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in reply to schizoidman

Just as Republicans are hamstringing our republic. Someday we’ll find out why they all co spired to debase our security and standing in the world, but by then we’ll be neck deep in dead soldiers from WWIII and we won’t have time to reflect.



German army chief says contact with US military cut off by Pentagon


cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/39664905

Lieutenant General Christian Freuding fears the longstanding military partnership between the two allies is unravelling under President Trump’s administration

The Pentagon has “cut off contact” between American defence officials and their German counterparts, according to the head of Germany’s army.

The United States has traditionally treated Germany as one of its most important European allies. It is thought to have about 35,000 soldiers stationed at German bases such as Ramstein and Stuttgart, which serve as staging posts for American operations across Africa and the Middle East.

Since President Trump’s return to power in January, the relationship between the countries has become markedly cooler.

in reply to Stamau123

Imagine how that must feel for Germany. First, they decide they want to tie Russia down to eternal peace by dangling infinite oil and gas riches in the face of Putin, and he decides to hell with riches, he wants WAR!

Then they have this relationship that lasted for 80 years with a former occupying nation that they submitted to and obeyed. They braved nationwide dissent over that nation stationing nuclear missiles on its peace-loving soil. They criminalized everything that nation disliked. As recently as (checks notes) now they supported a genocidal regime because they were told that's the thing to do.

And now all this sensible foreign policy blows up in their face, and they did nothing wrong, except bet on the crazy horses.

I mean, it beats BEING the genocidal regime, or - worse - being the target of the genocidal regime. But it does give one the impression that being sensible is not all that it's cracked up to be.

in reply to Stamau123

Trump is planning a pincer attack on Europe, Putin to the East and US to the West.

in reply to silence7

Exactly, for those who can't keep up with the events, the issue is that Ruzzia has been pushing their luck and EU itself is getting tired of the Ruzz "mosquitoes", ie the many many on-going hybrid atacks incl. drones, fires, sabotage etc. This is ON TOP of the intensified atrocities by Ruzz in Ukraine and other places fyi. Time to do something, many in Europe think. From the NYT article, the European pov:

"Concern that sabotage is growing ever more dangerous has led some European leaders not just to blame Russia for hybrid activity more frequently but also to talk more openly how they will defend themselves.(..)

“This is a lot about ‘Now, Russia is at war with the West,’” said Charlie Edwards, a hybrid-warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former intelligence and security strategist for Britain. “That’s an important change.”(..)

Every time NATO and the E.U. don’t do something, the credibility of the alliance is questioned,” Mr. Edwards said, “for the simple reason that there seems to be no obvious, public response.”

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to silence7

Russia has almost certainly been conducting a drone campaign in Europe resulting in warehouses exploding for example. So those accusations are correct.
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)


Tuvix - Self-Hosted RSS Aggregator




Home server / NAS scaling


Currently I'm thinking again about setting up a home server. But I am unsure about the scaling. In the hope to get some input from experienced users I'm coming here.

Services that I intend on running:
- TrueNAS SCALE
- Jellyfin
- *arr stack
- Immich
- Nextcloud
- Bitwarden (maybe)

I've read the Jellyfin documentation which states i5-11500 (because the toolkit for 7-10th gen is deprecated, even though you could encode H.264/H.265) or newer for CPU based encoding or at least a GTX 1660. Because electricity is quite expensive here, I'd prefer CPU encoding. On the other side, office systems with 11th or newer gen are far more expensive. I've found a i5-6500, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1660 system for 180 Euro incl. shipping.
There are a few 7th-9th gen systems with 16 GB RAM available that use on board graphics and are 80-120 Euro excl. shipping but I'm not sure if they suffice running the mentioned services and maybe a few more I don't know about yet.

I have two WD Red and a WD Green lying around, I'd like to use. From what I've heard so far, it's necessary to use a separate drive to run TrueNAS off of, which I'd need to buy separately.

Maybe you can give me some insights. Thanks.

in reply to Senseless

What about using Intel ARC GPUs for encoding as they are all kinda made specifically for it, I don't use jellyfin but I got an Intel ARC B310 Eco used for like $45.

Looking at current prices it seems like it's around $120 now, was cheaper last year, but I still recommend looking into Intel GPUs.

in reply to Shady_Shiroe

I looked into it before but this will get a lot more expensive here. I'm currently mostly looking used HP, Dell or other office PCs.

The Jellyfin doc states that

Intel ARC B series cards require ReBar to be enabled. This means you must use it on a platform with Intel 10th gen, AMD Ryzen 3000 series or newer.


Europeans accuse Putin of feigning interest in peace after talks with US envoys


Ukraine and its European allies accused Vladimir Putin on Wednesday of feigning interest in peace efforts after five hours of talks with U.S. envoys at the Kremlin produced no breakthrough.

The Russian leader “should end the bluster and the bloodshed and be ready to come to the table and to support a just and lasting peace,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged Putin to “stop wasting the world’s time.”

The remarks reflect the high tensions and gaping gulf that remain between Russia on one side and Ukraine and its European allies on the other over how to end a war that Moscow started when it invaded its neighbor nearly four years ago.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-peace-talks-putin-witkoff-aa639c6ba85c4fc6d5a07c65e72e96d8

in reply to MicroWave

I’m just utterly baffled why the whole damn European continent appears to be willfully ignorant of how consistently Russia operates in bad faith - particularly considering how long its been going on for.
in reply to Riddick3001

The fact that it took Russia attempting to fully annex a relatively enormous neighboring country not once, but twice (2014; 2022-????) kinda proves my point
in reply to gravitas_deficiency

So your thinking is something like:

because Ukraine was invaded in Crimea in 2014 and there after, in 2022 there was the full-blown invasion; you conclude that Europe is willfully ignorant of Russia being badfaith actor and that therefore Europe still naively believes that Ruzzia has peaceful intentions? Weird conclusion.

EU started with sanctions after Crimea was annexed. So no, Europeans didn't think Russia had peaceful intentions. Also there is the shooting down in 2014 of a passangerplane MH17. So again, no.

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in reply to Riddick3001

No, my thinking is “it’s been nakedly apparent what kind of person Putin is, and how he and the oligarchic mafia that he initially aligned with and then suborned, have not only taken complete control of the Russian federal government apparatus writ large, but also have been trying to subtly undermine the social and geopolitical fabric of pretty much the entire western world since he orchestrated his own rise to power with false-flag terrorism executed against his own country”.
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to MicroWave

One of these days they’ll realize that putting restrictions on the weapons given to Ukraine is playing into Putins hands. They’re so fearful of “escalation” when Putin’s already escalated.

Putin knows opening up a second front by attacking another former SSR would force the rest of the world to acknowledge what they already know - that he has no interest in any peace he hasn’t solely dictated - and actually respond to the obvious threat. So, he’ll play the war of attrition against Ukraine, Trump will fellate him, Europe will do little, he’ll rebuild his army and go after the next former SSR. Rinse, repeat. Modern leaders have no stomach for dealing with a bully like Putin. Or even a stupid Billy like Trump.


in reply to Lucky_777

Probably the only option for holding any of them accountable as everyone in the admin will get a blanket pardon.
in reply to Lucky_777

A lot of the difference between this administration and previous ones is how much they don't care about hiding their crimes. It's gotta be surreal for Chelsea Manning to see the president post the same type of video bombing civilians that she went to federal prison for leaking.

We have been treating non American lives as subhuman for a long time.

in reply to Lucky_777

I swear to god if the next administration pulls the "now is the time for pulling together and healing" instead of prosecuting, I'm going to be rip shit
in reply to frongt

That's probably exactly what will happen, if by some miracle this administration ends any time soon
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)


Deep-sea search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to resume


Malaysia's transport ministry said Wednesday that the deep-sea hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will resume Dec. 30, renewing hopes of finally locating the jet that vanished without a trace more than a decade ago.

The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

The transport ministry said in a statement that U.S.-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity will search intermittently from Dec. 30 for a total of 55 days, in targeted areas believed to have the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.

in reply to HellsBelle

This is an incompetent waste-of-resources, worse than pointless.

That flight's pilot had rehearsed turning once outside of land-radar, to prevent the crash-site from being discovered,

flying over the sea,

& then slamming into the sea,

on his home flight-sim, I've read.

Why bother pouring another few $million into pretending that the aircraft "went missing", when it was intentionally destroyed by the pilot?

I don't know what motivated his mass-murdercide ( "murdercide" term coined by New Scientist, for suicide-bombers ), but we need to stop pouring our finite-resources into pointless idiocies,

when there are such great needs for the living, here & now.

( XOR we're pushing ourselves closer to a species-wide DarwinAward, this-century,

which may be what the real aim is..

obliterate our viability, then pretend that we're "not responsible" for our non-survival, right?

Bah.

Make all such wasting-of-resources be paid-for by volunteer-financers, & then maybe there'd be moral-basis for it.

But when general taxpayer basis is either paying-for, or subsidizing, idiotic wasting-of-opportunity, then it's abuse/wrong. )


Sorry for being bitter,

_ /\ _



It's the Christmas light video again - 2025 edition


in reply to lemmy_st3v3

Like

Or this one?



Cosmonaut removed from SpaceX's Crew 12 mission for violating national security rules: report


A Russian spaceflyer was pulled from SpaceX's next astronaut mission for violating U.S. national security regulations, according to a media report.

This morning, The Insider reported that Artemyev, 54, was apparently removed from Crew 12 for violations of ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), a U.S. law that seeks to safeguard national security by restricting the dissemination of sensitive information and technology.

"The cosmonaut allegedly photographed SpaceX documentation and then 'used his phone' to export classified information," The Insider wrote (in Russian; translation by Google), citing the work of launch analyst Gregory Trishkin.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/cosmonaut-removed-from-spacexs-crew-12-mission-for-violating-national-security-rules-report

in reply to MicroWave

Thank goodness. He might avoid getting blown up by Musk’s incompetence then.
in reply to Leon

What are you on about? Crew Dragon might be the most reliable ride to space ever.

All of SpaceX’s bullshit with Starship is completely separate from Dragon/Falcon9.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to Pennomi

I’d say they probally represent a common perception of Musk and SpaceX these days. Not everyone has time to pay attention to everything they do, but lots of rocket explosions make headlines.

You’re not wrong, I’m just pointing out why the misperception is understandable, and probally common.

in reply to Pennomi

Musk haters arent usually the brightest bunch...

Edit: yeah, I know everyone around here likes to hate on Musk, thats how I know, and my point stands. Bring all your downvotes and hate. It helps prove a point.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to Socialjusticewarrior

Being bright or not has nothing to do with it. Both intelligent people and less-intelligent people have excellent reasons to hate Musk.

Regardless of that, Falcon 9 is exceptionally reliable.

in reply to Pennomi

Ok. But that just sounds like...

intelligent people and less-intelligent people...


...Are capable of hating someone that they have never met and will likely never meet. For reasons that won't ever substantially effect them anyway. And imagined violations of principles.

I dont think we are on the same footing... you seem to need to know very little about some to be able to hate them... I dont think we understand hate the same way...

Fact: Your hate negatively affects you more than the person youre hating, in this case Elon Musk.

Edit: typos

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to Socialjusticewarrior

Fuck off, bot. 2 day old acct and you're already spouting "I'm an OG" bullshit? To the front lines with you.
in reply to MicroWave

I'm subscribed to his YouTube channel, the guy just likes to show off how cool space stuff is.

m.youtube.com/@OlegMKS/videos


in reply to Matt

Have you been living under a rock? Session has always relied on a crypto backed peer-to-peer network.



China floods the world with gasoline cars it can't sell at home


  • China's industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles
  • Fossil-fuel vehicles accounted for 76% of China's auto exports since 2020 with annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely >6.5 million in 2025

Web archive link

China's electric vehicle (EV) industry captured half its domestic market in just a few years, crushing sales of gasoline-powered vehicles from once-dominant global automakers.

But foreign players were not the only losers. Many Chinese legacy automakers also watched their sales collapse – and responded by flooding the world with fossil-fuel vehicles they could not sell at home.

While Western policymakers have focused on the threat of China's heavily subsidised EVs, protecting their markets with tariffs, US and European automakers face greater competition from China's gas-guzzlers in countries from Poland to South Africa to Uruguay. Fossil-fuel vehicles have accounted for 76% of Chinese auto exports since 2020, and total annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely more than 6.5 million this year, according to data from China-based consultancy Automobility.

...

The boom in China's gasoline-powered exports is driven by the same EV subsidies and policies that wrecked the China businesses of automakers including Volkswagen, General Motors (GM) and Nissan by underwriting scores of Chinese EV makers and igniting a devastating price war, a Reuters examination found. The phenomenon highlights the far-reaching impacts of Chinese industrial policy, as foreign competitors struggle to keep pace with government-backed firms chasing Beijing's goals to dominate critical sectors nationally and globally.

...

China's gasoline-vehicle exports alone – not including EVs and plug-in hybrids – were enough last year to make it the world's largest auto-exporting nation by volume, industry and government data show.

...

Chinese carmaker SAIC's exports – mostly of its own brands, without [former joint venture partner] GM – soared from nearly 400,000 annually in 2020 to more than a million last year.

Dongfeng's exports of nearly 250,000 vehicles last year, up almost four-fold in five years, proved critical as sales of its China partnerships with Honda and Nissan entered a "downward spiral," said Jelte Vernooij, Dongfeng's Central Europe manager.

Dongfeng's annual global sales have fallen by a million vehicles since 2020, to less than 2 million, company filings show. Yet Vernooij is not worried about Dongfeng's future – because it has Beijing's backing.

"The fact that we're state-owned is key," he said. "There's no question that we will survive."

...

China's top auto exporter is Chery, whose global sales rocketed from 730,000 vehicles to 2.6 million between 2020 and 2024. Chery, which has both state and private owners, grew annual exports over the period by about a million units – relying mostly on the gasoline-powered vehicles that comprise four-fifths of its sales. China's top 10 exporters include five other state-owned automakers and two private ones, Geely and Great Wall Motor (GWM), that also sell more gasoline vehicles than EVs.

...

Only two of China's top 10 auto exporters focus exclusively on battery-powered vehicles. One of them is US electric-car pioneer Tesla. The other is BYD, which sells only EVs and plug-in hybrids.

...

Chinese automakers' rush to export gasoline cars can be traced to government policies that created a glut of factory capacity to build them.

China's rapid EV growth idled assembly lines capable of producing up to 20 million gasoline-powered cars annually, estimates Automobility CEO Bill Russo. Such unproductive overhead raises costs, pressuring automakers to repurpose capacity for exports.

...

[Chinese] automakers got cheap EV factories financed by [Chinese] cities and provinces eager to demonstrate development.

"Local governments even prepare the land and build the factories, allowing companies to 'move in with just a suitcase,'" said Liang Linhe, chairman of Sany Heavy Truck, among China's largest truck makers.

The result: massive overcapacity. At a March EV conference, Su Bo, China's former vice minister of industry, urged regulators to promote the conversion of gasoline-car factories to build battery-powered models. He estimated China's industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles – far more than its domestic market needs.

...

in reply to Sepia

China could literally solving world hunger and the US press would complain about it being a plot to ruin US farmers.
in reply to anarchiddy

It would be, though not just US farmers.

Any country that sends large amounts of food, clothes, etc. as aid wrecks the domestic production and sustainability. Why would anyone work to establish a farm or textile production when you can get imported rice or castoff T-shirts for almost nothing?

Same as when Nestle gives away just enough free baby formula for the mother's milk to stop, so then they have to keep buying formula. If China (or any other country) drives an industry into the ground, then the community is dependent on the imports.

in reply to frongt

A perfect example of how and why capitalism creates and entrenches poverty.
in reply to Sepia

Blessed be the AliExpress empire. May the orange dragon rule for all of eternity


How unsustainable global supply chains exacerbate food insecurity


...

Brazil accounts for more than half of the world’s soybean trade. About 70% of that goes to China for use as animal feed. It is also the world’s second largest corn exporter, mostly for animal feed and biofuels.

Such exports have enriched Brazilian agribusiness, but they have undermined domestic food production. This is negatively affecting the food security of poorer communities. Between 2010 and 2022, soybean production increased by over 100% while rice production fell by 30%. The production of other basic food crops also fell.

Domestic food prices increased faster than general inflation, and low-income families have experienced food insecurity and have cut their food consumption.

...

Global supply chains are designed and operate as systems of production and trade that reward profitable exports, rather than combatting food insecurity. They often direct resources away from where they are needed to where they are profitable.

When right-to-food systems are established to tackle food insecurity, as in Belo Horizonte, they must cater to their local context. Policies such as subsidised food consumption and production, plus coordinated distribution are all ingredients required for tackling food insecurity.

in reply to Sepia

This is a bit of a catch-22, isn't it? And I'm saying this as someone that grew up poor and lived in communities where people lived on $1 a day. This isn't the solution it thinks it is.

Poverty rates in urban areas mean that a lot of people who are food insecure live in places distantly removed from where food is grown. Even in Brazil. The crops spoken of here are popular specifically because they travel well, store well, are cheap to mill, and common commodities so a bag of rice from Thailand can go to Brazil or the US or Nigeria or France or India and everyone knows what to expect. But other than high value crops like flowers, cocoa or coffee, it's exceedingly rare that large numbers of farmers grow crops that they don't consume even a bit themselves or sell locally. Post-harvest waste products for most staple grains are their own market, and plenty of broken rice makes it to the market for sale as well. I'm not saying this is a perfect or good system, just that it hits a lot of very basic human desires that do, in fact, feed most people on earth already.

A right to food system is nice, but it's expensive, especially as populations continue to urbanize. Many countries subsidize agriculture, focused on smallholder farming, because it's a cheap way to get votes and funnel things like fertilizer contracts to your friends.

If this was such a good idea, the logical conclusion is to just make exports of edible products illegal and only allow imports. Flood your own markets with food that would be so cheap no one would bother farming it because the inputs alone would run you at a huge loss.




Which SBC for TV streaming?


I'm looking to get a something to plug in to my TV for streaming jellyfin and streaming games. Criteria:

  1. can play 1080p h264 from jellyfin without transcoding
  2. can stream 1080p 60hz games via steam link / moonlight
  3. low power consumption so it's not a big deal if I leave it on
  4. runs an open OS (raspian etc)
  5. wifi and bluetooth
  6. hdmi output
  7. ideally less than ~150 AUD (100 USD)

Thanks in advance! Any tips around remote control and/or home assistant integration for it would also be welcome.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to unit327

Not sure if this counts as SBC, but maybe you should try to find a used GMKtec G5. It is tiny and these usually have N97 and 12gb of DDR5. New one goes for 139 where I am at, so maybe it is fair to try to find used one for cheaper.

Alternatives: minis with N5059, N95, N100, N150 are all priced similarly.

in reply to imetators

minis like the N100 when you are using it to do things has a lot more ability and uses a similar amount of watts (or can do a lot more for more for just a bit more watts). However when the box is just sitting there with the power on but otherwise doing nothing it uses more power than ARM based single board computers. So the real question is how much will they want to do when they are using it, and how often will that be. If they are watching movies/playing games for 16 hours a day the mini PC is the better answer and won't really cost more energy to run. If they are leaving this on, but only using it for a couple hours per month than a device that uses less watts will save money.
in reply to bluGill

4W rpi5 versus 7W n100 on idle is not a big of a difference. I admit that rpi5 would be around half as cheaper to run but even with really high electricity price, difference is minuscule. Your average wifi router would utilize around the same amount of energy as N100 minipc.
in reply to unit327

The Le Potato AML-S905X-CC has h.264 and h.265 decoders up to 4k, emmc connector So you don't have to run off an SD card. I've used it as a media player and its pretty damn solid. I can't speak to streaming games because I don't do that, so I don't know if it's a different format. It does not have a powerful processor, so if the stream is encoded differently I wouldn't expect it to be very good.

Its pretty old, around rpi3 performance, but having the decoders in there make it better than the RPI 4 for playing those types of videos.



Deadly Hong Kong fire raises suspicions of corruption, lax safety as fears rise about safety elsewhere in Hong Kong's high-rise skyline


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46626951

Archived

Uncomfortable questions are being raised over who is to blame for Hong Kong’s deadliest blaze in decades.

As the territory mourns over the high-rise apartment fire that killed at least 156 people, anger and frustration are mounting over building safety lapses, suspected construction corruption and lax government oversight.

But bigger issues are at play. Some political analysts and observers say the tragedy could be the “tip of an iceberg” in Hong Kong, a city whose skyline is built on high-rise buildings. Suspicions of bid-rigging and use of hazardous construction materials in renovation projects across other housing estates have left many worried the disaster could be repeated.

[...]

Seven of 20 additional samples collected later from the site failed to meet safety standards [...] Some fire alarms failed to sound when the fire started, residents and officials said.

[...]

“It did open a Pandora’s box,” said John Burns, an honorary professor of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.

“You’ve got all of these issues which have been swept under the table,” Burns said. “Because of all that we now know -- or believe we know -- about bid-rigging, collusion, corruption, no fire alarms, government negligence, all of these things have come out.”

[...]

The Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong warned that the city’s tough national security law would be imposed against “anti-China” forces who use the fire to “incite hatred against authorities.”

The disaster may overshadow an election Sunday for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council if angry voters stay away, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a locally based political scientist and a senior research fellow at Paris’ Asia Centre think tank. Turnout for such votes is scrutinized by Beijing as an indicator of approval of the semi-autonomous territory’s “patriots-only” governance system.

“The question for the Hong Kong government is: do they care about what the people think?” Burns said. “They absolutely should. (And) if they ignore public opinion, I think, on this issue, this is a huge mistake.”



Hong Kong: Children of jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai voice new alarm for their father's health, saying his condition continues to deteriorate


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46627203

Archived

[...]

Lai, who turns 78 next Monday, has been behind bars since late 2020 as China clamps down on the financial hub to which it promised a separate system when Britain handed it over in 1997.

Lai, a diabetic, has been kept in solitary confinement without air conditioning in a jail where summer temperatures rise to 44 Celsius, his children said.

"He has lost a very significant amount of weight, visibly, and he is a lot weaker than he was before," said his daughter Claire Lai, who left Hong Kong after seeing her father several months ago.

"His nails turn almost purple, gray and greenish before they fall off, and his teeth are getting rotten," she said while on a visit to Washington, where the family is seeking to rally support for her father.

[...]

After learning he enjoyed curry sauce, "instead of having extra curry sauce, he has no curry sauce at all," she said.

"It's little things like that that are extremely petty," she said.

[...]

He faces at least 15 years in prison — effectively a death sentence — on charges of foreign collusion related to mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 against Beijing's encroaching power.

[...]

His son Sebastien Lai voiced hope that both U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer would keep raising with China the issue of his father, who is a British national.

"It will take two hours to put my father on a plane and send him away," Sebastien Lai said.

"It'll be the humane thing to do; it'll be the right thing to do," he said. "They've already put him through this hell."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/03/asia-pacific/politics/hong-kong-jimmy-lai-family/



Radar revelation stokes fears Caribbean could be drawn into US-Venezuela crisis


cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42924622

After being pressed by reporters, Persad-Bissessar admitted on Friday that at least 100 marines were in the country, along with a military-grade radar, believed to be a long-range, high-performance AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR, which the US defence company Northrop Grumman said was used for air surveillance, defence and counter-fire.

The prime minister claimed the radar installation in the country, which is only seven miles away from Venezuela at its closest point, is part of a counter-drug trafficking strategy, and that she had withheld details in the interest of national security and to avoid alerting drug traffickers.


in reply to floofloof

Of course not! That's crazy.

If all the regional neighbors also got dragged in then that would mean that when the US went into Iraq that Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.....

Oh, never mind.

in reply to floofloof

I truly fucking hate the USA.

Edit: I'm s

Imjust playing, erica youknow ilove u

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)


Macron heads to China for talks with Xi on trade ties and Russia's war in Ukraine


France is aiming to attract more investment from Chinese companies and facilitate market access for French exports. During the visit, officials from both nations are expected to sign several agreements in the energy, food industry, and aviation sectors.

https://apnews.com/article/macron-visit-china-france-trade-7ae4b7cf75ac07173e5ff412f7fcb1f2

in reply to schizoidman

Germany's foreign minister to visit China next week, as EU prepares to toughen up on trade

The European Union is expected to toughen its trade stance on China next month, with signs that Germany - the EU's largest member and economy - is aligning with the shift and that the 27-member bloc may be sufficiently united to push through policy changes that deepen ties with like-minded trading partners ...

China's weaker economy and its move up the value chain of industrial production means it is no longer the reliable market it once was for German exports.

But Germany still remains a key investment partner for China, which is struggling to attract fresh funds as its post-COVID recovery struggles for momentum ...



The Rise of Chile’s Hard Right


in reply to acargitz

Tbh the venezuelan migration has been detrimental for certain south American countries.

The citizens need the problem solved.


in reply to acargitz

"Morality? Huh? Why bother, just make the immoral legal!" - Western civ circa forever
in reply to YappyMonotheist

It's very much a matter of degrees and there's no doubt that Israel is much higher on the immorality scale, compared to most other ("civilised Western" or not) countries.

Also, as a monotheist - presumably of one of the larger denominations - you are throwing stones in a glasshouse here.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to A_norny_mousse

Do you think I condone horrible things done "in the name of God"? As if God asked us to just be horrible to each other, lol. Those are them, this is me, as long as I don't follow or cosign it, I'm clean. And so is any Westerner that denounces these things the way I just did. 👍
in reply to YappyMonotheist

Do you think I condone horrible things done “in the name of God”? As if God asked us to just be horrible to each other, lol.


What about the bibble?

in reply to A_norny_mousse

It's a collection of books, at least half if not more of them clearly state their author,(and none of them say "this is God, btw"), and the foundation of many faiths, what about it? It's a pretty cool collection!
in reply to acargitz

Can't hurt to quote a bit more:

— joining Adalah’s existing list of now more than 100 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens.

One of the report’s central findings is a sweeping assault on freedom of expression, thought, and protest across a wide array of arenas. It includes laws prohibiting the publication of content that includes “denial of the events of October 7,” as determined by the Knesset, and restricting broadcasts of critical media outlets that “harm state security.”

Another authorizes the Education Ministry to fire teaching staff and withdraw funding from educational institutions based on views it considers expression of support for, or incitement to, a terrorist act or organization. And alongside a state-led campaign to deport international solidarity activists, a third law bars foreign nationals from entering the country if they have made statements critical of Israel, or have appealed to international courts to take action against the state and its officials.

But perhaps the most dangerous bill is one that targets citizens who merely seek to consume information from sources the state doesn’t like. Just a month after October 7, the Knesset passed a two-year temporary order — renewed last week for another two years — that outlaws the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization,” carrying a one-year prison sentence. In other words, the legislature now criminalizes conduct that takes place entirely within a person’s private space.


All happening silently while the public is busy wrapping their heads around more overt government activity. Sound familiar?


in reply to 🏴حمید پیام عباسی🏴

Oh look the wizards of the coast are holding the orbs for magic the gathering together. They are highlighting great deck color combinations too.
Right? Right?


Selfhosted alternatives to Discord with screensharing?


Been trying to figure out a user friendly alternative that I can get my less technical friends to transition to. We all use Signal already for messaging but it just doesn't fulfill our screenshare needs.

Most important feature it needs is the ability to screenshare with system audio, such as for streaming games or watching videos.

I'd ideally also like it to be E2EE just for the sake of privacy and security.

From what I've read and looked into it seems the closest thing that meets my needs would be Teamspeak 6 as you can host it yourself, and with the new update it now allows screenshare with audio (either as P2P or via server).

As far as I can tell chat messages don't persist by default but it can be enabled (and this would be a feature my friends would really want too).

I currently have a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ but I'm aware it's a bit old and is ARM so I'm thinking of buying a Pi 5.

Do you think I'm on the right track here or are there any other options this community would recommend?

in reply to sCrUM_MASTER

I really love all my various Pis but at the moment there are so many refurbished servers available (thank Windows 11) as well as several small form factor x86 PCs that a Raspberry Pi 5 sadly is on the lower end of performance/cost.
in reply to sCrUM_MASTER

I use self-hosted Jitsi for screen share, although this is just video conference software without the IM aspect of Discord. (Jitsi does have IM to be clear, but it's a chat tied to a particular meeting, not like a persistent groupchat.) You could just use Signal chats as you have already been doing and send Jitsi links when you want to call. Jitsi has E2EE although I'm not up to date on the details of how it works.


Be Your Own Privacy-Respecting Google, Bing & Brave


… by running your own instance of the free and open-source federated metasearch engine SearXNG on OpenBSD!
… by running your own instance of the free and open-source federated metasearch engine SearXNG on OpenBSD!


DNS over TLS with LetsEncrypt


blog.hardill.me.uk/2025/12/06/…

6 months ago LetsEncrypt announced that they would start issuing certificates for IP addresses. Last week I was curious if they had actually enabled it yet for general consumption, it turned out to be not yet available for everybody, but there was a forum thread you could ask to be added to the testing list (I’ve not linked to it as they have said no more testing, it will go live RSN).

When it […]

#certificates #DNS #DoT #letsencrypt



Need guidance on DNS configs for VPS/Pangolin


Good morning/evening my selfhosting friends, I’m kind of a noob, so hopefully I can articulate what I’d like to accomplish well. I am currently in the process of overhauling my entire homelab, which has involved me setting up a VPS as a proxy/tunnel for

Good morning/evening my selfhosting friends,

I'm kind of a noob, so hopefully I can articulate what I'd like to accomplish well. I am currently in the process of overhauling my entire homelab, which has involved me setting up a VPS as a proxy/tunnel for remotely connecting to/exposing services on my LAN due to my ISP having me behind CGNAT.

Currently, I have a subdomain (provided via Namecheap) pointed at the static IP of the VPS. With this, I can ssh into my server with ssh root@vps.domain.tld which is what I want. Now, I seem to have landed on Pangolin for accomplishing the aforementioned proxy. However, when installing it, I'm stumped by the first few questions: Pangolin wants me to input my domain.tld, followed by pangolin.domain.tld for Pangolin specifically.

Reading the docs, they then want me to either create an A Record for a wildcard domain at my VPS' IP, or create a root domain record aimed at the IP. My question is, how do I keep the vps.domain.tld while also allowing for pangolin.domain.tld to be valid at the same IP? I know I can create SRV Records, but I am unsure how Pangolin will handle that with the multiple TCP/UDP ports it needs open. I'll also want to access it via HTTPS obviously, which may add some complexity.

I hope this makes sense, sorry if anything is unclear or if the solution is obvious.

in reply to marighost

You can have multiple (sub)domains pointing to the same IP, no issue there.

So you can still have your vps subdomain AND another one for Pangolin. That's effectively how Pangolin itself works, assigning multiple subdomains to itself, so it can route the requests to other machines. It just does it without adding records to the DNS provider, it just listens to anything that gets sent to its IP through the wildcard address (unless you make Pangolin your DNS provider, that is).

Also, the wildcard (sub)domain will always have the lowest priority, so if there are ANY records pointing somewhere, they'll have precedence over the wildcard.

So, your DNS should contain three A records: one for vps, another for Pangolin, and a wildcard, all pointing to the vps address.

Hope this helps!



disable-javascript.org


An initiative that informs users about some of the most severe issues affecting the JavaScript ecosystem, and explains how to disable JavaScript in various browsers and only enable it for trusted websites.
An initiative that informs users about some of the most severe issues
affecting the JavaScript ecosystem, and explains how to disable JavaScript in
various browsers and only enable it for trusted websites.


in reply to RandAlThor

It's funny because xitter is also a hotbed for Zionists. It'll be fun to see how they seemingly ignore actual antisemitism by the rich, but go after people defending human rights for people in gaza.
in reply to 0_o7

They won't care because they're busy boycotting Lush for trying to help amputee children from Gaza.
in reply to 0_o7

Zionism? The ideology that fundamentally is based on the belief that Jews cannot safely exist anywhere except in a global ghetto built on ethnonationalism and apartheid? Touching tips with antisemites? Naw, not possible!
in reply to RandAlThor

People whining like a bunch of unhinged crybabies because Ms. Rachel says that murdering children is bad.

Where are they on this?



Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn


As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.


Archive: archive.today/uZB13


Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn


As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

💡
Do you have a tip to share about age verification? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.

The other states include Louisiana, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Montana, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Arizona, and Ohio.

“As you may know, your elected officials in Missouri are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” DeVille says in the video. On the blocked homepages there’s also a link to an explanation of the “Restricted to Adults,” or RTA label, which porn site administrators place on their sites to signal to device-based parental controls that the websites are inappropriate for minors.

Like most of the other 24 laws across the country, Missouri’s age verification law requires websites containing more than one third of material that’s considered “harmful to minors,” or sexual content, to perform age verification checks. Similar or more restrictive laws have swept the country since Louisiana became the first state to enact age verification legislation in 2023.

Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet
Invasive and ineffective age verification laws that require users show government-issued ID, like a driver’s license or passport, are passing like wildfire across the U.S.
404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg


Age verification laws reach beyond porn sites, however. In Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi and Ohio, where the laws are written broadly enough to cover social media sites and any platform hosting adult content, Bluesky users have to submit to a face scan by the third-party company Yoti or upload a photo of their credit card to verify they’re over 18 years of age. In July, Bluesky started requiring all UK users to verify their ages in response to the Online Safety Act. We’ve previously reported on the security risks in uploading sensitive personal data to identity verification services, including the potential for hackers to then get ahold of that information themselves. In October, after Discord started requiring UK users to verify ages, the platform announced hackers breached one of its third-party vendors that handles age-related appeals, and said it identified around 70,000 users who may have had their government ID photos exposed as part of the breach.

Last week, Pornhub’s parent company Aylo sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft, urging them to support device-based age verification in their app stores and operating systems, WIRED reported. “Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,” Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo, said in the letter. “However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”

Instead of protecting minors, age verification laws spike usage of virtual private networks and send users—including, potentially, minors—to unregulated or unmoderated sites that don’t care about complying with U.S. or UK laws. In Missouri, searches for VPNs spiked following the law’s enactment.

Missouri schools are not required to teach sex education, leaving it up to local school boards to decide what, if anything, children are taught about sexual health. School districts that do teach sex ed are required to promote abstinence, a modality long recognized as ineffective at protecting children from engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Even if a district offers sex ed, parents are allowed to pull their kids out of that class altogether. But despite research showing age verification laws don’t work either, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway believes forcing adults to undergo age verification protects the children in her state. “We are proud to stand on the side of parents, families and basic decency. Missouri will not apologize for protecting children,” Hanaway said in a press release.


in reply to Mediocre_Bard

Except those who control the narrative will not face consequences for harmful messages they spread. For example, the trump administration spreads a lot of anti-trans messaging. They've been going after the funding of schools for what they deem "CRT and radical gender ideology" (thehill.com/homenews/education…). Now imagine they go after online commentators which will be super easy because they've got their real names attached to their posts.
in reply to hark

I get what you're saying. However, I don't think that the solution to that is hiding identities online, but rather killing the politicians.



Iran: Leaked wedding video lays bare luxurious lives of the country’s political elite and highlights hypocrisy of Islamic Republic -- [Opinion]


A short video of a private wedding went viral in Iran recently, tearing away the country’s veil of piety and exposing hypocrisy and a seeming disregard for the rules by which the theocratic regime requires that most Iranians live their lives.

The wedding in question was that of Fatemeh Shamkhani, in mid-2024. She is the daughter of Ali Shamkhani, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, at the luxurious Espinas Palace Hotel in Tehran.

She wore a low-cut strapless dress with a western-style bridal veil rather than the full head-covering mandated for Iranian women. Many wedding guests also wore modern western styles and a lot of the women went without head coverings.

The video displayed images that were starkly dissonant, revealing the significant class and moral divides within the Iranian Republic and contradicting Iran’s values of revolutionary simplicity and Islamic modesty.

[...]

That it was Shamkhani’s family wedding made matters worse. A former commander of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, he is a key power broker in Iran, who has the ear of Khamenei himself. He was also involved in the savage crackdown on the public protests in Iran in recent years, in defence of the same security and morality laws his family was seen so lavishly violating at the wedding celebration.

[...]

The emerging ruling elites maintain their wealth through oil revenue, state contracts and shadow economic activities – that enable them to evade sanctions (the Shamkhani family was identified and sanctioned earlier this year by the US treasury as controlling a vast shipping empire involved in transporting oil from Iran and Russia in breach of US sanctions). .

[...]

Since the 1979 Revolution, Iran has maintained its legitimacy through its mission to reshape public conduct by enforcing rules such as hijab requirements and sex segregation. The state maintains complete authority to regulate female bodies.

So the Shamkhani wedding, with its ostentatious luxury, its low-cut gowns and lack of head coverings felt to many Iranians as showing complete disregard for laws that the regime’s “morality police” uses to enforce strict rules on ordinary women. The rules exist to control, but they do not apply to those at the top of the tree.

This incident is significant in the context of the “woman, life, freedom” protests of recent years. These were sparked in 2022 by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who had been arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. Since then, many Iranians, particularly young people, have openly defied the hijab law.

[...]

in reply to Hotznplotzn

Tangentially related, but theres a reason why Pakistan's field marshall has the internet nickname of "Hafiz Whiskey"


Ukraine war: Russia hands 11-year sentence to 57-year old Ukrainian midwife in occupied Ukrainian territory for having 'pro-Ukrainian views’ and supposed spying


cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42893848

Web archive link

The Russian occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ has sentenced Larysa Malovychko, a 57-year-old midwife from Enerhodar, to 11 years for ‘pro-Ukrainian views’ and supposed spying. According to Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov, Larysa Malovychko was abducted back in September 2023 and held prisoner for some time both in Russia and in occupied Crimea.

Russia has imposed a near total information blockade on most occupied territory, with next to nothing more known about Malovychko, or her so-called ‘trial’. The verdict was reported on the so-called ‘court’ Telegram channel on 20 November 2025, with nothing to indicate how many (if any) hearings there were, before the predetermined guilty verdict and 11-year sentence.

...

‘Spying’ or ‘treason’ charges have become extremely common since Russia first launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Such ‘trials’ are held behind closed doors, with convictions and long sentences guaranteed. Both men and women are targeted, and there are also no bars as far as age is concerned. Very young people have been seized and, later, sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, for example, when they were underage, while equally horrific sentences have been passed against Ukrainians in their 70s. This is all of particular concern given the very real danger of being subjected to torture in Russian captivity.

...

In June 2025, 74-year-old Oleksandr Markov from Enerhodar died in Russian captivity. He had been abducted on 8 May 2024, with his family knowing nothing about his whereabouts until March 2025. It was only then that they learned that a fake occupation ‘court’ had sentenced the 74-year-old to 14 years in a maximum-security [‘harsh-regime’] prison colony on ‘treason’ charges.

Dmytro Orlov reported then that at least 26 other residents of Enerhodar were illegally held in Russian captivity, including seven women. 13 of them are employees of the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, with Russia having begun abducting and torturing employees soon after it seized control of the plant in early March 2022. It is quite possible that the real figure is much higher.

...



China cracks down on calls for accountability over deadly Hong Kong blaze


cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42893098

Chinese authorities have arrested several activists and issued a stern warning to “anti-China and pro-chaos elements” amid criticism of the government’s response to Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in a generation.

...

[Among ohers] authorities arrested Miles Kwan, a 24-year-old student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after he created an online petition calling for greater transparency and accountability from the government, multiple reports said.

The petition included four demands, including the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to probe the circumstances of the fire, including whether potential conflicts of interest may have contributed to the disaster.

Before it was removed from the internet on Saturday, the petition had garnered more than 10,000 supporters.

...

China’s national security office in Hong Kong appeared to condemn the petition before its removal, accusing activists of using “the banner of ‘petitioning the people’ to incite confrontation and tear society apart.”

Hong Kong’s Office for Safeguarding National Security also accused figures with “sinister intentions” of exploiting the fire to return the city to the “black-clad violence” that erupted during mass antigovernment protests in 2019.

On Monday, a commentary in the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper called on the public to be vigilant against “anti-government elements” with “malicious intentions”.

“They have even gone so far as to ‘act as representatives’ to establish a so-called ‘concern group,’ put forward so-called ‘four demands,’ distribute leaflets, and launch a petition, all in an attempt to incite public unrest,” the commentary said.

...



Japan and China trade accusations after coast guard incident in disputed waters


Japan's coast guard said two Chinese coast guard patrol ships entered Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in the early hours of Tuesday, and left a few hours later.

The Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, have been a regular flashpoint between the two nations over the decades.



China draws in Europe’s businesses despite alarm over competition


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/54194025

archive.is/1hnqw
“Today, it’s not competitive any more to bring [products] into China when there’s local competition,” said Conrad Keijzer, chief executive of Swiss chemical maker Clariant.

The company is spending SFr180mn ($226mn) expanding its plant in China’s Daya Bay petrochemical hub, where last year Germany’s BASF and Shell also announced big investments.

German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen, for example, recently announced job cuts of 7,600 in Europe by 2030, less than a year after announcing its latest expansion in Shenyang, north-eastern China. Automotive parts maker Schaeffler, which told state media in China it planned to double its business in the country in six to seven years, has announced the closure of some of its European operations and gross job cuts of 4,700.

French engineering group Schneider, Danish power-train maker Danfoss and wind turbine maker Vestas and pharmaceutical companies including Swiss drugmaker Roche and AstraZeneca have all also recently announced China expansions or factory upgrades.




Ireland: 'Aggressive response' needed as cyber threats aligned to states like China and Russia pose “significant threat” to national security, cyber agency says


cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42887934

Web archive link

The accelerating cyber threats facing Ireland demands “an aggressive response” by the State, according to the country’s cyber bosses.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said criminal cyber gangs and hackers, aligned to states like China and Russia, pose a “significant threat” to Ireland’s national security.

This is because Ireland is a host to some of the world’s largest tech providers and cloud computing facilities as well as the worsening geopolitical situation and the threat posed to Europe resulting from Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

The centre said it “regularly observes state-aligned threat actors carrying out scanning and other reconnaissance activities” targeting Irish government and State-owned networks.

...

Publishing its 2025 National Cyber Risk Assessment, the NCSC said Ireland was at risk from cyber attacks on “shared critical infrastructure”, such as gas and electricity pipelines connecting Ireland to the UK and France.

...



To grow, we must forget… but now AI remembers everything


With OpenAI’s memory upgrade, ChatGPT can recall everything you’ve ever shared with it, indefinitely. Similarly, Google has opened the context window with “Infini-attention,” letting large language models (LLMs) reference infinite inputs with zero memory loss. And in consumer-facing tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, this means persistent, personalized memory across conversations, unless you manually intervene.

The sales pitch is seductively simple: less friction, more relevance. Conversations that feel like continuity: “Systems that get to know you over your life,” as Sam Altman writes on X. Technology, finally, that meets you where you are.

In the age of hyper-personalization — of the TikTok For You page, Spotify Wrapped, and Netflix Your Next Watch — a conversational AI product that remembers everything about you feels perfectly, perhaps dangerously, natural.

Forgetting, then, begins to look like a flaw. A failure to retain. A bug in the code. Especially in our own lives, we treat memory loss as a tragedy, clinging to photo albums and cloud backups to preserve what time tries to erase.

But what if human forgetting is not a bug, but a feature? And what happens when we build machines that don’t forget, but are now helping shape the human minds that do?



One fire, two systems: Hong Kong's grief meets Beijing's red lines


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46579107

Archived

[...]

It was [...] the speed at which the fire tore upward [in Hong Kong] that led a 24-year-old university student to launch a petition demanding an independent investigation.

He barely had time to gather signatures before police arrested him for "incitement".

The message was clear: Even grief had boundaries, and asking questions was now a political act.

From that moment, sorrow gave way to anger. And the city's fault lines — rights versus sovereignty, people versus power — snapped sharply back into focus.

[...]

The blaze [...] did more than destroy homes. It revived one of Hong Kong's most visceral fears; that lives can be reduced to collateral in a system that no longer listens.

What should have been a moment of collective mourning instead widened the fracture between Hongkongers demanding accountability and a government increasingly shaped by Beijing's doctrine that sovereignty sits above all else.

And this time, the anger was not directed at local officials alone — it was aimed squarely at Beijing.

For many residents, the horror of the fire lay not only in the ferocity of the flames but in the recognition that everything they had worked for — homes bought with decades of savings, belongings accumulated through sacrifice — could be erased in a night.

Hong Kong's housing crisis has long fed collective anxiety, but this disaster struck its deepest nerve. In a city where ordinary families already struggle with extremely unaffordable flats, even the illusion of safety can no longer be taken for granted.

The sense of betrayal deepened when Beijing issued a warning not to let "a disaster disrupt Hong Kong", reinforcing the belief that the state prioritised protecting its authority, not its people.

[...]

The unease grew when volunteers and NGOs who rushed to help the displaced were abruptly ordered to leave the site.

Many had been distributing food, locating documents, offering emotional support. Suddenly, they were told to withdraw on Sunday.

For many Hongkongers, the scene was familiar. A compassionate response — neighbours helping one another — had become politically sensitive.

Authorities appeared to fear that the disaster zone, with swelling crowds and rising frustration, might become a gathering point for something larger.

In a city still haunted by 2019, solidarity itself had become suspect.

Inside Wang Fuk Court [the place of the fire], residents were not surprised that the fire spread so fast. Some had long questioned whether the scaffolding nets used during a renovation met flame-retardant standards.

Others filed complaints as early as 2023, warning of fire risks.

A contractor even wrote to the Fire Services Department requesting clarity on safety requirements — letters that, residents say, went unanswered.

[...]

The arrest of the petition organiser — paired with the removal of volunteers — made something unavoidable: the space for Hongkongers to demand answers, or simply to show up for one another, has been quietly but steadily erased.

Under the national security regime, the line between civic action and political threat has blurred beyond recognition.

What used to be routine — filing complaints, demanding accountability, launching petitions, helping neighbours — now carries an implied risk.

Beijing's insistence that sovereignty cannot be challenged has reshaped even the vocabulary of disaster. A call for answers can be reframed as agitation. Grief can be interpreted as defiance. Volunteerism can be treated as "gathering".

[...]

For residents, the questions were immediate and practical. Why did the alarms fail? Why did the nets ignite so quickly? Why were earlier warnings ignored? Who will take responsibility?

For authorities, the questions were political. Could public anger spill into unrest? Could demands for accountability turn into mobilisation? Could crowds at the disaster site grow into something larger? Who must be monitored — not who must be heard?

This is why, for many, the fire now stands as a symbol of something larger — a reckoning not only with safety failures but with a governance model that asks citizens to trust a system that no longer feels accountable to them.

While officials have pledged support for displaced residents, the shift toward a political narrative has been unmistakable: The arrest [of the 24-year old petitioner], the "care teams", the warnings about "disruption".

[...]

In the days after the blaze, residents sifted through ash — passports, wedding photos, a child's cherished toy — fragments of lives interrupted.

But the emotional landscape of the city was shaped by a different kind of loss: The erosion of faith that the system exists to protect them, not to discipline them.

Beijing may want the flames in Tai Po to fade quickly. But what they revealed may not.

in reply to Hotznplotzn

What a politically charged article. It claims that the fire conceens were unaddressed when the first 3 arrested were executives tied to failing to have the building up to code, something I've never seen before.


Swiss government urges people to ditch Microsoft 365 and others due to lack of proper encryption


Swiss data protection officers have warned public bodies not to use cloud services from industry hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, due to a lack of true end-to-end encryption.

This comes as many SaaS vendors, especially those falling under the US Cloud Act, could be required to hand over data to US authorities, even if it’s stored in Switzerland.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/swiss-government-urges-people-to-ditch-microsoft-365-and-others-due-to-lack-of-proper-encryption

in reply to Sahwa

That's like quitting Spotify now because you just realised it still doesn't offer decent sound quality. It's far from the only reason to quit using it and not a very good one.
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)


Devastating toxic spill seen as test of whether African countries can stand up to China


Even before the dam collapsed, Lamec did not feel safe working at the copper mine.

"If our work protective gear gets damaged, it is not always replaced," he tells us. "We have to take a risk and use it again."

He is talking to the BBC in a car on a quiet backroad near a village in northern Zambia, too nervous to speak to us in public or to use his real name, for fear that speaking to the press might cost him his livelihood.

When he turned up for his shift one day in February, he tells us, he found that one of the dams at the Chinese-owned mine had been closed.

The tailings dam - used to store toxic by-products from the copper mining process, including heavy metals like arsenic, mercury and lead - had collapsed into a tributary connected to the Kafue, Zambia's longest river and a major drinking water source.

At least 50,000 tonnes of acidic debris spilled out into the surrounding waterways and farmland, according to the government. Some environmentalists, however, claim as much as 1.5 million tonnes was spilled, with one expert saying a full clean-up could take longer than a decade.



Suspected members of neo-Nazi terror group arrested in Spain


Police in Spain have arrested three people on suspicion of belonging to the Base, a global neo-Nazi terrorist group that incites and trains members in techniques to overthrow governments and bring about a race war.

The group, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is part of a worldwide “accelerationist” white power movement that prepares its cells to carry out violent and destabilising attacks.

In a statement on Monday, Spain’s Policía Nacional said the three arrests, made in the eastern province of Castellón, had enabled them to dismantle the first accelerationist terrorist cell detected in the country.

Officers seized two firearms, replica guns, ammunition, knives and tactical military training gear, as well as accelerationist material and neo-Nazi paraphernalia.




Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days


Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028. This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by
Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028.
This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which set the technical requirements that we must follow. All publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities like Let’s Encrypt will be making similar changes. Reducing how long certificates are valid for helps improve the security of the internet, by limiting the scope of compromise, and making certificate revocation technologies more efficient.
in reply to artiman

Shit like this is why building websites is no longer fun for me like it was back in the 90s and 2000s. There's way too much security shit to worry about now.
in reply to Psythik

Like what?

SSL is so simple and automatic with certbot.

Then there's CORS if you really need to load resources from other sites, but you won't need that for small sites.

Making the backend is easier than ever. It's much harder to make security mistakes nowadays.

And if you don't know what you're doing, just ask an LLM if you made any fuckups..



Email client that imports labels as tags instead of folders on Linux (and Android)


Problem Statement

I'm in the process of de-googling, and I'm about 60% there, but I still need gmail for the things that I cannot or have not yet migrated.

I've also recently experimented w/ the Thunderbird app for both Linux and Android, and it's okay. One thing that really irritates me is the fact that when I import my emails from gmail, all my labels are handled as folders in Thunderbird. This is an issue b/c I have rules to help organize incoming email by assigning one or more labels. I believe Thunderbird has the concept of tags, but by default Thunderbird routes gmail labels to folders instead of tags.

Question

Is there a mail client on Linux (and Android) that handles labels from gmail as tags instead of folders? Alternatively, is there a setting in Thunderbird that will use tags instead of labels that I'm just not aware of?

I've tried searching DDG, but came up with nothing useful beyond other posts on other social media websites asking similar questions.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 settimana fa)
in reply to Ardens

Agreed, this is where I'm at as well.

What I've had in place for the last decade or more made sense to me once upon a time, but it's over engineered and of limited usefulness.

Despite the potential technical solutions offered in other comments, I've resolved to go through and clean up my email history, including deleting stuff I no longer need and reconfiguring how I assign labels to incoming messages in gmail in order to make sense to my current self and play nice with the folder system, which seems to be more industry standard anyway.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 settimana fa)
in reply to curious_dolphin

I can only applaud it. And a nice cleanup once every decade feels good too. 😀


Filen free plan. Any good?


I was looking for a Google Drive alternative. Its mainly for storing small documents. 10GB is Filen's limit on their free plan. Its more than enough.

But I am concerned about their privacy. Have anyone used it? I am ready to pay for a really good service but if they are giving it for free than I why should I pay if they are private enough?

They also have paid ones but they are an overkill for me. I mainly use offline HDD backups. These are for some quick access files. I don't need an app or anything. Simple web login would be fine.

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Canadian air passenger traffic to U.S. down for 9th consecutive month


For the ninth consecutive month, fewer passengers at Canadian airports are heading to the United States amid the trade war.

New data from Statistics Canada shows total Canadian air passenger traffic in October was up by 4.5 per cent to five million travellers from the same time last year, but the number of people on U.S.-bound trips is down 8.9 per cent to 1.2 million travellers.

in reply to Sahwa

Everyone considering visiting the US should ask themselves some serious questions: is my visit so important that it’s worth the risk of being jailed for years? What if I unknowingly break an insignificant law and catch ICEs attention? Do my skin color/religious beliefs put me at greater risk of abuse? What are the possible repercussions for the people I’m visiting, and my loved ones back home?

They can talk about numbers being “down”, but frankly, 1.2 million is WAY too fucking many.



How I discovered a hidden microphone on a Chinese NanoKVM


in reply to Retro_unlimited

No critical thinking I guess. How the hell would a KVM flash your BIOS or more likely UEFI.
in reply to Auli

It could probably change the language selector.

If I'm an elite hacker spy who works for the hacker spy division of the Chinese army, am I going to change the system language of the thing I am hacking to Chinese and forget to change it back?



Samsung reveals first tri-fold phone


Samsung reveals first tri-fold phone #
phonescoop.com/articles/articl…
in reply to YaGirlAutumn

Because when you break it, the repair costs will keep funneling money back to them. I guess.