A project in Co Mayo is generating renewable electricity through the flying of kites, which its operator has described as a potential "game changer" in the wind energy sector.
It is being conducted on a bogland just outside Bangor Erris, located on a landscape one might expect in a Star Wars.
The site, which is the first designated airborne wind energy test site in the world is being operated by Kitepower, a zero emissions energy solutions spin-off from Delft University in the Netherlands.
Kitepower's system employs a yo-yo effect, where a kite, measuring 60sq/m is flown at altitudes of up to 425m attached to a rope that is wound around a drum - which itself is connected to a ground-based generator.
The kites can generate 2.5 to 4 tonnes of force on the tether.
Researchers in the U.S. and Germany have tested a global earthquake detection and alert system that makes use of a device many people already own, including in less developed countries—Android smartphones. According to their study, published today in the journal Science, the Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system’s efficacy rivaled traditional seismic networks in its ability to detect seismic activity and deliver alerts.
“The global adoption of smartphone technology places sophisticated sensing and alerting capabilities in people’s hands, in both the wealthy and less-wealthy portions of the planet,” the researchers, including Richard Allen from the University of California in Berkeley’s Seismological Laboratory, wrote in the study. “Although the accelerometers in these phones are less sensitive than the permanent instrumentation used in traditional seismic networks, they can still detect the ground motions and building response in hazardous earthquakes.”
⚠️ Warning: This morning, some accounts are using the platform for #phishing attempts. ‼️ DO NOT click on "verification" links ‼️ DO NOT follow prompts to switch instances ‼️ Report any suspicious accounts immediately
📢 Share this alert quickly—let's help Fediverse stay safe!
I wanted to try moving towards web apps for any big tech platforms I've not stepped away from yet, but Instagram stories are not loading on Ironfox. Normal Firefox works fine so I feel like it's some default privacy setting that's blocking this, but I'm not sure how to fix this
I think US customs said it was because he admitted to using drugs in the past and had photos of a paraphernalia on his phone. He said they ignored that stuff and focused on the photo. So it comes down to whether you think one specific customs employee could potentially see something they don’t like and choose to refuse entry for another reason or that customs is being honest and open about the reason his entry was refused and that the people making the announcement fully understand the situation (including the thoughts of the person that examined the photos).
I feel like the latter is unlikely, but I don’t have enough evidence to say either way. I don’t think drug paraphernalia in a photo or admitting past drug use are good reasons to refuse entry either.
None of the documentation or statements by US officials are consistent, and appear to include a bit of lying. So people are leaning towards him being at least partially correct in his accusations.
In short, they saw the picture and then began an extended interview where they made a bunch of false claims, and used made up reasons to deny him. Then later claimed they used more reasonable argument, which also doesn't really hold water.
It's probably more important if Putin the actual person is actually Asian or not. And he isn't lol he is of Russian ethnicity and born in Europe to Russian parents who were also born in Europe.
just because you came into a conversation in the middle and injected something no one else was saying doesn't mean the thing you injected became the topic of discussion
Through conquest and colonial exploits though. That's like saying Macron is South American because French Guiana exists. Putin was born and raised in St Petersburg; a historically Finnic territory if anything
Russia the country is both in Asia and Europe, that makes someone of Russian ethnicity born in Europe to Russian parents an Asian
That's... Not how it works lol
Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian, the most spoken Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Orthodox Christianity, ever since the Middle Ages. By total numbers, they compose the largest Slavic and European nation.
Closest you can get is calling him "Eurasian" I guess
Russia is a European country at its core controlling a vast portion of Asia through invasion and colonial exploits. France is also located in the Pacific, North America, South America, Africa, but no one would claim that it's not a European nation.
Please do tell me how Russia, as the direct successor state of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union - having exploited, resettled, and genocided millions of people from hundreds of different ethnicities - should NOT be consider a colonial state. You think Slavs are native to Sakhalin or something?
What are you even mad about? Or are you just trying to be cool and edgy? Russia is an exploitative, genocidal, imperialistic, racist colonial empire whether you like it or not ;)
I lived in china for 4 years and Winnie has Def never been outlawed. Chinese censorship is much more sophisticated than "hey, that's illegal." There's not a list of pictures or memes or phrases that if you're caught with you'll get a visit from the police. No no no. There are hundreds of thousands of people monitoring social media for the latest "subversive" trends. When a new trend develops that content is blacklisted and just not allowed to be spread. You'll send your friend a picture and it never shows up on their phone. There's no indication on your end that it didn't send or they didn't get it. You can have this content on your phone, the CCP doesn't care. They care about it spreading. And you'll never get in trouble for trying to spread it because the system doesn't allow it to spread.
Any decision about censorship is a compromise of some kind between open communication/access to information and the prevention of the spread of content that could be deemed harmful in some way or another.
Maybe I'm just being thick right now but I'm really not sure who are supposed to be the "children". It seems it could just as easily be the CPC for being uncompromising in their censorship of the internet, fascist trolls who say they should have a right to use slurs and disinformation to incite violence, or liberals who are unwilling to accept that a hardline stance needs to be taken to censor the fascists.
I'm unsure if this is an enlightened centrist take, you saying the CPC (and similar) do what needs to be done or that we need our freedom and the commenter above is the child. Whatever you mean, your comment (at least to me) comes across a bit rude and unconstructive.
Ok your comment successfully ragebaited me so tbh I'm probably the child.
Edit: changed CCP to CPC because that is the technically correct term, even though for some reason most English language outlets use "CCP"
When they find out the extent of the censorship they mind very much. But that's the problem, the censorship is so deep and so good that the vast majority of the Chinese never find out how extensive it is, because it's not just your WeChat, it's ALL MEDIA. The Chinese don't have access to over 90% of the internet, so they never find out what's out there or know what information they're missing.
And you're just trading one dystopian nightmare for another. Saying one is better than the other is like saying having a foot cut off is better than losing a kidney. There is nuance, they're both bad.
Buddy, I lived there for years. My sources are the hundreds of Chinese people I spoke to in their native tongue for years. Not the propaganda from my country. True, SOME Chinese people have VPNs. Most do not.
And I think the more poignant question is this. Why do they need a VPN to access the wider internet in the first place?
Stop with the pedantic BS. MOST do not use VPNs to get around censorship because MOST do not have a VPN. So again, why do the Chinese need a VPN to access the wider internet?
Not all internet outside of China is Western. I'll give you an example. My wife was a cross cultural communications teacher in China. She had her students pick countries outside of Asia to do a cultural report on. One student picked Poland for whatever reason. The Chinese internet, other than here is Poland on a map, it has this many people, and it's capital is Warsaw, had no other information, Literally nothing else.
So when you ask why they would need access it's because they deserve to be informed about the world around them. There is waayyyyyyy more to the internet than "fascist propaganda".
They also can't access the absolutely braindead remarks you're saying right now. Isn't that a travesty?
And you searched this inside China did you? What are you not getting? Even Chinese search engines inside China show different information then Chinese search engines outside china. It's a walled garden. You are out of your depth here. Go to bed.
i suggest you read some leftist theory despite the propaganda your country does to make you hate it
Dude. They literally started the first comment with "I lived in China for 4 years". When you start trying to "um actually" people with years of first-hand experience, it might be time to reflect on your own biases
us media lies about it and muddies the water instead of suppressing it like china
"instead" is incorrect. They both do both, albeit to differing degrees.
Also you're quoting yourself, not caboose. How long have you lived in China? They lived in China and spoke to Chinese people in Chinese about their personal experiences with the Chinese information landscape. Where were they hypocritical?
And yeah, lots of Chinese people do [X], if [X] is a thing people do. There's like 2 billion of them. Even the most supportive source you could find said 75% don't use VPNs. Listen to the person with personal experience.
I literally just explained it to you in my previous post. I quoted what I said and further clarified it because you asked.
Nothing you said have anything to do with hypocrisy. You still haven't quoted them.
a quarter of 2 billion people is quite a lot.
I didn't accept the accuracy of that figure, I just noted it as an upper bound. Absolute values aren't particularly useful in this kind of discussion. Any weird and obscure niche interest has millions of fans. What's relevant are proportions. I think numbers are probably much closer to 1:10. In a big country that's a lot of people, but it isn't anywhere near typical. Even 1:4 isn't typical, and that's an unexamined generous figure.
should i listen to MAGA fascists then, because they mostly have extensive personal experience with the US?
Do they have more personal experience with the US than you do? I only listen to them enough to figure out how they got where they are and how to prevent others from going there, but I've lived in the US for decades so I have my own expertise. How long have you personally lived in China?
That doesn't mean that person is an expert on China just because they lived there. They could very well be wrong, and in fact they are. You don't have to take my word for it, the Brazilian YouTuber Felipe Durante has lived in China for years, and continues to do so, and he goes in the complete opposite direction than the person saying "I lived there and censorship no one knows anything" in this thread.
Why should I take this random person word instead of the one I can literally see is in China?
the censorship is so deep and so good that the vast majority of the Chinese never find out how extensive it is, because it’s not just your WeChat, it’s ALL MEDIA.
Have you considered it's actually the other way around?
The problem is the censorship is so deep and so good that the vast majority of westerners never find out how extensive it is, because it’s not just your nazi.world, it’s ALL MEDIA.
Yes. But like I said, I lived there for years. True, the western media gets a lot of things wrong. But china is heavily censored, there's no way around that reality.
Yes, and if you're getting a 100% Rosey picture of China and the CCP guess what? It's just different propaganda. There's good and bad things about China. For me bad things outweighed the good.
Angry? Me thinks he projects too much. I lived there. I base my opinion on first hand experience. So the fact that you haven't means your basing your experience on something that somebody else WANTS you to think. You're an actual sheep.
Are you seriously trying to say that western relations are more censored than china's? One of those countries has locked off Internet. The other does not.
If you're implying that there is no substantial amount of censorship in the west you're kidding yourself. e.g. RT/TASS, Genocide in Palestine, Leftists/Communist thought, Removing TikTok is in the talks, etc. come to mind. Not like only one side is locking off their internet.
Also, not wanting western Nazi (social) media platforms is just self defense.
Yes, there is censorship. But the information is there if you search for it. The fact that you're typing the words "genocide in Palestine" and I am reading those words pretty clearly demonstrates that the level of censorship in the west is no where near the level of censorship in China. If the CCPs position is "Israel has a right to defend itself" you would never even know there's a conflict in Gaza.
Most Chinese don't have access to a VPN. Do you need a VPN to access that information? The fact that there is an extra step to access the information means that china is more censored by default. There's also the fact that at certain times of year all consumer VPNs are blocked (June 4th is one of those dates, oddly enough)
Yes, I've heard of shadow banning. The censorship in China is still worse. I'm not saying censorship doesn't happen in the west. I am saying it is much more widespread, oppressive, and complete in China. No amount of you crying is going to change that fact.
Being subject of western imperialism tends to do that. The US uses various think thanks and it's media landscape to produce narratives with the intend to destabilize the countries like e.g. China. Also any state goes into censorship when it's hegemony is threatened. Also chinese people on average seem way more informed about current events than the average European or American
Chinese people seem way more informed about current events? 🤣🤣🤣😂🤣😂. That's gonna be a no from me dog. Clearly you've never talked to the average Chinese person. There are vast swathes of current events and information they've never even heard about. They're well informed about the topics that make it past the censors, for sure. My god you're just as misinformed as everyone else. The only difference is your misinformation is "china good" misinformation. Which is sad, there are a lot of things to point at in china that are legitimate "China good". Like fast, cheap/free and effective healthcare. The best in the world high speed rail. The closest to a meritocratic education system I've seen or heard of. Virtually zero homelessness. But when it comes to censorship, nah, they're wayyyyy worse. Yeah, the west can be better than china then some things. It's okay buddy, you can be objective you know
Cope. I guess you had a different experience when you were there. I got asked about NATO, Russia/Ukraine, Iran/Israel, US Tariffs and saw it analyzed in CCTV also when revisiting earlier this year. CGTNs quality of analysis is way higher and objective than other (state) media.
What are topics that didn't make it past the censors in your opinion?
I'm not questioning that censorship is happening, it's just happening differently than in western societies. Classifying it as "way worse" is just your subjective experience
I'm saying the censorship is not even close to the same degree. Communists and leftists are not censored. If they were, I wouldn't encounter them in main stream social medias.
Removing tic tok is not censorship lmfao.
Also, not wanting western Nazi (social) media platforms is just self defense.
If it was only banning the platforms, I would agree.
As a lib it definitely seems that way. There may be even too much amirte?
Removing tic tok is not censorship lmfao.
Id argue trying to remove a main stream platform with a flatter algorithm that allows for counter hegemonic content to go viral is a form of censorship, but in that case China blocking Western social Media isn't either
If it was only banning the platforms, I would agree.
You're kinda fucking stupid as shit if you don't understand propaganda in the west is orders of magnitude worse than in China based solely on the dollar amount spent on it
propaganda while related to censorship, is not the same thing as censorship. You are putting 2 different terms as equivalent. And it's no surprise the west's budget on that would be larger in dollars, the pay by exchange rate is higher in the west for those positions, and china is one country, the west is dozens of countries.
Thank you for explaining to everyone that propaganda and censorship are related but not identical terms. I'm sure the time spent reading it was just as valuable as the time spent writing it. And now it's gone.
And while your point is kind of dumb in that it assumes every society is exactly the same and that differences in how they spend money is explainable by scale of the economy, it's extra dumb because by that mechanism you're conceding the main point of contention that the west controls the thought and discourse in its empire more than China does.
Literally, no, I'm not conceding that point. Their dollar does not give the same value. There is substantially less control of media and internet in the west as compared to china.
I wouldn't've had to explain it if you knew the difference in the first place
You're a fuckin moron man. You can easily find any of the so called "censored items" with mainstream search engines like google or even just on Facebook or reddit. What are these so called banned topics that you say exist anyways?
I honestly can't tell if you're just too prideful to admit you're wrong. I don't believe any present minded, awake person could be naive to the concept of a discovery algorithm. So you setting the bar at 'you can literally find it if you know what you're looking for and try' for government control of thought and discourse seems genuinely in bad faith.
Give an example. Russian news outlets and far left ideology are both too unpopular to be common even without suppression. They're not examples of censorship.
No, reactionaries should be rehabilitated to the best of society's capabilities. Participation in society isn't sacred, the purpose of democracy is to deliver the best results for the most amount of people. Reactionaries that wish to expel and murder minority groups should be treated as any other violent criminal, through rehabilitation if possible.
Should openly fascist people be allowed to vote [for government] in your opinion?
Why should they? As in, materially, how does society benefit from that? How does the democratic decision-making tool become more useful from it? I consider democracy to be a decision-making process, so I don't care for vague idealistic assertions like "every adult should have the right to vote" unless there's a benefit from it. And allowing an explicitly anti-liberal, anti-democratic, bad-faith opportunist (and fascism is explicitly and openly all of those) to vote is harmful to the democratic process and increases the odds of it making a bad decision.
Can't they use stuff like signal or simplex to communicate. How they going to decrypt the msg and the app simple x is open source. Until they are not seeing what app you have in the system it should not be a problem
no, it's a novel, it's a work of fiction, not a piece of theory or history that you can quote, the ending and the world is entirely built by the writer, there's no study it's literally arguments made up by the writer based on no sources or research, anyone can write a dystopian story, I could write a dystopian story and quote it right now, it's not argument, it's stupid.
You know, in my novel of people who quote novels ending up as nazis, you do resemble it a lot.
/\ as valid as using a novel like 1984 or animal farm or whatever else as an argument
1984 and Brave New World are allegories based on real life social observations and events. So, yes, they are based on history. They are famous for a reason. It is just that you find it too close to comfort.
It's not history, but it's certainly theory. The study it's based on is through observations of reality. When comparing something to one of these books, we're testing their observations by comparing them to reality. Incidentally, it gets brought up a lot when an event, occurrence, or vector in society begins to resemble these books too closely.
Your hyperbole of people quoting books all being nazis, on the other hand, is very easily disproven.
Badly; as someone who is culturally illiterate, lacks the skills of observation to make any determination (whether it be about myself or the subject of the world around us), is incapable of actually making any arguments, and so uses "colourful language" in a juvenile attempt to cover up their shortcomings.
The question I asked you was to explain the method by which I was making a judgement, which you presumed to know.
Can you answer it, stupid? Or are we going to get another paragraph about how you being snide is supposed to obscure the fact that you can't maintain a coherent thought throughout one of your posts?
No, you're a pointless individual because you literally have no point in this argument. I asked you for what your point was and you've done nothing but evade and insult. You're a vapid fucking idiot. See? I can actually stake a position.
Reminds me of the same reaction, but inverse for the right, when Squid Game first came out. The right keeps insisting that the show is about socialism, even though the creator explicitly mentioned it's about capitalism.
As we all know, a cultural understanding of works of literature that influenced its readers is exactly like one weirdo on twitter being weird about a movie. Brilliant.
It's always projection. Even if they're not literally doing the thing that they accuse their opponent of doing yet, the fact that they're making the accusation reveals their intention.
Ah shit, this means they're gonna do everything they made up about Xinjiang (if they're not doing it already at the alligator place)
it's a massive fucking lie anyway; anyone who's been to china can tell you they have winnie the pooh merch in every fuckin' shop. winnie the pooh is very popular there.
Idk man. People typically use it to be racist against Chinese folk. It's not crazy that video game moderation teams would ban a common insult against a race of players.
I also don't know anything, but it sounds like none of us do and we are just speculating
Its not racist. Chinese are not identified by winnie the pooh. Winnie the pooh was used by chinese online forums to criticize X Jin Ping the supreme leader and fascist dictator of China who got rid of term limits which Deng put forth.
No, it started as an adorable meme on Chinese forums:
It then became a racist trope on Western forums.
The title of president is ceremonial, so term limits on it are hardly consequential. The real top position since 1982 has been the General Secretary of the CPC, which is a renewable five year term that has never had term limits. Xi is still very popular with people in China, so it’s no surprise that he won a third term in 2022. Jiang Zemin also won three terms, so there’s nothing unusual about it.
Taiwanese are rushing to buy patches being worn by their air force pilots that depict a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh - representing China's President Xi Jinping - as a defiant symbol of the island's resistance to Chinese war games.
I thought about asking how would state controlled media be able to publish anything about an image if it's banned. Then I figured that's pretty obvious, and didn't want to ruffle any feathers. Should have known better than to try and go against the narrative. My bad.
Would be my reaction too if I wouldn't be able to corroborate claims. Did you know the Ukrainians claim to be winning the war? So do the Russians.I wonder who's right?
I see you're not smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question and choose to use it as a deflection from not being able to corroborate your ridiculous claim that you can't post winnie the poh on chinese social media. Basically I was trying to highlight that anyone can claim anything it's why @SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world is right in asking for your homework libshit
Brother. You must say something is banned for it to be banned. You can't just vibe ban something. You have to tell people "hey, stop doing this". Where is that message
I don't think many people are gonna have "hot takes" based on a vaguely titled article behind a paywall.
Also "scandals" to do with the Chinese military have little to do with someone saying that Taiwanese military badges don't prove anything about the situation in China.
Well you are foolish if you really think this proves anything. There is a long history of anti-China movements catering to the west for sympathy, as that's their main backer. Protest signs in English and this are just part of an appeal to the west.
All this proves is that they have heard the same stupid memes you have.
I think the top comment is the real answer on this.
There is censorship in China, as well as in the west. They just operate very differently.
In the west, outside the US, I think it'd be fairly easy to argue there's more censorship in China. (Even with the pretty depressing clamp down on right to protest, and suppressing of anti-israel speech in many forms happening at the moment)
Equally though, people massively overblow what censorship is actually like in China. I'm not gonna get disappeared next time I go to China just for this comment. Or even if I overtly criticised the government on real-name social media.
tl;dr "China bad!" and "China so good!" are both equally annoying positions to find on the internet.
Reality is nuanced, but that doesn't seem to make people happy.
Top comment is about how Chinese censorship is not overt, but behind the scenes to stop your speech from spreading. It's definitely censorship, but no one is going to arrest you for criticising the government online (to a point), they'll just stop you from reaching others with your message.
I'm just saying that there definitely is censorship, just not what some "China Bad" people imagine.
My comment was in opposition to the "China Good" crowd who also pretend like everything bad said about China is not true.
Reality is inbetween, in my opinion. It's a country with good and bad points.
Sorry for the late reply. I agree completely. China is a state like any other and does good and bad things. People love to just make up garbage about China, and some people say the weirdest pro China shit you can imagine.
i mean, should a meme that's not exceedingly political but pokes slight fun of a political figure increase the chances of you getting into a given country, when its on your phone?
No, it's a double edged sword, it is.
on the other hand it would be kind of funny if having pictures of bald eagles and us flags and pro trump memes on your phone made la migra care more about the immigrants they are deporting.
Again, no. I only have so much room on my phone for corny-ass-mostly-lazy-spoiled-shits; mainly cats.
Funny meme but it's worth noting that he wasn't denied entry to the US for the meme. It was because they found messages between him and his drug dealer.
Reddit admins would have permabanned for this comment though their masters are doing same comments inflicting violence but IRL. Love lemmy for free speech
Right-wing demonstrators on Saturday assaulted Arab lawmaker Ayman Odeh and attacked his car as he traveled to an anti-war protest in Nes Ziona, days after the Knesset failed to approve a motion to expel him from the legislature over controversial comments he made on the conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Demonstrators could be heard repeatedly cursing Odeh and chanting “death to Arabs” in a video filmed from inside the vehicle.
Pour celles et ceux qui ne seraient pas partis loin en vacances, le MastApéro a lieu comme toujours le second vendredi du mois, toujours au même endroit, toujours avec les mêmes personnes sympathiques !
Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad, a key humanitarian aid hub, suffers hellish night and morning of Russian strikes — Russia is weaponizing deportation — Ukraine proposes peace talks with Russia next week — [vlog/video blog] 24 hours inside Pokrovsk as Russia c
Medical Supplies for Ukraine’s Hospitals. Partnering for global health equity.
Russia’s war against Ukraine
Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk and his team celebrate defeating Britain’s Daniel Dubois in their undisputed world heavyweight boxing title bout at Wembley Stadium in London on July 19, 2025. (Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images)
Fire, flight diversions reported near Moscow as Ukraine launches droneattackon Russia’s capital. A fire broke out in Moscow Oblast overnight on July 20 as Ukraine reportedly launched a drone attack targeting the Russian capital, local Telegram channels reported.
Ukrainian hackerswipedatabases at Russia’s Gazprom in major cyberattack, intelligence source says. The cyberattack allegedly destroyed large volumes of data and installed custom software designed to further damage the company’s information systems.
Ukraineproposespeace talks with Russia next week, Zelensky says. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on July 19 that Ukraine has proposed new peace talks with Russia for next week, with National Security Council Secretary Rustem Umerov extending the offer and signaling readiness for high-level discussions.
Ukraine considerseasingtravel ban for men ages 18-24, parliament speaker says. Ukrainian lawmakers are considering whether to allow men ages 18 to 24 to travel abroad, a move that would ease current wartime restrictions, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk said on July 19.
Ukraine moves toreclaimUkrainian names for foreign places in official use. A new initiative will examine how the Ukrainian language describes foreign locations while at home, with the aim of standardizing and promoting a Ukrainian spelling, said Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
Russia aims tolaunch2,000 drones towards Ukraine at once, German general says. The staggering figure described by German Major General Christian Freuding, who heads the Ukraine task force at the German Defense Ministry, comes as Russia continues to expand its drone production.
Human cost of Russia’s war
1killed, 6 injured in Russian drone attack on Odesa. At least one person was killed and three were injured as a fire engulfed a residential building amid a Russian drone attack on Odesa overnight on July 19.
Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad suffers ‘hellishnight and morning’ of Russian strikes. Pavlohrad, a city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast that has become a key humanitarian aid hub for those evacuating the front lines, suffered one of its most severe attacks of the war, Governor Serhii Lysak said on July 19.
24 hours inside Pokrovsk as Russia closes in on key Ukrainian city
International response
‘Russia isweaponizingdeportation’ — Ukraine evacuates 43 deportees from Russia-Georgia border. Instead of being brought to the Ukrainian border, 56 Ukrainian deportees were taken to a basement facility in Georgia where they were being held in a transit zone, aid group Volunteers Tbilisi reported.
In other news
Ukrainian boxer UsykdefeatsDubois, retains world heavyweight championship. Oleksandr Usyk retained his heavyweight title and preserved his unbeaten record with a commanding fifth-round knockout of Daniel Dubois on July 19 at Wembley Stadium.
Zelenskyunveilsnew composition of Ukraine’s Security Council. President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 19 announced the updated composition of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, following the country’s latest government reshuffle. While most members remain the same, one notable change is the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the council’s new secretary.
Ukraine’s defense, digital ministriescoordinateto scale drone solutions. Newly appointed Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal met with Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on July 19 to discuss scaling up battlefield technologies, with a focus on interceptor drones and anti-Shahed systems.
The Kyiv Independent delivers urgent, independent journalism from the ground, from breaking news to investigations into war crimes. Your support helps us keep telling the truth. Become a member today.
Coming under fire from the left for the glaring contradiction of providing military assistance to a state that is perpetrating an active genocide, AOC issued a statement claiming her vote was about protecting civilians. AOC’s statement is absolute crap. The Iron Dome is not used for defending, it’s used to facilitate constant attacks. In an article for Jewish Currents titled “Iron Dome Is Not a Defensive System,” Dylan Saba explains:
“‘In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
The Iron Dome isn’t for protecting civilians, it’s for protecting the Israeli regime from deterrence. We see this in the comfort the regime displays in waging constant military violence on its neighbors knowing they can’t retaliate. That’s why Israel cut a ceasefire deal with Iran so fast.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
This is the whole ‘don’t vote for anyone other than Trump because they’re not hard enough against Trump’s agenda’ BS propaganda. Because the leftish person isn’t left enough for you doesn’t mean they’re worse than the person on the right. Media going after AOC right now is a concerted effort to smear the name of a leading young and powerful leftist. No one is going to be perfect, but hot damn is it easy to see how much these people frighten the establishment. The smear campaigns are on over drive for her and the new guy in NYC, Mamdani.
Stop vilifying the person who is leaps and bounds better than their contenders… just because they’re not perfect.
she voted no on the full munitions bill, which included the iron dome "defenses"
honestly i'm having trouble having serious conversations with people about this because they refuse to recognize or grapple with the fact that she voted no on the full munitions bill, which included the iron dome "defenses"
the only thing that makes sense to me is that she's playing politics and doesn't want MTG's amendment to be used against her - which is strange given that she ultimately voted no on the entire munitions bill
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) rejected the EU's unilateral move, reaffirming that India does not recognise sanctions imposed outside the United Nations framework.
the sanctions target Nayara Energy’s 20-million-tonne-per-year refinery in Gujarat’s Vadinar, where Russian energy firm Rosneft holds a 49.13 per cent stake.
India condemned the quotunilateral sanctionsquot by the European Union targeting a oil refinery in Gujarat and urged the EU to avoid quotdouble standardsquot in energy trade
I mean India does enjoy the energy sovereignty by trading with Russia, the same way EU exercises their authority to sanction them because of it. Seems fair.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is once again responding to internal opposition within the Labour Party with force, echoing the tactics his government has used to try to suppress Palestine solidarity groups across the UK. After dozens of MPs rebelled against a draconian welfare bill that would have devastated the lives of thousands of disabled people (the bill’s gutted version still entails significant cuts to welfare), Starmer responded by suspending four of them: Rachael Maskell, Brian Leishman, Chris Hinchcliff, and Neil Duncan-Jordan. He then took things a step further by re-suspending veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott.
Abbott had previously been suspended over trumped-up allegations of racism following comments made in an interview, allegations that are hard to reconcile with her decades-long record of fighting racism and discrimination in her constituency. She was eventually allowed to run on the Labour ticket just ahead of the 2024 general election, but has remained a vocal critic of the Starmer cabinet’s austerity agenda and its enthusiastic turn toward militarization. Reacting to her latest suspension, Abbott remarked that the Labour leadership obviously wants her out – as it did many other progressive members when 2024 election tickets were being drafted, one might add.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday he’ll pack his bags and flee to Florida if he loses the NYC mayoral race to socialist Zohran Mamdani.
“It’s all or nothing. We either win or even I will move to Florida. God forbid!” Cuomo told business leaders and other honchos at a Hamptons breakfast hosted by supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday he’ll pack his bags and flee to Florida if he loses the NYC mayoral race to socialist Zohran Mamdani.
“It’s all or nothing. We either win or even I will move to Florida. God forbid!” Cuomo told business leaders and other honchos at a Hamptons breakfast hosted by supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis.
Musing out loud some casaul philosophical reflection on fedi and tech ethics, related to this toot:
In our FOSS movement and the social impact movements that favor the fediverse we value a set of principles we think are essential to improve all the things that need fixing, in order to move to a better world.
Fediverse as no other other online space can be considered a "humane technology field lab". People care about the features of their app, and the impact it has on fedizens that use it. This focus on the human side, ethics, and externalities is highly laudible and much needed to become the norm everywhere. The only future of mankind is the one where we find equilibrium of our exploitation with what our planet can provide. Holistic sustainability.
But do we take all the externalities into account fairly? Or are we fooling ourselves that app-centric humane tech focus is enough. We aren't able to collaborate at scale in our grassroots environment, as Big Industry™ under hypercapitalism is able to do. Yet we do work in public and give all our innovation away, also to the bad actors. Is that responsible? Are we really creating "humane technology" then?
Are we able to control what we create, as we introduce it into society in real-time?
Will our work remains commons based, for the people by the people? Or won't we be able to avoid corporate capture of our tech followed by 'business as usual'? Maybe the way we work together now is the best we can muster. But who is pondering if that is the case, and looking into better ways to work ethical and responsible in large-scale grassroots commons that keep sustainable technology ecosystems afloat?
FOSS: "Nice! I bridged all the social web protocols"
FOSS: "And I made service development dead easy, intuitive and productive"
Fedizen: "This is so wonderful. What a cozy place we have"
Meta: "We agree! We embraced the technology and today announce free fediverse access for anyone. Our datacenters are primed and ready for a billion more fedizens. That's not all! With Service Mart you're in full control!"
Due to a bug in the #Discourse #ActivityPub plugin the image is included twice and with the wrong alt-text (the one that auto-generated on image upload).
The #ALT4you alt-text is the exact text of my toot at this location:
FOSS: "Nice! I bridged all the social web protocols"
FOSS: "And I made service development dead easy, intuitive and productive"
Fedizen: "This is so wonderful. What a cozy place we have"
Meta: "We agree! We embraced the technology and today announce free fediverse access for anyone. Our datacenters are primed and ready for a billion more fedizens. That's not all! With Service Mart you're in full control!"
Coming under fire from the left for the glaring contradiction of providing military assistance to a state that is perpetrating an active genocide, AOC issued a statement claiming her vote was about protecting civilians. AOC’s statement is absolute crap. The Iron Dome is not used for defending, it’s used to facilitate constant attacks. In an article for Jewish Currents titled “Iron Dome Is Not a Defensive System,” Dylan Saba explains:
“‘In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
The Iron Dome isn’t for protecting civilians, it’s for protecting the Israeli regime from deterrence. We see this in the comfort the regime displays in waging constant military violence on its neighbors knowing they can’t retaliate. That’s why Israel cut a ceasefire deal with Iran so fast.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
People who say you should criticize AOC less because there are way worse members of congress act like she’s just passively sitting there being a mediocre lawmaker. She’s not. She’s actively anchoring the leftmost edge of the Overton window of US politics to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and genocide. She’s actively stopping American politics from moving any further left than the nightmare we see before us.
Leftists shouldn’t hate AOC less than the politicians to her right, they should hate her much more. It isn’t Mike Johnson’s responsibility to move the US government to the left, and it’s not Nancy Pelosi’s job. It’s hers. That’s what she was elected to do. That’s what she framed the goals of her entire political career as being. And she’s taking her stand firmly bracing against any leftward movement from America’s genocidal, warmongering, unjust, exploitative, tyrannical status quo.
Coming under fire from the left for the glaring contradiction of providing military assistance to a state that is perpetrating an active genocide, AOC issued a statement claiming her vote was about protecting civilians. AOC’s statement is absolute crap. The Iron Dome is not used for defending, it’s used to facilitate constant attacks. In an article for Jewish Currents titled “Iron Dome Is Not a Defensive System,” Dylan Saba explains:
“‘In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
The Iron Dome isn’t for protecting civilians, it’s for protecting the Israeli regime from deterrence. We see this in the comfort the regime displays in waging constant military violence on its neighbors knowing they can’t retaliate. That’s why Israel cut a ceasefire deal with Iran so fast.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
People who say you should criticize AOC less because there are way worse members of congress act like she’s just passively sitting there being a mediocre lawmaker. She’s not. She’s actively anchoring the leftmost edge of the Overton window of US politics to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and genocide. She’s actively stopping American politics from moving any further left than the nightmare we see before us.
Leftists shouldn’t hate AOC less than the politicians to her right, they should hate her much more. It isn’t Mike Johnson’s responsibility to move the US government to the left, and it’s not Nancy Pelosi’s job. It’s hers. That’s what she was elected to do. That’s what she framed the goals of her entire political career as being. And she’s taking her stand firmly bracing against any leftward movement from America’s genocidal, warmongering, unjust, exploitative, tyrannical status quo.
Mr. Geneva Convinience, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
High-ranking Times editors and reporters have material and ideological ties to Israel’s occupation and apartheid. Their journalistic malpractice enables genocide in Gaza.
Dopo una pausa di quasi quattro anni (il suo ultimo lavoro "Red Letter Year" è del 2008) dovuti al matrimonio e alla maternità, la quarantunenne Ani DiFranco ritorna con un nuovo disco, il diciannovesimo: ¿Which Side Are You On?.. Leggi e ascolta...
Dopo una pausa di quasi quattro anni (il suo ultimo lavoro “Red Letter Year” è del 2008) dovuti al matrimonio e alla maternità, la quarantunenne Ani DiFranco ritorna con un nuovo disco, il diciannovesimo: ¿Which Side Are You On? Sono presenti alla realizzazione di questo album Pete Seeger, i Neville Brothers, il compagno e produttore del disco Mike Napolitano e molti altri musicisti di New Orleans, città di residenza della DiFranco. Il “marchio” che ha sempre contraddistinto la folksinger americana è l'impegno politico, la libertà e l'autonomia di pensiero e di azione, proprio per questo non ha mai accettato compromessi con le major, pagando di persona l'esclusione dalle radio e dai riflettori mass-mediatici... artesuono.blogspot.com/2014/07…
Embark on an epic journey through PlayStation history! See "every PlayStation ever," from the iconic PS1, PS2, and PS3 to the powerful PS4 and PS5. Discover rare variants like the Net Yaroze and PSX, and explore unique accessories. We compare console performance, discuss generational leaps, and recommend the best models for your collection, whether you're a hardcore collector or a casual gamer. See classic games like Parappa the Rapper, God of War, and Motorstorm played on period-accurate displays. Uncover the evolution of controllers, from Dualshock to Dual Sense, and learn which PlayStation is right for YOU!
„Vor 28 Jahren ist ein Raumschiff mit Außerirdischen über Johannesburg gestrandet. Seitdem werden die Aliens in einem slumartigen Flüchtlingslager isoliert – dem District 9.“ – Ein südafrikanischer Science-Fiction-Film, der es in sich hat, uns mal wieder wirklich nachdenklich werden zu lassen. (ZDF, Wh)
"Vor 28 Jahren ist ein Raumschiff mit Außerirdischen über Johannesburg gestrandet. Seitdem werden die Aliens in einem slumartigen Flüchtlingslager isoliert - dem District 9.
Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoft will no longer use that key to sign the shim first-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot the kernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been available since 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may require the hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which may or may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not be lost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors and users.
Small companies which use old laptops with Windows might be bitten hard by this because they can become locked out of their hardware with no way to update it, or even make a backup!
And by the way, Intel motherboards which are running your Linux system may contain a copy of Minix - yes, the Minix from the historic Tanenbaum vs. Torvalds debate - which runs below the OS in the system management mode engine and is controlled by the vendor, which can e.g. update firmware via the network. SMM is normally not visible by the user but it can cause problems e.g. for real-time applications because it has higher privileges than the kernel and can interrupt all of the kernel at any time.
For a home desktop that's never left unattended with anyone untrustworthy, I don't see that Secure Boot is worth the effort in setting up.
Given that you have to re-sign the boot image every time you upgrade, any malware already running with root privileges on the machine could easily slip itself into the new signed image.
The best security is not running untrusted software to begin with.
Can you explain the detailed reason why you think that? Voicing opinions is nice of course but explaining the thought process and logic is, I think, almost always more interesting to other people.
To start with, what do you think is the "normal users" threath model? And, for example, if one happens to be a member of any of the various minorities that authoritarian governments of every color happen to single out and persecute in your countries case, what would you want to protect from? Or if you are, say, a lawyer, and have a professional obligation to protect sensitive data from theft?
Actually, I would love for you to explain to me how Secure Boot alone would protect someone from any of that. If you want to protect files, you need full disk encryption, not Secure Boot.
Or are you seriously expecting a government-level threat actor to bother to:
Sneak into your home while you're away or asleep;
Overwrite your bootloader or UEFI with a rootkitted image of the same version so it's impossible to tell;
Wait for you to boot your computer and enter your disk encryption password, then:
Use the rootkit to read the decrypted files off your disk?
That's the great thing about fascist governments, is they have no need to be that sneaky. They can just change the laws to make whatever you're doing illegal and jail you until you agree to give up your documents, or simply hit you with a $5 wrench until you tell them the password.
You need both FDE and Secure Boot, ideally with FDE using a TPM with PIN and PCR 7+15=0. FDE without SB can be trivially boot-kitted and obviously SB without FDE is mostly pointless. Maybe for a server/desktop behind locked doors you don't worry as much, but for a laptop you absolutely should. Also it's really easy in Arch to resign the UKI with sbctl via a pacman hook whenever the kernel is updated so there's no good reason not to use it.
If you're relying on a LUKS password only, it can be brute-forced. To protect against that you need a decently long password which is annoying to type every boot. A short TPM PIN sealed by SB protecting LUKS is both more convent and more secure.
Finally, if an attacker or malware gets root, FDE isn't protecting you either.
Even having no pre-boot PIN with SB on is nice, then you only need your user space login where you could even use fingerprint reader if you like. For servers they can already start serving without anyone having to intervene manually (which is nice after power outage, for example).
So yeah, SB, TPM and FDE are a very nice bundle that heavily secures against the most relevant attack vectors.
Yep that's how my desktops and servers are set up. I only recently started adding the TPM PIN to my laptops for a bit of extra protection from cold boot / evil maid attacks.
Secure Boot is a really contrived and, frankly, bad defense against an attack that is extremely difficult to execute in reality and does not happen often (are there any examples of a bootloader replacement against a home desktop in the wild?).
An actually good solution would be firmware support for LUKS-style FDE (with a password-encrypted key which then encrypts the rest of the disk), so that your bootloader is encrypted with the rest of your system and impossible to substitute without erasing the rest of the disk, until you enter the password. This way there's no need for key enrolment into firmware, and firmware manufacturers don't have to just trust MS. (the firmware of course needs to be protected too, by signing it with the manufacturer's key; if you flash something unsigned, a warning pops up Android-style before every boot).
If you are hiding something from the state (like your sexual orientation or something), your energy is much better spent encrypting your communications online and keeping your identities anonymous. If you are already suspicious enough to try and pull a bootloader replacement attack on you, any authoritarian state which would do that in the first place will just throw you in jail and fabricate evidence as needed.
The main advantage of SB is TPM. At runtime the key isn't available and unlocking your disk works automatically as long as nothing has been tampered with (which is then also a nice canary: if you suddenly have to enter your password during boot, something's off).
There's nothing technically preventing using TPM without secure boot. This is a limitation imposed by OEMs. In fact I have a separate hardware encryption key that I encrypt my (laptop) drive with, and even I don't (can't) know the private key. I only know the pin that is needed to unlock it. If motherboard OEMs implemented something like this on the motherboard, with the ability to decrypt the bootloader partition before booting into it, this would solve everything.
If secure boot is off, and you run malware on your pc, it can change the boot process to escalate privileges.
This probably requires root or admin in the first place, but if they can install a malware loader, they can establish persistence so that even if you remove the os-level components, they'll be reinstalled on reboot.
Yeah, but the malware can just wait for a system upgrade where you sign a new boot image and slip itself in then.
It works for Windows because theoretically only Microsoft would have the signing key and it's not just sitting on disk somewhere. But then you're just trusting Microsoft, and also subject to vendor lock-in.
If secure boot is off, and you run malware on your pc, it can change the boot process to escalate privileges.
This is technically correct, but on a desktop system, malware executing in user space is normally already game over. It can exfiltrate and send your passwords or ssh private keys, change browser certificates or browser software, add user systemd sessions or crontab entries and can generally e.g. do everything a banking trojan would like to do.
As commenters on the LWN thread said, I doubt that many firmwares even bother to check anyway. My motherboard happens to have had a bug where you can corrupt the RTC and end up in 2031 if you overclock it wrong. I didn't use secure boot then though so I don't know if it would have still booted Windows. But I imagine it would.
That said, I've always just enrolled my own keys. I know some other distros that make you enroll their keys as well like Bazzite. At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything, clean proper secure boot straight into UKI.
As commenters on the LWN thread said, I doubt that many firmwares even bother to check anyway. My motherboard happens to have had a bug where you can corrupt the RTC and end up in 2031 if you overclock it wrong.
Seems it compares the expiration date of the UEFI key with the signature date of the bootloader / OS keys. (See the comments on the LWN article, some are far more knowledgeable than I am.) So, no, it does not require a working on-board clock to lock you out if you are not extremely careful and fully understand each part.
That does not help if the master key in the key chain is expired.
Sure you can disable Secure Boot. But a password-protected BIOS is secured by TPM again. High levels of security always carry a risk of locking oneself out.
I don't think you understand what "enrolling your own keys" means in the context of Secure Boot.
The key affected here is specifically for the Linux shim signed by Microsoft. It is used by GRUB and some distros to work with Secure Boot.
Enrolling your own key means you add a new certificate to the key store. This is completely separate from the one provided by Microsoft and controlled only by you. The common recommendation is to remove all built-in keys and only add your own, to make this system as secure as possible.
OK, now you are talking about something a bit different - registering own keys in the UEFI system, which is significantly more involved than updating the BIOS, and also requires firmware support, and the firmware also needs to match the motherboard. And the whole issue with ACPI support for Linux shows clearly that having reams of specufications is not enough, the implementation of the BIOS needs to match that specification which whether thsz's the case you will only learn after you bought the hardware.
That said, I've always just enrolled my own keys. I know some other distros that make you enroll their keys as well like Bazzite. At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything, clean proper secure boot straight into UKI.
I didn't start talking about it, this was many comments above
At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything,
The whole point of the article is that you do depend on their expired root key. You have produced a lot of text without even understanding the key issue. At that point I am wondering whether all that text was produced by an LLM?
I don't know that you've understood the issue either, and you're being kind of a jerk? My understanding is this mainly affects installation media. If you disable Secure Boot, install a Linux distro, enrol that distro's keys and then reenable it, you're fine. That seems to be what the commenter you're replying too is suggesting.
Please don't troll and come back to the topic. GP was completely missing the topic, do you want to avoid it?
. If you disable Secure Boot, install a Linux distro, enrol that distro's keys and then reenable it, you're fine.
Um, given that Secure Boot prevents any modification of your computer's boot chain - including installing another boot loader or OS - that's not how it works.
given that Secure Boot prevents any modification of your computer's boot chain
Secure Boot does no such thing. All it does it require that everything in the boot chain is signed by a trusted cert.
Binding TPM PCR7 to FDE (or more brittle options like 0+2+4) is really what protects against boot chain modifications but that's another topic.
Disabling SB to install the distro, then re-enabling it once installed with either maintainer-signed shim or self-signed UKI/bootloader is perfectly fine.
I'm not trolling, you called them an LLM, they clearly aren't, you're being a jerk. I'm not going to engage with someone who thinks they're the smartest person in the room.
That's the whole point of enrolling your own keys in the firmware. You can even wipe the Microsoft keys if you want. You do that from the firmware setup, or within any OS while secure boot is off (such as sbctl on Linux).
That's a feature that is explicitly part of the spec. The expectation is you password protect the BIOS to make sure unauthorized users can't just wipe your keys. But also most importantly that's all measured by the TPM so the OS knows the boot chain is bad and can bail, and the TPM also won't unwrap BitLocker/LUKS keys either.
Secure boot is to prevent unauthorized tampering of the boot chain. It doesn't enforce that the computer will only ever boot Microsoft-approved software, that's a massive liability for an antitrust lawsuit.
Yeah this is an issue but not a big one. Most distro's installation media don't use shim so you have to disable SB during install anyway.
And installing the 2023 KEK and db certs can be done via firmware without much trouble or you can use sbctl in setup mode which I believe has both the 2011 and 2023 keys.
If you dual boot Windows you'll want to update it to the new bootmgr signed with the 2023 keys and add the 2011 certs to dbx to protect against BlackLotus or let Windows do it via patches+regfixes.
Also know that any changes to PK, KEK, dB, or dbx will change the PCR 7 measurement so handle that accordingly if you use TPM unlock for FDE.
That is far more complex than a firmware update and also depends on a correct implementation of the spec in the BIOS - which, given the experiences with ACPI for Linux, is not at all something one can rely on.
I just tried to distro-hop and found my BIOS had been locked with a password. Assuming I didn't set a password that I subsequently forgot (and that isn't one of the many I have memorized), I figured this might have something to do with the age of the laptop (I have a HP 4540s). If certificate expiration is already affecting people then this might be it.
EDIT: I just forgot I set a password, and it took me 2 days to realize that I was stupid enough to have set the password that I used for everything when I was 12 years old.
Not OP, but BIOSes often give you a specific error code after a few wrong password attempts. You can put the code in here to recover the password: bios-pw.org/
You can self-sign and self-enroll secure boot keys. Can’t say it’s an easy process, though - I had a lot of misery with it on my Surface Go 1st Gen. Might be better on my Thinkpad.
Microsoft's keys are pre-installed to all motherboards, so boot binaries signed by Microsoft are trusted by default. afaik Microsoft keys often can't be removed, but not because it's not possible, but because it can brick devices. you can create your own MOK or Machine Owner Keys and set up your linux system to sign your bootloader and kernel with it, but that is in addition to Microsoft keys.
That's bullshit. ARM is an architecture and by itself does not specify secure boot any more than x86 does. Raspberry Pis don't have secure boot. You can unlock the bootloader on a Pixel, install GrapheneOS, and relock the bootloader just fine. Several other manufacturers allow bootloader unlocks no problem. The main reason you can't on some popular phones is US carriers, even international Samsungs you can unlock the bootloader and flash whatever you want on it.
I'm literally typing this comment on a phone running a custom OS (LineageOS on a OnePlus 8T). I'm literally 2 versions of Android ahead of the latest supported version. I also have a Galaxy S7 running Android 15, a phone that officially tops out at Android 8 and launched with Android 6. Both you literally just toggle the bootloader unlock option in the settings, no hacks no craziness, it's literally a feature.
At this point you're just straight up making shit up.
The only one I can't find for sure is whether there's any lockdown on the firmware for the Microsoft Surface and Copilot+ laptops, but I'm also not finding any sources pointing that it would be. But at this point you're buying Microsoft hardware, what do you expect.
Some people argue that one can work around such locking down of PC hardware. Do this or that to avoid issues with substantial tinkering.
But that is not a bug but a feature. Sure, as a technical Linux user you can work around some nastiness. Like working around privacy invasion on Facebook or Linkedin by "adjusting" settings, or "adjust" settings in Wimdows to make it more private and so on. The thing is: working against the platform becomes quickly a losing game, because you don't control the platform - Microsoft does. And it does not help you if you manage to re-gain control of your device after some hours of tinkering if 99.9% of people around you don't have the knowledge and time and store your data, photos, Emails on OneDrive and so on. Freedom is very much a collective thing and software freedom is no exception.
And this does not mean that the thinkering and hacking is in vain - but it is not enough. We need the practical right to control our devices.
Nello scenario di guerra contemporaneo, dove sono le informazioni a farla da padrone, con la possibilità di attaccare da distanze chilometriche mediante l’utilizzo di razzi ed artiglieria, piuttosto che l’impiego di semplici droni radiocomandati, le …
Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-st
I bought a cheap Chinese security camera for a fraction of the cost of a Ring and signed up for their cloud storage system. I'm more comfortable with the Chinese government being able to access footage of my backyard, than the current US administration.
eh, you might have a spare day to source a completely uncompromised camera and find someone in a trusted neutral country who runs an unproblematic hosting service and configure a system to do offsite storage in a secure way, but I've got other stuff going on. If you can source me a reasonable alternative I'm happy to use it when it comes time to renew my subscription.
What you're saying makes me think you aren't aware of the technical knowledge of your typical smart doorbell or cam user, which is basically little to none.
And exactly this behavior ("I have no clue about the thing I will do, but I'll do it anyway without educating myself prior") is what makes everything suck more and more because it always gets adapted to the lowest common denominator.
We're only still alive because people need licenses to drive cars or fly planes.
But this maybe implies that there's a possibility to change this behaviour. Which is infeasible. For many of the same reasons why we don't have people specialize in more than a couple of areas.If you're not implying that and you're just saying that in vacuum, then yeah sure. That said it's not the only reaaon why things suck more and changing this behaviour is not the only way to not have things suck, For example a government in a more democratic system might serve its citizens more than its corporations and ban these practices.
Yeah sure, government shall intervene. But...i can probably expect more from anyone else.
And no,I didn't imply everyone should be expert at everything. That is beyond impossible, even for fractions of fractions of things. But. If you wanna drive a car, you're forced to learn a shitton and pay like 2k € to be allowed to do so. One of the reasons is safety for others.
If I had no clue about e.g. doorbells, I would ask a pro I know or search the net or whatever. At least the absolute basics of it. Even setting the pure curiosity aside, just to know what the heck I'm getting at. Admitted, I might have much more spare time than the regular Jane or Joe, but I'd still do that if I had to work. Just less intensive.
But yes, this mixture of apathy and ignorance is the leading reason why the internet sucks so much nowadays then 30 or even just 20yrs ago. The majority of absolutely clueless people not knowing how they get fucked and where to draw a line. Sure, to some it's just a tool they don't need to know shit about to use it. No judging. BUT that doesn't change the fact.
That's the thing, you correctly see the difference in available time after work. That difference stacks over time. Having read this or that makes you understand terminology, patterns, builds confidence and over time that marginal extra time I have had has made it possible for me to grok a manual in 15 minutes but my father who hasn't had that time takes 45 minutes from his shorter available time. Then there's all the modifying details around kids or no kids, how much more hours the lower parts of the working class have to do to pay rent today vs earlier and so on and so forth. Everyone really but it's just much worse for the lower sections.
And then there's the problem of availability of products without extensive research. There's few brands owned by few large corpos that spend a lot pushing them left front and center on their digital platforms. That increases significanty the amount of work anyone has to do to avoid surveillance in this case. And as you understand, increasing the amount of work, increases the amount of time, and there's hard cutoffs which lead to the work not being done, which leads to the marketing campaigns succeeding in getting dad to buy a Ring. These people study, research and know well how to get people who seemingly have choices to choose their product 8 out of 10 times. Especially when transacting via their digital platform.
Which is why we're fighting a losing game if we rely on the individual when they're standing against the corporation which acts as a large collective with collective resources aligned to achieve their goals. This is why individualism is profitable and therefore encouraged. Consumers, employees have to also act as a collective which pools their resources like time, expertise to counteract this. E.g. by having people, supported by the normies, digest, analyse and spit out the results in trivial form (when posaible) that also takes very little time for everyone else to grok, so they make the right decision. Example that come to mind is Consumer Reports.
Your arguments are all valid and fine, wouldn't argue with them. BUT understanding the underlying reasons doesn't really change the fact and my point.
I can empathise with speeders, murderers, scammers and whatever. But know why someone does something, or even truly empathizing with it, doesn't change the fact that it's bad. I could understand a society of murderers and their reasons for murdering. But they'd still destroy their society.
And sadly I really see no way for the government (any gov anywhere) to really pull the rudder. Capitalism just won. And, as you already stated, their goals align excellently with the average Joe/Jane having no clue about the stuff that's thrown in their faces and are worked to death so that'll never change.
And in capitalism right now there's no obvious way to reverse the trend. That said, if the critical theory of capitalism (and history) holds any water, the victory is very likely to be temporary, followed by mass unrest and significant change. What kind of change is not so clear but we may have a say if we're educated enough and organized, so at least we know who to support when the time comes.
Not today anymore. Social-media and the state-of-stupid of the web inhibit that. The masses don't even know what to protest for or against. And without MASSIVE numbers you'd achieve nothing. Someone just needs to throw enough moneyz at the problem (or pay thousands to flood the net with "I love our overlords because XYZ") until it's gone.
It was hard to topple a king some 100yrs ago, but today? We don't even know our kings anymore. Besides those few media-clown-babies that so desperately crave attention to fill a bottomless void of darkness inside them.
Yeah we're definitely playing on hardcore mode. There are some reasons for optimism though. A lot of people who wouldn't think about these things a few years ago are talking about class. I'm talking regular peope I know. These issues were just not on our horizon until recently. They see things very differently than they used to. That's the hopium I'm huffing. 😄
Besides that I would trust a Chinese cloud way more than a murican one (I'm non-US), this really is a lazy excuse. This apathy paired with ignorance or being technically challenged is the main reason dystopian shit like ring even sells at all. Or all those silly "smart" assistants like Alexa.
Phrases like "renewing my subscription" in context of a fucking doorbell itself sounds so absurd to me.
E.g. A raspberry (or the likes) with some run-of-the-mill ip-cam, some wifi-doorbell and AgentDVR would do the same for even less moneyz. And just for you, not the whole world. Wouldn't take more than some hours of setup.
Not too long ago, that statement would have sounded controversial or even crazy. Nowadays though, I’m shocked how much sense it makes to me. Never thought that I would agree with something like that.
I mean, they actually submitted the idea of removing two national holidays to "save money". The dishonest part here is "to fight Russia", even though the next budget is expected to increase the army's budget.
Oh yeah, it's to totally send boots in Russia and walk on Moscow of course, we've almost done it once, we can do it again! That's totally not a big jump to a fantasized conclusion fed to y'all by known Russian propagandists. The author of the article somehow manages to grasp the problem and dishonestly draw wrong conclusions from it.
There are many reasons to increase the Army's budget. Funneling money to Macron's friends in the armament industry is one of them, preparing the public opinion for a war that will never happen to justify "sacrifices" and austerity is another.
I don't think there's any point in debating about this on .ml anyway. You've probably made up your mind about this already.
There are many reasons to increase the Army’s budget. Funneling money to Macron’s friends in the armament industry is one of them, preparing the public opinion for a war that will never happen to justify “sacrifices” and austerity is another.
These are probably also reasons, but you think war with Russia isn't on the minds of every government in Europe right now? They're already fighting a proxy war with Russia! At the very least I think this is one of many reasons for increased military funding.
Not dishonest, but following the jingoistic remarks made by several European leaders plus the current NATO proxy war and economic murder attempt of Russia, it's at the very least in the cards, lol. The budget could go into Ukrainian drones (it already is, this is just a proposed increase) just like the American budget serves to bomb tf out of Palestine and neighbours. It's dishonest to say otherwise, come on.
plus the current NATO proxy war and economic murder attempt of Russia
Wow, why would "NATO" do this? Russia hasn't invaded anyone since ~~2022~~ ~~2014~~ ~~2008~~ ~~1999~~ ~~1994~~ ~~1979~~ ~~1968~~ 1956, that's such a long time ago, and those Hungarians totally deserved it.
Oh. Now I see the problem - you're still operating with centuries-old thinking. You think "war with Russia" means France launching a unilateral invasion of Russia.
Funding NATO is literally the equivalent of preparing for war with Russia. NATO was formed explicitly to counter the USSR. It was staffed with Nazi officers from the Third Reich on the basis that the Third Reich was 100% dedicated to destroying the Soviet Union and enslaving Russia. When the USSR was dissolved, NATO didn't dissolve itself, it became an openly aggressive military force launching invasions of several countries under various pretenses.
The idea of austerity for increased NATO funding can only be interpreted as money for war with Russia. Sure, you can pretend NATO is purely defensive but even if that's the case it's still accurate to say that France is engaging in austerity to fund a war with Russia, just a defensive one.
The reality, however, is that the West has been hell bent on dominating Russia for over 200 years and the quintessential example of that history is Napoleon's campaign to invade Russia - one of the deadliest canpaigns in history. And since the Third Reich was also a Western attempt to invade Russia resulting in massive bloodshed, it becomes really difficult to ignore the obvious problem of France funding NATO (remember, originally helmed with handpicked Third Reich officers) as some kind of "just defensive pact" especially when NATO dropped DU bombs on Yugoslavia in its supposed war for humanitarianism, and NATO's involvement in offensive operations in East Asia.
So you may take issue with the imagined implication that France is going to send an army under the French flag to march on Moscow - I think that's silly too. But you're arguing against a strawman.
They are already attacking Russia through a proxy. They've not been shy about it. They are increasing military spending because they think their proxy is about to collapse and their liege the US is already demanding everyone else step up so they can pivot to China.
Friend, where are you getting your facts to compare it to? Empire controlled outlets. You can not say that a certain fact is or is not being blown out of proportion when the other source for a fact can't be trusted
For which military? A western military? Yeppers, im sure they trained you to do proper source analysis! Not like they have any incentive to alter the training to disadvantage certain sources that just so happens to go against western narratives nosir! Sure they have done a whole lot of evil things, but not ensuring their rank and file are properly trained on source analysis is where they absolutely draw the line 😁 🙄
Well at least I recognize a Russian troll when I see one.
What I do is not believing everything I see on the internet. Whenever there's an article, it can only be confirmed when there are multiple factual sources. RT is far from factual and pushes a very strong narrative. Like the Russian government. Also like Fox News, and US government. Russian independant news sources can be pretty good, but government controlled sources tend to be awful. Especially when it's about the unprovoked invasions into neighboring countries. Like Georgia and Ukraine. And the years long war which consists of insane amounts of factually confirmed horrific war crimes. Like chemical weapons for example. But hey, if you think the Russian government, which is run by an oligarch dictator, is more credible than independant news sources, they you do you!
Kind of like how they attempt to discredit Europe's extremely reasonable concerns about Russia (conswidering they've been bombing the shit out of ukraine for a couple of years?) starting a war by calling it a "fantasy"?
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.
I wish I knew where to bet on the fact that if Ukraine has a complete collapse and an unconditional surrender half of you libs will go "these Russian bots lol have fun when Ukraine unveils their gambit and kills the entire Russian government and are celebrated as heroes by everyone in the country"
Why would I laugh about Russian bots spreading nazi propaganda. Also, what Ukrainian collapse? Right now the chances of Russia having a complete collapse is bigger than Ukraine.
The real reason is because France is being kicked out of Africa so they have to turn inwards and colonize their own people.
The more African countries free themselves from the shackles of French imperialism, the worse it will get for the average French. Then it would be very easy to sell them the next war for them to needlessly die in.
You're also so sorry about your crimes that you continue supporting and selling weapons to Israel in midst of a genocide. Also only East Germany took their denazifcation seriously. Actions speak louder than words. It's also the reason you words ring hollow
Germany’s guilt-pride for its war crimes is a head fake. If it were sincere, Germany wouldn’t be materially supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and suppressing domestic dissent for “anti-semitism.”
In German Cold War anti-communist discourses, the image of the Red Army as a “horde of rapists” worked as a strategy of exclusion in the construction of a national identity based on “Western values.
Thanks for your links but I'll trust my grandparents who were there and lived under soviet occupation. Families hid their daughters in attics and haybarns when the red army came through
Yeah let's see this play out with just the soviets. I am not condemning them. I am simply stating that if the allies were never formed the axis scourge would have rolled across the Earth.
So evil for ending the cycle of famines, defeating the Third Reich, establishing autonomy for historically repressed cultures, improving quality of life and standard of living for millions, pioneering an entirely new form of democracy, advancing the science and engineering of spaceflight, space exploration, medical practices, and vaccines, advancing women's liberation beyond anything in the Western world, and tirelessly working against the effects of North Atlantic imperialism - that is until the revisionists began the process of liberalization and European rapprochement that ultimately led to the suffering of its people, the dismantling of the Union, massive morality from liberal economic shock therapy.
While Gladio is a thing, and the history we are taught in Europe is colourized, it feels like you have very romanticized view of USSR.
Gulags were a thing. So was plunder of "liberated" nations (e.g. Poland), and destruction of the individual countries culture (e.g. Polish cookbooks from before USSR occupation vs after are worlds apart).
Gulag literally means prison. It's a scare word to use it the way you're using it. Prisoners in the Gulag worked, but they were paid the national minimum wage and it was saved for them when they left prison. Compare that to US prisons even today and it's not even a contest which is more humane and moral. US prisoners are charged hundreds of dollars per day for the privilege of being imprisoned and then leave with massive debt which becomes a condition of their parole - they have to find work and they have to make debt payments or they get disciplined, which maintains state control over them long after they have served their sentence. Additionally the gulag population was highest when it imprisoned Nazis during the war. But the US has a per capital imprisonment rate higher than the USSR, and those prisoners are slave laborers that make products for for-profit companies to the tune of multiple billions annually. So, if I have a romantic view of the USSR, it's not my because my perspective ignores their carceral system.
As for national plunder, all of the claims I have seen are of soldiers taking things. Not exactly a massive wealth transfer. Some cultural artifacts were taken and probably should be returned, but a) plundering is a universal problem of every single military adventure and not unique to anything done by the Soviets, and b) what the Soviets did is absolutely a minor infraction compared to the looting done by the Western colonial powers during their 500-years of continuous global terror. So no, national plunder is not something I am ignoring in my assessment.
As for culture, Ukraine shows how much individual cultures were supported and elevated under the Soviet system. Even AI can explain the cookbook evidence you bring up - prewar Polish cookbooks were focused on the upper class and Polish peasant food barely ever made it into cookbooks. After the war, with the abolition of the upper class, Polish cookbooks represent the food of the common people, the super majority.
So no. I don't think my view is romantic, I think you are still working through the sedimentary layers of propaganda that make you believe no one could support the Soviets if they really understood what you understand. The reality is that you don't actually understand those things - you don't understand the prison system nor the comparative analysis of prison systems between the USSR and the US; you don't understand the comparative analysis of the behavior of the Soviets post-war vs the behavior of other militaries post-war and what it represents regarding the relative nature of "good and evil"; you don't understand the cultural policies of the USSR and the comparative analysis of those policies versus the cultural policies of the West in similar situations (hint, the idea that native Americans would even have cookbooks, let alone in their own language, is beyond the pale).
Keep working through it. I was where you were at one point. I couldn't imagine why anyone would be a "tankie", I got banned from communist communities for saying things I thought were not just reasonable but universally accepted and understood. But over enough years of research and discourse, I came to realize just how deep the propaganda and narrative control has been and just how wrong my positions were.
You can stop being condescending, it's not welcomed.
As for national plunder, all of the claims I have seen are of soldiers taking things. Not exactly a massive wealth transfer.
In 1956, when First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party Gomułka was summoned to Moscow, he made some secret notes (that are now public) counting what infrastructure did Moscow stole (as in - systematically took apart, moved to USSR) from Poland (by 1956!):
hundreds different factories lost all machinery
thousands of small manufactories (think pa & ma small manufactories)
8 (!) power stations (from Górny Śląśk)
coke oven gas pipeline 115km,
all big chemistry factories from Polic to Kędzierzyn (value of 1 200 000 000 pre-war $)
4000 km of rails!
heavy machine factories in Jelcz, Łabędy, Zielona Góra, Wrocław, Elbląg, Szczecin
machinery from Mines in Bolesławiec
about 2/3 of machines from the biggest shipyard in Poland (the rest were too big to move)
You're saying that industry was plundered without looking at the context, which is that industry was massively expanded in Poland under Soviet economic policy. The fact that machinery was appropriated and reallocated throughout the USSR is precisely what one would expect if a nation that was under the bourgeois rule of production anarchy was suddenly and necessarily integrated into a centrally planned system following the destruction of the most powerful bourgeois military ever fielded at the time.
The idea that you consider the removal of pipeline to be national plundering but ignore the expansion of heavy industry under the Soviet economic program shows you don't have a grip on what plunder means. You could count any reallocation of machinery as plunder if you are willing to ignore the entire other half of the balance sheet. The real plunder is national wealth, social services for the masses, food stores to stave off famine, art and cultural relics, etc. There was some of that, again, not to the extent of the West, but it's worth noting. But power plant machinery? Please. You pretend that the USSR plunged Poland into an agrarian bronze age when the exact opposite is true.
Stop carrying water for the rich elite and the petite bourgeoisie who lost their livelihoods when communism came in.
You think 14 paper factories is worthy of inclusion in the national wealth of Poland and supports your claim of national plunder? Foolish.
For some reason some Western and all of Russian researchers say that P oland being occupied by USSR did wonders to Polish economy, while Polish researchers say otherwise. I wonder why. Oh, btw, the same is true if you look at any other colonized country.
The idea that you consider the removal of pipeline to be national plundering but ignore the expansion of heavy industry under the Soviet economic program shows you don’t have a grip on what plunder means. You could count any reallocation of machinery as plunder if you are willing to ignore the entire other half of the balance sheet.
You mean rebuying similar equipment to stolen one, from USSR, on credit, and then processing the resources for them and selling them back by the price USSR dictated?
You pretend that the USSR plunged Poland into an agrarian bronze age
I did nothing of the sort. You said you're unaware of systematic wealth transfer, plunder, by USSR. So I showcased, with sources, an example of that.
Foolish
Yes. So far you've proven that you're unable to think or say that USSR did anything wrong, and glorify all the actions undertaken.
If that's not romanticizing, I don't know what is.
For some reason some Western and all of Russian researchers say that P oland being occupied by USSR did wonders to Polish economy, while Polish researchers say otherwise. I wonder why.
Bourgeois nationalism does a lot of things, but one of the most sinister things it does is it distorts narratives about reality so effectively that people inside the bubble think everyone outside the bubble is deranged. You should take your acknowledgement that "for some reason on the Polish establishment hold these opinions" and examine what's really going on. For example...
You said you’re unaware of systematic wealth transfer, plunder, by USSR. So I showcased, with sources, an example of that.
You think that replacing 14 paper mills with heavy industry is an example of systematic wealth transfer, when it's nothing of the sort. If you understand the economic theses of the USSR, it's pretty obvious what was happening - they were attempting to maximize the collective industrialization of all territories they were now responsible for after pushing back the Third Reich to Berlin. This is obviously an entirely different set of constraints than the Polish economy was working under prior to the war. Specifically, the pre-war Polish economy was dominated by the interests of the national bourgeoisie, and those interests were to produce goods for export to the international bourgeoisie for the highest price with the least salary paid to Polish workers. Hence the abject rural poverty that the majority of the Polish population lived under. After the war, during which the Third Reich waged all-out war and destroyed anything productive that they couldn't control, it was the communist program of industrialization and wealth distribution that not only allowed Eastern Europe to recover as quickly as did but also reduced levels of rural poverty and inequality relative to the pre-war period.
Because, again, prior to the war, Poland was dominated by the interests of the ultra minority national bourgeoisie, and your cookbook comment is just wonderful evidence of it.
Yes. So far you’ve proven that you’re unable to think or say that USSR did anything wrong, and glorify all the actions undertaken.
This is what anti-communist bourgeois nationalism does to you. It makes you think people who disagree with you are blindly glorifying all actions undertaken. This is a lie. There were huge problems. Stalin did terrible things and he directed people to do terrible things and he didn't stop people from doing terrible things. The other elected leaders also did terrible things and they directed people to do terrible things and they didn't stop people from doing terrible things. But here's the thing the bourgeois ideology blinds you to - the ruling classes in the world have been doing the same and worse for centuries. We cannot make determinations about the USSR based on the actions of individual soldiers, individual squadrons, even individual generals. We have to judge the USSR based on whether or not they fought and defeated the Nazis at great cost. The reason we have to judge that way is that when we analyze the ruling classes of other nations, we find that instead of resisting the Third Reich, they supported it, they pushed it further, they made it worse. No, defeating the Nazis doesn't mean we can excuse every wrongdoing, but it does mean that we need to see those wrongdoings in the context of the alternative, which was total dominance by the Third Reich and total enslavement of the Slavic peoples across Eurasia, as well as the total extermination of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and many others in Europe.
So yes, Poland lost 14 paper mills that previously made paper that could be sold on the international market for a profit, and they were replaced by heavy industry that produced things that could only be exchanged within the Soviet bloc because once you were in the communist bloc you were cutoff from the international markets. All of that is true. But the alternative was to have an antebellum period where every occupied country in Eastern Europe became a recruiting and staging ground for fascist organizing that would continue the bourgeois assault against the world's first ever modern proletarian state. Operation Gladio shows us that this is true, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators across Eastern Europe shows this to be true and the existence of active neo-Nazi paramilitary forces literally killing Russians shows us that this is true.
If that’s not romanticizing, I don’t know what is.
This is a correct statement. You don't know what romanticizing is. You have been blinded by bourgeois nationalism and an ideology of anti-communism disguised as resentment and national injury. You think losing 14 paper factories is meaningful and that people who disagree with you are blind zealots who don't understand reality and operate on romantic fantasies. So yes, you don't know what romanticizing is.
I wish you luck breaking free from the mental prison you are in.
It's going to be a separate message to keep the discussion focused.
Gulag literally means prison.
That's the end of discussion here. You know nothing about gulags. It does not. Gulag is an acronym. Even wikipedia knows better.
Prisoners in the Gulag worked, but they were paid the national minimum wage and it was saved for them when they left prison.
Source please. Because while not everyone died, and gulags differed, my great-grandfather was not offered "salary" for forced slave labour.
I'm not an USian, we're not talking about US here. Don't steer the conversation there, as it's "whataboutism" and bears no relevance to you romanticizing USSR.
Yes. An acronym for administering corrective labor prisons. It was the primary prison system of the USSR and was in no way some grand evil. It was created as a way of making prisoners productive instead of letting them rot in a cell. It was designed to be rehabilitative.
Yes, I am fairly positive your great-grandfather was accounted for in the prison salary system because that's how bureaucracies work. The only way he wouldn't have been is if he was a prisoner of war and all that implies.
Yes it was. On paper. And maybe the first one tried to be. Be the 1930 they were designed to mine, chop, place rails and so on. With an impressive death rate and population.
I think you're confusing "taiga gulags" with "sharashka" or lagry near western USSR part if you think it was anything but slave labour camps in general.
I wonder what was happening on the Western Front that creates the conditions for more brutal labor camps? Could it have been widespread fascism, Operation Gladio, Nazi and Nazi sympathizers, and bourgeois nationalistic anti-communism?
Or is it, as you say, just the moral failing of a morally and intellectually inferior people?
I come from Slovakia and I have to disagree with your view that the USSR is awesome and hasn't done almost nothing bad. After the war USSR in Czechoslovakia performed similarly imperialist things as USA did during it's history. This includes falsifying election results, banning every party except the communist. It essentially took a before free country as it's satellite. Source
Also in 1968 In CSK began an era of liberalization, that is lifting on travel ban, enabling free speech,... The USSR saw this as us distancing from them and invaded us with army. After this they changed our government and begun the strictest era of the regime. For example: You couldn't consume ANY western culture, religion was banned. I have a friend, who illegally imported CS Lewis books, and spent time in prison for that. Source There's an excellent movie on this called Waves (2024). I highly recommend it, cause it showcases more views on the invasion, like the soldiers, who thought that here was a fascist dictatorship.
There's many details I haven't mentioned but if you disagree I hope for meaningful conversation.
For the record, I am very much on the left and I think that both socialism and communism can work in the real world, but not like the USSR
I never said the USSR didn't do anything bad. They did tons that was bad, many things that communists today study from both the perspective of "this was wrong headed and should not be repeated" like wholesale banning religion and from the perspective of "the conditions at the time were so severe, this is the best they could come up and we need to learn so we can do better" like the relocation of Koreans.
But we don't have to argue about that because what you have presented shows a lot of misunderstandings of history and political analysis that needs to be corrected before we can proceed on making judgements on any country or leader.
First off, falsifying documents is not imperialism. Banning political parties is not imperialism. Imperialism is a process value extraction by nations over nations that allows one nation to continuous acquire the value produced by another nation through structural force and use that value to maintain this exploitative structure.
Second off, "after the war" is a really critical important time period. For some reason, all the Russophobes seem to think that when the war is over then everyone should just pick up their jerseys and head home and leave the field to its own devices. War has never worked like that. The reason the USSR turned a free country into its satellite is because that free country no longer had a functioning military to defend itself and the region from further fascist/capitalist incursions. That includes lacking a counter-intelligence capacity.
And now we get to Nazis. There was absolutely a fascist movement in Czechoslovakia that lasted basically until the Nazis came in and occupied the country. And when they came in and occupied the country, they were the fascist movement in Czechoslovakia. At that point, Czechoslovakia ceased being a free country.
The Soviet liberation of Czechoslovakia has to contend with multiple threats. First, the Third Reich had purged the government and as much of society as possible of anyone with communist, trade unionist, and anti-fascist sentiments. Then they installed fascists in the administration of the country and elevated and armed pro-fascists throughout the country. This is the first problem. The Soviets couldn't just liberate and leave because they would be leaving behind a fascist power structure that would never stop trying to find ways of destroying them.
The second problem is after the war. It was clear even before the war started that the Western powers would rather have fascism than communism. Multiple attempts by Stalin to get the Western powers to stop the spread of fascism failed because the West understood fascism as an extension of capitalism and communism as the antithesis of capitalism. By the time the war is ending, the West is making this abundantly clear with their show of force nuking Japan, their occupation of Korea, the creation of the Western European Union and ultimate NATO. NATO was staffed by hand picked Nazi officers, a clear signal to the Soviets that there was no chance for real peace. Then those Nazi officers in collaboration with Western leadership planned and executed Operation Gladio which set about to connect with all the pro-fascists groups across all of Europe in an effort to organize a non-state militia movement to continue the fight against the USSR that the Nazis had advanced.
Under these conditions, the USSR could not simply leave all of the countries it has liberated as it matched to Berlin. The countries were economically devastated, their administrations had been purged of anyone remotely friendly to the USSR and violently populated with Nazis, ultranationalists, and fascists, and every country had fascists in them that were now being organized and armed by the West to continue fighting the USSR. At this point, the only option the USSR has is to take on the task of rebuilding all of these nations at every level: social, economic, and political. Anything less than this would create the conditions for violent fascist uprisings and continued war and bloodshed.
So what is there to do but use the political tools available. The USSR is a union of socialist states, with political structures for how each member state could express its own culture and localized needs and development. Unfortunately, this had never been tried at such distances and the Soviet leadership needed to come up with a way of achieving the goals of peaceful codevelopment without having the Western-most states being formally SSRs. Their solution was to ensure these states were independent but that they were heavily managed by the USSR in the social, political, economic, and military domains to prevent the emergence of fascist militias and fascist movements - things that were not only possible but were literally being actively cultivated by the West.
Religion was not banned in Czechoslovakia nor was all of Western culture. The Catholic Church was particularly targeted by the Soviets for purging from their sphere of influence and with good reason, the Vatican was the core actor in helping Nazi leadership escape the Soviet sacking of Berlin. The Vatican was relocating Nazis all over the world and the US joined them through Operation Paperclip. As the Soviets, it would be obviously suicidal to allow the unfettered operation of the vestiges of the Holy Roman Empire who were actively supporting the Third Reich and deliberately relocation their ranks with obscured histories and names. Can you imagine anyone leaving that alone on the basis of "well it's religion"?
As for C.S. Lewis, have you read his work? It's all pretty out and out Christian Nationalism. I don't blame the USSR for banning it. But all Western work was not banned. Plenty of French and Italian media was widely popular in the Soviet bloc. What you're mainly referring to is the fact that much of Anglo media was banned. And again, for good reason. The UK was the largest must brutal empire on the face of the planet. They weaponized culture in ways no one has ever done before. But they were already being ecclipsed by the USA who continued that tradition and amplified it to it's most extreme. The US was literally manipulating the art market via dark money under the direction of the CIA. Nothing is sacred to the anglosphere. They corrupted everything they touched for political purposes - religion, parenting, education, journalism, literature, music, art, theater, technology, language, politics at all levels, community organizing, etc.
The Soviets were very clear that they did not want war. But the Americans were very clear that they would do anything it took to create the conditions for more war. The Soviets were trying to build a never-before-seen society and they needed peacetime to rebuild after the devastation caused by the West. Meanwhile, the USA had been untouched by the war and was taken the post war period as a major opportunity to expand its empire. It launched a massive campaign in Korea that made Blitzkrieg look like a walk in the park. Korea, by the way, shares a border with Russia. Watching the US completely level half of an entire country after WW2 is over while the Soviets are dealing with millions dead and war-induced famine makes it very clear that the US has every intention of creating conditions for a war of devastation with the USSR.
Did the Soviet leadership do bad things? Absolutely. But were they just an evil imperialist regime that made up lies and punished people for sheer control? Absolutely not. Everything they did was based on the structure of conflict with the West and the realities of Western empire, including the thorough integration of fascism, faith, culture, economics, and politics.
This will be a quick reply, since I don't have much time now. Your views are very interesting and new to me, could you provide some sources pls. Just ancorrection about CSK during the war. It broke apart, Czechia being under a brutal occupation and Slovakia having its own fascist government. In Slovakia it was really bad. First transports to Auschwitz were from Slovakia, we were proud about our race laws being stricter than Germany. But in 44 there was a uprising (note: the second largest uprising after the Warsaw). It was suppressed, but it's important.
Note: whats sad is that the history they teach now pretends that Slovakian government did what they did to save us from occupation, but if you look at it a bit more, it's obvious that it wasn't forced, but voluntary. Also fascist artist from that era are still taught about without mentioning their ideology. (Yey capitalism /s)
Ok, so as I said a longer reply later today. I haven't read your reply throughoutly sorry bout that.
The Soviets couldn't just liberate and leave because they would be leaving behind a fascist power structure that would never stop trying to find ways of destroying them.
Not true, the election was won by a socialist party, but didn't want to be under the control of USSR, USSR didn't like this, they wanted complete control of the government so they coup d'etat it.
But were they just an evil imperialist regime that made up lies and punished people for sheer control? No...
Maybe not imperialist by definition, I'm not a historian, but they did punish people and made up lies for sheer control. Example In Czechoslovakia thousands of people were executed or sent to prison for life for made up things. This same happened in Hungary, Poland and surely the whole USSR. This trials were publicized by the government to make them examples of what happens when you try to criticize the regime. And this is important and why I believe the Soviet era was as a whole not good. It was a very authoritarian centralized regime, where most criticism was banned. As I mentioned in my previous post, the 1968 invasion of CSK happened because we enabled independent journalism, free speech and free travel. There were peaceful protest brutally ended, because students wanted electricity and hot water in dormitories. Nothing fascist, just basic needs and the government responded by beating them up and arresting.
Religion was not banned in Czechoslovakia
It wasn't but all churches were owned by the state, not being used for anything religious and if you were publicly religious, you wouldn't get any job and then would be arrested for being unemployed.
I am curious as what you think about the travel ban. I mean if your borders have to look like this with guards and dogs that chased and often killed anyone trying to exit, I think there's something wrong.
The project, reportedly the first of its kind in the world, will see robots ride subway trains to deliver goods to more than 100 stores across Shenzhen.
Seems a bit of a publicity stunt as there must be a better way to do this than to drop logistics on to human subways? That being said inner city delivery bots are great idea. I'd see them all the time in Estonia a few years ago and food delivery should be entirely automated.
Meh, I think I like the idea of 1 truck pulling up to a docking bay, them all driving out the back and hopping on the mostly empty cars in slow times that are already going to the subway platforms where the deliveries need to go. It's either that or having to go through every subway entry point to drop them off. I think this will get flack because people are anti automation, but if it was people pushing carts to restock them manually I would still prefer them all getting in one vehicle to the subway and all getting on there and hopping off 1 at each stop. The product is all coming from one source, so why have 43 routes from place to sub station and then 43 routes back. If it is actually busy enough that it is holding up entry somewhere, having it in one location and streamlining it sounds nicer as well. It's not like the people can bring carts through turnstyles anyways, so they are already entering through a designated entry if the 7-11's are on the platforms. (They might not be, they could be elsewhere, but the article says downstairs).
If the bots are required to have paid transit passes and if they're confined to off-peak hours when the subways aren't full anyway, this could actually be a net win for mass transit: they're putting money into the system while consuming relatively few resources, so the bots can fund improvements that benefit humans.
Yeah. Just need to make sure that sensible restrictions are in place to prevent the creep into turning a public service into primarily a commercial one. Starts out only running during off hours, then running during active hours at a reduced rate, then it's got dedicated cars for the robots, then it overflows into passenger cars... you see where it's going. Best to set up guard rails before it's a problem.
I actually thought a dedicated car would be a good solution. Of course as an additional car, not as a replacement for a passenger one. Then you could optimize the interior for these robots
Just because it's the US doesn't mean it's not bigoted to generalize people, especially with such insulting and hateful generalizations. And Chinese companies are as motivated by profit as any company is, which means they would be interested in maximizing cost efficiency by scaling up services like this. Putting policies in place to protect other priorities for the public good is sensible no matter where you are.
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