They were bought by Kape Technologies in 2019. This drove away a lot of folks because of prior security concerns with another product of theirs. I don’t recall the specifics, but here’s a reddit thread from the time with comments that likely shed some light on the worries from then if you’re curious.

As a practical response, I’ve been with them since years prior to that and didn’t change because I renew 3 years at a time and had 2 years left when they were bought. Figured I’d give them that time to see how things changed. Best I could tell, they didn’t in any way that pisses off my ISP, so I still haven’t bothered switching.

Fair enough, but it’s a good value for the price. Mullvad’s €5/month, and while it’s fallen out of favor I know people who still use PIA and get it for close to $2/month by prepaying for a few years at a time. You could probably pay for it by turning off the laptop a few hours a day to save on electricity.

Worth the price, imo.

What’s the argument for doing this? It looks like media stack includes a vpn, so the effort level isn’t going to be all that different.

Echoing everyone else: definitely use a vpn if you’re torrenting. Strongly consider using a seedbox if you’re on starlink or anything else with poor upload speeds.

I’d wager lots of people think there’s something wrong with having 40+ vacancies going into the next administration.

I am not sure why Google would remove these important details from the search listings

Because they’re an ad company first and foremost. It’s more important to them that you open the video than it be relevant. If you have to open a few extra videos to find the right one, you’re more likely to see an extra ad or two in the process.

They don’t have to worry about the results being less useful until it’s bad enough people start actually using other search engines again.