The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes billions of dollars in giveaways to fossil fuel companies and their executives

Republicans who backed Trump’s anti-environment bill have accepted over $105m from big oil

^{Dharna Noor (The Guardian)}

Brittney Lyon provided her boyfriend Samuel Cabrera girls as young as three to drug, bind and abuse in exchange for going on dates, prosecutors say

Babysitter who provided young girls to her boyfriend for sexual assault sentenced to 100 years in prison

^{James Liddell (The Independent)}

French president vows to punish those who felled tree planted in memory of Jewish man tortured to death in 2006

Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Emmanuel Macron decries ‘antisemitic hatred’ after memorial tree cut down

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

The issue concerns refugees who have lived in the country since Aug. 16, 2023, under the Uniting for Ukraine program, devised by the Biden administration to allow Ukrainians to stay in the country on humanitarian parole.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/kyivindepend…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

120,000 Ukrainians in US at risk of deportation as Biden-era program lapses, WSJ reports

^{Martin Fornusek (The Kyiv Independent)}

It's the final day before a potential work stoppage could ground all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights.

Air Canada, flight attendants enter final day before strike deadline - Wings Magazine

It's the final day before a potential work stoppage could ground all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights.

^{Wings Staff (Wings Magazine)}

Joking memes about imprisonment, deportation, and death by alligator are designed to radicalize and desensitize.

The official voice of the US government Is cruel, gross, and weird. What is that doing to us? 

^{Mother Jones}

Across the internet, users rely on browsers and extensions to shape how they experience the web: to protect their privacy, improve accessibility, block harmful or intrusive content, and take control over what they see. But a recent ruling from Germany’s Federal Supreme Court risks turning one of these essential tools, the ad blocker, into a copyright liability — and in doing so, threatens the broader principle of user choice online.

Is Germany on the Brink of Banning Ad Blockers? User Freedom, Privacy, and Security Is At Risk. - Open Policy & Advocacy

Across the internet, users rely on browsers and extensions to shape how they experience the web: to protect their privacy, improve accessibility, block harmful or intrusive content, and take control ...

^{Daniel Nazer (Open Policy & Advocacy)}

Washington, D.C.’s attorney general calls administration’s actions ‘gravest threat’ to district’s self-governance

DC sues Trump over ‘hostile takeover’ of city’s police

^{Alex Woodward (The Independent)}

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir released a video on Friday showing him taunting Israel’s most prominent Palestinian detainee, Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure, in his jail cell. The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry denounced the confrontation as "an unprecedented provocation".

Archived version: archive.is/newest/france24.com…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Far-right Israeli minister taunts jailed Palestinian leader in prison visit

^{FRANCE 24}

France on Friday condemned the Israel’s destruction of a school under construction in northern occupied West Bank, calling for accountability, Anadolu reports.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/middleeastmo…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Is the bubble about to burst?

Sam Altman says ‘yes,’ AI is in a bubble

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted to thinking AI is in a bubble. During an interview with reporters, Altman said investors are “overexcited” about AI.

^{Emma Roth (The Verge)}

Nintendo's patents apparently reveal that Switch 2 Game Cards have lower performance compared to games running internally.

Rumor: There Is A Performance Gap Between Switch 2 Game Cards Vs. Internal Storage - Gameranx

^{Ryan Parreno (Gameranx)}

Louisiana attorney general Liz Murril is suing Roblox, accusing it for being 'a breeding ground for sex predators'.

The State Of Louisiana Is Suing Roblox - Gameranx

^{Ryan Parreno (Gameranx)}

Plex has notified some of its users on Thursday to urgently update their media servers due to a recently patched security vulnerability.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/plex-warns-users-to-patch-security-vulnerability-immediately/

China's military researchers have unveiled a mosquito-sized surveillance drone in June 2025, developed at the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) in Hunan province¹. The bionic microdrone measures about 2 cm long, weighs 0.3 grams, and features two leaf-like wings that can flap 500 times per second, along with three hair-thin legs².

The device is designed for covert military operations and battlefield reconnaissance, with sensors and circuits packed into its tiny frame³. "Miniature bionic robots like this one are especially suited to information reconnaissance and special missions on the battlefield," said NUDT student Liang Hexiang while demonstrating the drone on state television⁴.

Security experts warn about potential risks. "If China is able to produce mosquito-sized drones, it would likely be interested in using them for various intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tasks, especially in places that larger drones struggle to access," said Georgetown research fellow Sam Bresnick⁵.

The drone's small size makes it nearly invisible to conventional radar systems, though experts note its diminutive scale could limit operational range and endurance⁶.

1. SCMP - Chinese military lab creates mosquito-sized microdrone for covert operations ↩︎
2. Euronews - China unveils tiny spy drone that looks like a mosquito ↩︎
3. SCMP - Chinese military lab creates mosquito-sized microdrone for covert operations ↩︎
4. NY Post - China unveils eerie mosquito-sized drone designed for stealth military operations ↩︎
5. CSET - China unveils mosquito-sized drone ↩︎
6. NY Post - China unveils eerie mosquito-sized drone designed for stealth military operations ↩︎

China unveils mosquito-sized drone | Center for Security and Emerging Technology

CSET’s Sam Bresnick shared his expert insights in an article published by The Telegraph. The article discusses China’s unveiling of a mosquito-sized drone developed by scientists in Hunan province, highlighting its potential for intelligence gatherin…

^{Jason Ly (CSET)}

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinas-lead-in-open-source-ai-jolts-washington-and-silicon-valley-ffdec83b

Source.

Joel Kaplan, (Chief Global Affairs Officer, at Meta) released joint statement:

Starbuck lawsuit against Meta, April/2025.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/world/europe/trump-putin-alaska-summit.html

imagemagick Montage:

I can only create a montage if all the exif data is cleared.

As a new user on Lemmy, going through the learning curve, I had issues uploading images.

Simple, I turned to imagemagick to reduce the size of the images and create a montage, rather than uploading 20 images for a simple bread recipe.

!bready@lemmy.world

========================================

I transfered my recipe images from my phone to my laptop and set about using Montage.

The images on the phone, and in the directory on my laptop, were clearly orientated in Portrait and not landscape.

========================================

Problem:

I ran montage to create a simple 4 image montage:

montage 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg 4.jpg -geometry +2+2 1-montage-image.jpg

I checked the output file, the images were in the right order but had changed from portrait to Landscape. They looked terrible

I then tried some different images.

These came out as expected, in portrait and in order

=======================================

I compared the images,

identify -verbose 1.jpg

the ones I transfered from my phone still had all the exif data intact and the other ones had no exif data

========================================

So I cleared the exif data for the files.

exiftool worked perfectly:

exiftool -all= *.jpg

created an "original-images" directory, then moved the originals to "original-images" directory

mv *.jpg_original original-images

when I cleared the exif data all the images in the directory reverted to landscape

========================================

so I set them back to portrait:

One liner to change orientation by 90 degrees

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec convert {} -rotate 90 {} \;

or mogrify:

mogrify -rotate -90 *.jpg

or

mogrify -rotate +90 *.jpg

========================================

created the montage image:

montage 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg 4.jpg -geometry +2+2 1-montage.jpg

========================================

Now I reduced the size so I could upload them

create an "images" directory if you do not want mogrify to overwrite the originals.

mogrify -resize 50% -quality 80 -path "/path/to/reduced/images/" *.jpg

or

mogrify -resize 50% -quality 80 -path "images" *.jpg

job done

========================================

A lot of messing about to upload an image

È doloroso trovarmi qui ad ammetterlo a me stessa ma, ancora una volta, scopro che i miei piani di dominazione del mondo sono stati troppo ambiziosi; almeno per ora, in questa fase più iniziale. Ovviamente tutto bene col mio codice, anche se è ancora nelle fasi iniziali… i problemi inaspettati sono piuttosto arrivati con Sharkey, […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-08-15 12:21:17

riempimento della squachiavanza porta la morte ad essere dischica… (Sharkey prende troppo spazio ed è un problema)

È doloroso trovarmi qui ad ammetterlo a me stessa ma, ancora una volta, scopro che i miei piani di dominazione del mondo sono stati troppo ambiziosi; almeno per ora, in questa fase più iniziale. Ovviamente tutto bene col mio codice, anche se è ancora nelle fasi iniziali… i problemi inaspettati sono piuttosto arrivati con Sharkey, che nell’arco di una settimana mi avrà sequestrato almeno 1 GB di disco col suo database di merda, e non penso di dover spiegare quali calcoli fare per capire che una situazione del genere è insostenibile. Quindi, ho dovuto per il momento abbassare il tiro, prima che il disco del server mi si riempia in misura da costringermi a levare tutto quanto… 😖

Il problema è sostanzialmente una combinazione di 3 fattori: la mole di dati in ingresso generata da migliaia di utenti di migliaia di istanze ogni giorno è gigantesca (e il mio server non ha problemi a processarla, ma ecco, sono troppi miliardi di byte), il database è strutturato di merda (con troppi dati derivati che occupano inutilmente spazio, nonché francamente colonne inutili)… e, soprattutto, il software non ha alcun meccanismo per cancellare dati vecchi, quindi per ripulire periodicamente le note di utenti di istanze terze, o comunque quei dati che sono riottenibili. E per Misskey è da anni che la gente chiede aiuto per questo problema, ma la richiesta continua a naufragare, si vedano #13157 e linkate… e per Sharkey ugualmente è da un po’ di tempo che si parla di questo schifo, ma, forse, il fato per una buona volta mi vuole bene: 3 settimane fa in #1017 qualcuno sembra aver preso interesse a lavorarci… 😨

Comunque sia, il problema per me è ora, e quindi ho come minimo dovuto disattivare i relay, che sono dei cosi che si aggiungono per far scambiare i messaggi tra la propria istanza ed altre pur senza avere relazioni di follow con migliaia di utenti (…perché non so chi cavolo seguire io, e a me pochi mi cagano), e così l’influsso di note e allegati è passato da decine di migliaia al giorno a poche decine e basta al giorno, che è persino meno di quanto ho sulla Spacc BBS… Ma questo quindi significa direttamente che, per il momento, non avrò un flusso costante estremamente sparso e variegato di conversazioni che posso passare all’intelligenza artificiale per farla funzionare in modo completamente autonomo e a dir poco extracircostanziale. (Non che io avessi finito di scrivere il codice per questa parte, eh, ma prima o poi quello sarà pronto… e i dati allora mancheranno.) 💨

Avrei quasi la mezza idea di, pur non sapendo se questa mossa potrebbe in parte rompere l’applicazione (ma, come si suol dire, cip ciop fa l’uccellino, YOLO fa il cormorano… e in ogni caso farei un backup prima), creare uno script per fare in modo grezzo la pulizia del database… ma purtroppo non è affatto una stronzata filtrare tutto per cancellare solo i dati effettivamente ridondanti, ossia le note solo da server terzi (e fin qui ok) che non hanno relazioni internamente alla mia istanza (niente reazioni o commenti o boost da parte dei miei utenti, non sono salvate tra i preferiti, e così via), e poi cancellare anche i file a queste associati dall’altra tabella (aiuto!!!). E oltre alle note, che sono rogne, e agli allegati, che invece mi fanno proprio incazzare visto quanto occupano pur essendo solo metadati (il contenuto dei file non viene scaricato!), volendo pulire pure gli utenti è la fine… 😭

Vabbè, viste le parole (…poco attendibili?) di quella persona sconosciuta di cui sopra, però, mi conviene evitare di sbattermi, e piuttosto semplicemente pregare affinché tale promessa si trasformi in codice… al più presto. Se la mia speranza (e i miei bot potentissimi…) proprio deve morire, allora lo farà solo dopo la mia istanza, non prima!!! 😾

#1017 #database #Misskey #server #Sharkey #spazio #storage

Database Retention/Purge Policies (#1017) · Issues · TransFem.org / Sharkey · GitLab

What feature would you like implemented? The problem After running an instance...

^GitLab

https://youtu.be/Q-z28zFn2sg