Justice Department leadership is prepared to use its rule-making authority to declare transgender people as mentally ill and deprive them of their Second Amendment right to possess firearms, according to two Justice officials who shared internal discussions with CNN.

Deliberations at the highest levels of the DOJ follow the recent mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, an attack police say was carried out by a 23-year-old former student at the church’s school who may have been a transgender person or a de-transitioned individual. Two children were killed in the attack, and 21 others were injured.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/doj-plans-to-label-trans-americans-as-mentally-defective-to-take-away-their/

Amazon's strict return-to-office policy and relocation demands are hindering recruitment, affecting its ability to attract top tech talent.

Archived version: archive.is/20250904101836/busi…

Amazon's RTO policy is costing it top tech talent: internal document

^{Eugene Kim (Business Insider)}

Lives erased in the Caribbean, wrapped in a White House video and sold as victory

They blew up a boat far offshore, killed eleven people, and called it justice

^{Mitch Jackson (Uncensored Objection. Cross-examining political BS.)}

For years, I relied on Spotify like millions of others. The convenience was undeniable stream anything, anywhere, discover new music through algorithms, and share playlists with friends. But over time, several issues became impossible to ignore: artists getting paid fractions of pennies per stream, fake Artists and ghost Tracks, AI music and impersonation, creepy age verification complicity and the fact that despite paying monthly, I never actually owned anything. So I decided to take back control of my music experience. Here's how I built my own self-hosted music streaming setup that gives me everything Spotify offered and more.

Why I Ditched Spotify, and How I Set Up My Own Music Stack

{/ truncate /}

^{James Ambrose (leshicodes.github.io)}

Sensitive content Clicca per aprire/chiudere

Researchers from UC Berkeley, Ajou University, and Georgia Tech unveiled Rhagobot in 2025, a tiny aquatic robot inspired by water striders of the genus Rhagovelia¹. The robot features self-deploying fan-like structures on its legs that harness surface tension for propulsion, mimicking the insects' ability to move rapidly across water surfaces².

The 8 cm long robot weighs just 0.2 grams and uses passive fan mechanisms that unfurl in 0.01 seconds without requiring muscle power³. These fans, measuring 10 by 5 mm, enable the robot to achieve speeds of two body lengths per second and execute 90-degree turns in under half a second⁴.

According to Professor Je-Sung Koh from Ajou University, "Our robotic fans self-morph using nothing but water surface forces and flexible geometry, just like their biological counterparts. It is a form of mechanical intelligence refined by nature through millions of years of evolution"⁵.

The breakthrough came from studying the water striders' fan architecture using electron microscopy, which revealed that surface tension alone powers the fan deployment - contrary to previous assumptions about muscle activation⁴. This passive mechanism reduces power consumption compared to motorized alternatives, making it promising for environmental monitoring and search-and-rescue applications³.

1. WebProNews - UC Berkeley's Rhagobot: Water Strider Robot Harnesses Surface Tension for Speed ↩︎
2. Heise - Inspired by water striders: self-unfolding fans make the 'Rhagobot' agile ↩︎
3. Future Tech on Instagram ↩︎ ↩︎
4. New Atlas - Robotic water strider rows itself forward by fanning feathery feet ↩︎ ↩︎
5. Heise - Inspired by water striders: self-unfolding fans make the 'Rhagobot' agile ↩︎

Robotic water strider rows itself forward by fanning feathery feet

Although we've seen many robotic water striders over the years, scientists are still finding new aspects of the insects to replicate. Recently, for instance, researchers created a strider-bot that zips across the water's surface via fans on its feet.

^{Ben Coxworth (New Atlas)}

German giant takes aim at US hyperscaler dominance as some EU customers fret amid Trump 2.0 rhetoric

SAP splashes €20B on Euro sovereign cloud push

: German giant takes aim at US hyperscaler dominance as some EU customers fret amid Trump 2.0 rhetoric

^{Lindsay Clark (The Register)}

cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/27075196

On Tuesday 16 September, a Guardian panel of experts will be looking to answer questions about the forces driving the pushback against a greener world.

We want to hear from our readers globally as not everyone can make the live event. Send in your climate crisis questions and we will put a selection of them to our panel on the day.

Send in your questions for the Guardian’s climate assembly panel

We would like to hear your questions about the climate crisis and we will put a selection of them to our panel

^{Guardian community team (The Guardian)}

cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36914853

Pro

2025-09-05 10:17:42

China-aligned crew poisons Windows servers to manipulate Google results

GhostRedirector poisons Windows servers: Backdoors with a side of Potatoes

ESET researchers have identified a new threat actor targeting Windows servers with a passive C++ backdoor and a malicious IIS module that manipulates Google search results.

^{www.welivesecurity.com}

cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36914853

Pro

2025-09-05 10:17:42

China-aligned crew poisons Windows servers to manipulate Google results

GhostRedirector poisons Windows servers: Backdoors with a side of Potatoes

ESET researchers have identified a new threat actor targeting Windows servers with a passive C++ backdoor and a malicious IIS module that manipulates Google search results.

^{www.welivesecurity.com}

::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::

Sam Altman X/Twitter Post.

::: spoiler Who is Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Gibstine Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019. He is considered one of the leading figures of the AI boom.

Altman dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019. In 2019, he became CEO of OpenAI and oversaw the successful launch of ChatGPT in 2022. He was ousted from the role by the company's board in 2023 due to a lack of confidence in his leadership, but was reinstated five days later following significant backlash from employees and investors, after which a new board was formed. He has served as chairman of clean energy companies Helion Energy and Oklo (until April 2025). Altman's net worth was estimated at $1.8 billion as of July 2025.
:::

I first wrote about Farahi’s case in 2009, when it was one of the earliest public examples of the FBI using immigration to recruit Muslim informants. At the time, the FBI denied the practice outright. As other journalists uncovered similar cases, the FBI continued to deny.

Farahi’s fight with the government began in November 2004. As he walked home from evening prayers in North Miami Beach, he saw two men waiting outside his apartment. They introduced themselves as FBI agents.

The country was still in the grip of post-9/11 panic, and the agents wanted information about two men who had attended Farahi’s mosque: José Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber” accused of plotting to set off a crude radioactive device, and Adnan El Shukrijumah, a Saudi national who became a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda after leaving the U.S.

Farahi said he’d talk, but only in the open. He wanted his congregation to know why he was speaking to the FBI. The federal agents wanted something very different: secrecy. “I can’t,” he told them. To him, becoming an informant would have meant betraying his faith community. “People trust you as a religious figure, and you’re trying to kind of deceive them,” Farahi said to me years ago, when I first asked him about his encounter with the FBI. “That’s where the problem is.”

Years later, FBI agent Terry Albury leaked internal documents to The Intercept, confirming what Farahi’s case had suggested: using immigration as leverage wasn’t a rogue practice, but rather had been codified in the pages of the FBI’s internal policy manuals.

FBI agents were even tasked under official policy with helping deport informants who were “no longer suitable for use” — an acknowledgment that the policy goal wasn’t transactional so much as coercive.

This Imam Refused to Be an FBI Informant. Now ICE Wants to Deport Him.

Foad Farahi had resisted the FBI since the George W. Bush administration. Under Trump, ICE rounded him up.

^{Trevor Aaronson (The Intercept)}

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/04/epstein-files-ghislaine-maxwell-doj-chief

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/04/white-house-pentagon-department-of-war-00545673

Le vacanze finiscono, e il ritorno alla routine può sembrare una montagna da scalare. Quella sensazione di** stanchezza,** il sonno sfasato e la bilancia impietosa non sono solo sensazioni, ma i sintomi di un vero e proprio "stress da rientro".

Il tuo corpo ha bisogno di essere riabituato, gradualmente, a ritmi regolari. In questo processo, l'alimentazione gioca un ruolo chiave, ma anche piccoli accorgimenti come l'esercizio fisico leggero e la riscoperta di un sonno di qualità sono essenziali.

Vuoi scoprire come affrontare al meglio questa transizione e tornare a sentirti energico e in salute?

Salute & Benessere: come evitare la ‘’sindrome’’ da ritorno dalle vacanze- Consigli utili per adulti e bambini- Sana alimentazione

Giuliano Marchese, divulgatore Medico Scientifico, da oggi collabora con "NewsmadeinItaly"  curando la rubrica "Benessere & Salute", con report su ricerche, consigli utili ed una corretta informazione per "star bene".

^{www.newsmadeinitaly.it}

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

BlueMonday1984

2025-08-24 23:00:11

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st August 2025 - awful.systems

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

La curcuma non è solo una spezia millenaria, ma un potente alleato per il benessere, grazie al suo principio attivo: la curcumina. **Riscoperta dalla scienza moderna, si è rivelata un eccellente **antinfiammatorio e antiossidante **naturale. Studi scientifici hanno dimostrato che la sua efficacia, in particolare contro l'infiammazione, può essere paragonabile a quella di farmaci comuni come **l'ibuprofene, ma con un profilo di sicurezza superiore.

Tuttavia, il suo assorbimento da parte del corpo è spesso limitato. Per questo, la ricerca ha sviluppato strategie innovative come la combinazione con la piperina o formulazioni avanzate, che ne potenziano l'efficacia.

Vuoi scoprire come integrare al meglio questo "oro giallo" nella tua routine?

La Curcuma e la Curcumina: L'Antinfiammatorio Naturale Millenario Riscoperto e Potenziato dalla Scienza Moderna

La curcuma , questa radice dallo sgargiante colore giallo-arancione, è emersa come una delle protagoniste indiscusse nel dibattito sulla sal...

^{Giuliano (Blogger)}

Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump is changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, the White House announced Thursday, insisting the rebrand will project a more powerful image.

While the department's official name is set in law, Trump in an executive order is authorizing use of the new label as a "secondary title" by his administration, a White House document said.

Defense officials are permitted to use to use "secondary titles such as 'Secretary of War,'...in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch," according to the document.

It was not immediately clear when Trump planned to sign the order, but his public schedule for Friday said he would be signing executive orders in the afternoon as well as making an announcement in the Oval Office.

The president, a marketing-savvy real estate developer, has repeatedly said in recent weeks that he was mulling such a change.

Late last month, the 79-year-old Republican claimed the Defense Department's title was too "defensive."

The Department of War "was the name when we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything," he told reporters on August 25.

According to the White House document, the name change "conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve."

Established in the early days of US independence, the Department of War historically oversaw American land forces.

A government reorganization after World War II brought it along with the US Navy and Air Force under the unified National Military Establishment, which in 1949 was retitled to the Department of Defense.

"Restoring the name 'Department of War' will sharpen the focus of this Department on our national interest and signal to adversaries America's readiness to wage war to secure its interests," the White House document said.

The move is the latest overhaul at the Pentagon since Trump took office in January and appointed former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the sprawling department.

Hegseth, a combat veteran, has repeatedly touted the push to restore a "warrior ethos" in the department, and has lambasted prior administrations for policies he and Trump have derided as "woke."

Hegseth notably has sought to expel transgender troops from the military and change the names of bases that honored Confederate troops back to their original titles, after they were renamed under former president Joe Biden.

While Trump's order could potentially be rescinded by a future president, it "instructs the Secretary of War to recommend actions, to include legislative and executive actions, required to permanently rename" the department, the White House document said.

Trump rebrands Department of Defense as 'Department of War'

^RFI

Italian dockworkers have threatened to “shut down all of Europe” and block all shipments to Israel if communication with the latest aid flotilla bound for Gaza is lost. The threat marks a significant escalation in dockworkers’ long history of industrial action in solidarity with Palestine.

Speaking at a procession in the port of Genoa – one of Italy’s two largest commercial ports – on behalf of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a syndicate of various grassroots unions in Italy and thought to be the largest of its kind, the dockworker said: “If we lose contact with our boats, with our comrades – even for just 20 minutes – we will shut down all of Europe.”

“Our young women and men must come back without a scratch, and all this cargo, which belongs to the people and is going to the people, must reach its destination, down to the very last box.”

“13,000-14,000 containers leave this region every year for Israel. Not a single nail will leave anymore,” he continued.

Italian Dockworkers Threaten to ‘Shut Down All of Europe’ If Gaza Aid Flotilla Is Blocked

A union representing dockworkers at one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean - a key stopping point for Israeli goods - has said it will ‘block everything’ if Israel stops the inbound aid flotilla. Polly Smythe reports.

^{Novara Media}

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-05/canada-to-stall-electric-vehicle-rules-as-carney-seeks-to-boost-auto-sector?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1NzA0NjcyMywiZXhwIjoxNzU3NjUxNTIzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUMjM5S1JHUDQ5MzgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDMkYxNDM5NTYzRjg0QTBFOEIxNzA5MzY0RjMyQ0JFOCJ9.NXZjolgAOB6zzEZST1d_L1TD4JR6yLT2A_FZsY73efY

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/department-of-war-trump-executive-order

I'm sure there's a lot of discussion about age-verification laws around here right now and for the sake of keeping things on topic I won't really broach the subject here, but it has gotten me thinking that there really isn't much that can be programmatically marked as adult content on the fediverse.

I haven't dived too much into researching the subject, it looks like Lemmy lets you set posts as NSFW, but most activity is centered around microblogging and that appears to have coalesced around Mastodon's approach of freeform content warnings. This seems like a disaster in the making if "don't show adult content to minors" becomes something that has to be more strictly enforced; these content warnings can be used for everything from benign spoiler warnings to very obviously signposting sexually explicit fetish content. Computers can't really understand this level of nuance unless you throw something that does natural language processing at it, and that will almost certainly come up with a lot of false positives and wasted energy in the process; I can't imagine this going over well with anyone really.

So, I've been wondering, how difficult would it be to standardize a separate mature-content warning from the content warnings currently in place? This idea has clearly been floated before (see this issue on Mastodon's GitHub and this blog post written by someone who was a minor and directly affected by this issue at the time) but I haven't actually seen any work towards anything beyond paying lip service to the subject. Maybe it could be a boolean toggle, like how the former Cohost did it (on top of content warnings) or something closer to how Bluesky does it where you have a few set moderation labels that you can apply yourself (see below).

We could also consider moving this distinction beyond posts; the Mastodon issue that I linked above also mentioned applying this to users and even entire instances.

There are a few caveats here in that people historically don't really appreciate being hidden/deboosted for posting adult works, and there is the potential for backlash if something gets marked as adult when it really isn't. I'm not entirely sure how this could be addressed beyond leaving this to implementers and maybe leaving some strong advice to be understanding and not shove people in a corner because they draw kink art for example.

I'd definitely appreciate more thoughts on the subject, please let me know what you think.

Sorprendentemente, appena qualche ora di sonno e qualche ora di scrittura magica un pochino avanti e indietro più tardi, e ho effettivamente trovato una soluzione al problema problemoso delle prestazioni imbarazzanti di Love2D caricato di una tale OOP che non gira affatto bene su una viemmina come quella di Lua… e, anche se come previsto […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…