jayalpha

"The banking industry promised that from mid-2019 name checks would be carried out when customers sent money to other people"

Wow. So far behind.

"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to return the money, but he refused."

There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.

You can buy this in most of this countries legally.

I love coca tea and coca wine.

Astrill. Not the cheapest but I am very happy with it. Also to circumvent GFC

ICs and computers may have been a huge part of the downfall, especially if you consider how important they are in warfare.

"1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure"

The USSR had a good economy for some time. During Stalins brutal industrialization, growth rates may have even outclassed Chinas. E.g. 13% p.a. over 12 years, the numbers are controversial. I have a paper about it. Fact is, in WW1 and WW2 Germany faced a very different country.

The later decline may also correlate with declining oil production. The USSR sold a lot of Oil and Gas to the west.

"The soviet union failed, because centralized, collectivism, and having all the output owned by the state is a failure as a model...."

This is also true fro China and the last word, if the system is sustainable or not, is not spoken in this regards.

I tell you a secret: The western market oriented, capitalistic system is also bound to fail.

1. Due to the inherent feature to use debt to prefinance production, the economy has always to keep growing. It is not possible to use our current capitalistic system in a steady state economy.

2. Since wealth and economic growth are interlinked and energy is more or less limited, the system has to come to a stop sooner or later.

It is well known. VEF, Eletrotehnika, Tondi Elektroonika and others. Also big biotech hub in Soviet times. AFAIK. Even the first soviet atomic bomb was partly build there ("Sillamäe").

I spare you the details for the Czech republic since this should be well known. They were always an industrial and manufacturing hub, even during German occupation in WW2. Airplanes, Tanks, guns, cars (Skoda!), machinery etc. Don't forget, they are a comparably small country.

To sack it may have been one of the stupidest decisions ever by a CEO (Apotheker).

After the blow out sale they had something they were lacking before: huge customer base. But the idea to make money with software and apps instead of hardware may not have been compatible with HP business culture.

The question is: What are you trying to achieve?

Access the internet via an anonymous SIM card (tethering), then use TOR to access your VPN (paid in Bitcoins, money order or whatever). This gives you a decent level of anonymity, if need be.

"Does not claim to provide anonymity or censorship avoidance"

Well, a VPN provides privacy, not anonymity. But setting up a VPN is trivial. In fact, I could do it with a one liner on the Shell.

"censorship avoidance"

This is the tricky part. You may want to look into Softether.