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elisheva_m posting in

What would be involved in setting up a ~~fake~~ facsimile of a VPN service to gather intelligence on a criminal organisation?

~~Would this essentially be a VPN where the relay saves a copy of the traffic? Everything I've found to read on the internet assumes more knowledge of tech and jargon than I have.~~ Could a choice of servers in different countries be faked? A UI seems easy enough, but what about the ISP it connects to? If it was simply a gateway to a real VPN, would the real VPN notice? Could it at some point send a second copy elsewhere without being noticed?

This could be a scheme the character is pondering near the end, so it doesn't have to work - it could simply be trying to find solutions to some of the concerns. He has a habit of staring out the window late at night mulling over such things. He really wants to be able to build a phone case with a rechargeable listening device but we've gotten lost on the physics of discretely charging it from the phone.

There's the social infrastructure to make it appear legit, website & fake reviews and social engineering to get them to bite. I've already written this for a different operation, not in great detail but enough for my purposes. If faking a VPN is feasible, I'd probably replace the existing scheme in those scenes with this one. But the marketing email may be more along the lines of "Police and governments can't subpoena a service they don't know exists" with a link to the dark web.

Edit: It doesn't need to actually work as a VPN, the character won't care about hiding the users' info. It just needs to look like one from their side of things.

Please be careful with how much detail and tech-speak you throw at me, my health is poor and I am easily overwhelmed. If this is a rubbish idea, please be kind in putting it down.

Thank you for any help.

elisi

But here are two petitions:

Tell Keir Starmer: Cancel All Contracts with Palantir

Stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline

Also, have the funniest ever explanation for Darcy's proposal. (Link goes to Instagram. With thanks to Promethia.)

Current Mood: tired

denise posting in

dw_news

Back in August of 2025, we announced a temporary block on account creation for users under the age of 18 from the state of Tennessee, due to the court in Netchoice's challenge to the law (which we're a part of!) refusing to prevent the law from being enforced while the lawsuit plays out. Today, I am sad to announce that we've had to add South Carolina to that list. When creating an account, you will now be asked if you're a resident of Tennessee or South Carolina. If you are, and your birthdate shows you're under 18, you won't be able to create an account.

We're very sorry to have to do this, and especially on such short notice. The reason for it: on Friday, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Age-Appropriate Design Code Act into law, with an effective date of immediately. The law is so incredibly poorly written it took us several days to even figure out what the hell South Carolina wants us to do and whether or not we're covered by it. We're still not entirely 100% sure about the former, but in regards to the latter, we're pretty sure the fact we use Google Analytics on some site pages (for OS/platform/browser capability analysis) means we will be covered by the law. Thankfully, the law does not mandate a specific form of age verification, unlike many of the other state laws we're fighting, so we're likewise pretty sure that just stopping people under 18 from creating an account will be enough to comply without performing intrusive and privacy-invasive third-party age verification. We think. Maybe. (It's a really, really badly written law. I don't know whether they intended to write it in a way that means officers of the company can potentially be sentenced to jail time for violating it, but that's certainly one possible way to read it.)

Netchoice filed their lawsuit against SC over the law as I was working on making this change and writing this news post -- so recently it's not even showing up in RECAP yet for me to link y'all to! -- but here's the complaint as filed in the lawsuit, Netchoice v Wilson. Please note that I didn't even have to write the declaration yet (although I will be): we are cited in the complaint itself with a link to our August news post as evidence of why these laws burden small websites and create legal uncertainty that causes a chilling effect on speech. \o/

In fact, that's the victory: in December, the judge ruled in favor of Netchoice in Netchoice v Murrill, the lawsuit over Louisiana's age-verification law Act 456, finding (once again) that requiring age verification to access social media is unconstitutional. Judge deGravelles' ruling was not simply a preliminary injunction: this was a final, dispositive ruling stating clearly and unambiguously "Louisiana Revised Statutes §§51:1751–1754 violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution", as well as awarding Netchoice their costs and attorney's fees for bringing the lawsuit. We didn't provide a declaration in that one, because Act 456, may it rot in hell, had a total registered user threshold we don't meet. That didn't stop Netchoice's lawyers from pointing out that we were forced to block service to Mississippi and restrict registration in Tennessee (pointing, again, to that news post), and Judge deGravelles found our example so compelling that we are cited twice in his ruling, thus marking the first time we've helped to get one of these laws enjoined or overturned just by existing. I think that's a new career high point for me.

I need to find an afternoon to sit down and write an update for

dw_advocacy highlighting everything that's going on (and what stage the lawsuits are in), because folks who know there's Some Shenanigans afoot in their state keep asking us whether we're going to have to put any restrictions on their states. I'll repeat my promise to you all: we will fight every state attempt to impose mandatory age verification and deanonymization on our users as hard as we possibly can, and we will keep actions like this to the clear cases where there's no doubt that we have to take action in order to prevent liability.

In cases like SC, where the law takes immediate effect, or like TN and MS, where the district court declines to issue a temporary injunction or the district court issues a temporary injunction and the appellate court overturns it, we may need to take some steps to limit our potential liability: when that happens, we'll tell you what we're doing as fast as we possibly can. (Sometimes it takes a little while for us to figure out the exact implications of a newly passed law or run the risk assessment on a law that the courts declined to enjoin. Netchoice's lawyers are excellent, but they're Netchoice's lawyers, not ours: we have to figure out our obligations ourselves. I am so very thankful that even though we are poor in money, we are very rich in friends, and we have a wide range of people we can go to for help.)

In cases where Netchoice filed the lawsuit before the law's effective date, there's a pending motion for a preliminary injunction, the court hasn't ruled on the motion yet, and we're specifically named in the motion for preliminary injunction as a Netchoice member the law would apply to, we generally evaluate that the risk is low enough we can wait and see what the judge decides. (Right now, for instance, that's Netchoice v Jones, formerly Netchoice v Miyares, mentioned in our December news post: the judge has not yet ruled on the motion for preliminary injunction.) If the judge grants the injunction, we won't need to do anything, because the state will be prevented from enforcing the law. If the judge doesn't grant the injunction, we'll figure out what we need to do then, and we'll let you know as soon as we know.

I know it's frustrating for people to not know what's going to happen! Believe me, it's just as frustrating for us: you would not believe how much of my time is taken up by tracking all of this. I keep trying to find time to update

dw_advocacy so people know the status of all the various lawsuits (and what actions we've taken in response), but every time I think I might have a second, something else happens like this SC law and I have to scramble to figure out what we need to do. We will continue to update

dw_news whenever we do have to take an action that restricts any of our users, though, as soon as something happens that may make us have to take an action, and we will give you as much warning as we possibly can. It is absolutely ridiculous that we still have to have this fight, but we're going to keep fighting it for as long as we have to and as hard as we need to.

I look forward to the day we can lift the restrictions on Mississippi, Tennessee, and now South Carolina, and I apologize again to our users (and to the people who temporarily aren't able to become our users) from those states.

dreadlordmrson posting in

little_details

Would hospital care after minor dog attack injuries expose a first trimester pregnancy?

Details:
I have a story I'm currently working on set in a modern type world, and a plot point where one of the two main characters is attacked by a pack of street dogs and gets some minor scratch and bite injuries. I'm thinking just a few stitches at most. I can guess they'll need "just in case" antibiotics and rabies shots because of the bites, but would common care involve any tests that would expose an early pregnancy?

Goals:
I'm trying to keep the pregnancy a surprise for the other main character later in the story, so a "some hospitals would do these tests but some wouldn't" could be ruled that this time it wasn't done. But if it's very common to do certain blood or other tests that would easily reveal a pregnancy, that's a problem. And having the other main character who's acting as their savior/caregiver in this scenario decide not to get them treatment wouldn't be in character or suit his arc in the story, even with minor wounds that in theory could be treated at home.

Do I need to change details of the attack, or depict this medical team as negligent? Or is the stealth of this pregnancy safe?

elisi

Watch on YouTube

A relevant quote:

Along about November I began to forget when it hadn't been raining and became as one with all the characters in all of the novels about rainy seasons, who rush around banging their heads against the walls, drinking water glasses of straight whisky and moaning, "The rain! The rain! My God, the rain!"
Betty MacDonald: The Egg and I

Current Mood: damp

author_by_night

dreamersdare | Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition Challenge 2

Make a Top Ten list for your favourite series and tell people exactly why you love it. This can be in any format - tv series, book series, radio plays, movie sequels, something else not mentioned here. Your series can be as short as two vaguely linked pieces of media and as long as... well, the sky is your limit. Whatever you like!

Ahh, let's see. I feel like I've gushed about a lot of these before, so I'm going to use a template. I'm including "things you might like" specifically because so often, "watch these similar shows" lists tend to be random shows that have nothing in common with the one being talked about. I've tried taking a more critical approach. We'll see how that worked.

( Read more... )

Why I love it: It's a musical with amazing songs, the humor is great. They're very daring. They go much darker places in season three, and I wasn't sure about that, but I feel they did it well.

Did I Fic It? I've only written one. I've read a few, but not many.

Favorite Pairing: Heather/Hector.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: I know everyone stans Paula and Rebecca, but I think I'm giving it to Heather and Rebecca. Heather goes from seeing Rebecca as this chaotic spectacle to respecting her to loving her. I would actually compare it to Stevie and David in Schitt's Creek, in terms of their first meetings going from "what the hell is this" to "oh, I actually care about you and want to be your friend".

Random Headcanon or Meta: None.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Maybe Schitt's Creek, since Rebecca's kind of a combination of David, Moira and Alexis, and it's also about a town changing your life, and good-if-flawed people trying their best. The Good Place is also good for the latter, and there's a lot of character growth.

3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Yes, they know it's a sexist term. The show's a lot more nuanced than that. :)

Discovered: 2015 or 2016.

Why I love it: It's a musical with amazing songs, the humor is great. They're very daring. They go much darker places in season three, and I wasn't sure about that, but I feel they did it well.

Did I Fic It? I've only written one. I've read a few, but not many.

Favorite Pairing: Heather/Hector.

Random Headcanon or Meta: I think I would get rid of the whole New Greg thing, but have Rebecca and Greg cross paths years later.

AND SPOILER: I also wish we'd had Rebecca's journey in songwriting be the plotline of season four, instead of the final episode. I don't really see the point of "Character Chooses Herself" when you don't see the character choosing herself.

3. Heartstopper.

Discovered: Um... 2023? 2024?

Why I love it: The first two seasons made me smile. The third season is darker, but I appreciated it for what it was. Also, as someone who was disabled, neurodivergent and acearospec in high school, I can relate to certain elements of the show. Sitting in a classroom eating lunch with your teacher, anxiety eating at you... yeah. I know that one.

Did I Fic It? I tried writing one. Couldn't get into it. I've read a few.

Favorite Pairing: Nathan Ajayi/Yusuf Farouk.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Nick and Tori, though Nick and Tara are a close second. Maybe even a tie.

Random Headcanon or Meta: None.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would pair well, mostly for the mental health aspect. And many Heartstopper fans came from Schitt's Creek. (Myself included! *Waves*)

4. Schitt's Creek

Discovered: Technically whenever it was on Netflix in the US, but like many people, I gave up after one episode. I rediscovered it in 2020 when I'd exhausted the other quarantine shows. (If someone had shown me the Open Mic episode, I would've been hooked instantly. What is wrong with the people in my life? SMH.)

Why I Love It: It's funny, but has a serious edge to it. As a Millenial who came of age late in life, David, Alexis and Stevie spoke to me. (Although I disliked them at first for that exact reason. Projection's one of hell of a drug.) And it has a wonderful queer love story.

Did I Fic It? And how. I actually thought I was done with the whole fandom thing until I started watching SC. I risked spoilers by looking it up on TV Tropes while I was watching, and saw there were fics for it. So I finished the show as fast as possible so I could read the fanfic. LOL. Back then, there were so many fics. Sadly, the fandom's dwindled quite a bit. I miss when fandoms lasted longer.

Favorite Pairing: David and Patrick. They're a queer pairing that's open and affectionate, and their sexuality isn't really the focus. There's only one Coming Out episode, and it's very well done. They're a loving couple that actually acts like they not only love each other, but like each other. (I mean, there is a bit of teasing, but it's affectionate, IMHO.)

I'm also going to squeeze in Johnny and Moira. (RIP Catherine O'Hara.) After all, they are David and Patrick's mirror in many ways, and I also like seeing an older couple that still loves each other. (And older characters who aren't silly for still having dreams and aspirations.)

Favorite Platonic Relationship: David and Stevie. But I think Moira and Alexis are a close second, for their evolution.

Random Headcanon or Meta: I don't think we have all day.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Heartstopper, Heated Rivalry, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Good Place... not sure what else. Maybe Parks and Rec, if you watch for the small-town humor.

Speaking of which...

5. Parks and Recreation

Discovered: I'm not really sure. 2011ish?

Why I Love It: It's funny. Makes me happy. However, I haven't seen it in a while, and... with everything going on in the US, I'm not sure I would still enjoy it. OTOH, it might make for a nice reprieve. See Headcanons.

Did I Fic It? Not really. I think I wrote one or two fics.

Favorite Pairing: Ben and Leslie, who were to me then what David and Patrick are to me now, for some of the same reasons. "I like you and I love you."

Favorite Platonic Relationship: At the time, it was Leslie and Ann, but I think on rewatch, I decided it might actually be Ron and Leslie and April and Leslie. Ann and Leslie are sort of the "fantasy" BFFship, I think, whereas with Ron and April, we really see the complicated evolution friendship can be. Maybe it's the difference between friends you make as young person and friends you make when you're older, even though I don't think Leslie ages that much.

Random Headcanon or Meta: It takes place in the same universe as Schitt's Creek and Red White & Royal Blue. Leslie worked under President Ellen Claremont and was lowkey obsessed with her. Also, Pawnee and Schitt's Creek are sister cities.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Schitt's Creek, The Good Place.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Angel the Series)

Discovered: I mean, I'm a Millennial, so Buffy was always around. XD But I didn't really start watching it until c. 2007. We watched it in a English class after we read Dracula - we watched Buffy versus Dracula specifically. My friend at the time almost cried when I told her that was my first episode.** I struck a deal with her: I'd watch Buffy properly if she watched Firefly. Neither one of us ever looked back.

Why I Love It: I love the character dynamics, the found family, fighting the good fight.

Did I Fic It? I think I started a few fics for it. I never really found a fanfic community for it. Otherwise, I absolutely would've.

Favorite Pairing: Tara/Willow, and maybe Buffy/Faith.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Giles and Buffy. I also think Anya and Giles are a little underrated. Over on Angel, I wish we'd gotten Fred and Cordy. We didn't.

Random Headcanon or Meta: There's a version of Tara and Willow thriving in another dimension, with Cordy's help. (Actually, in Schitt's Creek, there's a joke about "farm witches". I kind of want Tara and Willow to be the farm witches.)

Also,I think Buffyverse and The Good Place could be in the same universe. I don't want to say too much so as not to spoil, but if anyone's interested in a more detailed entry, let me know. If you took away all the comedy in The Good Place, I think you'd get something way closer to Angel, or at least Buffy.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Our Flag Means Death and The Good Place have similar themes of found family and fighting the good fight, plus what I said above. And Stranger Things, which is set in the eighties, so it references a few of the same tropes Buffy initially referenced. Plus, it's also about young people fighting the Big Bad.

**I don't think Buffy versus Dracula was as much a bad episode as it was a bad episode to introduce someone to. It's very camp and almost a parody OF the show. I definitely thought my negative impressions of the show were confirmed. It's like introducing someone to Jane Austen by showing them the BBC Pride and Prejudice, except it's just Mrs. Bennet screaming.

7. The Good Place (since I can't seem to stop talking about it)

Discovered: 2015? 2016?

Why I Love It: Ethics and philosophy, afterlife, found family... the show has it all. It also constantly changes the status quo. Constantly. I love it.

Did I Fic It? Not really.

Favorite Pairing: Chidi and Eleanor, as well as Janet and Jason.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Tahani and Jason. Also Janet and Michael.

Random Headcanon or Meta: See above.

Other Things Fans Would Like: In addition to what I've said, Man on the Inside feels like a spiritual successor, even though it's thematically quite different. They make frequent nods to The Good Place, after all. Just be aware that it does deal a lot with grief. I'd also recommend Ghosts - I've seen the U and the original BBC, and I think both work, although the US version is a bit sillier. (I actually kind of wish Michael Schur had adapted Ghosts for the US. I think it would be a lot closer to the BBC.)

8. Man on the Inside

Discovered: 2024.

Why I Love It: It has a bit of mystery, found family, people working together.

Did I Fic It? I have an idea at the back of my head.

Favorite Pairing: Julie/Didi.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Emily and Charles. I also love Charles's relationship with his grandsons.

Random Headcanon or Meta: I have this theory that Charles is a reincarnated version of Michael from The Good Place. I'm not alone in that.

Other Things Fans Would Like: Probably any Michael Schur show? It's very Schur, though less The Office. I think The Office was Michael's training wheels. Not saying it was a bad show, I just think that his later shows are more demonstrative of Michael Schur as we know him. Blah. Sorry for the ramble.

(Only two more? To think I didn't know how I was going to list ten when I started.)

9. Community

Discovered: 2009?

Why I Love It: It's meta AF.

Did I Fic It? No.

Favorite Pairing: I don't think I really shipped anyone, except lowkey Britta and Troy.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Abed and Troy.

Random Headcanon or Meta: Part of me thinks that the show is actually Abed's show that we see in season one, and it's a slightly exaggerated version of everything that really happened. But only slightly, because it's still Greendale and it's still the Study Group. :)

Other Things Fans Would Like: .. I don't know. I think any "nerdy show" would probably be appealing. 30 Rock was very similar, actually, in that it had a lot of pop culture references and a lot of what I'll call "crack episodes". ETA: Actually, Stranger Things would work. It's a fantasy with a lot of 80's pop-culture references. Abed would have LOVED Stranger Things.

10. North of North

Discovered: 2025.

Why I Love It: I appreciate that it focuses on indigenous characters. There's lots of Canadian humour (it takes place in Nunavut). And again, people trying their best.

Did I Fic It? No.

Favorite Pairing: None, really. I think the romantic elements of the show are actually a bit cliche and weak. Sorry.

Favorite Platonic Relationship: Bun and Neve. :)

Random Headcanon or Meta: I don't want to spoil too much, but I think that Neve sees Bun as another daughter, which is why she's so quick to help take care of her.

Other Things Fans Would Like: This is tricky. I might recommend Little Mosque on the Prairie, actually. It's another Canadian show about a small community in Saskatchewan, in this case focusing on Muslim characters as they form a Mosque in the basement of an Anglican church.

*I first read the phrase as "Netflix and Chili". I think I like mine better.

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Faking a VPN

I feel like I am behind on everything...

Update on legal cases: one new victory! :) One new restriction :(

Wound care exposing a pregnancy.

I'm in the UK, so I will talk about the weather...

My Own Netflix and Chili*

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