Taiwan cheered, China upset after Trump signs new Taiwan legislation into law
Taiwan expressed thanks and China was upset on Wednesday after Donald Trump signed into law legislation requiring the U.S. State Department to regularly review and update guidelines on how the United States officially interacts with Taipei.
The United States is Taiwan's most important international backer despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, and the issue is a constant source of irritation in Sino-U.S. relations given Beijing views the democratically-governed island as its own.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung told reporters more frequent reviews of the guidelines would allow Taiwanese officials into federal agencies for meetings, for example, though the legislation does not make explicit mention of this.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China firmly opposes any form of official contact between the United States and "the Taiwan region of China".
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I don’t know man. This crap gives such ammunition to the “both sides are corrupt” argument.
Do we really believe things in Ukraine would be better or even the same under Putin? What are we even talking about here?
don't like this
Nothing justifies Ukraine murdering its own people in its own country for the eight years before this war started.
- Reuters, 2014: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- Leaked recording between Nuland and Pyatt: | transcript
- Counterpunch, 2014: US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: 'I want to bring up a warrior': Ukraine's far-right children's camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
- Internationalist 360°, 2022–2024: History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
The suspensions have more to do with political polarisation than genuine security concerns related to the invasion.Volodymyr Ishchenko (Al Jazeera)
That is not even the end of it.
I'd like to add on that there is literal footage of Ukrainian troops firing into crowds of civilians in Mariupol and Krasnoarmeysk back in 2014, both after Maidan Coup.
There is also footage of Ukrainian Nazis carrying out a pogrom against the Romani in 2018.
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NATO expansion:
- George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
- Orinoco Tribune, 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
- Al Mayadeen, 2023: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine
NATO in general:
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023:
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
- Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
Especially with new leadership.
Zelensky was a comedian groomed by oligarchs. He played a president on TV and then ran for president on TV. This was planned out in advance. Zelensky has never been in control because he was an actor in way over his head, beholden to US comprador oligarchs, and his life is openly threatened by high-level Banderite fascists should he get out of line. And he’s quite wealthy now, an oligarch in his own right. He’s in no way a “servant of the people;” that’s an act played by an actor.
Even if Ukraine was the most corrupt country ever, bombing the shit out of the citizens is not the way you help
I don't know, they sure tried it in the eastern part of the country for 10 years
Can we tho?
You’re so far off reality I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.
don't like this
They are engaged in continuous operations that let American and European defense firms verify the effectiveness of and learn how to desert modify their weaponry
Not many countries have essentially unlimited defenseless people to just test weapons on for fun
Experience matters and if you aren’t engaged in combat operations your military complex will lack compared to those who are
I genuinely don't think blowing up 1000 schools is a great way to "battle test" weapons. Might as well be blowing up stationary cardboard targets.
The only time Israel gets to test against real weapons is during their 12 day war with Iran. Where the entire system they worked on so hard for decades gets overwhelmed by a barrage of missiles in the most expected fashion possible, and the US wastes like 30% of their interceptor stockpile and is now running a defecit.
The biggest reason I don't believe America controls Israel is because Israel has nukes (with secrets stolen from the US). The US would never hand over nukes to a proxy. Certainly not one as unreliable as Israel.
Because a proxy is supposed to be fully reliant on the host and not have insane amounts of autonomy
Also America paying a visit to the guy who stole the nukes and is blackmailing America into doing their bidding because Israel has nukes lmao
A real testing ground for American weapons is Ukraine where America is fighting a real army. Guess who's not getting nukes though.
- YouTube
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The US obviously doesn't just obey the demands of every nuclear armed country, so something else must be happening.
Israel is an extension of the US, it's part of the US rather than a puppet of the US. Israel is no more a proxy than Texas is.
I don't think Israel is a reliable partner to the US whatsoever. If they see the tides are shifting they will gladly ally with Russia or China whenever it becomes more convenient. They have already sold US secrets to Russia multiple times. Bombed the USS liberty etc. Of all the US "allies" in the Middle East, Israel is the least reliable one. Ask Britain what happened to the King David hotel.
Now compare that to Qatar and other Gulf states which are literally paying the US billions in "protection money" so the US can put military bases all over their country which it then uses to bomb Iran (for Israel). Now that's what we call a good deal. And then Israel goes ahead and bombs Qatar and the US turns off the air defense systems so they can do it.. Now that's a surefire way to get all the countries paying for US to host military bases to look elsewhere.
Israel is getting far too much playing money for how bad they are behaving.
That's because Qatar and other Gulf states are actually proxies, they are dependent on the US.
Israel isn't like that because it's an extension of the US. The US doesn't control Israel, it is Israel. Israel doesn't control the US, it is the US. They're two heads on the same hydra. If the tides shifted so far that Israel was looking towards Russia or China, that probably means the US is in full collapse and we'd also see Texas join BRICS or some shit.
Dependance is a big part of what it entails to be a proxy. A proxy isn't supposed to get too much autonomy lest it will start looking out for its own interest over the host when it gets too powerful. Israel is playing all sides. Giving a proxy nukes is certainly not a real thing.
This gets even clearer when looking at the Israel-Russia relation. Israel refused to send weapons to Ukraine because then Russia would probably start selling their anti-air and other weapons to Iran. For an unsinkable aircraft carrier Israel is extremely unreliable because Russia is much closer to Israel in proximity than Israel is to the US. Therefore Israel plays friendly with Russia, against US policy (and even sells US secrets to Russia).
The US doesn’t control Israel, it is Israel.
If that's the case I'd love to hear an explanation for Israel bombing Qatar which is under US protection. That was a ridiculously bad move for US prominence in the region. And the whole part where Israel threatens US presidents with nukes under their planes.
I keep saying that Israel isn't a proxy. It should be thought of more like the 51st state. Is Texas a US proxy? Obviously not!
Just because the US and Israel are two heads of the same entity doesn't mean that there aren't internal contradictions that manifest as differences in strategy and tactics. There's an ongoing intrafactional dispute over how the imperialist project should be carried out going forward as the empire transitions to a new phase - sort of like how we see Trump eroding US prominence by ending USAID, chaotically slapping tariffs on its own allies, completely throwing away the figleaf of international law, etc etc.
Playing nice with Russia isn't proof of much. There are bourgeois factions within the US that also want to bring Russia on-board for the encirclement of China, so the fact that Israel might also want to do the same thing shouldn't be surprising. Israel playing friendly with Russia isn't a betrayal of the US, but rather, a strategic ambiguity that leaves the door open for Russia to jump ship.
As for attacking Qatar, the US imposed a "peace plan" less than 3 weeks later which Israel immediately accepted. That doesn't look like Israel calling the shots, nor does it look like Israel is a proxy. They look like co-equal partners that sometimes disagree, but ultimately can unify when they need to for the sake of their overall agenda.
My bad I misunderstood what you meant. But the "51th state" narrative is completely false too. In fact it's literally the newest Israeli propaganda, since their "we are doing the dirty work for the US" narrative fell apart.
MondoWeiss - The Shift: 50 States, One Israel
Just because the US and Israel are two heads of the same entity doesn’t mean that there aren’t internal contradictions that manifest as differences in strategy and tactics
This isn't entirely false but Israel and the US have very different goals. Israel doesn't abide by US weapon transfer laws, has its own legal system, and most importantly contrary to Ukraine, Israel gets their weapons for free with a direct full cash donation.
The way to make Israel part of the US is to make it reliant on the US is by debt-trapping it like the US debt-traps itself. But the US doesn't do that, because Israel refuses to be tethered to the US. It just wants free weapons... and somehow gets it!.
The US is in the position of power but is giving away all its cards for free.
As for attacking Qatar, the US imposed a “peace plan” less than 3 weeks later which Israel immediately accepted. That doesn’t look like Israel calling the shots, nor does it look like Israel is a proxy.
The US let Israel bomb Qatar and knew Israel was going to do it.
The peace plan being Israel taking half the Gaza strip and getting all their captives back. And then continuously violating it. Israel clearly just did a PR stunt and got everything they wanted out of it. Even China and Russia bowing to Israel and handing Israel half of Gaza at the UNSC. And Israel is already moving bombing Lebanon, invading Syria, and very likely pulling the US into another Iran war soon.
To be clear, Israel doesn't fully controll the US. There are many different lobbies in the US. Healthcare, OPEC, Agro, Israel, etc. But all Israel's power revolves around a single topic which most other lobbies don't care about. So Israel can easily get their way most of the time. That said, when they start touching the other lobbies, especially the OPEC as Israel did in Qatar, we start seeing pushback.
But that gets to the crux of my point. The US doesn't support Israel out of self-interest. It supports Israel until Israel starts harming the self-interest of the US hard enough to get other big lobbies involved. And bombing Qatar was certainly one of those moves.
The Shift: 50 States, One Israel
Amid the ongoing genocide, the largest-ever delegation of U.S. lawmakers attended the “50 States, One Israel” conference in Jerusalem last week. It’s clear from the event, and the local reactions it sparked, that Israel’s isolation is only worsening.Michael Arria (Mondoweiss)
Ukraine is definitely the new gold mine but most countries don’t expect actual state v state war.
They want weapons for use on defenseless civilians because that’s 99% of the likely and intended uses for military applications in the west. American cops are literally trained by IDF units to use their tactics. Our military equipment is directly sold to domestic cops.
The west has no better test bed than Israel for learning militant apartheid strategies
That makes no sense either because Israel is using the most advanced stealth fighter jets to throw the heaviest bunker buster bombs on... stationary targets above ground.
I really don't think that leveling an entire city with bombs has any practical use whatsoever. There is no GPS jamming, no advanced defense systems. Nothing which improves the advanced weaponry in any meaningful way that wouldn't be achieved by simply painting some read targets in a Nevada deserts and checking how accurate the bombs would hit there.
Cops aren't getting F35's. The only valid use which can be argued is that Israel has is their mass surveillance systems and police state which does see actual use in export to the US and Europe.
It really feels like everyone is desperately trying to ignore the fact that Israel has basically all of US congress on their payroll, and the reason the US is giving taxpayer money to Israel is not out of self interest. AIPAC is the elephant in the room here.
Dropping bombs with stealth jets isn’t the vast majority of what they do.
The majority of what they do is with people on the ground in close urban scenarios. They are equivalently armed to us police in almost all these instances.
AIPAC is a vehicle thru which these interests are effected
Israel barely does ground combat in Gaza. 90% of its campaign is bombing hospitals and schools from the sky. When they finally roll up to do some ground combat some dude in flip flops walks up and throws a mine into their tank and they take heavy casualties.
What Israel does in the West Bank is comparable with US police minus the land mines in the West Bank. But Israel is not spending billions in military funding on their West Bank raids.
Options for remote Wake-on-lan. Or I guess wake on WAN.
So I want to setup a remote backup location at my parents house although they are very mindful about there electricity usage and environmental impact (and so am I) so I don't want to have to have a pc always on when it doesn't need to be.
Is it possible to setup remote Wake-on-lan so I can schedule my homelab at my place to wake up the server at my parents house and start a backup like once a week, I want to do this in a secure fashion as well so ideally no port forwarding, I currently use cloudflare tunnels for my home network.
Are there any other options or do you have a similar setup at your place?
To Catch a Predator: Leak exposes the internal operations of Intellexa’s mercenary spyware
To Catch a Predator: Leak exposes the internal operations of Intellexa’s mercenary spyware - Amnesty International Security Lab
Drawing on leaked internal company documents, sales and marketing material, as well as training videos, the “Intellexa Leaks” investigation gives a never-before-seen glimpse of the internal operations of a mercenary spyware company focused on exploit…Amnesty International's Security Lab
European Commission plans ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets
Leaders focus on bolstering Ukraine’s finances as US-Russia talks to end war make little progress
The European Commission will move ahead with controversial plans to fund Ukraine with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets, but in a concession to concerns raised by Belgium, which hosts most of the assets, the EU executive has also proposed another option: an EU loan based on common borrowing.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday the two proposals would ensure “Ukraine has the means to defend [itself] and take forward peace negotiations from a position of strength”.
EU leaders will be asked to decide on the options later this month, as Ukraine faces a looming funding crunch, while the latest round of US-Russia peace talks appear to have made little progress.
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Just do it already!
But next, I'd really like banks to consider the idea that it isn't bad for business to say "tyrant's money isn't necessarily safe here".
‘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)
pancake likes this.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.”
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.
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
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.
pancake likes this.
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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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?
NoneOfUrBusiness likes this.
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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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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Be Your Own Privacy-Respecting Google, Bing & Brave
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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.
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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People whining like a bunch of unhinged crybabies because Ms. Rachel says that murdering children is bad.
Where are they on this?
Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn
As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.
Archive: archive.today/uZB13
Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn
As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.
💡
Do you have a tip to share about age verification? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.The other states include Louisiana, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Montana, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Arizona, and Ohio.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Missouri are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” DeVille says in the video. On the blocked homepages there’s also a link to an explanation of the “Restricted to Adults,” or RTA label, which porn site administrators place on their sites to signal to device-based parental controls that the websites are inappropriate for minors.
Like most of the other 24 laws across the country, Missouri’s age verification law requires websites containing more than one third of material that’s considered “harmful to minors,” or sexual content, to perform age verification checks. Similar or more restrictive laws have swept the country since Louisiana became the first state to enact age verification legislation in 2023.
Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet
Invasive and ineffective age verification laws that require users show government-issued ID, like a driver’s license or passport, are passing like wildfire across the U.S.404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg
Age verification laws reach beyond porn sites, however. In Wyoming, South Dakota, Mississippi and Ohio, where the laws are written broadly enough to cover social media sites and any platform hosting adult content, Bluesky users have to submit to a face scan by the third-party company Yoti or upload a photo of their credit card to verify they’re over 18 years of age. In July, Bluesky started requiring all UK users to verify their ages in response to the Online Safety Act. We’ve previously reported on the security risks in uploading sensitive personal data to identity verification services, including the potential for hackers to then get ahold of that information themselves. In October, after Discord started requiring UK users to verify ages, the platform announced hackers breached one of its third-party vendors that handles age-related appeals, and said it identified around 70,000 users who may have had their government ID photos exposed as part of the breach.Last week, Pornhub’s parent company Aylo sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft, urging them to support device-based age verification in their app stores and operating systems, WIRED reported. “Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,” Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo, said in the letter. “However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”
Instead of protecting minors, age verification laws spike usage of virtual private networks and send users—including, potentially, minors—to unregulated or unmoderated sites that don’t care about complying with U.S. or UK laws. In Missouri, searches for VPNs spiked following the law’s enactment.
Missouri schools are not required to teach sex education, leaving it up to local school boards to decide what, if anything, children are taught about sexual health. School districts that do teach sex ed are required to promote abstinence, a modality long recognized as ineffective at protecting children from engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Even if a district offers sex ed, parents are allowed to pull their kids out of that class altogether. But despite research showing age verification laws don’t work either, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway believes forcing adults to undergo age verification protects the children in her state. “We are proud to stand on the side of parents, families and basic decency. Missouri will not apologize for protecting children,” Hanaway said in a press release.
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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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
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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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wheezy
in reply to MicroWave • • •It's just so odd to me. Like, the historical parallel here would be if during the US civil War the Confederate army retreated to the Florida Keys and the Union was never able to conquer them due to other international conflicts.
So for 30 years the Confederates rule there with slavery and a dictatorship over the people. All the while they keep calling themselves "The real America"
The "Keys" see progress eventually following a less hostile relationship with the Union and have their dictatorship replaced by a more liberal form. A normalizing could occur and diplomatic relations between the Keys and the rest of America could occur peacefully and under the wishes of the existing people of the Keys.
BUT, for some reason some other country on the other side of the world has been establishing military alliances and bases near the Keys. They are "allies" with the Keys but on paper acknowledge the Union as the "real America".
Say what you want about China today. But, what the fuck is America even doing here? They don't reduce tensions with Taiwan or "protect it". They don't care about democracy. They literally supported its fascist leaders for decades. America's hostile invasion of Korea to support fascist over communist is the entire reason that Taiwan was never captured by mainland China during their civil war. They did not want to risk conflict with the Western state that was doing everything to install loyal dictators in Korea and their neighbors.
China can have bad intentions and not give the people of Taiwan their now rightful self determination. I'm not saying that. But, holy shit, Americans just eat up the "we have to be a part of ever conflict ever"
That is not why the US cares about it. The US will abandon them (or bomb them) if it's beneficial to US oligarchs to do so. Can we get some healthcare and stop worrying about what China does in its own backyard?
Zorque
in reply to wheezy • • •neidu3
in reply to wheezy • • •erzdt
in reply to wheezy • • •Taiwan never had been under PRCs control. The Union and Confederacy aren't comparable to PRC and ROC.
But, if in your analogy the civil war ended decades ago and the successor of the Confederacy would be under the threat of invasion by the Union, of course it could be justified to arm the successor of the Confederacy and to defend them in case of war.
On the other hand, in the analogy, nations could ignore one of the sides in case of slavery, aggressive foreign policies, general human rights abuses, global strategy and economics or whatever.