Congress quietly strips right-to-repair provisions from US military spending bill
A win for the contractors
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Google is powering a new US military AI platform
“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled A-I.”
Google is powering a new US military AI platform
The Department of Defense is announcing its own “bespoke” AI platform, GenAI.mil, and Google Cloud’s Gemini will be the first to be available on the platform.Jay Peters (The Verge)
Microsoft unveils massive 2026 expansions for Age of Empires and Mythology series
The Age of Empires franchise has been back in a big way for years now, both thanks to Definitive Edition remasters as well as new games like Age of Empires IV. With 2025 now coming to a close, Microsoft is looking towards where the franchise will go in 2026. Today, the development team shared a roadmap that details these plans, and there are plenty of good news for fans.
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UK spending half an hour longer online than in pandemic, says Ofcom
The survey found people in the UK spent on average four hours and 30 minutes online every day in 2025
Call of Duty won’t release Modern Warfare or Black Ops back to back anymore
“We will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental.”
Call of Duty won’t release Modern Warfare or Black Ops back to back anymore
Activision’s future Call of Duty releases will no longer include back-to-back launches of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games.Jay Peters (The Verge)
Linux audio stuttering when opening separate application, how to prioritise audio when using Linux?
AI Surveillance Startup Caught Using Sweatshop Workers to Monitor US Residents
Bombshell new reporting from 404 Media found that Flock, which has its cameras in thousands of US communities, has been outsourcing its AI to gig workers located in the Philippines.
After accessing a cache of exposed data, 404 found documents related to annotating Flock footage, a process sometimes called “AI training.” Workers were tasked with jobs include categorizing vehicles by color, make, and model, transcribing license plates, and labeling various audio clips from car wrecks.
In US towns and cities, Flock cameras maintained by local businesses and municipal agencies form centralized surveillance networks for local police. They constantly scan for car license plates, as well as pedestrians, who are categorized based on their clothing, and possibly by factors like gender and race.
In a growing number of cases, local police are using Flock to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveil minority communities.
It isn’t clear where all the Flock annotation footage came from, but screenshots included in the documents for data annotators showed license plates from New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, and California.
Flock joins the ranks of other fast-moving AI companies that have resorted to low-paid international labor to bring their product to market. Amazon’s cashier-free “just walk out” stores, for example, were really just gig workers watching American shoppers from India. The AI startup Engineer.ai, which purported to make developing code for apps “as easy as ordering a pizza,” was found out to be selling passing human-written code as AI generated.
The difference with those examples is that those services were voluntary — powered by the exploitation of workers in the global south, yes, but with a choice to opt out on the front-end. That isn’t the case with Flock, as you don’t have to consent to end up in the panopticon. In other words, for a growing number of Americans, a for-profit company is deciding who gets watched, and who does the watching — a system built on exploitation at either end.
AI Surveillance Startup Caught Using Sweatshop Workers to Monitor US Residents
The powerful surveillance startup Flock was caught using workers in the Philippines to collate data on US residents.Joe Wilkins (Futurism)
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I mean, there is actual "AI" tech that exists, and isn't just people working in sweatshops, like this:
deeplabcut.github.io/DeepLabCu…
It's just kind of difficult to get consistency between trials, and reliability seems to boil down to completely eliminating variability. So kind of useless outside of a lab setting (as is).
I tend to feel like it's more trouble than it's worth and too unreliable (as is) to usually bother with it, but I know people who are just fellow lab rats (not broligarchs) and are super devoted to getting AI to work for their projects. Like most sectors in this country, even science is being forced to embrace AI. Regardless of if it actually makes sense for your line of work or not, the expectation is get it working or face the chopping block, and there are definitely people who are trying their hardest to really get this shit off the ground (because the alternative is be prepared to be out of a job for being obsolete).
This is also why it's kind of surprising to learn that even "AI" that's simply comparing license plates from one camera to the next, is actually just due to human slave labor.
So, do any of the broligarchs receiving these huge contracts actually believe that eventually they'll get AI to work once enough data and money is dumped into it and the little people at the bottom figure out all the kinks for them?
Or is it just that everybody at the top acknowledges this is a dead end, but once you're in the secret club at the top of the food chain, and you're making ridiculous amounts of money, your incentive is just to keep your mouth shut, keep making money, and fuck the consequences because once society collapses you'll get to be kings of your own little monarchs anyway?
If it is the second, and nobody at the top really believes AI is going anywhere, then what are all the giant, energy sucking data centers that are being built across the country actually for?
Still have to think to coordinates actions but the coding is mostly done by IA.
But if the broligarchs don't actually expect to ever get any of this "AI" shit actually working, then what is the end game?
Obviously the majority of people are only in it to make quick money, but what about the psychos at the very top who are directing policy and building these giant nuclear powered "AI" data centers?
If Thiel/Musk/Zuckerberg don't actually have the expectation that "AI" will eventually work itself out, then it won't matter how money the rich (but not broligarch rich) Wall Street bros and bankers dumped into the "AI" boom.
It won't be like the .com boom and the Internet, because it doesn't actually exist. If the economy completely collapses, and dollar becomes worthless currency, the "money" the average rich asshole hoards away after investing in the 2025 "AI" boom, will have about as much value as monopoly money.
Meanwhile the fucking Bond villain billionaires like Thiel (who have been dreaming of this exact scenario for over 20 years) hold all resources (including a recently purchased uranium mine).
So, "hypothetically," if that was Thiel's endgame, and the "AI" jig is up, then they no longer have to pretend they're trying to develop artificial intelligence or AGI. But they do already hold control of most resources, have mass surveillance capabilities, and each broligarch owns one or more of these giant supercomputers/data centers that have been built in cities all over the ~~U.S.~~ world and soon in outer space.
In this totally fictional scenario, once the dollar collapses (likely followed by all of society collapsing along with it), what do the broligarchs actually use their giant nuclear powered "AI" data centers for?
AI or no AI, they're currently being built all over the country, so what is their actual purpose?
Had an issue with an update and had no networl access after reboot. How many kernals can be available in grub?
Still pretty new to Linux, I'm on Ubuntu Studio 24.04 LTS and had some issues with updates through the updater with errors and so I did sudo apt update/upgrade instead. Something went wrong and had errors, and after a reboot I had no internet access, Ethernet or WiFi, and no options to connect to anything. Running sudo lshw -c network showed unclaimed networks.
In case anyone has a similar issue, I fixed it by:
1. Reboot, spam shift to get into grub
2. Advanced options
3. Recovery mode for the lower number kernel
4. Enable networking
5. Fix broken packages
My question is about number 3. There were 4 kernel options, 2 normal with a recovery for each (I can't remember the specifics but one had 37 and the other 36). I selected recovery 36 as it was the older kernel. Is that amount of options (2 for each kernel) normal or can I create more? Like 37, 36, 35, 34, etc.
I was in panic mode since this PC is for work, and thought it might be nice to have more older kernel options if possible. I've also learned my lesson and am currently running Timeshift.
It's been a long time since I used Ubuntu, but at the time I did I recall running into issues keeping too many old kernels. They were stored in a fixed space folder (or maybe partition?) that was like 100MB and sometimes wouldn't clear out automatically, so I remember this. May not be relevant now, but if it is, space in the storage folder is the limiting factor so you would need to change that. If it IS a partition, then you would need to deal with all that is involved with that.
edited to add that my current OS only stores three or four as well. I have never really dived into it.
The Quest for Reasonably Secure Operating Systems
The Quest for Reasonably Secure Operating Systems
I never worried on Windows about security as much as I should have, it just so happens I've been lucky to have never been hit with ransomware. By the time...yazomie > tech
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Another step up is the confidential computing project. Requires hardware that supports it though, which sucks, but takes the virtual hardware concept and adds multi key memory encryption on top.
Remember though security without a threat model is just paranoia, so what level of hoops and investment you need really depends on what your threats actually look like.
I personally love containers and Macsec. It limits most of my concerns. I want to mess with confidential containers next, which is to say lightweight VMs in containers with memory encryption set, but thats all future to me. The irony is that I then I have to figure out attestation better for those machines since from the host they are black boxes.
iOS 26 doesn't offer privacy settings at all for "Home" app
It appears that even if you don't have the app installed, it is in Settings > Apps. But there's no option at all, to customise its privacy settings.
Downloading the app also doesn't let you customise its privacy settings. In fact, the app then disappears altogether from the privacy settings! It doesn't even appear anymore in the "Hidden Apps". Removing it again however, shows the app popping up again in the settings.
What's more, it's deliberately erroneously labelled as "Start Screen" when you don't have downloaded it.
Ridiculous. One more reason to go to a Fairphone or something like it.
However, you can edit it... but very cumbersomely, only by going to Settings > Siri > App Access ... and then suddenly, you see the app!
This seems like it's straight up illegal.
If by “privacy settings” you mean controlling what system permissions the Home app has, you’re out of luck. It’s a semi-default app and may be more deeply embedded into iOS than is apparent.
If you’re trying to control what other apps have access to HomeKit data, you can find that in Privacy & Security.
Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It
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key trick is that it uses edge detection to make a smooth pixel art image
here's an example without edge detection
and here's with it enabled
edit: I spent way too much time on this, but figured out how to make the edge detection method produce sharp images
[2024-10-27] OpenZFS new deduplication mechanism and why you still may not want to use it
OpenZFS deduplication is good now and you shouldn't use it
OpenZFS 2.3.0 will be released any day now, and it includes the new “Fast Dedup” feature. My team at Klara spent many months in 2023 and 2024 working on it, and we reckon it’s pretty good, a huge step up from the old dedup as well as being a solid ba…despair labs
Florida governor designates Muslim rights group as terrorist organization
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order designating one of the country’s most prominent Muslim civil rights groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as a “foreign terrorist organization,” becoming the second high-profile Republican governor to do so in recent weeks.
CAIR's Florida chapter announced a lawsuit challenging the order at a Tuesday press conference in Tampa, where Hiba Rahim, the chapter's interim executive director, called the order "defamatory and unconstitutional."
The U.S. government has not designated CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations, but President Donald Trump last month began the process of doing so for certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.
The Florida order instructs agencies to take action to prevent CAIR from receiving any state contracts, employment or funding.
CAIR was founded in 1994 and has chapters in nearly two dozen U.S. states.
Army begins to reshape its acquisition enterprise along portfolio lines
“We will leverage taxpayer dollars in a more accountable, flexible and deliberate manner to maximize their value across capability portfolios,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during an address at the National War College. “We will shift funding within portfolios’ authorized boundaries swiftly and decisively to maximize mission outcomes. If one program is faltering, funding will be shifted within the portfolio to accelerate or scale a higher priority. If a new or more promising technology emerges, we will seize the opportunity and not be held back by artificial constraints and funding boundaries that take months or even years to overcome.”
In that address, Hegseth credited the military services with laying the groundwork for some of the reforms he wants to make department-wide. And the Army started its implementation work last month, naming six new “portfolio acquisition executives.” Each of those PAEs will oversee different “capability areas” with programs managed by what had, up until now, been called program executive offices (PEOs), and will now be called capability program executives (CPEs).
Army begins to reshape its acquisition enterprise along portfolio lines
Former program executive offices are starting to realign their organizations under the new "capability portfolio executive" construct.Jared Serbu (Federal News Network)
Uncovered: Instacart is using AI algorithms to charge customers different prices for the same items. It's not just online. It's in physical grocery stores too.
New Investigation found that some grocery prices differed by as much as 23 percent per item from one Instacart customer to the next. In an inadvertently sent email, the company calls one pricing tactic “smart rounding.”
Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds
Exclusive: Instacart’s AI pricing may be inflating your grocery bill.Consumer Reports
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Uncovered: Instacart is using AI algorithms to charge customers different prices for the same items. It's not just online. It's in physical grocery stores too.
New Investigation found that some grocery prices differed by as much as 23 percent per item from one Instacart customer to the next. In an inadvertently sent email, the company calls one pricing tactic “smart rounding.”
Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds
Exclusive: Instacart’s AI pricing may be inflating your grocery bill.Consumer Reports
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Best multi player steam setup?
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/39957209
Hello lemmings, I've once again come for your advice. I've built a sff system with a dual boot bazzite os. This will be mostly for my kids playing games and media serving from Big picture in the living room. I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the accounts. Ideally it would be as close to a console experience as possible but I want to make sure each kid can save their own progress. What's my best option here? Does everyone need their own os account that signs them into steam properly? I've never set up a system for multiple users before.Edit: details
Edit: thanks for all the feedback! I'm leaning towards single system account with multiple steam accounts. Now I just need to figure out how to keep myself signed in on steam so I don't have to put my PW in every time. Thanks a ton!
I'd go with different system acounts. That way their savegames are guaranteed to stay separate.
That's because on PC most games just care about the system user when determining the savegame folder, and don't care about steam accounts.
So, what I'd do is to:
- Give each their own system account
- Set up Gamescope as a session: wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam…
- Configure the Display Manager to use that session for their users (In GDM, for instance, it's enough to manually select it once on login - GDM remembers the last-used session per user)
- Profit
If your kids are only going to be using big picture mode in steam, then one system account will work. The steam deck only has one system user with the ability to have multiple steam accounts and that works great for multiple users, from my experience.
For anyone interested in a great dual use system for regular desktop use and a console-like experience, I recommend checking out nixos and jovian-nix:
jovian-experiments.github.io/J…
I'm using it on my main PC and it works incredibly well to mimic the steam deck experience using a full desktop on nixos 25.11
What’s a graphical piece of software you wish existed or was better?
Hi Linux Lemmites. Recently finished up school and started working full time and kind of miss working on personal projects. I’m looking to try to make something in rust and try out gpui if I can figure it out or maybe egui. I also want to make something maybe even a handful of people would actually use as I find that motivating, so I ask what would actually be useful to you?
Edit: thank you all very much for the input, I think that maybe doing something akin to a “settings+” would be a fair target for me for a n initial project. If I make anything interesting I’ll make another post in this sub.
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(ADC) “Smartphone, dopamina e dipendenza: il mio ESPERIMENTO di 7 Giorni”
Caspiterina, De Concimi ha cacciato fuori questo esperimentino pazzo 2 settimane fa e io me l’ero perso… l’ho scoperto solo stasera per caso: 1 settimana senza lo smarfonino (o smarfonone, nel suo caso) per capire se è possibile vivere senza. Non tanto in senso di pratica universale del mondo, perché purtroppo al giorno d’oggi l’avere […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
(ADC) “Smartphone, dopamina e dipendenza: il mio ESPERIMENTO di 7 Giorni”
youtube.com/watch?v=yKM4mMAxtE…Caspiterina, De Concimi ha cacciato fuori questo esperimentino pazzo 2 settimane fa e io me l’ero perso… l’ho scoperto solo stasera per caso: 1 settimana senza lo smarfonino (o smarfonone, nel suo caso) per capire se è possibile vivere senza. Non tanto in senso di pratica universale del mondo, perché purtroppo al giorno d’oggi l’avere ed usare costantemente uno smartphone è qualcosa di praticamente forzato dall’esterno, sia dalla società che per certi versi dagli Stati, e con ogni anno che passa la possibilità di poter rimanere senza in tal misura si fa sempre più sottile, quindi non è questo il punto del video… Il suo discorso è più che altro sull’abitudine, la dipendenza, e queste minchiatine qui. 😳
È un caso spassoso che, come la sua sfida sia stata di 1 settimana, così io stasera — dopo aver trovato appunto per caso questo video, che credo abbia qualche spuntino di riflessione, e quindi mi è venuta la voglia di postare — stia scrivendo qui dopo 1 settimana intera che non tocco il fritto misto… E beh, di un caso si tratta, perché io non ho affatto mandato a fanculo il telefono, ma semplicemente sono evidentemente a corto di olio, quindi è difficile friggere. (In altre parole, l’anedonia mi distrugge, e quindi col piffero che esce qualcosa da scrivere qui, di lungo e sensato… ma, anche oggi pomeriggio ho applicato il mio fix vietato, e dunque stasera ho la voglia di fare le cose, che wow… però non divaghiamo.) 🙏
Lui avrebbe voluto fare proprio una settimana senza Internet, ma non è riuscito a giustificare il prendersi una settimana di ferie (che sarebbe la conseguenza logica di una tale scelta per lui, visto che il suo lavoro non è raccogliere i pomodori), quindi ha ripiegato sul semplicemente mettere via lo smartphone pieghevole fantastico moderno che ha, e ritornare ai tempi antichi del suo vecchio cellulare Nokia, mettendo la SIM in quello e non usando più lo smartphone per niente; se non per i codici della banca (e zio merdone, le banche e le loro app!) e per registrare pezzi di vlog. 👌
Cosa ne può mai venire allora fuori da questa cosa? Boh; per lui, che può fare a meno di avere certe app molto distraenti sul cellulare (incluse alcune che, nonostante ciò, avrebbero un giustificabile scopo lavorativo, come YouTube Studio; quindi non parliamo solo di minchiatine), decidendo quindi di levarle da lì, allocandole solo al PC e a tempi della giornata più controllati, avendo così un potenziamento dell’attenzione e sprecando dunque meno tempo durante tutti i giorni e quindi nella vita… e, per chi guarda, invece, veramente boh; nel senso, dipende. 🍇
Io, in realtà, grandi problemi con il telefonone in questo senso non sento di averne… ma non tanto perché ne ho in realtà di ben più gravi in altri sensi—ehm, volevo dire, non solo perché non è la prima volta che sento queste cose; quanto più per il fatto che innanzitutto il mio uso dello smarfonone è abbastanza diverso dalla media delle persone della mia generazione (che, le statistiche lo dicono, è comunque quella più fissata), e poi perché tante misure riparative o preventive dell’abuso dello smartphone sono per me normalità da tempo… per una semplice questione di miei gusti e tendenze, in realtà, lol. 😊
Alla fine del video, Alessandrone suggerisce alcune cose effettivamente utili, che per me infatti non sono nuove. Piattaforme social che non aggiungono praticamente nulla alla mia vita non le uso (ma in realtà, curiosamente, come ho già detto, se le iniziassi ad usare non riuscirei ad acquisire l’abitudine; mi scoccerei naturalmente e smetterei senza farci caso)… Il telefono certamente non è il mio unico robo di battaglia, e anzi, a casa non ho davvero tanto la voglia di usarlo quando posso fare qualcosa ugualmente o meglio dal PC (come scrivere)… E beh, a me le notifiche danno proprio fastidio dentro (ma questa sarà altrettanto la potenza del mio autismo), quindi le uniche che permetto al telefono di ricevere in qualsiasi momento sono chiamate ed SMS, nient’altro (mentre, sul tablet, praticamente zero). 😈
In realtà, però, devo ammettere che dei problemi di abitudini zombi li ho pure io, a riguardo… e quindi sì, assolutamente evito di tenere collegamenti rapidi a cose che apro di continuo senza motivo, altrimenti è la fine, ma mi trovo a dover ogni tanto cambiare anche la disposizione del drawer delle app o altre cose di questo tipo, perché sennò non basta… Ma, questo non è tanto un problema di dopamina, visto che mi accorgo che per me pure il fottuto Alt+Tab sul PC è compulsivo; proprio nel mentre di scrivere questo post, l’ho premuto non so quante volte… e l’unica finestra che ho portato in foreground è stata la mia cartella Download rimasta aperta da poco fa, non una app con meccanismo da slot machine. (E no, impostare la scala di grigi non mi aiuta con ciò.) 🥴
Boh, complessivamente l’esperimento è gnam, e… io non lo farei, perché ehh… francamente, a me, lo smartphone, quando serve serve. Se voglio annotare qualcosa devo farlo, e idem se voglio cercare sul web delle robe, o se ho da scattare delle foto e persino modificarle al volo, nonché attuare rapidi momenti di sysadmin e programmazione in giro, visto che un tablet sarebbe troppo grosso e dunque non potrei portarlo ovunque… Però, allo stesso tempo, non è assolutamente la fine del mondo se in un certo momento non posso aprire Pinterest o Telegram per guardare (e pigniare…) i miei memini; basta che ho un manga da leggere, o una console per giocare, e riesco tranquillamente a non morire. (…E sì, sto implicando che se non ho la possibilità di scrivere quando voglio è improbabile io possa sopravvivere; ma insomma, se esplodessero gli smartphone domani userei il 3DS, e se esplodesse tutta l’elettronica del pianeta userei la carta.) 👍
#adc #dipendenza #dopamina #esperimento #smartphone
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Glauber Braga é expulso do plenário após ocupação da Mesa Diretora
Glauber Braga é expulso do plenário após ocupação da Mesa Diretora
Congressista foi levado por policiais legislativos para fora do plenário após protesto contra possível cassação.Congresso em Foco
Can DSA Hold Mamdani Accountable? Its Co-Chairs Respond
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Segal Secrets: docs reveal Antisemitism Envoy's big pay day - Michael West
Official Propaganda for Caribbean Military Buildup Includes “Crusader Cross”
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1260…
An official U.S. military social media account on Monday shared a photo collage that included a symbol long affiliated with extremist groups — and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.In a post on X trumpeting the deployment of troops to the Caribbean, U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, shared an image that prominently displayed a so-called Jerusalem cross on the helmet of a masked commando.
The Jerusalem cross, also dubbed the “Crusader cross” for its roots in Medieval Christians’ holy wars in the Middle East, is not inherently a symbol of extremism. It has, however, become popular on the right to symbolize the march of Christian civilization, with anti-Muslim roots that made it into something of a logo for the U.S. war on terror.
Tattoos of the cross, a squared-off symbol with a pattern of repeating crosses, have appeared on the bodies of people ranging from mercenaries hired by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to Hegseth himself.
Now, the symbol has reared its head again to advertise President Donald Trump’s military buildup against Venezuela — an overwhelmingly Catholic country — and boat strikes in the Caribbean.
U.S. military forces are deployed to the #SOUTHCOM area of responsibility in support of #OpSouthernSpear, @DeptofWar-directed operations, and @POTUS' priorities to disrupt illicit drug trafficking and protect the homeland. pic.twitter.com/vLvg9fQ5Lx— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) December 8, 2025
“As with all things Trump, it’s a continuation, with some escalation, and then a transformation into spectacle,” said Yale University historian Greg Grandin, whose work focuses on U.S. empire in Latin America.
The social media post came amid rising controversy over a series of strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, dubbed Operation Southern Spear.
[
Read Our Complete Coverage
License to Kill
---------------](theintercept.com/series/licens…)Hegseth is alleged to have ordered a so-called “double-tap” strike, a follow-up attack against a debilitated boat that killed survivors clinging to the wreckage for around 45 minutes. The U.S. has carried out 22 strikes since the campaign began in September, killing a total of 87 people.
The Pentagon’s press office declined to comment on the use of the Jerusalem cross, referring questions to SOUTHCOM. But in a reply to the X post on Monday, Hegseth’s deputy press secretary Joel Valdez signaled his approval with emojis of a salute and the American flag. In a statement to the Intercept, SOUTHCOM spokesperson Steven McLoud denied that the post implied any religious or far-right message.
“The graphic you’re referring to was an illustration of service members in a ready posture during Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR,” McLoud told The Intercept. “There is no other communication intent for this image.”
The original image of the masked service member appears to have come from an album published online by the Pentagon that depicts a training exercise by Marines aboard the USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean Sea in October. The photo depicting the cross, however, was removed from the album after commentators on social media pointed out its origins.
Amanda Saunders, a spokesperson for the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, the Pentagon-run photo agency, said she was unable to comment directly but forwarded the request to the Marine unit involved in the exercise.
“Content on DVIDS is published and archived directly by the registered units,” she said, “so we don’t have control over what is posted or removed, nor are we able to comment on those decisions.”
Hegseth and the Cross
The Jerusalem cross’s popularity on the right has surged in part thanks to featuring in various media, including the 2005 Ridley Scott film “Kingdom of Heaven” and video games, according to Matthew Gabriele, a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech and a scholar of Crusader iconography.“It supports the rhetoric of ‘defense of homeland.’”“It supports the rhetoric of ‘defense of homeland,’” Gabriele told The Intercept, “because the crusaders, in the right’s understanding, were waging a defensive war against enemies trying to invade Christian lands.”
The symbol’s position of prominence in official military communications is just the latest example of a trollish extremism by the Trump administration’s press teams, which have made a point of reveling in the cruelty wrought on its perceived enemies at home and abroad, or “owning the libs.”
[
Related
Team Leader at Gaza Aid Distribution Sites Belongs to Anti-“Jihad” Motorcycle Club, Has Crusader Tattoos](theintercept.com/2025/08/06/ga…)
Monday’s post may also be intended as Hegseth putting his thumb in the eye of the Pentagon’s old guard. Hegseth’s embrace of the symbol — in the form of a gawdy chest tattoo — once stymied, however temporarily, his ambitions in the military.Folling the January 6 insurrection, according to Hegseth and reporting by the Washington Post, Hegseth was ordered to stand down rather than deploy with his National Guard unit ahead of the 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden. The decision to treat Hegseth as a possible “insider threat” came after a someone flagged a photo of a shirtless Hegseth to military brass, according to the Washington Post.
“I joined the Army in 2001 because I wanted to serve my country. Extremists attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war,” Hegseth wrote “The War on Warriors,” his 2024 memoir. “Twenty years later, I was deemed an ‘extremist’ by that very same Army.”
Hegseth was hardly chastened by the episode and has since gotten more tattoos with more overt anti-Muslim resonance, including the Arabic word word for “infidel,” which appeared on his bicep sometime in the past several years. It’s accompanied by another bicep tattoo of the Latin words “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” yet another slogan associated with the Crusades and repurposed by extremist groups.
The use of the image to advertise aggressive posturing in a majority-Christian region like Latin America may seem odd at first glance. In the context of renewed U.S. focus on Latin America, however, it’s a potent symbol of the move of military action from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
“They’re globalizing the Monroe Doctrine.”The post comes on the heels of the release of the Trump’s National Security Strategy, a 33-page document outlining the administration’s foreign-policy priorities that explicitly compared Trump’s stance to the Monroe Doctrine, the turn-of-the-century policy of U.S. dominance in Latin America in opposition to colonialism by other foreign powers. Grandin, the Yale historian, described the document as a “vision of global dominance” based on a model of great-powers competition that can lead to immense instability.
“They’re globalizing the Monroe Doctrine,” Grandin said. “I’m no fan of the hypocrisy and arrogance of the old liberal international order, but there’s something to be said for starting from a first principle of shared interests, which does keep great conflict at bay to some degree.”
The post Official Propaganda for Caribbean Military Buildup Includes “Crusader Cross” appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
Pete Hegseth’s Arabic tattoo stirs controversy: ‘clear symbol of Islamophobia’
Critics say US defense secretary’s tattoo of the word kafir, meaning ‘infidel’ or ‘non-believer’ could offend MuslimsMarina Dunbar (The Guardian)
2025 set for second-hottest year on record
2025 set for second-hottest year on record
This year is expected to match 2023 as one of the warmest on record, second only to 2024, EU scientists warn. They cite greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels as the main cause of global warming.Felix Tamsut (Deutsche Welle)
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Spoiler formatting looks like this:
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
Spoilers go here
:::The "Tap for spoiler" part is what shows up in the post, like this:
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
Snape kills Dumbledore
:::
You can put whatever you like instead of "Tap for spoiler", such as emojis:
::: spoiler 😱😱😱😱
Mrs Flood is the Rani
:::
That's all 😀
Tesla Optimus falls in Miami demo, hand movements sparks remote operation debate
Tesla Optimus's fall in Miami demo sparks remote operation debate
While falls are not unusual in robotics development, a specific hand motion has raised questions about the current level of autonomy in Tesla’s system.Jijo Malayil (Interesting Engineering)
‘I Was Paid’: Bongino’s Confession About His January 6 Claims | The deputy director of the FBI admitted to lying during his days as a pundit.
‘I Was Paid’: Bongino’s Confession About His January 6 Claims
The deputy director of the FBI admitted to lying during his days as a pundit.David A. Graham (The Atlantic)
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Unequivocal War Crimes
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
America Has Become a Digital Narco-State - Paul Krugman
America Has Become a Digital Narco-State
Social media giants have bought our government, and are trying to bully EuropePaul Krugman
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Krugman is a worthless hack. Sensational headline with implicit endorsement of prohibition is a prime example.
Edit about the "nobel": Everybody who's talking about this "nobel prize". There is no nobel prize in econ. It's a phony award made up by bankers. That's how pathetic the pseudo-science of economics is. They need to make up their own fake awards for relevancy. So please don't tout the phony awards of this pseudo-scientists. I could make up an award for flat earthers but that wouldn't legitimize flat earthism.
(And even if there were a nobel for econ... Who cares about awards if the underlying "science" is still trash?)
Here's one of the best traders talking about the same issue:
invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=b…
It's eloquent and funny at the same time.
I included a timestamp to jump (almost) directly to the most relevant bit (also 33m, but 31m sets up a better context for an extra 2min of time compared to going directly to the 33m mark). But the whole video is worth watching.
Yes, Krugman is a hack.
The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. | Aaron Bastani Meets Cory Doctorow
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
I bambini che piangono quando viene tolto lo schermo: Alberto Pellai racconta la mutazione antropologica che ha cambiato l’infanzia
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Cose scontate, ma ignorate, evviva l'adhd per tutti!
Personalization algorithms create an illusion of competence, study finds
Selected highlights:
The researchers divided the participants into different groups to test the specific effects of algorithmic personalization. One group served as a control and viewed a random assortment of items with all features available to inspect. Another group engaged in active learning, where they freely chose which categories to study without algorithmic interference.the study measured the participants’ confidence in their decisions using a rating scale from zero to ten. The analysis showed that participants in the personalized groups frequently reported high confidence levels even when their answers were wrong. This effect was particularly distinct when they encountered items from categories they had rarely or never seen during the learning phase.
This indicates a disconnection between actual competence and perceived competence caused by the filtered learning environment. The participants were unaware that the algorithm had hidden significant portions of the information landscape from them. They assumed the limited sample they viewed was representative of the whole.
The findings provide evidence that the structure of information delivery systems plays a significant role in shaping human cognition. By optimizing for engagement, current algorithms may inadvertently sacrifice the accuracy of user knowledge. This trade-off suggests that online platforms can shape not just what people see, but how they reason about the world.
Personalization algorithms create an illusion of competence, study finds
While personalization algorithms keep users engaged, they may create a false sense of expertise. A new experiment reveals that curated content feeds limit information exploration, causing learners to form distorted views while remaining surprisingly …Eric W. Dolan (PsyPost Psychology News)
essell likes this.
Australia’s world-first social media ban begins as millions of children and teens lose access to accounts
Millions of children and teens lose access to accounts as Australia’s world-first social media ban begins
Accounts held by users under 16 must be removed on apps that include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and Threads under banJosh Taylor (The Guardian)
Introducing: Devstral 2 and Mistral Vibe CLI. | Mistral AI
Introducing: Devstral 2 and Mistral Vibe CLI.
State-of-the-art, open-source agentic coding models and CLI agent.Mistral AI (mistral.ai)
Report Exposes Instacart's Hidden AI Price Experiments That Could Cost Families $1,200 Per Year
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1253…
Consumer advocates on Tuesday called on the Federal Trade Commission and state officials to investigate artificial intelligence-enabled pricing experiments used by Instacart, the grocery shopping app millions of Americans rely on, that charge up to 23% more for some shoppers than others when they buy the same item at the same store.
Consumer Reports joined the advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative and the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union to uncover Instacart's pricing experiments enabled by Eversight, an AI pricing software that Instacart acquired in 2022. The company's CEO said last year that the experiments have helped the company “to really figure out which categories of products our customers [are] more price sensitive on"—in other words, to tailor prices based on a customer's shopping habits, whether they're near a competing store, and other factors.
The groups' study, Same Cart, Different Price, describes how researchers ran five tests with 437 participants, studying the prices of a basket of items bought at two Target stores and three Safeway stores using Instacart.
In one test at a Safeway in Washington, DC, shoppers logged on to the app to buy a carton of eggs from the same brand at the same time and found that the price they were given varied widely. Some shoppers were charged just $3.99 for the eggs, while others saw a price as high as $4.79—20% higher.
Shoppers at a Safeway in Seattle saw a 23% difference in prices for Skippy peanut butter, Oscar Mayer turkey, and Wheat Thins crackers. At two different Safeways in Washington, DC, Instacart quoted shoppers at one store a price that was 23% higher than at another for Signature Select Corn Flakes.
"It’s time for Instacart to close the lab. Americans shopping for groceries aren’t guinea pigs and shouldn't have to pay an Instacart tax.”
For the same basket of groceries, shoppers at the Seattle store were asked to pay as much as $123.93, while others were charged just $114.34.
"The average price variations observed in the study could cost a household of four about $1,200 per year," said Groundwork.
Justin Brookman, director of tech policy at Consumer Reports, said Instacart's tactics "hurt families who are simply trying to purchase essential groceries."
"At a time when everyday Americans are struggling with high prices, it is particularly egregious to see corporations secretly conducting individual experiments to see how much a person is willing to pay," said Brookman. "Companies must be transparent and upfront with people about pricing, so that they can make informed choices and keep more of their hard-earned money. We encourage the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to investigate Instacart’s pricing tactics."
Groundwork noted that Instcart's website acknowledges that it runs price tests, but states that "shoppers are not aware that they’re in an experiment" and are having their grocery prices selected for them via algorithm.
While Instacart has claimed its price experiments are "negligible," the groups emphasized that they're being used "against the backdrop of the fastest increase in food prices since the late 1970s."
After previous reporting on companies' use of "shrinkflation," "dynamic pricing," and other practices that keep prices high even as pandemic-era labor and supply chain issues have subsided, "today’s report shows Instacart’s experiments are yet another way corporate pricing tactics are squeezing American families," said Groundwork.
The study did not find evidence that Instacart is giving shoppers different prices based on their ZIP code or income, as companies like Amazon, Delta Air Lines, and Home Deport have been accused of doing.
But the groups said Eversight gives the company the capability to use that data to make pricing decisions tailored to particular shoppers.
“Instacart is quietly running pricing experiments on millions of shoppers during the worst grocery affordability crisis in a generation, and it’s costing households as much as $1,200 a year,” said Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens. “They have turned the simple act of buying groceries into a high-tech game of pricing roulette. When the same box of Wheat Thins can jump 23% in price because of an algorithm, that’s not innovation or convenience, it’s unfair. It’s time for Instacart to close the lab. Americans shopping for groceries aren’t guinea pigs and shouldn't have to pay an Instacart tax.”
The groups credited some state and federal lawmakers who have begun to take notice of pricing practices like Instacart's; US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act in July with the aim of prohibiting the use of automated systems to set prices. New York has enacted the first-of-its-kind Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act, which requires companies to prominently disclose to customers, "This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data" when they use methods like Instacart's. Other state legislation has been introduced in Colorado, California, and Pennsylvania to ban the use of surveillance to set prices.
The groups called on the FTC to take action under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which bans "unfair methods of competition." Those could include “'price discrimination not justified by differences in cost or distribution,' which appears to match Instacart’s pricing experiments and fluctuations," the report reads.
The FTC could also bring enforcement cases or initiate rulemaking to officially label AI-enabled pricing strategies as an "unfair or deceptive practice," affirming that companies who use them are breaking a consumer protection standard.
"Fair and honest markets are the bedrock of a healthy economy," reads Tuesday's report. "Companies like Instacart offer great convenience, but they are increasingly pursuing corporate pricing practices that unfairly decouple the price of a product from its true cost. As more consumers learn about, and decry, these practices, perhaps companies will change course. But if they do not, policymakers should intervene and require them to change their practices."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Casar-Tlaib Bill Would Ban Corporations From Using AI to Set Prices, Wages
"The idea that employers would leverage surveillance data to exploit a worker in a desperate position and offer them a lower wage is appalling," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.stephen-prager (Common Dreams)
Trekking nella Riserva di Monte Catillo - "Orizzonti Tiburtini"
ESCURSIONE GRATUITA DI NATALE 🎁 🎄 + Cena di Gruppo - SABATO 20 DICEMBRE 2025
Una bellissima giornata nella Riserva Naturale di Monte Catillo, subito fuori il centro storico di Tivoli, a pochi passi da Roma.
Un variegato percorso naturalistico ci condurrà attraverso la macchia mediterranea e i boschi di sughera e cerro.
Lungo il sentiero potrai godere dei caratteristici affacci panoramici dell'area tiburtina: la splendida acropoli di Tivoli, la vasta campagna romana, i Monti Prenestini e Cornicolani (anche il mare se saremo fortunati).
> Ti racconteremo la storia, i miti e le leggende di questo luogo antico ed affascinante, forgiato dal fiume Aniene.
E' una facile escursione, a meno di un'ora dalla capitale, cui seguirà una cena di gruppo per festeggiare insieme la fine della stagione escursionistica!
Prenotazione (obbligatoria) aperta fino a Venerdì 19 Dicembre 2025 ore 15:00
Per informazioni contattate @greentrek@mastodon.uno
greentrek.it/escursioni/escurs…
Escursione nella Riserva di Monte Catillo - GreenTrek.it
Un trekking per ammirare i panorami della Riserva di Monte Catillo. A pochi metri da Tivoli un piccolo scrigno di biodiversità e bellezza.GreenTrek.it
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curbstickle
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •What distribution, DE, browser, etc? Is hardware acceleration enabled? Do you have multiple audio outputs simultaneously enabled?
A bit more detail would be helpful
PearOfJudes
in reply to curbstickle • • •tekato
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •Karmatrine
in reply to tekato • • •It's kinda not supposed to happen if your setup is correct.
Most likely reason is too short buffer. And on high CPU load it's just getting overrun. There are legitimate ways to mitigate it in pipewire. And even manage some rt prio things. Arch wiki and pipewire docs should have comprehensive info on how to properly setup things. It can be bit complicated because different sources can have different quantum values. So some can stutter and some not, but it should be all configurable. Pipewire is very good in that regard, just sad I don't see any good tools to manage these values w/o creating/editing configs, so people don't jump into this rabbit hole of research.
Please note that defaults on pipewire should not stutter regularly with proper interface, my main audio interface performs way above what pipewire set by default. But I did used different interfaces and some do struggle with default quantum values.
tekato
in reply to Karmatrine • • •erebion
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •Does it stutter if you open Pavucontrol? I've seen a couple setups where Pipewire stutters when pipewire-pulse is used, as does Pavucontrol.
(In some setups this only happened when the volume indicator is enabled in Pavucontrol and disappeared when it was switched off.)
FauxLiving
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •Run pw-top while you’re having the issue and post the output.
It’s probably a bad default setting that’s setting the buffer/quantum incorrectly.
diamond
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •none of these applications require particularly low latency, so if you're on Pipewire, you can increase both min, max and default quantum to something like
[1024, 4096]. i have to do this on my N100 laptop and it helps a lot.pw-toptells you which app uses which quantum too, and often times, your machine will slightly struggle with apps that suddenly demand lower quantums and cause stuttering. increasing the min quantum fixes this issue.Atemu
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •mybuttnolie
in reply to PearOfJudes • • •