See my update in the main post, please check if you also had split tunneling enabled. Still a weird behavior but now it is narrowed down to this feature.
again, this doesn't make sense as the NordVPN Firefox extension is using the same IP address ranges. Also I tried different VPN server in different regions, even the "IP obfuscating" ones
No I am not sure, I don't really see any error message, just a timeout. Not sure how an error of the DNS resolver looks like compared to any error caused by a timeout. However the DNS resolution should indeed be returning a different error, at least when entering a random non existing URL Firefox returns "server not found" instead of "problem loading page"(and NS_ERROR_NET_TIMEOUT in network debugging consoel). But what else could it be? It is so strange that the combination of Firefox and NordVPN extension does work, so it seems that the routing through the vpn network generally works, so it actually has to be something with the windows client interaction I guess.
There are indeed many Lemmy instances that have captcha protection, it's really up to the instance admins if they want to protect or not. Many of those "spam" instances do get quickly defederated by the serious ones.
For years Reddit and Twitter were coexisting peacefully and it should be clear for everyone by now that each format has its pros and cons and they are used for different purposes. Was is a bit interesting though is that the active users gap between Mastodon and Lemmy seems to be much higher than it was/is with the corporate originals.
There are a lot of forks of Misskey which are more popular in the "West". I recommend you to have a look at Firefish, Iceshrimp, Catodon or Sharkey. Firefish used to gain a lot of traction but there was some personal drama going on with the original maintainer, causing the project to feel unmaintained for a while. Luckily the do have a new maintainer now. Anyway partially due to this problem some folk like the former community manager created a new fork Catodon. Iceshrimp also another direct fork of Firefish. So a bit of trivia from the FOSS Mastodon world. In the you might as well just use Mastodon if you are fine with the UI. But I love that we have so much variety in the FOSS ActivityPub World.
yeah cameras and their software is pretty much one of the few vendor specific aspects left in the android world that is worth comparing and maybe worth paying for. Of course flagship models like Pixels and the S series from Samsung certainly can deal with QR codes these days
I found out that even without prime the delivery speed is sometimes the same here in Germany. They say it would take 1-2 days longer but quite often my amazon packages arrived early. Same for packaging cost. Sometime they adverdise the 0€ shipping costs with prime but it literally is also 0 without prime. I mean they are not lying, just not telling the whole truth xD
Weawow is a completly (also ad-)free weather forecast app run basically solo by a Japanese guy. I was surprised when I found this app that it was so good in every aspect that I had to donate the guy. It has has more than half a Mio. reviews on google play with an average of 4.9 . Idk of any free app with that many reviews having this kind of rating, well deserved.
See my update in the main post, please check if you also had split tunneling enabled. Still a weird behavior but now it is narrowed down to this feature.