The proposed update to Switzerland’s Ordinance on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic (VÜPF: Verordnung über die Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs) represents a significant expansion of state surveillance powers, worse than the surveillance powers of the USA. If enacted, it would have serious consequences for encrypted services such as Threema, an encrypted WhatsApp alternative and Proton Mail as well as VPN providers based in Switzerland.
So. Switzerland doesn't really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense. It's still an old nation-state with laws made in the olden day when you had to compromise. There are many cases where the "direct" part is optional and requires interested people to assemble signatures yadda-yadda. Not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal. That aside, its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing. Which means that for some issues it will always drift shitward.
It also has separation of 3 kinds of government by degree of locality, but not separation of the "an entity ensuring food safety can't regulate telecommunications" or "an entity regulating police labor safety can't regulate riot police acceptable action" kinds.
(Which is why I usually refer to my preference for a kind of "direct democracy" as a revised one-level Soviet system with mandatory rotation, plenty of places and sortition to state worker roles, despite that not having very good connotations.)
Democracy is an infant still learning to walk. You plug the holes and add new institutions for oversight. You don't shoot the damn baby and start over because you know how you'd force everyone to do it.
And this argument has been used for every political system in history. Even in USSR in materials approved by censors it was normal to joke about it.
You plug the holes and add new institutions for oversight.
Why don't you do that with real-life mechanisms? A moving part of a machine has corroded enough to have a hole unintended by design. Go on, plug it. Oh, it's better to replace the part.
That aside, I think you've missed my specific arguments, not providing any of your own. Those things about participation as wide as possible and rotation. This means that there should be as many political roles as possible (of a delegate or of a secretary or of anyone), often rotated, with the same person not being able to hold the same or similar post for longer than N months, and with sortition based on some pseudo-random mechanism (pseudo-random to be able to check the results for fraud). To reduce the power of any single delegate or bureaucrat and to make lobbying, bribing and blackmailing them harder. To simultaneously make the population more politically literate - by almost every citizen, ideally, participating in some kind of daily decision-making work. Not voting once a year (at best) from among choices given to them by someone else.
That's what con artists do - provide the victim with an illusion of choice.
You don’t shoot the damn baby and start over because you know how you’d force everyone to do it.
That's exactly what you do. One consistent system does one thing by design. Another consistent system does another thing by design. Something in-between organically evolved does neither. Evolution is the survival of the fittest - fittest for survival. So an organically evolved system is approximating the optimum of power. The status quo.
What it does not approximate over time is any idea of public good. That would be nuts - so, metaphorically, you've built a wooden bridge, do you think it'll become more or less reliable over time under snow and rain and sun? Is a 100 years old bridge better than a bridge just built and tested?
And the optimum of power is formed by the existing system among other things.
Which means that it becomes more and more static and degenerate.
This is not law yet. The Federal Council (the executive) has started a consultation process at the beginning of the year which ended in May. They are now looking at all the feedback that came in, that was - unsurprisingly - exclusively negative from all sides. If the responsible minister wants to go ahead with it, it goes to the Federal Council for a vote. If they approve it, this would be a decree to change an existing decree and that would come into effect next year or the year after.
And this is where direct democracy comes in: If this is the case anyone can start getting signatures for a public initiative which would change the constitution to prohibit such practices. In fact anyone can start doing that now. If it succeeds, then it'll come to a popular vote. Threema (a secure chat provider) has already announced that they would do that and I'm sure that they wouldn't be the only ones to band together in this.
The process might take long, but this is in no way "not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal" and in fact has happened multiple times in the past. Hence why Switzerland has a direct vote on issues every few months because of something called "Referendum", whereby a popular vote can be forced on an issue passing through parliament. I might have my criticisms of the political system, but this ain't it.
its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing
Well yes, there is some level of representation, so over 8 million people don't have to decide every little detail on 1000s of changes of law. The system is built upon a "milita" system. I.e. politicians usually have a job. So people have the possibility to vote in experts or their vicinity and know that they won't solely be career politicians. Unfortunately the laws around financing and propaganda are rather lax, giving an advantage to the rich, which leads to an over-representation of the capitalist class with occupations such as lawyers and business-owners and a clear under-representation of classical working-class jobs such as craftspeople or office workers. This is amendable though to correct the mismatch, if people realize their class interest and don't fall for the same right-wing propaganda of a party whose playbook has been inspired by the US GOP for decades and who is inspiring Germany's AfD now.
The main downside of the system imo has to do with people with no knowledge on an issue having to weigh in on them and therefore how powerful propaganda campaigns can be, which means that money buys power, as in every other existing so-called democracy - direct or not. Especially with how money shifts power away from the populace, this is inherent to capitalistic systems and it would be on the populace to protect itself from it. With enough propaganda though, people keep voting for more power of capital unbeknownst to them or not, just as they might vote against their interests on other things. The fact that you have to convince so many people, who hopefully do have some degree of education, makes it a lot harder though, for big capitalists to reach their goals, compared to less direct systems. And I know of several examples, how such a vote did not go in favor of big capital. What usually makes the difference is whether they succeed in portraying their advantage as the advantage of all.
Yeah, so the difference in what I'd like from what you describe as existing is:
The representation should be spread thinner over the population, and with separate organs voting on separate kinds of matters. Ideally so that most of the population would have some short experience in participating in at least one of those organs by reaching the age of 30. Experience is needed to make your last paragraph less problematic, and wide participation - to gain that experience first-hand and also to make it very expensive to blackmail\bribe\threaten enough people. This might also make a referendum an event a bit more rare, because it won't come to that.
In general it's very cool that such a system even exists as a proof that nothing is impractical about it.
There do exist things resembling that a bit. Usually done on the local level and mostly concerning some street/development design, where people are invited to actively participate in a workshop style event with experts and vote on the results. But yes, these are not mandates. And as soon as you go onto the state or federal level, such structures become virtually non-existent.
The others are parliamentary commissions which can be instated by parliament and are formed of mainly external experts around a certain issue. These are often used on state and federal levels of government.
I would love if representation was spread wider over the population and that involvement was higher. I also am baffled at how bad general civics education is here in school, especially at the obligatory level. I would welcome a far more detailed and engaging civics education where they could already get some experience right at the school. Or go and participate at some local event. This way they also see the importance of a truly democratic process. Alas, as long as they can't vote, nobody seems to want their opinions.
Another part that needs addressing is finances. There's a lot of intransparency yes, but the way it works now, it is also very hard to get your message across without being big in a main political party or having some big private sponsor. Which limits your actual freedom before and after you're elected. If we're thinking radical we might severely limit campaign budgets or think about public funds allowing the same restrictive scope for everyone, no matter their background and finances. This would also limit the imbalance in outreach between capital-backed candidates and others.
A third huge problem lies within the judiciary, where judges on many levels effectively also have to be party-associated to get elected. If that sounds completely compromising their necessary impartiality, yeah, it's because it does. (Although I don't have data on how that influences their work)
And lastly: The structures of accountability for politicians. I know that some steadiness or stability is necessary, but without the fear of accountability, far too many misuse their positions without repercussions. As we see from around the world, this invites more and more brazen figures to do more and more brazen violations. Just a brain-fart: 100k signatures to force a vote on relieving someone of their immunity so they can be tried in court. And to not just wait it out. Right now, it's parliament that has this exclusive possibility.
So. Switzerland doesn't really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense.
Yes, it's half-direct, who said otherwise? Fully direct on a Nation state level would maybe be possible now with the Internet. But we can still overrule them, while germans get tired of their politicians lying on elections and doing what they want. Doesn't mean they don't try here.
But yeah, this system has it's weaknesses with complicated or emotional topics. But then again, we are all humans.
Fully direct on a Nation state level would maybe be possible now with the Internet.
That's my point. It might seem dangerous to rely on the Internet for such basic matters, but it's already being used to great effect to undermine all democracies. So there's no choice, it's like an arms race. (Still, probably for elections it'd make sense to have a countrywide parallel intranet, so that someone's error in setting up a BGP router wouldn't disrupt it.).
But yeah, this system has it’s weaknesses with complicated or emotional topics. But then again, we are all humans.
That's the other side of the problem - modern easiness of propaganda.
OK, I live in Russia, just rather sad to see how many other countries are slowly drifting in the same regrettable unsavory direction.
None. I'm using "compromise" here in the sense of compromising between democracy and elites, with the world order normal 200 years ago. Today those compromises don't work because of technological progress and different makeup of societies.
Strong means attractive. Not getting pummeled in WWII and making some profits, being complicit in some crimes (turning back Jews), and in general being on top for many decades make you look strong.
I meant current times, not in the past. Sorry, I assumed that would be obvious. There are also some things I like about Germany, though they have a pretty terrible past.
The Nazi gold is still very much a thing. And the descendants of Jewish people who died in concentration camps are often unsuccessful in reclaiming any wealth that was stored in Swiss banks, because they don't have death certificates and what not. Switzerland is incredibly stubborn and selfish when it comes to anything that would tarnish their neutral stance in banking and politics.
Nazi gold didn't disappear after the Nazis fell. They still pocketed it all, despite knowing where all that wealth came from, and did fuck all to help rebuild Europe.
Other things like their appeasing attitude towards Russia, reluctance to allow weapons exports to Ukraine, and willingness to export weapons to awful regimes are all unambiguously current.
Yeah, the whole "private banking" history thing the EFF seems to lionize in the article was 100% just for serving lucrative international robber barrons and other criminals. It was never about protecting regular citizens privacy.
My theory is that if you're cute you're socially protected and the same applies to states and countries. Switzerland is quite the nice place and there are cultural hubs of historical importance, so it has the cute look now doesn't it.
Hold up now! I'll have you know in some parts of the country women couldn't vote until the 90s! Also unmarried cohabitation was illegal in some cantons until the 80s and paternity leave as a concept only exists in Switzerland since the 00s.
You’re right it doesn’t dive into encryption however, given that the data is still accessible a government agency can surely decrypt it if they truly wanted to, even if it take them years.
a government agency can surely decrypt it if they truly wanted to
They can't. Not using any known technology. Even basic encryption like AES256 would take 10^50 years on a supercomputer. That's not even getting into quantum-resistant encryption.
america is the only country that is except from Swiss banking privacy laws. they strong armed us with something (still dunno until today what exactly) to have it removed for american citizens.
I know this and i know that political systems in Switzerland are really unique. I think this kind of thing can pass despite the robust involvement of the civil society, mostly because it's an update on a preexisting law. But this is something I can't tell as of now.
Considering that we might have a World War III or 2nd American Civil War in a decade or two, it would be foolish of Switzerland to not permit encrypted VPN. A stable neutrality is very profitable in a world of uncertainty.
Isnt Switzerland the country that struggled with their covid response because of the direct democracy requirements lacking provisions for such changes...amazing they can figure everything out to hurt the public.
I visited Switzerland just after the vaccines dropped. The Swiss COVID response far surpassed the response in the United States. They rolled out a nation-wide app for vaccination attestation, and any museum, restaurant, etc. could scan a QR code on someone's phone with a phone. But do they have a scary, socially reactionary subset of their population? Yes.
In some harmful ways they are fanatically culturally conservative. But they also care about community, sustainability, health, the well-being of children, environmental preservation, organization, and self-reliance. Being a small, rich, homogeneous, topographically-isolated country drives these characteristics.
Surveillance State developments are depressing but not surprising.
what covid response? our government simply played on "eigenverantwortung" (personal responsibility). in a country with one of the highest education levels it wasn't difficult to keep a distance of 2 meters during the peak of the pandemic unless you're surrounding yourself with naive people. I was able to go swimming in the lake in the summer, and skiing in the winter while Italy, France and Austria had this banned. weird to think about it but I honestly had a pretty fun time during covid and made some of the best friends to date during it. hell, we even had music festivals and our numbers were not horrible. I think you're thinking of Sweden. happens a lot.
Powers that would make the US blush!? Give me a fucking break. The US spies on all communication in the entire world.
Proton is a joke and their CEO is an obvious fascist. It was stupid to think a corporation is the answer to privacy anyways. They obey all countries rules and turn over your information the moment they are asked by governments.
The future of privacy in Switzerland is in the hands of the citizens. Let's hope they make the right decisions and encourage them to do so.
If these corporations really cared about privacy they would be promoting laws to make it enshrined in our constitutions. The reality is privacy is just another way to market to the masses who don't know better.
My cynical side says these "privacy" focused corporations not wanting privacy to be enshrined in law is because then every business would be privacy minded and their marketing advantage would quickly disappear.
they've been threatening this for year to keep suckling at the tit of governmental subsidies to make Switzerland look more attractive for investors with them being here. I doubt they'll follow through.
I self host mine. Honestly I just self host as much as I can to avoid stuff like this because while many European companies are great you just never know. I was with Tuta but decided to self host, same for when I was using Filen for backups. Hell I'm even self hosting my git repos and search engine now.
@poutinewharf commented a screenshot of Proton's post, but the headline was about their AI chatbot, and the news about the Swiss move is buried at the end.
Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals(new window) to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.
switzerland was never a utopia for anybody except corporations, billionaires, and nazis. their "neutrality" was nothing more than an excuse for unregulated capitalism.
Switzerland never had solid privacy laws - and is known for intelligence service overreach for decades.
They had a Stasi like system of "who to imprison" when "the time comes".
They listen to all IP traffic in and out the country - which is concerning in times of traffic pattern analysis. And they are known for their close cooperation with US intelligence services.
Protons (and Threemas) claim of "soo good swiss privacy laws" is nothing more than swiss-washing. And they know it.
Proton has already given away data of its customers (climate activists) to the swiss authorities. And only talked about it when the press got onto it.
Buried in Proton's AI announcement today is a pretty shocking detail about their service 👀
Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.
The latest release of the ActivityPub WordPress plugin introduces new functionality for performing remote follows directly from WordPress. Here's why that's important for the future of WordPress on the Fediverse.
WordPress-ActivityPub v 7.1.0 Introduces Following Capabilities
The ActivityPub plugin team at Automattic has been doing some amazing work. Over the past few years, this single-person project has shifted from a single-person effort to a team of full-time developers. With the release of the 7.x branch of the ActvityPub integration plugin, project devs announced that they would be working on bringing remote following capabilities to the plugin itself.
Today, version 7.1.0 was released with a very early sneak peak at this new feature. While it’s currently hidden behind an “Advanced Options” toggle, it’s now possible to use the ActivityPub plugin to directly follow other Actors on the network.
This is still a relatively new feature, and the plumbing hasn’t been completely fleshed out yet. Team member Konstantin Obenland explains further in the announcement:
There’s really no functionality around it yet, beyond following accounts from other instances, as we have yet to start processing incoming posts and adding the ability to interact with them. But if you just can’t wait to show your appreciation for other accounts by following them, go wild!
Why is this Important?
The connection from WordPress to the rest of the Fediverse has always kind of been in a weird place. While the main ActivityPub integration for WordPress generally works great for sending articles to subscribers, following people directly from the WordPress dashboard has been messy. Right now, if you wanted to use your WordPress blog as an actual Fediverse account, you would need the following things:
Friends – a social dashboard for WordPress, still in the early stages. This piece is primarily used for following other people in the Fediverse.
Enable Mastodon Apps – This implements a substantial amount of the Mastodon API, so that you can post microblog updates directly to your WordPress site.
Event Bridge for ActivityPub – This technically adds support for federated Events, by converting your site’s events calendar into something people on the network can subscribe to and indicate their attendance.
With these three pieces, it’s possible to cobble together something that comes close to being a complete Fediverse user experience. Still, this process takes time to set up, can be prone to configuration issues, and sometimes has missing features. Having different plugins that all touch the ActivityPub integration can also be harder to test code and report issues. We use Tusky with our site for social purposes. It’s pretty good, but definitely could be better. By introducing remote following functionality directly into the ActivityPub plugin, the project team will effectively provide standard mechanisms for other plugins to directly rely on. In the near future, this might mean that you won’t have to rely on Friends to be the broker of your social connections. Instead, Friends can just use what’s already put in place by the core plugin, and focus on ways to just work as a social dashboard.
Also, Starter Packs!
One other thing worth mentioning involves preliminary support for the Fediverse Starter Kits, a proposed recreation of Bluesky’s Starter Pack functionality. While there have been a number of attempts to make something similar for the Fediverse in the past, there has yet to be a Fediverse standard for lists filled with recommended users to follow. However, the WordPress team has put in the effort to support Pixelfed‘s Starter Kit Data Schema as a point of reference.
A screenshot of the importer in action. Credit: Matthias Pfefferle
In all, this release iterates on the current ActivityPub stack for WordPress, and could provide a stable foundation for a lot of future functionality that we’ve all come to expect from platforms such as Mastodon, Misskey, or even Bonfire.
A Call from the Workers of Gaza to Labor Unions Around the World:
A Cry in the Face of Starvation and Genocide
To all free workers everywhere,
To our comrades in trade unions and labor federations around the world,
We bring to you the statement of the workers of Gaza, issued by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, addressed to the workers and unions of the world—this final appeal they have named “A Cry Before Death.” It reaches us from the midst of hunger and siege, from beneath the rubble of factories and homes, and from the heart of a continuing war of extermination that has gone on for nearly 22 months alongside a systematic policy of mass starvation executed by “Israel” with direct support from the United States and its European partners.
The statement reads: “The Israeli war has destroyed 80% of Gaza’s homes, all of its factories, workshops, and sources of livelihood, and most of its farmland has been bulldozed.”
Indeed, the lives of workers, fishermen, farmers, and all productive social sectors in the besieged Strip have been turned into a living hell. Their families are now without shelter and without income. There is no food and no medicine. One worker says: “We are besieged by American and European weapons, choked by hunger, neglect, and silence — all in an attempt to destroy our lives, to break our resilience, and to crush the will of resistance in our people.”
We address you today once again, not merely as victims, but as the workers of Palestine: an integral part of the popular and working classes of this world, struggling for justice, liberation, and dignity. And we call upon you to:
Break the silence and complicity, raise your voices within your unions and federations, and denounce the policies of starvation, siege, and massacre in Gaza.
Pressure your governments to end arms deals and military cooperation with the occupation, and to impose sanctions on the Zionist settler-colonial and apartheid regime.
Boycott companies that support the occupation, and withdraw union investments from any company, institution, or entity involved in funding or profiting from the war.
Organize days of rage and global solidarity in factories and workshops, in ports and airports, in the streets and public squares, in support of Palestine and its brave people.
We especially appeal to the unions of seafarers and port workers, urging them to refuse to load or unload “Israeli” ships or those bound for Zionist ports, and to halt any form of maritime or commercial cooperation with the tools of war and siege. Your strong hands and awakened consciences are capable of halting the machinery of extermination and stopping the shipments of death sent to Palestine. Show all humanity the power of the struggling working class when it rises united in defense of justice and human values.
From here, we proudly and gratefully salute our comrades, the port workers in Greece, for their principled and courageous stance, and their leading role in boycotting “Israeli” ships and rejecting complicity in war crimes. We also salute the labor unions in Norway, Spain, France, Canada, and elsewhere for their pioneering role in impactful solidarity with our people through the boycott of occupation institutions. We call upon all labor unions around the world to cut ties with the so-called “Histadrut”, the Zionist organization that claims to belong to the working class while participating in the siege of Palestinian workers, justifying the genocide in Gaza, and serving as an integral part of the Israeli occupation apparatus.
Comrades, What is being carried out today in Gaza is a crime of mass starvation in full view of the world: its aim is to displace us and expel us from our land. This is not only a war of physical extermination; it is a series of crimes that surpass everything committed by Nazism and fascism in Europe. It is carried out with the aim of subjugating us by destroying the very conditions of life and human dignity. Yet the popular working classes and their free unions around the world possess a legacy of history, strength, and courage sufficient to defeat these criminal policies — if they unite their ranks and raise their voice in confrontation with colonialism, Zionism, and the savagery of capitalism.
We promise you: We will rebuild the universities, schools, institutions, and factories of Gaza again, as we have always done after every American-Zionist war of destruction. And we will continue our steadfastness, no matter how great the hardships and challenges.
Let us turn anger into action, and solidarity into a concrete stance. Let us break the policy of starvation and raise the banner of labor struggle for justice—For a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) 23 July 2025
(Text of the statement from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions – Gaza)
The Workers’ Cry Before Death
A cry we raise to speak to the consciences and dignity of our comrades in the unions, to call for mobilization in support of children who cannot find milk or a morsel of bread, for mothers whose breasts have dried up, for patients waiting to die of hunger, for elders who fear dying of hunger, and for workers who can find neither work nor bread.
Our free comrades, For 22 months, the occupation has carried out the killing of civilians and the destruction of homes—destroying 80% of Gaza’s houses, all of its factories, bulldozing most of its agricultural lands, and closing off most sources of livelihood.
Honorable colleagues, We think well of you, so roll up your sleeves to break the siege on Gaza. We await from you a human and moral role to save Gaza from a blockade in which the criminal occupation has sealed every window for the entry of food, medicine, and water to its people.
Our union comrades, We await your role in delivering the cry of the children and workers of Gaza to decision-makers and to the streets. You are the most worthy of carrying this responsibility—so be our support, move the streets, and stop the arms deals that are killing children, women, and workers. Mobilize the sympathizers and supporters to break the siege on Gaza, and deliver your free voice to the decision-makers.
There is no excuse for those who abandon Gaza and its people, or who abandon the workers.
Gaza will remain a witness to those who stood with the cry for humanity and the cry for freedom, and it will remain a symbol for the free people of the world.
A Call from the Workers of Gaza to Labor Unions Around the World: A Cry in the Face of Starvation and Genocide To all free workers everywhere, To our comrades in trade unions and labor federations around the world, We bring to you the statement of th…
It's a quote from Marx talking about why the Paris Commune adopted different political forms than that of the republicans. Saying "ready-made" in this case would be saying that the form of government of an insurgent working class is essentially different from the typical bourgeois state, and that the working class can't simply try to operate the bourgeois state, ready-made because it already exists. Effectively this means that Marx is clear that in order for the working class to free itself, the bourgeois state must be destroyed and replaced by a government created by the working class, and, judging by the Commune and later experiences, will be constructed amid the struggle to destroy the bourgeois state.
Sorry if that's a lot for an innocuous question. But if you're still curious, for fuller context:
The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of “social republic” ... did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic. ... But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France. During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary control – that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes – became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief...
Later on in the same section Marx describes the different political form of the Commune, mentioning mandated revocable delegation in place of representation, combining executive and legislative functions into the assemblies of delegates, and so on.
@Provinto@lemmy.ml gave an excellent answer, but I figured I'd take my shot at simplifying further.
Essentially, the bourgeois state is formed over time to support bourgeois society. A revolution that tries to wield it in its own favor has to contend with the fact that over time, the state as a superstructure is fully compatible with its respective base, capitalism. In order to change the base and superstructure, an entirely new state needs to take its place, not just in name but in structure, otherwise the old superstructure left hanging will wrest back control, like what happened at the Paris Commune.
Saw this posted over on HackerNews, and loved it. I'm big on self-hosting, and this is an incredibly exciting idea to me.
The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network of friends that operate a 24/7 always-on LAN party, running since 2021. The vast majority of documentation is maintained on the LAN, but this website serves to give interested folks, prospective members or friends an idea of what the Promised LAN is, and how it works.
Their manifesto is also worth reading. My personal favorite part:
We do not wish to, nor will we, rebuild the internet. We do not wish to, nor will we, scale this. We will never be friends with enough people, as hard as we may try. Participation hinges on us all having fun. As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug.
This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends’ homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy. Remember how we got here. Rebuild a community space that doesn’t need to be mediated by faceless corporations and ad revenue. Build something sustainable that brings you joy. Rebuild something you use daily.
Except there are artists available at all price ranges. Usually with the expensive ones you're paying for experience and/or prestige. There are less experienced/prestigious artists that will gladly take your $60 commission.
Also, art isn't a necessity. It is a luxury and by definition always will be, especially custom art commissioned by you. The stance of the people behind AI art is founded on the notion that you need art so it can benefit from automation in the same way food does. But you don't need art. It's the capstone of Maslow's pyramid. If you're at a level of privilege where art starts seeming like a necessity, you can afford $260 for it.
I'm not even strictly anti AI art. But I absolutely hate the argument that AI makes art more "accessible" or "affordable" (it was accessible/affordable before, you were just too lazy to find artists at your price range) or "reduces the barrier to entry of becoming an artist" (by which they mean you don't actually have to learn how to make art to make it, as if that's a good thing).
I especially hate the animosity AI artists and AI art enjoyers have toward actual artists. Portraying them as pretentious, profit driven, judgmental, etc.
Your phone too, your PC/laptop too, your car too, your meat too, your air-travel too....who cares? Banishing "AI" won't cure this planet. It would just slightly delay the inevitable.
It's just the usual, easy hate for things I don't need/like.
spamming this cringe bullshit across a bunch of different instances doesn't make you any less of a permavirgin slop fiend who loves to be cucked by corporations
My brother, I am someone who is pretty pro-AI art, for reasons too complex to get into, but which basically have to do with latent possibility spaces and the boundary between discovery or creation.
I am typically pissed off and annoyed when people get their pitchforks out at any mention of AI art. I also consider myself a pretty decent amateur artist. I draw, I paint, I 3D model. I also like working with the more core technologies of AI. I have a horse in both races, so to speak.
But this post, this post makes me feel like one of those pitchfork-wielders that typically annoy me. Why? Because you've depicted the artist as a rude snob who looks down on poor people, and is thereby getting their just deserts and having their smugness deflated now that they're no longer needed. This is such a wildly inaccurate perception of artists. 9999/10000 artists make probably less than $40,000/yr in the U.S. Most of them could make more money doing something else, but they don't, because they love art. They aren't looking down on poor people, they are poor people.
And no, $60 really isn't enough. Nobody is getting paid enough these days. Do you have any skills or crafts that took you 4 years of work to become even barely good enough at that someone would even consider hiring you? And if so, how would you like it if someone asked you to work for days at a rate below minimum wage? Don't people deserve to have not just subsistence lives, but nice happy lives in return for creating something nice and happy for you?
No artist is sneering at your low commission offer on account of you being poor. The sneering is that, you can spend $60 on something that you don't need whatsoever, whereas they likely need your $60 to buy something like food. These are people who live ENTIRELY off what people pay them for their work, no wage, no tip, etc. How could you ever look down on them for wanting to have a nice life, while at the same time wanting what they provide? It's fine if you're not willing to pay $260 for their work, but it's not fine to look down on them for it, and it's nonsense to characterize them as a judgemental snob. Unless you're trying to commission Jeff Koons or something, any artist you talk to is struggling to get by just like everyone else. You aren't "serving them right" or "teaching them a lesson" by going to AI instead. You're just making it harder for them to make a living doing what they love, and regardless of whether AI does it better than them, or another artist is willing to live a shittier life for that and therefore charge a lower price, that's nothing to be proud of.
I don't want to be mean or make you feel bad, though, I just want you to stop and think about what it must feel like to be a poor artist and see something like this. No doubt they're suffering extra competition as a result of AI, but should we revel in that? If in my small town, I have a neighbor who makes a decent living by charging $20/ticket to his guitar concerts, and then one day another guy moves in, who plays way better my neighbor, and only charges $10/ticket...such that eventually my neighbor can't afford to make a living playing his music any more and picks up a job he hates instead...That's just a shitty situation. And I'm not going to go as far as many others do and say you're bad for buying the $10 tickets from the new guy. I get it, you're struggling too, we all are. You want some joy for the lowest price you can get it, and if it's better, why not? But that doesn't mean we need to turn our noses up at our neighbor and deem his shows "overpriced" - especially if he's already living on less money than his patrons to begin with.
Nooooo, you don't get it. The poor artists are smug meanies so we are allowed to steal from them. If the poor artist just accepted the massive low ball offer than everyone would be happy and we'd have world peace probably.
Ugh yes these artists, so mean, so evil, greedy and disgusting, they don't deserve being paid not even a tenth of the minimum wage. 60 bucks isn't enough to cover that 12 hr job you say? Where do you live???
Not like I'm gonna make art for anybody else anyway. Do I look like a fucking party clown? I'll take your ideas, they're gonna suck, and maybe if it's impressive I'll write a note I never look at again.
If you offer somone 60$, and they deny it and say they can only do it for 260 it's because they already have someone willing to pay 250, and they can only make 1 piece at a time. Why would they turn down a 250$ piece to make your 60$ piece? It's simple scarcity. You aren't entitled to someones labor for any price. I really don't care if you use AI to make what you want. The only thing about AI that annoys me is that it's everywhere now, and it looks bad a lot of the time. But just understand that your post here just makes you look entitled. That's why your being mass downvoted. I suggest you do some introspection, and try to see things from other peoples perspectives.
spamming this cringe bullshit across a bunch of different instances doesn't make you any less of a permavirgin slop fiend who loves to be cucked by corporations
spamming this cringe bullshit across a bunch of different instances doesn't make you any less of a permavirgin slop fiend who loves to be cucked by corporations
spamming this cringe bullshit across a bunch of different instances doesn't make you any less of a permavirgin slop fiend who loves to be cucked by corporations
Am using my redmi note 8 with lineageos built in custom recovery. And my device was rooted. Recently i installed a OTA update and i loose my root access. As i don't own a laptop (i used my friend laptop to flash custom rom and magisk) it's cery inconvenient to lose root on every OTA update.
I researched about it and find magisk don't root android in a deeper level but in a surface level, thats why an OTA update wipes root access.
So recently i was looking at custom recovery like orangefox and twrp fir fixing this issue. For my device orangefox dropped development and rwrp have updates only one a year and last one was yeras ago...
What should i do ? How can i really keep root on an OTA update without a PC or Second device with OTG cable ?
Is there any other root manager that don't allow to lose root after OTA updates ? And is this issue caused by updating the recovery along with the OTA update ? Just so confusing!
Is there something you absolutely need root for? Or can you get away with not having root? It is always better to not have root capability, as that is a huge attack vector.
Root gives me more control over my device and many powerful apps like shizuku and sdmaid works better than non root. Usually i don't use magisk modules. And one another use is it installs app updates without a waring like play store. That's it.
You could use aurorastore. Sdmaid is useless IMHO. I don't see the point in it. I used to be rooted but now using GrapheneOS I am not anymore and although I miss customising the navbar pill and notification bar height it is safer this way.
Try Lygisk, it's a fork of Magisk that's meant to survive OTAs for devices that only have one system partition. I've used it on a previous phone and it worked great.
I have a PC currently configured to dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Mint. I don't need Windows anymore, but Mint is working just fine and I'd rather avoid wiping the whole thing and starting over. Is there a safe way to just get rid of Windows?
Yes. You can just straight up delete the windows partition. Windows just won't boot anymore, even though doing only this won't remove it from the boot menu.
You can do this from your running linux install, but if you want to grow the linux partition to take up the free space, you'll need to do that from a live usb.
No changes should be necessary. Just delete the windows partition, and grow the linux partition.
Make sure you keep the efi partition, and swap partition, if there is one.
But moving a partition can't be done online. And often enough it's mecessary before growing one, that I generally just tell people to do partition changes offline.
You sound like you know some things that perhaps I don't know.
Slightly different question...
I have a 128GB SSD with Linux Mint MATE 20.3, and I did a full and successful dd backup to my 4TB backup drive.
I have a 100GB external USB hard drive as a test medium for Mint MATE 22.1. I am happy with my test setup, and tried to dd that over to the 128GB SSD. But it wouldn't boot.
I restored the original 128GB SSD image and all is good right now, but why the hell didn't the 100GB>128GB even boot?
Edit: Secure Boot has been disabled all along, screw that headache.
AFAIK dd will create an IDENTICAL environment. This is actually not desirable as it will cause UUID conflicts where multiple partitions in a system have the same UUID.
Unless you're restoring something you imaged, dding one disk onto another requires fiddling with the UUIDs and fstab, to make the partitions unique again, so the kernel can tell them apart.
The goal was to migrate the 100GB to the 128GB, hopefully expand it, and format the 100GB for future temporary/experimental use.
I never planned on having both drives actively running at the same time, so I don't think there should have been any UUID issues, nor did I run across any errors suggesting such an issue.
But even without expanding the partition, the dd command should have 1:1 copied the 100GB, with space to spare, and be bootable, right? Or so I thought...
I had no problem dd restoring the original 128GB contents though, so at least I didn't bork everything. Also the 100GB external USB is still fine. 👍
Is your SSD an NVME drive? It's possible that there are non-UUID references (maybe /etc/fstab, or GRUB's config) to the drive that are involved in the boot process.
Maybe it is looking for /dev/sda2, which is correct on the USB disk, but now everything is on /dev/nvme0n1p2.
Solution: Live disk, mount the root and boot partitions, look at the config files and fix the references.
-Or-
It could be that your boot manager has an an entry for the 128GB drive already, just pointed at the wrong .efi file.
If you were originally on Arch for example(, btw) on the 128GB drive. During the installation of the bootloader you would have inserted an entry into the boot manager like:
But now, since you're on Mint, arch-linux.efi isn't there and the boot manager falls over.
Solution: Live disk, use efibootmgr (wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unifi…), to delete the bad entry (\arch-linux.efi) and add one pointing to the correct file (\mint.efi ? grubx64.efi?).
e: It looks like Mint uses grub, so you could also live disk -> chroot into the environment -> run grub-install (wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#…) to create the entry. You will still have a 'bad' entry which you can delete with efibootmgr.
Meant to be. I literally cut a service panel hole under the laptop to remove or reinstall it whenever I feel like, or maybe eventually upgrade it.
I've been booting off of other devices, like my 8GB USB flash, 100GB USB HDD, and even Live Boot USB DVD drive. It's actually been very convenient, as I can boot off of whatever the hell I want from USB.
My backup is on a 4TB, so really no worries to me, I can more or less freely experiment around with whatever OS I want, and if it doesn't work right, I can just dd my backup over whatever again, and it just works.
But why doesn't the dd 100GB>128GB work as I'd expect?
Obviously that's not the exact dd command I used, for privacy reasons.
There's not many things that are happening at boot: the UEFI Boot Manager points to GRUB which boots your system.
It's almost certainly one of them. The Boot Manager's entries can be fixed with efibootmgr
Most likely you'll also have an issue after it boots because of the swap from being on /dev/sda to /dev/nvme0n1. Your home directory or swap file from the USB drive probably in the fstab like:
Now /dev/sda doesn't exist anymore, because you're on an NVME drive. Now those directories will be at /dev/nvme0n1p3 and /dev/nvme0n1p4. You'll have to edit fstab manually to fix this. If fstab is using UUIDs then it'll work as-is since the partition UUIDs would have been part of the image.
e:
Obviously that’s not the exact dd command I used, for privacy reasons.
In almost all cases it'll be the same situation. The boot manager is pointing the wrong way. You added the entry to the 100GB drive when you (or whatever Mint uses to install) ran grub-install. You also have an existing entry for the OS on the 128GB drive.
The only way it would have worked seamlessly is if you plugged the 128GB drive into the same connection that the 100GB drive was on AND both the original OS and Mint both use grub AND install it in the same location.
It's an easy fix once you know what to look for (just run efibootmgr --unicode and you'll see the boot entries).
I be getting really confused when one config boots from /dev/sda, but when I have my backup drive attached (not the boot device), it boots from /dev/sdb
Hell I dunno, I probably confused the hell out of my laptop plus myself with my cutout mod reconfiguration, but it's happy to boot from almost anything now.
Almost...
Hey, at least I know how to restore to my previous state from backup via dd 👍
I be getting really confused when one config boots from /dev/sda, but when I have my backup drive attached (not the boot device), it boots from /dev/sdb
Hell I dunno, I probably confused the hell out of my laptop plus myself with my cutout mod reconfiguration, but it’s happy to boot from almost anything now.
You probably just have multiple boot entries and some are higher priority, so if you plug in a drive it's boot config is higher in the boot order and since it is available it'll boot that.
Just run
efibootmgr --unicode
You can see all of the entries and their boot order.
I already use Guix shell as a package manager on top of Debian (for programming mainly) and occasionally Arch in an VM (managed by virt-manager).
I don't have the impression that using NixOS or full Guix would save me time. But I will probably try Guix System on a spare disk in the next months, when I have time and energy to get a feel on it.
Oh it almost certainly won't save you time unless you already know Nix and how the ecosystem works. But it does make rolling back to previous configurations basically effortless, which seems like it would obviate your need for a full staging drive.
One can copy the system using a tar backup, fix the mount pointd by changing the volume label (which identifies the mount point), and do a dist upgrade then.
I guess that's the best way to do it on a server. But for desktop systems, I now think it is better to make a list of manually installed packages, and to re-install the packages that are still needed from that list. This has two advantages:
One gets rid of cruft and experimental installs that are no longer needed, which is really important in the long term.
Some systems (I a looking at you GNOME) can break in an ugly way if doing an upgrade instead of a re-install. Very bad behaviour, but it can happen. (And this might answer the question whether Debian is more stable than Arch: Yes, as long as you don't upgrade GNOME).
And one more thing I do for the dot files:
Say, my home folder is in /home/hvb . Then, I install Debian 12 and set /home/hvb/deb12 as my home folder (by editing /etc/passwd). I put my data in /home/hvb/Documents, /home/hvb/Photos/ and sym-link these folders into /home/hvb/deb12. When I upgrade, I first create a new folder /home/hvb/deb14, copy my dot files from deb12, and install a new root partition with my home set to /home/hvb/deb14. Then, I again link my data folders , documents and media such as /home/hvb/Documents into /home/hvb/deb14 . The reason I do this is that new versions of programs can upgrade the dot files to a new syntax or features, but when I switch back to boot Debian 12, the old versions can't necessarily read the newer-version config files (the changes are mostly promised to be backward-compatible but not forward-compatible).
All in all this is a very conservative approach but it works for me with running Debian now for about 15 years in a rather large desktop setup.
And the above also worked well for me with distro-hopping. Though nowadays, it is more recommended to install parallel dual-booted distros on another removable disk since such installs can also modify grub and EFI setup, early graphics drivers and so on, even if in theory dual-boot installs should be completely independent... but my experience is that is not any more always guaranteed.
Another possibly quicker way to do this is a larger BTRFS disk and create subvolumes from snapshots and mount these. When the subvolumes are no longer needed, they can be deleted like any folder.
Note: the growing the partition from a live USB thing is only necessary if you want it all to be one partition. If it's a separate drive, or even if it's not, you can just format the old Windows partition/drive and mount it as a new storage volume.
Why do you try to make Linux seem unusable? It's not "Linux"'s fault proprietary software doesn't work on it. Would you criticize GNOME, KDE Plasma etc. and any of the gazillion other pieces of software exclusive to Linux for not working on W*ndows to reach a wider audience next?
Not a problem for me. All the software I need is either available as native Linux or runs ok under Wine.
I'm ready to ditch Windows entirely at this point. I just need to find the best way to do that, without having to rebuild the Linux side of my dual boot PC.
You can use the gparted tool to graphically remove the partition(s) and then format them to whatever file system type you are interested in and just have those mounted as extra data drives. Or merge them into your Linux partition (depending on setup). That will require gparted to be run as sudo as you are interacting with disks.
Alternatively, you can a tool like fdisk to change partitioning in terminal. You can pull the disk info using something like lsblk, so if you had a specific drive it might be sudo fdisk /dev/nvme0n1, then you'd want to print the current table and look through the help.
Either way, a good way to do it might be to use dd (or a different disk image tool) to copy your Linux installation partitions to a portable hard drive, and make sure the image works. Then wipe the drive and copy the Linux partitions back to it via dd or another imaging tool.
Hi, I didn't see the answer if you only have your pc and no other big storage : If you still have the installation usb or recreate one. Boot on it then you open gparted with that you remove the two partition off windows, the main with the system and the recovery one (if there is) but don't touch the first or last partition esp if it exits. Then you can expand the partitions to get the free space. Extend to the right is fast but extend to the left can be really slow and prone to failures. I case you Linux partition are all on the right you can also create new main partition, do the install of the linux on this one, then reboot on the USB, move the user and configuration files on the new system, delete old installation partitions, then extend the new install to take the full drive. There is commands to remove the old esp entries I don't remember yet. This can take few hours so be patient.
The other option with a backup (dd) of the main partition is obviously safer but take nearly the same amount of time and need an external drive.
Germany’s federal government is preparing massive cuts to social welfare benefits, pensions and healthcare starting in the autumn. Chancellor Friedrich Merz made this clear last Friday at his summer press conference. The business pages of the main media outlets are also full of suggestions on how to save billions at the expense of the needy, pensioners, the sick and wage workers.
It is now clear that the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Social Democrats (SPD) deliberately omitted the planned social cuts from their coalition agreement and delegated them to expert commissions in order to first push through the massive increase in military spending. They apparently anticipated tremendous resistance if they had announced a huge increase in rearmament spending and social cuts at the same time. But now, as Merz made clear, there is no more time to lose. Workers and the most socially vulnerable are to pay the costs of rearmament and war.
Merz is preparing the weapons so that when the AFD, which he will paint as opposition to his Fascism-lite regime eventually wins, they can do full Fascism.
It's very revealing how casually liberals spit out populist as an insult. The derogatory use of the word unmasks their real conviction that majority rule is only admirable when the majority thinks like them. Strip away the varnish and their ideal is not democracy at all, but a stewardship by the enlightened elites who keep the unwashed masses at bay.
With how expensive AI seems to be, it's baffling to me how companies expect to turn a profit on it. 30B a year sounds more like the budget for an entire government scientific agency. And if that's just for the data services...
microsoft already admitted it doesnt generate profit, so all these companies, including google, is ramming AI into all thier devices and services to recoup the losses.
Even copilot explains that it's answers are crippled by responding faster with less accuracy to reduce resource usage and there's nothing the paying customer can do about it.
Wtf, it doesn't make a lot of sens since open ai doesn't have the monopole of ia anymore. Also the only service they found to sell is literally a chatbot wich no company will find interesting if it cost too much
I did a very deep dive into the history of Libre Software and stuff, and how "Open Source" became a term. And speculated out of it a whole theory about AI, ICE and US Politics in general.
Instagram accounts that primarily feature images of children, but are run by adult users, will no longer be recommended to “potentially suspicious adults.”
The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts.
I'm about to deploy a fix and when I do any old scheduled posts will get published. If you'd like to change the date on your scheduled posts, please do so now.
Oh, okay! If it's being worked on, that's all I needed to know! I'm just going to delete them and publish them normally, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong so next time I tried I wouldn't just be repeating a mistake.
Hey good folks, i.e. Rimu & PugJesus@piefed.social / piefed.social/u/PugJesus (pardon, not yet sure how to correctly tag here),
I happened to have this same issue last week, and am pleased to see today that the bugfix seems to have worked! Ah, and one other useful thing I discovered was that one can go back and correct a post if one happened to have botched the scheduled time, previously:
I couldn't find a way to go back to that post directly, but sure enough, I pulled up browser history, went back to the post link, made the edits, and it successfully posted at the corrected, specified time! 😃
Chinese state-sponsored hackers have exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft software to breach sensitive systems around the world, including those of the
Sorry, I didn't realise it was paywalled. It didn't prompt me to pay when I opened it. It's not a source I usually use, but I couldn't find an alternative unless from much less reputable sites.
I’m not a fan of the laws regardless, but if we pretend for a second they’re justified, it’s worth considering how they should work in a case like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has quite strong protections against problem content already, and that’s because it has a shared global view of content with effective moderation tools and a wide moderator base that respects the rules. That reality should be taken into account in the governments new rules. On the other hand, anyone who understands how this all works was already against this stupid law, so I guess they didn’t get any useful feedback internally
Protection, flush with billions in new funding, is seeking “advanced AI” technologies to surveil urban residential areas, increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems, and even the ability to see through walls.
A CBP presentation for an “Industry Day” summit with private sector vendors, obtained by The Intercept, lays out a detailed wish list of tech CBP hopes to purchase, like satellite connectivity for surveillance towers along the border and improved radio communications. But it also shows that state-of-the-art, AI-augmented surveillance technologies will be central to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant campaign, which will extend deep into the interior of the North American continent, hundreds of miles from international borders as commonly understood.
Wouldn't surprising me if they already do. They got all kinds of stuff at their check points and you have few constitutional rights there (even less so in this admin)
"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak."
Is this real? This can't be real. Then, on the other hand, it's the American president. The guy who said that ancient Rome and the US have always been allied.
Judge rules Epstein grand jury records will remain sealed ABC News 3–4 minutes
The records were related to grand juries convened in West Palm Beach.
A federal judge in Florida denied a Justice Department request to unseal grand jury records tied to federal investigations into Epstein, according to a public order released Wednesday.
The request is one of three made by the Justice Department to judges in New York and Florida seeking to unseal records from federal investigations into Epstein.
This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017.
New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP
According to the order by District Judge Robin Rosenberg, the records the department sought to unseal related to grand juries convened in West Palm Beach in 2005 and 2007 that had investigated Epstein.
Judge Rosenberg faulted the Justice Department for failing to outline sufficient arguments to justify the unsealing of the records, which are normally protected under strict secrecy rules.
Rosenberg's opinion states her "hands are tied" given existing precedent in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals which only permits the disclosure of such grand jury materials under narrow exceptions.
She further denied a request to transfer the issue into the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York, where two judges are separately mulling over similar motions from the department seeking to unseal grand jury records tied to Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.
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Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York denied Ghislaine Maxwell's request to review grand jury testimony related to Epstein.
"It is black-letter law that defendants generally are not entitled to access to grand jury materials," U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference with President Donald Trump in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House, June 27, 2025, in Washington.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images, Files
Maxwell's lawyers requested access to the sensitive grand jury records to determine if Maxwell would take a position on the records' release.
Judge Engelmayer wrote that there is no "compelling necessity" for Maxwell to review the records. An objection from Maxwell into unsealing the records could further complicate the process of potentially releasing the records.
"She has not shown, or attempted to show, that the grand jury materials in her case are apt to reveal any deficiency in the proceedings leading to her indictment," he wrote.
Judge Engelmayer noted that he plans to "expeditiously" review the transcripts himself and would consider providing an excerpt or synopsis to Maxwell's lawyers.
Can’t Trump just issue an executive order like he has done for everything else? What’s so special about this? It can’t be because he doesn’t have authority because he didn’t have authority for most of the other EOs. It’s probably just smokescreen and there is no intention of releasing anything about his pedo mate Epstein.
...you're redirecting stderr to the stdout's destination while stdout is still sending output to the screen. So any permission errors encountered will go to the screen, not to rsa-keys.log.
From the bash manpage:
==================
Note that the order of redirections is significant. For example, the command
ls > dirlist 2>&1
directs both standard output and standard error to the file dirlist, while the command
ls 2>&1 > dirlist
directs only the standard output to file dirlist, because the standard error was duplicated from the standard output before the standard output was redirected to dirlist.
==================
Commands given to the shell are evaluated and processed in a specific order and fashion, and this is one quirk of that that many people are unaware of.
(...) If |& is used, command1's standard error, in addition to its standard output, is connected to command2's standard input through the pipe; it is shorthand for 2>&1 |. This implicit redirection of the standard error to the standard output is performed after any redirections specified by command1.
Just to be clear, because some seem to conflate Bash with Shell. If not specified, assume POSIX shell, that's how /bin/sh is handled as well. And that has no |&.
Grazie infinite a tutta la Redazione di Gazeta Destinacioni, che pubblicizza la mia ultima opera "Sorella di Perfezione" (LFA Publisher). È una sorpresa inaspettata, e sono al settimo cielo.
SORELLA DI PERFEZIONE da “Sorella di Perfezione” di Giuseppe Iannozzi – LFA Publisher Ringrazio. Piano chino il capo, come un bambino. Ringrazio la gentilezza e la bellezza che ti appartengono,…
I suppose it would have given a new meaning, or a different understanding, of the chaos in the film. Come to think of it (been a long time since I have seen the film) I can't remember if there was a slant to any one religion injected in the film. Seems like it was very vaguely worded, 'passing over to the other side,' 'angry spirits,' and the 'beast.'
Xbox controversially raised the base price of its mainline games to $80 in an announcement a few weeks ago. Now, it seems to be backtracking. Good, I say.
I was just wondering that, too. Wasn't the first one almost like an indie title? Not sure, how much I'm mixing it up with Outer Wilds, but Wikipedia tells me their teams were around a similar size anyways...
Nel tentare (in parte invano, ma in parte no, dai) di alleviare le mie sofferenze giornaliere, dovute alle solite impossibilità di incartamento, eccomi qui di nuovo ad uscirmene fuori dal letterale nulla con un nuovissimo dei miei toolini pazzurdi… Ma a ‘sto giro ho davvero poca voglia di scherzare, quindi, per una buona volta, metto […]
il cartafacenzio di octo e la foglianza interattiva!!! (Papiellify, nuova app per creare fogli decorati)
Nel tentare (in parte invano, ma in parte no, dai) di alleviare le mie sofferenze giornaliere, dovute alle solite impossibilità di incartamento, eccomi qui di nuovo ad uscirmene fuori dal letterale nulla con un nuovissimo dei miei toolini pazzurdi… Ma a ‘sto giro ho davvero poca voglia di scherzare, quindi, per una buona volta, metto la fine della storia all’inizio: l’aggeggio di questa volta è caricato su https://hub.octt.eu.org/Papiellify/ (ed era da tanto che non mettevo una roba nuova lì sopra…), ed in poche parole è nientedimeno che un (o meglio, il; credo sia l’unico al mondo) fogliatore… 🍀
In pratica, ero qui di nuovo a voler stampare fogli con grafichine personalizzate, come mostrai qualche altra volta, ma il solo pensiero di dovermi ancora mettere a fare tutta quella roba strana in programmi tipo Office (di qualsiasi vendor; io uso Libre, ma non cambia) — assolutamente non fatti per questo tipo di cose, nonostante stranamente usati da tutti per questo tipo di cose — piazzando nei bordi le immagini, poi le righe, e infine non ne parliamo di layout un pochino più complessi… mi fa venire subito la nausea e dunque addio alle intenzioni spassose. Ovviamente, come all’assoluto solito, sono una ragazza magica, e quindi, piuttosto che avvilirmi, è spuntato fuori il momento di mettermi all’opera, con la programmazione… e questa qui è la primissima versione abbastanza utilizzabile da essere pubblicata, gnam! 🥰
Ho avuto rubamenti di tempo vari adesso eh, quindi ci ho messo qualche giorno in più che normalmente non avrei impiegato per arrivare al punto di qualcosa che già mi sta essendo di enorme utilità, ma la app per ora è ancora abbastanza semplice, pure se non sembra… Ci sono tanti controlli a schermo, si, e si possono già creare infiniti layout sfiziosi semplicemente maneggiando con questi form, certo, però questo ancora non è niente rispetto a quello che potrebbe essere… neanche il tempo di saltellare per i progressi già fatti finora, infatti, e già sento la mancanza di una gestione multi-pagina, o di più preset di stile impostabili, ma vedrò di adoperarmi man mano che le necessità spunteranno fuori (a me, o ad altri… vi scongiuro, apprezzate il mio lavoro cartiaco…) 😳
Io invito come sempre a provare per credere (e sennò che cazzo li metto online a fare i miei tool…), ma in buona sostanza questo è come funziona la app: sfruttando non casualmente, ma proprio esattamente (cioè, usare altro di base mi avrebbe richiesto infinitamente più lavoro), le funzioni di layout intrinseche della piattaforma web (il CSS, bono!), permette di gestire dei livelli (che nella pagina sono non altro che elementi HTML con applicati particolari stili), che sono definiti da immagini caricabili o pattern preprogrammati (come codici SVG), e sono personalizzabili in una marea di criteri tra cui dimensioni, spaziature, slittamenti, e per i pattern cose come spessore del tratto, colori e vattelappesca — tutto impostabile precisamente, e altamente risminchiabile, senza scrivere codice! 😜 Qui, per esempio, ho creato due diversi papielli (ovviamente stampabili, e che goduria) per provare un po’ il tutto: il primo, a righe azzurre spaziate a 8mm e con una decorazione di Sailor Moon in basso a destra (dimensionata in modo ideale per l’A5, ma ovviamente modificabile); ed il secondo, con una griglia a puntini di 10mm decorata ogni 4 con dei cuoricini… ed entrambi usano solo due livelli, quindi si può fare solo di meglio. Questi esempi, ed eventualmente altri che creerò, li ho salvati in JSON con l’apposita funzione del menu in-app, e chiunque voglia usarli può semplicemente caricarli nell’applicazione, sono scaricabili qui: memos.octt.eu.org/m/gnwNvbS4zv…. 💖
Un bonus per me, per concludere, è che ho notato che sui browser web mobile questa app funziona a metà… e detto così sembra qualcosa di negativo, ma io ero partita dal presupposto che la UI di questa app dovesse essere così intricata da essere virtualmente inutilizzabile su smartphone; quindi, scoprire che in realtà si riesce realisticamente ad usare (forse anche grazie al fatto che il pannello delle opzioni si può restringere, e viceversa quello dell’anteprima) mi fa piacere. Il problema tuttavia è che, sia da Firefox che da Chromium, su Android (almeno, sul mio Xiaomi del cazzo…), l’esportazione su PDF o in stampa è rotta, e la pagina esce vuota… quindi poi dovrò usare qualche libreria JavaScript strana per esportare dal lato del mio codice, anziché delegare al browser, che abbiamo capito fa cagare. Una cosa comunque è certa: con tutte queste caselle di input, slider per i numeri, ed alcune opzioni forse relativamente criptiche, non è un software adatto agli utonti deboli di cuore… ma, il suo lo fa al top (credo). 😺
You think AOC is to blame here? Really? You think AOC is sneaking into rooms with republicans where they all agree not to talk about Israel’s weapons? That’s your truth?
New research from the University of Waterloo's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute demonstrates that any artificial intelligence (AI) image watermark can be removed, without the attacker needing to know the design of the watermark, or even wheth…
I think maybe an update to the image format standards, where it like somehow includes a hash of the instrument that has taken the photo and video, and thus, only such media that can be verified to have been taken by a physical instrument can be used in like legal matters, or reporting or journals.
Either this hash can be verified by some algorithm, or maybe the media could depend on this hash in such a way that the media is corrupted if it gets altered.
There are already plans for metadata signing. I think some high end Canon cameras might do it already. It basically allows proof (via public private key of the hash) that a particular camera took that photo.
The idea is that you can create a chain of custody with an image. Each edit requires a new signature, with each party responsible for verifying the previous chain, to protect their own reputation.
It's far from perfect, but will help a lot with things like legal cases.
Depends on the hash - some are tracable to a crypotographic public key and thus cannot be faked. Most are not but there are options that can be. Normally we refer to such things as signed not a hash but same thing to the layman who doesn't understand this.
In order for it to be traceable with a public key, it needs to be signed with the private key. That means the private key has to be on the camera. That means it can be extracted from the camera and leaked.
Maybe. There are ways to assign a private key that is not easy to extract. a chip that creates a private key on first poweron and then saves to internal memory for example.
Not easy to extract sure, but is it secure enough for you to claim that it hasnt been leaked and so forms a secure chain of custody? Once one has been leaked then that can be used to sign any fake pictures you like. I woudnt buy that for anything for serious than is this meme picture real.
The obvious limitation being that you can take a real photo with attestation with a real camera of a real computer screen displaying any fake shit you can imagine, then you have an officially hashed photo of anything.
Leica, Sony, Nikon, and Canon have backed an Adobe-created digital signature solution for authentication of photos directly in the camera, including metadata like time/date stamps. But that's mainly for journalism and professional grade cameras, not the cell phones that 90+% of new images are created on.
There is a solution, but y'all aren't going to like it.
The solution is blockchain. Actually, it's even worse, the solution is NFT's.
Not the scammy, crypto bro, nonsense it has been used for; but the actual technology.
A cryptographically secure digital token that can track where something was made, where it's being used, who has the rights to it, and ensures that it's authentic and not some copy made with AI.
Unfortunately, thanks to crypto bros, the technology has become so tainted by scams that most people get upset just hearing the letters NFT, so adoption isn't likely.
I don't think this is that controversial. If you take out NFTs, it's using the block chain as a hash. I think that works, but at that point you might as well use regular hashes to verify the integrity of your video
There are other privacy issues with having an indelible marker as to the origin and chain of custody of every digital artifact. And other non-privacy issues.
So the idea here is that my phone camera attaches a crypro token to the metadata of every photo it takes? (Or worse, embeds it into the image steganographically like printer dots.) Then if I send that photo to a friend in signal, that app attaches a token indicating the transfer? And so on?
If that's a video of say, police murdering someone, maybe I don't want a perfect trail pointing back to me just to prove I didnt deep fake it. And if that's where we are, then every video of power being abused is going to "be fake" because no sane person would sacrifice their privacy, possibly their life, to "prove" a video isnt AI generated.
And those in power, the mainstream media say, aren't going to demonstrate the crypto chain of custody on every video they show on the news. They're going to show whatever they want, then say "its legit, trust us!" and most people will.
These are the fundamental issues with crypto that people actually don't understand: too much of it is actually opt-in, it's unclear to most people what's actually proved or protected, and it doesn't actually address or understsnd where trust, authority, and power actually come from.
Sorry for blowing this on you, but fuck blockchain, fuck NFTs.
What we need is better understanding of cryptography.
PGP has solved this problems decades ago, and crypto has just borrowed some parts, but made it worse in every possible way and into incomprehensible depths.
I thought GPG was bad? I don't have enough personal experience with it to quickly summarize or opine on the merits of either of these two articles, but:
I do agree with "fuck NFTs" though, and mostly agree with "fuck cryptocurrency" (mostly because porn and drugs are in my view legitimate use cases for at least a hypothetical non-environmentally-destructive cryptocurrency).
It’s been more than five years since The PGP Problem was published, and I still hear from people who believe that using PGP (whether GnuPG or another OpenPGP implementation) is a thing they should be doing.
It isn’t.
I don’t blame individual Internet users for this confusion. There is a lot of cargo-culting around communication tools in the software community, and the evangelists for the various projects muddy the waters for the rest of us.
The part of the free and open source software community that thinks PGP is just dandy, and therefore evangelize the hell out of it to unsuspecting people, are the same kind of people that happily use XMPP+OMEMO, Matrix, or weird Signal forks that remove forward secrecy and think it’s fine.
Not to mince words: The same people who believe PGP is good are also famously not great at cryptography engineering.
I’m not here to litigate the demerits of PGP. The Latacora article I linked above makes the same arguments I would make today, and is a more entertaining read.
It is of my opinion as a security engineer that specializes in applied cryptography that nobody should use PGP, because there’s virtually always a better tool for the job you want to use PGP for.
(And for the uncommon use cases, offering a secure, purpose-built replacement is a work-in-progress.)
Note: I’m deliberately being blunt in this post because literally more than a decade of softspokenness from cryptography experts has done nothing to talk users off the PGP cliff. Being direct seems more effective than being tactful.
If you want a gentler touch, ask your cryptographer. If you don’t have a cryptographer, hire one.
Instead, let’s examine the “use cases” of PGP and what you should be using instead. (Some of this is redundant with the Latacora article, but I’m also writing it 5 years later, so some things have changed.)
This section contains specific tools to solve the same problems that PGP tries to solve, but better.
What makes these recommendations better than PGP?
Simply, they don’t make cryptographers want to run the other way screaming when they look under the hood. PGP does.
Some people are forced to use PGP because they work for a government that legally requires them to use PGP. In that corner case, your hands are tied by lawyers, so you don’t need to bother with what cryptographers recommend.
Note that this is an ecosystem-wide consideration, not something that specific individuals must manually opt into for each of their hobby projects. The only downside to Sigstore is it hasn’t been widely adopted yet.
If you’re a Python developer, you can just use PEP 740 to get attestations with Trusted Publishers, which gives you Sigstore for free. For most developers, this is as simple as setting up a GitHub Action to publish to PyPI.
This is a developing trend: Other programming language and package management ecosystems are following suit. I expect to see Sigstore attestations baked into NPM and Maven before the next US presidential election. With any luck, your favorite programming language could be on this list too.
Sigstore doesn’t just give you a signature that you check with a long-lived public key, nor does it require you to do the Web Of Trust rigamarole.
Rather, Sigstore gives you a lot for free. Sigstore was designed around ephemeral signing certificates rather than a long-lived private key. It was purpose-built for preventing supply-chain attacks against open source software.
Alternatively, use minisign. If your package ecosystem doesn’t support Sigstore yet, you can get by with minisign (which is signify-compatible) until they modernize.
You can also use SSH signatures, if you’d prefer. (More on that below.)
There are a lot of other encrypted backup tools that work fine, if you don’t want to give Colin Percival your business. I don’t have a financial stake in any of them, nor have I audited them thoroughly.
Borg uses reasonable cryptography, but I haven’t had the time to review it carefully.
Kopia looks fine, but I really hate that they misuse “zero knowledge” to describe an encryption protocol (rather than a proof system). We should not reward this misbehavior by marketers.
The point is: You’ve got options.
Too many options, in my opinion, to settle for PGP.
Not a lot to say here. I’ve written a lot about this over the years. Misuse-resistant cryptography libraries–especially ones that make key management less painful for users–are the way to go.
Some PGP proponents will insist that AEAD is possible now, but as long as the installed base of PGP remains backwards compatible with the lowest common denominator, that’s what your software uses.
Just use age. Or rage, if you’re a Rust enthusiast.
(And if you have concerns about “which age key should I trust?”, I’m already planning an age-v1 extension for the Public Key Directory project. More on that below.)
Security teams around the world insist that they need PGP for bug bounty submissions or security operations, but Signal does this job better than PGP ever did.
Once upon a time, you needed to give people a phone number to use Signal, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Still, many people have missed that memo and think it’s a requirement.
My Signal username is soatok.45. Go ahead and message me. You won’t learn my phone number that way.
If you want the ability to vend a transparently verifiable public key for a given user, that’s one of the use cases for the Public Key Directory I’m designing in order to build end-to-end encryption for the Fediverse.
Although this is purpose-built for the Fediverse, I’ve deliberately included support for Auxiliary Data messages, whose formats will be specified by protocol extensions.
Rather than trying to grok the Web-of-Trust, you can simply have your software check that multiple independent Public Key Directories have verified the record, since its inclusion is published in an append-only transparency log, secured by a Merkle tree.
My design doesn’t preclude any manual key verification, or key-signing parties, or whatever other PGP cultural weirdness you want to do with these public keys. It just establishes a baseline trustworthiness even if you’re not a paranoid computer nerd.
My project isn’t finished yet. In the meantime, you can manually check public keys when using the other recommendations on this page.
Email is insecure. Even with PGP, it’s default-plaintext, which means that even if you do everything right, some totally reasonable person you mail, doing totally reasonable things, will invariably CC the quoted plaintext of your encrypted message to someone else (we don’t know a PGP email user who hasn’t seen this happen). PGP email is forward-insecure. Email metadata, including the subject (which is literally message content), are always plaintext.
There isn’t a recommendation for encrypted email because that’s not a thing people should be doing.
Now, there exists a minority of extremely technical computer user for which Signal is a nonstarter (because you need a smartphone and valid phone number to enroll in the first place).
Because those people are generally not the highest priority of cryptographers (who are commonly focused on the privacy of common folk–including people in poor and developing countries where smartphones are more common than desktop computers), there presently isn’t really a good recommendation for private messaging that meets their constraints.
If you find someone insisting that they “need” encrypted email, read up on the XY Problem. In a lot of cases, that’s what’s happening here.
Do they ipso facto need email (as in, specifically the email protocols and email software)?
And do they care more about this constraint, or the privacy of their communications?
Because if their goal just to communicate privately, see above.
If the tool they’re using being email is more important than privacy, they should consider sending empty messages with an attachment, and use age to encrypt the actual message before attaching it.
That’s serviceable, just beware that everything Latacora wrote about encrypted emails still applies to your use case, so expect someone to CC or forward your message as plaintext.
(Unless you’re legally required to use PGP because of a government regulation… in which case, why do you care about my recommendations if you’re chained by the ankle to your government’s bad technology choices?)
Finally, miss me with the “but someone can screenshot Signal” genre of objections.
As Latacora noted, people accidentally fuck up PGP all the time! It’s very easy to do.
Conversely, you have to deliberately leak something from Signal. There is no plaintext mode.
PGP fails to be a Signal competitor, in ways that are worse than Threema, Matrix, or OMEMO.
Watch This Space
With all that said, I am actually designing an encrypted messaging protocol that will have an email-like user experience, except:
Everything is always end-to-end encrypted, with forward secrecy.
It’s not backwards compatible with insecure email.
It doesn’t use PGP, or any 1990’s era cryptography.
I can’t promise a release date yet. I’m prioritizing end-to-end encryption for the Fediverse before I write the specification for that project (tentatively called AWOO, but the cryptography underpinning both projects should be similar).
Maybe 2026? We’ll see!
If someone beats me to the punch, and their design is actually good, I’ll update the post and replace this with a specific recommendation.
I hate typing 'asymmetric key cryptography', and GPG is just three letters.
Those blog posts explain a lot, but one use case is missing (at least I don't see it apart from git commit signing), and that is verifying the source of a public message.
And I do wish we tried using the private keys more. Specially now when anyone can deepfake anything.
If I ever release my nudes, never trust them unless they are signed and you can check them with public key in my profile.
The tech would have been great for bestowing ownership over the digital goods bought with microtransactions, but never would have gotten there since corpos have the rule of law under their thumb.
You can have whatever token you want with all the metadata, licensing and ownership information you want...
...unless you plan on only seeing images in your own platform, nobody gives a shit, people will take screenshots and image files and share and use them however they want. There's no world in which you load a full DRM plugin or do 4 different types of handshake with a full blockchain just to load a jpeg into a comment.
Last week, we warned of a coming anti-democratic backslide. Now, we see it happening.
Under the new law, the prosecutor general, a notoriously non-independent figure, will now oversee anti-corruption investigations — in a complete overturn of the system that was set up to be independent from other law enforcement bodies.
In reality, it means that Zelensky’s office will be able to stop investigations with a phone call.
It also closely follows an escalated prosecution of Ukraine’s best-known anti-corruption activist, an outspoken critic of Zelensky.
Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated to reflect the fact Zelensky signed the bill into law on the evening of July 22, as shown on the Parliament's website.
Last week, we warned of a coming anti-democratic backslide.
Before you straight up downvote this after reading just the headline you should know that Kyiv Independent is highly credible and staffed with reputable journalists.
mediabiasfactcheck.com/kyiv-in… (not that I personally think MBFC is a reputable references, but the people who would downvote this, for the most part, do)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal cau…
Hey, they also react on who post this and the source, when the same info just with way less inflammatory headline was posted by someone who is not western shill from something that isn't just CIA media front, it was like -30 votes lol.
Also, it's starting, Zelensky's getting demythologised by even western aligned media prior to his inevitable downfall. Just like us commies said long ago, but libs were frothing at mouth then.
They're still frothing at the mouth, they're just changing targets. Libs are doing mental warmups for the incredible gymnastics they're gonna have to pull off to pretend that this was unforeseen and tAnKiEs got it all wrong anyway.
So, unnamed journalists, or perhaps the owner, or...? No leader is perfect, but wartime and holding your own against Putin is no easy feat. You could do 1000x worse than him and now you're nitpicking during war time? I guess I'm jealous that you feel like you can when our trainwreck is still building concentration camps to enrich his buddies.
The last few lines are getting closer,
Ukraine’s democracy can still be salvaged. In peacetime, that responsibility would fall on the Ukrainian people.
But today, Ukrainians are fighting — and dying — for Europe and the whole free world.
This is wikipedia, so it's probably a little biased. Biased in what way is something I don't know enough to say. This does tell us something though, they want to hold everyone's feet to the fire. I understand why journalists want to do this is normal times, but when there is a war going on, you need people to be behind you. Also, most people are ignorant and need to be spoon fed, especially during war time. They have other shit on their mind and they need a hero in their lives.
The Kyiv Independent
In October 2021, disputes arose between employees of the Kyiv Post and the owner of the newspaper. Journalists at the newspaper believed that even under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, their previous critical reporting was adversely affecting the business of the owner, who had bought the barely-profitable newspaper from Mohammad Zahoor in March 2018, and invested significant funds in it. The owner of the Kyiv Post at the time was the Syrian-born investor Adnan Kivan (Kadorr Group, which owns Channel Odesa 7). Brian Bonner, the former CEO of the Kyiv Post, said in April 2022 that the newspaper's "fragmentary reporting" had brought it into conflict with every Ukrainian government it dealt with so far, including Zelensky's. According to Bonner, Zelenskyy had tried to portray himself as a reformer to Western governments, and alleged that critical reporting had been seen as undermining that message. The government, Bonner said, had begun to lean on Kivan, who had seen ownership of a "crusading media outlet" as more trouble than it was worth.[2]
[3]The president's office denies it, the prosecutor's office denies it, Kivan denies it - but I know we were under pressure ... The Kyiv Post survived [former presidents] Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Poroshenko, but died under Zelenskyy. That was a big surprise to me.[2]
Edit: I'm going to add this, they are owned by journalists and a media company apparently
The Kyiv Independent is an English-language Ukrainian online newspaper founded in November 2021, three months before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, by former staff of the Kyiv Post and media consultancy Jnomics Media. The online newspaper is also active on Twitter, Bluesky and Reddit.[1]
Wikipedia is an imperialist propaganda outlet and disinformation website presenting itself as an encyclopedia launched in 2001 by bourgeois libertarians Jimmy Wales...
The Ukrainian revolution had from the very start an anti corruption message. Politicians have both taken advantage and undermined it. This week is not unexpected. Zelenskyy backtracking today is not unexpected. Him using smoke and mirrors, in his new idea, to avoid undermining political allies will not be unexpected next month.
It is utterly predictable that this newspaper will issue similar editorial later.
One day there will be not so much corruption in the life blood of Ukrainian politics. But not soon. Maybe in a generation?
yeah I sorta wish the news communities did not allow editorials. I mean im pretty sure they would not allow people to just post about their opinion of some news.
I can see that, but I disagree. If Bernie Sanders wrote an editorial about cleaning up politics, I would want to read that. I probably wouldn't want to read about /u/ilovetits's take on it.
I’m just surprised (well not really surprised, disappointed) that it took this long to resume reporting on one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It was well known that corruption had reached obscene levels in Ukraine, until they were invaded; Then seemingly everyone forgot.
No, western media (and aligned to them) just hushed all mentions of corruption in Ukraine, or else someone might ask why they are sending so much money and weapons to such corrupted country. Now when the money stream dies off and USA is preparing to pivot from Ukraine to Asia, western media are again allowed to express criticism toward Ukraine.
Because they paid for them, why do so many people think these weapons deals are charity.... They're paying for them and the payments are either for trade agreements or seized Russian assets dispersed to the country Russia is currently invading.
It just doesn't really matter right now, do you have a credible claim of corruption that is more urgent then the need for Ukraine to not be annexed? No then what's your point and why can't it be solved when they don't have literal murderous invaders wandering about.
Poland has begun to deport Ukrainian refugees.Since the beginning of the year, the Border Guard Service has made 127 decisions on deportation. Of these, 107 have already been fulfilled, and almost all concern the citizens of the Square.The...
I am aware, it ranges between stealing of passports and kidnapping, libs refer to them as "unconventional tactics", anyone with a working conscience refers to them as no less than bloodthirsty Western meatgrinder operations.
so he's being discarded after doing west's dirty job (and not even finishing it)? boy, saddam hussein and noriega are laughing right now in hell, saying "at least they gave us a little bit more time".
Sadly I think this was bound to happen. Zelenskyy has been not only fighting the physical war with Russia but also a prolonged propaganda war and the measures he's used to fight against the mass of disinformation flowing out of Putin's bullshit machine were bound to be corrupt by their very nature. You can see the paranoia that has set in as he was not only attacked by the east but now with Trump in office, he started getting it from the west as well. I fear that it's only going to be downhill from here.
Video - Rami Abou Jamous, a French-speaking journalist from Gaza, sent Le Monde a voice note describing the hellish struggle to find food and water as Israel has severely restricted access to humanitarian aid since March 2.
i keep seeing these people's experiences on tiktok and rednote and still can't imagine what life is like knowing that the entire world is going to do nothing but watch as you live out the last few hours/days of your life with the knowledge you're going to die slowly from starvation and that the lucky ones are the ones who die quickly from a missile strike or gunshot from an idf soldier.
you beg and you plead for help and an overwhelming majority just ignore you, with the few that will try to help are just as impotent as you are to help your situation.
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We use Tusky with our site for social purposes. It’s pretty good, but definitely could be better.
A screenshot of the importer in action. Credit: Matthias Pfefferle
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Art by AJ
rottingleaf
in reply to underline960 • • •No fucking way, but mah direct democracy ...
So. Switzerland doesn't really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense. It's still an old nation-state with laws made in the olden day when you had to compromise. There are many cases where the "direct" part is optional and requires interested people to assemble signatures yadda-yadda. Not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal. That aside, its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing. Which means that for some issues it will always drift shitward.
It also has separation of 3 kinds of government by degree of locality, but not separation of the "an entity ensuring food safety can't regulate telecommunications" or "an entity regulating police labor safety can't regulate riot police acceptable action" kinds.
(Which is why I usually refer to my preference for a kind of "direct democracy" as a revised one-level Soviet system with mandatory rotation, plenty of places and sortition to state worker roles, despite that not having very good connotations.)
like this
Maeve likes this.
ruuster13
in reply to rottingleaf • • •Democracy is an infant still learning to walk. You plug the holes and add new institutions for oversight. You don't shoot the damn baby and start over because you know how you'd force everyone to do it.
Kowloon wasn't built in a day.
rottingleaf
in reply to ruuster13 • • •Bullshit. It's older than gunpowder.
And this argument has been used for every political system in history. Even in USSR in materials approved by censors it was normal to joke about it.
Why don't you do that with real-life mechanisms? A moving part of a machine has corroded enough to have a hole unintended by design. Go on, plug it. Oh, it's better to replace the part.
That aside, I think you've missed my specific arguments, not providing any of your own. Those things about participation as wide as possible and rotation. This means that there should be as many political roles as possible (of a delegate or of a secretary or of anyone), often rotated, with the same person not being able to hold the same or similar post for longer than N months, and with sortition based on some pseudo-random mechanism (pseudo-random to be able to check the results for fraud). To reduce the power of any single delegate or bureaucrat and to make lobbying, bribing and blackmailing them harder. To simultaneously make the population more politically literate - by almost every citizen, ideally, participating in some kind of daily decision-making work. Not voting once a year (at best) from among choices given to them by someone else.
That's what con artists do - provide the victim with an illusion of choice.
That's exactly what you do. One consistent system does one thing by design. Another consistent system does another thing by design. Something in-between organically evolved does neither. Evolution is the survival of the fittest - fittest for survival. So an organically evolved system is approximating the optimum of power. The status quo.
What it does not approximate over time is any idea of public good. That would be nuts - so, metaphorically, you've built a wooden bridge, do you think it'll become more or less reliable over time under snow and rain and sun? Is a 100 years old bridge better than a bridge just built and tested?
And the optimum of power is formed by the existing system among other things.
Which means that it becomes more and more static and degenerate.
RubberElectrons
in reply to rottingleaf • • •Con artists are also known for seeding bits of truth in with their turgid morass.
There are parts of your monologue I'd agree with, but I suspect what your ultimate intent is.
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MonkderVierte
in reply to rottingleaf • • •Compared to how long humanity lived in absolutistic systems (dawn of civilization).
AliSaket
in reply to rottingleaf • • •This is not law yet. The Federal Council (the executive) has started a consultation process at the beginning of the year which ended in May. They are now looking at all the feedback that came in, that was - unsurprisingly - exclusively negative from all sides. If the responsible minister wants to go ahead with it, it goes to the Federal Council for a vote. If they approve it, this would be a decree to change an existing decree and that would come into effect next year or the year after.
And this is where direct democracy comes in: If this is the case anyone can start getting signatures for a public initiative which would change the constitution to prohibit such practices. In fact anyone can start doing that now. If it succeeds, then it'll come to a popular vote. Threema (a secure chat provider) has already announced that they would do that and I'm sure that they wouldn't be the only ones to band together in this.
The process might take long, but this is in no way "not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal" and in fact has happened multiple times in the past. Hence why Switzerland has a direct vote on issues every few months because of something called "Referendum", whereby a popular vote can be forced on an issue passing through parliament. I might have my criticisms of the political system, but this ain't it.
Well yes, there is some level of representation, so over 8 million people don't have to decide every little detail on 1000s of changes of law. The system is built upon a "milita" system. I.e. politicians usually have a job. So people have the possibility to vote in experts or their vicinity and know that they won't solely be career politicians. Unfortunately the laws around financing and propaganda are rather lax, giving an advantage to the rich, which leads to an over-representation of the capitalist class with occupations such as lawyers and business-owners and a clear under-representation of classical working-class jobs such as craftspeople or office workers. This is amendable though to correct the mismatch, if people realize their class interest and don't fall for the same right-wing propaganda of a party whose playbook has been inspired by the US GOP for decades and who is inspiring Germany's AfD now.
The main downside of the system imo has to do with people with no knowledge on an issue having to weigh in on them and therefore how powerful propaganda campaigns can be, which means that money buys power, as in every other existing so-called democracy - direct or not. Especially with how money shifts power away from the populace, this is inherent to capitalistic systems and it would be on the populace to protect itself from it. With enough propaganda though, people keep voting for more power of capital unbeknownst to them or not, just as they might vote against their interests on other things. The fact that you have to convince so many people, who hopefully do have some degree of education, makes it a lot harder though, for big capitalists to reach their goals, compared to less direct systems. And I know of several examples, how such a vote did not go in favor of big capital. What usually makes the difference is whether they succeed in portraying their advantage as the advantage of all.
rottingleaf
in reply to AliSaket • • •Yeah, so the difference in what I'd like from what you describe as existing is:
The representation should be spread thinner over the population, and with separate organs voting on separate kinds of matters. Ideally so that most of the population would have some short experience in participating in at least one of those organs by reaching the age of 30. Experience is needed to make your last paragraph less problematic, and wide participation - to gain that experience first-hand and also to make it very expensive to blackmail\bribe\threaten enough people. This might also make a referendum an event a bit more rare, because it won't come to that.
In general it's very cool that such a system even exists as a proof that nothing is impractical about it.
AliSaket
in reply to rottingleaf • • •There do exist things resembling that a bit. Usually done on the local level and mostly concerning some street/development design, where people are invited to actively participate in a workshop style event with experts and vote on the results. But yes, these are not mandates. And as soon as you go onto the state or federal level, such structures become virtually non-existent.
The others are parliamentary commissions which can be instated by parliament and are formed of mainly external experts around a certain issue. These are often used on state and federal levels of government.
I would love if representation was spread wider over the population and that involvement was higher. I also am baffled at how bad general civics education is here in school, especially at the obligatory level. I would welcome a far more detailed and engaging civics education where they could already get some experience right at the school. Or go and participate at some local event. This way they also see the importance of a truly democratic process. Alas, as long as they can't vote, nobody seems to want their opinions.
Another part that needs addressing is finances. There's a lot of intransparency yes, but the way it works now, it is also very hard to get your message across without being big in a main political party or having some big private sponsor. Which limits your actual freedom before and after you're elected. If we're thinking radical we might severely limit campaign budgets or think about public funds allowing the same restrictive scope for everyone, no matter their background and finances. This would also limit the imbalance in outreach between capital-backed candidates and others.
A third huge problem lies within the judiciary, where judges on many levels effectively also have to be party-associated to get elected. If that sounds completely compromising their necessary impartiality, yeah, it's because it does. (Although I don't have data on how that influences their work)
And lastly: The structures of accountability for politicians. I know that some steadiness or stability is necessary, but without the fear of accountability, far too many misuse their positions without repercussions. As we see from around the world, this invites more and more brazen figures to do more and more brazen violations. Just a brain-fart: 100k signatures to force a vote on relieving someone of their immunity so they can be tried in court. And to not just wait it out. Right now, it's parliament that has this exclusive possibility.
MonkderVierte
in reply to rottingleaf • • •Yes, it's half-direct, who said otherwise? Fully direct on a Nation state level would maybe be possible now with the Internet.
But we can still overrule them, while germans get tired of their politicians lying on elections and doing what they want. Doesn't mean they don't try here.
But yeah, this system has it's weaknesses with complicated or emotional topics. But then again, we are all humans.
rottingleaf
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •That's my point. It might seem dangerous to rely on the Internet for such basic matters, but it's already being used to great effect to undermine all democracies. So there's no choice, it's like an arms race. (Still, probably for elections it'd make sense to have a countrywide parallel intranet, so that someone's error in setting up a BGP router wouldn't disrupt it.).
That's the other side of the problem - modern easiness of propaganda.
OK, I live in Russia, just rather sad to see how many other countries are slowly drifting in the same regrettable unsavory direction.
CHKMRK
in reply to rottingleaf • • •What democracy does not rely on compromise?
antbricks
in reply to CHKMRK • • •rottingleaf
in reply to CHKMRK • • •None. I'm using "compromise" here in the sense of compromising between democracy and elites, with the world order normal 200 years ago. Today those compromises don't work because of technological progress and different makeup of societies.
Just like those in the USA.
percent
in reply to underline960 • • •themurphy
in reply to percent • • •There's a reason every billionair has a bank account in Switzerland.
And it's not to pay more taxes. Or to launder less money.
jobbies
in reply to themurphy • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to percent • • •You've not heard of shady banking, Nazi gold, reluctance to stop dealing with Russia, women not being able to vote until the 70s, and Nestle?
Switzerland gets aggressively simped for online, and there's certainly some nice things about them, but there's also some pretty awful things.
rottingleaf
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •percent
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •HereIAm
in reply to percent • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to percent • • •Nazi gold didn't disappear after the Nazis fell. They still pocketed it all, despite knowing where all that wealth came from, and did fuck all to help rebuild Europe.
Other things like their appeasing attitude towards Russia, reluctance to allow weapons exports to Ukraine, and willingness to export weapons to awful regimes are all unambiguously current.
percent
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •Crashumbc
in reply to percent • • •Akasazh
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •Klear
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •like this
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Cethin
in reply to Klear • • •like this
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lagoon8622
in reply to Klear • • •c1a5s1c
in reply to lagoon8622 • • •Jason2357
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •eleitl
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to eleitl • • •eleitl
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •socialsecurity
in reply to eleitl • • •SonOfAntenora
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •Birch
in reply to TheGrandNagus • • •Crashumbc
in reply to Birch • • •MangoCats
in reply to percent • • •Kazel
in reply to underline960 • • •bort
in reply to underline960 • • •like this
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wewbull
in reply to bort • • •like this
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Kairos
in reply to wewbull • • •like this
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wewbull
in reply to Kairos • • •proton.me/blog/lumo-ai
Read the Building EuroStack for the Future section
Introducing Lumo, the AI where every conversation is confidential | Proton
Protonlike this
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Evotech
in reply to wewbull • • •lemmyknow
in reply to Evotech • • •artyom
in reply to wewbull • • •yistdaj
in reply to artyom • • •ohshit604
in reply to artyom • • •Not really many second bests out there, Sweden bent over and wants to join the EU and the Netherlands has had a rocky history of seizing data-centres.
Switzerland is the last stand for true neutrality.
artyom
in reply to ohshit604 • • •ohshit604
in reply to artyom • • •No but they’re still apart of the Five Eyes Alliance which regulates companies on how data is processed and handled.
If I’m not mistaken user data must be retained for 7 years under the five eyes alliance, I’ll try to find a source to this.
Edit - I think this describes the different alliances pretty well: comparitech.com/blog/vpn-priva…
Who’s watching you? A guide to the 5, 9, and 14 Eyes Alliances
Mark Gill (Comparitech)artyom
in reply to ohshit604 • • •ohshit604
in reply to artyom • • •You’re right it doesn’t dive into encryption however, given that the data is still accessible a government agency can surely decrypt it if they truly wanted to, even if it take them years.
artyom
in reply to ohshit604 • • •They can't. Not using any known technology. Even basic encryption like AES256 would take 10^50 years on a supercomputer. That's not even getting into quantum-resistant encryption.
PrimeMinisterKeyes
in reply to ohshit604 • • •Ah, to live in 1994 again.
Bwaz
in reply to underline960 • • •like this
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DeathByBigSad
in reply to Bwaz • • •c1a5s1c
in reply to DeathByBigSad • • •underline960
in reply to c1a5s1c • • •c1a5s1c
in reply to underline960 • • •callouscomic
in reply to underline960 • • •Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Everything goes to shit.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Its always the next thing, and the next thing and the next thing. What's the new proton everyone will annoy the fuck out of us with?
This is why I stopped giving a shit. Actually. I do give a shit. I will let them surveil all of my shits, and garbage, and vomit.
A Wild Mimic appears!
in reply to callouscomic • • •SonOfAntenora
in reply to underline960 • • •SabinStargem
in reply to underline960 • • •Squizzy
in reply to underline960 • • •grumpusbumpus
in reply to Squizzy • • •I visited Switzerland just after the vaccines dropped. The Swiss COVID response far surpassed the response in the United States. They rolled out a nation-wide app for vaccination attestation, and any museum, restaurant, etc. could scan a QR code on someone's phone with a phone. But do they have a scary, socially reactionary subset of their population? Yes.
In some harmful ways they are fanatically culturally conservative. But they also care about community, sustainability, health, the well-being of children, environmental preservation, organization, and self-reliance. Being a small, rich, homogeneous, topographically-isolated country drives these characteristics.
Surveillance State developments are depressing but not surprising.
Squizzy
in reply to grumpusbumpus • • •c1a5s1c
in reply to Squizzy • • •ZeroOne
in reply to underline960 • • •Tattorack
in reply to ZeroOne • • •Holy shit. An actual interrobang.
This is like finding a shiny.
fartographer
in reply to Tattorack • • •theherk
in reply to Tattorack • • •SunshineJogger
in reply to underline960 • • •DragonTypeWyvern
in reply to SunshineJogger • • •kingthrillgore
in reply to SunshineJogger • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to SunshineJogger • • •two factors:
SunshineJogger
in reply to The Quuuuuill • • •_cryptagion [he/him]
in reply to underline960 • • •Doomsider
in reply to underline960 • • •Powers that would make the US blush!? Give me a fucking break. The US spies on all communication in the entire world.
Proton is a joke and their CEO is an obvious fascist. It was stupid to think a corporation is the answer to privacy anyways. They obey all countries rules and turn over your information the moment they are asked by governments.
The future of privacy in Switzerland is in the hands of the citizens. Let's hope they make the right decisions and encourage them to do so.
If these corporations really cared about privacy they would be promoting laws to make it enshrined in our constitutions. The reality is privacy is just another way to market to the masses who don't know better.
My cynical side says these "privacy" focused corporations not wanting privacy to be enshrined in law is because then every business would be privacy minded and their marketing advantage would quickly disappear.
lambalicious
in reply to underline960 • • •3dcadmin
in reply to underline960 • • •IhaveCrabs111
in reply to 3dcadmin • • •3dcadmin
in reply to IhaveCrabs111 • • •Bubbey
in reply to underline960 • • •frosch
in reply to Bubbey • • •poutinewharf
in reply to frosch • • •Bubbey
in reply to frosch • • •c1a5s1c
in reply to frosch • • •Crashumbc
in reply to c1a5s1c • • •rozodru
in reply to Bubbey • • •Owl
in reply to underline960 • • •underline960
in reply to Owl • • •@poutinewharf commented a screenshot of Proton's post, but the headline was about their AI chatbot, and the news about the Swiss move is buried at the end.
Introducing Lumo, the AI where every conversation is confidential | Proton
ProtonbigFab
in reply to underline960 • • •“In a democracy, the right way is to argue, not threaten to leave.” Socialist member of parliament said.
Does this man understand the very first day this law would approve Proton is dead? Do politicians understand privacy at all?
katy ✨
in reply to underline960 • • •philpo
in reply to underline960 • • •Switzerland never had solid privacy laws - and is known for intelligence service overreach for decades.
They had a Stasi like system of "who to imprison" when "the time comes".
They listen to all IP traffic in and out the country - which is concerning in times of traffic pattern analysis.
And they are known for their close cooperation with US intelligence services.
Protons (and Threemas) claim of "soo good swiss privacy laws" is nothing more than swiss-washing. And they know it.
Proton has already given away data of its customers (climate activists) to the swiss authorities. And only talked about it when the press got onto it.