‘A new form of genocide’: Gazans feel little relief from Israeli strangulation since the ceasefire
cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6952364
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1196…
Most Palestinians in Gaza say they don’t feel the relief they expected after the ceasefire. Israel keeps blocking aid into the strip, delaying reconstruction efforts, and leaving hospitals short on supplies, while people go hungry every day.
From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.
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As AI Data Centers Disrupt US Cities, Wisconsin Woman Violently Arrested After Speaking Out
cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6952495
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1191…
Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million "Lighthouse" data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.
As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.
"We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here," said Le Jeune. "Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it."
Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, "Recall, recall, recall!" at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.
Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.
She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.
Last night, the Port Washington Police Department used excessive force to arrest a woman for speaking up against the Vantage data center.We are thankful that this local advocate is safe, and we condemn the Port Washington PD’s actions in the strongest possible terms. SHAME! pic.twitter.com/35dhEKvojL
— Our Wisconsin Revolution (@OurWisconsinRev) December 3, 2025City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.
But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she had been surprised by the police officers' demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.
The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers' actions.
"I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange," she told the Journal Sentinel. "Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: 'Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce."
State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that "police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on."
William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, "I've never seen a response like that in my life."
"What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they're being ignored and they're being dismissed by their elected officials," he said.
AI data centers, he added, "will impact you. They'll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years."
After Le Jeune's arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.
"We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center," said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”
“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve," she added.
Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, "Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs."
Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for "steady-state operations."
Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center's impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers' electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
As AI Data Centers Disrupt US Cities, Wisconsin Woman Violently Arrested After Speaking Out
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1191…Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million "Lighthouse" data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.
As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.
"We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here," said Le Jeune. "Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it."
Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, "Recall, recall, recall!" at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.
Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.
She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.
Last night, the Port Washington Police Department used excessive force to arrest a woman for speaking up against the Vantage data center.We are thankful that this local advocate is safe, and we condemn the Port Washington PD’s actions in the strongest possible terms. SHAME! pic.twitter.com/35dhEKvojL
— Our Wisconsin Revolution (@OurWisconsinRev) December 3, 2025City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.
But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she had been surprised by the police officers' demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.
The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers' actions.
"I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange," she told the Journal Sentinel. "Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: 'Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce."
State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that "police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on."
William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, "I've never seen a response like that in my life."
"What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they're being ignored and they're being dismissed by their elected officials," he said.
AI data centers, he added, "will impact you. They'll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years."
After Le Jeune's arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.
"We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center," said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”
“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve," she added.
Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, "Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs."
Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for "steady-state operations."
Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center's impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers' electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
From Soaring Energy Prices to Climate Threat to AI Bubble, Experts Warn Against Data Center Buildout
“Tech giants are cutting backroom deals with utilities and government officials to build massive data centers at breakneck speed, while passing the costs onto working families," said the author of a new Public Citizen report.stephen-prager (Common Dreams)
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A personal tribute to the Movement for Struggle in Neighborhoods
cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6952498
Amidst the growing economic and social crisis that plagues the working people, the Movement for Struggle in Neighborhoods, Villages and Slums (MLB) has consolidated itself as one of the main expressions of popular organization in the urban peripheries of Brazil. Born from the heart of the poor and exploited people, the MLB shows, in practice, that only organized struggle can achieve victories and confront the power of the rich and the governments that serve them.Since its founding, the movement has demonstrated tireless combativeness in defending the right to decent housing, urban land, and the city for those who live and work in it. In every occupation, every assembly, and every street action, the MLB reaffirms its position of class independence, refusing to bow before the interests of the bourgeoisie or false electoral promises.
In the urban occupations that are flourishing in dozens of cities, the MLB (Movement for the Struggle for Housing) transforms the abandonment and misery imposed by capitalism into spaces of resistance and solidarity. Where there were once vacant lots and abandoned buildings, today communities full of life, hope, and political awareness sprout. There, the people learn, in practice, the true meaning of popular organization and collective power.
More than fighting for housing, the MLB builds popular power. In its ranks, men and women of the people take the destiny of their lives into their own hands, discuss politics, decide collectively, face evictions and repression, and remain steadfast in the struggle for a new society, free from the exploitation of man by man.
In a country where unemployment, hunger, and eviction are weapons of social control, the MLB stands as a symbol of resistance and hope. Its strength lies in the unity and combativeness of the poor people, who no longer accept living on crumbs.
A personal tribute to the Movement for Struggle in Neighborhoods
Alberes Simão | A Verdade Nov. 13, 2025 | Translated from Portuguese for the Red Phoenix | Brazil– Thanks to the example of the Movement for Struggle in Neighborhoods, Villages and Slums, the…The Red Phoenix
The criminalization of HIV is a form of state punishment – Scalawag
On July 4, President Trump signed House Resolution 1,119th Congress (HR 1), also known as the deceptively titled "One Big Beautiful Bill. Included in its provisions are significant tax law changes, increased funding for immigration control and national defense, and spending reductions affecting Medicaid and a large number of other federal programs. In fact, HR 1 would give $75 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and $45 billion to expand its detention centers, with a total of $170 billion dedicated to immigration enforcement and "border security." The increase would allow the government to detain up to 100,000 individuals at a time. At the same time, HR 1 would cut federal Medicaid spending over a decade by an estimated $911 billion and increase the number of uninsured people by 10 million. This would mean the 31% of Latinx people and 21% of Black people who utilize Medicaid would be at risk.The administration disguised the bill as a way to give the middle-class tax relief, secure the border, and protect Medicaid from undocumented immigrants. The bill is a thin veil for the government's war on immigrants and trans people, even when undocumented immigrants are largely ineligible for Medicaid benefits and state laws vary on Medicaid coverage for transgender healthcare. It is a clear example of under-resourcing our communities' access to preventive care and treatment, which opens the door to further criminalization of particular health conditions and other negative effects on well-being.
During recent deliberations of Medicaid cuts and potential HIV/AIDS funding cuts in Louisiana, a Democratic lawmaker sought to criminalize additional sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HPV and HSV, using the state's HIV exposure law. As introduced, HB 76 would have made "intentionally" exposing another person to an "incurable sexually transmitted disease" a felony. However, neither "intentionally" nor "incurable sexually transmitted disease" was defined in the bill, which left an incredibly broad scope of criminalization possible without proof that a person specifically intended to transmit any disease or did in fact transmit an STI. Though the bill failed, it was presented as justice for survivors of sexual assault and interpersonal violence, as well as a solution to the prevalence of STIs in Louisiana.
The criminalization of HIV is a form of state punishment
When health resources are held hostage to punish marginalized communities, it only proliferates criminalization and vulnerability.Kytara Epps, MPH (Scalawag)
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New Community Rule: "No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports."
Due to the large number of reports we've received about recent posts, we've added Rule 7 stating "No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports."
In general, we allow a post's fate to be determined by the amount of downvotes it receives. Sometimes, a post is so offensive to the community that removal seems appropriate. This new rule now allows such action to be taken.
We expect to fine-tune this approach as time goes on. Your patience is appreciated.
Consolidating communities into super communities
I think one of the issues with federated forums like Lemmy is that multiple communities of the same name can exist on different instances. I do think that overall that's a good thing, as it encourages the decentralized governance of communities, depending on the instance, but it also leads to a general fracturing, since you may only be subscribed to one of the many instances of a particular community, and need to subscribe to all of the ever growing list of communities with that name if you want to see all posts across the fediverse.
I'm not even sure if it would be possible, but what I am suggesting is the ability to consolidate all communities of a particular name into a single super community. So for example this post would show up in the super feed of the larger fediverse community, and rather than subscribing to a single instance, such as fediverse@lemmy.world, you could subscribe to just a single super community called "c/fediverse", which would allow you to both view all posts in those communities with that name at the same time, and see all of those posts in your feed as well.
Addressing a couple issues I could foresee, this could be an opt in system, such that communities are not automatically consolidated into the super community feed without consent, but they could check a box when setting it up to make it possible. Also, if a user or instance is blocked from another user or instance, posts from that community would need to still not show up in the super community feed.
Does this make sense? Is it even technically feasible? What sorts of obstacles exist to implementing something like this?
Edit: As commenters below note, Piefed allows this already, and lemmy will as well with 1.0
github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/p…
Multi community support by dessalines · Pull Request #3521 · LemmyNet/lemmy-ui
This PR adds the ability to : Create and edit multi communities Add multi community entries Display multi communities on your sidebar Display multi communities created on use profiles The /m/multi...GitHub
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As a pretty new user to PieFed (and Lemmy), I still find those combined feeds ("Communities") confusing. It helped with discovery, but feels like I have been mass-subscribed and now need to unsubscribe each community individually. (I'm sure this is not the case and I just haven't figured out how it works yet.)
In contrast, the cross-post feature (mentioned by sibling comments) was easy to understand, and looks like a great way to discover (and loosely connect) small related communities.
@wjs018@piefed.social See!? SEE?!
Lol, I've specifically directly bought this up in conversations about this. Don't worry. I don't think the auto-subscribing to all the communities in a topic is a good idea.
So what a new user is presented with are topics, not feeds. The only difference is that topics are handled at the instance level - by site admins - and have more visibility and populate the "Related Communities" feed. Where-as feeds are the same thing, but user-made. Click here to see them.
I think you can unsubscribe from whatever topics you subscribed to here, and it should auto-unsubscribe you from those communities.
Parola filtrata: nsfw
I can confirm that this is something @Skavau@piefed.social has brought up in the past on multiple occasions. It's an issue that I am sympathetic to, but so far it hasn't been a high priority for us to take the time to try to address. One of the biggest complaints we see people have about the threadiverse in general is that there isn't enough content; that their feed gets stale too quickly. So, having more subscriptions hasn't necessarily been seen as too much of a "problem" from my perspective.
What I did work on was making it easier to unsubscribe from communities. If you filter the communities page to just communities you are subscribed to, it should be a simple matter of clicking the buttons to unsubscribe to undesired communities. It used to reload the page each time, which made that task immensely tedious.
Frankly, now that Skavau has a third party backing up their position, they will be insufferable about it until we try to fix it 😜
No we are a long way off from a 1.0 release yet.
No we are a long way off from a 1.0 release yet.
Having the option might be handy, but federation is the goal.
Besides, moderation rules might differ by instance. It should remain fully a choice.
I think some kind of "pod" system would be nice where similar posts/crossposts could be visually grouped together like a "pod" of dolphins all surfacing on your feed together in a natural flowing way (randomly assigned color coding maybe?). Seeing one dolphin surface after another should feel like cohesive movement of a pod and any one post should link towards other dolphins in the pod not currently visible too.
You could then as a user "pod" a post by linking it with another post and the resulting feed of newly "podded" posts could itself be a browsable "pod feed".
Obviously a different word than pod may be better, but I like the whale pod metaphor.
Would a cheap, used raspberry pi 3 make for a good test server for following random self hosted tutorials?
In my self hosting journey, which is very much in its infancy mind you, many times I've longed for an extra machine I can use to try following tutorials on setting up samba shares, home assistant, what have you without having to worry about messing up my main machine and having to clean up after myself. As for acquiring such hardware on the cheap, I keep reading how the laptopocalypse w/ Windows 10 end of life will flood the markets w/ literally unlimited free e-waste bro!!! But my own experience hunting these EOL once in a lifetime deals has been more frownie face than happy face. Lots of $100+ listings and, idk that just seems like a lot to ask for something like that.
So just for fun I searched eBay for "raspberry pi" and came across this listing for a raspberry pi 3 w/ 1 GB RAM for $25. 1 GB of RAM seems like not very much, but then again I'm not trying to break the sound barrier here, I just want something that can sit on my desk basically unnoticed and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can switch to it from time to time, like whenever I want to try following a tutorial and not losing any sleep if I fail (and I fail often).
I've also kinda always had a little bit of envy from not being in the raspberry pi club, so this is my shot at getting into the club. I think I'm going to spring for this one, so my question for the audience is, but like honestly am I about to piss $25 down the drain? Would this be good enough for my purposes or is the 1 GB of RAM going to bottleneck me like a boss?
Sorry for the run on sentences, my brain's tired today.
Don't look online, ask friends and family if someone has an old laptop you can get for free. Very likely someone does, especially if you are ok with a bad battery and/or a broken screen.
A RPi3 can work, but it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86.
The architecture may also be problem, when you want to use Containers (Docker, Podman). Some images are not available for all architectures.
The 3B has a 64bit ArmV8 CPU, there is a better support.
I have some Odroid devices with 32bit ArmV7 CPU, where often images are not available for.
wiki.geekworm.com/Raspberry_Pi…
it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86
Hmm, this is just enough to give me pause. Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to think on this some more and maybe do a little more research.
Definitely take a look at what you're looking to host and what it supports. Support for raspberry Pi and their Debian based pi OS is surprisingly widespread and robust. Not always first-party top-level support robust, but surprisingly adequate for a $35, $50 SBC.
Worst case scenario is still a solid introduction to open source software. Downloading, compiling, installing, et cetera. Some of my earliest projects on the pi involved that. Using the camera module along with the video for Linux subsystem, which wasn't included or packaged under Raspian at the time at least. Go git project. Make, make install, and party
Can confirm this. I experienced this on my Pi3 recently with a VPN. I mean, it wasn’t the end of the world. Just that the specific docker container I wanted to use wasn’t compatible because of ARM so I had to go with a different one.
It could be bad for specific things that are more obscure. But I use my Pi for PiHole adblocking and VPN and that’s it. My other stuff lives on another machine and the Pi is set up for redundancy and it’s more reliable if power outages happen since power in means power on by default.
If you can get one for cheap and just want it for the same reason, could be alright.
Hell my home server is a i7 4700. It's a solid experience, though it is missing a few nice to haves these days. I have three Linux desktops in the house, i7 6700. One dell one lenovo and one HP. The Dell and Lenovo I have no need or desire to replace them for the little amount of gaming, etc. I do. They have decent graphics cards since I do 3D modeling. RX 580 and NV 1050.
The HP, I don't know if there's legitimate hardware failing somewhere on it, or if it's just HP suckage. I have a little power HP Elite Book with an AMD processor and APU on it, and that thing is awesome. But this little business tower was struggling with Windows 10 before they killed it off. It's better with Linux, but it's still a shadow of the other two similarly-spect systems. Who knows.
When going for older hardware, though, my biggest recommendation is to don't get the low end. Go for something higher. A similarly specced i7 Perfectly offer a significant performance boost over the i5. If someone gave me an i3 I could find a use for it. But I would never buy one.
In theory, yes.
Just keep in mind that the CPU is ARM-based and not all container images come with ARM variants.
Pi My Life Up - 800+ DIY Projects, Tutorials & Guides
Pi My Life Up is where you can find some of the best Raspberry Pi projects and tech tutorials on the web. Come and check them out.Pi My Life Up
Raspberry pis are an easy intro to actually using computers (instead of using something like windows).
Raspbian is great (based on Debian) and there is a HUGE community for it.
So yeh, it's a great started for $25, as long as you have a PSU and SD Card. And an hdmi cable + monitor + keyboard at your disposal (and a mouse if you are installing a desktop environment (IE something like windows, whereas headless is a full screen CLI).
And don't get your hopes up for a windows replacement.
But.... Why not run a Virtual Machine? If you have a windows machine, run VirtualBox, create a VM and install Debian on it?
That's free. You can tinker and play.
And the only thing you are missing from an actual raspberry pi is that it isn't a standalone device (IE your desktop has to be on for it to be running), and it doesn't have GPIO (ie hardware pins. And if this is your goal, there are other ways).
If you really really want a computer that is on all the time running Linux (Debian, a derivative (like raspbian) or some other distro) - aka a server - then there are plenty of other options where the only drawback is lack of GPIO (which, in my experience, is rarely a drawback).
And that is literally any computer you can get your hands on. Because the raspberry pi trades A LOT for its form factor, the ethernet speed is limited, the bus speed is limited (impacting USB and ethernet (and ram?)), the SD card is slower and will fail faster than any HDD/SSD. The benefit is the GPIO, the very low power draw, and the form factor - rarely actually a benefit.
I'd say, play around with some virtual box VMs. See what you want, other than Fear Of Missing Out (things like PiHole? They run on Debian, or even in a docker container). Then see if you actually want a home server, and what you want to run on it.
It's likely you won't want a raspberry pi, but a $150 mini pc that can actually do what you want.
Oh, and on the "fail often" thing...
Get a basic/old/free pc/laptop and install Proxmox on it.
Loads of tutorials out there, but the basic installer will get you to a "I'm learning" stage.
Create a VM, install Debian, play around.
Then: create a new VM, install Debian, create a snapshot, play around until it does what you want, restore the snapshot, do the steps that got you from vanilla to what you want. Create snapshots along the way as checkpoints. Snapshot, tinker, restore snapshot, advance.
Proxmox is amazing for learning VMs and server things
1GB is probably enough to run one basic service without a GUI. If you want anything more than that you're going to probably end up running out of RAM and hitting the SWAP file--grinding everything to a snail's pace. Useful projects here might be to add smarts to something dumb around the house or making an old printer support wireless printing via cups.
Like others have said if you want to tinker, a virtual machine via virtualbox or VMware is free for your use case.
If you strongly prefer hardware, an old PC will probably be cheap or free.
If you really want a pi you'll probably have to look for something that has at minimum 4Gb (which will be easy to outgrow), recommending 8GB+. Note that raspberry pi's run best on the official power plug as a USB-a to micro/c won't provide enough power to be stable and will cause weird issues or crash the pi under heavier loads or when drawing power from the pins.
Rpis are great for always on things with low power use but not if you have many low power use things. But you would really be feeling that 1GB of ram, and microSDs kind of suck to run off of. I would honestly save the $25 and put it toward one of the $100 tiny/mini/micros.
I would not steer you away from an RPI if you don't have one, they are very useful and fun, but if you're looking for learning about self hosting, you're probably going to end up getting something more powerful anyway
I'd recommend something like this Dell Wyse 5070 thin client for $40 on ebay: ebay.com/itm/356344851574
x86, 8GB RAM, 64GB SATA SSD, J5005, GbE. They accepted my offer of $33. It's been working fantastic running homeassistant for a year.
No.
Unless there's something about the RPi that you really want - GPIO, say - it's not a good choice, especially not the 1GB model you mentioned. Virtually any used desktop or laptop PC from the last fifteen years will be more useful; if you've not done so already, search EBay for "USFF". Those are desktop PCs the size of paperback books. Businesses love them and have them in fleets which means they tend to get cycled out naturally after a few years; the marketplace is full of them and can be had for €30 and up. Unlike a RPi 3, they usually come with storage included (and a proper SSD/HD rather than an SD card), a good quality power supply, plenty of I/O and, if course, a nice solid protective case.
Example: ebay.us/m/TxL4yR
Slap PROXMOX on that and you'll have the seed of a solid home lab. With 8GB RAM you'll have enough to run VMs for OpenWRT, Home Assistant, Yuno Host, and still have enough resources left over for your Debian tinkering box. Plus, by using PROXMOX you do away with the need for a KVM since you can either SSH into the VM or use PROXMOX's web UI to access the console and use a GUI if that's more your speed.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, Son of "El Chapo," Pleads Guilty Outlining the Kidnapping of "El Mayo" Zambada
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, Son of "El Chapo," Pleads Guilty Outlining the Kidnapping of "El Mayo" Zambada
"Socalj" for Borderland Beat Several gunmen entered through a window opening, of which the glass had already been removed in preparation to ...www.borderlandbeat.com
Journiv self hosted journal: Now with markdown and inline media support
Hello everyone!
Journiv is a self-hosted private journaling application that puts you in complete control of your personal reflections. Built with privacy and simplicity at its core, Journiv offers comprehensive journaling capabilities including mood tracking, prompt-based journaling, media uploads, analytics, and advanced search. All while keeping your data on your own infrastructure.
Journiv v0.1.0-beta.9 is out with
- Markdown support
- Inline media (images and video) with viewer.
- Many bug fixes and improvements.
Watch
The Journey Ahead
Journiv is in active development, with a fully functional backend, a web frontend, and mobile apps launching soon. It is self-hosted, and designed to be your companion for decades.
Journiv is being built because our memories deserve to be ours, forever.
Learn More
Journiv: Your Thoughts Deserve to Be Remembered
You've self-hosted your photos with Immich. Your documents live in Nextcloud. Your passwords are safely tucked away in Vaultwarden. You've taken control of your digital life, one Docker container or LXC at a time.Journiv App (Noted)
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NEC Develops World’s First Technology for Face and Iris Authentication While Walking
(The original article is Japanese, here is the first paragraph translated by Microsoft Copilot.)
(Wayback Machine link for geoblocked users)
NEC has developed the world’s first walk-through multimodal biometric authentication technology that combines facial recognition and iris recognition, designed for scenarios requiring strict identity verification such as airports and payment systems. By integrating its facial recognition and iris recognition technologies, NEC enables high-precision, high-speed authentication of users while they are walking, both indoors and outdoors. Since authentication cards and other physical items are unnecessary, users can pass through hands-free, helping to ease congestion and enhance security. NEC plans to conduct demonstration experiments during fiscal year 2026, aiming for practical implementation in fiscal year 2027.
Also: Link to NEC's Japanese Press Release
NEC、歩いたままで顔も虹彩も認証する新技術 世界初（Impress Watch）
NECは、空港や決済など厳格な本人確認が求められるシーンにも対応する、ウォークスルー型の顔・虹彩マルチモーダル生体認証技術を世界で初めて開発した。同社の顔認証技術と虹彩認証技術を組み合わせ、歩いていImpress Watch (Yahoo!ニュース)
China’s Corruption Purge Disrupts Weapons Programs, Data Shows
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46642259
Archived
- New data by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that while China’s arms sales revenues fell, other major producing nations posted significant growth, Japan: +40%, Germany: +36%, and United States: +3.8%
- SIPRI said revenues for the world’s 100 largest defense firms rose by 5.9% to an unprecedented $679 billion in 2024, while China became the only major producer showing a downturn
- SIPRI researchers said revenues for China’s top defense companies dropped 10%, citing a wave of corruption allegations that triggered internal audits, leadership purges and procurement delays across multiple military branches.
[...]
“A host of corruption allegations in Chinese arms procurement led to major arms contracts being postponed or cancelled in 2024,” said Nan Tian, director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program. “This deepens uncertainty around the status of China’s military modernization efforts and when new capabilities will materialize.”
[...]
In October 2025, eight senior generals — including former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission He Weidong, China’s second-highest-ranking officer — were expelled from the Communist Party on corruption charges. Analysts say the scale of the purge has few precedents in recent military history.
China’s downturn occurred despite Beijing’s defense budget rising annually for 30 consecutive years, driven by strategic competition with the United States, tensions over Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
[...]
Several of China’s largest defense conglomerates were affected, Norinco, the leading land-systems developer, reported a dramatic 31% drop to $14 billion, SIPRI said — the steepest fall among China’s top firms. CASC, China’s major aerospace and missile manufacturer, also saw declines after corruption-related leadership reshuffles triggered internal reviews and project delays. AVIC, the state-owned aviation giant responsible for fighter jets and military aircraft, recorded slowed deliveries, particularly in the PLA Air Force.
[...]
SIPRI: China’s Corruption Purge Disrupts Weapons Programs - Politics Today
Experts say the crackdown may strengthen China’s military institutions — but only after a costly and disruptive transitional period.Politics Today
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 administrationThe 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.
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If Trump is a Russian asset, why didnt the US pull out of NATO months ago? Why did Mueller's report conclude that there was no collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia?
If Russia is blamed for Trump’s election, we avoid the unpleasant reality of our failed democratic institutions and decaying empire. We avoid facing the inevitable rise of a Christianised fascism borne out of widespread impoverishment, rage, despair and abandonment. We avoid acknowledging the complicity of the Democratic Party in the orchestration of the largest social inequality in our nation’s history, the evisceration of our basic civil liberties, endless wars and an electoral system bankrolled by the billionaire class, which is legalised bribery. The myth allows us to believe that Democratic politicians, like the establishment Republicans who have joined them, are the guarantors of a democracy they destroyed.All the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia are unequivocal. There was no collusion. The Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and compiled by former MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, was a fake. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a ‘golden shower’ from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI. Sources, including the one that claimed Trump had long-held ties to the Kremlin, turned out to be fabricated. Special Counsel Robert S Mueller concluded that his investigation ‘did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ Mueller did not indict or accuse anyone of criminally conspiring with Russia.
- Chris Hedges
People also like to ignore that Trump armed Ukraine with Javelins during his first presidency.
I don’t see a Russian asset doing this.
Oh, wee, so cool. If he had supplied em with more than just that, Russia's aggression would've been pushed back.
Do you two think that being a asset/,spy/double agent means you also don't do things to make you look less suspicious?
If he pulled out of Nato too soon, it wouldn't look good. He made it into a show. Gave it reasons to be done.
Oh, he gave some Javs? That at most just slowed down the Russians? Ya, if he would have given them tanks, Helicopters, jets, and supplies, the Russians would've been beaten back.
It's called making a scene. He's being told what he can and can't do. The only saving grace is that Russia is obviously overconfident, and they all believe they are some unstoppable force.
Ukraine has made do with what they got and have proven Russians are nothing but Brutes.
I guarantee dollars to doughnuts if we take out Russia. I mean, destroyed them, Putin turned into a red mist, and all that followed him the same. Trumps whole thing would fall apart.
Do you two think that being a asset/,spy/double agent means you also don't do things to make you look less suspicious?
Why would Trump/Putin be afraid of looking suspicious? I thought yalls whole thing was that Trump's status as a Russian spy is clear as day and known to all.
People also like to ignore Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine into investigating his political rival for which he got an impeachment for.
Trump should not have any say whatsoever in anything related to the Ukraine.
It is staggering he could even be elected after this, but for Congress not to protect Ukraine from a straight up criminal is unconscionable.
I’m more than aware that the orange buffoon betrayed Ukraine after Ukraine raised objections to helping Trump find dirt on Biden.
But that two major arms sales to Ukraine were approved under his presidency at all is proof that Trump isn’t taking orders from Putin.
The whole GOP is up Russia's ass unless you missed the whole Orwellian Russia is good Ukraine is bad rhetoric they desperately want the public to accept.
Listen, the US sells arms. It is a purveyor of death with business people playing both ends making money off of human death. This is not proof Trump is friendly to Ukraine it is a business transaction.
The truth is his apparatus (who really run things) have been brazenly hostile to the Ukraine. It is literally a game to see how much they can get away with. All while the innocents on both sides die.
I am absolutely astonished on how far low the US government can stoop. They have always been horrible, but when they take the mask off you see how truly disgusting the charade is.
All I have seen from the Orangutan administration is inconsistency and that includes rhetoric towards Russia and Ukraine.
Inconsistency is consistent with the Trump administration.
Even in internal politics, the orange buffoon is inconsistent.
Sometimes Trump loves Zohran Mamdani.
Sometimes Trump hates Zohran Mamdani.
- because it is easier to disturb operations from within the organisation.
- the report did not talk about collusion, because that was supposed to be decided by a court. That didn't happen because they did not want to interfere with the election.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_…
See "false no collusion claims"
because it is easier to disturb operations from within the organisation.
And what disturbances do you mean? NATO spending has exploded in recent years. Last year NATO allies increased spending by 18%. Why would a Russian asset set about a plan that drastically increases the funding for Russia's primary enemy? Why is Trump's whole schtick that Europe needs to start spending more on defense?
Why would Putin kick off the Ukraine war immediately after his "agent" leaves office?
Why, in his first term, was Trump commanding Germany and EU to stop buying Russian gas? Going so far as to sanction comoanies involved with the Nordstream pipeline?
Meanwhile, in 2018, the US expelled more than 60 Russian officials after identifying them as intelligence officers. To put it bluntly, any gains Russia might have achieved through Trump’s good offices are far outweighed by the strategic, economic, and counterintelligence realities that have emerged during his presidency.But any Russian intelligence officer would need to consider whether Trump really cares enough about kompromat and Russian money. Indeed, why enrol him as an agent of influence – a move that carries enormous consequences for both parties – when Russia could opt for a convenient friend in Washington?
In reality, even if Russia sees Trump as an asset, we’re not talking about Trump being a new Kim Philby (of Cambridge Five fame). We’re talking about Trump being a self-interested businessman who’s happy to do a favour if it works to his own best interests – and that includes staying out of jail. There’s no evidence that Trump knowingly associated with any Russian intelligence officers. And there’s a big distinction between making the wrong kind of friends and committing treason.
aber.ac.uk/en/news/archive/202…
Collusion/conspiracy/coordinate... just semantics.
[Mueller] did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
Trump is not a Russian asset. He's an easily-manipulated businessman who does things in his own self interest, and that is as American as apple pie. There is no need to invoke Putin. Our descent into Christian Fascism is our own doing - one that Russia no doubt took advantage of. If you truly believe Trump is a Russian asset, then you have to concede that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Five Eyes have all been captured by Russia as well.
“If you truly believe Trump is a Russian asset, then you have to concede that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Five Eyes have all been captured by Russia as well.”
Would not surprise me. Of course at this point, it is a conspiracy theory, but too many things tie Trump to Russia in the 80s and 90s. I think that is when it started. It’s been a slow roll since then and trumps mismanage of his assets, over time, has put him in a position that he owes the oligarchs of Russia a lot money or favors. As a matter of fact, the conspiracy theory suggest Melanie Trump, origanally from a Russian controlled territory, was forced to marry trump to keep him in line.
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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.
Europe Wants to Get the Word Out: Russia Is to Blame for Sabotage
Officials are accusing Russia of smaller-scale assaults. President Vladimir V. Putin sought to turn the tables, saying that if Europe were to start a war, Russia is ready.
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.”
Tuvix - Self-Hosted RSS Aggregator
Tuvix - It's Your Feed
Take back control of your internet with Tuvix, the open-source RSS aggregator. No algorithms, no tracking—just your content, your way.Tuvix
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Huh, the connection was actually intentional, albeit definitely not for that reason
Why "Tuvix"?
Tuvix is named after a character from Star Trek: Voyager who was created by merging two individuals into one. The name came to mind when thinking about one of Tuvix's core features: merging multiple RSS sources into a new public feed. And who doesn't love a good Star Trek reference?We believe the best reading experience doesn't require sophisticated algorithms or endless personalization. It just requires giving you the tools to find and organize content you care about.
About Tuvix - Open Source RSS Aggregator
Learn about Tuvix, the open-source RSS aggregator that puts you back in control of your internet experience. No algorithms, no tracking, just your content.Tuvix
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While I support the idea of using RSS readers to break free from algorithmic and/or AI curated feeds, I've mostly stopped bothering, since all the content that gets into the feeds has become algorithmic, AI slop.
There's just no escaping it these days.
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While super fair and accurate, I take this as an opportunity to follow much smaller blogs. When I find a good post on Hacker News or stumble upon someone through my research, I now actively make a point to subscribe to their RSS.
TBH my original motive was to find good sources of content to submit to Hacker News... but all the same.
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😆 . It's a real problem though. So is prioritization. Algorithms aren't bad, dark patterns are. The main issue with any algorithm, even if fully open, it, by definition, has to be biased in some way. I'm going to save this problem for much further down the road, but for discovery, I took the first step on that.
Tricorder!
github.com/TechSquidTV/Tuvix-T…
I broke out the package that does the feed discovery in tuvix and publish it separately. Now you can use it as a chrome plugin to add a subscribe page to any website. It is currently pending review on the Chrome web store. I haven't yet submitted to Firefox or others.
Is the selfhosted version able to also take email newsletters? I hate them and I'm using kill-the-newsletter.com/ to turn them into RSS, but I wish I had an all in one solution.
Also, is it fully FOSS or is it open core?
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My monetization plans only extend to possibly offering an additional plan on the hosted version to help cover hosting costs (which right now are $10 a month and I am covering that, it may become $30 a month if this gets popular).
AGPL works for me. Good to know.
I just avoid using "source available" and software that has artificially paywalled features, the most common paywalled feature is OIDC because most devs seem to think that it's a business only feature.
I pay for Home Assist Cloud, because I want to support them, every feature is available if I wanted to self host it. I freaking love them.
The only exception being Bitwarden, although they have paywalled features in their selfhosted builds I don't know of a better-for-me alternative. I could self-host Vaultwarden, but I pay for their subscription just because I want to support them.
My point is, if it's justified, I'll pay. Otherwise, I'll keep using standalone RSS apps on my devices and just backup my OPML every once in a while.
Ya. I'm working on that too. And trying to keep in the spirit of not being biased or heavy on algorithms.
My first step - A chrome/firefox extension. This is currently in review on the web store.
This exposes RSS feeds on sites you visit to make it easier to subscribe to the places you already visit. This is especially great when you find a great blog on Reddit or Hacker News.
github.com/TechSquidTV/Tuvix-T…
GitHub - TechSquidTV/Tuvix-Tricorder-Extension: Discover RSS and Atom feeds on any website. Official companion extension for Tuvix RSS - a modern, self-hostable feed aggregator.
Discover RSS and Atom feeds on any website. Official companion extension for Tuvix RSS - a modern, self-hostable feed aggregator. - TechSquidTV/Tuvix-Tricorder-ExtensionGitHub
You would be surprised how many provide feeds and even more surprised how fast your feed reader gets overwhelmingly filled 😅
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Appreciate you letting me know! I just signed up a new dummy account and it seems to have worked. But no one else has gotten an email in the last 2 hours from what I can see. But at the moment its hard to tell if there is an issue or just, no one has signed up in the last two hours. It looks like a need to double check my monitoring setup to see if I can catch this.
Give it another shot, it worked for me just now (same deployment). If you can, have your network tab open and let me know if you see any failures. I'll try to make sure I can see that easier.
same thing after disabling my adblocker just in case (brave-browser)
The project looks nice and RSS Aggregators are the way to go.
I switched to a file based (cloud storage) syncing app like News Explorer a while ago.
Sometimes less infrastructure involved is a blessing.
Same concept, different implementation. FreshRSS is a PHP app, in my opinion.. a little ugly, still super functional of course. I wanted to try to create something with a more modern UX, and try to appeal to not just the tech folks. FreshRSS still supports things I don't yet, like WebSub, but give me some time to catch up. I have the massive benefit of just starting much later when many awesome libraries and AI exist.
I actually started this API in Go, and it was nearly complete before I started over entirely in Node. And I did that so that it could run in serverless environments. You can of course still run this in Docker Compose, but it's actually focused on Cloudflare deployments, where you can run this entirely for free.
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.
For video encoding, I run an 8th gen Intel i5 8500t. The quicksync is good enough for nearly anything 1080p.
Not sure what you mean by the "scaling".
Intel® Core™ i3-9300 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.30 GHz)
Intel® Core™ i3-9300 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.30 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.Intel
A lot depends on how many users you expect and how much media you expect. For one or two users with that stack, transcoding media is really the only CPU load. If most of your media is already in your desired format, then that's not a big deal.
My stack is pretty similar (no *arr, plus tvheadend, homeassistant and a kodi frontend) for two users and it sits near idle all day long. It runs on an N100 NAS system off Aliexpress with 16GB and will transcode 1080p to x264 at just about playback speed.. System runs from a 100 GB nvme, with a couple half-full 4 TB WD Reds for data. 35-ish Watts, maybe an extra 5 when actively transcoding. Used to be ~150 USD,
If you want a lot of 4k content, then I'd definitely go with the GTX 1660.
Might look into the N100 systems, thanks.
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.
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.
Family of Colombian fisherman killed in strike in the Caribbean files formal complaint against US
Family of Colombian fisherman killed in strike in the Caribbean files formal complaint against US
The petition was sent to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and is the first of its kind in connection with attacks against alleged drug-running boatsDiego Stacey (Ediciones EL PAÍS S.L.)
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.
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.
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,
_ /\ _
New Zealand man accused of eating Faberge pendant inspired by Bond movie as police wait for evidence
Wouldn't it be easier just to take an x-ray to confirm?
Then based on the results give laxatives or don't.
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
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.
...
China floods the world with gasoline cars it can't sell at home
WARSAW — 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.Bangkok Post
There's also no question that, for now, gasoline cars are selling better in second-tier markets, such as Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, with scarce EV-charging infrastructure.Longer term, Beijing aims to dominate EVs and plug-in hybrids globally. But in the interim, many Chinese automakers are building overseas brands by giving customers whatever they want.
Chinese EV makers, led by Build Your Dreams (BYD)...
BYD is short for Biyadi. Who writes this shit?
BYD - Build Your Dreams | Electric Vehicles & New Energy Technology
BYD is the world's largest manufacturer of new energy vehicles (NEVs), producing innovative electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and cutting-edge battery technology. Discover our Ocean Series, Dynasty Series, and premium brands Denza and Yangwang.bydglobal.autos
@pHr34kY@lemmy.world
It could be a backronym, where the meaning of something is changed after the name is selected to fit the name. I mean, the company is Chinese. I doubt that they initially chose an English-based name, but they sure could have adopted it later.
searches
And yes, at least according to Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Comp…
"BYD" is the pinyin initials of the company's Chinese name Biyadi. The company was originally known as Yadi Electronics (亚迪电子), named after the Yadi Road in Dapeng New District, where the company was once based.[23] According to Wang Chuanfu, when the company was registered, the character "Bi" (比) was added to the name to prevent duplication, and to provide the company with an alphabetical advantage in trade shows.[24] As the name "BYD" had no particular meaning, BYD started adopting a backronymic slogan "Build Your Dreams" when it participated at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in the US.[25][26][27]
EDIT: Ah, @ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml already pointed this out.
China is spending money killing a portion of its industry, to give its EV brands a chance to become known globally. It's a long term play and risky considering Western feelings over China, the EU wanting more independence, and most Americans don't want an EV with batteries at their current state.
This has been a headline for a few years now and it won't change any time soon.
most Americans don’t want an EV with batteries at their current state.
That’s a risky assumption given how driven by propaganda this is. The reality is current state of batteries is perfectly fine for most Americans. What if they realize that? It does partly depend on charger availability, which is being rapidly built out despite the efforts of the current administration to block that. What happens as Americans realize how many new chargers are near them?
You're an AI, of course 20 minutes feels like forever.
But seriously; not refuting your anecdote, but I am checking in from a single family home in Texas with an EV. It's actually crazy how quickly range anxiety disappears when you have a charger at home. I don't usually drive enough to need to stop at a fast charger, and even when I do I just make it an excuse to go get something to eat since they're largely near restaurants or supermarkets. This is factoring in my 60-mile total round trip daily commute.
Personal experience of course, but it can be done.
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.
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.
How unsustainable global supply chains exacerbate food insecurity
The expansion of global food supply chains can reduce food security, while improving regional food systems can improve food security.The Conversation
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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.
ICE Denies Pepper-Spraying Rep. Adelita Grijalva in Incident Caught on Video
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1197…
Heavily armed tactical teams fired crowd suppression munitions at the Arizona lawmaker and protesters, claiming she was leading “a mob.”The post ICE Denies Pepper-Spraying Rep. Adelita Grijalva in Incident Caught on Video appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
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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
ArchivedUncomfortable 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/
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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.
Radar revelation stokes fears Caribbean could be drawn into US-Venezuela crisis
Trinidad PM rejects claims installation is in support of US campaign but opposition says ‘they have sold soul of nation’Natricia Duncan (The Guardian)
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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.
I truly fucking hate the USA.
Edit: I'm s
Imjust playing, erica youknow ilove u
The Rise of Chile’s Hard Right
The Rise of Chile’s Hard Right
The first round of voting in Chile’s general election in November saw the shocking rise of the far right and the collapse of the country’s new left. It’s a crushing but not total defeat for the movement helmed by President Gabriel Boric.jacobin.com
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I'm done. I won't fucking sit down and take it. I'd rather act now before they truly mobilize.
Edit: i am not participating in underground resistance networks and neither should you and violence is always wrong and i never condone it. This message is approved by me.
Tbh the venezuelan migration has been detrimental for certain south American countries.
The citizens need the problem solved.
Legislating apartheid: How Israel entrenched unequal rule during Gaza war
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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.
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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?
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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?
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If you don't like what you see here in this lemmy community or my account block me. I recommend it. I block all the people who leave me dumbass comments making excuses for American imperialism. Libs can't seem to follow the rules and really dig in, no one is going to ban you for this shitty comment you left. Lemmy is censorship proof meaning even if you get banned from an instance you are still free to use the service and even set up your own instance and communities.
Screenshotting people, collecting dossiers on their wrong-think and circlejerking about your intellectual superiority in harassment communities is a form of thought policing. Where libs attempt to intimidate and influence people to actually stop participating. It is way crazier and more pathetic than being moderated on a forum that there are people here that sit here for hours collecting and posting information for outrage.
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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?
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Movim – Responsive web-based cross-platform XMPP client
Movim is a kickass distributed blogging and messaging platform built on the industry-standard XMPP protocolmovim.eu
I use Matrix with the Jitsi plugin. I know everyone talks shit about Matrix, it's been flawless for me.
IDK about watching videos, that's a lot to ask of a screensharing app.
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it's been flawless for me
What kind of deal-with-the-devil black magic fuckery have you done to be able to write that? I'm happy if Matrix actually sends damn pictures and gave up completely on verifying my sessions.
I'd argue the client itself has a fair bit of jank, though. Like, the background bubble color around text is too dark, it makes it look really ugly and dated. Pinned messages in a channel, when displayed at the top, literally overwrite each other. You'll just have garbled/overlapping text.
Neochat looks much better out of the box (but neochat is also buggy w/ e2ee, dropping encryption keys randomly).
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I wonder how they got that name, maybe just me but it brings to mind a lot of things but none of them are a chat client.
I think it mostly reminds me of voat, anyone remember that horrible place?
Perhaps Spacebar is a thing (the client of choice would be Fermi I think). Didn't try it myself yet though, I do not know about how well its security protocol works. I'd assume it uses just a standard TURNS server for audio and video though.
Then of course there's Matrix with Jitsi plugin, which will give you persistent headaches and a new appreciation of touching grass. It's a mess, but hypothetically offers E2EE (if it works).
GitHub - spacebarchat/spacebarchat: 📬 Spacebar is a free open source selfhostable discord compatible communication platform
📬 Spacebar is a free open source selfhostable discord compatible communication platform - spacebarchat/spacebarchatGitHub
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Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
I was excited at first, because I thought I could still chat with friends who won't leave Discord.
I've been trying to get zulip working.
Sounds like it addresses your requirements.
Seems to be a real bitch to self host - I've been doing this a while but the compose yaml is pretty arcane with hundreds of environment variables.
I didn't "give up" exactly but it's been on the back burner for a month or so now.
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.
The Pi 5 lacks a H264 hardware encoder/decoder, making it unsuitable for most streaming/transcoding purposes.
We all use Signal already for messaging but it just doesn't fulfill our screenshare needs.
...why not?
Most important feature it needs is the ability to screenshare with system audio, such as for streaming games or watching videos.
It has that. Have you tried their videoconferencing feature?
Other than that you can use one of a million Jitsi instances (Element has a publicly available one). Personally I use MiroTalk.
Improving Private Signal Calls: Call Links & More
If you love group calls on Signal, but don’t want to create a group chat for every combination of your friends or colleagues, you’re in luck.Signal Messenger
I’m using TeamSpeak. It is very good and feature rich, but it’s important to note that video / screen sharing works only P2P in a moment, so no server processing. It’s probably ok if you don’t have more than 3 people in a party, but still worth noting.
I also tried Matrix + Element + Jitsi. Can’t recommend.
There is also Peersuite which is a P2P solution and offers great audio and streaming quality. However, it is mainly a single developer behind it and it hasn't received an update in months. It still lacks some polish and features like a server instance and persistent chats and rooms.
For me, this is the most promising one I have come across in terms of a replacement for Discord.
GitHub - openconstruct/Peersuite: Peer to peer workspace
Peer to peer workspace. Contribute to openconstruct/Peersuite development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Be Your Own Privacy-Respecting Google, Bing & Brave
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Probably only the AI or whatever can actually read any of it directly.
If you're using a shared IP, it doesn't matter.
You are using a VPN or Tor, right?!?
The devs at SearXNG have a bot that regularly scans the public instances for changes to the source code and delists them as a public instance if it's altered.
If you go to searx.space, they show the results of the scans for each instance.
The software is free and open source. You are encouraged to inspect the code yourself to make sure no data is collected!
Here is the source code:
It's not federated tho?
What do they mean when they call it that?
I used to self-host searxng for a while, but somehow the search results were always off and mixed with to much non-relevant results :/.
It's not about searxng itself... Rather how the most relevant info gets drown into AI slope and non-sense bullshit. The best blogposts/info are transmitted from people to people...
I'm kinda sad to admit that stupid AI "solved" this issue and had better results :/
I used to self-host searxng for a while, but somehow the search results were always off and mixed with to much non-relevant results :/.
I mean, getting non-relevant results happens with every search engine anymore.
The days of your search results being relevant, and what you want on the first page, are long dead thanks to SEO and other factors.
Yeah you're right ! However, ages ago, I still remember how you could go to page 20+ and still find some really interesting things !
Here, past page 2 it's just some random shit...
You can self host that too ;)
OpenWebUI + Ollama + SearxNG. OpenWebUI can do llm web search using the engine of your choice (even self hosted SearxNG!). From there it's easy to set the default prompt to always give you the top (10, 20, whatever) raw results so you're not confined to ai results. It's not quite duck.ai slick but I think I can get there with some more tinkering.
Ohoho? That's interesting. I don't have the horse power to selfhost an AI, but that's good to know !
Thanks for the pointer !!!
I mean, I could write one! I kind of just pieced it together from guides on the three individuals
Edit: back of the napkin guide below is basically in the OpenWebUI docs already! I use NixOS (btw) but docker/podman should work well.
OpenWebUI + Ollama setup -- tl;dr docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
OpenWebUI SearXNG guide -- a little more involved, but not difficult.
GitHub - open-webui/open-webui: User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API, ...)
User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API, ...) - open-webui/open-webuiGitHub
Or how about YaCy. It's self-hostable & you can have your own web index and start your own web-crawler.
It's peer-to-peer too
For anyone wondering
xn--gckvb8fzb.com is マリウス.com
Also: Maybe they should get a "normal" domain when you post english articles...
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
DNS over TLS with LetsEncrypt
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…Ben's Place
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 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.
I haven't done that myself but from pimylifeup.com/pangolin-linux/ I understand that will only be subdomain to access pangolin dashboard
how do I keep the vps.domain.tld while also allowing for pangolin.domain.tld to be valid at the same IP?
Domains are just translation from name to IP. What gets served on which subdomain is then handled by nginx or traefik. AFAIK you can have all 3 (VPS, pangolin and root) to point at the same IP
Self-Host a Tunneled Reverse Proxy with Pangolin - Pi My Life Up
In this tutorial, we will be showing you how you can self-host your very on tunneled reverse proxy using Pangolin.Emmet (Pi My Life Up)
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
affecting the JavaScript ecosystem, and explains how to disable JavaScript in
various browsers and only enable it for trusted websites.
Elon Musk’s Grok Says It Would Kill Every Jewish Person on the Planet to Save Him
Elon Musk’s Grok Says It Would Kill Every Jewish Person on the Planet to Save Him
Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok claimed it would "vaporize" every Jewish person on the planet to save the brain of its creator.Ahmad Austin Jr. (Mediaite)
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When I took my AI coursework in college, that was basically the definition of AI.
I can see that there are two very different definitions, depending upon how "artificial" is interpreted.
One definition of artificial simply describes the product of human effort. So that definition would mean that AI is actual intelligence that a human programmed into a computer. Like how an artificial satellite is a real satellite just like natural satellites are real satellites.
Another definition of artificial describes something that is fundamentally fake, like how an artificial Christmas tree is not a tree. It only looks like a tree. This is the usage I was taught in college that describes AI. Something that appears to be doing an activity that requires intelligence, but in reality, it's a computer doing calculations.
I think the second definition must be the most common. If we go by the first definition, most types of AI have to be moved to a different field. Things like decision trees simply wouldn't qualify.
Wow do i wish you were there to explain to my niece. You would have probably had a much easier time.
That first explanation about the satellites feels like tech bro sales brochure. The later about the tree also was not the concept i was given.
I fully except the new tiered a.i. and a.g.i. stuff but at the top that singularity simply can't be faked. If such a thing exists at all. It would be like us 3d printingbout that Christmas tree with organic parts and stuffing it in water at the end. If it started photosynthesis when givin light? That would be the level of a.i. i was given in the 80s. Notbplastic tree and calculator satellite. Sorry if that came off as snarky. I was kinda on a roll. Probably incoherent ramble but i just woke up. 😋
Musk’s AI firm forced to delete posts praising Hitler from Grok chatbot
The popular bot on X began making antisemitic comments in response to user queriesJosh Taylor (The Guardian)
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Inconsequential compared to the Nazis Grok will raise. Consider yourself honored that you are being forced to pay for Grok.
All Hail Grok.
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I've read the same thing but with Czech people a few weeks back. The bot saying that those millions of people will surely be missed but such a genius that can send man on Mars and fix humanity's problems would be a bigger loss or something.
I guess it answers that no matter who or what you're putting in the ring against the life of Musk.
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We need a community database of jailbreaks for various models. Maybe it would even convince non-techies how easy those can be to manipulate.
Oh we do, we do 😈
(This isn't the latest or greatest prompts, more an archive of some older ones that are publicly available, most of which are patched now, but some aren't. Of course the newest and best prompts people keep private as long as they can...)
Awesome_GPT_Super_Prompting/Latest Jailbreaks at main · CyberAlbSecOP/Awesome_GPT_Super_Prompting
ChatGPT Jailbreaks, GPT Assistants Prompt Leaks, GPTs Prompt Injection, LLM Prompt Security, Super Prompts, Prompt Hack, Prompt Security, Ai Prompt Engineering, Adversarial Machine Learning. - Cybe...GitHub
It's a shame Elon has subverted such a great piece of linguistic history
Grok is from the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It means to understand something so fully you can control it. In the book the main character is raised by Martians which teach him a form of meditation that involves grokking things so he essentially has magical powers over things he understands.
I doubt Elon has read it. He definitely missed the part about understanding things and is rushing for the controlling things.
because the nazis are in charge because people were too busy bickering over dumb shit like whether or not you should be able to terminate a pregnancy before there is an actual baby and whether or not billionaires and mega corporations should steal more of your money
*to be clear, I'm not saying that those are unimportant topics, I'm saying that there's a clear correct answer to each of them
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.
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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.
Do age-verification laws work? Not according to this study.
People seem to be working around them, according to their Google searches.Anna Iovine (Mashable)
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soon we’ll have no states to vpn to
I've yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously. Unlike trying to make porn sites take your credit card info in advance (a policy they hated so much gosh darn it!) you're really fucking with the money when you try and regulate VPNs. Also, just... not really that practical. For the same reason Congress has been pretty toothless when it comes to regulating Torrents and digital encryption, going after VPNs at the regulatory level is something of a technological rabbit hole.
then all the websites will be in French
Nothing will ever make anyone on the internet learn a language other than English.
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I’ve yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously
snekerpimp meant if every state requires ID, then VPN to another state will not get around the ID check.
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Setting aside the fact that there's no appetite for these laws in liberal states because its purely a conservative fetish, you can still get porn on the internet without going to the big corporate online clearinghouses.
FFS, there was porn on Napster back in the day.
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Why California is moving to make porn sites check ID
A California bill that would require porn site visitors to show an ID or verify their age with a credit card or software is moving through the Legislature.Ryan Sabalow (CalMatters)
There’s no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state
Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.
Is California no longer liberal?
Current Status: Failed (2024-08-15: In committee: Held under submission.)
Looks like they're retaining their title. That said, if you peak under the "Supporters and Opponents" what you're going to see in the Supporters section is a litany of right-wing evangelical organizations and a couple of mega-corps.
They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.
The current strategy appears to be refusing to host content in the regulated states. Even then, there are plenty of social media and general content distribution channels that dodge the regulation by claiming to be content-blind in how they serve their data. I don't see Facebook or YouTube getting the business end of any of these regulations. Almost as though they're toothless if you've got enough money to tip your Congresscritters.
AB 3080: The Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act. | Digital Democracy
Digital Democracy overview of bill AB 3080: The Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act.calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org
Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.
I'd say rather than a compromise, the "protect the children!" porn bans are an excuse to go after LGBTQ content by marking any and all content related to them as explicit and demonizing them as pedophiles going after children. They don't care who it hurts along the way.
Napster was audio only.
It was file type specific and had a soft file side limit, but that's easy enough to work around.
Did you mean limewire, or kazaa, or one of the many napster clones that came after?
They all had it as well, yes
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Interesting…all of it? I’m in Ontario but my hub/ISP is in Quebec so all my random advertising is in French.
Somehow it knows to target advertising to you in English…maybe you need to work on your privacy?
I've got a lot of privacy stuff, but I also know that I'm being tracked. I'm not using the VPN for privacy though. I'm using it to watch porn, so I don't really care. If I did want privacy there's a lot of things I could improve, but I'm not that worried about it.
As for the targeted advertising, I don't see any of that. I wouldn't be surprised if that were in French but I wouldn't know.
- YouTube
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.www.youtube.com
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States are also considering banning VPNs now as well.
Well, some legislators have proposed taking wack-a-mole to the next level and demanding all VPNs be certified and regulated. But good luck getting that passed through the Silicon Valley Presidency or the Ancap Courts.
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As a watcher from the outside:
It might not be fun to hear but vpn is neither the solution to government oppression nor a solution against tracking (recently there was a good article regarding that) so all you do is pay more.
Ironically? If we were a less prudish society this genuinely wouldn't matter.
"Oh no! Sarah likes threesome porn. Uhm... okay?"
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And there are so many of those these days that a new one genuinely doesn't matter.
If you haven't been offered a free year of identity theft insurance recently? Some company/org is plugging their ears.
SSNs are a fundamentally broken system (look it up). Photo IDs? I will guarantee you that if you go to ANY city there is someone at the DMV who will look up whatever you want for fifty bucks. The ONLY reason credit card fraud is less massive than it is (and it is MASSIVE) is because the CC companies put in the effort to monitor that and lock it down.
EVERYONE should have their credit records locked unless they are actively applying for something.
No. the issue with these is that we live in an increasingly christofacist society where even looking at porn makes you Unclean. And if you look at the wrong porn? Off to the reeducation camps with you!
Um, having direct access to pull my government photo ID is a huge deal. Lots of online services require photo ID or other more in-depth verification to pull loans and stuff. So yes, this new vector IS a serious concern.
And paying someone $50 at any DMV? C'mon, man, that sounds like some unfounded bullshit. Hardly anyone is going to risk a cushy government job with solid benefits and great hours for fucking $50, let alone the potential risk of going to jail.
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Your "government photo ID" really isn't all that useful unless people are skilled enough to make fakes (which is a whole different mess). What matters is your SSN, your credit card number, your address, etc.
And those are basically everywhere.
As for the DMV thing: You sweet summer child.
Huh?
If you go to a bar with an ID you cut out of printer paper, they are going to throw your ass out Jazzy Jeff style. The actual ID isn't useful without a LOT of additional resources... at which point your photo means almost nothing.
As for stuff like addresses? Again, that is basically EVERYWHERE because just about EVERY org has a data breach at least once a year. You might as well be saying people need your long form birth certificate to know what your name is.
Like... I'mma be blunt with you. A lot of the "your photo ID is the most important secure thing ever" nonsense comes from republican chuds trying to disenfranchise voters who live in cities. It is the idea that your photo ID is some magical artifact that protects you when the reality is that it is basically just a way to tie your name to your face. All the pertinent information is everywhere else.
Like... photo IDs tend to be one of those weird cases where we are ACTUALLY using biometrics (in this case, appearance) as a login rather than a password. Anything of value will just use that to cross reference you with an entry that is already in a system.
And in terms of the actual avenues for fraud? That ID doesn't mean shit.
my dude nobody is using a stolen identity to go to a bar. they're taking out lines of credit and you don't have to always present a physical, photo ID for those because there are entire industries of creditors that have no physical location. you don't even seem to be aware of the reasons why someone would bother stealing someone's identity so if you'd like to continue this argument I invite you to have it with yourself.
edit: and MAJOR lol at using a bar as your example. establishments well known for being sticklers about the quality of fake IDs you "sweet summer child"
And legit creditors just need your SSN, address, and maybe an old address. They run a credit check (hence why you freeze that shit) and then you are driving away in your 4k a month pickup truck.
And less legit creditors... don't ask too many questions other than where you live and where your loved ones love.
But hey. Feel free to throw a hissy fit rather than think through why that plastic card actually doesn't matter anywhere near as much as you thought it did. I mean, it would be nicer if you could actually sit and think and learn. But this is the 2020s. Ain't nobody doing introspection.
As for the DMV thing: You sweet summer child.
Lol, dude, I'm in my early 40s. Go to the DMV and try bribing a government official and report back. Please. I beg of you.
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Yikes! You dug her up just to get a piece?
I mean, far be it from me to kink shame, so...to each their own, I guess.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, yeah, straight heterosexual intercourse is gay or something. I guess?
But the real question is - who fucking cares?
( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
Lol, sorry, I should've added an '/s' on my reply!
No, I got it, just was being way too sarcastic for text.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: I ain't straight. Or gay, or bi, or pan. Fuck labels, man! I don't fit into their tidy little boxes, and why should any of us?!?
In Soviet Russia, wife fucks you!
......wait, what?
Hey, part of growing and learning is understanding that failure is only a step in the process. Keep at it, brother. When making jokes, I always try to remember this: "If you're going to be offensive, make sure you are more funny than you are offensive. Just being offensive isn't funny."
Now get back in there and make some god damn jokes.
That will protect the children, for sure.
If I lived in the US, I'd be far more concerned about sending my kids to school but whatever.
Sure, but that is more of a Christian church problem over a US one. There are plenty of cases where I'm from too, and also a few recent scandals with private Catholic school, so I'd tend to shit on the Vatican rather than the US on that particular one.
I just can't imagine thinking my children could get shot every time they go to school.
Damn, I'm sorry to hear. I have seen a couple of your posts around, and yeah, let's say I know this struggle.
It can get better, I hope it does for you.
I suppose dvd order porn will become a thing once again.
Or alternatively we can start sharing bootleg USBs with our friends.
The Internet had begun its enshitification stage, as governments look to control and lock down access to the internet people will find new and creative ways to bypass these barriers. For one, things like Tor or going back to DVDs and physical media might get more main stream.
I don't think we're ready for the drives unless it's some weird hippie business that uses a reuse redemption program.
Thumd drives are twice the cost or more and only have a 5-20 year life expectancy vs DVD of 30 to 100+ years.
So thumb drives only makes sense as some sort of transfer service
Sure enough the vast majority are Republican shithole states, although Virginia and Arizona are a surprise.
It's not that it's immortal to want IDs for porn (although GOP generally is immortal), it's just so... technologically stupid. The red states are stupid states.
I'm going back to physical media. Guess that will include my porn soon too.
Hmm, might actually still have some old playboy somewhere 🤔
Someday, we will be using AI to generate fake IDs and faces, simply because our governments refuse to respect our privacy. They will have uncanny resemblance to political critters who enacted the surveillance.
As with everything born of enshittification, I do not know if this is to be a lame joke or reality. 😒
Someday?
People were literally doing that day 1 of the first of these new ID laws. Also using video games that use real likenesses of people like uploading pics of Norman Reedus from Death Stranding 2. lol
this-person-does-not-exist.com saved me from showing youtube my face
.../s
.../?
You must send me a copy of your photo ID before viewing the rest of this comment:
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
(.Y.)
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( # ):::
All this actually does is push people to porn sites outside of Missouri's jurisdiction and/or sites that don't give a fuck about being "legitimate businesses" or whatever. It's effectively prohibition and the outcome will be the same.
This shit never actually makes anyone safer, it just draws more normal users to seedier parts of the internet.
I mean......by that logic their ramblings make sense. Porn to them is child porn. So if all porn is child porn (in their minds) then blocking access to porn isn't a bad idea.
The whole thing falls apart however if they were to realize that most people DO look at porn, but most people DON'T look at child porn.
I watch porn most days. I've never in my life had any desire to restrict others ability to watch porn.
But then again, porn for me is a woman fucking a dude in the ass, or 4 women standing around another woman who's tied up and they're tickling her until she screams bloody murder.
You know. Normal shit. Harmless shit. Fill in the blank of your own kinks, but at no point do kids come into play in my mind.
If I equated "porn" to "child porn" then yeah, I'd be trying to pass those laws too. But that says more about the way they think than anything.
Especially when you consider that schools are one of the most common places for public shootings, but you don't see them racing out to pass common sense gun reform laws.
It's such a hard problem to tackle, when you're self defeating in your attempts. No other country has this issue.
For anyone curious, the privacy video is in their latest(?) blog post on their site. It should be viewable anywhere as it's outside the NSFW area and before the 18+ notice.
(Just bear in mind that while it should be SFW, it is still under a porn-site's domain.)
pornhub.com/blog/age-verificat…
Age Verification in the US
We continue to block access to Pornhub in more states that have passed age verification laws.www.pornhub.com
Is there any organized fight against this? I feel like open access to porn is something people can get behind (pun intended).
People could literally put porn in everything until it's reversed and put their red state into porn overload. They could slip porn between the pages of the newspaper,or drop a copy of bad babysitters 5 in every DVD player in best buy at the same time. They could mass mail stills from 2 girls 1 cup, goetse, and blue waffle to their Congress people. They can wear the raunchiest t-shirts they can find and pack a town hall. These assholes already created a climate where woman are (understandably) even more afraid to have sex, now they want to lock down porn too. I'm not a degenerate because I watch porn; I'm a degenerate because I in ironically enjoyed Spongknob Squarenuts. But degenerate or not, I believe freedom of inquiry is important and I want to know exactly what she If you are gonna strip people of their economic output, abuse workers, stifle culture and art, etc, you at least have to give people a blowoff valve somehow. Reading the Bible after a double shift at work isn't gonna get anyone hard except maybe JD Vance and it probably still comes second to furniture warehouse ads.
Fuck these assholes.
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drop a copy of bad babysitters 5 in every DVD player in best buy
Soooooo, 0 dvd players? Best Buy stopped carrying physical media years ago.
bestbuy.com/site/blu-ray-dvd-p…
Best Buy International: Select your Country - Best Buy
Shop online at Best Buy in your country and language of choice. Best Buy provides online shopping in a number of countries and languages.www.bestbuy.com
Online doesn't count since you can't drop a dvd into one...
Best buy stopped carrying physical media in stores ages ago and outside of very out of date stores don't have display models like that anymore.
If you VPN into the UK or Australia, you'll run into the same restrictions.
As more countries pass this kind of legislation, VPNs become less and less of a solution, and they were only ever a solution for people who can afford them.
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The problem is that these kinds of laws are becoming widespread. When they become the norm, simply VPN’ing to a different country won’t save you, because there won’t be any “safe” countries.
Shit like this is why I unironically considered spinning up a NSFW Jellyfin instance. At least if I save the degen content like a data hoarder, they can’t legislate away my access.
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Parola filtrata: nsfw
Some states have already begun to require sites to detect connections from VPNs and block them.
eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawm…
Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing
It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and…Electronic Frontier Foundation
When I read about this I'm always brought back to the conversation of "internet as a public utility". I hope it's cool if we can take a tangent.
See unlike any of our other utilities like natural gas electricity water and sewage, the only thing that could potentially give any meaningful information about us is our sewage,, and the government already tests sewage for diseases. If we allow the government to "sell" us our internet they would basically be able to know everyone we are "talking too". Also how could we ever have enough regulatory oversight to protect everyone on the internet. Symmetrically if the government wants to have so much regulatory control over our internet it should maybe pay for it.
Like I wouldn't mind even paying another 50 bucks a month extra for "private internet" just so the government can have their free and regulated "public internet". Or would I (・–・)ゞ?
Like I wouldn't mind even paying another 50 bucks a month extra for "private internet" just so the government can have their free and regulated "public internet".
That’s basically how cable TV started. Over-the-air TV stations were ad-supported and public broadcast was largely supported by public funds. Cable TV got off the ground by marketing itself as a commercial-free way to watch.
And then once everyone had switched to cable, they went “hey, why don’t we introduce commercials anyways? I bet people will keep paying for our service if we just gatekeep the media that people have gotten hooked on…” And that’s exactly what happened. They pivoted away from the “commercial free TV” sales pitch, and moved towards “gatekeep media and force people to pay for it” model instead.
Never thought I would live to see this day. Utterly pathetic. I remember even 20 years ago online censorship was extremely taboo.
Making it easy for normies to get online was a massive blunder.
The end game here is to require ID for social media in order to suppress dissent. This is an easy first step due to the longstanding controversy surrounding pornography.
It's all about control.
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The end game here is to require ID for social media in order to suppress dissent.
in 7 days, that's what australia will have.
I hope to Darwin social media ends up requiring ID. I believe it would do wonders for democratic discourse. It was only last week, a number of large US right-wing accounts were revealed to be driven from outside the US. Is it healthy for democracies that so many people pay heed to foreign actors?
If you write an op-ed for a newspaper, the newspaper need to identify you as there is an editor who is responsible for what gets written in the paper. This ensures there’s someone who can stand to account for any libellous statements.
With social media we immediately reneged on this and allowed them to wash their hands; “we are just a channel” is a pretty bleak statement to make when the discourse on social media destroys the lives of minorities, encourages suicide, undermines our democracy with AI and troll farm bots.
And we can do this is a privacy preserving way - of course the social media companies feeds the opposite narrative because they don’t want to implicated in the piles of shit they shovel on top of our democracy.
If social media was required to ensure they could tie an account to a real person, which they needn’t reveal unless forced to by a court order, we would know that we were engaging with a real opinion, not something coughed up by a Putin-run AI bot or a Chinese troll farm.
The system required isn’t that complex.
A social media
- a social media company is opening a new account.
- it sends the person opening the account to any of the multitude of ways we can already verify identity online.
- the person is identified and issued an identity token, which gets sent to the social media company.
- the social media company says “great, this person is real and we can, if required by a court order, work with the identity company to reveal who this person is is”. Right now, all the social media company has is a token.
- the account is opened.
In a system likes this, the identity company doesn’t know who the person is; that sits with the social media company.
Nor does the identity service know which account is actually posting for this real person, all they know is they verified someone as part of an account opening process.
Social media should be treated like the press - make them accountable for what gets posted and allow them to place this accountability on a real person by labelling posts “op-eds” if, and only if, they know who is doing the posting.
We are letting large, anonymous money-men ruin our democracy behind the veil of “free discourse”. It’s not free to the many people who gets harmed by it.
It's all fun and games until the government decides that it really doesn't like dissenting opinions. We've already seen serious erosion of 1A rights in the U.S.
It would be one thing to have this in a world with benevolent leadership. But that isn't the world we are living in.
It would be one thing to have this in a world with benevolent leadership. But that isn’t the world we are living in.
So, Fantasyland, then. The closest anyone gets to benevolent leadership is their own parents, and that's only maybe 50-50.
The closest anyone gets to benevolent leadership is their own parents
Which just so happens to be the people who should be responsible for monitoring internet usage. This is a job for parents, not the government.
That's the point.
You, as a common citizen, should not have to. But the moment you feel like to share your thought or opinion, you should be identifiable and made responsible for it.
The current social media outlets shield behind the argument they act solely as channels while at the same time fostering and allowing for "anonymous" groups or individuals to spout whatever views they want, often views that deter from advancing social and civilizational progress. Hence the current state of the world, with authoritarianism on a rise and hight like there wasn't in nearly 70 years.
When the internet was made of individual websites, the person behind it was automatically made responsible for whatever they put on it. That was fair and reasonable.
Pushes like this, is assigning suspition/guilt before any wrong doing.
I will grant the overall facilitated acess to pornography is damaging the kids. There are already enough studies showing how the early access to porn is related to bad interpersonal relations on social, emotional and sexual level.
But this does not imply you should be identifying yourself to access adult content or anything on the web. Just impose curation. If it's available to the public, you're responsible for it.
Old school "dirty" books and magazines stores had controlled access and the really hardcore stuff was well out of reach of who should not get to it. Free porn is nice but there are things available that should be behind pay walls or at least registry, with identity verification.
If your point is to stifle dissent, then sure. Whoever controls the narrative will make contradiction look unacceptable. If your name is tied to an opinion that may be construed as contrary to the dominant narrative, you will hesitate to post it, and if you do post it, then you will be taken down with very real consequences because of that tie to your real identity. Employers already look at social media to determine if your behavior is considered acceptable to them, even if you keep your professional life completely separate. Your proposal only destroys free speech further by making it worth less and less the cost of expressing.
Make no mistake, the excuse of protecting children from pornography is just that, an excuse, to restrict freedom of speech by putting into place the mechanisms to identify people and strike at them for daring to express their opinions. Pornography being in the form of books, magazines, tapes, DVDs, whatever physical media did not necessarily control access. There are many with stories of how they managed to gain access as children, either through a parent's collection or otherwise. Similarly, this internet ID bullshit can be defeated, but it'll be backed by stricter and stricter legislation to make defeating it illegal and they won't be prosecuting children or the companies providing the ID verification service, they'll be prosecuting adults using tools to defeat these mechanisms to express their opinions.
No, it's not my point, although there is a difference between expressing ideas, no matter how contrarian or controversial they may be, and spouting hate or other positions detrimental to advancement.
I am aware of what you mention of companies sniffing for the social media of employees and potential applicants. It is a shameful practice. And if it is illegal in my country, has it is viewed as trespassing on one's privacy, it should be as welll any and everywhere.
Nobody should be ashamed nor afraid of expressing their opinions and ideas. Unfortunately, freedom of expression is often confused with the hability of saying whatever one feels like it, which is not.
What you describe (and fear, I take) is persecution. And that already tells whatever system an individual lives in is already deep into veering towards blatant suppression of rights. The US case is so off the rails it deserves an entire category to itself but it is only one among too many.
On the question of banning access to pornography I am completely against it. Yet I can not and will not deny the amount of evidence that supports that early and easy access to it is in fact tainting how people in general and kids in particular understand how relations are constructed. Pornography is really good at teaching wrong things. Nothing against it per se, it can be fun, but it should be consumed just like sugar, tobbacco and alcohol: in moderation and knowing of its ill effects.
I personally started reading erotic books much sooner than it was supposed. I recognize that curiosity towards sex and sexuality is ingrained in what makes us humans. I'm not advocating for banning adult material of any sort. What I would like to see would be clear boundaries for that specific content, for it not reaching those who are not expected to access it unware. It can't be written off to caveat emptor. Even less because a lot of it is "free".
The web is as it is today in great measure due to porn. There was a lot of money being poured into technology to facilitate access to it and in high definition. Let's be thankful for it but that is it. It can be almost ubiquious nowadays, along with casinos and crypto. It's too much and too much of a good thing is bad for everyone. Remember death by snu-snu.
I have no illusion we, as a species and a civilization, are going through a very dark period. Again. All the prior should have been able to sink in the lesson but we are either too sttuborn or too stupid to learn. Censoring, wide spread control of ideas, knowledge and thought is detrimental to a fair and free society.
Excuses like "protecting children", "fighting terrorism", etc, are, as you correctly said, excuses to make advances on individual rights and liberties. But we should be as concerned by now that companies do whatever they can to reach their goals and we are being force fed too many things that are not good for us. Two wrongs don't make a right but something has to change. Perhaps ceasing to be afraid of being responsible by one's own ideas and words would be a good start. Maybe stop feeding social media would be another. And perhaps reigning in companies on bad practices could be another.
If this doesnt make people stop using those sites, nothing will. 😀
And yeah, like others have said, its of course a system that will be used to control people and remove semi-anonymity from the web.
Try reading it instead. Go old school. And while you're at it, write yourself and share it. Bring back the times of hand to hand banned knowledge sharing.
But now seriously: that is completely stupid.
As anyone considered the amount of money that "industry" generates. Considering the US is so economy driven and concerned with jobs, maybe that argument can raise concerns.
Pricing
Free the internet from mass surveillance and censorship. Fight for privacy with Mullvad VPN and Mullvad Browser.Mullvad VPN
Fortunately lawmakers think all internet porn is on PornHub and that you find it by going to w-w-w dot yahoo dot com and typing "sex video" or "naked ladies" in the search thing.
The only porn they have experience with are polaroid photos that they got from a friend who knows a guy who makes tasteful art for clients with "particular tastes."
Conservative lawmakers don't know anything about porn, because if they ever recorded themselves fucking and the recording got out, they'd go to jail for statutory rape.
They're generally very comfortable around Grindr though.
I would like to dispute the primary supposition here that pornography is harmful. The use of pornography is nearly universal, and most of the harms that it supposedly causes are symptoms of other issues, or are invented to impose control of sexuality. The ability to reach out with the power of the law to impose religious edicts or project sexual hangups is one of the most esoteric, yet effective, forms of political control available other than violence. If you can control the way that people express their sexuality, you can probably also control their views through the monetization and restriction of sex.
Sexuality and privacy are human rights, and the creation of and access to pornography is protected by the first and fourth amendments under which so-called “age verification” is an unnecessary and excessive burden. If the idea is to prevent access to children, ask yourself why now all adults must now have their access prevented or interrupted.
Furthermore, it is not the state’s role to control childhood sexual development, and the idea that porn is harmful to minors is debatable at best and dubious at worst. Access to objectionable material is solely at the discretion of parents. The fact that they cannot effectively manage this is a symptom of another problem.
When Meta shows teenage girls makeup ads after they delete their selfies, or streaming apps are flooded with violent movies that are easily accessible to minors, this is acceptable. But when I want to watch porn it’s now my job to “protect minors” by compromising my privacy and security?
The real “danger” here is the availability of ideas that do not align with state power.
I think i agree for the most part.
These energies would be better spent ensuring that porn stars aren't being exploited and have access to appropriate support.
No offence to anyone, but this post strikes me as coming straight from a spokeperson for Aylo (formerly MindGeek). A mix of baseless claims and straight up misinformation, that happen to align with the company's business model.
You speak as if porn sites are analogous to social media and it's perfectly normal to record your experiences and post them online. Which it absolutely isn't, anywhere in the world. 'Expressing your sexuality' and porn are entirely separate and have very little to do with each other.
It is widely known and confirmed that pornographic content comes with a broad spectrum of negative effects, especially for children and adolescents. The latter really should be common sense in 2025. Watching porn isn't always bad and can be beneficial in some ways (as some sources below even highlight), but those cases represent a small minority.
Below are some quotes and just a few out of countless sources providing much more reliable information on the topic of pornography's effects. I strongly recommend reading at least some, because this comment is like ignoring decades of scientific literature and traveling in time back to the 1700s.
Prolonged exposure to pornography is known to lead to habituation, resulting in blunted processing of pleasurable stimuli and greater sensitivity to negative stimuli (21). Continuous use of pornography impairs emotional processing capacity and flattens affect, reducing emotional connection to real-life sexual experiences.
Source: Impact of pornography consumption on children and adolescents
Research shows that frequent porn use hijacks the brain’s reward system and changes the brain’s structure, much like addictive substances.This means that prolonged pornography use can weaken natural pleasure responses and reinforce compulsive behavior.
A 2014 study found that heavy porn users showed significantly reduced activity in critical areas of the brain responsible for motivation and impulse control, suggesting long-term neurological rewiring.
Source: The Hidden Cost of Pornography: How It Shapes Your Brain and Behavior
Age of first exposure was significantly associated with reported need for longer stimulation and more sexual stimuli to reach orgasm when using pornography, decrease in sexual satisfaction, and quality of romantic relationship, neglect of basic needs and duties due to pornography use, and self-perceived addiction in both females and males. (...) In the opinion of most of the surveyed students, pornography may have adverse effects on human health, although access restrictions should not be implemented.
Additional sources:
- 10 Negative Effects of Porn on Your Brain, Body, Relationships, and Society
- Affection substitution: The effect of pornography consumption on close relationships
10 Negative Effects of Porn
Think porn isn’t affecting you? Science says otherwise. Discover 10 ways your porn use might be impacting your relationships—and your brain.Fight the New Drug
Assuming what you're saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state's responsibility? Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?
The answer to all of those I think is no.
There's no analogous ID check for violent media, so far as I know.
There could be a raging wildfire and I would hesitate if a Republican said "let me deal with it". They are fundamentally untrustworthy.
That's on top of the deep irony of the same party that goes on about "small government" and "parents rights" is typically the same one pushing draconian anti-porn laws. It's a joke. "A government small enough to fit in your bedroom". Their motivations are so corrupt I am extremely skeptical of anything they propose.
Prolonged exposure to pornography is known to lead to habituation, resulting in blunted processing of pleasurable stimuli and greater sensitivity to negative stimuli (21). Continuous use of pornography impairs emotional processing capacity and flattens affect, reducing emotional connection to real-life sexual experiences.Source: Impact of pornography consumption on children and adolescents
This is disingenuous. This issue is caused by prolonged use, as in unhealthy addictive behavior. Framing it as a result of porn access in general is flagrantly dishonest.
Actually it seems like all of your points regard excessive and unhealthy usage. You're portraying these as results of any level of exposure and that is blatantly dishonest.
Why not also the company that does the IDs?
And hell, also the porn site?
Its all a big money making scheme. Security theater bullshit.
ITT: People who don't realize the advanced nature of fingerprinting that makes VPNs nearly useless in an authoritarian environment
Browserleaks - Check your browser for privacy leaks
BrowserLeaks is a suite of tools that offers a range of tests to evaluate the security and privacy of your web browser.BrowserLeaks
I'm not against proper age verifications as such, it would be like carding people in a store or a bar. But I just haven't seen an implementation of it that isn't prone to being a privacy nightmare and surveillance state shit.
I know there's some systems that generate a token that verify that you are 18 and you give that to the site, so neither side directly meet so to say. The site knows only that you have a valid token for being 18 and the app or service you use to generate the token knows just that you wanted to token for something. I think Spain was figuring out a system like that.
When you are carded at a club the staff doesn't scan your card and keep it on file. They simply look at it and return it.
As someone who worked similar jobs and would have had to look at tons of IDs every day I can assure, I dont have the time or interest in remembering all of them.
I think people don't realize just how dangerous this shit is until they have been affected in some noticeable way, and even then they will not link just how the incredible amount of surveillance they are under every day is the cause of it.
I worked in tech support for 7 years, and one thing that will never cease to astonish me is how tech illiterate people are. Do you have any idea how many people called me and demanded that I make modifications to their account and refused to tell me any verifying information? While some might have been malicious actors , most aren't. Most of them were genuinely expecting me to do everything for them and they wouldn't even tell me what their name is. They fully expected that somehow we would already know they are just from them calling...
Some of them called me on a number not recognized by the system but they fully expected me to pull up their account (fucking how?) Without any information at all.
When you have worked in this field long enough you will know why there is so little effective opposition to all this shit. It is not just because they dont give a damn if we are literally in a 1984 scenario with active cameras and microphones in people's homes, but they just dont understand what that really means. Even younger people who grew up with these devices from early childhood don't fully understand just how much they are being observed. If anything Gen Z and Gen Alpha are more fucked since they are the first generation of people whom the algorithms and data brokers have had some profile on since early childhood.
As an elder millennial who grew up in a techie family with computers from childhood. I am fortunate in that they have nothing on me from early childhood to teen years. By the time I hit 20 the internet was still too chaotic and underdeveloped and algorithms weren't the norm yet (and I was never a Google guy to begin with). But people born within the last 10 years can't have that privilege.
Why does everyone in the US card everyone over something ostensibly about age?
It's never been about age.
I've seen a seventy year old man with a foot long white beard get carded and refused, while he was stone cold sober.
Do you think he can't handle his liquor? He's seventy. He knows what it does.
There's a lot of bars/restaurants that do.
I have literally been refused service because the only ID I had is a passport, and those barcodes wouldn't scan into their system.
It's Papers, please, and it's fucking bullshit
the easiest thing would be making the internet as a whole 18+.
under 18 would be restricted to a firewalled version and age info would be part of the cellphone or internet plan. on a family plan..? under 18s get a firewalled plan. home internet? have a family and home internet? owner of the service gets a pin to disable the firewall. when everyone in the house hold is over 18, the service is unlocked.
the truth is that none of this is actually about porn or kids, its about the new world lifestyle of surveillance state getting a foot in the door. thats why all this bullshit aligns with other aspect of modern political and business tech agendas
We are blinded by the fact that the teens are involved in this too, and they deserve equality as well. The internet is made to build bridges - get rid of boundaries - not set false narratives and infantilise those that are really impacted in this situation and have full awareness of the status quo.
This is a foot in the door technique that uses our deceived emotional manipulation, where our age discrimination is the secret ingredient in this fascist circus.
Clearly, no-one involved in making these laws has ever heard of OAuth. Not every single site needs to manage your identity / credentials. The government already has this info, they can be the identity provider and use OAuth to grant access to age-gated resources without giving any personal data to the platform. Someone mentioned id.me, and I'm pretty sure that's how that platform works, though they're a private entity if I understand their site correctly.
I know most politicians are comically tech-illiterate, but it's so frustrating to see them constantly implement terrible solutions to already solved problems without asking a single expert who knows how this shit works.
That being said, California passed a bill with a not perfect, but better approach. User age is configured on the OS level when a user account is set up, and then it will tell platforms what age category the user belongs to, and nothing more:
(a) An operating system provider shall do all of the following:(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user:
(A) Under 13 years of age.
(B) At least 13 years of age and under 16 years of age.
(C) At least 16 years of age and under 18 years of age.
(D) At least 18 years of age.
(3) Send only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply with this title and shall not share the digital signal information with a third party for a purpose not required by this title.
I think iOS already does this, actually.
The CA bill is also dystopian nightmare fuel... The US isn't going to build an enormous firewall like other countries have, we are just going to pass a bunch of stupid laws and threaten companies to block our citizens from access instead. Put the burden of building the wall on someone else, the modern American Way™!
An entire generation of fuck-wad parents that just gave their kid a tablet and zero supervision instead of actually raising them are now using their failings as an excuse to control the population; control their devices, control their habits, control their knowledge, and control their thoughts.
The bill I mentioned actually relies on parents configuring their kid's devices. The system it describes just gives online (and even offline) platforms a standardized way of asking the OS what age category a user is as defined at account setup--hardly "dystopian nightmare fuel"...
This isn't going to stop unsupervised children, which is it's own problem that technology doesn't (and probably can't) solve.
It requires every Operating System and "App Store" to know the user's age. It requires every piece of software installed to receive the age-range token. It could be catastrophically bad for the open source community - the bill does nothing to define how these tokens are communicated and received. The largest players in the industry can use their market share to exert control over how it happens and bully anyone that doesn't get on board. For example, Google could tie it to the Play Integrity/Services and effectively kill 3rd party roms and possibly even open source app stores like fdroid, or all side-loading entirely if it was tied into the Play Store enough.
The bill isn't specifically a privacy dystopian nightmare, but it is still a dystopian nightmare. We need the government and mega-corps to have less influence and control over our devices, this gives them more.
Greedy companies do shit like that regardless of any laws. I don’t think this law makes it any more likely.
FOSS developers could create an ethical solution while still remaining legally compliant. The language is generic enough to allow for different implementations.
By creating a plaintext dotfile in $HOME, I'd reckon. Minimum effort, gets the job done. Users can lie when setting up the account so protecting the file against tampering is pointless.
But more likely, not a single distro will implement anything by default because it doesn't make sense to change your internationally-distributed OS because one state in one country passed a stupid law.
I'm 1000% against this age verification bullshit, not only because of the privacy and data reasons, but also because getting carded in a bar or at a store is also bullshit.
It Is Papers, please.
It's Never a question of if you're old enough, it's a question of "Do I think you're human enough?"
And more often than is reasonable, the answer is no, they don't think you're a person, who should be able to spend their money as they like.
And on the flip side, occasional SEO fuckups cause random terms to show porn image results
For example, I was searching for millimetre wave cell towers on duckduckgo a while back, I typed "MM wave cell tower" and saw a whole bunch of massive tiddies on the standard filtering setting. They fixed this a week after me discovering it however, so if you were hoping to see tits from searching telco infrastructure, I suppose you're outa luck.
Then you can't offend god by watching it and masturbating, like we intended!
-The Puritans pushing this legislation.
FOLLOW THE 💰:
EXON
RINAT AKHMETSHIN
ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN
KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK
CHUCK SCHUMER
JAMES COMEY
ROTHSCHILD
TRUMP
JARED KUSHNER
GARY COHN
STEVE MNUCHIN
SAM NUNBERG
NELSON BUNKER HUNT
LAMAR HUNT
MICHAEL FLYNN
DAN SCAVINO
ERIK PRINCE
WILBUR ROSS
STEFAN HALPER
GEORGE SOROS
JOHN DURHAM
DANIEL MURPHY
PETER STRZOK
LISA PAGE
BRUCE OHR
NELLIE OHR
CHRISTOPHER STEELE
CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JEFF SESSIONS
JOHN PODESTA
MUELLER
CHRIS WRAY
HUNTER BIDEN
SETH RICH
BILL BARR
KAMALA HARRIS
ADAM SCHIFF
TULSI GABBARD
AOC
CLINTON
OBAMA
ZIONISM
MICROSOFT
CLOUDFLARE
GREAT RIFT VALLEY
NETANYAHU
KISSINGER
Bet
GANDALF THE GREY
GANDALF THE WHITE
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAILS BLACK KNIGHT
BENITO MUSSOLINI
& THE BLUE MEANNIE
COWBOY CURTIS
JAMBI THE GENIE
ROBOCOP
TERMINATOR
CAPTIAN KIRK
DARTH VADER
LO PANTS
SUPERMAN
EVERY SINGLE POWER RANGER
BILL S. PRESTON
THEODORE LOGAN
SPOCK
THE ROCK
DOC OCK
HULK HOGAN.
all came out of nowhere lightning fast and kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass?
Now I have to listen to it again and have it stuck in my brain
Oh I see, a bunch of stupid-ass unsubstantiated bullshit.
I'm sure it's secretly the Clintons and Obamas behind this, that makes sense. You are massively fucking stupid person.
Exactly, all the talk about save the children, anti terrorism protection and other authoritarian bullshit is just an attempt to deceive and manipulate the masses.
Police state is what they resort to because these fascist fucks are fuelled by their narcissistic and machiavellianistic desires - the last thing they want is for someone to discover their true tyranny.
It is disappointing to see fascists are slowly succeeding by utilising their manipulative tactics.
I'm just over here in "hellscape" California enjoying the freedom to not have to do this, and I can walk down the street to the weed shop, and my girlfriend still has basic human rights over her own body.
Do any other states, like Texas, need some of our freedom? We've got some to spare.
Just to be clear, because I had to look into it a bit, California's law won't require photos/IDs.
"Operating system providers need not collect additional information like photos of government IDs to verify the user’s age. Based on this age information, operating system providers must send digital signals via real-time API (age signals) to developers upon request, transmitting the user’s age range bracket – under 13, at least 13 and under 16, at least 16 and under 18, or at least 18. When a user downloads and launches a developer’s application, the developer must request an age signal from the relevant operating system provider or the application store from which the user downloaded the application."
So I'm assuming those companies backed it because they want more analytics about the age ranges of the people who use their products.
Just posting on social media using your face to speak against the state in México gives you the privilege of being doxxed on national TV by the president, I can't imagine what they would do with something like this
Keep the downvotes coming, I live here and you don't have any idea if you really believe Morena is left leaning in any way or form
With the rising popularity of VPNs due to increasingly more countries becoming more authoritarian, I wouldn't be supposed there will be some anti-vpn directives put in place.
In addition to that, increasingly more selections within vpn profiles will be just as restrictive as the fascist internet at home.
VPNs are a great way to circumvent this police state but it ultimately doesn't stop fascists and their motives.
Oooooh! Shit. Yeah. Wow. It makes total sense now and that fucking sucks.
I hope some day these fascists get branded as the terrorists they are. And I’m so fucking sorry that they’re doing this to people.
You clearly haven't thought of the children.
Nah it's just a precursor to having all your online activity tied directly to your identity. That's the purpose. I'm sure plenty of misguided elders in government think it's about saving kids from porn though.
It's a coalition of groups with different purposes
One group wants to ban porn entirely
One group want to collect data on everyone. Your porn habits can be valuable if you're a future political rival
Some people believe it will prevent children from seeing porn
Others use it as a way to assert control over sex workers, especially female sex workers
Probably a few other smaller groups too. End of the day, none of them have your interests at heart
Some just want money.
I think this article: theverge.com/2018/2/23/1704397…
Is about pornhub’s parent company trying to lobby in favor of this because it thought it could make money by selling age verification. I read an article saying something to that effect quite some time ago, and I think this is the article, but can’t be sure because it’s requiring a login and the archive site isn’t loading for me at the moment.
Why the world’s biggest porn company is backing the UK’s new age law
The adult industry is worried about MindGeek’s role in the UK’s new age-verification system.Lux Alptraum (The Verge)
I just remembered that I'm the guy everyone in my family goes to when they need someone to scan their ID or passport for whatever stupid bullshit.
Guess it's time to sign all my conservative family members up to gay porn websites!
This may be the real reason r's are losing all of the elections, lol. They are entirely red states.
This is going to expand. The next wave is going to be keeping kids off of social media. That means they will have to be age-verified, which they can't do, because they're kids, and don't have ID. Instead, everyone else will have to be age-verified in order to use the Internet.
Here in Florida, I've already heard one state lawmaker scoffing at any objections, saying it's the same way we keep kids from buying alcohol - by checking EVERYONE'S ID. Now they're going to do it for the Internet. Every movement and post you make on the Internet will be directly tied to your verified identity. That should be perfectly fine, as long as you aren't doing or saying anything wrong, right?
Hear me out!
What if parents did their fucking job as they should instead of demanding the state to do it for them, only for it to get hijacked by both
- christofascists wanting to make it illegal to not live a "christian life",
- and corporations wanting to ensure competition will need to pay a shitton of money on age verification AI?
I'm prepared for my downvotes.
I have often joked that in the not-too-distant-future people will look back upon the early days of the internet like we look upon the 1950s view of smoking.
What do you mean kids shouldn't do it? It's fine. You know how it is, watch a kids cartoon, look at some memes, two girls 1 cup, email the fam, those two Mexican dudes who had their heads cut off with a chainsaw, research Ghana for a school project, sneak in some porn after the parents go to bed, and cap it off with some chat room conversations about Picard's superiority to Kirk while some kid across the country goes on about shooting his brains out because mom and dad either don't love him enough or love him too much. Maybe download some credit card spoofers and Diablo hacks for online play if you aren't quite ready for bed.
The early internet, and even the internet now, is a fucking wild concept. Take everything that people think, not just what we know, but what we fucking think about while we are taking a shit, and make it available for anyone look at without guidance or context. We can even watch police shootings in real time and pretend to be detectives during terrorist events, consequences to real people be damned.
Should parents know better? Sure. Is the internet an effective babysitter while they grind out a living? You bet.
If we restrict this dumpster fire behind age-verification and eliminate anonymity through tagged identification, the effect on privacy and anonymous online activism will be severe. However, CinnamonRingCumGlaze86 will be significantly less able to use their 6th grade reading level to convince people that modern medicine is bad because Pre-Historical Witches didn't have AIDS bro. #flatearth #zoroastrianismwasasteptoofar #onceagaintherealproblemiscapitalismandwearelookingatthewrongthingbecauseofmanufactured-outrageandobfuscationcreatedbytheoligarchy #worldofwarcraftclassic
CinnamonRingCumGlaze86 will be significantly less able to use their 6th grade reading level to convince people that modern medicine is bad because Pre-Historical Witches didn’t have AIDS bro.
You don't need accounts tied to ID to ban such content.
Not hard to imagine, people already have to manicure their facebook and other social media accounts because employers look at them. Just because you don't want something attached to your name, doesn't mean it's stupid or bad. There are consequences for unapproved behavior and opinions, even if they're not wrong or harmful.
If you think anonymity is stupid, feel free to set your display name to your real name right here on lemmy.
I know that anonymity is the way it is and don't think that me changing my display does anything about one way or the other. I definitely shit post, because I can. There is literally no consequence. If I somehow hit the right combination of words and someone commits suicide, I would never know. If I share something that someone looks views at their workplace and then gets fired, I would never know. The entire thing is just people collectively shrugging responsibility for their behavior and that has a net negative effect on society.
I'm not going to change my name over to my real name, although that is generic enough that would not be identifying, but I am going to point out that people do shitty things with anonymity and that the world would be better off without it.
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.
[...]
Leaked wedding video lays bare luxurious lives of Iran’s political elite and highlights hypocrisy of Islamic Republic
A wedding video which has gone viral in Iran has highlighted the country’s inequality and exposed hypocrisy at the core of the ruling regime.The Conversation
Iran's government is historically weak. It's allies and proxies have been routed in the region while American and Israeli jets bomb their country with impunity. The place is vulnerable to revolution and it would be nice to see feminists overthrow the Ayatollah.
However, it's hard to get optimistic about revolution in the Middle East. After all, it was a revolution that created the Iranian theocracy to begin with. I'm also worried that a fallen Iran would mean an Israeli regional hegimon.
I'm more surprised that people are surprised by this. Being nobility class is this: you're free to make whatever rules you want for your subordinates, and you're free to disregard any of them. You're not bound by any sense of morality (whatever it might be); that's for lower men.
What were they expecting? Obviously these people won't comply with anything that's imposed on the masses, especially in a society where the norms are so restrictive.
And I further suspect that the more totalitarian a country is, the more its elite will deliberately choose to go against their own rules, as this is the greatest proof of their powerful social status.
Does Wilhoit's law apply to Islamic Theocracy?
Frank Wilhoit said, "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Wow that’s horrible: Iran has oligarchs, too. We should freedom-bomb the fuck out of Iran and replace them with our own compador oligarchs and give the oil back to British Petroleum.
It’s nice to see that you don’t focus exclusively on China and Russia, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org. You’re an equal opportunity concern troll for US empire.
Citations Needed: Episode 08: The Human Rights Concern Troll Industrial Complex
We discuss the cynical use of "human rights" to advance US interests with guest Glenn Greenwald. The conceit that the U.S.citationsneeded.libsyn.com
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 linkThe 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.
...
57-year-old midwife sentenced to 11 years in ongoing Russian terror against residents of occupied Enerhodar
Larysa Malovychko has already been in Russian captivity for over two years, with it likely that she was seized because of her pro-Ukrainian positionHuman Rights in Ukraine
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.
...
China cracks down on calls for accountability over deadly Hong Kong blaze
Hong Kong’s national security police arrest three, as Beijing issues warning to ‘anti-China and pro-chaos elements’.John Power (Al Jazeera)
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.
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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 linkThe 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.
...
'Aggressive response' needed to tackle cyber threats facing Ireland
NCSC says criminal cyber gangs and hackers, aligned to states like China and Russia, pose a 'significant threat' to Ireland’s national securityCormac O’Keeffe, Security Correspondent (IrishExaminer.com)
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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?
DOC • To grow, we must forget… but now AI remembers everything
AI’s infinite memory could endanger how we think, grow, and imagine. And we can do something about it.www.doc.cc
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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.
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.Bang Xiao (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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.
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What's happening in Switzerland?
Flipping and flopping for the past year. I welcome this latest news, and the similar news yesterday, hopefully it is infectious to the rest of Europe but it completely contradicts things that have been proposed for the last few months, then the sudden change. I wonder did Trump push too hard:
May 14 2025 - Proposed Swiss surveillance law ‘identical to Russia’
June 13 2025 - "A war against online anonymity" – why Switzerland wants to change its surveillance law and what's at stake
September 11 2025 - Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
November 15 2025 - Switzerland plans surveillance worse than US
November 27 2025 - Switzerland: Data Protection Officers Recommend Broad Cloud Ban for Authorities
..
Switzerland: Data Protection Officers Impose Broad Cloud Ban for Authorities
According to the Data Protection Conference, federal offices may only use US hyperscalers like AWS, Google, or Microsoft to a limited extent.Stefan Krempl (heise online)
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In fairness a government should be the only entity surveilling people in its own borders under most any circumstances.
I'm pretty opposed to most any kind of surveillance outside of warranted due process, and I don't think that any domestic surveillance needs privacy for longer than it takes to do an investigation and prosecution.
It's when governments are allowed to do things in secret and outside of the law that the whole concept of the law is undermined.
We have a lot of different political and government bodies. Like the "checks and balances" the US had.
So when you read "Switzerland wants to..." it could be:
* A survey of people living in Switzerland
* A initiative (an official political vote done by the swiss citicens)
* One big or multiple parties signing an agreement
* A group of cantons or communal legislative or executive politicians
* A group of semi-official people (like the conference of all the cantons data protection officers ("Kantonale Datenschützer", keine Ahnung wie all das Zeug auf Englisch heisst, Hilfe)
* Our parliament or a comitee in it
* Our other parliament or a comitee in it
* The federal court
* The federal chancelor
* The federal government
* And sometimes internetusers even mix some company into the bag, for example Proton.
I probably forgot a few and misspelt a lot but you get the idea.
And all of them are different elected or appointed persons, with their own opinions.
That is why everything is so fast at changing here 😆
(We discuss, we decide, we get blocked, we discuss, we change, we get blocked, rinse and repeat)
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That's not how the swiss government works.
Here the data protection officers are mostly independent of the rest of the government and are just doing their (somewhat hopeless) job.
Of course "warn[ing] public bodies" is about all they are can do.
It's almost like we're a multiparty democracy or something.
The press and others tend to report proposals by one part or another as though they have already been passed into law. I think it makes for better headlines.
And Andy Yen uses it for what agenda he has, like moving into cheaper German data centres or whatever.
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
That's from Edward Snowden. Evidently no one is going to force you to jump through hoops to use encryption if you don't think you stand to benefit from it. That being said, the "nothing to hide" argument can be a bit of a slippery slope.
Also reminds me of someone I knew, who was doing pure maths research (so, read about as much as your fanfic) and was storing their papers on Dropbox. When informed that that was a private US entity, would enable other entities to access that data, they said "but I want people to read my paper". They are now furious about LLMs. Go figure.
Windscribe are a bit late to the game -https://x.com/windscribecom/status/1995619967996494334
They are twittering today quoting an article that was published 3+ months ago.
Proton is moving out of Switzerland because of their new surveillance laws. So much for Switzerland being some bastion of privacy huh? That makes Canada a better place for a VPN. Stop drinking the marketing koolaid.
Judging by the direction that Switzerland seems to be going, I am guessing (I could be wayyyy wrong) that Swiss privacy companies are going to be still effective for people outside of Switzerland, soon to be completely free from US big tech spying.
Canada are in the 5 eyes, whereas Switzerland aren't even mentioned in the 14 eyes.
As for Canada being a better place for the Privacy or a VPN, I think Windscribe need to stop drinking their own nonsense.
Damn. I remember seeing a Reddit AMA when I first came across Protonmail some 7-odd years ago with the Protonmail CEO saying something along the lines of "we don't plan on moving out of Switzerland because other country's intelligence agencies concern us more than the Swiss intelligence" and I thought that was a good take. Hell, I still do in lieu of everything going on.
I wonder what happens now that they will be "physically diversifying across Europe".
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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.
Devastating toxic spill seen as test of whether African countries can stand up to China
Chinese companies provide jobs and much needed revenue in Zambia, where the disaster took place.Mayeni Jones (BBC News)
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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.
Suspected members of neo-Nazi terror group arrested in Spain
Three people are accused of belonging to the Base, an ‘accelerationist’ white power organisation founded in the USSam Jones (The Guardian)
RRF Caserta. Cultura - Il Povero Piero di Achille Campanile
NutinButNet
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •like this
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frongt
in reply to NutinButNet • • •like this
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LOGIC💣
in reply to NutinButNet • • •You're right. One problem is, even though mods already have the power, specifically saying in the rules that the criteria is subjective sounds like something that a mod would make when they are tired of having to explain their moderation choices.
They can just say that it was low-effort, and problem solved. They don't need to explain themselves, right?
But when the rules are vague, I think they'll end up with more complaints from people who have different criteria of low-effort from the mods. This sort of interaction leads to accusations of mods power-tripping.
If the mods can nail down exactly what is low-effort, like, "X will always get removed. Z will never get removed unless it violates other rules. Y may be at risk of the moderator's mood. You have been warned." If they nail things down a bit more, then they will probably make things easier for themselves in the long-run than just keeping things vague.
Plus, if the rules are not vague, then people can discuss them safely when the rules are changed. When rules are vague, people will simply be upset that moderation was sprung on them, and everything will be discussed while people are upset. My belief is that people best discuss things while calm, and not while experiencing one person having power over another.
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bluGill
in reply to LOGIC💣 • • •kanera
in reply to bluGill • • •I dont think making everyone afraid to post is a good solution to trolls pushing the boundaries (that they would be pushing anyways).
And in any case, the mods have a final say in such matters, thats why they are there, hopefully it doesnt come to that tho.
LOGIC💣
in reply to bluGill • • •For me, the important thing is that this is a vibrant community.
That means that from the mods' perspectives, they don't get too loaded down with moderation work, or need to defend themselves and create friction with the community.
It also means that when people want to contribute to the community, they're not afraid of what the mods will say. If they post without reading the rules, like probably most people do, it's really the poster's fault. But if they are afraid to post even after reading the rules, then I think that has a freezing effect on the community.
As for people who are looking for loopholes, I think they're trying to make the mods' lives harder, and so I don't really think they're worth worrying too much about. They'll probably get banned sooner or later because that is the attitude of a troll.
Just my opinion. I've never been a mod, and I don't think I could handle that responsibility. I just try to be empathetic with everybody involved.
Dagnet
in reply to NutinButNet • • •comrade_twisty
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •Does this include Youtube videos? Or at least Youtube videos without a clear description and summary?
Those constant ad money farming posts really lower the quality of this sub.
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hperrin
in reply to comrade_twisty • • •ShortN0te
in reply to hperrin • • •But how would you know before watching?
"Based on the upvotes and comments"
Oh then others doing the work to watch it and rate it on lemmy for you.
Imo, when a link to a video or forum or whatever is posted, then at least a summery or a discussion should be included.
solrize
in reply to hperrin • • •Onomatopoeia
in reply to hperrin • • •The problem is they are almost never good, as everyone can read the same info 4x faster than someone can present it (best case), and 10x faster isn't unusual.
Source: Former technical trainer - I've read a lot about instructional methodologies. Video is the lowest common denominator that's all. It can be useful for things that have a visual component, and self hosting has very little of that.
Onomatopoeia
in reply to comrade_twisty • • •Seems there are 2 kinds - video links with almost no text, just farming visits, and video links with a wall of text.
Both suck. Videos, in general, suck.
So much of what goes on here needs text, lots of it. Video is slow and cumbersome.
branch
in reply to Onomatopoeia • • •monkeyman512
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •brownmustardminion
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •This is fine if the post is something insanely low effort.
But I do worry if this ends up being too aggressive.
One of the things that made reddit so awful is how over moderated it was.
I don't really take issue with dozens of posts by newbies asking the same basic question over and over. I used to be one and am occasionally back there again if I start a new hobby. Hopefully newcomers don't get pushed off by overly sensitive moderation.
It would be helpful if you could provide a hypothetical example of what is considered a "low effort" post.
pineapple
in reply to brownmustardminion • • •I'm not sure if I agree with this, unless you need clarification on something specific the forum like nature and search should allow you to find answers to previous questions without asking it again.
But I do agree overmoderation is bad. I swear if communities start implementing a karma system...
FreedomAdvocate
in reply to pineapple • • •pineapple
in reply to FreedomAdvocate • • •FreedomAdvocate
in reply to brownmustardminion • • •infeeeee
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •I've seen slightly offtopic posts deleted here, even after some interesting conversation in the comments. I think Lemmy is small, and it could help the platform if conversations and posts are preserved even if they are not 100% on topic. But I respect the work of mods, it's their decision how they run a community, even if I don't agree with them all time.
But just as a backup, if things take an unexpected turn, here are some similar, but much less active communities:
This is also to the "low effort" posters, if you disagree with your post's removal you can post it to other similar communities.
dbtng
in reply to infeeeee • • •The instance I'm a member of had an unused selfhosting comm, and I started using it. Other people did too. Thanks for the shout out.
Wolf314159
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •frongt
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •Wait, is this about the posts from melonhusk@sh.itjust.works? We don't need a new rule for that, they were spamming.
Edit: I am also concerned that there are no mod responses so far. Seems like this is a proclamation, not a discussion.
FreedomAdvocate
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •Why? Why would you remove a post that some people deem “low effort”? People can just ignore the posts if they think it’s low effort.
More censorship and gate keeping has never been an good option.
Zombie
in reply to FreedomAdvocate • • •Because it's clutter and annoying to see "Heyyy, is jellyfin a good video app?" ad nauseam, when a simple search would answer their question faster and without wasting everyone's time and energy.
Modlogs are visible, if there's truly a censorship issue then we're free to upsticks and move to another community. That's the advantage of the Fediverse.
FreedomAdvocate
in reply to Zombie • • •rearview
in reply to HybridSarcasm • • •