Benefits of better US relations come second to Russian leader’s maximalist war aims, say insiders and analysts
Vladimir Putin appears unfazed by Donald Trump’s first tangible break with Moscow – a sign, analysts and Kremlin insiders say, that the Russian leader had long anticipated a deterioration in relations from the apparent improvement at the beginning of Trump’s second term.
While Moscow views the souring of ties with Trump as regrettable – the US president dramatically shifted tone last week as he announced a deal to arm Ukraine and threatened massive sanctions against Russia – sources say Putin was always going to prioritise the war. He remains confident that Russian forces are gaining ground and that Ukraine’s resistance could soon unravel.
What break with Moskow? Arms deal means metal can be purchased by European countries for the war in Ukraine. The sanctions are threatened - not implemented. I cannot see how Putin could have it better without sitting in the white house himself.
Two old dementia patients ruining their countries for money. Too bad we couldn't get trump and putin on the same no return flight to the moon. The world would be a much better place without them both
A court has upheld the classification of the AfD party as "suspected right-wing extremist" by domestic intelligence. An appeal against its listing as "confirmed extremist" is still running.
Two vessels collided in Cuxhaven port, spilling 6,000 liters of oil into the water, with crews racing to contain the spill. Meanwhile, Germany's chancellor is hosting the French president in Berlin.
Yes, "confirmed" or "proven" would be the right term. This is even legally correct, which is important in the age of ChatGPT and the like.
The AfD is legally classified as a right-wing extremist party and, as such, is rightly under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ("Verfassungsschutz"). This is the assessment of an organization that itself has major problems with right-wing extremism — even they confirm this.
The occupation army ordered the civilians to approach aid trucks with their hands raised—a clear sign of surrender—and then opened fire on them without provocation.
Interpol had issued the notice against Watson, known for tactics including confrontations with whaling ships at sea, at the request of Japan, but has now decided the measure was 'disproportionate,' lawyer William Julie said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a bill that critics say weakens the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies, sparking protests in several cities and drawing international criticism.
The new law grants the prosecutor general control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (Sap), and critics say it undermines their authority.
Ukraine's chief prosecutor, Zelensky loyalist Ruslan Kravchenko, will now be able to reassign corruption probes to potentially more pliant investigators, and even to close them.
For a few years the US pushed anti corruption measures in Ukraine along with the rest of the world. Under Obama we pushed a chief attorney who refused to prosecute a corporation to resign. Unfortunately some people left out parts of the story where he was delaying the case. It was the corporation hunter Biden worked for so while it countered corruption, it looked bad if you didn't know he was stalling the case. Some people never mentioned that detail. Now we have a new leader who revels in the corruption openly.
Yeah in South Africa when our then President, Jacob Zuma, disbanded our independent corruption body, the Scorpions, that started basically corruption on such a scale, even had a commission of inquiry for state capture. Just look at South Africa's growth since then, basically entrenched poverty and joblessness to our countrymen.
Be afraid Ukraine, even if Zelensky has good intentions, what about the next president. All the advice I can give you is to become active, continue putting pressure on your elected officials. The people have the power, especially through the ballot
There's no way Zelensky has good intentions here. I know many like to treat him as a minor deity, but there is only one reason to sign an anti-anti-corruption bill.
Shit article. Only source is: "The warning came from authorities in eastern Zhejiang province on WeChat over the weekend after a comedian referred to her allegedly abusive marriage in a performance that went viral on Chinese social media." There is no link to the primary source of any 'warning'
I’m wondering how much more racist a far right Japanese party is compared to every day regular racism in Japan. Are they proposing organ harvests for their geriatric voters?
The connected sex toy platform Lovense is vulnerable to a zero-day flaw that allows an attacker to get access to a member's email address simply by knowing their username, putting them at risk of doxxing and harassment.
The U.S. government said Monday it is immediately placing a 17% duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.
The US has plenty of areas with a shitton of sun in the winter. Very dry areas, like southern Spain, or Israel, produce year round and with little available water, but well managed.
The Netherlands produce vegetables, competitive for export, with half the sun or heat.
Vegetables are one of the few sectors that can be repatriated in a short time through tariffs.
When you get into tree crops and such is when you have the same problem as with factories, years until production.
Given that tomatoes suffer when nighttime temperatures start going below 55°F (13°C), there is pretty much nowhere in the continental US where they can be grown successfully year-round without some sort of environmental control or protection.
Yes they can. See Almeria, Spain. Similar to Arizona/NM weather, and as dry. Also, the Dutch do it, in climate controlled greenhouses, price competitive.
The temperature in Almeria has never gone below freezing in all of recorded history, which is not the case anywhere in Arizona or New Mexico. Even Yuma, AZ goes well below freezing sometimes, and winter averages are well below the comfort threshold for tomatoes, where in Almeria average lows are warmer. And the summer highs in the US southwest (tomatoes also suffer and will not set fruit when temps are consistently above 95° (35°C) blow Almeria and everywhere in Europe out of the water.
I'm not saying you can't grow in greenhouses and still be able to afford tomatoes, but there's no situation in which growing in a greenhouse doesn't cost more than growing outdoors in a suitable climate. Mexico has that suitable climate year-round, and the US does not, and as a result this tariff on Mexican tomatoes is going to significantly raise tomato prices in the US.
I imagine you have searched for data, and have looked up Almería (city) not the province. The city is on the shore. Almeria province is hilly. As soon as you go some few hundred meters up climate becomes way more extreme.
temps are consistently above 95° (35°C) blow Almeria and everywhere in Europe out of the water. Hate to tell you, but in Madrid (and it's not the hottest) it's been between 34 and 40ºC since June. Albox, in the province of Almeria for example had a max in 2021 of 45º C.
For most vegetables, passive methods, such as greenhouses, with shade systems and ventilation, these extremes can be reduced.
Extremist Israeli politicians and right-wing settlers held a conference in Israel's parliament on Tuesday where they said the US had given them the "green light" to transform the besieged Gaza Strip into a "resort town" once they had completed the et…
I mean, it was Israel who suddenly started bombing Iran. Iran doesn't want war with Israel, but they're rightly not going to drop their nuclear program for it. I don't think that was part of the ceasefire deal.
Every thinking human being with a moral compass should want to see Israel (as in the apartheid state, not the people) destroyed. That's one thing and active belligerent action is another. Iran policy with Israel has always been one of low-level proxy conflict, not war.
The deal will reportedly see the US levy 15% tariff on goods imported from Japan. Donald Trump also said the US would increase exports of rice and vehicles to the East Asian nation.
Yeah, good luck with that. No one's gonna buy our rice or shitty, gas-guzzling cars over there because of this trade war shit, so this is basically just Trump announcing a 15% tax on consumers who want to buy stuff from Japan.
A lot of our cars won't fit on Japanese roads and inner cities, however, the US already exports quite a bit of rice to Japan. I think the most popular rice used in Sushi is grown in California. That being said, if the market exists, then American automakers will attempt to make model(s) that appeals to Japanese sensibilities. This will probably just result in Toyota manufacturing marginally more in the US only to export the vehicles back to Japan.
Japan govt has already asked their motor US subsidiaries to export their goods back to Japan. Its much more easier for them to make Jp specific modification compared to US-origin manufacturers.
Rice situation in Japan is pretty dire atm and probably will stay that way through 2026. It’s a staple crop and prices have gone up substantially due to the shortages
Agree, and using the rice situation as leverage is shitty tbh. It’s a crisis and while Japan is a developed nation with a relatively good standard of living for the most part it’s also one with extremely stagnant wages and economic growth, fairly significant wealth inequality, etc.
many Japanese are struggling to get by more than Americans. Though it’s hard to directly compare. The average salary in Japan in far lower than in America (~30k vs ~39k) and wages for equivalent positions are much lower (like a computer programmer who gets paid $80k for an American company might get $50-60k from a Japanese company), but the cost of living is much lower in many ways, rent costs are substantially lower (even a Tokyo apartment is like $500usd/month unless you want something crazy extravagant), robust public transit network making car ownership truly optional, healthcare system that is not ideal but has much more managed costs than the us, etc
That’s probably in part why sanseitō (think japanese maga: anti immigration (in a country that barely allows it), super nationalist (in a country that’s already crazy nationalist), anti vaccination, etc) is seriously picking up steam and just picked up several seats in the upper house, going from 1 seat to 14 at the expense of the LDP and communist party who lost seats. They ran on rhetoric similar to trump, a “silent invasion” of immigrants is “taking over Japan”. It captured their youth, who are frustrated by a lack of meaningful jobs and the reality of an economy that has been stagnant for many decades at this point (arguably caused by boomer policy and refusal to break from tradition) but instead of looking inward at what could’ve been done wrong domestically they are looking for a boogeyman to easily shift blame to. Sound familiar?
The right wing shift is not limited to America unfortunately. AfD, sanseitō, national rally, Lega, Orban and bolsonaro, etc. many of these are picking up quite a bit of steam
Tell that to yoshinoya, who has been mixing California rice into their rice for the past year with some locations using entirely American rice, or Matsuya, who have switched to American rice at many locations due to cost. Lawson is also starting to prototype bentos with rice blends. Even if the consumer takes a nationalist approach the invisible hand of capitalism will reject that for profit
And with that there’s data to suggest the consumer doesn’t reject imported rice. Aeon sold the 80/20 blend with US rice and that proved popular enough that they are now selling 4kg bags of 100% california rice due to consumer demand. The 80/20 bags were 10% cheaper, the 100% is likely far more
It is a dangerous game. This is how walmart destroyed American small business. Everyone has ideals and principles until a massive vendor with huge advantage shows up and undercuts everyone in town by 10-30%. Doesn’t matter if the product is inferior. People don’t have money
I, however will not buy US rice from a shitty experience I had with it, and the fact that I'd rather not support a shithole run by a president who wants to annex Canada.
I use us rice because I live here and in terms of global warming unless there is a shortage and I have no other option it makes the most sense to use California rice
That said Japanese rice is more aromatic and has lower arsenic content so in a perfect world I would use that. However, I do not want to both contribute to the emissions of shipping rice across the globe when there is rice that is good enough plus I don’t want to contribute to taking Japanese rice away from Japan. It appears that a big contributor to the rice shortage is again capitalistic scumbaggery - both in terms of middlemen scalping with shortages occurring and the export market valuing Japanese rice as “premium”. I don’t want to contribute to that just like I won’t buy a marked up concert ticket or game console.
Yeah, I truly wonder whether the U.S. autos were even consulted on this. Retool domestic factories to make a tiny number of left-hand drive pickups that don't even fit on Japanese streets? Sounds expensive and pointless. There's simply no market.
Putting fuel in the GTO was a pain. There are a few stations near me that were not very compatible with that stupid rigged solution to US crash standards. plus the lack of trunk space due to the tank being in there kinda sucked.
Lmao I love that you knew exactly what car I was talking about. But yeah that car was so ridiculous that I destroyed a business after they tried to show me "my" fuel filter. To even get to that shit was like a 5 hour procedure. But God, the way that car drove was nothing short of magical. It was like it was connected directly to your brain. It knew exactly what you wanted to do and did it. The Mazda MX-5 is exactly the same way, but easier to push to its limits. It's less like a robotic companion attached to your brain, and more of a best friend you've grown up together your whole life.
We need to stop all reporting of Trump deals until they are in writing. Anyone notice that Coke never confirmed the sugar thing? The UK tariff framework isn't anything more than a handshake. The healthcare plan is just two weeks away. We have always been to war with Eastasia.
Nothing is real until it is signed. He gets the bump by announcing them and then nothing happens and he isn't held accountable.
Taxes are the prerogative of Congress not executive. This is a continuation of decades of usurping power from the legislative to centralizing under executive that illustrates why both US political parties entail right wing politics.
So, if good sense fails me not: japanese goods imported into the US will have a 15% markup at border...
Right.
What makes me morbidly curious is what Japan waved in return of that "agreement".
I'd more quickly turn my back on them and let them levy whatever tariffs on my nation's goods they see fit and enter "negotiations". Yes, it would be painful in the short term for my country but it would be worth it.
NPR did a segment on this - we already had a trade agreement in place with Japan that was ironically set up during his first term. That agreement had us paying 1.5% on imports from Japan. We're now going to pay 10x more.
My stocks here in Japan shot up the other day, which is weird because we still have tariffs — just less than what he had originally proposed. We'll see how long this "deal" lasts.
I've just been buying the dips and it seems like it's working out. I just hope I receive enough dividends to allow me to keep buying domestic rice.
an attempted distraction from the epstein files, the tariffs are pretty much losing thier effectiveness on MSM as distraction, because hes used so much already.
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The above was added to my copy... Get fecked FT, this is well within fair use
But to evade the new rules, a growing number of people in the UK are turning to tools more often used by citizens in authoritarian regimes to get around internet censorship.
This should say something like the following to explicitly call out the UK goberment for their shit
"But to evade the new rules, a growing number of people in the UK are turning to tools to bypass an authoritarian regime and to get around internet censorship."
They all do that, even those who intend to resign deny it until the day it happens.
Ishiba doesn’t have any big scandals currently, so I see less public outrage directed at him in the news and it feels more like infighting within the LDP (just my impression). Of course losing so many seats in the election is a cause for resignation but I’m not sure anybody who replaces him will be able to quell the public’s discontent either.
I don't even know wtf the LDP does. Apart from continuing to block gay marriage, the only policy they've had in the past decade is to raise taxes every year. It's to the point where people are feeling the squeeze enough that the ultranational populist fascists just gained seats, and yet they still keep winning. How they keep getting the majority is beyond me, but then again idiots in plenty of countries vote against their own interests.
Tesseract was the only client that had an in-community search input, compared to all the other clients that require re-entering the community name. That shows how functional it was to me.
I'm looking for third-party instances right now (that's how I ended up on this post), found one so far (but outdated) : lemmy.max-p.me/
Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
It's not just remote work. All our manufacturing sites use to VPN connections data centres. It would cripple manufacturing on an epic scale if they were instabanned.
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I'd argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Also, what if I just connect to a vps overseas and set my exit point there? Will they ban vps too? This is gonna be so much fun to see from the outside
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I'd argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Feature, not a bug.
They want people back in offices to help landlords and property prices. This way they can say that remote work is not banned and it's just companies choosing not to buy a permit and offer it.
I work from office and i regularly use a vpn at work to connect remotely to devices that are not physically with me. Not to talk about companies that provide remote assistance and use them to connect to their customers devices.
Remote work is just a byproduct of vpns, but not the real reason why you use them at work.
Absolutely not, of course. I'm just hoping they try to enforce this so a shitstorm of proportions only seen in the brexit will ensue.
One thing we must acknowledge to these idiots is how much effort they put on showing the world the consequences of extremely stupid acts so the rest don't have to do it.
I could definitely see myself setting up a Wireguard VPN only allowing connections to a bunch of porn sites here on my home fiber in Sweden. Should make a nice little side profit.
It's something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.
A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.
It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I'm not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian's Firewall?) will take some time.
In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like "This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets."
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
Just to fast-forward this dumb cat-and-mouse thing, the next step is people go back to torrenting their porn and deeper down the rabbit hole of garbage "free" websites skirting the rules.
As always, the UK is useful on the international stage because sometimes you need to be able to point at some idiot trying dumb stuff to explain to people why dumb stuff is dumb.
It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.
Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.
Neoliberal political class implementing fascist surveillance capitalism laws — masquerading as child protection — because they are owned by a fascist oligarchy.
It's probably true that a few anti-porn people exist somewhere in the world. It's certainly true that fascists love adding in new tools to keep the general population from using the internet freely.
I am pretty sure they would consider tor as using a VPN.
Probably they would demand ISPs to run lists of known VPN addresses and if you connect to them, they will forward the information to the anti-terrorism unit and you will get SWATed.
Don't the people in those countries use a proxy to access tor first? probably that means cycling through the proxies regularly as they become known. I have no doubt that it is impossible to prevent truly tech savvy people from access. Also Russia, Iran and China all run state sanctioned hackers, so the governments have a vested interest in allowing these groups to obscure where they are coming from.
But i am not sure how much that transpires to a broader public.
That's what things like snowflake and bridges are for. Because, at least with snowflake, it just looks like a webRTC phone call. But it's actually tor traffic. And snowflake proxies are ephemeral, since you can just run them in your browser and help anyone connect.
I believe China can stop any kind of access at any time, they just choose to allow a certain percentage of folks to get through above a certain bar of sophistication and need.
Come on UK, just skip all the boring parts and make unremovable collars for everyone fitted with GPS, cameras and miniature bombs that can be remotely detonated. After all, that's the only way to make sure nobody is doing bad, very bad illegal stuff and to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, isn't it? Fucking hell, these fucks really are trying to create a bloody dystopia...
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Will the next step be banning VPS then? Because that's what will happen: if you ban VPNs (good luck with that lol), people will just connect to a VPS in a less stupid country and exit from there.
I hope they start looking at TOR too, that should be really fun.
Show me a ban that didn’t came with 10x problems. People have their needs even the filthy ones. Especially the filthy ones. Hence will find a way to fulfill it. If there’s no legal way to do so the demand will create an alternative market for it to match the demand…more trouble on the way if that’s the lane the UK choose
Hey now, that's a lot of animosity for a statement that doesn't do much to make a good point.
The original question was
Show me a ban that didn’t came with 10x problems
I posited a conjecture based guess with some basic reasoning and as i said , it was opinion more than provable fact.
By "worked out" i meant the overall situation is better after the ban, despite the negative consequences.
It seems that was lost on you, but now you know.
So let's address your reasoning, such as it is.
People died from tainted drugs before the ban, probably a lot from tainted drugs of the type in the ban.
Unless you have any evidence those numbers changed significantly after the ban, I'll chalk that up to your opinion.
Not a very reasonable one to my eyes, but such are angry people on the internet.
I was not aware i needed to provide an example of a ban that resulted in everything being completely fixed after the fact (mainly because that's not how the question was worded) but if that was, in fact, the requirement, my bad.
If I'm a monster (in your opinion) because i think the reduction in access to terribly addictive drugs might have overall brought down fatalities and other negative consequences, then i can live with that.
What would be defined as a VPN and even then there are other options to get access to content as if you where in a different country or ways to bypass the age restriction. A lot of companies and governments also use VPN's to get people to work on their servers, so how would the UK function.
It always baffles me that they try shit like that.
Edit: heck proper sex education is a way better solution to reduce unhealthy sex habits
Maybe it and maybe it isn't, but kicking against it trying to change won't help because there is a certain amount of the population who believes that it isn't for control, but it is actually for sex or protecting the children or what not.
If you want to get those people over to change their behaviour, you want to work on compromises or in this case you want to deflect them into fixing something else.
Trust me, I have a lot of right and even some mildly right people around me and with going hard against them you will just confirm their bias.
That sounds a bit like fear mongering from Reform: a VPN is safety 101 when using public networks, and most businesses make use of VPNs to secure their data. They are also a key component if WFH (you use the company VPN).
If Labour are stupid enough to go after VPN usage, I suspect it would guarantee their loss at the next election.
Eh, I dunno. The vast majority have no idea what a VPN is. If a VPN ban benefits Rupert fucking Murdoch then the tabloids will wang on about how they're used by paedophiles and people smugglers and that'll be that.
It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the "child" "violent pornography" etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.
Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.
Yeah that's the point of the license from Ofcom, to approve the endpoint address used for the VPN. Most work places don't use some random IP address but a small pool of known DNS entries for their endpoint. Just because you are using a VPN doesn't mean nobody can see which endpoint you using.
If this comes to anything I'm moving to somewhere in the EU and pursuing citizenship there. This is clearly not about protecting the children anymore (not that it ever was).
Proton, the Geneva-based encrypted email provider founded 11 years ago by three scientist who met at CERN, will freeze its investments in Switzerland, its chief executive Andy Yen told Le Temps on Wed
I saw this news and I guess it’s good that privacy is being discussed somewhat soberly over there in the wake of this investment decision.
Personally I have recently been exiting out of the UK, a much more invasive country, so Switzerland for now does seem like an improvement for me. Norway is further out geographically and has less Mullvad servers, would seem like the less favorable option for me unless the proposed laws actually pass.
The UK government doth protest too much about protecting the kids. It’s obvious that this whole thing is just an attempt to increase the surveillance of the UK population.
For starters, the whole "Progressive" thing is an American concept born out of the American environment (with its very deep religious moralistic strain amongst a large fraction of the population) and does not really applicable to Britain because, at least until recently, they didn't really have regressive tendencies.
Beyond that Labour hasn't been Leftwing since Tony Blair took over in the 80s and started talking about it being New Labour - they're Neoliberals and quite strongly so, so pretty rightwing.
What they did was performative Identity Politics like in the US: theatrics in the Moral space to make them seem different from the other mainstream party, rather than actually having genuine Liberal Principles.
Of late they even ditched that and seem to be trying to outfascist the Fascists.
All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.
Do you know what's smarter and more talented the the UK government?
I started using a VPN after my friends/classmates told me about them in my Sophomore year of HS, mostly to get around the Wifi banning us from accessing certain apps (social media). Now, like all the other dumb kids, I used whatever they recommended, which was some shitty "Free" VPN that was probably stalking my data. But by Senior year, I smartened up and learned about online privacy and got myself a Proton VPN subscription after using the free version for a bit.
So yeah, I could totally believe middle-school and up are using VPNs, cause that's what we literally did.
Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist
Couldn't people just hire a VPS in another country and VPN with that using Wireguard etc, or even use RDP etc to it? Is it even a VPN if you're remotely operating a computer in another country?
WireGuard would be illegal. ISPs would monitor for encrypted traffic streams. All remote workers must now come back to the office. ofcom can see any and all traffic. Your loyalty to the king shall be examined. You choices of media will be scrutinized. The threat of losing your children will be used to force compliance. Welcome to the machine.
Pretty much every single website uses HTTPS these days which means all traffic is encrypted anyway. Instead of a VPN you could use an encrypted proxy that connects over HTTPS. I doubt the UK is just going to completely cut itself off from the rest of the world’s internet (because all it takes is one path out).
I remember in Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (Great read, Free e-book here.) they had an insider at the ISP who just encrypted all the traffic that came through, so it just became the "new normal".
Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.
Refer to other comment. They don't see "VPN traffic", they see encrypted tunnels between two ports to some offshore vps. At best, they see a header saying "openvpn". The article is alluding to the country effectively wanting to crack down on encrypted tunnels (because you cannot discriminate VPNs from them). At best, maybe they're just christofascist idiots.
I don't think it's that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
apparently having a functioning brain isn't a requirement of being an mp
but of course we knew that when she did this in 2019:
On 16 July 2019, Champion stated: "If my party comes out as a remain party rather than trying to find a deal or >rather than trying to exit, I can't support that, it goes against democracy". She said she would rather support a "no-deal Brexit" than remain in the EU, as she believed Labour had to deliver the result of the 2016 referendum.
I’d email my MP to ask why this Labour Government is using the BBC to promote Reform talking points and implementing brain dead Reform policies, but I don’t expect anything other than the blandest party line response.
All this pandering to Reform voters is completely useless, people will still vote for the original rather than a shitty knockoff. Despicable behaviour from Labour.
When encryption is legal, they can't know what is going on between two points. They going to make is so we can only have encryption to nodes they trust?
It is dangerously technologically illiterate to wage war on encryption.
Easy enough to do when it's mega corps. They don't really care about anything but money. If everyone had self hosted services with e2e, be far harder. Encryption is everywhere now.
So they will go after the end points. Which again, is a battle they can't win. All very Cory Doctorow's "Unauthorized Bread".
There will be others too, those are just in my head's cache.
Some how we need to get governments to listen to us serfs instead mega corps and authoritarian police/spooks.
The world they want is not only terrible for digital and political freedom, but competition, thus functioning markets. It's terrible for making developers and makers instead of dumb consumers, which in turn, is terrible for technology and progress.
The Collective Shout Out must feel envious of such power... Think about all what they could ban, you know, for you and your children protection of course.
I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn't even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
To be honest, I've found WireGuard's performance is harmed more by replay attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
What's a reply attack? Do you have people activity MITM-ing your connection? Personally I've found Wireguard performance to be significantly better, especially on spotty mobile Internet
Man in the middle can be part of it. It's just basically recording and sending stuff back. Generally I use WireGuard, but on unhygienic networks, were OpenVPN is warning about possible replay attacks, WireGuard doesn't work as well. Could be something else of course, but I've got one end. It's not constant or always.
Oh replay attacks, that makes a bit more sense. Honestly I've never been on such a poor network to run into that. I don't know your situation, but I'd be doing anything I could to get away from that ISP if they're actively manipulating your traffic
It's doesn't fall over, it just slows down. Or appears to much more than OpenVPN. There could be something else going on, but for what ever the problem was, OpenVPN was coping better and just spitting out errors about a possible replay attack and continuing like nothing was wrong. I've not looked again as OpenVPN is working fine. For everything else, I'm using WireGuard.
It would have been my go to. But they can detect openvpn and other protocols. I would just use a ssh tunnel with squid proxy. The squid wont cache ssh traffic unless you run your own cert and set up the squid that way. It will however seamlessly allow you to connect through a ssh tunnel with one port forward.
I've certainly happily used SSH tunnels --- on Linux it's great in that it's readily available wherever you already have OpenSSH installed --- but one downside of OpenSSH as a general-purpose tool for tunneling is that it is intrinsically TCP and thus forces packet ordering across multiple tunneled connections, which may not be necessary for whatever you're doing and can have performance impact. Part of the reason mosh exists is to deal with that (not for the SSH-as-a-tunneling-protocol case, but rather for the "SSH-as-a-remote-shell" case).
Wireguard is UDP, and OpenVPN can use either TCP or UDP, depending upon how it's configured.
If we were going to move the world to a single "tunneling" protocol, SSH wouldn't be my first choice, even though it's awfully handy as a quick-and-dirty way to tunnel data.
I used putty for tunnels on windows machines. As for mosh I forgot it exist. I use wireguard now. But if they ban VPN it will be harder for them to prove the SSH is being used for the purpose evading their stupid law. The high bandwidth usage could be a lot of things... right?
While in the hospital ten years ago I did get a visit from the IT dept. They didn't have any qos on ssh and I was moving a lot of data through it. They just asked me to limit my high usage to late night.
Just adopt a CCP style social credit system already. Why all of this pussyfooting around being a totalitarian, censorship focused, surveillance state? Just do it. Give the good people of UK a solid reason to be a little bit more French again.
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[4][5][6] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.
People can be banned from airlines but they get banned for the same reasons they do in the US, like getting drunk on the plane and punching someone. Or like how the US bans people who owe child support from getting a passport, judges in China are allowed to ban people with unpaid child support or big enough unpaid fines from state owned airlines until they pay.
As an American, it always made me laugh when we made fun of China's "Social Credit Score" when we literally have one already that determines whether we can buy houses/cars/etc lol
Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements, which has riled up a lot of right-wing politicians here. The reason for these protests is that the previous (Conservative) government had been paying exorbitant amounts of money to house asylum seekers in hotels, effectively lining the pockets of hotel chain executives - all while we deal with a massive housing and cost of living crisis.
This was meant to be a measure to give asylum seekers temporary accommodation which was put in place at the start of COVID, but has been government policy since 2020 with no end in sight.
Labour have also done jack-shit to resolve our skyrocketed (legal) immigration levels since they got into power, except for scrapping the Rwanda Deal which would have deported any illegal migrants to a third country for processing (which as the name obviously suggests, is the East African state of Rwanda.)
Britain is now a country which you can enter illegally without ID, but need photo ID to watch a protest against people entering without ID.
Let that sink in.
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they've handled this legislation, that they've straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
If Labour don't get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election...
It would have been smarter for the UK to mandate that every ISP must provide a family filter for free as part of their service. Something that is optional and can be turned on or off by the account holder but allows parents to set filters (and curfews) if they want. They could even require that ISPs require new signups to affirm if they want it on or off by default so people with families are more likely to start with it enabled.
The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)
SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.
Hopefully the US and UK both will recognize why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.
The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.
They know. The "think of the children" angle is just cover to enrage the tabloid readers and to be used as a straw man against anyone criticisng the law ("you're a pedophile"). The real purpose is "let's enumerate the IDs of everyone who uses the internet for anything we don't like" and "let's censor anything we don't like starting with LGBTQ content"
Crazy because every (isp provided) router I have used has these options. They probably aren't 100% correct all the time, but it would be good enough for children (even though you shouldn't rely soley on filters to replace watching your kid).
Enterprises will love that. A perfect excuse to end wfh. However, this will cripple business travelers. I'm sure there'll be some exception for corporations where they can exercise maximum control over their employees while still being allowed to generate capital.
Ive got a few UK coworkers that will be out of the job if anything disables VPNs. They voted for that mess now they can sleep in their 1/3 salary local jobs too.
They couldn't switch off VPNs for businesses. I work in a hospital and we use VPNs to create secure tunnels to other third party health care companies as well as NHS adjacent health services amongst other things. This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things. This would cripple our service and go against NHS england and government requirements for the secure transfer and sharing of data.
This would have to be public VPNs only. Despite the fact that it would be complete bullshit either way.
If they outlaw VPNs then all internet-connected businesses will flee and everyone will just move to the dark net. Then you’ve got a whole other problem.
Damn near every business uses VPN technology. They literally cannot exist in the modern world without it. It would be incredibly expensive and impractical to do without.
VPNs are one of the core security measures of all large companies.
VPNs aren't just a "hide your IP" tool, they're a way of giving someone access to an organisation's internal network. Sensitive servers such as databases, wikis, scheduling tools etc don't have publicly exposed IPs, they only have connections that are accessible from inside that VPN. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_…
Not only that, but they are crucial for network security. VPNs allow all network traffic (with a few necessary exceptions) to be routed through the company's network and benefit from its security measures, mainly monitoring traffic for suspicious and malicious behaviour. Without it, finding compromised PCs is much harder and enforcing company policies regarding web use would be impossible outside the office.
it's both hilarious and sad how this is coming from a "please think of the children!!" perspective meanwhile gender affirming care for trans kids got banned pretty recently
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.”
When I was a kid, Reddit and general public Internet access weren't things, but I sure managed to get my hands on pornography. I'm pretty confident that even entirely killing Internet access isn't going to stop kids who want to get ahold of porn from getting ahold of it.
They can come and pry TOR from my cold dead hands lmfao
this law can eat shit. i ain't gonna dox myself and feed my personal info to companies. maybe they should take this as a hint that most people care about their privacy
if you don't want kids seeing NSFW stuff be an actual parent and don't raise your kids on the internet??
Yeah I'm Australia we have just decided to ban all social media for people under 16, i think it's great honestly because screw from insta etc but I don't think it's the government ls job to prevent kids from using social media.
I really think it's a way to force adults to register their id to accounts not about protecting kids.
Parents should monitor what their kids are doing not the government
I agree that it should primarily be a parents responsibility to keep kids off social media. But the big problem with social media is that a large proportion of young children don't want to be on social media and recognise the detrimental impact it has on them, but the fear of missing out or being excluded is what keeps them on it. it then becomes a collective action problem, to get them off it you need to get a lot of their peers off it as well. There are movements where groups of parents try to do this, but reaching the critical mass necessary to do it is difficult.
Hopefully the ban keeps a large number off to reduce the pressure on kids to be on it and at the same time the parents can do their bit as well.
Parents should monitor what their kids are doing not the government
While I agree wholeheartedly with this, it's often not that easy.
Back in the days of 28.8 modems my parents found my little bro's downloaded porn stash. It was in a Zip disk in his underwear drawer. They then locked down both of our AOL accounts so we couldn't see that stuff.
I thought this was bullshit because I kept my Zip disk full of porn next to all the other ones and labeled it "Homework." Why should I get punished if I didn't get caught?
So I downloaded a keylogger, stole my dad's password, and unlocked my account and continued to download porn.
However, I don't think government regulation would have worked in my case.
Someone should start a bussiness near the border of Republic of Ireland and get two antennas pointed at each other across the border, with the RoI side having connected to the free internet, then the UK Northern Ireland side connected to the Intra-net. You pay a "Club Membership Fee" to get access to the proxy network.
Its not a VPN, its a Nerd Techie Club, just with a free proxy service as part of the club membership 😉
Possible? Yes. Probable? No. LTE would work wonderfully for such usecase, but the firmware to it is never shared. Wifi would work theoretically, but the distance would get in a way. Bandwidth would go down all the way to a rounding error.
just do what the chinese do to get around thier great wall. use proxies and anti-detect browsers, its the next step after VPN.. you might want to look around how to set these up.
Proxy is a step below VPN since it doesn't tunnelise data.
Anti-detect browsers. Do you mean Tor? It's a decent solution, albeit the slowest one.
What people use to bypass the great Chinese firewall is VPN with VLESS protocols. Unlike usual VPN protocols, those are specifically made to bypass censorship.
I'm looking forward to the next UK election where the headline will be: Labour has lost the election in a landslide that left them with dozens of votes total
Every single person who didn't think this would affect them who watches porn in any capacity is very likely highly pissed off and will continue to be for as long as this draconian bullshit is enabled.
I don't think it's even possible to get rid of VPNs without outright banning encryption. If I set up a VPN that uses an obscure port and the traffic is encrypted, how are they going to know it's even a VPN?
They're going to know it's VPN fairly easily because it's fairly obvious what you're doing when all or most of your traffic is encrypted and is directed at one or two addresses. Even more obvious if those one or two addresses happen to belong to known VPN or VPS providers or something.
The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:
Labour rules out VPN ban in UK but issues warning to UK households
Labour won't ban the use of Virtual Private Networks
And the story begins:
Labour has ruled out a possible VPN ban after reports thousands of UK households were at risk following the Online Safety Act kicking in under the government. Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is "not considering a VPN ban" - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.
Most conventional VPNs, e.g. OpenVPN, WireGuard, AnyConnect, PPTP/L2TP, IKEv2/IPsec, etc., actually don't work in China. Technology-wise GFW is quite sophisticated and conventional VPNs are not designed for censorship circumvention anyway.
You'll have to use things like Shadowsocks or V2Ray, which is out of the reach of most people.
This makes me feel like they were in a bind here. The so called "online safety bill" was a tory concoction that took years to pass through the courts because of how invasive it is and how anyone could easily bypass it.
If labour want to stop it, they'll be accused of not wanting to protect children.
Whatever anyone thinks of labour, I'd ask people to ask themselves, if you were in that position, what option do they have other than to let it play out as the spectacular failure it was always going to be and making sure everyone knows who's fault that was afterwards?
Picture this: it’s January 19th, 2038, at exactly 03:14:07 UTC. Somewhere in a data center, a Unix system quietly ticks over its internal clock counter one more time. But instead of moving fo…
I don’t understand why people always say that. Pentium Pro could handle 64 GB even though it was a 32 bit CPU. It had a 36 bit address bus. Later models are the same.
People say it because it was a Windows limitation, not a computing limitation. Windows Server had support for more, but for consumers, it wasn't easily doable. I believe there's modern workarounds though. The real limit is how much memory a single application can address at any given time.
What does a 64-bit system and 4GB RAM have to do with using 64bit timestamps?
32bit systems can use 64bit values without issue. In fact, even an 8bit system can handle 256bit values or even longer ones without issue.
The bittiness of a CPU and its address space have nothing to do with the length of usable data unless you end up with data longer than the RAM volume (and even then there's swap).
There is also the fact that during Y2K, we didn’t have as much reliance on computers.
And we still shouldn't.
Uniting the reliance upon long-range electric connectivity (radio, PSTN - but that now depends on computers too), the reliance upon computers (like mainframes), the reliance upon microcontrollers, the reliance upon personal computers (like Amiga 500), the reliance upon fast encryption helped by computers, the reliance upon computers used for mining cryptocoins or some beefy LLMs, the reliance upon computers capable of running Elite Dangerous, and the reliance upon computers capable of running devops clusters with hundreds of containers, - it's wrong, these are all different.
An analog PSTN switching station shouldn't care about dates. A transceiver generally shouldn't too. A microcontroller doesn't care which year it is, generally.
With an Amiga 500 one can find solutions, and it's not too bad if you don't.
The rest is honestly too architecturally fragile anyway and shouldn't be relied upon as some perpetual service.
I was at Pepsi for Y2K. In 98, we started with MSMail, W95, and Netware2. We had to also replace all 40k desktops. We worked like dogs for those 2 years and only barely had everything ready in time. Without that work, we would not have been able to continue any business operations. Nothing about it was overhyped.
It only depends whether the app and its OS/kernel interface use a 32-bit value to store the time information.
32-bit architecture or OS has nothing to do with this bug, for example 16-bit architectures must've used 32-bit time, too (otherwise they'd be able to only count up to 32-65 seconds).
It's a problem with the internal represensation of a C/C++ type alias called time_t, mostly. That's the thing that holds the number of elapsed seconds since midnight on Jan. 1, 1970, which is the most common low-level representation of date and time on computers. In theory, time_t could point to a 32-bit type even on a 64-bit system, but I don't think anyone's actually dumb enough to do that. It affects more than C/C++ code because most programming languages end up calling C libraries once you go down enough levels.
In other words, there's no way you can tell whether a given application is affected or not unless you're aware of the code details, regardless of the bitness of the program and the processor it's running on.
Y2K wasn’t overhyped. It was just successfully planned for. This reeks of the paradox of IT. “Everything is broken, what do you even do” vs “nothing is broken, what do you even do?”
Linux kernel has had support for 64 bit time for years. On Debian, packages for the upcoming release were updated to 64 bit time earlier this year. I'm fairly sure the other distributions have done or are doing the same. So basically you now have 2 years to upgrade your OS and to pester the vendors of commercial software to do the same.
Like someone else said, it will be 2 very busy years, but we can survive this.
Yeah it only felt like it wasn’t a big deal because it became a big deal early enough for there to be plans made. And because good people doing hard work to prevent a problem wasn’t newsworthy after the fact.
It's mostly just 2 or 3 MAGA zealots trying to pretend to be a, "disinterested third-party denizen that doesn't believe the mainstream, so they can't make a solid judgment on Trump or his actions until they have a dinner conversation with him in private."
Fun fact! I'm studying for my amateur radio technician license and learned that ham came from calling amateur telegraph operators' sloppy work 'ham-fisted'. The amateur radio community decided to lean into it, and thus the ham radio operator was born
Fun fact! I'm studying for my amateur radio technician license and learned that ham came from calling amateur telegraph operators' sloppy work 'ham-fisted'. The amateur radio community decided to lean into it, and thus the ham radio operator was born
I'll assume FCC Technician license; it's a fun hobby. I have had a General license since the 1990s when the FCC still required a proficiency in morris code. At a cost of $35 to renew and the ability to have a cellphone alternative while traveling long distance by car, it's worth keeping.
Have fun, find your Ham niche and enjoy it for the rest of your life!
That's the one, and thanks! My son and I got into Meshtastic as a hobby, and I guess ham radio was the next logical direction for our interest. It's fun learning the science behind how it works.
The lower house of the Russian parliament approved legislation imposing fines on people searching online for content that the authorities deem "extremist." Protesters are calling the bill "something out of 1984."
Well I mean if Putin wants you gone he doesn't need a rule to permit it, but his sort of law is about pushing that oppressive power down to lower levels of the chain. You dont need to catch the attention of anyone important, you can be oppressed by an anonymous low level clerk on a power trip.
Russia's Ministry of Justice's list of extremist materials spans more than 500 pages and contains over 5,000 entries. These include songs that praise Ukraine and blog posts by the feminist rock band Pussy Riot.
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Come previsto, il kernel Linux 6.16 è stato promosso a stabile. Linux 6.16 ora accoglie il mondo con diversi miglioramenti delle prestazioni, il supporto per i driver GPU open source NVIDIA Hopper e Blackwell in Nouveau, la preparazione per Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) e molti altri interessanti miglioramenti.
On June 4, during a meeting with government officials, Vladimir Putin stated that all public services must be moved to the national messenger app called Max
If Greece was doing what Israel is doing and my fellow Greek electors were responsible for electing for 20 years in free and fair elections the government that does it AND they were polling the government coalition responsible for doing it first for the next election AND in opinion polls overwhelmingly supported the genocide and I was one of the few brave souls doing the protesting, not only would I be ok with the conflation, I would be encouraging.
Holding autocracies to account is easy: send the dictator to the Hague.
Holding democracies (even flawed ones like Israel's) to account is harder.
That's what I've been saying this whole time! Watch people find a reason for racism :/ genocide is abhorrent, but can we really say we should hold everyone accountable by association?
Interact with real people from Israel and suddenly there's a lot more to it than "Israeli bad"
I remember from history class that a boat of Jewish refugees was turned away from several ports during WW2. Wild to have lived long enough to see that reason completely flip and have a decadent cruise turned away for supporting genocide.
Well, yeah. But the Israeli population is 75% Jewish and their leadership even more so. I'm holding my neighbor responsible for genocide, I'm holding Israel responsible for genocide. A critique of Israel is not an attack on Jews.
Israel exists because there wasn't anywhere in the world that would grant Jews asylum in WW2. Rejecting boatloads of Jews is continuing the strong case for the need for a Jewish state.
And you can't call Jews living in Israel "colonists" as if they can "go back to Europe" now. They can't leave Israel now,
On one hand there's a large number of people that want to "wipe Israel off the map" and on the other hand we have European countries not allowing Jews to enter. So what is the meaning behind "wipe Israel off the map" now?
I used to think a Jewish state wasn't necessary, though I didn't have a problem with there being one. I figured we'd never go back to a to the dark times of the past. But now I'm absolutely convinced that a Jewish state is 100% necessary. So... congratulations, protesters?
I'm 70 years old and have always supported Israel until now, but I am starting to believe that the world would be better off without Israel. They function with a complete absence of honor and humanity, and completely lack the ability to compromise fairly. Israel is an irritant to a peaceful world.
The thing is with dog whistles is that the people that use them think they're being clever and fooling everyone. But it doesn't really fool anyone, and those that use the dog whistles pretend to be offended when you start talking about the subject they're really talking about.
Seen it hundreds of times with the MAGAs and y'all are no different from them.
We're in a thread under an article celebrating how Israelis aren't welcome in other countries.
So that indicates eliminating Israel isn't just about ethnically cleansing Jews from the area, since you don't want there to be anywhere else for them to go. So what does "eliminating Israel" mean now?
Who said eliminating Israel required ethnically cleansing Jews? There were jewish people living in Palestine before Israel, there will be Jewish people living in Palestine after Israel.
Who cares about what you think, you're a genocide denialist. There's zero point in wasting time talking with pedophiles about the merits of fucking kids.
Israelis are very welcome to turn themself in to international justice and get trialed for their war crimes.
They are called colonists because they are litterly colonizing land in occupied territories. The government consists of parties that openly call for this.
Refugee ships also still get intercepted and turned away from various countries. It is nice seeing the violent bigots turned away for a change, though.
I hear this a lot, but I don't think it's the gotcha people claim it is. Most genocide in the modern day tries to aim for economic strangling by eliminating/stealing what few opportunities exist for some populations. See, for instance, the IDF's efforts to starve Gaza rather than shoot every single Palestinian. Or fascist America's efforts to deny jobs (even the ones that are not in competition) to disabled or minorities.
I don't see it as "I'ma move and get rich", I see it as "I'ma move and not starve on the street".
That's sadly not true, at least in Europe: since most people cannot enter legally, they have to resort to illegal way, and smuggler know this, and strangle them with bribes, extra fees etc. Most "trips" to enter through Italy for example for this reason cost thousands of dollars, not something a poverty stricken family can afford. Most economic migrants are from middle class in their own countries, who are attracted by the false promises of TV shows about how everyone in Europe or other countries depict themselves, but again, are decently well of on their own countries. Source for prices: International migration and illegal costs: Evidence from Africa-to-Europe smuggling routes - ScienceDirect share.google/YgcY5iFUeuZLvPmPH
For the US, on the other hand, since you have a river vs a desert + sea, can be a lot cheaper
I mean, Euromaidan was a result of the Ukrainian people being frustrated with the rampant corruption. I think it’s likely many are upset. I don’t even see a justification for the need to put these departments more closely under the control of the executive in this article.
I don’t even see a justification for the need to put these departments more closely under the control of the executive
False corruption charges are frequently used by insurgencies and foreign influence operations to undermine legitimate governance. I'm not saying it is or isn't a legitimate concern in this case but, if it were, we definitely wouldn't know the exact reasons. Given Russia's history of using foreign influence as a weapon of war and, in particular, their history of doing so in Ukraine, I can definitely understand the concern.
Of course real corruption can't go unanswered because of the possibility of trumped up charges. It's a tricky bit of business to get right.
very. there's mass gatherings in Lviv and Kyiv even with the elevated risk of death by shahed. Ukrainians ars making it clear: they genuinely will fight to the death for their freedom. using one authoritarian to justify another authoritarian will not be allowed.
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Did not read the article but of course they did. Fear not our government will do nothing to remedy the situation, wouldn't want to upset those in real power.
Bummer. I'll hop on a redeye Amtrak train tonight and bark at the moon in his honor. Silliness aside, he always seemed like a genuine good guy. Hope he's able to find peace and his family solace in the kind words that will be spoke of him in the coming days. If nothing else I'll always really enjoy his hits when they come up in my playlists.
He was the guest and performer at a final concert just weeks ago. Anyone connected to the metal scene in any way knew about it. They raised almost 200 million for charities.
It already was the metal concert of the decade, now with his passing just weeks after, this will be remembered as a once in a century event in the metal world, how I wish I could have been there !
Lost any ounce of respect I might have had left for him (which really wasn't much) and his wife when they started pushing Genocide propaganda for Israel.
Nothing says "rock and roll" like supporting Israels right to genocide I guess.
True rock and roll would be pissing on his grave. Maybe Kneecap can do the honors.
Sharon Osbourne denied a deepfake video of Ozzy Osbourne suggesting he was going to die soon and also disputed her mother's statements about assisted suicide.
I woke up with a bad feeling. I knew exactly one thing. And it reminded me of December 26th 2015. Remember the year of death that was 2016? Celebrities were dropping like flies and our entire childhoods' were going into graveyards?
That started December 2015, the day after Christmas. That was the day that Lemmy of Motorhead died. His death ripped a hole in the universe. Two weeks later David Bowie died. And after that famous people kept dying for a year. Reality TV star Donald Trump would be elected into office by people that kept saying celebrities had no role in politics. 2016 was the first year of the world we know today. And trying to describe the world before 2015 to someone who never witnessed life before that would become difficult.
I loved Black Sabbath. I didn't care for Ozzy Osbourne. I didn't care for a Black Sabbath without Ozzy. It was that combination of the two that I liked. I used to tell people this and they would shrug and then I would tell people this after the Osbornes show came out and people would react the same way as when I told them I didn't like cake. It meant I wasn't human. Who can trust somebody who doesn't like cake or like Ozzy Osbourne?
But I had to be honest with myself and them. I didn't like Ozzy Osbourne and no amount of crazy antics was going to solve that.
But this morning I woke up knowing exactly one thing. Ozzy Osbourne was dead. He can't create chaos with his death like Lemmy did because the chaos is already here. But maybe he can fix it. Maybe Ozzy's death well mend the hole in reality. This agent of chaos, with his passing, might be able to restore sanity. A sacrifice. For Satan. Who so loved the world he gave his only avatar so that everyone, believer or not, could have peace everlasting. We should know in two weeks if he is the herald of a brighter new future.
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WOW. Ozzy is a Rock legend. The world will not be the same without him. People can say what they want about him, but he was an artist. He and Black Sabbath were the epitome of Rock & Roll.
Honestly, that he lived this long, given his drugs and party lifestyle for many years, is pretty impressive. Now Keith Richards, on the other hand, will likely live to be 200 years old just because he's indestructible.
I got to see Ozzy once at Ozzfest. I'm glad for that.
Police in Tokyo say they have found that English proficiency test examinees involved in suspected group cheating had been given miniature earphones and other devices prior to the test.
They suspect that there may be other collaborators in Japan in addition to a Chinese national arrested in relation to cheating on the Test of English for International Communication, or TOEIC. ……
They say they have learned that the examinees in question had been given earphones measuring 3 millimeters across, a pendant-type repeater and a video guide in advance. ……
Those are very tiny earphones (you can see one in the video around 0:45). I wonder if there are any electronics inside or if they are just tiny magnet balls driven by the pedant repeaters.
Music sharing platform Bandwagon adds the ability for artists to sell albums, create paid channels for exclusive content, and announces upcoming premium subscription tier for artists
@Bonfire Social is getting close to release, and team already working on other features as well
some good articles on what its like to be a moderator, and the impact of LLMs on small communities on the fediverse
Bandwagon is a fediverse platform for artists to share their music, similar to platforms like Bandcamp. Artists can now use Bandwagon to sell their music albums with the latest update. Bandwagon has added support for Stripe, and does not charge a payment fee for albums sold via the platform. Selling albums via Bandwagon will not be completely free however: once Bandwagon Premier launches at the end of the year, selling albums will only be available for this premium subscription tier of $10/month. Bandwagon promises the platform will always be available for free for artists to upload and share their albums. Another new feature for Bandwagon is Circles, which allows users to share content with specific people. When you add accounts to a circle, you can create content that will only be visible to people within that circle, similar to how Bonfire’s boundaries system works. What is different about Bandwagon’s circles is that access to a circle can be put behind a paywall, where people can pay a monthly subscription fee for continued inclusion in that circle and to see exclusive content by the artist.
The upcoming premium subscription will give paying members the ability to sell albums, sell access to circles/memberships, and get higher quality streaming. Some further thoughts:
With circles, Bandwagon is placing itself in competition with Patreon. It is not the first project to try to put fediverse content behind a paywall: sub.club tried to make this work last year and had to shut down due to a limited uptake. Sub.club focused on microblogging and Mastodon, will targeting the music sector make a difference for Bandwagon?
Platforms on the fediverse has historically struggled with becoming financially sustainable, with most relying on donations, grants and volunteer labour. Bandwagon has a clear story on how it plans to become a financially sustainable platform. The big question is: can they pull it off?
One of the major challenges in building a new social network is in getting critical mass on the community size to made sure there is enough interesting content to keep users interested in visiting. Projects like Radio Free Fedi show that the fediverse has a dedicated community of musicians and other artists on the fediverse. Bandwagon also already has over 200 artists who are sharing their music on the platform. It indicates that music and artists might be a worthwhile direction to look for when building critical mass in communities.
How much will the connection to the fediverse matter for artists on Bandwagon? Bandwagon is open-source and encourages self-hosting, and that it uses ActivityPub provides clear value for creating a network of interoperable Bandwagon servers. But will people use the native connections with the rest of the fediverse as well? For artists, having a wider reach is beneficial, especially if they are selling albums. But will people use the interoperability of microblogging platforms like Mastodon to follow artists on Bandcamp, or will these interoperable networks stay mostly separate in practice?
Bonfire is an upcoming modular social networking platofrm that the team is working on getting ready for an official release. In the launch version (‘Bonfire Social’) the platform focuses on features that are more familiar to microblogging and long-form writing, but the platform is highly extendable and customisable: Bonfire is also experimenting with adding geodata and Mosaic, a bridge to connect other datasets to the platform. Bonfire also reported that they have their first organisation that will build their community on Bonfire: CrowdInBlue is a platform that wants to “connect water projects with funding sources”, and they will build this platform using Bonfire.
The Links
“The upside is that moderation gives me some control. Watching a fascist autocracy unfold before your eyes is terrifying. Everything is collapsing on a massive scale in myriad ways. It’s enough to make a person feel helpless. While it’s not monumental, I do get to curb some of that fascism through moderation. I get to push buttons with labels that read “delete post” and “suspend.” When some ignorant sociopath is harassing people, I get to wave a magic wand and make them disappear. At least from our corner of Mastodon. That’s empowering. And meaningful. It does make a difference because I get to silence them. I can’t begin to describe how good that feels. Just a little tiny bit of justice.”
An excellent writeup of what it’s like to be a moderator for Mastodon. It explains what the day-to-day experience of being a moderator on Mastodon is like, and what some of the main challenges are, such as dealing with targeted harassment and getting exposed to traumatic content. The quote above highlights why people put up with these challenges, and indicates the value of a social network that gives people agency.
“I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community. I do not know how to determine whether someone’s post about their new bicycle is genuine enthusiasm or automated astroturf. I don’t know how to foster trust and genuine interaction in a world of widespread text and image synthesis—in a world where, as one friend related this week, newbies can ask an LLM for advice on exploring their kinks, and the machine tells them to try solo breath play. In this world I think woof.group, and many forums like it, will collapse.“
A worrying account of how LLMs make the current systems of keeping spam out of closed social networks unfeasible. There are communities who need some form of anonymity of their members to function, such as the queer kink community woof.group. These communities ask for some form of applications by new members. The ability of LLMs to cheaply generate bullshit on a grand scale is being used spammers to join these private communities and use it for spam. There is a clear need for new ways to build and maintain communities while keeping spammers out, and it is currently unclear how such a system would look like.
“My goals now are more modest: planting seeds in people’s minds that another way to interact online is possible. And when people ARE READY and willing, help them set up an account on the Fediverse software best suited for their needs, helping them out and acclimatizing them to the culture of this place.“
Elena Rossini writes about how her thoughts on the fediverse and growth have shifted, and her plans for the next year of her blog. It echoes a trend I wrote recently about as well: the previous conceptualisation of growth for the new social networks does not hold up anymore, and we need new stories on how these networks can be used to build new communication structures.
Kim caught up with Andy, Mastodon's new comms lead, for a chat about the Fediverse's poster child. Find out more about the future of the project, how they feel about Bluesky, and how you can get involved.
Bandwagon Premier launches at the end of the year, selling albums will only be available for this premium subscription tier of $10/month.
This is kinda stupid? I don't see anyone wanting to use this. If you don't sell anything, you still have to pay. Also, as time passes, your older releases are sold less. If you don't release anything new in a while, it makes little sense to keep being subscribed until your next release. Fees are way better, especially for small / little known artists. I think it makes more sense to host some free stuff here for advertisement, and then post a link to your Bandcamp in your profile to let people buy there, because their model is better.
Yeah... I'm not sure that's a good monetization model... I feel like even the standard taking a small cut of every transaction is a better idea than that :/
It feels really overly punishing for small artists while being very reasonable for established larger artists, which sucks
onslaught545
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