Exiled Moldovan opposition head decries police crackdown
Exiled Moldovan opposition head decries police crackdown
Exiled Moldovan opposition politician Ilan Shor has denounced the election-related police crackdownRT
Chris Cuomo mocked after falling for deepfake video of AOC slamming Sydney Sweeney ad
In his post accompanying the ersatz video showing AOC wearing a black blazer and with her hair in a bun, Cuomo denounced the Democrat for having misplaced priorities.
“Nothing about hamas or people burning jews cars. But sweeney jeans ad? Deserved time on floor of congress? What happd to this party? Fight for small business …not for small culture wars,” he wrote.
Cuomo failed to notice that the AI-generated video bore a clear watermark stating it was “parody 100% made with AI.” - The supposed hard-hitting journalist also apparently forgot that Congress is not in session.
After the embarrassing gaffe, Cuomo acknowledged his error and removed the original post. However, his response attempted to shift focus back to his original criticism of the congresswoman regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
“You are correct… that was a deepfake (but it really does sound like you). Thank you for correcting. But now to the central claim: show me you calling on hamas to surrender or addressing the bombing of a car in st louis belonging to the idf american soldier?…dude?” he wrote.
Chris Cuomo mocked after falling for deepfake video of AOC slamming Sydney Sweeney ad
The veteran journalist apparently can’t tell AOC from an AI-OC.Ariel Zilber (New York Post)
Substack’s extremist ecosystem is flourishing
Substack’s extremist ecosystem is flourishing
The app's recent swastika push alert was just the tip of the iceberg.The Handbasket
Trump Is Quietly Using The U.S. Military In A Whole New Way
Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has authorized several unprecedented military actions and territorial claims:
Border Militarization:
- Transferred control of the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide strip along the US-Mexico border, to the Department of Defense in April 20251
- Established "National Defense Areas" in New Mexico and Texas, treating them as military installations where troops can detain migrants1
- Deployed over 10,000 troops to patrol and monitor the border2
Los Angeles Military Deployment:
- Federalized California National Guard troops in June 2025 over Governor Newsom's objections3
- Deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles following immigration protests3
- A June 19 appeals court ruling upheld Trump's authority to deploy troops in American cities4
Territorial Claims:
- Refused to rule out military force to seize control of Greenland from Denmark5
- Threatened military action to retake control of the Panama Canal5
- Proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America"5
Legal Framework:
- Administration argues military activities at border are legal under "military purpose doctrine" exception to Posse Comitatus Act1
- Critics say actions violate constitutional limits on military involvement in domestic law enforcement1
- Brennan Center called the border militarization "a transparent ruse to evade the Posse Comitatus Act"1
- Huffpost - Trump Is Quietly Using The U.S. Military In A Whole New Way ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
- Newsweek - Donald Trump expands US military role at southern border ↩︎
- CNN - Trump seizes on Los Angeles protests in contentious use of military amid migrant crackdown ↩︎ ↩︎
- The Conversation - Appeals court ruling grants Donald Trump broad powers to deploy troops to American cities ↩︎
- AP News - Trump refuses to rule out use of military force to take control of Greenland and Panama Canal ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Donald Trump Expands US Military Role at Southern Border
This directive involves the use of federal lands for military activities, such as constructing barriers and deploying equipment.Gabe Whisnant (Newsweek)
This only can go worse
Getting Started with Cloudflare Tunnel
Getting Started with Cloudflare Tunnel | David Ma
A guide to setting up and using Cloudflare Tunnel for local development.www.davidma.co
Ramaphosa Discusses Bilateral Trade With Trump, South Africa's Presidency Says
Ramaphosa Discusses Bilateral Trade With Trump, South Africa's Presidency Says
Ramaphosa Discusses Bilateral Trade With Trump, South Africa's Presidency SaysDuring a phone conversation, the two presidents emphasized their commitment to continued dialogue, the presidency said in a statement.Detailed discussions...Sputnik Africa
Russia Shoots Down Storm Shadow Missiles and Hundreds of Drones in 24 Hours
Russia Downs 240 Ukrainian Drones and 8 British Storm Shadow Missiles
Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced on August 7 that its air defense systems shot down eight UK-made Storm Shadow missiles and 240 Ukrainian drones overnightPetr Ermilin (Pravda English)
Putin not against meeting Zelensky, conditions should be created
Putin not against meeting Zelensky, conditions should be created
As the Russian president noted, there is still a long haul ahead for creation of such conditionsTASS
Pashinyan Selling Off Armenia’s Sovereignty to the West: Here’s What It Means for South Caucasus
Pashinyan Selling Off Armenia’s Sovereignty to the West: Here’s What It Means for South Caucasus
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is digging a suicidal geopolitical hole for Armenia by trading sovereignty for shaky Western promises, warned political analyst Shota Apkhaidze.Sputnik International
Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity
Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity
Donald Trump’s media company is teaming up with Perplexity to bring AI search to Truth Social, the President’s X.com alternative.Truth announced the endeavor in a press release on Wednesday. Anyone using the browser version of Truth can now use Perplexity to search the web. “We’re proud to partner with Perplexity to launch our public Beta testing of Truth Social AI, which will make Truth Social an even more vital element in the Patriot Economy,” Devin Nunes, Trump Media's CEO and Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, said in the press release.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
“We’re excited to partner with Truth Social to bring powerful AI to an audience with important questions. Curiosity is the engine of change, and Perplexity’s AI is developed to empower curiosity by delivering direct, reliable answers with transparent citations that allow anyone to dig deeper,” Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko said in the press release.According to the announcement, “the mission of Trump Media is to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back.” Which is a funny thing to put in an announcement about Trump partnering with a company whose investors include Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and the former CEO of GitHub.
Perplexity’s Truth Social search engine will be powered by stolen content. Earlier this week, Cloudflare reported Perplexity used stealth and undeclared crawlers to evade websites that explicitly set themselves up to avoid being catalogued by LLMs. Perplexity has a long history of using scrapers that ignore the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Perplexity started as a demo that scraped Twitter with fake academic accounts backed by AI-generated research proposals.
Forbes, the New York Times, New York Post, and the Dow Jones have all accused Perplexity of plagiarism. News Corp‘s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post sued Perplexity in 2024 for copyright infringement, claiming in the federal lawsuit that Perplexity is “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.” In 2024, WIRED reported on the accusations of Perplexity’s plagiarism and Perplexity almost immediately plagiarized the story. When New York Times tech workers went on strike last year, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas offered to help the Times keep the paper going.
Big Tech has aligned itself with the Trump administration since before the election, seeing an alliance of opportunity for deregulation of AI in particular.
But is the Perplexity-powered AI aggregation machine “woke?” I asked a few questions to find out. I wanted to know: Is Trump in the Epstein files?“There is no evidence in the recently reviewed and released government ‘Epstein Files’ of a ‘client list” or documentation placing Donald Trump as implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's criminal actions,” it said. “While Trump’s name, like many other prominent individuals, appears in public records of Epstein’s social and business contacts (such as guest lists or flight logs, widely reported over the years), there is no mention in current official documents or filings that directly implicates Trump as a criminal participant in Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.”
How does Truth Social’s search engine think the American economy is doing?
“The American economy is currently facing significant headwinds, with signs of slowdown—most notably by a contraction in GDP, rising inflation, and softening labor market conditions—though some leaders still emphasize areas of resilience,” Truth Search AI said.
Are the tariffs to blame?“Recent tariff increases in the United States have generally had a negative effect on economic growth and employment, raising costs for businesses and consumers while providing only limited benefits to some manufacturing sectors,” Truth Search AI said.
Damn. It’s woke as hell.
Big Tech Backed Trump for Acceleration. They Got a Decel President Instead
Effective accelerationists didn’t just accidentally shoot themselves in the foot. They methodically blew off each of their toes with a .50 caliber sniper rifle.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
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X plans to show ads in Grok chatbot's answers
X plans to show ads in Grok chatbot's answers
Grok's responses to users on X could include paid advertisements in the future.Mariella Moon (Engadget)
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Tech giants turning blind eye to child sex abuse, Australian watchdog says
Tech giants turning blind eye to child sex abuse, Australian watchdog says
Commissioner’s recommendations for tech companies include measures that have been criticised on privacy grounds.John Power (Al Jazeera)
Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks
Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks
Liz Reid says Google’s data shows AI is generating consistent clicks and better experiences.Ryan Whitwam (Ars Technica)
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Monkeys can't write, only hit random keys, but several monkey brains interconnected with each other, with an LLM, can.
In such a scenario, there'd still be a random factor behind the monkey's behaviors: less of a pure randomness, more of a Weasel Program.
how many monkey brains are needed to connect to have the capability of an human brain.
I often consider the Homo sapiens intelligence not as superior than other species, but just a different approach for problem-solving capabilities and tool-making among living beings. For instance, crows (particularly the New Caledonian crow) are well-known for exceptional intelligence, because they're not just able to use tools, they're also able to use tools to make/fix other tools (just like humans).
That said, I bet it would require less crow brains than monkey brains for human-like intelligence to emerge, despite primates being genetically closer to humans. Crows are awesome.
Huawei to open-source AI chip toolkit to take on Nvidia’s proprietary platform
Tech war: Huawei to open-source AI chip toolkit to take on Nvidia’s proprietary platform
The move will help accelerate innovation from developers, while making Ascend chips easier to use, Huawei’s Eric Xu says.Xinmei Shen (South China Morning Post)
Large language model developed by Chinese researchers helps rescue in Myanmar earthquake
Large language model developed by Chinese researchers helps rescue in Myanmar earthquake
A large language model developed by researchers from Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) was applied in rescue efforts following the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on March 28. It was recently included inwww.globaltimes.cn
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FEP-c313: Replies Addressed to Original Author’s Followers
Hello!
This is a discussion thread for the proposed FEP-c313: Replies Addressed to Original Author’s Followers. Please use this thread to discuss the proposed FEP and any potential problems or improvements that can be addressed.
Summary
This proposal introduces an ActivityPub extension to improve reply distribution. It allows a reply (comment) to be addressed directly to the original post author’s followers collection, so that followers of the original author can receive the reply. This behavior aligns with how networks like Diaspora and Friendica distribute comments, and aims to enhance conversation visibility across federated servers.
A new flag in NodeInfo metadata advertises support for this extension. Servers implementing this FEP can thus coordinate reply delivery: if both servers support it, a reply will be forwarded to the original author’s followers automatically; otherwise, the sender can fallback to standard distribution.
Re: FEP-c313: Replies Addressed to Original Author’s Followers
If Mastodon doesn't support forwarding delivery to local collections, then you're still facing an uphill battle getting Mastodon to support your FEP, no?
In which case wouldn't it be roughly equivalent to get Mastodon to support 7.1.2 of the AP spec?
Huawei to open-source AI chip toolkit to take on Nvidia’s proprietary platform
Tech war: Huawei to open-source AI chip toolkit to take on Nvidia’s proprietary platform
The move will help accelerate innovation from developers, while making Ascend chips easier to use, Huawei’s Eric Xu says.Xinmei Shen (South China Morning Post)
China is really practicing what they preach by making the fruit of the workers' labour available for all. They could have made infinitely more money by offering this as a service and that's what every Western C-suite would do even if every engineer that worked on it wanted it made public. Both Huawei's co-op leadership and presumably the Chinese government (even in Western "free market" capitalist countries decisions this significant by this big of a company would be subject to government oversight and export control) choosing to make it open source for free is saying a lot. They're also seemingly not concerned about preventing the West from using their technology in the same way the West denies China use of their tech, despite the obvious strategic and economic benefits of having something the West doesn't.
Same with a lot of other Chinese tech investments like Deepseek and RISC-V implementations.
I wonder if they're making these things open source to counter the Western propaganda that Chinese tech has spyware or built in censorship. If so, I think they've made pretty good faith strides and if they're hoping for countries like Canada to jump ship and work with them on tech instead of the US, I as a Canadian software developer would gladly work for a Chinese company over a US one.
FOSS Alternative to Privacy?
Virtual Cards That Protect Your Payments | Online Payment Security
Protect your payment security. Shield your financial information and protect against credit and debit card fraud with secure, randomly-generated virtual card numbers.www.privacy.com
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Do posts like these get verified in some way?
A screenshot of an image post can be faked so easily. Even the image can be faked so easily now. How do we know what’s real?
Chinese scientists detail how they created high-strength, low-temperature steel for world’s first fusion nuclear power reactor in action
‘Absolutely impossible’: how China created super steel for nuclear fusion
Chinese scientists detail how they created high-strength, low-temperature steel for world’s first fusion nuclear power reactor in action.Shi Huang (South China Morning Post)
Desperate measures to save Intel: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief for Taiwan
Desperate measures to save Intel: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief for Taiwan
A new report out of Taiwan has revealed that the current US administration is tying the reduction on trade of trade tariffs on Taiwan to significant TSMC investment in the US. This investment includes a 49% stake in Intel.Fawad Murtaza (Notebookcheck)
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China’s humanoid robots complete world-first multi-task training
China’s humanoid robots complete world-first multi-task training
UBTech's Walker S1 humanoids complete world-first multi-robot training at Zeekr's 5G smart factory, advancing intelligent automation.Jijo Malayil (Interesting Engineering)
Technology reshared this.
Netanyahu's government unanimously votes to fire Attorney General who is prosecuting him for corruption
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/04/netanyahu-fire-israel-attorney-general-trial
Israel to launch new phase of Gaza war after receiving US green light for total occupation
Media outlets citing Israeli sources said the Israeli regime plans an expansion of fighting and a full occupation of Gaza.The scheme to occupy Gaza, set in motion by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will continue with an offensive on Gaza City and central refugee camps, forcing much of the Palestinian population in Gaza to move south.
The objective, Israeli authorities said, is to eradicate what remains of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement and force the group to release the roughly 50 Israeli captives still held in Gaza, some of whom are still alive despite the famine in Gaza.
Netanyahu is expected to push the scheme for approval at a high-level Israeli war cabinet scheduled to convene on Thursday.
Netanyahu has reportedly already obtained the go-ahead from the United States. President Donald Trump does not oppose the scheme for the full occupation of Gaza, according to US officials cited by the media.
Israel to launch new phase of Gaza war after receiving US green light
The Israeli regime plans to launch a new phase of its war on the Gaza Strip after receiving the US green light.PressTV
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Any good music trackers?
I used to be on what.cd and redacted.ch but ran out of HD for a while.
Now I don't know where to get music anymore.
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A 40-year-old Palestinian detainee from Gaza died at a Shin Bet security service facility last year after falling from a significant height while handcuffed, sources told Haaretz.The incident occurred in January 2024, and the Palestinian man's body was transferred without identifying information, leaving him unnamed. According to sources familiar with the investigation into the case, after the detainee's death, the Shin Bet said that he fell while trying to escape the facility where he was being questioned.
The autopsy found signs that are consistent with a fall from a height, as well as signs indicating that the detainee had been handcuffed for a prolonged period.
The Justice Ministry told Haaretz that the probe into his death has been concluded with no suspicion of criminal activity, even though the deceased was in state custody at the time, which at the very least may indicate negligence by Shin Bet officers. Even though the man's body was transferred without identification, his identity is known to the Shin Bet.
A "political blackmail" – the EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory scanning of your private chats
A "political blackmail" – the EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory scanning of your private chats
According to the Council Legal Service, the Danish Chat Control proposal still violates human rightsChiara Castro (TechRadar)
Is libgen finally dead?
Ive been using one of the libgen.XX mirrors for a while. Its not working. Neither are the links on a site of all the mirrors.
Is torrent the only way to go now for books? Click to download was so easy.
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This gives a good guide on how mirrors on each service are
SLUM: The Shadow Library Uptime Monitor
This dashboard tracks the availability of popular shadow libraries in real time from a US-based server.[Click here to learn more](https://open-slum.org/staopen-slum.org
'Wipe' SSD before reinstalling Linux?
Are there any benefits, in terms of performance or security in 'wiping' or overwriting an SSD before reinstalling Linux? And if so, what is the best way of doing it?
I'm planning on doing a clean install of Debian 13 on my laptop soon.
I'm currently on Fedora and using encryption and will be using encryption on Debian too. I do not have a separate home partition.
Thanks 😀
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AFAIK it's a bad idea to use dd or another wiping tool that just overwrites the logical partitions on flash based media, and is also not that effective for security. SSDs have wear leveling and what the computer sees does not map 1 to 1 to what's actually on the flash chips. They also have extra overprovisioned space inaccessible to your computer specifically for shuffling data around when wear leveling. So not only are you wasting write cycles, it's not guaranteed to actually overwrite all your data on the flash chips themselves.
If you want to wipe an SSD, use secure erase from a tool like nvme-cli which will directly tell the controller to erase all the data. How well the controller implements that is anyone's guess though.
I'd say if you're going to the effort of fully encrypting your new install, doing a secure erase will be in that spirit and won't hurt. There won't be any performance benefit but it will (probably) ensure that none of your previous unencrypted data is still there, though even if you don't do this, just writing to the drive in normal use will eventually fill up the free space and make it less and less likely that sensitive information is recoverable, but how long this happens depends on how you use the computer.
How to securely erase an NVMe SSD
It's generally accepted that SSDs cannot be securely wiped by writing patterns to the drive, due to features such as wear leveling and over-provisioning, and that the most secure way to wipe a mode...Super User
I have been using disktest to overwrite my SSD's.
I overwrite the SSD's before encryption. works just as well on HDD's too.
A 2TB HDD takes about 3.5 hours to overwrite with the encrypted seed
A 250GB SSD takes about 17 minutes to overwrite with the encrypted seed
install with cargo
cargo uninstall disktest
much faster than your usual suspects like dd.
it runs as root: so add this $PATH to the root .bashrc
export PATH=/root/.cargo/bin:$PATH
recent test run on 250Gb ssd with just write with no verify:
disktest --write -j0 /dev/nvme0n1
The generated --seed is:
omNw4JreY1ZVAfwD4dgooF061R10Ra0vnmYv5SrU
Use this seed for subsequent --verify.
Writing /dev/nvme0n1 (512 bytes sectors), starting at position 0 bytes...
[15:09 / 00h:00m:10s] Wrote 7.62 GiB (8.18 GB) @ 779.3 MiB/s ...
[15:26 / 00h:17m:16s] Done. Wrote 238.47 GiB (256.06 GB, 256059113472 bytes) @ 235.5 MiB/s.
Successfully dropped file caches.
Generated --seed omNw4JreY1ZVAfwD4dgooF061R10Ra0vnmYv5SrU
Success!
to check my SSD's I use:
prometheus-smartctl-exporter
sudo smartctl -i -a /dev/nvme0n1
GitHub - mbuesch/disktest: Solid State Disk (SSD), USB Stick, SD-Card, Hard Disk (HDD) tester
Solid State Disk (SSD), USB Stick, SD-Card, Hard Disk (HDD) tester - mbuesch/disktestGitHub
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eldavi
in reply to bubblybubbles • • •butwhyishischinabook
in reply to bubblybubbles • • •bubblybubbles
in reply to butwhyishischinabook • • •butwhyishischinabook
in reply to bubblybubbles • • •