Qwant has been blocking access from countries that have non-European languages ​​as their official language since around 2020.
It is still not available in Japan and other countries.

XユーザーのQwantさん: 「Some of you have reported difficulties using Qwant in several countries around the world. It is a difficult decision but we have decided to close access to our services in certain countries where we don’t believe to provide the expected quality of service. Our apologies for this.」 / X

I recommend using Stract, which builds its own index independently without relying on Bing or similar services.

ProtonMail is headed up by a CEO willing to tow the MAGA line when expedient, and then retreat from it and claim it was misinterpreted when called out on it.

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/

https://techstory.in/proton-mail-faces-backlash-over-claims-of-political-neutrality-amid-ceos-praise-for-republican-party/

This is probably not the service you want to be using if you want to avoid the mad king in orange.

Don’t chose American tech. Don’t choose European tech. Don’t choose Chinese tech.

The country/continent of origin is irrelevant. You’re still vulnerable to spyware either way.

Choose Open Source tech.

*choose open source tech

Otherwise we’re just swapping corporate abusers for new ones.

Vivaldi is still Chrome under the hood

Last year, America’s vice president set the tone for the new transatlantic relations.
JD vance:
'The threat that I worry the most about, vice-a-vis Europe, is not Ruzzia, its not China, its not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. ’

A year later, Europe is still searching for an answer to the question of how to deal with President Trump. According to the host of the Munich Security Conference, organizer and diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, the same question will dominate conversations in the corridors again next week.

Ischinger said:
‘We need to try to repair to the extent possible the trans-Atlantic relationships, try to repair it and rebuild trust to the extent that is possible. And simultaneously work on creating a more self-sufficient, a more self-determined, a more self-reliant Europen Union.’

‘I can only applaud Canada’s prime minister Carny’s speech. But it’s a speech by a Canadian and not by a European. And the difference is that Canada has the privilege of not sitting in Europe where we’re currently engaged with a war on our continent which Russia is waging against a neighbor of the European Union. In other words: we are probably significantly more dependant on continued close coordination and support by the United States than that might be the case for Canada.’

‘We need to demonstrate our ability to be strong and to defend our interests but we should try to do this without unnecessarily alienating the United States, because we continue to need them.’

In 2003, Europe clashed with the U.S. over the Iraq War. France and Germany opposed the American invasion. That war was one of the factors that later allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to question the dominant role of the United States in global politics.

In Munich in 2007, putin asked:
‘What is a unipolar world? No matter how beautiful you make it in the end, it indicates one particular situation: There’s one center of authority, one center of power and one place where decisions are made.’

A practical example of the consequences of this independence of Europe. A week before his country was invaded, Zelensky asked why he was not getting the support needed to prevent an attack. Four years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, a ceasefire is being discussed under U.S. leadership, talks that have already been ongoing for more than a year.

Ischinger concluded:
‘I would hope that in Washington people will come to realize that Russia has been only playing for time and has been using Alaska and all the meetings inbetween to gain time and to start talking about the benefits of Russian-American relations without really making a single move to demonstrate that they are willing to end the war in Ukraine.’

I really fucking hope that this Munich security conference isn’t our time’s “Munich Agreement”.

the only way you’re free from US/israeli spying is using chinese tech

Email was never designed to be secure. It’s one of the most non-secure ways of communication possible. It heavily relies on trust, for example, nothing about email prevents you from forging who it is from, you can send an email from epstein@fbi.gov and it will arrive in a person’s mailbox just like that. Email also has no built-in encryption. The security of email thus has to be enforced by centralized parties, establishing their encryption standards and networks of trust. It’s just a problem with email itself. People should just abandon email for secure communication. If you really need to send something securely then send it over a Matrix server or something that guarantees end-to-end encryption and can be hosted by anyone.

Just made this and your other post my Signal and WhatsApp story. Ironic, I know—both of those are American…