PRISTINA, Sept 11 (Reuters) - A new minister in Albania charged to handle public procurement will be impervious to bribes, threats, or attempts to curry favour. That is because Diella, as she is called, is an AI-generated bot.
For decades, America has been the largest donor to Afghanistan, and in 2024, US funds made up a staggering 43% of all aid coming into the country.
The Trump administration has justified withdrawing it, saying there were "credible and longstanding concerns that funding was benefiting terrorist groups, including... the Taliban", who govern the country. The US government further added that they had reports stating that at least $11m were "being siphoned or enriching the Taliban".
The report that the US State Department referenced was made by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). It said that $10.9m of US taxpayer money had been paid to the Taliban-controlled government by partners of USAID in "taxes, fees, duties, or utilities".
The Taliban government denies that aid money was going into their hands.
What happened in Afghanistan when/after the Americans pulled out is a fucking disaster that was talked about for way too short a time.
Add to that the more recent USAID cuts.
The worst thing is that all these cuts together are still peanuts compared to government bailouts, funding OpenAI, military, losses in tax revenue because multibillionaires etc.
Like, killing people is bad, but killing them just because you're cheap. Or greedy. Trump and his posse will juice the lemon called USA until it's completely dry, taking parts of the world with them.
America funded the weaponising of Afghanistan by creating radical extremism to fight a war with Russia, using the expendable Afghan lives of men, women and children. This led to the anticipated decades long devastation to infrastructure and civilization. But yes, no need to cover your mess America.
Um, why did USA pay anything to Afghanistan after they forcibly ejected everyone from the country? That happened in 2020-2021, and the payments just continuned?
So you actually needed Donald Trump to end that waste? What in the fuck?
It seems this asshole cares more about dollars he'll never be paid than the lives of mothers and children he'll never have to face.
The reason we didn't have much European terrorism after WW2 is because we invested in and rebuilt those countries after the war. Jesus Christ, you so-called fiscal conservatives never learn shit from history.
You know what's even dumber? That money you care so much about being "saved?" You'll never see a penny of it. That's all going to the ultrawealthy ruling class. They're going to steal all of it for themselves. "Steal!?" you object. Yes steal. Oh yes, they might remember to make it legal, probably by executive order or some shit.
That money would be better spent helping babies and mothers in Afghanistan survive childbirth than going to the already filthy rich. Frankly I'd rather have them get it than the likes of even you.
Let me guess, you think you're the next Charlie Kirk so we should have a "debate" now.
Don’t forget children advocating for the murder of a murderer and a rapist is against the rules. Definitely don’t advocate for the murder of a murderer
The Sado Mines, once famous as a gold mine in the 17th and 19th centuries, was mainly used to produce war supplies for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. More than 1,500 Koreans are reported to have been forced into labor at the mines from 1940-45.
In December 2023, this blog joined the fediverse (pt_BR). Thanks to a WordPress plugin — the publishing platform used by Manual do Usuário — it became possible to follow updates here without leaving…
This does remind me that I wish that Fediverse clients would have RSS reader functionality built in by default. I have a sneaking suspicion some do and I just don't know how to use the feature. Effectively allowing people to "boost" aka repost with backlink RSS updates on a Fediverse client would enable most of what a blogger would want from the Fediverse, with the exception of receiving all the comments on the posts they share.
Bridgy does that, but then it is essentially just a mirror so it does have the server inefficiency of redundant hosting built in.
That you might say is the fundamental design decision of Activity pub, shifting the hosting burden from a single host to a distributed network of server instances. This enables a more robust network, with instances holding content the users have interacted with regardless of if the original host instance goes down. It also reduces time to load for content after it has beed federated to a user's local instance, assuming it is closer in proximity and capable enough. At the same time, this makes content ownership and control a challenge.
Functionally the Fediverse is a public commons with content ownership practically distributed across the network of instances, whether copyright says so or not. Attempts to impose universal author controls on this framework face a lot of dissonance because it is fundamentally at odds with the underlying concept of federation as distributed hosting. The minute a host begins hosting content over which they have no control (such as encrypted posts) the potential for abuse skyrockets.
Since the popularization of the Distributed Social Network concept I have wondered whether pre-existing content distribution infrastructure like RSS might not be more advantageous as a backbone for social networking, with the development load entirely shifted to the client side and away from protocols. The IndieWeb project is playing with some of these ideas, and I have seen some prototypes online of RSS based social networks, so my question is, what is the fundamental advantage of ActivityPub over the combination of these other existing protocols with longer histories and broader existing implementation? RSS, email, XMPP, etc. Is lower latency really a good enough justification for widely redundant data distribution?
This question becomes increasingly relevant when it comes to multimedia, and the minute that you offload multimedia to central servers by link embedding instead of hosting within the instance, boom you are back to the old centralized architecture and why are you federating?
So I am going to pose this question to the Fediverse myself, what is the reason that federated content distribution should be adopted for general use rather than distributed aggregation? That is to say of a client performed with the same features as a Fediverse front end, but all of the content was self-hosted and listed via RSS or Atom with comments handled via Webmention, direct messages via email or XMPP, and moderation handled at the level of aggregation via instances (meaning a user "joins" or "subscribes" to an instance, and that instance provides a ban list, list of feeds subscribed to by its users for discovery, provides a user directory) what would be the features that this type of system would lack that ActivityPub based systems have in place?
There are three advantages I see, and I'm not completely sure they justify mass adoption vs. the cost of broad redundancy of content and authorship issues.:
Choosing local instance for faster loading, but this only is an advantage after content is brought in for the first time, in which case it actually is slower as first the instance has to pull the cintent and then serve it to the user.
"all" content in the protocol is of the same type, allowing for easier interoperability between clients and services. I'm thinking this is the root of what most people will say is the big advantage of ActivityPub vs. older protocols, but I'd like to hear more about why this is enough of a reason to overcome the inertia of existing mass adoption and support of the alternatives.
It isn't based in XML, and modern devs don't want to use XML. As I'm not a coder, I cant say how big an influence this has, but from what I have seen it seems to be a substantial factor. Can anyone explain why?
Some interesting thoughts - and questions - here. Seems you posted them in the wrong place, given the paltry response. Or possibly at the wrong time (i.e. 6 hours after the herd had moved on, a perennial problem with social media).
It isn’t based in XML, and modern devs don’t want to use XML. As I’m not a coder, I cant say how big an influence this has, but from what I have seen it seems to be a substantial factor. Can anyone explain why?
XML is space-inefficient with lots of redundancy, and therefore considered to be ugly. Coders tend to have tidy minds so these things take on an importance that they don't really merit. It's also just fashion: markup, like XML and HTML, is a thing of the 90s, so using them is the coder equivalent of wearing MC Hammer pants.
Thanks for clarifying, I figured fashion had at least something to do with it given the number of actively used protocols and services that still use it, XMPP being the one I use the most myself.
Even on XMPP I have seen several projects to "translate" the protocol into other languages (specifically Rust in one).
Efficiency makes sense, but then also the number of devs proficient in a language due to shifts in the emphasis of training and education is just as strong a force.
Most Blogs require you to create an account and login to your specific blog. I ain't doin that. But if it appears in my feed on my account that I control, I might throw in my $0.02, which will improve engagement on your blog.
In practice, ActivityPub’s distributive nature replicates content across a multitude of servers (every server where someone follows the blog), which, while not catastrophic here, is at least inefficient.
I mean, that's kinda the point though, also. Any federated product will do the same.
Given that — and the fact that few people follow and almost nobody interacts via ActivityPub — I’ve been considering removing Manual from the fediverse for several months.
I mean, that's fair, but also, what is it costing you to keep it? You're greatly improving visibility of your blog.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.
Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told The Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.
The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.
Adra spent the night outside the village, unable to get home and check on his family because soldiers were blocking the village entrance and he was scared of being detained, he said.
Israel’s military said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.
Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.
Been avoiding it because I don't want to just cry. I literally cried during Superman when the little kid was raising the flag. Trying to stay quiet in the theater. It just reminded me of so much.
I know everything that's in it. I've started 5/7 days of every week, for the last two years, listening to Amy Goodman (Democracy now) tell me what awful things happened the nights before.
I just avoid visuals now. After the call of the 9 year old in the car I don't think anything beyond that is anything useful to "make me understand". I don't think it does anything but disable me for some time. The story of the pregnant women dead from an attack as the doctors tried to save her child. My wife was 7 months pregnant then.
I'm a stay at home parent with a kid right now. Lost my job at Microsoft because I spoke up about it's support of genocide. I can get to a protest or picket line every couple weeks when my wife can watch our kid.
I just think for some of us that more witness of suffering is just disabling and no longer effective. Maybe I'll watch it with my daughter someday. Gaza has defined a lot of my love and appreciation for her.
I think a more interesting question is why there aren't major US TV news sources between Fox News and the center, occupying the area that the three-more-liberal-kids wanted to take Fox News.
To the right of Fox News, you have upstarts One America News Network and Newsmax.
During the 2020 United States presidential election, President Trump began to promote Newsmax over its rival, Fox News.[80][81][82][83] Trump's preference for Newsmax over Fox News became clearer after the latter became the first news outlet to call Arizona for Democratic challenger Joe Biden.[42] Newsmax has made their more conservative leanings a selling point to disaffected Fox News viewers, as well as employing Fox News alumni to join their lineup on Newsmax TV, such as Rob Schmitt and Greg Kelly.[42][84][43] Emily VanDerWerff of Vox reported that the outlet "spent lots of time arguing that other media outlets jumped the gun in calling the election for Biden and that Trump still has a path to win this thing", and that it was one of the only networks that didn't call the election for Biden, citing the Trump campaign's legal challenges. However, she did write that "Newsmax doesn't go full arch-conservative" and "doesn't give airtime to QAnon paranoiacs".[46]
OAN saw growth in its audience as a result of its election coverage. It was boosted in particular by Donald Trump, who expressed disapproval of Fox News' reporting on the presidential election and encouraged his supporters to instead watch OAN or Newsmax TV, another conservative channel promoting election falsehoods.[150][151][152]
In the US, there there are a pretty broad range of media outlets on the left. On the right, things are considerably more concentrated. There's a bunch of data out there on this, but just to dig up a quick recent Pew survey:
All religions are far right extremists. No free thought or speech, only their ficitonal god, and all their hate. Literally thoudands of years of history showing exactly that.
As long as they are allowed to spread nazi propanda, there will be nazis killing your children, or doing everything they can to get them in their weird death cult.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — When residents of Equatorial Guinea’s Annobón island wrote to the government in Malabo in July last year complaining about the dynamite explosions by a Moroccan construction company, they didn’t expect the swift end to their internet access.
Dozens of the signatories and residents were imprisoned for nearly a year, while internet access to the small island has been cut off since then, according to several residents and rights groups.
Local residents interviewed by The Associated Press left the island in the past months, citing fear for their lives and the difficulty of life without internet.
Located in the Atlantic Ocean about 315 miles (507 kilometers) from Equatorial Guinea’s coast, Annobón is one of the country’s poorest islands and one often at conflict with the central government. With a population of around 5,000 people, the island has been seeking independence from the country for years as it accuses the government of disregarding its residents.
Wow that island is beautiful. I say we get a gofundme going to help them achieve independence. And if they want to also let me immigrate there from the U.S. afterwards, I’m not going to say no.
I think I went on a rabbit hole reading about this island online awhile back. IIRC they speak creole Portuguese, while EG speaks Spanish, and have been punished by the government for wanting independence for years. This Internet shutdown is just a drastic and recent punishment.
It does seem like a nice life there. But very different than what we in the west are accustomed to. They lack many basic necessities, there's shortages of everything that's imported.
It would be important to not be a burden to the community. Starlink isn't available there, so I'm not sure of another way to work remotely from there. And unless you have a skill they would benefit from, you might be a strain on a community already stretching it's resources. But I do see the appeal of an island like annobón.
LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said people have a right to peaceful protest after more than 100,000 demonstrators joined an anti-immigration march through London on Saturday, but he condemned assaults on police and said Britain was built on tolerance and diversity.
Far-right activist Tommy Robinson organised a march attended by around 110,000 people on Saturday. Police said 26 officers were injured, while it made an initial 25 arrests with more expected to follow.
"People have a right to peaceful protest. It is core to our country's values," Starmer said on X on Sunday.
"But we will not stand for assaults on police officers doing their job or for people feeling intimidated on our streets because of their background or the colour of their skin."
The giant pot in which Nigerian chef and former Guinness World Record holder Hilda Baci attempted to make the world's largest dish of jollof rice has broken as it was being hoisted on a crane to be weighed.
Thousands of people gathered in Lagos to watch the latest world record bid from the well-known food influencer, who in 2023 held the title for the longest cooking marathon.
Her recipe for jollof, a popular West African dish, included 4,000kg (8,800lb) of rice, 500 cartons of tomato paste and 600kg of onions - all poured into a custom-made pot that can hold 23,000 litres.
Food didn't actually spill and video doesn't even show anything breaking. Bah! I'm happy it worked out, but I was kind of hoping to see a tragedy within the bounds of human comprehension for once.
The event was trending on social media and videos show that as the huge red pan was being lifted, one side buckled and the supporting legs gave way, however the food did not spill.
Manufacturing the giant steel vessel to hold her dish took a team of 300 people two months to make
WTF? That pot is not complicated enough to require that much labor, especially when they still managed to fuck it up. In a country of 250+ million people, surely it shouldn't have been that hard to find a competent engineer and metalworker to help them with it, right?
It usually means that 300 people were involved in the project at different stages of its lifetime. It probably also includes the people involved in sourcing the material, tools, people, workspace, etc. That's probably 20 people who likely never touched the final product. There likely was also some marketing and business people involved. They did probably put hands on the final product for a photo op.
Not everyone knows every person that's eligible for every job. Maybe they didn't have capable people at hand, or knew how to get in touch with them. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
Even if you only had incompetent people involved, and involved twice as many incompetent people as necessary in every step, I still don't see how you get over 150 people
Given that its a rich Nigerian supported by a large company, its quite possible numbers were inflated, either by those trying to break the record to make it more impressive, or by the people contracted to make the dish who might inflate numbers so that they can be paid better (esspecially given the immense wealth inequality in Nigeria). From what I've been told, that sort of fraud is very common.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Wonder why they didn't just set the pot on a scale while it was empty though. Then add ingredients after. Or just fucking weigh the ingredients as they go in, idfk.
Because you can't cook with a scale and because they didn't have a scale big enough to put the pot on it. You can see the scale attached to the crane. They wanted to weight it by lifting it.
Oh, I get it, duh. Makes sense. Shame 😐 I guess they should just say okay to measuring the ingredients separately that are added in? And perhaps do a little napkin math to account for evaporation or whatever.
Afterwards the giant dish of jollof rice, which also included 168kg of goat meat, was divided into individual portions and distributed to the huge crowds.
While most of this post is about Blacksky, there are a couple of sections that focus on the fediverse -- "And yet..." and "A great learning opportunity for the ActivityPub Fediverse"
It's a platform using AT Proto (the protocol Bluesky uses), independent but still connected (think about Lemmy instances). That way they can apply their own moderation policies and don't have to follow Bluesky censorship.
I've disabled invite codes for signing up or migrating to the blacksky.app Personal Data Server (PDS).
The invite codes were necessary to prevent en masse bot signups.
We've since turned on captchas and added rate limiting to the server.
independent but still connected (think about Lemmy instances)
It's not really connected in the same sense two Lemmy instances are connected. They're able to pull in the same data as Bluesky as it's all public and PDSs don't really have the ability to block a relay from crawling them.
At the app level (blacksky.community / bsky.app on the web) it's more like TweetDeck/Twitter: different client interfaces to the same underlying network. That's not a perfect analogy though because Blacksky makes different moderation decisions than Bluesky.
But also, people using either of these apps can store their data in arbitrary PDSs, so when people migrate their accounts to the Blacksky PDS they can use either of the apps. So there it's more like Piefed/Lemmy -- different implementations of the same protocol. Again though it's not a perfect analogy because the AT Protocol architecture lets you migrate all your data between PDSs seamlessly, and so far only a few niche ActivityPub implementations support that (Hubzilla et al with nomadic identity, ActivityPods using Solid Pods).
Oh, I thought blacksky.comnunity used Blacksky's relay. If it uses Bluesky's then yeah, disregard what I said.
That's not a perfect analogy though because Blacksky makes different moderation decisions than Bluesky.
I'd hope so given how abysmal Bluesky's moderation is. The discovery feed is filled with transphobia, but you can't say Charlie Kirk should rest in piss.
Again though it's not a perfect analogy because the AT Protocol architecture lets you migrate all your data between PDSs seamlessly, and so far only a few niche ActivityPub implementations support that (Hubzilla et al with nomadic identity, ActivityPods using Solid Pods).
I don't believe Hubzilla's nomatic identity works with APub though, irrc it uses something called Zot.
I've been thinking about how to add nomatic identity to Lemmy quite a bit and it's something I'd like to work on after 1.0 is out, but it's hard a problem for sure.
Yeah, Bluesky's moderation really is abysmal. Somebody I know got suspended for 24 hours for saying something about Charlie Kirk and when they came back immediately moved their account to Blacksky ... and who can blame them!
Right now blacksky.community is an app that uses Bluesky's AppView, which in turn uses Bluesky's Relay. They're working on their own AppView (which will have the equivalent of local-only posts) and that will use their Relay. I didn't mean to undercut your point though, they often talk about PDSs as analogous to web pages, so your "different search engines" analogy is very accurate, it's just not quite there yet.
And good point about Hubzilla ... if I recall correctly either in (((streams))) or Forte (or maybe both) MIke implemented the nomadic identity over ActivityPub as well. It's really frustrating that AP development in general hasn't paid more attention to his ideas! If you're thinking about this kind of stuff for Lemmy, it's also worth looking at socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/…
Hello! This is a discussion thread for the proposed FEP-ef61: Portable Objects. Please use this thread to discuss the proposed FEP and any potential problems or improvements that can be addressed.
Right now blacksky.community is an app that uses Bluesky’s AppView, which in turn uses Bluesky’s Relay. They’re working on their own AppView (which will have the equivalent of local-only posts) and that will use their Relay.
Interesting, from what I understand of ATProto, this would be hard to do on protocol, it'll be fascinating to see how they do it. Maybe something off protocol like the recent bookmark feature Bluesky got.
I didn’t mean to undercut your point though, they often talk about PDSs as analogous to web pages, so your “different search engines” analogy is very accurate, it’s just not quite there yet.
I'd love to take credit for this, but the ATProto docs themselves make this comparison which is where I'm getting this from.
if I recall correctly either in (((streams))) or Forte (or maybe both) MIke implemented the nomadic identity over ActivityPub as well
This sent me down a bit a of a rabbit hole. It seems (streams) used an updated version of Zot, Zot/11 but was renamed to just Nomad. I can't find anything about this, the (streams) repo only contains the spec for Zot/6, so I'm not sure about it's APub compatibility. Apparently, Nomad had been discontinued in Forte in favour of pure APub, anyway.
Oh, I know about Silverpill's work, it's really interesting! I even mentioned it recently. I'm glad we have someone smart like them working on this stuff.
I do think some kind of separation of user data from servers, like what AT Proto does, is actually quite desirable. I just don't like that PDSes can have their data harvested by whoever, I think data sharing with a server should be opt-in.
Also agreed that sharing should be opt-in (and here on fedi as well).
In terms of Blacksky's approach to private data, Rudy shared this earlier today blog.smokesignal.events/posts/… ... the working group on private data is having its first meeting this week, and there are a couple of other proposals as well, so it'll be interesting to see how things converge. Bluesky has said they're going to add it to the protocol but the timeframe isn't clear. My guess is people will go ahead with off-protocil implementations initally and plan to adapt once it's standardized (famous last words).
According to Seoul’s foreign ministry, Landau conveyed his deep regrets over the detention of hundreds of South Korean workers in an immigration crackdown earlier this month at an electric vehicle battery plant construction site for a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution in Bryan County, Georgia.
A total of 316 South Korean workers returned home Friday, after being held in a detention center for a week.
Tijdens een optreden in Amsterdam riep het Britse duo zaterdag leuzen als "dood aan de IDF". Ook noemden ze de deze week vermoorde radicaal-rechtse Amerikaan Charlie Kirk "een stuk stront".
Racists are just tools of the super rich using them, religious, the ignorant disaffected, etc.
After they consolidate power they will be relegated with the rest of the population. They are being used because they are ill-informed, but they are not the ones pulling the strings, not the ones calling and running the plays here. It is moneyed interests doing that
If I honestly thought that you could expand your horizons I would be very interested in describing to you how China shares the same desires for the United States as MAGA has for the United States. But I think you and I both know that you have a much more than casual love for China. You will just have to put the pieces together yourself.
dafuq? i'm saying china is a genocidal imperial regime all the time. i guess if your standard is that anyone who wants to tank the united states is maga i get the joke. just didn't realize what you were saying
American MAGAs also don't really want American greatness if it involves immigrants, minorities, or liberals having a good life there. Their love of America and goals for its greatness are VERY selective, all the way to founding values like freedom of speech, separation of powers, and separation of church and state.
It's really just fascism. And fascism, for all its claims to be country-first, is an international reactionary effort.
The performance was held at the Paradiso Grote Zaal. The venue released a statement on Sunday saying it “believed in the power of artistic freedom”.
“Music – and especially punk – is an art form that traditionally magnifies anger, discontent, and injustice without a filter,” it said.
“In a world on fire, artists sometimes choose language that sounds confrontational or violent.”
Addressing the singer’s calls for the death of IDF troops, the venue said it shared “the outrage and concern surrounding the genocidal violence taking place in Gaza” and that “Bob Vylan’s raising his voice against this is legitimate and necessary”.
Punk has always been anti-fascist because fascists and punks compete for the same follower base, and overlap is unavoidable unless one side draws a very hard line about what's acceptable.
The fascists want to be able to say whatever they want under 1st amendment, but have always lost their shit when people say the same shit about fascists the fascists say about innumerable target demographics.
"death death to the idf" =/= "death to idf troops"
and i'm tired of outlets reporting on it like it is. the man was saying the idf is a criminal organization that needs to be resisted and disbanded. yeah, that's gonna result in some fighting because the idf are a violent and vile organization of oppressors, but in the context, "death death to the idf" is the only reasonable stance…
IDF is an org though, and he said death to that. it reads pretty clearly as bing about bringing about an end to the org to me an. the other read relies too heavily on a dictionary definition than on the types of allegory rappers engage in. but as you said, maybe that's just me
TF?! If that happened to you FordBeeblebrox I’m surprised my post (which included verbatim quotes from thumb no-head baby teeth) wasn’t also taken down. 🤷🤷🤷
Enjoyer of political violence falls victim to political violence. Oh no! /s
If these guys were themselves pacifists who prided themselves on giving every idea a fair hearing, I guess I would have a problem with any assassinations. As it is, there's just one side trying to unilaterally manifest a certain level of civility. One that unfortunately doesn't seem to exist.
Edit: I believe this complies with rule 6. Lack of concern about violence isn't the same thing as advocacy.
Well, the Right is trying to make Kirk into a new Horst Wessel figure, so I'm registering this is as a based attempt to keep the Overton Window at its current position.
There absolutely is justification for violence, political or otherwise. To say there is none is a violators way of ensuring they can continue to violate unchecked. Tagging politics as a motivator for such violence is also a misdirection. Hate is not political, race is not political. What makes them seem political is the fact that they are accepted and pushed by our elected officials. Those officials fully believe they are and should be immune to any repercussions for what they do and say. This belief is what gives them the will to ignore the protests and laws on the books that go against their wishes. What other option does anyone have but to show them in the strongest way possible that they are destroying everything they touch?
the post I had commented this on was deleted so I'm going to put it here for no reason.
I hold the following opinions:
political violence is probably a bad idea. this is for multiple reasons, one of which being that it usually doesn't create the intended effects.
charlie kirk might have been the worst piece of shit commentator of that era. i'm glad he shut the fuck up.
there are a lot of political commentators like him. the benefit of having one less of them is overshadowed by the detriment of the reaction to a political assassination.
his family is the absolute least of my concerns. i don't think about them at all.
The US Undersecretary of State, Christopher Landau, says "appropriate action" will be taken against "foreigners who glorify violence".
In a post on X, Landau says he has been "disgusted" to see comments on social media "praising, rationalising or making light" of the killing of Charlie Kirk and those who "glorify violence and hatred" are "not welcome visitors" to the country.
He says he has directed consular officials to "undertake appropriate action" and tells his followers "to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the State Department can protect the American people".
In a response to a tweet, Landau then says he will direct consular officials to monitor the comments to his post.
The originalists would probably say it only applies to white slaveowners who own property. Or some other random bullshit that doesn't logically lead to their foregone conclusion.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Hi guys! I've been here and there in the fediverse since a quite few years...always liked pleroma and mastodon, but always have a very bad luck. Every instance I went , every instance closed... Any good advice to choose an instance? I'm kinda tired of being exporting and exporting ad infinitum
If you are willing to have professional support and also support the underlying projects: Communick offers accounts only for paying-members. $29/year gives you an account on Mastodon, Lemmy, Funkwhale and Matrix, and we pledge to give 20% of the profits to the fediverse projects that we offer.
The group behind it or others similar. When you are on a small self hosted instance. You are at the mercy of a hobby admins time and skill. Which is no dig at them. Sometimes it just becomes too much.
I have had a number of Mastodon accounts since 2017 with the groups Mastodon servers. They run themselves as a serious organization. Providing services of a quality absolutely worth paying for. All with donations.
The HTTP response times are sometimes a little rough, but the team has managed to keep up a large part of the fediverse for the past few years. It's impressive, and I'm happy that I ended up chosing lemmy.world after migrating from lemmy.ml.
I think the safest thing would be self-hosting your own solo GoToSocial instance. With SLURP you could import your entire Mastodon archive… and if you’re not proficient, coding-wise, you could install GoToSocial via YunoHost.org, which is so easy to follow, a total newbie could do it (speaking from experience). The only requirement would be a basic VPS (say, about 5 Euros a month). If you could give up 1-2 coffees a month, it’s not that big of an expense. I personally love my GtS account, as I get to personalize it, setting character limits, uploading my own custom emojis, etc.
Thanks! I personally use a VPS because I don’t have a stable connection at home. If you could spare 4 or 5 Euros a month, I would definitely recommend self-hosting
Earlier this week, India signed a historic investment pact with Israel.
The deal, known as the Bilateral Investment Agreement (BIA), is meant to bolster investor confidence and provide smoother business transactions between the two countries.
At the signing ceremony in Delhi on 8 September, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the pact would "open new doors for both Israeli and Indian investors, strengthen Israeli exports, and provide businesses on both sides with certainty and tools to develop in the world's fastest-growing markets".
"India is a growing economic power, and cooperation is a tremendous opportunity for Israel."
Earlier this week, India signed a historic investment pact with Israel.
The deal, known as the Bilateral Investment Agreement (BIA), is meant to bolster investor confidence and provide smoother business transactions between the two countries.
At the signing ceremony in Delhi on 8 September, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the pact would "open new doors for both Israeli and Indian investors, strengthen Israeli exports, and provide businesses on both sides with certainty and tools to develop in the world's fastest-growing markets".
"India is a growing economic power, and cooperation is a tremendous opportunity for Israel."
With new investment pact, India moves to bind its economy to Israel
Azad Essa 14 September 2025 09:12 BST
Earlier this week, India signed a historic investment pact with Israel.
The deal, known as the Bilateral Investment Agreement (BIA), is meant to bolster investor confidence and provide smoother business transactions between the two countries.
At the signing ceremony in Delhi on 8 September, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the pact would "open new doors for both Israeli and Indian investors, strengthen Israeli exports, and provide businesses on both sides with certainty and tools to develop in the world's fastest-growing markets".
"India is a growing economic power, and cooperation is a tremendous opportunity for Israel."
100 percent chance modi is running pegasus and like nso type spyware.
That was likely part of the deal, for expanded or continuing surveillance powers.
Pegasus and the like were likely the flame virus tweaked and repurposed, that infected iranian centrifuges and computers some 20 years back. Described as the most malicious virus to date back then, it listened and watched and logged and shared everything on iranian computers secretly even when off, and ruined centrifuges by mis tweaking their spin rates.
I’ve been using a flip phone as my daily driver for a while now. The smartphone is still around, but it mostly sits in a drawer until bureaucracy or banking apps force me to use it.
For me, the benefits are clear: less distraction, more focus, better sleep. But I know for many people it’s not so easy. Essential apps, social pressure, work requirements… these are real blockers.
I’d like to start a discussion (almost like an informal poll):
If you thought about switching, what’s the single biggest thing that holds you back?
Is it banking? Messaging? Maps? Something else?
I’m genuinely curious because if we can identify the main pain points, maybe it’s possible to work on solutions or even start a small project around it.
So: what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?
Mama was right: Smartphones are frying our brains. App locks, screentime reminders, digital detoxes: we’ve tried them all. Nothing sticks because honestly? We’r
There really isn’t anything I couldn’t replace my phone with a tablet that stays in the house for, and it has been a growing thought to switch back to a dumb phone.
I just did. If you get any text messages about your upcoming penis surgery tomorrow, know it's legit! (Are they removing one, or adding one? Doesn't matter, I'm sure they'll figure it out...)
There's a terminology issue here, feature phones run apps, flip phones and true dumb phones shouldn't run apps or have any data connections. But it seems more common now to draw the line at Smartphone and anything else is "dumb" even if it's basically just a 2008 smartphone.
Stuff I use the phone for in rough order of importance: - maps and GPS - messaging (signal) - emulators and other quality games (none of that candy crush slop) - ebook reading - Wikipedia / quick research - Lemmy
I could drop lemmy from mobile because it's just a time waster and news source.
Wikipedia is important because too often people are interminably arguing something that can be settled with a 30 second search. Like, you don't need to spend 5 minutes arguing about the population of NJ just look it up.
Games are nice. I don't want to go back to carrying around a second device for games like it's 2001. I could bring a steam deck everywhere but that doesn't fit in my pocket.
I don't have any notifications turned on except like direct messages, so I don't find it much of a distraction.
i have only ever had basic phones, dating back to my first nokia ~ 25 years ago. i don't have the need or desire to have an android or iphone. one time. just once, ever--i enabled cellular data on my phone so i could look something up--the current weather forecast (in the kai weather 'app') because it started to look like i might get stranded out in a bad storm and i forgot to check the forecast before i left.
Literally just having a hotspot built in is keeping me on android. The lappy goes where I go, and that means as long as I have internet access I'm as connected as I could ever want to be.
Basically everyone has wifi, usually available after. I might just go out and get an unlocked dumbphone this week honestly.
Edit: yes I know about the mp02, its on the wishlist. I haven't had a job in over a year so I won't be getting it yet.
I personally dont think you need to switch to a dumb phone to get those benefits, smartphones themselves arent what's causing issues its what you're using. You want less distraction just stop using those apps or turn off push notifications.
Þere are oþer reasons to want a dumber phone. I miss charging my phone once a week, vs 1-2 times per day. I have a bendy-screen flip phone now, but before þese became available, it was hard to get a reasonably sized phone; þe trend was (and still is) phablets. I miss having þe expectation þat my phone would last for years, and not need upgrading because þe screen broke, or because þe OS stopped being updated, or because OS upgrades got more and more bloated and made þe phone slower and unusable over time. I miss þe time before an upgrade would completely fuck established muscle memory patterns because some dumb-shit decided to completely rearrange gestures - requiring an internet search to uncover þe byzantine, cryptic configuration combination to restore þe old behavior.
It's much more þan distractions.
OTOH, I need Jami to communicate wiþ my peer group, because SMS is insecure and incredibly basic. Navigation in your hand is incredibly useful, even þough it's been shown to ruin users' geospatial skills. And smarter address books are better þan old dumb-phone name+phone number address books.
But if I could get a decent, small e-ink phone, wiþ good battery, Jami, an address book, and hell, just a simple browseable map (even w/o navigation), I'd be golden. Jami is þe sticking point, because it introduces a dependency on Android, and þat's where þe fuckery starts.
Yeah, alongside that. Phones also have focus mode, digital wellbeing to limit usage of distracting apps. You can even turn on super power saving mode to limit phone use further and use it for basic functions like phones, messages, web browsing, etc.
I started on a privacy journey because I didn't like that I'm being tracked (by basically everybody) and feel that the technology that I pay for should be service to me, not me as a service to it (and its related parties).
Anyways, along the way I did a few things. Namely, I turned off mail notifications (this was an inadvertent feature since my mail service couldn't send notifications without google services that I removed). I also removed my sim and use data only via a hotspot, to which I don't always have on. These sound like crazy things, and admittedly they aren't for everyone, but the resulting mental shifts are exactly to this point.
Just because I have a device that let's me be available to anybody in any place at any time, doesn't mean I should be, or even need to be, available unless I want to be.
Now I protect my time, and the mental clarity that comes with it. I never was a doom scroller, but even now that concept is even more reduced. The phone is my tool, and I use when needed.
Right, absolutely. I use almost no apps for anything, I just use my phone’s browser for the web sites I want, and have a specific few non-privacy-invasive apps for other things (Voyager for here, Signal for messaging, password manager, etc) and have zero reason I would ever want to give up that functionality to do what, make CALLS? I don’t do that shit. Text message? Nah.
My parents and all their friends used to use PTT with their Nextel phones. It was a super handy feature. I wonder why it fell out of style. Seemed more convenient and less tedious than a phone call for short communications.
There are both open source and commercial apps that do PTT over internet. It turns phones into radio, it even has the capability to have central radio operation rooms for companies and such. It's all automated.
I can't get these people to use Signal instead of SMS.
But nothing internet dependent will turn a phone into a radio. We are in places where even 4G doesn't reach sometimes and if there was a Motorola repeater onsite it'd be great. I've got our company trying it out and the SL300 has been a game changer for our communication on site.
My first cell phone was a flip phone, and I'm not gonna lie, I've considered revisiting my teenage days again and getting one. But I feel like, right now, my smartphone use is very light.
I avoid Meta apps, I don't play mobile games, my biggest vice was reddit which has now become a shithole of bots and censorship so I don't go on there anymore. I read the news on here, chat a little on Discord, check my birdfeeder and that's pretty much it besides occasional use of google maps as needed.
On top of that, this phone is from 2018 so its battery life these days is not great. I think that helps too.
Maybe for those hesitating to get a dumb phone, perhaps start with an older smartphone to whittle your time down?
As someone who always had some kind of PDA (CASIO digital diary, Palm, Compaq iPaq) and switched onto the smartphone bandwagon pretty early (SonyEricsson P800/P910i, Qtek 9000, various Androids and various iPhones) ... I don't think I could enjoy the experience with a dumb phone. I love modern technology too much.
I once had a colleague that religiously only used a Nokia 3210 (the newer 3G/4G model). Which meant 160 character messages only. No emojis, no photos (as MMS were expensive). He was also the kind of person to use paper maps when driving - incl. stopping to look for alternative routes if some road was blocked or jammed. That's definitely not for me.
The only way this could work for me would be to have some small PDA that can connect to the phone to use the Internet. And I appreciate that both devices have been merged into smartphones at some point.
It's weird reading the responses. Our society has pushed smartphones down our throats that people can't imagine living without one. They name things they "need" when in reality it's all convenience in some form or another. All the while the true purpose of these devices is to listen, serve ads and feed on our insecurities, fears and anger.
"our society has pushed smart phones down our throats"
smartphones evolved from older methods of just getting through the day. taking notes, listening to music, calandars, date books, libraries, files, methods of communication.
you make the assumption that everyone is a slave to their device just because it's a smart device.
some of us were alive before smart phones existed. and we'd prefer not to go back in tech. and would instead prefer the devices we have now.
I second this. No one forced me. Even when work tried to force me to use smartphone 2FA it was easy enough to say "I'm not putting any f-ing micrsoft crap on my phone", they found a workaround - magically they could just use the basic telephone network to do the 2FA.
I chose to get one because it's more convenient than having phone, walkman, camera, book, torch , map, compass etc. I still carry many of those things from time to time when I want them, or when I want extra resilience. But I's choose the phone most times because it is a cheap, lightweight, small, convenient alternative that makes so many things just a bit easier.
Bloody hell just faffing around with walkman batteries and recording compilation tapes was annoying enough.
It's also very easy to just leave your phone behind and use the alternatives, they pretty much all still exist in some form. I mean that happens to me regularly whenever I lose my phone of when I forget to charge it or (partly) when I'm just out of range of the celluar network. I don't remember either dying or having any police jump on me and force me to buy a new one or charge it up immediately.
I dint do calls often at all, so a flip/dumb phone doesn't appeal to me much. However, i have been very tempted to upgrade my existing smart watch to one with LTE connectivity and skip the smart phone completely.
The Apple watch, for instance, with LTE can do maps/directions, calls, texts, etc., without needing a smartphone near by. It would be much less to carry, less distractions, and way more convenient.
The big thing it can't currently do, however, is MFA for my job. It can do Authy and many others, but the one we require doesn't work, I've tried many times, so I'm stuck carrying a smartphone around if I want to remain employed.
I’m mostly using my phone as an all in one multimedia device I can fit in my pocket.
I don’t see the flip phone as a good replacement for this kind of use. It wasn’t back in those days either. We used dedicated MP3 players or portable radio for music listening for example.
you couldn't pay me to go backwards in time, sorry!
see I was around before the age of the smartphone. growing up, I thought my cassette Walkman was the most revolutionary thing ever. and when PDAs were new, I would dreaammm about everything being on one electronic device.
smart phones have given me a freedom that younger me never had.
i no longer need to carry a notebook/memobook around, because I have powerful software on my phone that not only let's me note-take, but index and SEARCH my own notes. from my pocket.
i don't need to carry the 3 novels im reading at the moment because they're on the ereader app in my pocket.
contacts, games, all my news sources, photos, videos, all my media.
to me, this is still revolutionary tech and it has only improved my life
i think we are seeing a rise now of adults who were raised as iPad kids who never had to carry all their shit around the way us older individuals have. so they naturally would want to get away from it because they've known no different and they never had to live another way before that point.
its an understandable mentality from that one standpoint. but no, I will never give up my smart phone. i understand the reasons for those that do, but some of us don't really want to go backwards.
Camera is probably the first obstacle. I've got a kid, and I really want to have good documentation of her growing up. If there were a dumbphone with a legit camera, that'd be a big deal for me.
After that, probably maps is the next most important thing that I want an actual smart phone for. I remember getting my first smart phone, and probably the main thing I was excited about was always being able to navigate directly to where I wanted to go.
I highly recommend just getting a real camera. The pictures I took with my camera 11 years ago are still better quality than an iPhone can manage today. Modern cameras are far far better.
this guy, with the "real" camera and the phone camera, but the phone camera is the one I've most consistently got on me, because I can't lug a whole additional piece of hardware around in a camera bag, meanwhile the phone camera pictures are grainy and shitty, and I'd just as soon have a Pixel in my pocket at all times that can take fairly good pictures at all times.
Realistically, cameras can be put into two categories - they either effortlessly fit in your pocket, or don't, and any that don't tend to get left home unless you intend to specifically go take photos. Doesn't really matter how much bigger it is at that point. And if you have a high end smartphone, you probably can't get a camera that fits in your pocket that would be significantly better.
As the saying goes, the best camera is the one you have with you.
maybe you can reasonably throw into a handbag. but it quickly became a logistical nightmare, with how you're essentially stuck with cheap/kit lens (to make it small enough) and humidity is also a deal breaker.
also, would you want to abuse a not-cheap APS-C camera that way? I wouldn't lol
Pretty much nothing i use my phone for can be done on a flip phone. Smartphone is no distraction for me - I just use it when I need it to do something for me.
maps - occasionally GPS. mp3 player mp4s watching on long train / bus rides or when camping. large sd card (500gb) memrise/ language learning app. occasionally guitar tuner occasionally internet is useful for checking events, buying tickets, checking for hotels and stuff. occasionally checking emails. occasionally playing mindustry (when i want my battery to die).
I don't carry a laptop most of the time that i'd need for most of that stuff above. TBH - I can't use many other apps anyway because I don't want GPS or microG installed - so I'm mostly just f-droid apps.
Edit - i'd also prefer something like simpleX to SMS, but I don't actually know anyone else who uses it - so not an issue really. I just have to SMS.
No decent (local) music player, no DSP, no music streaming with newpipe, decent video player to watch series in bed, screen too small to read books, no e2ee messaging, no web browser, useless camera, operating system without security updates.
I honestly couldn't care less about calls and SMS, I only use that like few times a year.
I use my iPhone for a ton of different things. I pretty much never use it to make calls and hate talking on the phone (which is what flip phones are optimized for).
No way. Life is way better with smart phones. Tap to pay, maps, always having a camera, always having my notes, working as a mobile hotspot, controlling my home security system. 25 other things.
This stuff used to be so much harder. I’m not going back.
I will freely admit there are some dangerous addictive and invasive aspects to it also. I’m ruthless about what apps I will grant permissions to. And I don’t browse the App Store getting tempted by their promises.
I think the appeal of our phones not having to be a computer and not needing all the same rigor and paranoia and extra steps of a computer was really exciting. But it hasn’t turned out to be true. So now I treat it like a computer and approach everything with that level of skepticism. And also treat it like the gateway to capitalism that it is and I am skeptical of anything that’s trying to take my data or money. I think with the right attitude it’s a net positive device in my life
Speaking as someone who never has carried a smartphone, there are a bunch of tradeoffs. I do my banking in person, for instance, and that can be mildly inconvenient. I don't take a lot of photographs (when I do, I use an old-style single-purpose camera). "Portable media" is a CD player, and I carry a paperback book if I think I might have to wait somewhere for more than ten minutes or so. And so on. Just continuing to live the same way as I did a quarter-century ago.
I expect, however, that it's a lot easier not to miss what you never had in the first place.
All of that, plus the benefits of having a good pocket camera to carry around - spontaneous photography is my thing and having a good camera phone solves that equation nicely.
And before anyone says "get a real camera", I have real cameras and there's no way they can be carried in my pocket the same way a smartphone does lol. That and the smaller they get, the further image quality worsens to the point where you might just use a (good camera) phone instead.
I grew up with dumb phones, and you couldn't pay me enough to go back to using them - they suck!
Doesn't really make much sense for me to switch to a flip phone unless it was specifically built for privacy/security. SMS and regular voice calls are insecure, it likely could connect to fake cell towers uninhibited, it likely doesn't have hardware switches to disconnect various features e.g. modem, microphone, or camera.
I’ve lived through the cell phone invention, to flip phones, to smartphones. They were terrible back then and I doubt that’s changed now.
Now, I do understand the reason why you moved back to one. For me, I just got aggressive about notifications and turned off most of them. I stopped social media tied to friends and family and am selective about what I’m on and for how long. Takes more personal willpower (or whatever) but you do get used to it in the long run and feel better.
Not at all. It's really hard to live without the practical features of a smartphone, like web browsing and maps. What I need is privacy, not to throw it all away for a dumbphone.
I believe a lot of the benefits you claim dumbphones provide are all caused by abandoning social media. There's nothing wrong with technology, it's just social media. You don't need to use a dumbphone just to escape social media.
Same. My "smartphone" usage is about 10% phone, 10% SMS service, 10% camera, 5% flashlight, 10% GPS + Map tool, 15% e-mail, and 40% web browser... I carried a pretty capable flip phone from 2006-2013, the things I liked best about it were its longevity and its long battery life (up to a week on standby, 3-4 days even with normal usage.) However, even upgraded with GPS capability, the small screen would have made for a poor map experience, and e-mail and web browser were just out of its practical reach.
Stop browsing social media, maybe install Tor if you want that level of privacy - Smartphones can do that...
I simply wouldn't. A dumbphone does mostly the things I don't use a phone for.
And I don't mean fortnite and tickytocks, I've grown up through (most) of the history of mobile phones, I started with my mothers old Nokia 2110 back in like... 1998? I remember how awesome it was to finally have a phone, then to be able to get the bus schedules with the painfully slow WAP connection so I didn't have to call home, then to have navigation, replace the mp3 player, camera, and eventually even mostly my laptop.
I want to have a datapad with access to all the devices and information in my pocket at all times. If I need it to do something, I know there's an app for it probably. It's awesome.
I'd really prefer that the datapad wouldn't then leech all of my information in return, though. Oh, and bring back physical keyboards. I'd give my left nut for an HTC Desire Z with 2025 hardware.
Yes, I had to delete lemmy, reddit, twitter, mastodon, all games etc.
But I see 0 harm in: - 2FA authenticator apps (google authenticator, app for government ID, bank, ...) - DHL (unlocks packing station / parcel distributing machine here) - calendar (with voice assistant) - Pixel, iPhone, Samsung and some others are a fantastic camera! 10 years ago, it'd be a great deal just for that one feature. I used to pay USD/EUR 250 - 500 for a hobby-level camera that was worse - read my mobile CO2 sensor - not crucial, but occasionally show someone something in a video call - send injured animal photo / video right to the wildlife rescue station for advice (~ 2x per year) - plain old mp3 player - some might read eBooks, which is a good use of it, but I still prefer a hardcopy
So yes, on my 2nd smartphone only (first in 2021), but I find that it's worth it these days.
Enshittification intensifies, but a Linux phone might become very viable in a few years, especially when LLM adapters become easier to use. Self-hosted alternatives to google/apple photos are already very advanced.
The benefits of having a full-featured computer in my pocket are just too many for me to ditch it permanently if I have a choice. While it's certainly able to distract me if I let it, I don't think I've ever had it disrupt my sleep (aside from late night phone calls).
I think it's better for most (and potentially easier) to keep to the smartphone and just better control the applications that are on it and the notifications that they raise to make sure it isn't overly distracting you. This may require disabling certain pre-installed apps (e.g. Facebook is one I always disable and just interact with via browser when I want to). Another pattern to follow is adding barriers to the things that distract you most so it takes a little more effort to interact with your distractions. Hank Green's Focus Friend app that got popular recently is an example of that -- placing an emotional barrier on getting distracted when you need to focus.
But ultimately, we all need to do what's best for ourselves. Everyone's suceptibility to distraction is different and if a dumbphone is what works best for you, then by all means, go with that for as long as it's useful.
My "smart" phone is rarely used as a telephone. It's set to silent, all notifications turned off, blocks unknown numbers, transcribes voicemail and spends most of the day as a window to the world.
I'm not sure what, if anything, a "dumb" phone would add to my life, except more interruption, more administration to keep contacts up to date, and yet another device to charge and maintain.
presumably having a dumb phone that only does calls and maybe texts can help you stay in contact / reachable but without the possible distractions of the phone itself.
Headphone jack. I just can't say this enough, despite the fact I have apple's wireless earbuds (of some clique name) in my pocket at this very second. Headphone jack.
Don't ask for it for yourself. Ask for it for the d-bag sharing music of some guy grunting over a drum track on the bus. We need to save him from the damage to his reputation when his friends remind him they knew he listened to such trash later when he needs to deny it.
Does it actually happen? How so? I never had any bank or anything else force me to use a phone, so I am having hard time imagining that. So I am genuinely curious about this portion of your message.
2 factor authentication via app/texting I'd imagine.
An authenticator app is better than basically anything but a physical token / key generator, but the apps are more universally supported. No one is probably going to spoof your phone number to get into your accounts.... But doesn't hurt to me more secure about it anyway.
I am using a YubiKey for those (with a desktop authenticator app). Oddly enough, I do that because I do not trust Android/iPhone to stay secure. I actually trust them even less than a plain old SMS-based auth.
I tried a lot of things to keep my phone/screen usage down.l, including a dump phone. One day I got this brilliant idea to shut my phone off. That was way more efficient than any of the tricks I tried. When I need it for something I turn it on. I've since removed most fun apps from the thing.
I still have one game that I play, Lemmy, RSS and web browsers. Apart from those it's mostly a bureaucracy machine with messaging, email, banking, MFA, work stuff, maps, lots of apps for managing tickets (it's actually ridiculous), life trackers for some board games. Music, audiobooks and podcasts.
The smart phone is a convenient device that makes my life easier. I don't whis to handicap myself when I can just turn the phone off instead. I also like to leave the phone at home if for instance I'm going to a party at a well known location.
A flip phone/dumbphone would sort of be mutually exclusive with my use case. I use my smartphone nearly exclusively as a lightweight mobile computer for web browsing, SSHing into my server, and messaging over internet (not SMS). I rarely use the "phone" features of my phone, i.e. phone calls and SMS. So I'd be losing out over the features I do use, in favour of features I don't use.
If you're being distracted by your phone and a dumbphone works for you, good on you. I think most people are like me and use their phones as a small mobile computer rather than a phone though, in which case distractions are best handled with one of the many apps/browser add-ons/etc that block websites or apps.
I thought about switching, but instead I uninstalled social media apps and started using it more like an e-reader/MP3 player/messenger. It's worked pretty well! Been reading a ton in the last year. I may be addicted to fanfiction now though.
Google maps navigation, web browsing, YouTube, music streaming, WhatsApp, email, social media apps for entertainment, news apps, notes app, to do app, public transit app, ebook and audiobook apps, utility apps, good camera, good screen, good speakers.
If I consider all this there is just no way to go back to the old school flip phones or the candy bar phones with the T9 keypad for me, best thing I can do is hide all the apps I don't want to be distracted by, put app locks on the addictive ones and just be mindful of the time I spend on my phone and figure out other ways to spend my time like dedicated ebook readers or paper books and other activities
I think so too, there are so many useful tools on a phone, nobody has to use social media and apps that have a bad influence instead of just being practical and useful.
I have a minimalistic home screen with essential apps and all else is in folders for ex.
what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?
For me to start using my phone as the main way of my computing needs and entertainment needs. Which I don't. I only use it to send messages and read when my laptop is not in my hands. So I essentially have a not-so-smartphone, not-so-dumbphone.
My understanding is that flip phones only do calls and sms ? So I never call or text.. Only thing I use is an XMPP client, web browser, youtube music (until I replace that with selfhosted) and would use maps (but right now I broke the GPS on my phone so not that ...)
So I don't think I could use a flip phone, mostly because none of these applications except maybe music work on a flip phone ? Webbrowser needs a full sized screen...
Web browser. SMS and calling are completely useless. I need a phone so I can access the internet outside. I dont want a dumb 20 year old phone I want a modern phone without the pointless bullshit.
My ideal phone would have a small screen, replaceable battery, shit camera, shit speakers, 5G, two USB C slots and be able to run android apps and be cheap
Same minus Android apps, like late old Nokia ones. Nokia stuff was perfect. Also UX is always treated today as if those tasks were impossible to combine with a good UX, and thus modern typical UX is just how you can do it.
Except late Nokia before MS acquisition disproves that by its existence. Its UX was better than any of that shit, with all the necessary things possible to do.
Maybe not a dumb phone but I would love to use a phone with an e-ink screen. I know there are some projects about this or some Chinese phones but I haven't met an e-ink phone that I can install a custom ROM yet.
That would solve most of the issues others have brought up. It's probably fast enough for navigation and definitely fast enough for banking, MFA, RCS/Signal, etc..
Try the HiSense A9 Pro. I don't have one personally but from what I have seen and read, it can run Lineage OS quite well (actually better than it's own Android OS). I am considering it eventually but haven't made the move yet. Currently on Moto Razr 2024 which I am using with mostly FOSS apps and no social media whatsoever. I used to have a Pixel 9 Pro running Graphene OS which I truly enjoyed but it died on me and the warranty was not applicable due to me having installed that unsupported OS... So yeah, shit happens and I got myself this Razr for good price urgently since I was travelling when it happened.
Thanks for the suggestion, seems actually nice with all the ability to install a custom ROM. Sadly, it's not practical for me to get it from abroad because of our government's horrendous regulations about buying anything from outside of the country unless you are a trader. Even if I manage to buy it without any problems, there is also IMEI unlock fee which is almost the same price with this phone. My best bet would be, get this phone via a friend who comes from abroad and change the IMEI to my old phone. So, not soon but maybe some day.
1) navigation while traveling - don't need it much, if at all at home, but I travel often enough for work that losing that capability would be painful.
2) MFA - authenticator apps are the most convenient way to do MFA. SMS/email are terrible options for this and should only be used if there is absolutely no other option.
3) Access to the internet while away from home, both while traveling and while out and about
4) Music playback in the car
5) Communication - most of my friends don't use SMS/voice to talk, instead preferring Discord or Signal
Basically everything else I do on my phone could be done from a more proper computer with minimal inconvenience.
All I really need is calls, sms, a solid browser and some more robost messaging apps like signal and matrix/element - I'm a prime candidate for PostmarketOS if we ever get a stable piece of hardware. I have an old oneplus 6 that I've played with it on, its so close. If a flip phone could master that today, sure
I do use tap to pay, but meh I dont think I would miss it and android auto in my car could easily just be a bluetooth audio connection
I hadn't even thought of it from this angle. That's a hard stop for me right there.
Any flip phone you can basically hook up to bitpim or a cellebrite or whatever and copy its entire contents in a matter of seconds. There's no challenge. There's no security whatsoever.
Once upon a time, I set up my phone so I didn't need to look at it: it was basically e-ink and audiobooks.
Then I started adding games and learning apps back (I don't remember why), and now I feel like I'm not going back until e-ink reaches parity with smartphones (refresh rate, cell coverage, near-current OS).
well, I work in IT. So I am required to use apps like Teams for mobile and DUO 2FA in order to authenticate my laptop sessions.
Now, could I use only SMS/email 2FA? Technically yes. And I could just have Teams on my work laptop and have that nearby all the time, but it would be extremely inconvenient. Navigation would also be a big problem. Due to the nature of my job, I frequently have to visit a large number of different sites around my area. Having to open my laptop each time I need to go somewhere, open up a map site like OSM or Google maps to get the directions, print them off or write them down, then follow them manually hoping that I don't encounter random slowdowns or closures in an area I am not familiar with is basically a non-starter for me.
As for personal use, navigation rears its ugly head again. I often will be traveling with friends or family and we decide on a whim to change our destination for dinner or hangouts after based on times, appetites, budgets, closures, etc. Having a map app on my phone makes that easy to do. It would be impossible to do that without it, unless I had a near exhaustive knowledge of my whole city and surrounding suburbs.
Honestly navigation is the #1 thing. Random other stuff comes up, like my mobile password manager Bitwarden, or my various apps like my City's bus/metro app, and my city's parking app. Both of which again, I could make do without, but it would be extremely tough and inconvenient.
I've decided that the happy medium for me is to use as much FOSS phone tech as possible. That way at least the tracking and data harvesting is minimized and I am generally not supporting megacorps.
I use GrapheneOS, with mostly FOSS apps. The proprietary apps I do use are isolated with GOS's special sauce. I use Magic Earth for my navigation, which while not open source, the data sets they use are, and they are not google, and based in the EU, so far better privacy than Google's trash.
I wish I could switch to a flip phone, I've seriously considered it many times over the last several years. But for my lifestyle, it's just not feasible. The best balance for me is to compute ethically on my mobile. I have thought about going for the weekend with just a dumb phone, that might be possible, but I'll have to see.
I have exactly one game and exactly one 2fa app that I would meaningfully miss out on switching to a dumb pbone, outside of those two things I would genuinely consider it.
I don't use a smartphone enough to worry about it. If I am using my phone, most of the time it's either Anki, Google Maps, or, like you mention, banking/government stuff.
Texting via SMS (or whatever it is these days) isn't really a thing in Japan, either, which makes things more difficult especially as I despise talking on the phone. If, for example, I'm at the supermarket and wife remembers something she needs, getting that message is good
The one reason I have a nice, relatively new phone is that I want a fairly large, OLED screen for reading after dark. Yeah, I use it for a bunch of other stuff, but I wouldn't really miss any of those. The only thing I really need is the ability to make it look like text is floating in the dark over my head in bed.
I might switch to a flip phone if it had gps and maps.
That's simply the killer app for smart phones, at this point it's a necessary part of my life. Without it I need a separate device just for that, and that device is actually less useful.
Edit: now that I'm reading other responses I have to agree, secure messaging and 2fa are really important too.
I could live without everything else, but to be honest, I don't use much else. A few games, Lemmy, music apps, audiobook apps. Of those, Lemmy is the app most likely to leave me feeling upset, or like I want to doomscroll.
I think limiting the apps I use is the biggest thing I can do to not make the phone a negative influence for me. But to be clear, if that starts happening, Lemmy is the first to go, I already don't use any other social media.
I think it definitely depends on the persons needs. I use my phone for maps when I am going somewhere I am unfamiliar with. I use it for pod casts and audio books all the time. I use it for checking my bank account. Could I use something else to do these? Sure, but do I have access to all of the secondary devices to accomplish all of the above, not always. So yeah, the smart phone did become the catch all for a ton of daily processes, and I don’t have to carry 10 devices anymore.
Eh, I see no reason to switch to a dumb phone, because I don't think I'm that bad with my current phone. My main User profile on GrapheneOS is pretty minimal when it comes to apps, it's mostly messaging, banking, navigation, workout and music (I should probably move Lemmy and Pixelfed to a different profile, but they both have pretty little potential for scrolling for too long since the new content is naturally limited). The only game on this profile is the one I'm developing as a hobby project lol
All the annoying Apps (Secondary Email, Amazon, Aliexpress, Linkedin, Smartlife, Grocery store coupon apps etc) are banished to a secondary profile that has no permission to run in the background or send any notifications.
nothing would stop me and honestly if I could find a decent and new one similar to my old Sprint/Nokia phone from like 2001 I'd use it. I can't stand smart phones, I never liked them.
I would not give up the smartphone for a dumb phone, primarily for the superior security and privacy smartphones provide that dumb phones just do not have technology for.
This conversation has a tone of settling for inferior technology to do the work a well-designed smartphone experience should.
The smartphone can be made pretty "dumb" - the user experience has more to do with the software (apps) added to it than the hardware (the smartphone) itself.
Aside from the apps the platform bundles, I only have Signal (for text and voice), email, a browser, calendar, a note taking app and a FOSS music player. I have disabled all sound and visual notifications and removed all apps off the main screen.
Of late, I've moved the SIM-card onto a secondary phone that resides in my bag, which is only switched-on for navigation or if I need WiFi in a snap.
It has not always been this way for me and I am sure my setup will continue to evolve as my needs change.
I know exactly what I need my phone for: music, maps, banking, messaging, books and sometimes traveling. Anything else I have is a distraction that I'm addicted to have.
You know what keeps me from binning it? The FOMO, and not being able to hold conversations with friends and coworkers because I'm would not be tuned to the latest trends and happenings, and that sucks.
Dumb phone to take with you for calls / text messages and a non Sim card smartphone that would have apps on it but be hotspot over using the dumb phones data. Basically wifi only
That way if I were just doing errands on the weekend, just take the dumb phone. And then take the smartphone for onsite job trips and whatnot.
Smartphone would be degoogled. Remember, 2fa authentication doesn't need mobile data to work, its time based
I prefer smaller smart phones. I like having the mobile computer with me, but I want my pocket space back. I did look at jellyphone, but seems like service is spotty and i travel between countries. Stuck with the smaller pixels for now as the least offensive option while providing good compatibility for apps and travel.
Honestly, for me, it's the one-two-three punch of easy notes taken anywhere + podcasts + camera.
notes : before smartphones I carried a notebook in my pocket. And sometimes I still do; writing longhand is still pleasant for me, and being able to sketch and doodle with my notes is still clunky with a touchscreen, amazingly. But the experience of losing my notebook, or not having the right one with me when I need it, is disproportionately frustrating to me.
podcasts : this is one of the few ways my ADHD brain truly focuses. Listening to a podcast while walking, biking, running, driving, doing dishes, cleaning a room, mowing the lawn, etc. is almost foolproof in getting me to pay attention to the content. I have to be in the right mood to read, and videos are background noise to me after having the Discovery Channel or Scifi Channel on 24/7 in my apartment in college. Before smartphones I had a trusty RCA Lyra that went everywhere with me; and while the form factor and experience were fantastic, I now have a backlog of over 800 podcast episodes that would not fit on that device's 512MB internal storage. (Also, I just got a pair of noise canceling earbuds, and I have to admit I really like them)
camera : I've chosen my last four smartphones based on the camera quality. I've got kids, and being able to take adorable pictures of them at the drop of a hat is very useful to me. I don't need all the computational nonsense, but I do need it to be good enough and ever-present. Before smartphones, I would occasionally bring a digital camera around with me, but I can't afford one that would give me the quality I want, and it wouldn't fit in my pocket anyway.
Messaging, fitness tracking, and work stuff is also easier, though not in a way that I don't think I could backfill with other things if needed.
Nostalgia aside, the experience of these big three use cases is indisputably better with a smartphone than it was in 2005. Could I live without them? Yes! Absolutely. But I'd prefer not to, and since I shook my social media addiction I don't really feel the need to.
Well I had the displeasure of having to use a candybar style phone my mother was using cause it was 'easier' for her.
Ages to write a message
Very difficult to navigate through very similar SMSs (automated ones like electronic prescriptions) and pick the correct one based on date. Or even get an accurate broader picture of how many SMSs you received and when.
Did not setup email but I believe it would also be horrendous
But in my case, I disagree with the base premise of this post. The biggest anxiety and distraction caused by my phone is via phone calls. Asynchronous communications like sms and email are much better for me.
Whatsapp. That's the only fucking reason I'm not using a dumbphone. In Brazil, everyone uses it. Need to talk to a company? Whatsapp. Friends and family? Wpp. Book a medical checkup? Wpp.
There's also the problem of cell phone fees being abusive when calling/messaging people from a different company.
Pretty much because my smartphone is basically my digital Swiss army knife. Like even if I got a separate digital camera and MP3 Player, I also use it for navigation and to communicate with my parents and friends over signal, and like hell I am gonna give up signal. Add to that it's also my portable wifi hotspot when I'm out, my train tickets, and how I pay for things when I'm sans-purse, I don't know if I can give up my smartphone.
Would it be good for me to get off social media and to stop doomscrolling the news? Yes, but I can do that by going out and touching grass.
The main blocker is MFA. I can technically work around Google Authenticator (I use Aegis currently) because I can run it on my laptop, but I also need Okta verify (work VPN), Symantec VIP (bank), and the Steam app.
And some other very nice to haves:
Signal messenger
SSH client
Libby app
Organic Maps
I can find workaround for the rest.
That said, wouldn't it just be easier to uninstall the apps that cause distractions?
I haven't. I looked into it, and that's quite the drama. I like the name of CoMaps better, so I'll check it out. I see shared commits, but they seem to go to Organic Maps first and then I guess get cherry-picked onto CoMaps?
Precisely. I'd be more likely to switch to one of those pocket "hot spot" devices. Just a thing in my pocket that gives devices I control internet access and maybe has a shitty web interface I can log into for basic SMS when absolutely necessary. No microphone, no camera, no GPS, no access to my actual computing environment. Only 2 downsides are maintaining battery charge in multiple devices and the fact that those hotspots are generally hot garbage, and so unreliable.
Maybe, a flip phone if one existed that was 1) a full-time good quality internet hotspot (i.e., good battery), and 2) lacked a GPS and camera, and hardware disconnected the microphone when closed. Now that I think about it, that would be a fantastic device... if it existed.
I'm not a toddler so don't need help with "distractions" so nothing. That's like reverting computers to windows 95 just because modern operating systems can run Steam.
I don't even know where to begin. And I am not even going to bother, I am to old to keep explaining this shit. Don't even know why I replied as long as its clear you're giving mad neckbeard vibes
There are many reasons including neurodivergence that someone could benefit from external limitations. Infantalizing poor impulse control is ableist and condescending.
Nah I said nothing about disability. This notion that healthy adults need mental herding is very pervasive and has absolutely captured the pop tech culture.
This notion that healthy adults need mental herding is very pervasive
Need is a strong word, but it is very true that the environment you put people in will influence their behavior. Grocery stores filled with attractively packaged highly processed foods will drive more highly processed food consumption than if you had to show proof of age ID and sign a disclosure before being allowed into the back room to buy those same foods in plain brown wrapper containers blazoned with all the health warnings that apply to them.
Handheld screen tech delivers dopamine release as powerful as most recreational drugs / experiences. People are definitely "herded" by how that tech is delivered, default settings that most of them never take the time to learn how to change, other settings that annoyingly constantly reset themselves to undesired PAY ATTENTION TO ME configurations, etc.
So, yeah, mindfulness of how your devices are shaping your behavior is a "higher level of awareness" that we as a society should be collectively trying to attain.
I haven’t thought about switching mainly because I listen to music, books from the library and podcasts on it. I don’t want to go back to carrying 2 devices. But I mostly use my phone to look stuff up, check email, and music/books etc. I don’t really use social media on it.
It’s solving device addiction with another device. Sure it will be very interesting to investigate phone models to pick from. Indeed we are good at tricking ourselves. Creating “windows” with no phone at all works better for me.
Why would I want a device that I never use? I only make phone calls roughly 3 times per week. I message multiple times a day, but flip phones had shitty interfaces for typing. The vast majority of my phone use is web search, camera, navigation, and messaging. Flip phones could get better cameras than they used to have. Their screens were too small to do great at web searching. Navigation might work, I guess. Although I used to love my Treo and Pre for the full physical keyboard, I prefer swype typing now to tapping or physical keys.
Having a software authentication that can hold multiple keys for MFA. I’d love to switch to a dumb phone but that’s pretty much a requirement and I’ve never found a device for MFA that is as convenient for MFA
I was gonna buy one of those Lite phones, but it was expensive so I just deleted time-wasting apps and now my smartphone respects my time. Hardest part was getting people to just text me instead of various social media messenger apps. In the end, I deleted my accounts and now everyone from school thinks I'm dead, but those close to me can reach me easily. Sometimes I still binge YouTube via Firefox on my phone though, so I installed "Unhook" which blocks recommended videos, so I can only see what I search for.
I guess just remember that your smartphone can be dumb too. And still a lot more convenient than a flip phone.
I've been using a flip phone as my actual phone for a while now. I just find the tactility of being able to flip open the phone to answer, and flip shut the phone to hang up, is so much more satisfying that swiping on a screen. I do have my smartphone because I need WhatsApp and MFA for work related reasons, but I have no desire to be accessible 24/7, so if I'm out and about you can fuck off until I get back.
My smartphone isn't a phone with "extra" features to me. My smartphone is a portable personal computer with extra sensors, a GPS receiver, and wireless internet, which also happens to have a phone app. I don't want to carry an extra "dumb" phone. I would prefer my smart watch to be the communication and identity hub for me and my devices: holding the SIM card, acting as a wifi hotspot, routing calls and internet to my handheld brick or laptop, etc. Instead of acting like a third party add-on, it would be a mostly distraction free core. Let me use a smartphone, laptop, steam deck, cobbled together cyber deck, or whatever else have you as my local screen, storage cache, and/or proper desktop. Then I can put the screens down or leave them behind without feeling cut off or potentially stranded in a world that practically requires it to navigate with any ease. I want a smart watch that enables me to leave the house without car keys, driver's license, and credit cards; essentially with nothing but my watchphone. I want to be a cyberpunk Dick Tracy. What I want, with the freedoms and open standards I want, with the privacy I want, without being locked into a single monopoly walled garden, is probably a pipe dream. I want what is probably the next evolution of the "year of the Linux desktop". But a kid can dream.
My job. I have to answer emails in the field, I need GPS to get to job sites (they don't sell ADC map books at 7-11 anymore). I need to take pictures and respond to texts. I don't need these things but as a business owner I'd rather have the one smart box in my pocket than have to carry around the individual tools for reasons. Also, I carry a flip phone. It just happens to be an extremely smart flip phone (Razr)
Oh, and ParkMobile. I can pay for parking nationwide with my phone. And Audiobooks. and... well shit, I guess it doesn't end really. Sudoku while I poo for example.
Oh, oh, and also... why would I want to get rid of my smart phone? You meantion getting sleep. I don't use my phone in bed. Bed is for sleeping and sexy times. I don't do social media (unless you include this which is really just the modern version of channel surfing with chat attachment.) Maybe it's my age. I didn't grow up with screens like kids these days so to me it's just another tool. I'm responding to this on my PC not my phone.
Mainly my music. I’ve long thought about a dumb phone to avoid gps tracking everywhere as well as the spyware built in and the needless looking at it all the time. But music and podcasts need to come with me wherever I go. So I’d be carrying something akin to a smart phone around anyway. Doesn’t really side step the problem effectively.
Anytime your phone reaches out to towers it's being tracked. Hell, HAM radio operators can be tracked with gprs just by micing up. It's part of the reason I still have my license. The other is having a backup if I go somewhere with no phone reception. I don't have an ear for code but I can pump out SOS or scream mayday on all the frequencies (and yeah, of course it's a flashed handset, I will pay fines if it means mine or others lives are saved)
i don't want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn't that its "too smart", instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren't within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.
you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).
Aside from the Rotary Un-Phone, there are pretty much no dumb phones anymore. Those that market themselves as dumb are just reskinned full-fat platforms.
Even almost all flip phones are smart phones with a dumb skin, as they run either Android or KaiOS.
The main reason why I would switch is for device security - a true dumb phone OS that operates purely out of the ROM and has no ability to install anything that could survive a reboot.
And for something that primitive, it would be a flip phone on par with the Motorola StarTac. Simple black-on-green screen, low-res display, with a calendar and address book as the only non-phone, non-SMS functionality.
Well, I can buy a GPS map device. Cash payments are not much of a problem until the Govt. starts adding that extra tax on cash withdrawal from ATMs. I will need to wait for companies to grow a brain and stop using WhatsApp for work.
Buying train tickets, buying concert tickets, checking schedules for work or school or train times, communicating with people over something that isn't SMS or calls, taking nice photos on the go, listening to music.
Of course many of these would be solvable with a different device (handheld camera, mp3 player) or by buying tickets and checking schedules in advance, but the trade off isn't worth it for me
I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.
There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.
That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.
I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.
I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.
Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.
Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.
I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).
In a statement in the House of Commons on Thursday, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty said the decision came in the wake of the publication this week of emails Mandelson sent to Epstein in the 2000s, in which he gave his support to the disgraced financier even when he was facing jail for sex offenses.
Doughty said the emails showed that the “depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “materially different” from what was known when he was appointed ambassador to Washington last year after the Labour Party’s election victory.
On Wednesday, The Sun newspaper published emails that it said showed Mandelson telling Epstein to "fight for early release" shortly before Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Mandelson had corruption problems back in the Blair/Brown days too. He's a slimy middleman who thought it his job to keep Labour aligned with corporate interests. It was unfortunate that Starmer thought it a good idea to give him a job.
Hopefully this time he'll fuck off and keep his head down.
As an American, I look forward to when Americans fire Mr Trump after publication of supportive "shared secrets" to Jeffrey Epstein and illegal placement of Ghislane Maxwell into a country club prison
Against the background of relations between Russia and the West and the expiration of the START III (February 2026), issues of strategic stability are becoming more urgent. Although France and the United Kingdom are not parties to the treaty, they are actively modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
In July 2024, Paris and London agreed to establish a joint nuclear management group, strengthening coordination. Russia has stated that it will take into account the potential of these countries when assessing threats and negotiating strategic stability. The Russian Federation insists on the inclusion of London and Paris in the negotiation process.
Britain plans to spend 15 billion pounds on modernization. However, the Russian side points to the real risks of radiation incidents at the Clyde base in Scotland.
The world is entering a new nuclear race: all nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals. The United States and Russia are discussing new arrangements, including the involvement of China. Experts note that although Britain and France are modernizing, they do not have a large-scale build-up.
In recent years, the arms control system has seriously weakened — the INF Treaty and the DON Treaty have been severed, which makes dialogue in an expanded format especially important to prevent escalation.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum: Bring Them Home Now wrote on social media that Israel's strike on Qatar last week shows "every time a deal approaches, Netanyahu sabotages it".
The group's comments come after Israel carried out a strike on senior Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha, which Hamas said killed five of it members and a Qatari security official.
On Saturday, Netanyahu said getting rid of Hamas leaders in Qatar "would rid the main obstacle" to releasing the hostages and ending the war.
He also accused Hamas of blocking all ceasefire attempts in order to drag out the war in Gaza.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to Israel on Saturday and is due to meet with Netanyahu as Israel faces global condemnation for the attack.
However, families of the hostages described the Israeli PM's response as "the latest excuse for failing to bring home" their loved ones.
"The targeted operation in Qatar proved beyond any doubt that there is one obstacle to returning the 48 hostages and ending the war: Prime Minister Netanyahu," they said.
"The time has come to end the excuses designed to buy time so he can cling to power."
The group added that Netanyahu's "stalling" had cost "the lives of 42 hostages and threatens the lives of additional hostages who are barely surviving".
Before his departure, Rubio said US President Donald Trump was not happy with the strike on Qatar, but stressed that the US-Israeli relationship was "very strong"
The country now has more than 1,000 waste-incinerating power stations, representing more than half the world’s waste power capacity, according to the Global Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council.
That’s a good question, but, would the waste then be properly disposed of? It may not be incredibly efficient right now, but less trash is less trash, right?
The ships sending us Chinese goods have to return to China anyway. That’s why everyone was sending China their plastic to be “recycled”. Might as well just incinerate it.
What great news, the trash is just gone once you burn it and nobody has to think about that statement any further. One thing real quick: we don't need clean air for anything, do we?
It is possible to burn waste and manage the pollution in at least somewhat safe manner. Finland and Sweden do it reasonably well with high temperature furnaces and filtering the exhaust gases either with mechanical filter or trough water. That also (at least as far as I know) requires that you sort out the waste and don't burn stuff like electronics, metals and some other crap which can be effectively recycled and manage whatever remains properly.
So, it's possible, but I have absolutely no idea if China does that properly.
There are live pollution maps of the world if you need an idea if China does that properly but I‘ll have to warn you that you‘ll most likely be disappointed and somewhat terrified.
I meant that I don't know if these trash incinerators are managed properly. I'm well aware that in general there's a crapload of unmanaged pollution and a ton of other problems around, but like every other country China is slowly improving their stuff so it's not impossible that new plants would be up to modern standards.
I never met him myself, but I know a few people who have done way back. Site crew in Bristol mostly. Rip useless Paul who had one of his rats on the side of his trailer.
Our current government is the labour party, the one of the big two that is supposed to be more left leaning. They haven't been left leaning in twenty years, they crept to centrist and now the creep to the right continues. They're not dissimilar from the democrats in America. Internationally, there seems to be a general move towards the right and we are certainly following it. Demonstrations and activism don't seem to help. Shit is fucked, basically.
The UK government as effectively ignored all protests since the poll tax riots. The choice seems either start acting like the French or just sit down and shut up.
Yeah, and I've been on some actions that have kicked off, back in the day, fighting the lines of riot police. It was fun but achieved fuck all. Yeah we need many more people involved in aggressive protests. I don't know if that will help either, but at least we need to mobilise a broader section of the population.
If anybody is wondering, Tracer.ai is legit and operating at the instruction of Microsoft.
They’re an AI brand protection service which has been systematically harming Microsoft’s brand for a while. An example - getting YouTube videos about Minecraft removed, which has hindered Minecraft’s visibility online (which is a huge part of Xbox revenue). reddit.com/r/PhoenixSC/comment…
I do not understand why they want to remove minecraft videos.
Minecraft videos have been a huge part of it's growth... and it's impossible to imagine a scenario where these videos are harming MS or their brand. They already make money off of viewers buying the game... this is stupid
I do not understand why they want to remove minecraft videos.
For the same reason they went after the admin of the wrong instance asking them to delete the fake microsoft account - it's a dumb algorithm doing a shit job. That this is a separate company that is being paid while doing such a shitty job says a lot about microsoft
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said.
I get the sense they are sticking it more to entitled guys and potential mothers-in-law than the government! Just going off one friend's opinions there, though.
OK, I am not surprised, but that's not well known and kind of a taboo subject so not official, they were 'guidelines' and the policies were 'encouragement'. Canada did similar nasty abusive sterilization in its colonial enterprise until the '70s, but hardly anyone knows.
[from Cuba In Context - weekly newsletter of the Belly Of The Beast news/video collective]
From basketball to table tennis to girls' softball, Cuban teams have been blocked from competing in international tournaments on U.S. soil.
This week, journalists Dariel Pradas and Reed Lindsay take a look at the de facto travel ban on Cuban athletes that could include the World Baseball Classic and even the Olympics.
Also: * Former Trump officials make millions lobbying administration * Expedia dodges lawsuit over Cuba bookings * Trump keeps WWI law against Cuba in place * DoJ busts Florida smuggling ring
[from Cuba In Context - weekly newsletter of the Belly Of The Beast news/video collective]
From basketball to table tennis to girls' softball, Cuban teams have been blocked from competing in international tournaments on U.S. soil.
This week, journalists Dariel Pradas and Reed Lindsay take a look at the de facto travel ban on Cuban athletes that could include the World Baseball Classic and even the Olympics.
Also: * Former Trump officials make millions lobbying administration * Expedia dodges lawsuit over Cuba bookings * Trump keeps WWI law against Cuba in place * DoJ busts Florida smuggling ring
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has risen to a record high of nearly 100,000, its government has announced.
Setting a new record for the 55th year in a row, the number of centenarians in Japan was 99,763 as of September, the health ministry said on Friday. Of that total, women accounted for an overwhelming 88%.
Yes. Universal healthcare is highly correlated with life expectancy even when controlling for a shitload of other variables. This is like the host studied thing on the planet and the science is not controversial.
According to the new preprint, clerical errors, pension fraud, and a lack of birth certificates explain blue zones and their above-average numbers of centenarians.
When billionaire Bill Ackman suggested on Twitter that Eric Adams could “place a large [Polymarket] bet on Andrew Cuomo and then announce [his] withdrawal” from the New York City mayoral race, he described something that feels profoundly illegal. A politician profiting from non-public knowledge of their own withdrawal from an election surely crosses some line — insider trading? Market manipulation? Election interference? Illegal gambling? Ackman ended his tweet: “There is no insider trading on Polymarket” — not because it doesn’t happen, but because it won’t be charged. He’s right: the Securities and Exchange Commission’s insider trading rules don’t apply here. But that leaves the question: what rules, if any, do?
As Ackman says, prediction markets fall outside the SEC’s jurisdiction,a living in a different regulatory world than stock markets where executives get prosecuted for trading on non-public earnings or tipping off friends about upcoming mergers. Unlike crypto’s ongoing turf wars between regulators, prediction markets have a clear home: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees futures, swaps, and other derivatives trading. A farmer worried about a poor wheat harvest can buy futures contracts that rise in value if wheat prices increase, helping to offset the money lost from selling less grain. An airline can buy oil-based futures contracts to offset the risk of jet fuel costs rising, effectively letting them budget fuel at today’s prices even if market rates climb before delivery. Some derivatives markets more closely resemble prediction markets, dealing in events rather than commodities — for instance, ski resorts can hedge against poor snowfall by trading weather-based contracts.
While farmers hedging wheat prices serves a clear economic purpose, prediction markets operate in murkier territory. When people trade on sports games or celebrity relationships, are they engaging in legitimate derivatives trading deserving the same regulatory treatment? Or are platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket essentially gambling sites operating under the veneer of financial markets? And with participants potentially losing big money to better-informed insiders, who’s ensuring these markets stay fair? What happens when prediction markets collide with other issues — from market manipulation to gambling addiction to election integrity?
Prediction markets once lived on the academic fringe. Now they’re trading billions on politics, sports, and celebrity gossip — under rules never designed for retail gamblers.
More than 200 contractors who worked on evaluating and improving Google’s AI products have been laid off without warning in at least two rounds of layoffs last month. The move comes amid an ongoing fight over pay and working conditions, according to workers who spoke to WIRED.
In the past few years, Google has outsourced its AI rating work—which includes evaluating, editing, or rewriting the Gemini chatbot’s response to make it sound more human and “intelligent”—to thousands of contractors employed by Hitachi-owned GlobalLogic and other outsourcing companies. Most raters working at GlobalLogic are based in the US and deal with English-language content. Just as content moderators help purge and classify content on social media, these workers use their expertise, skill, and judgment to teach chatbots and other AI products, including Google’s search summaries feature called AI Overviews—the right responses on a wide range of subjects. Workers allege that the latest cuts come amid attempts to quash their protests over issues including pay and job insecurity.
These workers, who often are hired because of their specialist knowledge, had to have either a master’s or a PhD to join the super rater program, and typically include writers, teachers, and people from creative fields.
Rep. Sarah McBride [D], the only openly trans member of Congress, voted in support of "Honoring the Legacy" of Charlie Kirk
"scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" isn't some saying born out of ignorance or a failure to understand nuance, it is painfully accurate. when McBride won her election i lost a friendship after scoffing over her victory because of her Zionism and commitment to Israel. apparently, as a non-binary trans person, i should simply shut up and count her win as a trans goal reached.
today i am vindicated. didn't take long, did it? not even a full year in office and she has shown her true colors. she is incapable of protecting us from Christian authoritarianism because she is a willing participant in its takeover. Charle Kirk spent the last few years demonizing people like her and myself, dehumanizing LGBT Americans, and encouraging the spread of theocratic interpretation of our laws and allegiance to Trump. the rise in younger sycophants and MAGA loyalists can be directly attributed to Charlie Kirk's popularity and closeness to the Trump administration. Kirk was not a mere mouthpiece or figurehead; he wasn't some YouTuber or online guy popular with the kiddos. he was a massive political organizer, and the amount of lies Kirk spread about trans people was immoral, irresponsible, violent, deadly, and deserving of reaction.
Kirk blamed transgender Americans for everything from inflation to moral decay. while appearing on a radio show he wrapped up a comment involving queer people with the following: “someone should’ve just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and '60s." Kirk also referred to Leviticus 18 as "God's perfect law" when attempting to point out how another Christian was cherry-picking which passages of the Bible to follow (Leviticus 18 calls for stoning gay people to death if you read it as such which Kirk does). and here, transgender Rep. McBride [D], is voting to honor this man; a man who would have her killed through violent stochastic actors operating within the MAGA cult and general conservative fascists at large.
the fear and outrage Charlie Kirk was directly responsible for has done incalculable damage nationwide. McBride is offering the genocide of her own minority group if it keeps her protected and in power. she cannot be trusted and should be shunned by all. she is cowardly and will not help you. i have to leave my state because of the validity people like her are giving transphobic bigots like Kirk.
CHESS thin-film materials nearly double refrigeration efficiency compared to traditional methods. Scalable and versatile, they promise applications from household cooling to space exploration.
I have uploaded the photos I took during yesterday’s Norwin Band Festival to my Smugmug page. Feel free to check them out! I will be editing photos of each group and posting them to my Flickr account over time.
Mozilla has always aimed to make Firefox available to as many people as possible, including those on older Android devices. For years, we’ve supported versions of Android going all the ...
'Congresso inimigo do povo' esteve entre as hashtags mais usadas entre os dias 16 e 19. Reação negativa à proposta levou alguns deputados a pedirem desculpas nas redes após votarem a favor do texto
In Mainz müssen wirklich alle Kalender kaputt sein, oder die Programmplanung läuft noch auf einem PC unter Windows 3.11… denn das war das Betriebssystem zur Zeit der Produktion dieses Films. Wie nur, kann ein Mensch den genau auf das Ende des Sommers programmieren, wenn er doch am 2. Februar spielt? Also mitten im Winter. Was kommt als nächstes, „Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel“ zur Sommersonnenwende? (ZDFneo)
In Mainz müssen wirklich alle Kalender kaputt sein, oder die Programmplanung läuft noch auf einem PC unter Windows 3.11... denn das war das Betriebssystem zur Zeit der Produktion dieses Films.
Deestan
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