"government controlled sites like X" - I thought the control was the other way around?

Even the Yakuza are sick of shitty infrastructure.

Supposedly that only covers "user carrying costs" too.[0]

They claim to have 3 million weekly users[1], I have no idea if that's a realistic cost for running a VPN of that scale?

Notably applicants for these grants don't have to be non-profits[0], which seems a little odd?

[0]https://www.opentech.fund/funds/surge-and-sustain-fund/

[1]https://psiphon.ca/en/about.html

So they're cutting funding for TOR while making a shitty version?

Perhaps, but that assumes they're actually making anything. It's quite possible they're only announcing it, or will only take people's money, or that this is a re-badge of something one of their donors already made and couldn't sell on an open market.

A version only facilitating access to sites friendly to the Mad King and friends. No Fediverse for you!

Maybe just a rebranded version? Trump Oll-mighty Regent browser.

There's a European standard designed to fix this, which just uses body measurements, although I've never seen it used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_standard_for_si...

I wonder why they don't just make it open source at this point?

Apparently they still hope to make a bit of money out of it:

"I never had a license! Well, even then you can have one - if you absolutely want to. . Depending on your bid, we will then contact you." https://tempus-word.de/en/download/index

I guess they found out they make out more that way than setting up a ko-fi account. It also insures the soft and its legacy doesn't become bloated over time. It is also possible that given it uses old tech (GEM) and probably assembly code, the software as it is would not be more easily portable than it is now using emulators.

I think that's out of date. The banner at the top of the page says "you can request a free license for version 5.4 from us." According to archive.org that was added later than the text you quoted, somewhere between 2022 and 2024.

Maybe they never got the source code or the license to distribute it. This is not the original company after all.

Usage of licensed 3rd-party libraries for example!

As someone extremely sceptical of musk, I do have some hope that competition between spacex and it's Chinese competitors will make space somewhat accessible to hobbyists.

Hobbyist is another name for consumer, so yes, consumer will have access as long as they pay.

Those that can’t pay or are politically undesirables, will be excluded from the global commons of space.

My take is that the great dream of unifying humanity through the internet won’t be helped by having it run in space.

The title is wrong as they only included EU/EEA/EFTA/UK companies, at least according to their faq page. Which would exclude multiple balkan countries and some others.

Doesn't have to be a different dimension, international waters or space would do.

All this, and no mention of Sealand [0]? An unrecognized micronation in (formerly) international waters, with a hosting company (back then) that allowed almost everything, and its own coup and counter attack by the "legitimate" royals (and then Germany having to negotiate POW release of the coup organizer).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

Both those places are heavily government controlled.

In fact international waters if you're not flagged and registered to a specific country, then it's open season for anyone to board and seize you.

Which is something the US has demonstrated so clearly recently.

This shows that if you want real freedom on the high seas, you need a submarine. Captain Nemo had the right idea.

Can tap directly into the undersea cables too!

I'm so mad that the bitcoin bro cruise ship never set sail. We missed out on some exciting drama.

Aside from the counterpoints made by the other responders, this still won't work: you need a physical connection to those servers, and you can't just WiFi to servers thousands of kilometers away. So the servers need to be in another dimension, so you can access them without government interference.

The most obvious example of this is the innumerable[0] versions of the Christian bible.

[0] Before anyone says it, I'm sure some bible nerd has numbered them, it's hyperbole.