Your ISP can still see IP addresses you connect to, they forward all your traffic.

No they can’t. The ISP cannot see any traffic that goes to or from you while you are connected to the VPN, only that you are sending encrypted packets to/from the IP of the VPN itself. It’s the VPN that then sends your requests on to the site you want to see, and routes the reply from the site back to you.

DNS requests are a separate attack vector, but VPNs almost all offer a means of protecting those from scrutiny as well, and as you say, DNS over https/TLS is also resistant to snooping.

There are some more esoteric ways of spying on your traffic, but the likelihood of any of it being used against you is remote unless you are on the shitlist of a major corporation or government.

Ad blocking does more for less cost than getting a VPN will ever do

Ad blocking mitigates a different risk, which is that trackers on pages you visit will report your behavior to aggregators who sell that data. By all means, use an adblocker. Maybe two. But also be aware that some adblockers sell your data to advertisers (e.g., Adblock Plus: Ublock Origin appears to be less problematic). Or, if you’re a bit more technical, you can set up your network so that known data-collection output isn’t sent. There are even lists of known snoopware endpoints you can subscribe to so you can more easily block them. But the ingenuity of the data collectors is extreme, and it’s a continuing struggle.

Another potential source of leakage is your browser fingerprint (there are sites that’ll tell you how unique your profile is-- the answer is generally “enough to identify you.” There are extensions that can conceal that too.

The use of LLMs for ppolicy making is probably an obfuscation technique to complicate later court challenges. If we still have courts by then.

An actual idiom where I live is to say “I feel rougher than a badger’s arse” when hung over.

That might be a motivation not to lick one a second time.

it’s very good at explaining the plots of movies badly

Generally by recapitulating plot points with no understanding of their relative importance.

The Germans have it right, their word for butterfly means something like “little crusher.”

That’s only a partial saying. The whole is “you can’t butter a fly, but you can make a bi flutter.”

Words to live by. Sounds like something from my dream diary.

I hate to break this to you, pal, but that’s not why they called her the village bike.

Yeah, there’s some low-paid guy in Chennai who has a completely absurd job speculating on the meaning of nonsense idioms.

ChatGPT is probably trained on Stackoverflow responses, which in my experience, are often confidently-asserted bollocks, especially the ones that inform you of the impossibility of something.

I had recent experience of that. What was claimed to be impossible took me two short evenings after work. It wasn’t at all esoteric, either, it just took lots of steps and required lots of validation.

It did what any human would do

I’m a human and my response would be “I have no idea what the hell that means. Must be of Southern origin.”

It’s not a hard requirement, but it’s sure nice to leave the house at a low but non-freezing temp in winter while you’re away for a few days, then use a web app to bring the temperature back up right before you come back in.

Being on the home LAN, though, is a requirement for me. That is extremely convenient.

We have a Tado system, not the current generation but the one before. It was easy to self-install and configure and has never given us any trouble. There are a couple UX quirks, such as not having a confirm dialog after you touch the Shut Down All or Max Out the Heat buttons, but overall it’s one of the rare electronic gadgets that has led to no buyer’s remorse.

At least there aren’t as many fascist mods here, yet.

It’ll only benefit Tesla if anyone buys their shoddy cars.

Why would you?

…and that system is only activated in case of an accident. The spec explicitly states that there is no continuous tracking of vehicle position or other parameters.

When using my current browser, any guess as to how often I’ve said to myself “I need a browser that spies on me more”?

I suspect Altman has ambitions beyond being Microsoft’s cat’s paw, though it may be that that’s all he really is once the shouting is over.

Well, killing off Chrome would probably be a good thing.