I've never completely understood this, but I think the answer would probably be "no," although I'm not sure. Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data (this is a habit from my pre-VPN days), although I guess I should probably just keep it on since using strange Wi-Fi with a VPN is ok (unless someone...
Commercial VPNs as a security measure are pretty much a scam, at least in the way they are marketed.
These days, basically any web traffic is encrypted through HTTPS. Even on an untrusted network, nobody will be able to see the actual content (passwords, personal data) of what you're doing. DNS spoofing isn't viable either as any fake site they would send you to would lack the right certificates to establish a convincing HTTPS connection. So all someone can see is what servers you're connecting to, either by logging your DNS requests (can be prevented by using some form of encrypted DNS like DNS over HTTPS) or the IP addresses you connect to. And honestly, how much value does one get out of knowing that there's someone on their network who browses beehaw.org, supergreatbank.com and bigtiddygothgfs.to with no information to connect that to an actual person?
Unless you routinely use shady open Wi-Fi networks - and I'm talking about something that may have been setup on purpose by a malicious actor, not your local supermarket - to do security-critical stuff, you don't need a VPN. Also, if you trust your mobile data provider less than a company that tricks people into thinking you absolutely need their product to secure your data, you should get a different mobile data provider.
Now, there are use cases for VPNs but those are more along the lines of accessing stuff that's not available in whatever region you're currently in.
Edit: there is of course also the use case of hiding illegal stuff. In that case, I will not give any advice. Put some onions on top of your router or something, that's probably cheaper and more reliable.
Edit 2: just to make this entirely clear, I'm talking about commercial VPNs like NordVPN, Surfshark and whoever else pays YouTubers to advertise for them. If you host your own VPN, some of the downsides may not be as relevant. Though I would assume that anyone who even considers hosting their own VPN has enough technical knowledge about how networking works to know about the pros and cons.
Or don't. Unless you know that your provider is working against your best interests, a VPN provider is just as likely to be compromised as your cable or mobile ISP.
Your provider will just see encrypted traffic (mostly) anyway, so no it will not provide protection. The only thing that you're now hiding from your provider is which servers you're connecting to. Instead you're showing that info to a VPN company whose main business practice is scaring people into buying a product they probably don't need. Think about who you would trust more.
Please note that the comment you're replying to is leaving out a crucial piece of information: if your VPN provider is legally allowed to operate where you live, your government or law enforcement can get your data from them just as easily as they can get it from your ISP.
(Sorry for repeating myself but security is an important topic so I'd rather correct incomplete or misleading information in multiple comments than have someone miss the crucial part because they read only one sub-thread)
While my threat model is not universal, it comes close, at least for the average user which OP seems to be from their question. In practice, there is very little unencrypted traffic these days and in the case of that traffic you will have to ask yourself if your (commercial) VPN provider is more trustworthy than your ISP.
If you need to ask if you need a VPN there's a 99% chance that you don't. There are certainly a few use cases for both commercial VPNs and TOR (see my other comment) but to even be aware that those apply to you, you probably already have enough technical knowledge to approach the question from the direction "I want to do XYZ, how can I be more secure?" and not "I've heard of VPNs, do I need one?"
If you're using a commercial VPN from a provider who can legally operate in your country, your national government can just as easily get that information from them as from your ISP.
Sure, if you know that your ISP abuses your data, go ahead and do something. Though I would recommend changing ISPs before you give even more money to some other company who may or may not do the exact same thing to your data. I'm specifically not talking about TOR or some VPN that you host on your own. I'm talking about companies like NordVPN and Surfshark.
The analogy of locking your door doesn't quite fit. Locking your door doesn't cost you 10 dollars per month and doesn't require you to hand your keys to the guy who sold you the lock.
Oh I most certainly don't have much faith in my local ISP. But I have even less faith in some VPN startup funded by venture capitalists who may or may not be cutting corners on security to save a few bucks on their ends even if they're not actively malicious. At least my local ISP has been around for decades and is closely monitored by both a government agency and independent customer protection groups.
And yes, I do live in a place with a very strong regulatory framework. Our ISPs are bound by the EU GDPR and our highest federal court has confirmed multiple times that even saving connection metadata without a case-specific court order is illegal. Sure, they could break those laws but a commercial VPN provider can do just the same with the difference that not as many people would notice.
I checked and there is only a single comment that mentions Mullvad (other than yours that I'm replying to right now) that's visible on my instance with no specific explanation why it's better than other offers other than that you can pay with cash. If I've missed something, I promise you that it's not in bad faith, it's just that this distinction didn't come through clearly.
I hadn't heard about Mullvad before today and a quick look at their website made it look not very different from the fear-mongering you see with the others. Only after your comment I noticed the Why Mullvad VPN link at the very bottom that explains what they do differently. I'm still skeptical about some of the claims and especially of audits that they themselves requested but I'm happy to see that there are providers that seem to be more trustworthy than the ones that are constantly shoved down our throats and I'm definitely happy to have learned something new.
May I suggest that you write a top level comment that explains in detail why Mullvad is better than other services so OP (and others who stumble over this thread) has an easier time finding it?
I came into this discussion from the technical perspective (of which I've done plenty of research, both in university and in my job) that commercial VPNs don't do what most ads want you to think they do. Your ISP sees a lot less than they want you to think, VPNs use just the same encryption algorithms as everyone else and while public WiFi isn't great security-wise it's not as if anyone will read your bank password the second you connect. I still stand by those claims.
Then, the discussion drifted towards who you'd rather trust with the things that aren't encrypted (mostly DNS and connection metadata. Someone has claimed that many messengers are unencrypted but I think they have confused a lack of user-to-user encryption with user-to-server encryption), your ISP or some VPN provider. That's the point where we diverged: as I had no need for a VPN myself (because of the reasons mentioned above), I had not researched individual VPN providers and was not aware that Mullvad apparently has a strong track record. For that I apologize. Still, in a thread that started out with someone not knowing if they need a VPN at all and most discussion has been very general, I would not assume that anyone who comments is familiar with a specific provider without them being named explicitly. Also, I've stated in at least three places that I was explicitly talking about VPN providers like NordVPN and Surfshark that are prominently (mis-)advertised. Those I still would not trust further than I can throw them.
But I guess that's online discussions. We've talked about two different things and took a while to notice. I'm thankful for the correction and I hope you can understand where I came from.
In case you're serious with the sphinx question: in ancient Greek myth the entrance to the city of Thebes was guarded by a sphinx who would only let you through if you could solve a riddle, otherwise the sphinx would eat you. Which riddle that would be changes from story to story but the most famous one is along the lines of "What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening?". This was eventually solved by king Oedipus who realized it was a human who crawls as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and needs a walking stick as a third leg when they're old. Depending on which version you read, the sphinx was either so shocked by him solving the riddle that it threw itself from a cliff or was simply slain by him.
Well, you could consider the solution to the riddle a pun though that's quite a stretch. Though there is at least one modern rendition (in German) that directly uses a more pun-ny solution. It does't quite translate to English but I'll try. Basically, Oedipus thinks and thinks until he starts to complain "Ach Mensch..." which is roughly equal to English "Oh boy..." but "Mensch" is literally the German for "human" so it's the right solution and the sphinx has to accept it. If you understand German, I highly recommend checking out this version. It's "König Ödipus" by Bodo Wartke. He plays all roles himself on a mostly empty stage with only a couple of props and it's absolutely hilarious. The sphinx is a lion hand puppet.
Yeah, as I said in response to exocrinous, that would work. No idea why it slipped my mind when I typed my comment. I think I even thought of something similar, it sounded wrong in some way and so I went a different route.
Publishers have massively overspent the last few years, hoping the gaming hype that started during the Covid lockdowns would stay or even grow indefinitely. Investors are only happy when numbers are higher than the year before and the only way to achieve this is to cut expenses. Problem is, cutting expenses almost always leads to worse output in the near future causing these companies to starve themselves to death. But by that time, those responsible will have cashed out and moved on to become C-level execs at some other company that they can milk for a few years before running them into the ground as well.
When will people learn that LLMs have no understanding of truth or facts? They just generate something that looks like it was written by a human with some amount of internal consistency while making baseless assumptions for anything that doesn’t show up (enough) in their training set.
That makes them great for writing fiction but try asking ChatGPT for the best restaurants in a small town. It will gladly and without hesitation list you ten restaurants that have never existed, including links to websites that may belong to a completely different restaurant.
Not really. It tells you that there’s a druid who can turn into a bear and there’s a romance option for him. That’s it.
Doesn’t mention who he is or how he‘s relevant to the story. Most players won’t even see that scene in their first playthrough unless they explicitly look for it.
Video game voice actors are fearing that the ability for generative AI to replicate their voices may cost them work and, more fundamentally, control of their own voice.
Doesn’t apply to this case. This wasn’t in a commercial product but a fanmade Skyrim mod.
Apart from that, I fully agree. AI is an amazing tool for prototypes and hobby projects that wouldn’t be made at all without it (because honestly, nobody hires artists and voice actors for something only their friends will ever see). Making all AI-generated content public domain seems like a good compromise. Scientists and companies still have an incentive to improve the technology because people still have use cases where it doesn’t matter if someone copies what they generate, hobbyists can play around as much as they want and professionals have another tool in their toolbox to speed up prototyping before they start work on the actual handmade product.
I think the forseeable future will give us a hybrid solution where a writing team creates most of the content (dialogue for the main story and important side quests, character backstory, distinctive mannerisms) and AI fills in the rest.
One of the main problems with branching narratives is that it makes writing and recording dialogue very expensive. The upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 has something like 170 hours of cutscenes and players will see less than 10% in a single playthrough. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dialogue lines. Developers have to find techniques to reuse as much as possible which leads to situations where the ending consists of a loosely connected list of applicable scene snippets. Now imagine that AI can fill in the gaps between those snippets to make them seem like a single continuous sequence.
AI can also fill in events that the developers could never anticipate. Imagine you killing a random blacksmith in Skyrim. With current technology, NPCs would either not react at all or give a generic “killing innocents is bad”. How awesome would it be if the game would automatically generate a prompt from the basic facts: npc refuses to give discount, player kills npc, npc was blacksmith, player steals dead npc’s wares, wares are needed for sidequest, … and then use that to provide not only companion dialogue but also possible replies for the player. If this happens multiple times, maybe the companion will mention it in other situations or confront the player when they’re alone. Imagine if during a long walk through the wilderness, your companions start talking about what happened during the last few days.
With a fully AI-generated character, this would all become very generic and unnatural but if every character can extrapolate from a few hundred handwritten lines to match their tone, this could actually work.
I’m actually not too concerned about that. Yes, companies will try it because it saves money. But that will have a serious impact on quality and I still have hope that players will finally learn to just not buy a bad product. Sure, the bigger publishers will be able to sell through brand recognition alone for a while but not forever. This year, we’ve seen a lot of unfinished games and at least reviewers are starting to notice. The difference is that bugs can be fixed to recover from a bad launch. Bad content not so much.
Ever since the language puzzle in Tunic that got me to fill up 6 pocket sized pages of notes over multiple days while trying to puzzle it out as I tried to and, eventually, succeeded at translating the in-game “paper” manual, I’ve had a craving for games that force you to pull out a notebook and take notes/puzzle things...
A bit different but The Painscreek Killings. You’re a reporter investigating an abandoned village where years ago a couple of murders happened. There is no set ending to the game, you can leave at any time and answer a bunch of questions to see how much of the mystery you have solved correctly, a bit similar to what Obra Dinn does. Until then you can more or less freely walk around (there’s a rough order enforced by keys and hints) and figure out what’s important. I’ve filled close to 20 pages with notes, relationship diagrams and a few sketches and still feel like I’ve seen maybe half of what’s there.
about 50% content is like this, no matter what view you select. I think /r/pics has the right idea; it is so dominating. Other subs should change their post to be like this (with their own messages) I think....
As much as I hate this guy, could we please stick to the facts and criticise him for things that he actually did?
From what I can see, spez did not moderate jailbait. He was added by one of the other mods because back then you could just add people as mods without their consent. I have yet to see proof that he ever actively participated in that sub.
So please, go ahead, dislike him for being a lying jerk who‘s actively killing reddit but don’t jump on something that someone else did without asking.
Does a VPN used on a smartphone with Wi-Fi disabled (mobile data only enabled) provide any sort of protection?
I've never completely understood this, but I think the answer would probably be "no," although I'm not sure. Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data (this is a habit from my pre-VPN days), although I guess I should probably just keep it on since using strange Wi-Fi with a VPN is ok (unless someone...
What happened with the sphinx though? ( aussie.zone )
Transcription:...
Microsoft closes Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and others ( www.gamingonlinux.com )
AI Isn’t Banning Books in Iowa Schools. Republicans Are. ( theintercept.com )
Excerpt:...
'Dad, people are sending me pictures of bears': Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke 'wasn't ready' for the bear sex scene to go so viral ( www.pcgamer.com )
When your son's friends start sending him bear pics, you know you made a splash.
AI manipulation of Assassin's Creed character's voice stokes actors' concerns ( www.axios.com )
Video game voice actors are fearing that the ability for generative AI to replicate their voices may cost them work and, more fundamentally, control of their own voice.
Become ungoogleable ( joeyh.name )
What are your favorite video games that force you to pull out the pen and paper?
Ever since the language puzzle in Tunic that got me to fill up 6 pocket sized pages of notes over multiple days while trying to puzzle it out as I tried to and, eventually, succeeded at translating the in-game “paper” manual, I’ve had a craving for games that force you to pull out a notebook and take notes/puzzle things...
how new.reddit looks in private browsing ( beehaw.org )
about 50% content is like this, no matter what view you select. I think /r/pics has the right idea; it is so dominating. Other subs should change their post to be like this (with their own messages) I think....