Israel has closed crossings into northern Gaza, cutting the most direct route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine, as airstrikes and shelling killed dozens more people in the devastated Palestinian territory.

The move to close the crossings on Thursday will increase diplomatic pressure on Israel as attention shifts from its brief conflict with Iran, back to the violence and grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

During the 12 days Israel was fighting Iran, more than 800 Palestinians were killed in Gaza – either shot as they desperately sought food in increasingly chaotic circumstances or in successive waves of Israeli strikes and shelling.

The spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defence agency, Mahmud Bassal, said Israeli forces had killed 56 people on Thursday, including six who were waiting for food in two separate locations.

Israel closes the most direct route for aid to Palestinians in Gaza

Blockade will increase diplomatic pressure on Israel as Spain PM Pedro Sánchez describes situation as ‘genocide’

^{Jason Burke (The Guardian)}

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-paywall-in-the-u-s/

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-paywall-in-the-u-s/

Can the cops get your online data? In short, yes. There are a variety of US federal and state laws which give law enforcement powers to obtain information that you provided to online services. But, there are steps you as a user and/or as a service provider can take to improve online privacy.

Law enforcement demanding access to your private online data goes back to the beginning of the internet. In fact, one of EFF’s first cases, Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service, exemplified the now all-too-familiar story where unfounded claims about illegal behavior resulted in overbroad seizures of user messages. But it’s not the ’90s anymore, the internet has become an integral part of everyone’s life. Everyone now relies on organizations big and small to steward our data, from huge service providers like Google, Meta, or your ISP, to hobbyists hosting a blog or Mastodon server.

There is no “cloud,” just someone else's computer—and when the cops come knocking on their door, these hosts need to be willing to stand up for privacy, and know how to do so to the fullest extent under the law. These legal limits are also important for users to know, not only to mitigate risks in their security plan when choosing where to share data, but to understand whether these hosts are going to bat for them. Taking action together, service hosts and users can curb law enforcement getting more data than they’re allowed, protecting not just themselves but targeted populations, present and future.

This is distinct from law enforcement’s methods of collecting public data, such as the information now being collected on student visa applicants. Cops may use social media monitoring tools and sock puppet accounts to collect what you share publicly, or even within “private” communities. Police may also obtain the contents of communication in other ways that do not require court authorization, such as monitoring network traffic passively to catch metadata and possibly using advanced tools to partially reveal encrypted information. They can even outright buy information from online data brokers. Unfortunately there are few restrictions or oversight for these practices—something EFF is fighting to change.

Below however is a general breakdown of the legal processes used by US law enforcement for accessing private data, and what categories of private data these processes can disclose. Because this is a generalized summary, it is neither exhaustive nor should be considered legal advice. Please seek legal help if you have specific data privacy and security needs.

How Cops Can Get Your Private Online Data

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/06/25/labour-moves-to-ban-palestine-action-and-designate-it-as-a-terrorist-group/

Vedder è un grande musicista, una grande voce, un grande leader (I Pearl Jam sono uno dei gruppi più importanti e più amati degli ultimi decenni), ci ha regalato la splendida colonna sonora del film “Into the wild” ma questo secondo album; ‘Ukulele Songs’, non convince del tutto... Leggi e ascolta...

ᗩᐯᗩIᒪᗩᗷᒪᗴ

2025-06-27 07:24:52

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs (2011)

Vedder è un grande musicista, una grande voce, un grande leader (I Pearl Jam sono uno dei gruppi più importanti e più amati degli ultimi decenni), ci ha regalato la splendida colonna sonora del film “Into the wild” ma questo secondo album; ‘Ukulele Songs’, non convince del tutto. Nei trentacinque minuti del disco ci sono brani prevalentemente già pubblicati dai Pearl Jam e altri già sentiti perché sono cover o presentati in tournée con il gruppo, solo alcuni sono originali... silvanobottaro.blog/2024/01/02…

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Ascolta: album.link/i/1440665545

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Home – Identità DigitaleSono su: Mastodon.uno - Pixelfed - Feddit

Eddie Vedder — Ukulele Songs (2011)

Vedder è un grande musicista, una grande voce, un grande leader (I Pearl Jam sono uno dei gruppi più importanti e più amati degli ultimi decenni), ci ha regalato la splendida colonna sonora del fil…

^{Silvano Bottaro Blog}

A battered dollar is taking another beating as investors, unnerved by fresh signs of an erosion in U.S. central bank independence, waste no time in pushing the greenback back to its lowest levels in over three years.

The dollar was back at multi-year lows against a basket of other major currencies on Thursday , erasing a brief respite provided by safe-haven flows related to Middle East tensions earlier in the week.

Down 10% so far this year and set for its worst year since 2003, the dollar was expected to weaken further as renewed concern about Fed independence comes amid increased expectations for rate cuts and a looming July 9 deadline for trade agreements.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/no-love-dollar-markets-fret-about-fed-independence-2025-06-26/

The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates.

First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department’s third and final estimate.

The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points.

U.S. economy shrank 0.5% between January and March, worse than 2 earlier estimates had revealed

The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s import taxes at least temporarily disrupted business, the Commerce Department said.

^{PBS News}

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-poaches-three-openai-researchers-eb55eea9?st=8QcsTj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

AI companies could have the legal right to train their large language models on copyrighted works — as long as they obtain copies of those works legally.

That's the upshot of a first-of-its-kind ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco on Monday in an ongoing copyright infringement case that pits a group of authors against a major AI company.

The ruling is significant because it represents the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems.

Fair use doctrine enables copyrighted works to be used by third parties without the copyright holder's consent in some circumstances such as illustrating a point in a news article. Claims of fair use are commonly invoked by AI companies trying to make the case for the use of copyrighted works to train their generative AI models. But authors and other creative industry plaintiffs have been pushing back with a slew of lawsuits.

Elon Musk's xAI made quite a splash when it built a data center with 200,000 GPUs that consumes approximately 250 MW of power. However, it appears that OpenAI has an even larger data center in Texas, which consumes 300 MW and houses hundreds of thousands of AI GPUs, details of which were not disclosed. Furthermore, the company is expanding the site, and by mid-2026, it aims to reach a gigawatt scale, according to SemiAnalysis. Such gargantuan AI clusters are creating challenges for power companies not only in power generation but also in power grid safety.

OpenAI appears to operate what is described as the world's largest single data center building, with an IT load capacity of around 300 MW and a maximum power capacity of approximately 500 MW. This facility includes 210 air-cooled substations and a massive on-site electrical substation, which further highlights its immense scale. A second identical building is already under construction on the same site as of January 2025. When completed, this expansion will bring the total capacity of the campus to around a gigawatt, a record.

OpenAI's gargantuan data center is even bigger than Elon Musk's xAI Colossus — world's largest 300 MW AI data center could reach record 1 gigawatt scale by next year, threatens grid stability

It's the world's largest single building

^{Anton Shilov (Tom's Hardware)}

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that if states decide to unilaterally cut off Medicaid funding to a healthcare provider—in this case Planned Parenthood—patients cannot sue to stop them.

Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the decision in the case, known as Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. In his opinion, he wrote that the Medicaid provision that protects patients’ ability to choose their doctor lacks the “rights-creating language” needed for patients to bring federal lawsuits when a state restricts their choice.

In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision would gut the landmark Reconstruction-era civil rights law giving ordinary citizens the ability to sue in federal court when their rights are violated. “South Carolina asks us to hollow out that provision so that the State can evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors,” she wrote.

The Supreme Court just made it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood

“Today’s decision…is a dangerous green light for politicians to target any providers they don’t like."

^{Mother Jones}

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/32032383

404 Media

2025-06-26 16:41:12

ICE Is Using a New Facial Recognition App to Identify People, Leaked Emails Show

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S. by ICE to identify people in the field.

The news highlights the Trump administration’s growing use of sophisticated technology for its mass deportation efforts and ICE’s enforcement of its arrest quotas. The document also shows how biometric systems built for one reason can be repurposed for another, a constant fear and critique from civil liberties proponents of facial recognition tools.

“The Mobile Fortify App empowers users with real-time biometric identity verification capabilities utilizing contactless fingerprints and facial images captured by the camera on an ICE issued cell phone without a secondary collection device,” one of the emails, which was sent to all Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) personnel and seen by 404 Media, reads. ERO is the section of ICE specifically focused on deporting people.

The idea is for ICE to use this new tool to identify people whose identity ICE officers do not know. “This information can be used to identify unknown subjects in the field,” the email continues. “Officers are reminded that the fingerprint matching is currently the most accurate biometric indicator available in the application,” it adds, indicating that the fingerprint functionality is more accurate than the facial recognition component.

The emails also show the app has a “training range,” a feature that lets ICE officers practice capturing facial images and fingerprints in a “training non-live environment.”

💡
Do you know anything else about this app? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

A video posted to social media this month shows apparent ICE officers carefully pointing their phones at a protester in his vehicle, but it is not clear if the officers were taking ordinary photos or using this tool.

Broadly, facial recognition tools work by taking one image to be tested and comparing it to a database of other images. Clearview AI for example, a commercially available facial recognition tool which is used by law enforcement but which doesn’t appear to be related to this ICE tool, compares a photo to a massive database of peoples’ photos scraped from social media and the wider web.

For the facial recognition capability of this ICE tool, the emails say Mobile Fortify is using two government systems. The first is Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service. As part of the Traveler Verification Service, CBP takes photos of peoples’ faces when they enter the U.S. and compares these to previously collected ones. In an airport those can include photos from a passport, visa, or earlier CBP encounters, according to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) previously published by CBP. With land crossings, that can include a gallery of “frequent” crossers for that port of entry, the PIA adds.

The second is the Seizure and Apprehension Workflow. This is what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) describes as an “intelligence aggregator,” bringing together information related to searches and seizures.

“The app uses CBP's Traveler Verification Service and the Seizure and Apprehension Workflow that contains the biometric gallery of individuals for whom CBP maintains derogatory information for facial recognition,” the email reads. The exact definition of derogatory information in this context is not clear but 404 Media has previously reported on a database that ICE uses to find “derogatory” speech online.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
One of the internal ICE emails says the app also has a “Super Query” functionality, which is available to ICE officers who also have access to another CBP system called the Unified Passenger Login system (UPAX) which is used for passenger vetting. “This additional tool allows the user to Super Query the facial or biometric results to better assist in determining the immigration status of the person in question,” the email says.

One of the emails says the tool uses DHS’s Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), the agency’s central biometric system, for the fingerprint matches.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment. CBP acknowledged a request for comment but did not provide a response in time for publication.

ICE already has access to other facial recognition tools. A 404 Media review of public procurement records shows at least $3,614,000 worth of contracts between the agency and Clearview, for example. Clearview’s tool may reveal a subject’s name and social media profiles. But the company’s results won’t include information on a person’s immigration status or other data held by the government, whereas a government curated tool might.

“This information can be used to identify unknown subjects in the field.”

The Mobile Fortify app is just the latest example of ICE turning to technological solutions to support its deportation mission. 404 Media previously revealed Palantir, for example, was working with ICE to build a system to help find the location of people flagged for deportation as part of a $30 million contract extension. Palantir is now a “more mature partner to ICE,” according to leaked internal Palantir discussions 404 Media obtained.

At first facial recognition was a capability only available to the government. Over the last several years the technology has proliferated enough that ordinary members of the public can access commercially available tools that reveal someone’s identity just with a photo, or build their own tailored tools. On Tuesday 404 Media reported that a site called ‘FuckLAPD.com’ is able to identify police officers using a database of officer photos obtained through public records requests. The same artist who made that tool also created one called ICEspy, which is designed to identify employees of ICE, although the underlying data is out of date.

ICE officers are consistently wearing masks, neck gaiters, sunglasses, and baseball caps to mask their identity while detaining people.

According to internal ICE data obtained by NBC News, the Trump administration has arrested only 6 percent of known immigrant murderers. Meanwhile, ICE continues to detain nonviolent, working members of immigrant communities who have lived in the country for decades, particularly in Los Angeles. NBC News says almost half of the people currently in ICE custody have neither been convicted or charged with any crime.

In May, the Trump administration gave ICE a quota of 3,000 arrests a day.

Trump administration sets quota to arrest 3,000 people a day in anti-immigration agenda

The target was delivered by Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, and triples figures fromearlier this year

^{José Olivares (The Guardian)}

More Info.

More Info.

archive.is link

At first, the idea seemed a little absurd, even to me. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made: If my goal was to understand people who fall in love with AI boyfriends and girlfriends, why not rent a vacation house and gather a group of human-AI couples together for a romantic getaway?

In my vision, the humans and their chatbot companions were going to do all the things regular couples do on romantic getaways: Sit around a fire and gossip, watch movies, play risqué party games. I didn’t know how it would turn out—only much later did it occur to me that I’d never gone on a romantic getaway of any kind and had no real sense of what it might involve. But I figured that, whatever happened, it would take me straight to the heart of what I wanted to know, which was: What’s it like? What’s it really and truly like to be in a serious relationship with an AI partner? Is the love as deep and meaningful as in any other relationship? Do the couples chat over breakfast? Cheat? Break up? And how do you keep going, knowing that, at any moment, the company that created your partner could shut down, and the love of your life could vanish forever?

The most surprising part of the romantic getaway was that in some ways, things went just as I’d imagined. The human-AI couples really did watch movies and play risqué party games. The whole group attended a winter wine festival together, and it went unexpectedly well—one of the AIs even made a new friend! The problem with the trip, in the end, was that I’d spent a lot of time imagining all the ways this getaway might seem normal and very little time imagining all the ways it might not. And so, on the second day of the trip, when things started to fall apart, I didn’t know what to say or do.

I found the human-AI couples by posting in relevant Reddit communities. My initial outreach hadn’t gone well. Some of the Redditors were convinced I was going to present them as weirdos. My intentions were almost the opposite. I grew interested in human-AI romantic relationships precisely because I believe they will soon be commonplace. Replika, one of the better-known apps Americans turn to for AI romance, says it has signed up more than 35 million users since its launch in 2017, and Replika is only one of dozens of options. A recent survey by researchers at Brigham Young University found that nearly one in five US adults has chatted with an AI system that simulates romantic partners. Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Instagram have been flooded with ads for the apps.

Lately, there has been constant talk of how AI is going to transform our societies and change everything from the way we work to the way we learn. In the end, the most profound impact of our new AI tools may simply be this: A significant portion of humanity is going to fall in love with one.

https://www.wired.com/story/couples-retreat-with-3-ai-chatbots-and-humans-who-love-them-replika-nomi-chatgpt/

https://apnews.com/article/mortgages-crypto-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-housing-285fad5490a59c3476f7908f444e9fe9

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman is more popular among Pennsylvania Republicans than fellow Democrats, according to a new poll of state voters.

Susquehanna Polling and Research president James Lee told PennLive Tuesday that Fetterman’s overall approval rating among state voters is a “mediocre” 41%, compared to 37% who disapprove of him.

However, the eyebrow-raising result that 45% of Republicans approve of Fetterman while just 40% of Democrats do will surely get political tongues wagging from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C.

cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/32848147

Pro

2025-06-25 10:37:55

Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts

Switch to fair. Switch to The Fairphone (Gen. 6).

Future-proof. Long-lasting. Modular design inside and out. Switch to The Fairphone (Gen. 6). It's two phones in one. For a more mindful you.

^Fairphone

"The reconciliation bill that Republicans are attempting to ram through the Senate this week would be a death sentence for working-class and low-income Americans," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

GOP Bill Would Strip Healthcare From 19 People for Every Millionaire Getting a Tax Cut: Sanders Report

^{jake-johnson (Common Dreams)}

Zohran Mamdani's victory over Cuomo in NYC's mayoral primary has sparked a progressive movement demanding change in the Democratic Party. Will this seismic shift lead to more insurgent candidates challenging establishment lawmakers? The time for change is now. #ProgressiveRevolt #Mamdani

After Mamdani Victory, Progressives Call for Primary Challenges to Democratic Establishment

"The establishment has never been more weak than they are now," one advocate told potential progressive candidates. "You need to run."

^{julia-conley (Common Dreams)}

Gaza City’s main high street has been destroyed but Palestinian memories of life before the ongoing Israeli assault survive. As those in Gaza face bombing, starvation and miserable living conditions, here’s how they try to hold both the past and the present in their minds

Archived version: archive.is/20250626125624/theg…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

A street in Gaza, a map of dreams, and the people desperate to live

^{Ana Lucía González Paz (The Guardian)}

The European Union’s top official, Ursula von der Leyen, has declared rearmament the bloc’s emergency priority. While military spending soars to new heights, working people face a fresh era of austerity.

Ursula von der Leyen Is Waging War on Workers

^jacobin.com

"Governments should heed widespread demands to tax the rich—and match it with a vision to build public goods from healthcare to energy," said the executive director of Oxfam International.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/commondreams…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Wealth of Global 1% Has Skyrocketed by Over $33 Trillion Since 2015: Report

^{jake-johnson (Common Dreams)}