Pawall - Archive.ph link here

Summary:

China has taken steps to restrict local companies from investing in the US, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that could give Beijing more leverage for potential trade negotiations with the Trump administration.

Several branches of China’s top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, have been instructed in recent weeks to hold off on registration and approval for firms that are looking to invest in the US, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.

While China has previously placed restrictions on some overseas investments for reasons linked to concerns about national security and capital outflows, the new measures underscore tensions playing out between the world’s two biggest economies as Donald Trump ramps up tariffs. China’s outbound investments into the US totaled $6.9 billion in 2023, according to the latest available figures.

There’s no sign that existing commitments by Chinese companies in the US and elsewhere, or China’s purchases and holdings of financial products including US Treasuries, would be affected, the people said. It’s unclear what prompted the NDRC to halt the processing of applications or how long this suspension might last.

The NDRC and the Ministry of Commerce, both in charge of initial approvals for companies’ foreign investment, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
US equity futures dropped to session lows after the Bloomberg report. European stocks also extended their decline.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/china-restricts-companies-from-investing-in-us-as-tensions-rise

FTA:

Two Democratic legislators are introducing a bill on Wednesday aimed at Mr. Musk and the so-called Buffalo Billion project, in which the state spent $959 million to build and equip a plant that Mr. Musk’s company leases for $1 a year to operate a solar panel and auto component factory.

The bill would require an audit of the state subsidy deal to “identify waste, fraud and abuse committed by private parties to the contract.” It would determine whether the company, Tesla, was meeting job creation targets, making promised investments, paying enough rent and honoring job training commitments.

If Tesla was found to be not in compliance, the state could claw back state benefits, impose penalties or terminate contracts.

N.Y. Lawmakers Fight Trump With a Proposal Targeting Elon Musk

A bill would authorize an audit of a state deal allowing Tesla to lease a factory site near Buffalo for $1 a year, and would create a way for the state to claw back subsidies.

^{Jay Root (The New York Times)}

In a less-publicized move, Blasingame, a former bilingual educator, proposed omitting several chapters from a textbook for aspiring educators titled “Teaching.” One of those chapters focuses on how to understand and educate diverse learners and states that it “is up to schools and teachers to help every student feel comfortable, accepted and valued,” and that “when schools view diversity as a positive force, it can enhance learning and prepare students to work effectively in a diverse society.”

Blasingame did not offer additional details about her opposition to the chapters during the meeting. She didn’t have to. The school board voted 6-1 to delete them.

Conservatives on Texas School Board Escalate Fight Over Textbooks and What Students Learn

The decision to strip chapters from books that had already won the approval of the state’s Republican-controlled board of education represents an escalation in how local school boards run by ideological conservatives influence what children learn.

^ProPublica

Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge who was backed by Democrats, secured a 10-year term on the court over Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and a former Republican attorney general. As the first major battleground state election of President Donald Trump’s second term, the technically nonpartisan contest drew national attention and became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history.

Some also pointed out that Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, sued in Wisconsin this year challenging a state law banning carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could end up before the state Supreme Court.

Wisconsin Supreme Court election 2025 results: Susan Crawford defeats Brad Schimel, defying Elon Musk

Liberals will maintain their narrow majority on the court after Crawford’s victory in the first battleground state election of Trump’s second term.

^{Adam Edelman (NBC News)}

Summary

Democrats celebrated Susan Crawford's 10-point win in Wisconsin’s state supreme court race over Elon Musk-backed Brad Schimel, preserving the court’s 4-3 liberal majority.

Musk, who spent $25M supporting Schimel, faced online ridicule, including a post from the Democrats’ official account showing him in a cheese head labeled “Loser.”

They cast the result as a rejection of Trump’s agenda and Musk’s influence. Crawford called it a victory over the “richest man in the world.”

Republicans questioned Musk’s impact. Trump stayed silent but celebrated narrower GOP House wins in Florida

‘Loser’: Musk endures wave of gloating on X after liberal judge wins Wisconsin race

Democrats seize on result as a referendum on Musk and an emphatic repudiation of Trump’s richest supporter and ally

^{Robert Tait (The Guardian)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/28035946

In mid-March, Google announced that it was paying the staggering sum of $32 billion for the acquisition of the Israeli cloud-computing security company Wiz. The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will be the largest ever of an Israeli firm.

“Organizations of all sizes—from start-ups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organizations—can use Wiz to protect everything they build and run in the cloud,” Google said in a statement announcing the acquisition. The statement added that Wiz would join Google Cloud, but that the Tel Aviv-based company’s security services would still be available across other cloud platforms used by major firms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

What was left unsaid in Google’s announcement, however, were the personal backgrounds of its four founders. The co-founders of Wiz—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—are all veterans of Unit 8200, the signals intelligence division of the Israeli military, which is playing a key role in helping to carry out Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Jure Repinc

2025-04-02 18:41:03

Google is Acquiring Tech Firm Founded by Ex-Israeli Intelligence Officers for Record $32 Billion

In mid-March, Google announced that it was paying the staggering sum of $32 billion for the acquisition of the Israeli cloud-computing security company Wiz. The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will be the largest ever of an Israeli firm.

“Organizations of all sizes—from start-ups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organizations—can use Wiz to protect everything they build and run in the cloud,” Google said in a statement announcing the acquisition. The statement added that Wiz would join Google Cloud, but that the Tel Aviv-based company’s security services would still be available across other cloud platforms used by major firms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

What was left unsaid in Google’s announcement, however, were the personal backgrounds of its four founders. The co-founders of Wiz—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—are all veterans of Unit 8200, the signals intelligence division of the Israeli military, which is playing a key role in helping to carry out Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Google is Acquiring Tech Firm Founded by Ex-Israeli Intelligence Officers for Record $32 Billion

Google's purchase of the the firm Wiz tightens the embrace between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military.

^{Murtaza Hussain (Drop Site News)}

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip – aided by tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon – is fueling concerns over the normalization of mass civilian casualties and raising serious questions about the complicity of these firms in potential war crimes, according to a leading AI expert.

Multiple reports have confirmed that Israel has deployed AI models such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to conduct mass surveillance, identify targets, and direct strikes against tens of thousands of individuals in Gaza – often in their own homes – all with minimal human oversight.

Rights groups and experts say these systems have played a critical role in Israel’s incessant and apparently indiscriminate attacks, which have laid to waste massive swaths of the besieged enclave and killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

Israel’s AI use in Gaza normalizes civilian killings, obscures blame, exposes Big Tech complicity: Expert

Israel is using AI systems with known inaccuracy risks at ‘almost every stage’ of its military operations, says Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute - Anadolu Ajansı

^{www.aa.com.tr}

Hey, I hope someone can help me.

Problem:

When I wake my PC from suspend, my monitor is always set down to 30% brightness for some reason.

These are the brightness settings of the monitor itself, which can only be accessed via the monitor settings using the buttons on the monitor. I do not mean the brightness settings of my desktop environment.
These are still set to 100%, even though the monitor is darker.

The problem also arises in a second case. When I lower the brightness in the brightness control of my DE, my monitor brightness is also lowered in the monitor settings down to 30% again. I can then no longer increase the brightness in the DE settings, because 100% in the DE now equals 30% in the monitor. So if I set the brightness to 50% in the DE for example, this is 50% of the 30% set in the monitor. So actually only 15% in real terms

I hope I was able to explain the problem clearly. Please ask if you don't understand something. It's really annoying because I need to turn up my screen brightness with the Buttons on the Monitor every single time I wake up my PC.

Technical data:

• Nobara Linux 41 (Based on Fedora)
• KDE Plasma 6.3.3
• Wayland
• Desktop PC. So a external monitor. Not a laptop monitor.
• I have a 2nd monitor on which this does not happen.

Since the beginning of 2024, the demand for the content created by the Wikimedia volunteer community – especially for the 144 million images, videos, and other files on Wikimedia Commons – has grown significantly. In this post, we’ll discuss the reasons for this trend and its impact.

The Wikimedia projects are the largest collection of open knowledge in the world. Our sites are an invaluable destination for humans searching for information, and for all kinds of businesses that access our content automatically as a core input to their products. Most notably, the content has been a critical component of search engine results, which in turn has brought users back to our sites. But with the rise of AI, the dynamic is changing: We are observing a significant increase in request volume, with most of this traffic being driven by scraping bots collecting training data for large language models (LLMs) and other use cases. Automated requests for our content have grown exponentially, alongside the broader technology economy, via mechanisms including scraping, APIs, and bulk downloads. This expansion happened largely without sufficient attribution, which is key to drive new users to participate in the movement, and is causing a significant load on the underlying infrastructure that keeps our sites available for everyone.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/27700093

psychothumbs

2025-04-02 15:27:16

A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse

A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse | TechCrunch

A new security fund aims to help apps in the fediverse — like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed — to pay researchers for disclosing security bugs.

^{Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)}

Oggi è come se il piano di realtà a me circostante si stesse lentamente, ma inesorabilmente, sfaldando, tutto ai miei danni. Purtroppo, anche questo, ossia il farmi dubitare del mio stesso stato di esistenza, è uno dei metodi con cui gli spiriti esercitano l’ingiusto trollaggio secolare su di me, e io altro non posso fare […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-04-02 15:17:50

sfaldamento universitario con il tempo rinstranito

Oggi è come se il piano di realtà a me circostante si stesse lentamente, ma inesorabilmente, sfaldando, tutto ai miei danni. Purtroppo, anche questo, ossia il farmi dubitare del mio stesso stato di esistenza, è uno dei metodi con cui gli spiriti esercitano l’ingiusto trollaggio secolare su di me, e io altro non posso fare che patire, in questo modo, cercando invano sollievo nel postaggio. 🥲

Precisamente, il #meteo non capisco come cavolo stia funzionando al momento… Stamattina prima di andare all’università si stava bene, e invece arrivata lì c’era quel solito vento freddino — che è in verità molto più fastidioso di quanto non sia freddo, ed è stato capace di farmi mettere i guanti ad aprile iniziato… chissà da che paese di merda dove la primavera non esiste viene — che puntualmente non si è mitigato con il passaggio delle ore. E ora, di nuovo alla maison, si sta di nuovo OK… è assurdo! ☠️

Qui infine però ora pioviggina, e in effetti ci sono tanti nuvoloni neri… ma c’è anche stranamente un botto di sole. Piove col sole forte classico delle 4 del pomeriggio (e sono le 5, maledetta ora legale!). All’università però c’è stato da piangere: non c’erano nuvole brutte, però camminando a giro in pausa pranzo mi sono presa tipo 4 o 5 gocce (contate) in 2 minuti. E io proprio qui ho temuto che fosse la mia testa in corso di sfaldamento… ma no, è proprio la realtà in cui sono immersa che lo sta facendo, purtroppo e per fortuna; testimone la foto che qui includo di un gocciolone che è caduto sulla manica del giubbino e ha fatto persino gli schizzi… 🥱

#meteo

cross-posted from: jlai.lu/post/17374352

Go check this little meme generator by framasoft, one of the french references of foss softwares and culture. Not much, just nice 😀

The URL links to a presentation article in french - feel free to use a translator, and here is the direct link to framameme.

Enjoy!

publication croisée depuis : lemmy.world/post/27658670

Tout chaud sorti du four, framamemes est un generateur de meme rancais et libre !

Plus d'infos ici si ca vous interesse : framablog.org/2025/04/01/frama…

Hate de voir vos creations 👌

Framamèmes

Un générateur de mèmes sous licence libre proposé par Framasoft

^Framamèmes

Agenda preparation for the April ForumWG meeting can be found at this public link (anyone can make comments for review.)