorship. VPNs can help you access sites and services that are restricted by your local network or government. That’s why downloads of VPN apps in Russia skyrocketed in 2022, after the country’s invasion of Ukraine and more services became blocked. The same trend happened in Virginia and other U.S. states after they passed laws requiring photo identification for adult websites.

    Piracy. Internet service providers can sometimes detect when you are pirating movies, TV shows, music, or other media and send you angry letters. You can avoid that entirely by using a VPN when you download or torrent copyrighted material. Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free… but use a VPN.

    Region-locked content. This is a popular selling point for VPN companies that is actually true: VPNs can help you access online content that is officially restricted to a certain region. Switching your VPN server to a different country can change what movies and shows are available through Netflix, and UK-based VPN servers are frequently used to access BBC iPlayer content in other countries. However, this is not always reliable, as service providers will usually detect VPN servers after a while and block them.

    Accessing your home network. Setting up a VPN server at home is one way to access devices on your home network (such as self-hosted security cameras, media servers, and remote desktop) without opening up more of your network to the rest of the internet.

    There are other more niche use cases for VPNs, but those are the most popular ones that aren’t completely made up.