towerful

That's a decent W

Yeh, exactly.
And worst case, it gives you an opportunity to set your own boundaries and expectations

Yeh, straight up ask her about it.
You appreciate her boosting your ego, but it is coming across as flirting.
Is she flirting?

If she says yes, ask her where she thinks it's going, what you should do next.
Like, "oh, cool. I'm into that. So ... What now?". Then have fun, and see where it goes

If she says no, then say it will take some time to re-adjust to her being just a friend, and ask her to set boundaries if things feel like they go too far.
Like "oh ok, I wasn't sure. It's kinda lead me down that path, but I like playing games with you. So, if I'm ever inappropriate, call me out. But I'll try to keep everything platonic".
Then... Just be normal. Don't be confused. If you overstep then she will say.
Have fun, and enjoy a new friend.

Buying a french person a bottle of sparkling white would probably kill them

Yeh, good.
Hopefully they will realise what a farce OSA is as well, considering the skyrocketing VPN usage!

Basically? Humans are leverage?

He will get his caddy to drop a ball into the hole, and call it a hole-in-one

The only other solutions to "VPNs circumvent OSA" are:

1. Licence/regulate VPN usage (which is essentially a ban WRT the OSA).
   Extremely difficult to do. It's fairly trivial to just tunnel your connection over SSH to a VPS in another country.
   Also fairly trivial to get a VPN that tunnels over a websocket, making the traffic identical to website traffic.
   The government is going to play cat&mouse with decades of legitimate infosec.

2. Do something progressive, and drop the OSA (which isn't going to happen).
   They've literally just implemented these laws. It's not getting repealed.

They are going to make consumer use of anything that changes the public source address of a packet illegal.
How they enforce that, I dunno.
Like the whole OSA, it seems really poorly thought out. I dunno how they completely overlooked VPN usage

Eh, a back bencher has called for a report on how VPNs interfere with ofcoms ability to enforce/regulate the online safety act within 6 months.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vpns-online-safety-bill-labour-champion-b2239810.html

"My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.

"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems."

The likely conclusion of that report is that "VPNs circumvent the age verification requirement, so circumvent the OSA, so VPNs must be banned"

Old labour was.
They pivoted quite hard a few years ago to try and win an election.
They are just Tory Lite now.

"think of the children" WRT school ahootings means more police in American schools and arming American teachers.

gmail@mastercard.com?