By MEE staff
Published date: 21 July 2025 21:11 BST

The New York lawmaker voted against an amendment by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene last week that sought to block $500m in Congress' annual defence spending bill for Israel's Iron Dome programme.

Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar [as well as Democrats Al Green of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky - PL] had supported Taylor Greene's amendment, which eventually lost in a 422-6 vote.

In a post on X on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Greene's amendment did "nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza".

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel

US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for defending her decision to support a bill which will see more military aid go to Israel's Iron Dome air defence system.

^{MEE staff (Middle East Eye)}

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5-PtkUw9s

I have recently been finding myself on a network (cellular) that blocks access to VPN. I have tried Wireguard on multiple ports using IVPN and Windscribe with no luck. Similarly tried OpenVPN and IKEv2.

I also tried using Windscribe’s “stealth” protocol and IVPN’s obfuscation protocol but again with no luck.

I refuse to rawdog the internet like that and was hoping to get advice on how to work around that nonsense.

I am on iOS if that matters.

As Silicon Valley’s influence expands, a new belief system is quietly reshaping society. This piece explores how tech elites are redefining power, the risks to human agency, and what it will take to reclaim our collective future

Who decides our tomorrow? Challenging Silicon Valley’s power - Coda Story

^{Natalia Antelava (Coda Story)}

55 min read

Good journalism is making sure that history is actively captured and appropriately described and assessed, and it's accurate to describe things as they currently are as alarming.

And I am alarmed.

Alarm is not a state of weakness, or belligerence, or myopia. My concern does not dull my vision, even though it's convenient to frame it as somehow alarmist, like I have some hidden agenda or bias toward doom. I profoundly dislike the financial waste, the environmental destruction, and, fundamentally, I dislike the attempt to gaslight people into swearing fealty to a sickly and frail psuedo-industry where everybody but NVIDIA and consultancies lose money.

I also dislike the fact that I, and others like me, are held to a remarkably different standard to those who paint themselves as "optimists," which typically means "people that agree with what the market wishes were true." Critics are continually badgered, prodded, poked, mocked, and jeered at for not automatically aligning with the idea that generative AI will be this massive industry, constantly having to prove themselves, as if somehow there's something malevolent or craven about criticism, that critics "do this for clicks" or "to be a contrarian."

I don't do anything for clicks. I don't have any stocks or short positions. My agenda is simple: I like writing, it comes to me naturally, I have a podcast, and it is, on some level, my job to try and understand what the tech industry is doing on a day-to-day basis. It is easy to try and dismiss what I say as going against the grain because "AI is big," but I've been railing against bullshit bubbles since 2021 — the anti-remote work push (and the people behind it), the Clubhouse and audio social networks bubble, the NFT bubble, the made-up quiet quitting panic, and I even, though not as clearly as I wished, called that something was up with FTX several months before it imploded.

This isn't "contrarianism." It's the kind of skepticism of power and capital that's necessary to meet these moments, and if it's necessary to dismiss my work because it makes you feel icky inside, get a therapist or see a priest.

Nevertheless, I am alarmed, and while I have said some of these things separately, based on recent developments, I think it's necessary to say why.

In short, I believe the AI bubble is deeply unstable, built on vibes and blind faith, and when I say "the AI bubble," I mean the entirety of the AI trade.

And it's alarmingly simple, too.

But this isn’t going to be saccharine, or whiny, or simply worrisome. I think at this point it’s become a little ridiculous to not see that we’re in a bubble. We’re in a god damn bubble, it is so obvious we’re in a bubble, it’s been so obvious we’re in a bubble, a bubble that seems strong but is actually very weak, with a central point of failure.

I may not be a contrarian, but I am a hater. I hate the waste, the loss, the destruction, the theft, the damage to our planet and the sheer excitement that some executives and writers have that workers may be replaced by AI — and the bald-faced fucking lie that it’s happening, and that generative AI is capable of doing so.

And so I present to you — the Hater’s Guide to the AI bubble, a comprehensive rundown of arguments I have against the current AI boom’s existence. Send it to your friends, your loved ones, or print it out and eat it.

No, this isn’t gonna be a traditional guide, but something you can look at and say “oh that’s why the AI bubble is so bad.” And at this point, I know I’m tired of being gaslit by guys in gingham shirts who desperately want to curry favour with other guys in gingham shirts but who also have PHDs. I’m tired of reading people talk about how we’re “in the era of agents” that don’t fucking work and will never fucking work. I’m tired of hearing about “powerful AI” that is actually crap, and I’m tired of being told the future is here while having the world’s least-useful most-expensive cloud software shoved down my throat.

Look, the generative AI boom is a mirage, it hasn’t got the revenue or the returns or the product efficacy for it to matter, everything you’re seeing is ridiculous and wasteful, and when it all goes tits up I want you to remember that I wrote this and tried to say something.

The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble

Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a premium newsletter, all while supporting my free w…

^{Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)}

Imagine you live in the western United States and are planning a vacation to Europe, returning with a connecting flight somewhere on the east coast. When you arrive in the U.S., the government may invoke the Border Search Exception to search — and even fully copy — your electronic devices, all without a warrant. But because of the chaotic state of Fourth Amendment law for border searches, you’ll face one rule if you fly into Logan International Airport in Boston, an entirely different rule if you arrive at Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, and a third rule if you land in Dulles Airport outside Washington DC. A fourth rule will govern searches if you land at JFK or LaGuardia Airport in New York City, but if you land just outside New York at Newark International Airport, a fifth rule applies. And if you opt to avoid a connecting flight and land directly on the west coast, a sixth rule will be used.

With the stakes as high as the government being able to copy every sensitive email, photo, and document on your phone — without a warrant— how has the law become so convoluted? It is because each of those airports are located in a different appellate court’s jurisdiction, and those courts have disagreed on the scope of the Border Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Warrantless border searches became a feature of U.S. law long ago, well before the digital age. The power of Customs agents to search property entering the United States was established in the late 1700s, and the Supreme Court acknowledged warrantless border search authority in cases in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It formally recognized border searches by Customs agents as an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in the 1977 case U.S. v. Ramsey.

This out-of-date rule, created to help detect dangerous contraband as it is smuggled into the country, is a poor fit for the digital age and dangerously broad when applied to personal electronic devices like smart phones. Now that individuals carry as much sensitive information in their pocket as they could possibly store in their entire home, the Border Search Exception needs an update.

In 2014 the Supreme Court addressed this precise problem for another exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement: searches conducted during arrests. The Court refined the Search Incident To Arrest Exception to the warrant requirement, blocking its application to electronic devices. It noted that “Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects” individuals carry and that “[p]rior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day.” Though these same considerations apply at the border, the Supreme Court has not yet stepped in to similarly limit the Border Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Instead, the law has become a complex patchwork, with appellate courts setting out a range of rules.

https://cdt.org/insights/no-warrants-and-half-a-dozen-different-rules-the-convoluted-and-dangerous-status-of-the-border-search-exception/

I've tried using all three methods to access the web interface and none of them work. When I try using the https:///admin/ I get search results to access my router login. (I obviously replace the link with my pihole's IP address but I still get router login results)

Accessing through pi.hole/admin or pi.hole usually works but I keep having trouble connecting to the site. Checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it looks like pi.hole is down. Has this happened to anyone before? Do I just wait for the site to go back up?

Regà, aiuto. Io vorrei ogni giorno arrivare a fine giornata senza bestemmiare, ma purtroppo non è fottutamente mai possibile, perché c’è sempre qualcosa che non funziona!!! E boh, ultimamente allora non capisco se sono io che sto diventando sempre di più una calamita per gli insetti digitali di merda, o se tra le tante cose […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-07-21 20:33:36

la volpe e la finestra fanno insieme il grande spacc (glitch Firefox coi freeze a caso)

Regà, aiuto. Io vorrei ogni giorno arrivare a fine giornata senza bestemmiare, ma purtroppo non è fottutamente mai possibile, perché c’è sempre qualcosa che non funziona!!! E boh, ultimamente allora non capisco se sono io che sto diventando sempre di più una calamita per gli insetti digitali di merda, o se tra le tante cose è Firefox che è sempre più rotto… e stasera lui ha deciso di fare il seguente. 💩

Stavo facendomi i benedettissimi cazzi miei, quando così, dal nulla botto, noto che il merdardo inizia a laggare malissimamente… e noto anche che uno dei tanti processi del programma stava prendendo circa 2 GB di RAM — per fare cosa, non si sa bene, visto che ho anche l’estensione che scarica dalla memoria le schede inattive. Nel task manager di #Firefox appariva come “GPU”, e infatti, quando ho cliccato sulla X per ucciderlo, la finestra ha flashato un attimo… ma invece per Windows il processo era rimasto, e qui escono le rogne. 💔

A questo punto (ovviamente, perché l’utente vittima sono io) ha iniziato a peggiorare sempre di più, a tratti freezandosi per interi secondi mentre cercavo di navigare o scrivere… addirittura, nel fare Alt+Tab da finestre di altre app ad una del browser, sembrava non accadesse nulla, perché a schermo la finestra non appariva subito, impiegava secondi. Tutto questo, però, nel mentre che il video di YouTube in riproduzione sull’altro schermo (sempre in Firefox) filava liscio… il che rende tutto ancora più insensato. 😭

Quindi (e menomale, così tutti possono vedere la schifezza!) ho filmato la cacca, e si vede bene come in certi momenti prende e si blocca — cosa che si riflette in quel processo scassato che prende un intero core della CPU e diventa irresponsivo agli occhi di #Windows — poi appena si riprende digita in un colpo solo tutto quello che avevo scritto o esegue tutti i click che avevo cercato di inviare… fa schifo alla merda, e che cazzo! E alla fine si è pure incazzato di quanti click stavo facendo, perché ha preso ed è crashato completamente, senza permesso, cosa che mi avrebbe pure fatto perdere le schede in incognito aperte se non le avessi salvate in tempo (e questo non so se sia un crash interno o se è stato Windows che lo ha ucciso, ma qualunque sia la causa non si può continuare così… Non ce la faccio più!!! 😫😣)

#bug #crash #Firefox #glitch #Windows

Telegram

^Telegram

Hodeida (Yemen) (AFP) – Israel pounded Yemen's Huthi-held port of Hodeida with air strikes on Monday for the second time in a month, stoking fears of escalation as it warned Yemen could face the same fate as Iran.

In its latest raids, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel struck "targets of the Huthi terror regime at the port of Hodeida" and aimed to prevent any attempt to restore infrastructure previously hit.

The renewed strikes on Yemen are part of a year-long Israeli bombing campaign against the Huthis, but the latest threats have raised fears of a wider conflict in the poverty-stricken Arabian Peninsula country.

"Yemen's fate will be the same as Tehran's," Katz said.

His warning was a reference to the wave of suprise strikes Israel launched on Iran on June 13, targeting key military and nuclear facilities.

A Gulf official told AFP there were "serious concerns in Riyadh... that the Israeli strikes on the Huthis could turn into a large, sustained campaign to oust the movement's leaders".

The Huthis withstood more a decade of war against a well-armed, Saudi-led international coalition, though fighting has died down in the past few years.

Any Israeli escalation could "plunge the region into utter chaos", said the official, requesting anonymity because he cannot brief the media.

The Huthis' Al-Masirah television reported "a series of Israeli air strikes on the Hodeida port".

A Huthi security official, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP that "the bombing destroyed the port's dock, which had been rebuilt following previous strikes."

On July 7, Israeli strikes hit Hodeida and two nearby locations on the coast, with targets including the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, captured in November 2023, which the Israelis said had been outfitted with a radar system to track shipping in the Red Sea.

A Yemeni port employee in Hodeida said the strikes targeted "heavy equipment brought in for construction and repair work after Israeli airstrikes on July 7... and areas around the port and fishing boats".

An Israeli military statement said that the targets included "engineering vehicles... fuel containers, naval vessels used for military activities" against Israel and "additional terror infrastructure used by the Huthi terrorist regime".

It said the port had been used to transfer weapons from Iran, which were then used by the Huthi rebels against Israel.

Fears of escalation after Israel hits Huthi-held Yemen port

^RFI

This article describes what ive been thinking about for the last week. How will these billions of investments by big tech actually create something that is significantly better than what we have today already?

There are major issues ahead and im not sure they can be solved. Read the article.

Bubble Trouble

As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years i…

^{Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)}

https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/7/mega-launches-new-large-file-transfer-servicetransfer-it-with-no-file-size-limit/