Fonant

@HI_Greens@mastodon.scot These things are "sustainable" if society as a whole wants them to be sustained. Public services are NOT the same as profit-making businesses. The "profit" of a public service is the "service", not money.

@jwi@aus.social @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us I think many people see him as a successful person who they would like to emulate. He's also a caricature of a "British Leader" for the large number of xenophobes stirred up by the press. Posh voice, beer drinking, fox hunting, foreigner hating, sports jacket. Us Brits have been taught to worship people like him. It's how we managed to build the British Empire, by thinking we were better than all other human beings. He's "old school" for people who pine for "the good old days".

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @cstross@wandering.shop But it's almost impossible for a government to detect a VPN service that doesn't have age restrictions. Unless it's one of the big well-known ones.

A foreign entity could set them up, or someone aged less than 16 for themselves (and perhaps also their mates).

You need:

1. A cheap server, anywhere in the world, connected to the internet.
2. VPN server software, available for free from lots of places.
3. Some instructions, easily available.

@cstross@wandering.shop It's impossible to restrict access to VPNs. They could perhaps persuade some of the big providers to add access controls, but that would only result in more people using smaller or even self-hosted VPN services. You can't un-invent encryption algorithms.

@rastilin@aus.social @paul@notnull.space @Greylinux@floss.social @jonah@mastodon.neat.computer If this law ever does come in, the law makers will have a lot of fun trying to define what a "VPN" is. At the basic level, it's just an encrypted network tunnel between two computers. Something that is logically and mathematically impossible to ban.

@revk Companies House are worryingly incompetent. They still officially require printing and posting paper forms just to change a director's date of birth that was wrong by one day[*]. In practice you can resign as a director, then reapply on the same day, using the website. [*] due to bad UI on the registration form: a long dropdown list of days, easy to click off-by-one, rather than a numeric text field.

@RantyHighwayman@mas.to As you point out, unless free parking is time-limited it can result in a benefit to a very small number of people, whose cars fill the spaces all day. The ideal, for increasing "foot-fall" and benefitting as many motorists as possible, would be for short-duration free parking, with time-based fees then rising exponentially. Free for 10 minutes, then £1 up to 30 minutes, then £5 up to an hour, then £20 up to 2 hours, and so on. Much better would be to make parking (inefficient private transport) very expensive, and instead invest in free public transport. Solves congestion, pollution and transport poverty all at the same time! Reduces the ability to divide and conquer the population, though, as people will talk to each other more and discover that strangers are almost always nice people.

@jwi@aus.social @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us That's the thing. British Empire, innit.

@MikeFromLFE@cupoftea.social @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us It really annoyed me that the BBC results focussed entirely on just the seats being contested, and not at all on the total number of seats held by each party. Reform may have gained 1,400 seats, but the Greens now have more than 1,000 council seats too. The biggest change, I feel, is that the Greens are now a serious political force. They never used to be mentioned at all in local election results.

@ocean Can recommend @beasts in the UK for domain registration. They know what they're doing 👍

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @cstross@wandering.shop The government has to discover that there is an illegal VPN being used in the first place. It is quite possible for millions of VPNs to be made available to UK children, hosted all over the world. Perhaps hosted by children, sharing the small monthly server costs. Quite secret, extremely difficult to find. The proposed law could only ever hope to apply to a few big VPN companies. Which just moves the VPN usage by children underground, where other dangers lurk.

@etchedpixels@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop I'm not sure that TOR is a "VPN". It's not an encrypted tunnel, it's a distributed internet packet routing system. But it rather depends on what any law defines a VPN as. Something that lawmakers will have a lot of fun with!

@Caymon@mstdn.social The light, and the depth, are lovely. It's a contented scene 🙂👍

@graste Same with "Outlook".

Defining a "VPN" will be extremely difficult, but that's not my point. My point is that it is impossible to block access to VPNs, and equally impossible to ban them. This is a mathematical certainty. We can't un-learn how to have securely encrypted communications.

Successful repair café today. Fixed: Push buttons on a desk fan, that needed a new spring. My fault, lost the original spring last month while cleaning out sticky grease from the switch. Isn't it amazing how springs are almost entirely invisible if you drop them? Toaster, a flimsy broken plastic "spring" on the hold down latch replaced by a small proper spring. Straightened the bent slot levers. All working again. Ninja Foodie combination air-fryer, oven, pressure cooker. Lid latch sensor wires broken where they pass the lid hinge. Prevented anything being cooked. Fixed by soldering in some more flexible copper wires at the flex point. Most difficult part was getting into the case. Fix rate: 3/3 👍

@oschonrock@mastodon.social @PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop I'm presuming they'd want to check your age every time you USE a VPN connection? Otherwise the restriction on underage use would be meaningless.

@oschonrock@mastodon.social @PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop Yes. They can legislate as much as they want to age-verify all VPN users. Mathematics and logic makes this impossible to enforce in any meaningful way, though.

@oschonrock@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop @PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social A ban on Twitter in the EU would also be impossible to enforce.

@rvedotrc@tech.lgbt Forager "Even a Child Can Cover the Sun with a Finger"

@cstross@wandering.shop @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange That assumes that I do something that is bad enough for government to seize my computer. Unless they do, there is no way (without GCHQ spending a lot of time and effort) that a VPN ban could be enforced. If I did do something that got the attention of the security services, having a VPN without age restrictions is going to be the least of my problems! It's the same as the Online Safety Act. It makes a lot of noise, but is almost entirely unenforceable (see: Ofcom's fine for 4chan).

@cstross@wandering.shop @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange I agree. Allowing for inspection of innocent people's personal computers is both unacceptable and also counter-productive for law enforcement. The police are not going to be randomly doing "illegal VPN inspections" on everyone. They can only target the few big public VPN services, and persuade them to add age verification.

@cstross@wandering.shop @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange The likelihood of the police taking my computer for forensic examination is zero. I have plenty of things that I must keep private. So does everyone.

@cstross@wandering.shop @oschonrock@mastodon.social @PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social We can happily discuss whether age restrictions on "VPN users" is a Good or Bad idea for a law. My point is that it's impossible to enforce such a law. It would be as pointless as the Online Safety Act. Well-intentioned, no doubt, but embarrassing when ignored. The 4chan bulletin board has been fined £20,000 and more for breaching the Online Safety Act. Their response has been "we don't care, we're not complying with a UK law, we're not going to pay any fines". The only thing Ofcom can do is to ask UK ISPs to block access to 4chan. They haven't yet, but if they do it'll be easily bypassed by a VPN or TOR.