Some Mullvad VPN customers tunnel for exit after co-founder donates millions to populist party

Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden's national elections for the first time. Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the …

[Philip Storry]

Sad but not surprising

There seems to be a sickness in techbros.

During the dotcom boom, the rich tech folk seemed to have a social conscience, looking to donate into poorer communities. They mostly stayed out of politics, or at least kept such things private. Yes, One Laptop Per Child turned out to be somewhat misguided, but the thinking behind it is utterly opposite to how the techbros now seem to think.

Over 25 years there seems to have been a shift to the right. And an insidious one, at that. In being determined to keep their money, they've shacked up with the kind of political scum that mixes low taxes with "someone else is to blame, let's treat them really badly so we feel better about not fixing the problem we're blaming them for".

And before folks chip in to say that their viewpoints are correct, please remember that nobody in that "someone else" group is likely to have caused the actual problems we're facing. They didn't move manufacturing overseas, close all the branches on the high street or in the malls, or dump pollution over the land and into the rivers, offshore jobs, or anything else. They were never in a position to do that.

Here's a fun game to play - pick a problem in your community or country, and now name the illegal immigrant that caused it. The closest you'll get to an accurate answer is "Elon Musk", but he's usually celebrated by the broken people that are techbros.

These people could be fixing real problems. If they don't want to pay their taxes, they could donate to charities to fix the problem. Between them they could probably end childhood poverty, eradicate homelessness, and so much more.

But instead here we are. Blaming "the others".

What the hell went wrong? Why are tech bros so easily fooled by this crap? And, most importantly, is there any way to fix these broken people?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I'm not sure I'd call it a "far right" party, just because it criticises immigration. Policies like "make preschool, public transport, and dental care free of charge, reduce politicians' pay, and calls for a 30-hour working week" are more associated with the far left, like France's LFI.

I think "populist" is a better description, along with "unrealistic" and "naïve".

[Liam Proven]

Re: Sad but not surprising

> I'm not sure I'd call it a "far right" party,

Agreed. I spent some time reading up on Swedish politics before writing this.

> more associated with the far left

Yup. They say of themselves that they don't fit on the L/R axis. OTOH that sort of thing is a common enough excuse.

> I think "populist" is a better description

That's why I used it. ;-)

> along with "unrealistic" and "naïve".

Nicely put. ;-)

[Philip Storry]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Yeah, I may have worded it a bit badly by referring to parties rather than positions. I think I used parties because that's who gets the money, but perhaps position or platform would be a better choice of word?

In the same 25 year period the right wing has learned to use populism. They will often promise things that people want and which are centrist or even left-wing positions, but then once in power they won't deliver. "Wouldn't you know it, but circumstances have changed" and now they're just going to have to do only the tax cuts and socialism for the wealthy, and they can't afford the other things that they promised.

I'm loathe to bring up the populism of Brexit, but it's a very pertinent example because it delivered not one jot of what it popularly promised. To anyone. Especially those that funded it and campaigned for it, who mostly wanted a "Singapore upon Thames" but then found that the public definitely didn't want that, they wanted what they'd been promised... and they'd never intended to deliver those promises. it's a perfect example of how populism fails to deliver.

Reform have a somewhat populist platform in that they'll say whatever they think people want to hear about things like building houses or funding healthcare. But they only ever had one draft law - deregulation of cryptocurrency. What a strange coincidence, given their leader's recently revealed funding! You'd think that they'd at least have some draft legislation on immigration issues or the NHS, but no... so it's not difficult to see what their actual priorities are. Or what they were planning on doing if they get into power.

Populism doesn't respect traditional political boundaries or delineations. It's like an LLM - it will tell you what you want to hear, because that's what it was designed to do. Correctness or ability to deliver simply doesn't matter to it.

I'd agree that unrealistic and naïve are good terms. I suspect we're going to end up arguing towards agreement simply because I used a poor bit of wording. ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Brexit really only promised the ability to take independent decisions. It did deliver that, the fact that neither of the parties in government since then took advantage (and arguably did all they could to pretend it didn't happen) isn't a fault of Brexit. It was never an end in itself, just a means to an end and one that has been largely ignored.

Now that we appear to have Milliband as Foreign Secretary I suspect that he'll double down on that. It's good news that he isn't Chancellor and has lost his net zero portfolio, we'll have to wait and see how much he pisses off our neighbours and allies, which does seem to be his only talent.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I was going to reply to Philip that someone will be along to say brexit failed either because the politicians didn't do it correctly, or the lefties sabotaged it, but you beat me to it, sarcastically replying in character as one of those morons.

You even managed to throw in a hint of climate change denial too. Bravo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

> You even managed to throw in a hint of climate change denial too.

Bollocks. Just because I don't think Milliband's zealotry is helpful doesn't make it climate change denial. We need proper joined-up thinking on clean energy, not simply banning stuff deemed to be bad in the expectations that a perfect alternative will appear by magic.

We still need oil and gas while we wean ourselves off it, but Milliband refuses to use our own resources which support UK jobs and taxes. He'd rather use imported fossil fuels and enrich our neighbours because he can wave his hands and declare them zero-carbon since they don't count against our official emissions, just like all electricity imported through the interconnectors is deemed "green" no matter its actual source. It's the worst sort of greenwashing.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Fair enough. Apologies, and I withdraw that comment.

[jpennycook]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I've started calling them flat earther Brexiteers - so many of the people still supporting Brexit seem to be against vaccines, against science, thinking carbon dioxide has what plants crave, etc

They also forget the fossil fuel industry has a load of tax breaks, and they will just export to wherever will pay most, making absolutely no difference to our supply or prices.

> In December 2021, the High Court heard a judicial review regarding the revised strategy. The challenge was brought to the court by three environmental campaigners who argued that the OGA’s interpretation of its legal duty to “maximise economic recovery” of oil and gas had failed to consider public money supporting the oil and gas industry. Ahead of the judicial review, Rowan Smith, a solicitor at Leigh Day, which is representing the campaigners, stated that:

> "The simple point is that the OGA says it can by law ignore the tax breaks received by oil and gas companies when deciding on whether a project will benefit UK taxpayers. Our clients are going to court to establish the opposite."

https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/oil-and-gas-industry-outside-interests/

[Roland6]

Re: Sad but not surprising

>” the fact that neither of the parties in government since then took advantage (and arguably did all they could to pretend it didn't happen) isn't a fault of Brexit.”

I suspect they are struggling with the realisation that the “buck stops with them”, ie. you can no longer blame Brussels…

[Philip Storry]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I shouldn't reply to anonymous cowards, but I'm making a rare exception here.

"Brexit only really promised the ability to take independent decisions." - No it didn't. This is an outright lie. Proponents of Brexit promised we'd be richer, happier, be rule makers and have a more prominent place in the world. All of those things were falsehoods. You have started your reply with an outright lie designed to try to rewrite history.

You then state that "neither of the parties in government since then took advantage". This isn't true a second lie. The Conservative government did so, with the Environment Act 2021. You may remember that as the act which reduced a number of environmental standards below EU requirements, including water quality. Allowing already profitable water companies to dump raw sewage into rivers and onto beaches in the pursuit of more profits. Strangely, this law did not get a warm welcome from the public, and is still controversial. It is a very real "Brexit Benefit", and you should own it and be proud of it. Good luck with that.

Those environmental regulations are excellent demonstration of the underlying issue. It turns out when we actually ask people what EU regulations they want to move away from, there are very few (if any). Go ask farmers or fisheries if they favour moving away from EU regulations. Ask manufacturing if they think ignoring CE mark requirements is a good idea. Ask small businesses if changing our standards and definitions would help reduce the already increased red tape and import duties that they face. Almost all answers would be negative. Businesses want alignment with the EU because it makes things simpler and cheaper for them. The UK market is not quite large enough to be attractive on its own.

We haven't used the ability to change the laws because it turns out that it's not a good idea to do so. In most cases it harms our businesses. This means that most of the "independent decisions" you're referring to end up in one of three buckets: 1. Something that was never a decision for the EU anyway; 2. Something important that will hurt if we diverge; 3. Can't hurt because (for us) it's trivial.

So in reality we're discussing options 2 and 3. The decisions we don't want to take because they'll hurt, so we delay or defer them. All the important decisions are automatically kicked into the long grass, out of sight and our of mind. Which leaves us with the trivial decisions.

What we have now is the freedom to bikeshed. To make decisions about the unimportant things. Because everything else was either not the EU's purview, or is something we need to be aligned on unless we want to hurt ourselves.

And this is before we even point out that the entire discussion is based on a falsehood anyway - that the EU's decisions weren't our decisions. As an EU member, we were involved in creating those rules. We were rule makers - just not solo rule makers. This entire discussion is based on a fundamental lie from the anti-European movement.

Frankly, you should be ashamed of the multi-layered dishonesty you're repeating.

Fortunately, 50% would vote to rejoin compared to the 38% that voted to leave. Your lies have been exposed by the reality of Brexit, and people are moving away from them. It's no longer a question of if we'll apply to rejoin, but a question of when, and if the EU will take us back.

[ChoHag]

Re: Sad but not surprising

> As an EU member

Can we stop this?

We weren't "an EU member". We were one of the most significant, most influentual, members, whom many other EU members especially those east and south of about Germany, had to, to some degree, defer to whether they liked it or not.

[H in The Hague]

Re: Sad but not surprising

"who mostly wanted a "Singapore upon Thames"

Now, I remember reading somewhere that Singapore has immigration levels and most people there live in rented social housing. Does anyone know if that's correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Sort of, it's all ultimately state owned but 'sold' to homeowners on a 99 year lease. But there is significant government control on who lives where to avoid privileged rich zones or ethnic enclaves.

I don't know if it gets 'rigged' in the same way that rich French kids with connections get public apartments in the nicest arrondissements of Paris

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I'm loathe to bring up the populism of Brexit...

You should be. The EU is an undemocratic, authoritarian sh*tshow. Voting for Brexit was the best decision the British public made in the last 50 years.

Case in point from this very site:

Although 314 politicians voted to scrap Chat Control, while 276 voted to keep it, the vote required 360 MEPs to reject the Council of the European Union's position. As a result, the attempt to abolish the interim rule failed, despite more voting MEPs opposing it than supporting it.

One of the movement's more outspoken campaigners, former MEP Patrick Breyer, called Chat Control a vehicle for "suspicionless mass surveillance," and said it serves as a smokescreen to delay real action against the spread of CSAM online.

"The fact that Chat Control is moving forward against the will of the majority of voting MEPs is a farce and damages democracy," he said. "Our children are the real losers in this undemocratic process. The passage of a genuine, permanent child protection regulation is now in serious jeopardy. The Council will never agree to a desperately needed paradigm shift as long as they can simply stick to the old approach of suspicionless scanning at the whim of the tech industry."

At the heart of the Chat Control debate is the long-running conflict between the public's right to privacy and law enforcement's need to access evidence that could help prosecute those who create, possess, or distribute CSAM.

The Council wants laws that preserve E2EE while allowing client-side scanning for harmful material. Many say those two goals cannot coexist. Client-side scanning remains highly controversial. While technically feasible, client-side scanning breaks the principle of fully encrypted communications without exposing message contents in transit.

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/07/09/meps-fail-to-prevent-chat-control-snoopfest-revival/5269379

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

>Voting for Brexit was the best decision the British public made in the last 50 years.

And yet they still didn't win the world cup. Perhaps if Britain left the commonwealth it would also improve the cricket teams success ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

And yet they still didn't win the world cup. Perhaps if Britain left the commonwealth it would also improve the cricket teams success ?

Team GB didn't participate in the World Cup. Perhaps you meant England or Scotland? Are you American by any chance??

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Once all of Britain, including it's Celtic colonies, leave the commonwealth only England will have a team.

Wales is far too hilly to have cricket pitches and Scots really cannot be trusted with wielding wooden bats.

I understand there were attempts to teach Scots to play football but they haven't met with much success

I assume the Gaulish brutes can be taught to play rugby so we can have a proper Rugby competition without inviting foreigners, some sort of World Series ?

[Jamie Jones]

Re: Sad but not surprising

*woosh*

You really aren't the sharpest tool, are you? Peak irony that you don't even recognise when you're being mocked, and then try to insult 'Yet Another Anonymous coward' as if they are the clueless one!

[Roland6]

Re: Sad but not surprising

One of the notable and commented upon differences between 1966 and 2026 was in 1966 everyone hung out the Union Jack to show their support of England. In 2026 it was the cross of St.George…

[TheCobbler]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Beat France. So there's that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Is this a resurrected codejunky speaking?

[Philip Storry]

Re: Sad but not surprising

(I'm assuming you're the same AC as replied to elsewhere)

The Chat Control debate is indeed a poor set of events. No argument there.

But this happens in governments.

Our own government has had plenty of instances of trying to ban things. The entire age verification debacle, for example.

The EU isn't perfect. But it's much easier to change it when you're a member than to do so from the outside. The USA and China might have a chance of forcing change from outside, but we don't.

Which makes this argument something of a straw man.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

>I'm not sure I'd call it a "far right" party, just because it criticises immigration.

Were not fascists. We just want to build freeways, give everyone VWs, get the youth out in the fresh air - and kill all the Jews and Gays and Communists

[skpirate]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Criticizing immigration policy isn't "far right". "Remigration" policies intended to push out immigrants who have already made lives for themselves in Sweden and become Swedish citizens is. There's just no other way to frame that as anything but a racial purge (albeit a nonviolent one).

[isdnip]

Re: Sad but not surprising

They are probably trying to follow the lead of the US, where the ethnic cleansing by the ICE gestapo is getting violent.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Is ICE going to kick out ethnic Swedish US citizens? Is that why they're concentrating activities in Wisconsin ?

[Snake]

Re: "albeit a nonviolent one"

Wait for it, that'll come aroundas soon as [someone] decided they no longer need to appease others.

[abend0c4]

Re: Sad but not surprising

As soon as you argue that some people "deserve" more rights than others you simply get into a utilitarian debate about whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force (to the extent the two can be separated), though you can attempt to disguise it with the choice of a suitable scapegoat as Lyndon B. Johnson memorably illustrated.

It really isn't new - it recurs whenever contemporary rules are excessively* enriching one small group at the expense of the majority. Fixing that would result in the small group losing wealth and power. Ergo, use a small part of your wealth to pit the peons against each other so they leave you alone.

*as viewed at the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

Er ... you really think that those two are the only possible criteria?

[doublelayer]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

That depends on which level of "more rights" we're talking about, but in the most explicit examples, I do think it tends to boil down to both of those factors. For example, there will occasionally be a person who argues that power should be based on intelligence in some way. It is quite difficult to measure intelligence, so most suggested ways of implementing that end up being something you can prepare for (money helps with this) and easily gamed to hurt people those controlling it want to de-power (force helps with this). The history of the IQ test demonstrates both factors; it has used arbitrary correct answers to open-ended questions which made it unreliable and, if you need a high rating, you can get study material and prepare in order to increase your score.

It's likely you could come up with another criterion that could be used, but unless someone's seriously arguing it should be used, it mostly doesn't matter. When that happens, you need to consider how someone would try to implement it and how people to be judged will try to get what they want out of it, neither of which will match the theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

I think you are conflating whether (some putative rights might be implemented in some practical sense) with with (the motivation or idea that generated the notion of such rights).

Some might argue (to use abend0c4's wording) that - to pick a somewhat neutral example - that superior rights should derive from how tall you are; however such proponents might (or might not) have the ability to assert or implement those rights.

Naturally, a supply of money can indeed help with implementation, as could the ability to threaten (or use) force; but other approaches are nevertheless possible. But issues of successful implementation are not the same thing as the argued/stated criteria for being awarded a set of rights.

[doublelayer]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

I am intentionally including the practical sense because that is the sense that matters. We can argue theory all day, and I really enjoy it, but if it doesn't work in practice then fun philosophical debate is the only place you can have it. To demonstrate whether it can work in practice, you have to be able to demonstrate how you can do that.

The height example demonstrates this. There is an objective way to determine height. Well, sort of. Height varies in certain ways, and if someone was trying to manipulate the system, they could use that. But knowing that, we could also prevent them, because the rules are pretty standard so you can control for them. Intelligence is an example where that does not apply. If someone thinks they have an alternative that can be used and should be used, we could consider it, except most of the time, it really doesn't work in practice, doesn't make much sense in theory, and they don't really intend it in the first place.

[SilverPanther]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

That is completely untrue of IQ tests. One of the ways that cultural bias is detected in tests is by looking at how relative test scores for each group change when a potentially biased/arbitrary question is removed. Generally speaking, the type of arbitrary questions you described are the ones that disproportionately inflate everyone's scores - poorly scoring groups on a test are usually more likely to answer these questions correctly than other questions because they're less involved. Either way, IQ tests - which are illegal to use for job interviews in the USA, so it's unlikely you've ever seen one - are not biased in the way your describe.

I am not suggesting we use any sort of test to differentiate people's rights, as you were opining against, but IQ tests are much more accurate and predictive than people want to admit. Those who make careers trying to diminish this can accept that the world cup team for every country is compromised of people from just a handful foreign countries, rather than the native people of the country (USA is different ofc), because those people are superior to the natives, but we must pretend athletics is the only area where one group naturally accels over another.

The SAT seems to be what you were describing here. It's not an IQ test and doesn't even have similar questions to those you'd see in an IQ test. The company behind the SAT uses the method I described above of removing questions to see if it changes the scores of "underprivileged" groups in relation to Asians/White groups. Questions that could be culturally biased are tested in this fashion and removed if they are found to hurt minorities' scores. Usually the underprivileged groups do worse when the arbitrary questions are removed because they're the easiest.

If there was any way to design the SAT that was not ludicrously non-academic where blacks scored equally to whites/Asians, kids would be talking that test instead. The resources poured into solving this problem are enormous. If someone could prove the tests are biased, that would be the end of the SAT company. They're not. UC schools stopped requiring the SAT and they had to add remedial classes because a shocking percentage of the kids accepted post-SAT don't have the prerequisite skills a high school graduate is expected to.

[doublelayer]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

There is a difference between intentional bias and bias created through poor design, because you would have to detect and fix those in different ways. That difference matters little to the takers of the test if the results are used against them. Also, remember that I said "The history of the IQ test". There is still a test called an IQ test, and it is better today, but it is extremely different in design, execution, and scoring than its earlier iterations which were riddled with some intentional bias, plenty of unintentional poor design, and much misapplication of results. I am not sufficiently familiar with its latest version to say how much it has improved.

You seem to have a lot of other opinions you've shoved in here despite their irrelevance to the thing we were discussing. I think a few of them have been rephrased to make your opinions more palatable. Therefore, I've only responded to the IQ test parts.

[ChoHag]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

> You seem to have a lot of other opinions you've shoved in here despite their irrelevance to the thing we were discussing. I think a few of them have been rephrased to make your opinions more palatable. Therefore, I've only responded to the IQ test parts.

I can't tell if you're new to internet debates or very, very well experienced...

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

there will occasionally be a person who argues that power should be based on intelligence in some way.

Well, there does seem to be a negative correlation between intelligence and desire for power, but I can't see a practical way to use that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: whether those superior rights should derive from money or from force

Well it makes sense to have at least a minimum threshold of intelligence before entrusting someone with power.

From my decades long exposure to people of Mensa levels of intelligence, I would not entrust power to those scoring in the top 1 percent; I’ve not met someone with extremely high IQ who is balanced and not well up the Asperger scale.

[Empire of the Pussycat]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Techbro sickness runs deep.

Made me recall this...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8eqyj8e2o

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Mass low/unskilled immigration into Western nations has been a conscious choice of the ruling elite classes primarily for their own benefit. It leads to wage depression that’s great for the bottom line of big business and it’s also a Ponzi scheme. For example, in the UK you need to be earning north of £50k to be a net contributor to the country’s finances. How many low/unskilled migrants do you think meet this threshold? In reality, it’s even worse than that since each migrant has the right to bring family members with them and in certain cases the ratio has reached 15 dependents to each worker!

Of course, the migrants themselves are not to blame. They are simply taking advantage of the chance to improve their lot. It is the political class working in cahoots with the elites that are the root cause of this issue. Focusing on the UK again, successive governments have promised to lower migration while doing the exact opposite. That explains why the masses have lost trust to the point they are now flocking to the likes of Reform in their droves. The ordinary voter has been gaslit into believing that increasing GDP is the be all and end all when, of course, the true metric of increasing living standards is GDP per capita, something that’s diminished by mass migration.

Clearly, the wider welfare system itself unsustainable and this may in fact be intentional:

The Cloward-Piven strategy aims to utilize "militant anti poverty groups" to facilitate a "political crisis" by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, forcing the creation of a system of guaranteed minimum income and "redistributing income through the federal government".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward–Piven_strategy

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

> For example, in the UK you need to be earning north of £50k to be a net contributor to the country’s finances. How many low/unskilled migrants do you think meet this threshold?

Depends how you measure contribution

A 'never worked in her life' widow living off her husband's public sector pension in a house that's worth a £M cos it's in the right postcode is a contributor, but the immigrant nurse looking after her and earning £49K is a threat to the national well being.

[Roland6]

Re: Sad but not surprising

>” Depends how you measure contribution”

Pre-CoVid the rule-of-thumb was if you were a higher rate tax payer you were paying in more than you took out. Obviously, having non-working partners and children muddies the water, but having a single higher rate tax payer in a family means the family loses benefits the rule-of-thumb is still a reasonable approximation.

Your example nicely illustrates why it’s a rule-of-thumb and not an absolute.

[ianbetteridge]

Re: Sad but not surprising

I'm not saying this is your point of view, but I hear this idea of "contribution" measured solely in terms of taxation far too often. Workers in, say, care homes contribute a lot to the country, in part because the kind of people on higher end tax salaries don't want to be "saddled" with looking after old folk. Ditto the minimum wage employees in nurseries, looking after those £id50k+ parents children while they work.

Take away the poorly paid, and a remarkable number of the services which the richer members of society rely on would collapse. No man is an island, and all that.

[isdnip]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Lower-income immigrants are certainly earning they're keep. It may not be going to the state in high tax payments, but their cheap labor is contributing to the economy; it's just that the wealth goes to the shareholders, not the workers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

it's just that the wealth goes to the shareholders, not the workers.

Exactly. Which is why the left's passion for mass migration is absolutely inexplicable.

Guys! You're literally supporting the further enrichment of the 1%!!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sad but not surprising

But this crazy left gave all the asylum seekers Visa cards so they can use these to buy shares.

[Paul Herber]

Re: Sad but not surprising

"One Laptop Per Child"

I'm sure some of the tech-bros now would be thinking along the lines of, yes, that's a fair swap.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Tell them that with one of these you can replace the internals and keep going almost for ever, and these days they won’t be looking at the laptop.

We have fallen a long way since Carnegie and Cadbury.

[BasicReality]

Re: Sad but not surprising

And here you are, blaming “the others” again. Your version is rich people who run corporations, if only they’d spend their money on what you want everything would be fixed.

[Philip Storry]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Or if they'd not spend their money supporting certain causes.

I'm blaming actions. That's probably the key difference here. Techbro is merely a general label I'm using, and somewhat generalising with.

When evaluating actions a techbro only doing tech stuff is the same as an immigrant working as a cleaner, or as a tenth generation native person in full time education. None of them are spending time and money supporting causes I think are awful, so they are not who I'm talking about.

The causes I think of as awful tend to be aimed at people who have traits that are not actions, but ones that they cannot change. For example certain racial or cultural traits that they had no choice over, and even their children - born into a country as citizens of it - will partly or fully retain, through no choice of their own.

Targeting people for things that they have no control over is quite different to what I'm doing. Offended techbros can remove themselves from the set by not doing the things I've lambasted.

The only acceptable use of "othering" is one based on actions that people had agency over. Anything else is bigotry.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify that.

[Arkitekt]

Re: Sad but not surprising

Also sad and not surprising is how gullible and easily manipulated the general public are, trained like monkeys to see EVERYTHING through a political lens and completely devoid of common sense.

[SuperGeek]

Re: Sad but not surprising

"The closest you'll get to an accurate answer is "Elon Musk", but he's usually celebrated by the broken people that are techbros."

Damaged people seek out damaged people. I've experienced it happen between narcissists and borderlines.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Sad but not surprising

> There seems to be a sickness in techbros.

Highly relevant:

https://old.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1v2fwu7/the_billionaire/

PDF version:

https://www.patreon.com/thisecommercelife/posts/billionaire-164115406

[Fishbird]

It is good to have rights...

I fully support the right of both owners of Mullvad to express their opinions and to spend their personal fortune in whatever legal way they see fit.

However, I also claim my right to avoid contributing to their available funds, for whatever reason I see fit.

It is unfortunate, as I had recently decided on Mullvad for a VPN provider, and now I must look elsewhere.

[IGotOut]

Re: It is good to have rights...

Proton?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It is good to have rights...

Could be highly charged choice.

But it has more Ups than Downs

[Dan 55]

Re: It is good to have rights...

That's the kind of quarky answer I'd expect from you.

[Tron]

Well...

By all means decide to only deal with tech corporations run by people whose politics you consider to be benign and ethical.

And if you ever find one, report it here.

[Filippo]

Re: Well...

It's a lot like the choice of who to vote for. You don't look for someone who is a match for your ethics. You look for someone who is a closer match than the others.

Absolutes are a rhetorical trap. An appeal to minds that crave simplicity even at the expense of truth. If someone tells me that anything under 100% is equally wrong, I know they are trying to trick me.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Well...

A well reasoned point,

..... as long as we can all agree on boycotting the Judean Peoples Front

[Fishbird]

Re: Well...

I was pleasantly unsurprised to find that boycotting sociopathic multi-billionaires had almost no effect on the number of available tech suppliers.

I only lost access to several of the most enshittificated platforms... leaving plenty of others to spend my money and eyeball time with.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Country of Lords

There was this book review today on the Graun site Country of Lords titled "Social Darwinists to tech bros: tracing the long fight against equality in US."

What caught my attention was the photograph of Thiel and Musk taken back in 2000 — the pair even then looked like two dodgy used car sellers. Some Tesla owners might thnk "so what's changed." At least Arthur Daley had some charm… as he would have said: "those two… a pair of invertebrate liars."

.The parallels with pre·war Germany are rather obvious but those lines might only be drawn if you accept history a) isn't complete bunk or purely libtard wokery, b) oughtn't be subject to ridiculous and scurrilous revision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Country of Lords

> pair of invertebrate liars

No backbone at all?

[Paul Herber]

Re: Country of Lords

Plenty of skullduggery.

[Taliesinawen]

The psychopathology of parasocial relationships :o

This Binding Contract is forged between The Delusional Stan ("Party A"), who legitimately believes a billionaire tech founder reads their fanmail while weeping with joy. The behavior is usually a symptom of an underlying psychiatric condition rather than the parasocial phenomenon itself.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The psychopathology of parasocial relationships :o

At least the billionaire tech bro they worship provably exists - that's sort of progress

[Taliesinawen]

The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

Nov 2007: ‘OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria’

Nov 2007: Nigerian Patent Infringement Lawsuit: Scam or Shame?

July 2007: ‘Intel Joins One Laptop Per Child’

Nov 2007: ‘In pictures: Intel Classmate school’

January 2008: ‘Intel leaves the One Laptop Per Child board’

Aug 2008: ‘Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop’

Jan 2010: The Microsoft-Linux Story As Told in the Comes Exhibits

‘Remember that a key part of our strategy Is to create a situation where even if Nick rejects us for philosophical reasons there is a long and visible history of our attempts to work with them and then we have to ask to get a license for the "open source hardware" and we will make our own offering on the commercial side.’

-------

Every recorded memory has been systematically purged or rewritten; every digital archive silently altered; every image re-rendered; every monument and street corner renamed to align with the latest protocol; every historical timestamp retroactively shifted. The process operates relentlessly, millisecond by millisecond, without pause. History has completely ceased to exist. Reality is reduced to an absolute, unyielding present where the Borg is eternally faultless as told by the omnipresent voice of Big AI.

[doublelayer]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

I'm not sure if you're making your own point; you've just dropped articles. If it's what I think it is, though, it's weak. If you're using these to suggest that the OLPC project was deliberately targeted and killed, not all your articles defend that point and those that do don't agree on why, how, and most importantly, whether the methods used were illegal or immoral.

There's a lot more to the progress of the OLPC project than conflict with Intel (real) and Microsoft (very overblown). There were internal problems in the project with significant software and hardware gaps, mostly due to real technical challenges but that doesn't help the users, and difficulty making and selling units. For any philanthropic person, it would be nice to have a simple villain and say that this failed because big Intel crushed it beneath their bootheel, but if that distracts us from what went wrong, it prevents us from trying again and putting it right. The Raspberry Pi provides a useful comparison, as it avoided most of the stuff that was difficult for OLPC, did not get killed by attempted competition from all the same players, and did solve some of the software problems that afflicted the earlier effort, though they didn't have the same goals and therefore didn't complete the OLPC's mission.

[IGotOut]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

Or maybe the reason it failed was nobody actually bothered to ask the "clients" what they wanted.

Dammed if I can remember the podcast I listened to, but it was a lengthy discussion on why this, and so many other seemingly "good" ideas ultimately fail and the simple answer was "Western" centrism. Look at those poor Africans wouldn't it be amazing if we gave them laptops.

Great idea, until they don't have electric, they need repairs, maintenance, oh did I mention no one bothered to teach the teachers? Or that they didn't fit into any part of the curriculum. Give a bunch of kids a whole set of orchestral instruments, let's see how long it is before they can master them with no instruction.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

>Or maybe the reason it failed was nobody actually bothered to ask the "clients" what they wanted.

I think this was the problem. The laptops were specifically designed to need very little power (transmissive LCD IIRC) be easily repairable, rugged, waterproof etc etc and were filled with lots of 'educational' software. They were every wish-list feature of every aid-worker.

What the market needed was old Windows laptops that young adults could use to learn Windows and get a job in an office in the city - probably doing Nigerian prince 419 scams

Funny the only other place where western companies produce expensive massively over-spec'd but useless kit with no input from actual end-users is military.

[doublelayer]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

That was part of it, but there were fundamental technical problems too. The original concept involved off-grid power options including solar and hand crank generation. In practice, neither of those generated anywhere near the power required. You could charge them via solar if you already had much larger panels and the electrical infrastructure connected to them, but that was quite a bit more expensive at the time than it is today. In order to keep it low-power, they had to use flash, but that too was expensive, so they used a whole 1 GB of it (4 and 8 in later models). Even in 2005 when the project started, that wasn't a lot, and they didn't ship the 1 GB models until 2007. Since these were designed for situations with no or limited internet connections, that meant there actually wasn't all that much educational software they could fit on them.

There was another relatively simple problem. The laptops they made cost twice as much as they planned them to. Again, this was mostly due to real technical challenges, but it meant an even harder time selling them in sufficient quantities that they could do anything about it. These limitations meant that, even if they had talked to the schools that were supposed to use them, they might not have been able to put the things the students needed on the machines. They didn't think the non-tech parts through, and the tech parts proved hard even with the skilled people and corporate partnerships with AMD and Quanta they had. Following this inauspicious launch, they then spent a few years flailing by creating and then canceling multiple iterations, few of which would have done much about the tech problems. Either of those alone would probably have doomed the project. This remains difficult today, even with advances in cost efficiency of tech (pre RAM crisis).

[Taliesinawen]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

> Either of those alone would probably have doomed the project.

So, the project would have failed anyway without all that Microsoft sabotage ;)

"Remember that a key part of our strategy is to create a situation where even if Nick [Negroponte] rejects us for philosophical reasons there is a long and visible history of our attempts to work with them and then we have to ask to get a license for the 'open source hardware' and we will make our own offering on the commercial side."

"Yikes. We should see how we can 'target' the funds for the specific research. There is a way to position this around MSFT willing to possibly give MORE if they do research on stuff that is mutually interesting."

"I think we should name our new open source license and romance its creation. 'Education Open Source' or something like that. And offer that commercial terms can be established under such an agreement..."

“While we have investigated the possibility in the past, Microsoft is not developing dual-boot Windows XP support for One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop. [...] Our current goal remains to provide a high-quality Windows experience on the XO device. In addition, there will be limited field trials in January 2008 of Windows XP...”

[doublelayer]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

Yes, because there wasn't Microsoft sabotage. Your own articles describe that "sabotage". Problem 1 was Bill Gates slagging off the machines. He didn't work at Microsoft at the time and his primary complaint was that they were underpowered, which they were, but that probably was motivated by dislike of the competition. Failure to include OLPC in his philanthropy is not sabotage. The second complaint was that Microsoft didn't provide discounted Windows licenses, which would have run poorly on the 1 GB storage and slow processor. The third complaint was when they did provide discounted Windows XP licenses for the later versions with a bit more storage, which were almost never used and the only negative consequence was annoying a maintainer of the main Linux version who didn't like that anyone was considering Windows. Your quote about not supporting dual boot is misleading and wrong. Misleading because they originally didn't plan it because two OSes sharing 4 GB of flash would have recreated the original problem, and wrong because they did make them dual boot after all, though again almost nobody did it.

Not only would you have to define two opposing positions as both sabotage, there was more damage done by one zealot quitting than either of those. Intel made a competing product, sort of. Microsoft did not. Your accusations are wrong.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

Still reasonable to imagine Microsoft weren't thrilled about a future of small cheap Windows-free laptops

When, a couple of years later, the Netbooks started appearing Microsoft had some very restrictive ideas about what you could ship without losing access to your Windows licenses for your mainstream products

[Taliesinawen]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

> .. Your accusations are wrong.

Quoting Microsoft in their own words is not drawing accusations ;)

[doublelayer]

Re: The misguided “One Laptop Per Child”

The words at the top were yours, and they were accusations. Not detailed accusations, as you seem to really like letting people assume details, but that was probably a good idea given how much context you left out through not knowing it or not liking how it didn't support your case.

[bill1977]

Private Internet Access

I think there's too much performative noise around Mullvad and I hope they survive this. Except for the immigration issue - the party Daniel Berntsson donated to seems very much on the left. otoh, I left Private Internet Access because the new owner is an unapologetic, pro-genocidal zionist. That's not an insult - it's an objective truth (this comment will likely not be approved, regardless).

Whatever claims they used to be able to make about respecting the privacy of their users are, at the very least, suspect.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

SEK 5 million

They could buy a Ferarri for the leader of the party

[SilverPanther]

Sheep...

You cannot have handouts for the people and open borders simultaneously if you don't want your country to collapse. You have to pick one.

Democrats, even those currently serving in Congress, openly promoted the same positions as this Swedish party, without even offering the costly, generous welfare programs which the Swedish party aims to expand.

The author wrote an article trying to hurt one of the few privacy and free speech focused tech companies because the founder made a donation to a sensible political party in a foreign country - his own country, which the author has probably never even visited - solely because it's out of step with the increasingly ideologically radical mainstream left on a single issue where they switched to promoting nation destroying polices for their own political expedience. The politicians get money and power out of the deal, what do you get?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a classic liberal, I still haven't understood why Europe needs millions of MENA immigrants who cost more in welfare than they ever contribute in taxes and who are vastly overrepresented in violent crime. Nor have I understood why I need cheer for more Islam.

I was already a Mullvad customer before (just because they're the best VPN) but if anything, it makes me a more loyal customer.