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The problem is that they are sold as a security/privacy product, because they can’t mention the more illicit uses (which the author mentions under “when to use
by paulgb 3y ago
The problem is that they are sold as a security/privacy product, because they can’t mention the more illicit uses (which the author mentions under “when to use a VPN”), which are the real use cases people buy them for.
It’s kind of like when shops selling bongs would market them as “tobacco accessories”, but there was a wink-and-nudge understanding about how they would really be used.
- elorant 3y agoI buy them so I can have country specific ips
- EGreg 3y agoYou mean like vibrating massagers? Did you know the original vibrator was a medical device by doctors to automate treatment of Hysteria?
- zaroth 3y agoHaha, lookup what “hysteria” was and the medical “treatment” devised to “cure” it. We might have a long way yet to go as a species, but we’ve sure come a long way.
- jiggawatts 3y agoWe still have chiropractors and Chinese herbal medicine dispensaries.
- yosito 3y agoThe thing that bothers me is that we've had these things for so long, but no one does any actual research about them, so we still can't say that we know they don't work, but only that we don't know that they work. And "we don't know that they work" doesn't really convince people who say "thousands of years of tradition say that they work, and my great aunt was healed by it".
- jiggawatts 3y agoResearch has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work[1], to nobody's surprise. Sure, there's not a huge amount of research into the matter, but this is comparable to the small amount of research time sunk into verifying if prayer can cure cancer. Nonsense like "rhino horns look like an erect penis, so surely they will give you erections" should be dismissed without further discussion, but unfortunately a multi-billion dollar industry continues to wipe out rare and endangered species for magic cures that can't possibly work. [1] A large subset of such medications are basically stimulants that make patients feel better but do more harm than good. My father in law was scammed this way by a herbal doctor that gave him such huge doses as to cause heart damage.
- yosito 3y ago> Research has been done, and has shown herbal medicines to not work Plenty of herbal medicines are effective. Which is why we need research to understand which ones are, and which ones are bullshit.
- jiggawatts 3y agoWe have done this research, and the result is called "medicine" now instead of "herbal medicine". Aspirin used to be extracted from tree bark. Opium and morphine is the juice of the opium poppy. Penicillin is from a mould. Botox is from a bacteria. Heck, there's an entire subset of the pharma industry running around testing every damned plant, weed, and flower to see if it has some sort of useful effect! There's even been movies made about this! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/ We've tested herbal medicines, and use the pure extracts from those that do actually work every day in every country. That doesn't mean the guy selling dried tiger penis should be allowed to open shop next to a pharmacy and claim mysterious properties "unknown to science".
- HenryBemis 3y agoI assume you get downvoted due to the (not much) relevance of your example to the VPN discussion. As for the accuracy: Yes! 1) https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/technology-orgasm https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/technology-orgasm 2) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201303/hysteria-and-the-strange-history-vibrators https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201303... 3) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181107-the-history-of-the-vibrator https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181107-the-history-of-t...
- pgraf 3y agoAccording to this article, this is probably a myth: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian... https://archive.is/idRiW https://archive.is/idRiW
- IAmNotACellist 3y agoOr all those Nickelodeon commercials for wacky wiggling pens that are sooo hard to write with.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoExactly. Is there anyone whose primary use case for a personal VPN is not "Geofence bypass for region-locked content"?? Whenever a state in the US passes a new "we need your ID to watch porn" law, sales of personal VPNs must predictably skyrocket in that state.
- tim333 3y agoThere's also bypassing nanny software in coffee shops. I've had checking a word meaning on Urban Dictionary and checking the odds of Trump winning 2024 blocked by that. I guess for naughty words and gambling?
- tshaddox 3y agoIs "geofence bypass for region-locked content" actually “illicit”?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Is "geofence bypass for region-locked content" actually “illicit”? Yes, in practically every jurisdiction. It’s wilful breach of contract, tortious interference with the content distributor’s licensing schemes and copyright infringement.
- raxxorraxor 3y agoThis is false, it is not illegal. You might be in violation of a specific contract, but that is far from it being illegal. For example Steam might ban you if you circumvent a region lock. Reason for that is that there are other legal requirements for them as a market place.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago> This is false, it is not illegal. I highly doubt you know the laws in every region globally. This may be true in yours, but it's not a good idea to make such blanket, objective statements online.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoI felt stupid when someone told me what the 'roses in a glass' tubes that were sold in convenience stores were really used for, but I guess it never occurred to me that crack pipes would be something these places would want to be associated with. At least it restored my faith in romantic gestures a bit to know people weren't buying them as a token of love.
- ssl-3 3y agoThe bodega sells whatever people want to buy, as long as it doesn't get the bodega in trouble for doing so. Beer, wine, booze, tobacco, and vapes are obvious, but things like cough medicine (dextromethorphan), diarrhea pills (loperamide), little roses in neat glass tubes, and air dusters (let's kill some brain cells!) are perhaps less-obvious. The bodega wants to be associated with being the place where a person can stop in and buy anything, from a can of soup to a pair of pants.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoWhat's the deal with loperamide? I once asked why levothyrox, a drug to compensate a dying thyroid, is so regulated (at least in France). It's not like it's psychotic or something, it is just a hormone. Turns out people were buying it expecting weight loss... It's because of such idiots that people whose life is already complicated gets it even more.
- madog 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loperamide#Off-label/unapproved_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loperamide#Off-label/unapprove... News to me as well
- ssl-3 3y agoIt's an opiate, and some opiate addicts like loperamide. It's certainly not the fix they're looking for, but some of them like it enough that -- unlike seemingly every other OTC drug they stock -- it is kept behind the counter at the Dollar General near me, so that a would-be buyer has to ask for it. And that's not a result of regulation (anyone can buy as much as they want), but is rather a result of stock shrink. It tends to disappear in some less-than-savory neighborhoods. (I use loperamide occasionally for its main intended purpose of settling my gut down enough that I can do something other than hang out near a bathroom while I quickly dehydrate, and more than once it has been legitimately hard to find in some areas when I've needed to buy more.)
- fny 3y agoNYC has Mullvad ads plastered everywhere. They bill themselves as protection from corporate surveillance. This is not wink-wink advertising. It’s an attempt to swindle somewhat tech literate people through a lie. Sure you and everyone else on HN know what a VPN for, but that’s not the case for 97% of the people on a subway car who see their latest campaign.
- eipi10_hn 3y agoWhat lie?
- bayindirh 3y agoFunny thing is, in my most recent trip, hotel's wireless network information contained a note which can be summarized as follows: "Our hotel uses unencrypted wifi, so if you want any kind of privacy on hotel network, please use a VPN, kthxbye."
- gs17 3y agoI've seen a lot of VPN ads that specifically advertise how you can take advantage of regional pricing and get around geoblocking for various services.
- crossroadsguy 3y agoThis is exactly what it is. Almost everyone I know here in my country, which has not (yet) gone China, who uses a VPN does so exclusively to access sites and services that are banned or not reachable here (read porn, p2p, and geo-limited services like Hulu, and Spotify before it was released here etc). No one, absolutely no one, uses it for privacy and security.
- throwaway2037 3y agoHongkong? Taiwan?