VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in • Hacker News Board

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#661

Post by selfmodruntime » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

12ian34 wrote: post #283

spacebanana7 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a small minority of immigrants to the UK come through the skilled visa pathway, even if the health & social care visa numbers were added. See figure 1.3a - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisor... Note that to the best of my knowledge, these numbers don't include the Afghan resettlement scheme which would further lower the proportion of employment driven visas.

what about nurses and cleaners

„If we don‘t allow mass migration, who will pick the crops and wipe your mum‘s behind?“

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#662

Post by nailer » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

cs02rm0 wrote: post #62

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #27

Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically…

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…

The funny thing is that NHS doctors want the money that doctors get in Australia, which is… a market rate.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#663

Post by sojournerc » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

pfortuny wrote: post #527

raincole wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether age verification is a justified idea or not, it feels awfully like the UK is createing a new generation of single-issue voters here. Even wilder, they're lowering voting age to 16 [0]. So there would be a demographic group who can vote but cannot watch porn...? [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c628ep4j5kno

Well, you cannot drink alcohol if you are less than 21 in the USA, but you can vote.

You can also be drafted and/or die in a war. Absolutely absurd to think someone is old enough to enlist, but not have a beer

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#664

Post by selfmodruntime » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

Lio wrote: post #115

b800h wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the most recent example are the people from Palestine Action being arrested en masse at protests.

They're not really being arrested for criticising a law though. They're arrested for supporting a group that's been banned for causing around £30 million's worth of damage to our national defences at a time of hightened national security. There's the implication that Palastinian Action are going to continue attacking us. If they just stuck to protesting they would have been fine.

„Arrested for supporting a group“ you hear yourself right?

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#665

Post by selfmodruntime » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #59

ChrisKnott wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of people being arrested for criticising a law? Most of the time these dystopian descriptions of the UK turn out to be completely overblown nonsense when you look into them properly.

Yup, along the same lines as the “sharia no go zones” and “get stabbed six ways to Sunday every time you go outside” myths

Here is the Berlin Chief of Police admitting the existence of no go zones in the city for gay people and Jews) [1]

[1]https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/berliner-polizeip...

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#666

Post by observationist » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #469

Xiol32 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask - why not Mullvad?

Connectivity and IP blockage (I assumed) issues last time I tried it. But the main reason is — it’s the default recommendation on HN. So I would prefer to know what else good there that people are using. Because it would be really sad if it’s the only one. I kind of refuse to believe that. That’s all.

It's the only one. It's technically difficult, and there are lots of things to do to sell out the user in the name of not leaving money on the table or bowing to authority, or other excuses for bad behavior. Principle in anything is rare, we're lucky to have mullvad.

Next best option is self hosting. Beyond that, it's a thoroughly enshittified marketplace.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#667

Post by Arkhaine_kupo » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 10:07 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #621

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also strongly believe the hoi polloi have to be forced to do what is good for them - e.g. the sugar tax and other "nudge politics", or the currently Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is basically about imposing central policy on how children are brought up and educated. A non insulting way to view that is that central goverments understand incentives, and in the same way there are child incentives fo…

>with teh extreme being homeschooling failing every time its attempted. I don't know where this is coming from; statistically speaking, homeschooled children do better on pretty much every educational outcome. Because the absolute number one factor determining student outcomes is the ratio of students to teachers; the fewer students per teacher, the better.

This is a very common fallacy repeated by people who are either interested in supporting homeschooling, or haven't thought much about the subject.

The most telling stats is that the percentage of homeschooling parents increases, specially in religious communities but the test takers in homeschooled scenarios almost always come from higher educated urban families.

There is a large case of selectin bias, in a public school every kid takes an SAT test. For homeschooled kids, the kid of two doctors who was homeschooled and aces tests for breakfast he takes teh SAT and smokes any underfunded public school near him (although he probably scores average or below prep schools that cost arguably less than his homeschooling, with additional socialisation benefits etc). Meanwhile the hyper religious family wanting their daughter to marry at 16 is not letting that barely literate girl take her SATs.

The two groups in favour of home schooling are hyper capitalistists who think the disruption of public schooling + their advantage will make their kid unstopable, and the niche fringe believes, usually religious who are scared of interacting with mainstream institutions for fear of disrupting their reality. Both are problematic, anti social and harmful groups and their over representation in goverment and media is largely a sympton of the inability of liberal institutions to fight against illiberal threats.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#668

Post by bigfudge » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #344

areoform wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born. The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Wes…

The uk is a lot of things, but theocratic really isn’t one of them. If you’re referring to the House of Lords then you don’t really understand our government. The general population is as atheist as anywhere outside of Scandi countries.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#669

Post by teamonkey » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

ifwinterco wrote: post #128

nindalf wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible that you’ve managed to bring this conversation to immigration. In fact, it sounds like you’re saying the root cause of this crappy policy is somehow immigrants. Far fetched and not cool.

Immigration is becoming the #1 political issue in the UK for a reason. If they didn't want this, they could have just restricted it and it would have largely gone away as a topic of discussion, but current levels makes it inevitable it will become the main thing people think about

It’s a #1 political issue because certain political factions keep leaning on it, constantly, and have done for years.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#670

Post by alias_neo » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 10:18 PM UTC

peblos wrote: post #654

alias_neo wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe I only have to look as far as my own wallet to see the effects. I'm being taxed to the eyeballs while there is a glass ceiling preventing me taking any more pay home without a major jump which just isn't coming due to stupid tax rules keeping the working class from bumping into the middle class. I se…

I left in 2010 and the consensus is very much the same among my friends, or at least some of them anyway. I’m no longer eligible to have an opinion UK or local conversations. “how would you know”, “the city’s changed a lot since you left”, “why are people who chose to leave so interested in X”, statements specific to ex-pats. For those from outside the UK, ex-pat (expatriate) as a singular term is almost always derog…

It's kind of wild how people can't accept that anyone would want to leave the UK, plenty of people come here, they're leaving other places, so this must be the best place in the world.

If you don't like it you must be foreign; I'm not, I was born and raised in England to British parents. Nowhere did I say I was even planning to leave, I merely suggested that if things got worse I might have to consider it, and I was jumped on for that.

Things ARE getting worse, but I'm not at that point yet, maybe we'll have a miraculous turn around and our public services will improve and our economy will grow, I'm not even asking for it to be sunny for 3 months of the year, but if they don't, am I just supposed to sit here on a sinking ship with my children next to me?

And let's be real, it's not even about me at this point, it's about what is and what will be for my children, I've worked hard to give them a better life than I had as a kid, and I'll be damned if I don't do it.