I mean, yeah, I don’t trust a single word out of his mouth. He’s a fossil fuel stan. I think we should assume that anything this administration says, the opposite is true
❝ We developed the Living Wage Calculator to… estimate the local wage rate that a full-time worker requires to cover the costs of their family’s basic needs where they live…❞
in Manhattan, a living wage should be $33/hour.
the purpose of a capitalist is to keep us in debt & poverty
We actually need to cut the use of fossil fuels to zero to make it stop getting worse — but this is an indication that something like that is actually possible.
Microsoft is making changes to crack down on local Windows 11 accounts. You’ll need an internet connection and a Microsoft account to setup a new Windows PC.
Technically it possible with using windows server edition ,clean no bloatware ,minimum processes Legally cost a lot not available for usual users only in crack way
Honestly I’m using Windows Enterprise. Local accounts, GPOs to get rid of all the telemetry and other bullshit. Never seen an ad in the start menu or any other place. Just nice clean windows. Basically it’s what companies use so that Microsoft doesn’t piss them off.
I wish the IT company we work with used enterprise edition, instead I have to deal with a ton of fuckery that is professional edition in an org with 50 employees, and I do not have the schooling necessary to take over fully.
Really wish we could just ditch windows altogether every time I find another computer that is using a local login instead of an AD login because they couldn't be bothered to set shit up properly
Well I tried exactly server edition and for me it would be the best one edition comparing with all modern windows very few network requests only security updates ,predictable behavior of system,start up and shut down of system during 6 seconds.I tested on thinkpad t430 windown server 2025 ,CPU literally chilling 0-5% usage in idle
The Enterprise/IoT SKUs, which of course include LTSC, still let you use a local account, for now...
I won't be surprised if they plug that at some point way down the line too though given they're already playing with Windows on the Cloud in the enterprise sector.
I would be surprised if they force the requirement on LTSC.
I could believe they force it into enterprise licensing, but LTSC's whole deal is that the environment doesn't change and only gets security patches. It's made to be used in kiosks, CNC controllers and the like. Machines that are supposed perform one task reliably.
This is also the reason it's the best version of Windows for the desktop, and why Microsoft makes it so challenging to acquire licences.
In OOBE, go through MS account creation. Tell it you were born today. It'll let you set a password for the MS account before rejecting you due to COPA requirements. At this point, you can make an offline account without having even created an MS account, let alone having to use one.
This will not go away - it's a legal thing. MS doesn't want to deal with COPA stuff for very young kids, so this flow exists. Enjoy.
If that actually becomes a thing people do, that could prompt MS to start to require either submitting to a face scan or showing some government ID just to install Windows, though, if the way Google's handling KYC on YT if your account gets flagged as underage, and soon Android app dev, as well as KYC going out across other sites, is any indication.
I'm pretty sure having to KYC just to install an OS is the last thing people want right now.
Let them. The entire world is slowly migrating to Mac and Linux. I haven't even had the option of windows at my last 3 jobs. (To be fair, I've never had the option of desktop Linux, but this last one said pick a computer—I'm not positive that they would've balked at Linux.) That said, idk what's so great about Mac over Linux, but I guess it's not corporate friendly.
I'm trying to think of which MS products we even have in our ecosystem. Office, I guess. Corporate world will never wean themselves off of Excel.
There are plenty that will boot/install Linux just fine but won't do a nice clean install of Windows 11.
Modern Thinkpad E16 (AMD) is one of them, a clean USB won't work, it will always stick at not finding required drivers.
You need to inevitably create a USB install from the MS USB Media Creation tool, running on the machine itself from the included crapware Windows - to get an installer USB that will work.
Different if you're just pushing a wim over the network from endpoint/scm, but it's basically broken for local users.
Do you have more info regarding that ThinkPad E16? I'm mostly working with T series laptops and haven't had the problem, but always good to know if or when an E16 shows up.
Usually all ThinkPads work mostly the same regarding Linux support (bar the usual Nvidia driver shenanigans if you ever trip that), but I'd be concerned about the E-series themselves. If you want a cheaper than T-series ThinkPad you should get an L-series one. Not as expensive as the T-ones, but still retains some usable chassis durability, double replaceable memory slots, replaceable keyboard, etc. I've started calling the E-series as E-waste.
I had this issue at work, I was able to fix it by using the windows media creation tool instead of just writing the iso to the drive. Not sure why that worked, but it has every time so far.
Just install it in a VM. I've done this before to force Windows 10 to install on a USB stick, you can pass a VM an entire physical drive to use instead of a virtual hard disk and install to that SSD directly from the VM (just kill the VM and reboot into the windows partition when the VM tries to reboot to the windows installation). I'm sure if you passed the VM a USB created with Rufus you could install from that as well.
This is the rule for any account or mobile game, too - if it asks your age before asking for consent to farm, put any age below 13. It'll either not farm you because it's illegal or it'll kick you out. If the latter, good riddance really
My go to is to pop open the console and run "ipconfig /release" right before you create an account. Win 11 will have you set up a local account if you don't have a network connection.
OOBE\BYPASSNRO has been off and on for me, but so far nuking the network connection has always worked for me. I'm setting up a few new computers tomorrow, it will be interesting to see what tricks still work.
Inconclusive. Re-used machines instead of new computers. Systems did have Windows 11 on them. OOBE\BypassNRO worked, but they may have pending updates.
Edit: one machine would not let me skip MS account sign in with OOBE\BypassNRO. IPConfig /Release immediately let me set up a local account.
Edit: I have only been using Linux for less than a year now, and right now, really is the perfect time to switch. I only held onto windows for gaming, and now I use bazzite. There are some games that don't have steam backup, but with the games that do, I can play the same save between my steamdeck and bazzite.
There is so much more you can do with linux and all it's distros. I've messed around with linux in the past, but never was patient enough to deal with it. Now it's really that easy.
“While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use.”
Lol sure. If that was the real reason they'd simply let you create a local account. The audacious lying is just insulting.
It's not lying if what they mean by "not fully configured for use" is that the private data being captured and sent to their servers is not fully matched to a personal identity in their systems.
After all, they didn't say whose "use" that device would not be configured for.
Still, if they were actually being honest, this would be easily solved if they showed those "critical setup screens" BEFORE asking to create the account, and based on what the user selected then they would allow (or not) the creation of a local account...
In theory Pluton enforcement platform-wide, which also includes forced SecureBoot without the ability to install user-signed keys, as well as OTA updates for that super-TPM, could block alt OSes on PC though.
Fortunately, Pluton never caught on and that hasn't happened so far.
I'm gonna need an explanation how anything could prevent me from just formatting the drive and doing what I want, barring the use of proprietary hardware.
Forced SecureBoot with only MS keys and no way to install user-signed keys and no Linux shim would block non-Windows OSes from booting.
Basically, Pluton functions similar to how mobile devices function in terms of locked bootloaders.
AFAIK the only devices currently produced which actually use Pluton are Surface devices though, and if it's not being implemented as intended, it's just seen as a generic TPM by other OSes.
Proprietary hardware, like opaque bioses that can only be updated with signed, proprietary blobs? The bios that's in charge of picking something to boot from from storage? The bios that can decide which bootloader is allowed through digital signatures? The signatures that are only valid if their public key is registered in the bios? The proprietary, opaque bios that decide which bootloader's signature is valid through keys it can restrict?
Yeah, it's all coming together. Always has been. Joking aside, I'm still surprised this whole "fully locked bios" didn't take off. And I'm glad for it.
Fortunately, Pluton never caught on and that hasn't happened so far.
I'm confused. don't all recent AMD and intel CPUs have pluton included? I remember such an AMD announcement from ryzen 6000 and onwards, and for intel too
In a few years If authoritarian shitholes keep fucking getting their way I can see using an "unverified/ untraceable OS" to be a "national security violation"
What classes require windows? You can run most things in Linux. And for the cases where my classes had instructions on how to set up something on Windows, for Linux and MacOS they just had a foot note saying "You are on your own". But nothing was mandatory.
Same, I made the switch about 9 years ago when I was self-employed. Then I took a job with a small company running windows and it sucked. Now I'm 6 years in with my current, a mega corp, and they are all in on Microsoft. I've been so aggravated with the limitations of Microsoft products when I could get things done with a FOSS product in no time. Of course IT blocks FOSS installs because of corporate policy....🤬
I despise that I have to use this OS at work. I would never run windows on my own computer again. Its just insanity. Next they'll require a credit card to make a Microsoft account.
I could see them requiring government-issued ID. The age verification laws coming into effect in various states and countries make this a logical step for Microsoft. They might even start their own age verification service where you give them your ID and they vouch for your age with the sites you visit in Edge. Of course it would have the totally accidental side effect that everything you do on your computer could be monitored and legally tied to your identity.
I can add that in my experience, switching to Linux tends to have a positive impact on performance and keep the laptop usable for longer, I highly recommend you try it with your current laptop.
I've got an old desktop with a Core I7 with a 3 digit model number and 12GB of DDR3 RAM, it's running Mint Cinnamon. I've got a Lenovo x86 tablet thing with 8GB of RAM and a Pentium processor, it's currently running Fedora GNOME. I've run Ubuntu MATE on a Pi 4 as a desktop PC for about a year.
Most distros of Linux will run very well on a machine that ever ran Windows 7 acceptably. Prior to that, you start running into the "we're discontinuing 32-bit support" problem.
well I assumed your devices have 4 and such GB of RAM, but yeah at 8 GB memory efficiency is not a pressing problem.
like I have a laptop with 2 GB that runs windows 10 acceptably, there was a time when that was my main on-the-go setup. that memory is almost completely used up by just logging in to kde plasma. memory compression is of course not a choice with the cpu it has though
Im running cosmic desktop on arch, its actually very good! I have enabled automatic tiling of windows and its just super convenient. Like a tiling window manager but with all the stuff most people want built-in (top bar, notifications, screenshots, screen sharing etc).
You cant customize it as much as a real tiling window manager but if all you want is for your windows to tile, its awesome.
Not OP, but I have to keep one Windows PC around. My favorite mod for my favorite 20 year old 4x game will not run on Linux, even though the game itself will.
The rest of my PCs are running either Mint or Xubuntu.
Proton not virtual machine. Virtual machine emulate hardware for os to run like on pc. That also cause performance loss, but for 20 yo game probably not important.
I'm waiting for actual fire to start in my laptop before switching. I've had to do so many tricks to keep Win 7 going that I'm invested in keeping this thing going as long as possible. Plus all my porn is on it.
I installed windows 11 a dozen time at work (never at home) and I just click on "domain login", it just creates a local account and then after the install I have to manually join the domain. No Microsoft account enforcement at all.
It's regular Windows 11, not Enterprise, we are a small company.
But I'm wondering, this bypass is too easy, is it because it sees that the DNS server is also an active directory server, so it allows that, or the trick is that you tell him you want to join a domain?
Or maybe it's a domain enrollment bug because we're using samba 4 under Debian as active directory server and not Windows server/entra id/whatever they call it this month?
I don't think they ever said they plan to require it for Windows Pro or above skus. It's only home (you know the one business shouldn't be using anyway) that they said they wanted to enforce it on.
They actually did a lot of mess with Pro as well. There has been a "watering down" of Pro since Windows 10 to make sure that they can still do their anticonsumer crap to users. I imagine they also are trying to push businesses to get Enterprise instead of picking up relatively easy/inexpensive Pro licenses.
You need to have 11 Pro or better to domain join a computer.
Your computer would also need to be joined to your domain to allow the login, so there is definitely some config going on that is not available to the typical home user.
This "subscription" mentality is ruining value for a lot of society but, holy shit, do you ever rake in those huge amounts of monthly cash, for very little work.
Sometimes it's free trade as a carrot and embargo as a stick, like with, well, one can try to nail it to Napoleonic wars, but as old as life. Sometimes it's mass production and standardization and ergonomics and scientific industrial design, one can try to nail these to WWII, but also as old as life. And sometimes it's controlled escalation as a way to reach your goals without triggering nuclear response, which one can nail to the Cold War.
American strategy of the Cold War is being used against world markets, ladies and gentlemen. Together with the previous two strategies mentioned.
The Soviet one was the opposite, to try to make even the smallest transgression cause firmly the same response, so that controlled escalation wouldn't work, but unfortunately one is founded in human psychology (plus game theory) and the other in rational knowledge (just game theory), the latter always loses. It was called scientific-technical revolution and meant literally its name - instead of gradual escalation, which favors the stronger side, you should create technical means to punch a fatal wound, nothing gradual.
So - the subscriptions themselves matter very little, they are just slowly transitioning everything big to dependence upon remote components available over the Internet.
It's funny, actually, so much gradual work, and in the end it'll be just wasted time - even making computers is not magic. State of the art processes could as well be that for most of humanity, but for many purposes Pentium MMX is a good enough computer, and such are not magic.
And especially making computer software of the kind that's being "metropolized" like this is not magic. Most of it is complex simply because of legacy, backwards compatibility and as a barrier for competitors making alternative implementations.
I am horrified by what computers have become, from expensive magical tools to solve real problems, to ubiquitous shit-shoveling malware appliances controlled by some of the worst elements of society.
I've never been more appreciative than I am now of the decades of effort that have gone into building this free and open-source operating system.
Imagine if we were here in 2025, with all the incumbent operating systems going to shit, but in a world where Linux didn't exist and there was no alternative that wasn't owned by a tech giant.
The alternative alternative existed before Linux and still exists today: BSD
In a world without Linus Torvalds, all those people who have devoted time and effort into Linux might well have found themselves working / hobbying in the BSD ecosystems instead.
I think it's almost certain that Linux's niche would have been taken by it. It worked for Apple, after all.
Or, who knows, maybe GNU Hurd might have become viable.
I find this alternate timeline incredibly likely. I had a friend in college who was all about SCO Unix back before they went evil, even when Slackware was the go-to distro. We would have a lot more BSD forks out here now, although NextStep (and maybe even OSX) would probably still emerge as one of the better commercial ones.
As an aside: what I find amusing is that Homebrew is basically BSD Ports, served from a git repo. In 2025, it's a completely insane way to ship OS software to a single platform, but it does work.
Sure, if it wasn't Linux then another project may have got the love and attention.
I'm not glad it was Linux specifically, just glad there is a credible FOSS alternative of some kind, and in our universe that's Linux.
You might think there's no such world where we wouldn't have had some credible alternative, and as reasonable as that is - because freedom and independence are things people intrinsically want - I'm sure if you flap the butterfly wings enough times there'd be a universe where we all just collectively decided that commercial operating systems were the answer.
Yeah. Look at the shitheap we had to settle with when Reddit enshittified beyond redemption. We're really lucky to have such a well-polished alternative to Windows right now, and I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that Windows was awful from the beginning. If a halfway-decent operating system like OS/2 had become the default then we might be really scrambling right now.
Well I paid for what I have, and no one is allowed to rob me of what I pay for so I'm good. Sorry Microsoft you don't get to rob people any more than the rest of us. All it does is send people elsewhere.
But honestly I'm happy for the final push to Linux. I've been telling myself to make the change for a few years now but what's happening with AI training and side-loading / complete loss of privacy / general horrible vibes in the closed-source tech-sector..... Linux it is. I'm even ready for the learning curve. I grew up on dos, I'm sure I can find my way around it.
Lol it's been great getting off of Windows over the last few months.
I thought I would miss it, but Proton in Steam has been amazing on Ubuntu, with some exceptions (Stupid EA crap from skate. 2025).
Dual booting for now is OK, but gaming is pretty garbage anyway, so I will probably abandon Windows entirely soon. Definitely my last version of it. Feel so liberated having hobbies off computer anyway, and now using my computers with Ubuntu is actually enjoyable again instead of driving an expensive spy machine.
It shows as installable on Ubuntu in Steam, so I hilariously found out after installing Ubuntu and skate on my gf’s computer only to not be able to play it 😆
upgraded to 11 for free from win2k? dual boot linux and just running updates and rebooting the win11 every few months. paid $100 for win2k a long time ago. stupid giant passkey license, no thanks. got a free account and switched to digital at some point.
The workarounds people come up with to not make an MS account seem crazy to me. What difference does it really make if its a local account or not? You are still using windows so clearly you are ok with everything else, but the account is too much?
Using a Microsoft cloud account to log into my local computer means Microsoft owns credentials to a device in my house, and if they get hacked (which they do, all the fucking time), my device is less secure because of it and my data is less secure because of it.
There's absolutely no need for my copy of Windows to require me to login using a cloud-based account.
You can use all manner of apps to disable the telemetry and privacy nonsense that people have issues with Windows about (and I similarly find Microsoft's privacy-last approach to be tedious), but if your computer requires you to use a cloud account to log in, then your computer is susceptible to that cloud account being hijacked or hacked and Microsoft has given absolutely no good reason for this to be the case.
Logging in to a Microsoft account doesn't provide any real benefit to the user at all, the best you can say is that you're not prompted to log in again if you run the Microsoft Store or the Xbox app, and that's not a compelling benefit.
Well, at least in 10, the username is something dumb and you can't change it during creation (or everywhere easily after creation) when doing an online account. But linking after you create your account let you set it to whatever. So there may be people who are fine with online accounts but just want to set their usernames to whatever.
I don't have a personal Microsoft account, and have no desire to create one more account, but am required by my organisation to use 1 Windows-only software for 2 hours every week. As such, I run that in a Windows VM on my computer, and this doesn't seem like it'd be worth the effort of making a MS account
ChrisTitusTech's latest video on it... You're welcome. He has a curl you can use at any point in the installer to bypass the whole thing and land on desktop in a local account named admin
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Syria has published the results of its first parliamentary election since the government of former President Bashar al-Assad was toppled, revealing that most new members of the revamped People’s Assembly are Sunni Muslim and male.
Electoral commission spokesperson Nawar Najmeh told a press conference on Monday that only four percent of the 119 members selected in the indirect vote were women and only two Christians were among the winners, sparking concerns about inclusivity and fairness.
Sunday’s vote saw around 6,000 members of regional electoral colleges choose candidates from preapproved lists, part of a process to produce nearly two-thirds of the new 210-seat body. President Ahmed al-Sharaa will later select the remaining third.
Citing security and political reasons, authorities postponed the vote in areas outside government control, including Kurdish-held parts of Syria’s north and northeast, as well as the province of Suwayda, held by the Druze minority. Those suspensions left 21 seats empty.
In late 1973, five members of the Black September Palestinian militant group were arrested thanks to a tipoff from the Mossad, which claimed they were preparing to shoot down an Israeli commercial airliner at Rome’s largest airport with ground-to-air missiles. However, Moro arranged for them to be released a month later, then transported to Libya.
The Black September members were first flown to Malta on an Italian transport plane known as Argo 16 — which was routinely used to ferry Operation Gladio operatives to a secret training base in Sardinia, and deliver CIA/MI6 weapons to secret depots dotted around the country. When Mossad observed the Palestinians there and realized they’d been freed, they became “very annoyed,” according to Rome’s then counterespionage chief, Ambrogio Viviani.
On November 23 1973, Argo 16 crashed shortly after taking off from Venice Airport, killing the entire veteran crew.
An initial probe concluded the tragedy was an accident, but the case was reopened by the Venice prosecutor’s office in 1986. That investigation faltered as well, when security and intelligence officials refused to testify, and began withholding evidence. However, the judge overseeing the case, Carlo Mastelloni, told Salerno there was no doubt, based on “objective evidence,” that the plane’s downing was Israel’s dirty work.
“It’s all tied to the famous ‘Moro agreement,’” Mastelloni asserted. Argo 16’s sabotage was not only “retaliation” for the release of the arrested Palestinians, but a “warning” over Italy’s “concessions” to “Tel Aviv’s enemies,” he stated. Still, Lodo Moro continued to hold despite the implicit threat of violence, which raises the question of whether Mossad felt the need to up the ante.
Unsure if it's so much as degrowth but to alter our approach. Quite trying to scale up 1800 and 1900s tech and science and modernize our society and infrastructure. Creating loop systems rather than coal power and other poor energy sources.
Well yeah any potential solution is going to mean reduced potential profit, which you could describe as degrowth, but that would be the worst possible way to describe it.
The reason why we haven't gotten anywhere with carbon reduction is because wealthy people block any efforts.
Telling them that degrowth is the solution is unlikely to motivate them.
The first step would be to educate people with anarchist literature. It would be a process dismantling hierarchies without destroying our society of connectivity but I believe its possible. I believe people are, and are becoming more, altruistic on average otherwise civilization would not have been an emergent property of our collectivism.
If you feel you can't educate others, assist those who can. You'll never stop bad people from existing, but you can remove the ladders they seize to lord over us.
After not being able to beat Ukraine within 5 years Putin is definitely starting a ground invasion of Europe, which already spends 4 times more on weapons than Russia
GENEVA (AP) — Facing growing global calls to suspend Israeli teams from soccer, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Thursday the governing body must promote peace and unity and could not solve political issues.
Norway was among European soccer federations urging UEFA to call a vote of its executive committee ahead of the FIFA meeting in Zurich on suspending Israeli teams from international competitions. Turkey’s soccer body directly called on UEFA and FIFA to suspend Israel.
Any vote of the 20-member UEFA panel seemed likely to pass, people familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press, despite opposition from some members including Israel and Germany.
FIFA and Infantino — who has built close ties to Trump ahead of the U.S. co-hosting the World Cup next year with Canada and Mexico — were never likely to follow any UEFA vote. That prospect became even more distant last week when the U.S. State Department said it would work to protect Israel’s status in soccer.
"This genocide and other genocides are being enabled and fueled by our own governments, our institutions, our media, and companies. It is our responsibility to end that complicity."
The original message makes it sounds like somehow before two years ago everything was fine with Gaza. That what Israel was doing in the 78 years prior to that was no issue. I want OP to expand on his or her thoughts.
Israel hasn't "gone too far" now... Israel was already going to far before that. If fast genocide was your redline as opposed to slower territorial expansion, seige warfare, and occupation... Yeah you're the reasonthis they've had free reign to take the situation to it's current inevitable consequence.
You have to understand that not everyone was/is aware Israel's doings. The media in the west has always supported Israel, so you never heard anything negative about them. You cannot blame someone who could have had no prior knowledge of it and tell them they are the reason Israel had free reign, that's crazy talk. Anyone standing against what they are doing now or in the past is a good thing.
Did you even know until the last couple years? Until the attack happened?
If so, why weren't you being vocal and active about it? I could flip it on the head and say you are the reason Israel have had this free reign, because you knew and didn't tell us. See how dumb that sounds?
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Well, they never said when Israel went too far, just that they have. You can also be misinformed about a subject and retroactively see they went too far much earlier than you thought.
i've been liking her more each time i heard of and from her. she has been and is an inspirational young woman, worthy of much more praise than i have time for now. i especially applaud her uncompromising outspokenness on the issues of the modern world, most of which are present and evident in Gaza/Palestine. i think i remember she confirmed that her personal focus has shifted from environmentalism to dismantling capitalism, and i think taking her reknown globally and using it to expose the absolute depravity of the zionist establishment is vital work. everyone should be more like greta.
indeed. i hope more would come to this conclusion faster, i don't think the ecological catastrophe is going to be kinder to humans the longer we fuck with capitalism. things are only going to get worse.
Personally I find she falls in to the category of people who protest things we already know are bad. So I think all she does is self-promote and accomplish nothing. I don't disagree with her on any of the things she chooses to fight for, but I think she chooses the least effectual way to fight.
Great, she's shown the IDF are a bunch of cunts who are preventing aid reaching Gaza. We knew that. What's changed? IMO all she's done is move the camera lenses from Gazans onto her for a while.
While confirming that she and other Global Sumud Flotilla members were abused by Israeli forces who abducted and jailed them, Swedish climate and human rights activist Greta Thunberg on Monday implored humanity to focus on the genocide in Gaza as it enters its third year.
"I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me, but that is not the story," Thunberg said during a press conference at Athens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Greece, where she and other flotilla participants released by Israel were greeted by a cheering crowd.
"What happened here is that Israel, while continuing to worsen and escalate their genocide and mass destruction with genocidal intent, attempting to erase an entire population, an entire nation in front of our very eyes, they once again violated international law by preventing humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved," she continued.
"This genocide and other genocides are being enabled and fueled by our own governments, our institutions, our media, and companies. It is our responsibility to end that complicity... to use our privileges, our platforms, to take a stance against this, that is in every way unjustifiable," Thunberg asserted.
"I will never, ever comprehend how humans can be so evil that you would deliberately starve millions of people living trapped under an illegal siege as a continuation of decades and decades of suffocating oppression, apartheid, occupation," she added.
Thunberg's remarks came as Israeli forced continued their bombing and invasion of Gaza with the objective of conquering, occupying, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the strip. Israeli airstrikes—which have reportedly killed nearly 100 Palestinians over the past two days—continued despite US President Donald Trump's Friday exhortation to "immediately stop" bombing the embattled strip, citing Hamas' willingness to conditionally release the remaining Israeli and other hostages it has held since October 7, 2023.
Trump urged negotiators to "move fast" toward a ceasefire agreement ahead of Monday's indirect peace talks between Israel and Hamas in Egypt.
Since launching the assault and "complete siege" of Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, Israeli forces have killed at least 67,139 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures are widely believed to be a vast undercount. Most of those killed have been women and children.
Over 169,500 Palestinians have also been wounded in Gaza and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, while hundreds of thousands of others are starving in an engineered famine that officials say has killed at least 460 people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation. Just under two miles away at the International Court of Justice, tribunal members are weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations and regional blocs.
Thunberg and more than 400 other Global Sumud Flotilla members were intercepted last week by Israeli forces in international waters before being taken to Israel and jailed. Thunberg told Swedish officials Saturday that she had been "subjected to harsh treatment in Israeli custody."
“She informed of dehydration," a Swedish Foreign Ministry email noted. "She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.”
Turkish flotilla activist Ersin Çelik said he witnessed Israelis abusing Thunberg.
"They dragged little Greta by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag," Çelik said. "They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others."
Italian journalist and flotilla member Lorenzo D’Agostino said that Thunberg was “wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy.”
Abducted flotilla members said they were humiliated by Israelis, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called them "terrorists." This, from a man who in 2007 was convicted of incitement to racism and supporting the Kahanist terrorist group Kach.
D'Agostino told CNN Monday that “we were shocked by the level of humiliation and gratuitous cruelty that these people used on us."
"The way we were treated was... pushing the mistreatment and the humiliation to the limit that they could afford,” he said, explaining that his captors “knew that they couldn’t harm us physically” if activists were from countries like Italy.
“I was sharing my cell with a Turkish citizen whose arm was broken and he was left without painkillers for two days.”
“People coming from countries that are not allied [with Israel] were harmed physically,” D'Agostino added. “I was sharing my cell with a Turkish citizen whose arm was broken and he was left without painkillers for two days.”
Israel's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that flotilla members' claims of abuse are "brazen lies," and that “all the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld.”
As of Monday, Israel had deported 341 of the 479 detained flotilla activists. The remaining detainees are either awaiting deportation or, in some cases—including one Spanish woman who allegedly bit an Israeli medic during a forced medical examination at Ketziot Prison—are facing extended detention.
The alleged abuse of flotilla detainees pales in comparison to what Palestinian prisoners have allegedly endured at the hands of their Israeli captors. Former detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.
The Israeli military has launched investigations into the deaths of dozens of detainees at the notorious Sde Teiman prison, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Another group of boats is currently en route from Europe in another attempt to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.
"As more ships set sail for Gaza, we are likely to see a repeat of these events," Amnesty International said Monday, referring to the alleged abuse of Global Sumud Flotilla activists. "States must act now and make clear to Israel that its suffocating blockade and its ongoing genocide against Palestinians must end now."
"I'm insufferable, and always questioning if people like me, because deep down I don't like myself. I must justify my isolation in both my community and myself by pretending that it is both the right way to live both as an individual and a community, because to acknowledge otherwise makes all the dark thoughts I thought I got rid of swell up out of my control. I am very smart." - you
I was just looking at another post showing a picture/drawing with north Korean and ruzzian soldiers smiling happy together. OMG I got blind sided by the fellows there. Looks like at least some of the posters were ruzzian and I had no clue. I ended up blocking a few. How can they be so confused as to what reality is?
1) Israel is evil now 2) bad people do or did live in Gaza but Innocent people should not be sacrificed. 3) ruzzia is an asshole doing the same to Ukraine.
But...there the ruzzians also think Israel is evil? At least the ones on that post. So I'm just confused.
Lots of those have been crawling out of the woodworks and taking sides entirely based on the politicians from their favored political force taking that side, showing us that they have no Principles and Morals of their own whatsoever or at least that their own inate sense of Good and Evil is so weak that even the mass murder of civilians (including thousands of babies and tens of thousands of children) is less important to them than following the leader of their political tribe.
Any half-way decent human being looks at this and judges it based on the character of the actions that are being commited, and giving that it includes purposefully murdering children (to the point of literally executing them using snipers) its so morally powerful that most people are unable to not have a reaction of revulsion, but Amoral Sociopaths have no emotional reaction to even the murder of children and hence couldn't care less about that aspect of this situation, hence will just not understand "what's all the fuss about it" and/or just mindlessly "follow the leader" on it since the part of a normal human being's character that would be shouting for them to defend the victims and stop the aggressors, does not exist in such people.
Its unfortunate that the way our brains process ingroup and outgroup perceptions leads to such depravity spilling out of what we'd consider those who are true sociopaths into the thoughts and actions of every day people. The bug in the code of human cognition that is social identity theory is essentially dehumanization, the creation of facism, and genocide.
Yes exactly! That moral compass was just not there. I'm afraid of this stuff spreading. What a terrible future that would be if I could not expect sympathy from a passersby if I had just been hit by a car or fallen from a ladder.
Yet, even now, brown people are being kidnapped by the people who are supposed to defend our country... And nobody around defends from the kidnappers. We are afraid.
In all fairness, I think it's a mix of what @loonsun@sh.itjust.works wrote and those people having a much weaker moral compass, rather than them being full-blown sociopaths with no moral compass.
Or to put it in another way, even in people with a moral compass, if its a weak one, tribalism can override and even swith it off, so that even when faced with outreageous displays of what a normal person would feel is Unacceptable Evil they'll take the side of Evil if their "tribe's chiefs" are taking that side.
I think this justifies even more strongly your fear that this stuff spreads - a lot more people than just Sociopaths have both weak moral compasses (we live in an age were Society deems Wealth as the measure of the greatness of a person, not moral behaviour) and tribalist thinking is both more prevalent and more subtle.
Certainly that would explain how in some countries like the US there is still a majority (or at least a large minority) of people justifying and even supporting (usually by parroting "Hamas, Hamas, Hamas") the mass murdering of Palestinian children by Israel.
In my experience in a small leftwing party were the old-generation decided as a group to pass power over to the newer generation some years ago, the kids by themselves are just manipulated by more recent propaganda instead of old propaganda (for example, the new young leadership, having grown up under Neoliberalism, saw many elements of it as "natural" and hence part of the "structure we have to work within", rather than seeing those as just political choices like the rest) and end up fucking shit up in new ways (that party has pretty much collapsed to non-existence since) rather than being wiser than the older ones.
Beware of fetishising youth.
As I see it, you need a mix of all kind of people of all ages and all origins influencing politics, rather than just people with a very narrow range of life experiences. Also regular change is important - dishonest people using positions of power for their own ends, entrenched control of power and unchallenged groupthing becoming unquestionable dogma, are all things that get swept away by regular change.
See! Exactly how I think! So I basically landed among crazy people in that other post. And clearly its a touchy subject because I just realized that my post here could be interpreted either way...but instead of interpreting it as I am a good moral person who thinks innocent gaza people should not be murdered and Ukrainian people should also not be murdered, I get down votes!
It seems like the "crazy people" in the other thread were very politely telling you to stop mocking North Korea's food insecurity. Should I conclude from this comment that you are arguing that North Korea's military support for Russia during its conflict with Ukraine retroactively justifies a half century of punitive sanctions?
Are you: 1) Inebriated and confused 2) A victim of what seems to be a fediverse bug that has cropped up in the past 2 days or so where comments are ending up in completely the wrong place 3) the worst propaganda redirection bot ever programmed/hired
Those people were almost as confused as me with respect to Palestine/Gaza.
Me, I'm with Gretta. Israel is demolish the Gaza strip along with its people regardless of who they may be. It's just awful.
Meanwhile the people in the other post appear to also think that Israel should stop murdering innocent people.... But Russia should own Ukraine. WTF. Just confused.
Hint: Ukraine and Israel arent that different. The severity and the colonial relationship with Palestine/Russophones Ukranians is different but in the end, both states went after civilians - even if azov militas are excused of being „non-state actors“ (they arent)
"This genocide and other genocides are being enabled and fueled by our own governments, our institutions, our media, and companies. It is our responsibility to end that complicity... to use our privileges, our platforms, to take a stance against this, that is in every way unjustifiable,” Thunberg asserted.
“I will never, ever comprehend how humans can be so evil that you would deliberately starve millions of people living trapped under an illegal siege as a continuation of decades and decades of suffocating oppression, apartheid, occupation,” she added.
"This genocide and other genocides are being enabled and fueled by our own governments, our institutions, our media, and companies. It is our responsibility to end that complicity."
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker accused President Trump of "inciting" citizens to violence against ICE and border patrol agents with his "unconstitutional invasion"
Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adop…
I had to do a bit of research to remind myself. We did this in university as an exercise, so it was a while ago.
Basically with N signals (speakers) and M mixes (microphones). When M > N then you can create an MxN matrix and solve it numerically, and we were able to do that pretty easily. We also did the case where M=N as a demo and we used ICA for that with either projection pursuit or SVD, I can't remember.
With modern models this would be even easier with fewer microphones, and there's been a lot of time and money between when these methods were devised and now.
Psychiatrists have joined other public health groups in calling for the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.
Two psychiatry organizations — the Southern California Psychiatry Society and the recently formed grassroots Committee to Protect Public Mental Health — have released statements saying that the actions of the leader of the Department of Health and Human Services have increased stigma, instilled fear and hurt access to mental health and addiction care.
"As physicians committed to evidence-based care, we are alarmed by the direction of HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr," the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health said in a statement.
The Earth became darker from 2001 to 2024, meaning it reflects less sunlight, a research team reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Google Calls ICE Agents a Vulnerable Group, Removes ICE-Spotting App ‘Red Dot’
Both Google and Apple recently removed Red Dot, an app people can use to report sightings of ICE officials, from their respective app stores, 404 Media has found. The move comes after Apple removed ICEBlock, a much more prominent app, from its App Store on Thursday following direct pressure from U.S. Department of Justice officials. Google told 404 Media it removed apps because they shared the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that recently faced a violent act connected to these sorts of ICE-spotting apps—a veiled reference to ICE officials.
The move signals a broader crackdown on apps that are designed to keep communities safe by crowdsourcing the location of ICE officials. Authorities have claimed that Joshua Jahn, the suspected shooter of an ICE facility in September and who killed a detainee, searched his phone for various tracking apps. A long-running immigration support group on the ground in Chicago, where ICE is currently focused, told 404 Media some of its members use Red Dot.
💡 Do you know anything else about these apps and their removal? Do you work at Google, Apple, or ICE? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
“Ready to Protect Your Community?” the website for Red Dot reads. “Download Red Dot and help build a stronger protection network.”
The site provides links to the app’s page on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. As of at least Friday, both of those links return errors. “This app is currently not available in your country or region,” says the Apple one, and “We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server,” says the Google one.
The app allows people to report ICE presence or activity, along with details such as the location and time, according to Red Dot’s website. The app then notifies nearby community members, and users can receive alerts about ICE activity in their area, the website says.
Google confirmed to 404 Media that it removed Red Dot. Google said it did not receive any outreach from the Department of Justice about this issue and that it bans apps with a high risk of abuse. Without talking about the shooting at the ICE facility specifically, the company said it removed apps that share the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group after a recent violent act against them connected to this sort of app. Google said apps that have user generated content must also conduct content moderation. playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2… Google added in a statement that “ICEBlock was never available on Google Play, but we removed similar apps for violations of our policies.”
Google’s Play Store policies say the platform does not allow apps that “promote violence” against “groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization,” but its published policies do not include information about how it defines what types of groups are protected.
Red Dot did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday Apple told 404 Media it removed multiple ICE-spotting apps, but did not name Red Dot. Apple did not respond to another request for comment on Friday.
On Thursday Joshua Aaron, the developer of ICEBlock, told 404 Media “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” referring to Apple removing his own app. ICEBlock rose to prominence in June when CNN covered the app. That app was only available on iOS, while Red Dot was available on both iOS and Android.
“ICEBlock is no different from crowd sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple's own Maps app, implements as part of its core services. This is protected speech under the first amendment of the United States Constitution,” Aaron continued. “We are determined to fight this with everything we have. Our mission has always been to protect our neighbors from the terror this administration continues to reign down on the people of this nation. We will not be deterred. We will not stop. #resist.”
That move from Apple came after pressure from Department of Justice officials on behalf of Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to Fox. “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed. This Department of Justice will continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe,” Bondi told Fox. The Department of Justice declined to comment beyond Bondi's earlier comments.
The current flashpoint for ICE’s mass deportation effort is Chicago. This week ICE raided an apartment building and removed everyone from the building only to ask questions later, according to local media reports. “They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other," one neighbor, Eboni Watson, told ABC7. “That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where's the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, 'f*** them kids.’”
Brandon Lee, communications lead at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told 404 Media some of the organization’s teams have used Red Dot and similar apps as a way of taking tips. But the organization recommends people call its hotline to report ICE activity. That hotline has been around since 2011, Lee said. “The thing that takes time is the infrastructure of trust and training that goes into follow-up, confirmation, and legal and community support for impacted families, which we in Illinois have been building up over time,” he added.
“But I will say that at the end of the day it's important for all people of conscience to use their skills to shine some light on ICE's operations, given the agency's lack of transparency and overall lack of accountability,” he said, referring to ICE-spotting apps.
In ICEBlock’s case, people who already downloaded the app will be able to continue using but will be unable to re-download it from the Apple App Store, according to an email from Apple Aaron shared with 404 Media. Because Red Dot is available on Android, users can likely sideload the app—that is, install it themselves by downloading the APK file rather than from the Play Store.
The last message to Red Dot’s Facebook page was on September 24 announcing a new update that fixed various bugs.
Update: this piece has been updated to include a response from the Department of Justice.
Europa am Kipppunkt der KI-Ära – Sam Altman und Mathias Döpfner eröffnen die politische Debatte über Souveränität, Freiheit und die Zukunft des Menschen
Mit der Premiere seines neuen Gesprächsformats „MD MEETS“ legt Axel-Springer-CEO Mathias Döpfner die Latte hoch: Kein Politiker, kein Showgast – sondern Sam Altman, der mächtigste KI-Architekt der Gegenwart, CEO von OpenAI. In 45 Minuten sprechen die beiden über nichts Geringeres als das Schicksal Europas, den Sinn des Fortschritts und die Frage, ob der Mensch in der Ära künstlicher Intelligenz überlebt – moralisch, ökonomisch und kulturell.
Dieser Podcast ist mehr als Medienunterhaltung. Es ist eine politische Zäsur. Döpfner, einer der wichtigsten publizistischen Köpfe Europas, trifft den Entwickler jener Technologie, die unsere Demokratien, Arbeitsmärkte und Wahrheitsbegriffe zugleich beflügelt und bedroht. Der Springer-Chef fragt, Altman antwortet – und im Subtext steht die neue Weltordnung der Intelligenzsysteme.
Europas letzte Chance
„Europa darf nicht Weltmeister der Regulierung werden“, warnt Altman. Der Satz klingt technokratisch, ist aber Sprengstoff. In Wahrheit sagt er: Wenn Europa weiter bremst, wird es von der Landkarte der Innovation verschwinden. Altman kündigt den Aufbau einer „OpenAI-Souverän-Cloud für Deutschland“ an – gemeinsam mit SAP und Microsoft. Eine strategische Kampfansage an die digitale Abhängigkeit vom Silicon Valley und zugleich ein Testfall für Europas Selbstbehauptung im Zeitalter der KI.
Döpfner legt den Finger auf die Wunde: Europas Regierungen verteidigen Datenschutz, aber verlieren den Anschluss. Altman kontert höflich, aber bestimmt – KI sei längst weiter, als die meisten wüssten. „Wir haben Systeme, die unsere klügsten Menschen in den schwersten intellektuellen Disziplinen schlagen“, sagt er. Der Satz ist so beiläufig wie beunruhigend. Er beschreibt das Ende des kognitiven Monopols des Menschen – und den Beginn eines Wettlaufs zwischen technologischer Geschwindigkeit und politischer Trägheit.
Arbeit, Würde, Kontrolle
Döpfner fragt nach den Jobs der Zukunft. Altman antwortet, als sähe er in Zeitlupe zu, wie sich eine Zivilisation neu ordnet: „Kurzfristig wird KI viele Jobs zerstören. Langfristig werden völlig neue entstehen.“ Es ist die klassische Fortschrittsformel – und doch schwingt Skepsis mit. Die Frage, was bleibt, wenn Maschinen denken, berühren, komponieren, ist keine ökonomische mehr, sondern eine anthropologische. Altman glaubt an das „unerschöpfliche Bedürfnis des Menschen, gebraucht zu werden“. Eine tröstliche These, die aber zur Nagelprobe wird, wenn ganze Branchen automatisiert werden – von der Anwaltschaft bis zur Redaktion.
Gerade letzteres führt zum Kern des Gesprächs: der Zukunft des Journalismus. Altman erkennt die Paradoxie seiner eigenen Schöpfung: ChatGPT ist zugleich Werkzeug und Risiko für die Öffentlichkeit. „Ich wäre traurig, wenn KI den Journalismus zerstört“, sagt er. Aber er weiß auch, dass sie ihn verwandeln wird. Döpfner bringt das Prinzip auf den Punkt: „Ohne Vergütung für Inhalte trocknet das System aus – dann gibt es nichts mehr, was sich ‚scrapen‘ lässt.“ Eine präzise Beschreibung des neuen Urheberkriegs zwischen Maschine und Medium.
Der neue Prometheus
Philosophisch wird es, als Döpfner Harari und Oscar Wilde zitiert: Wird der Mensch zum Gott? Will Sam Altman ewig leben? Seine Antwort ist überraschend nüchtern: Nein. Ewigkeit sei kein Ziel, sagt er, sondern ein Irrtum. Fortschritt brauche Erneuerung, Sterblichkeit, Übergang. Altman träumt vom Leben als Landwirt, wenn die KI seine Arbeit übernimmt – der Schöpfer, der sich selbst abschafft. Das ist mehr als Anekdote. Es ist ein modernes Gleichnis: Der neue Prometheus will nach der Erleuchtung zurück in den Ackerboden.
Doch zwischen Technikglaube und Natursehnsucht bleibt die offene Frage: Wer kontrolliert die Schöpfung? Altman denkt in geopolitischen Kategorien. KI, sagt er, werde Kriegsführung, Propaganda und Machtbalance grundlegend verändern. Wenn „ein böser Akteur“ Zugang zu Superintelligenz habe, könne er ganze Systeme destabilisieren. Die Konsequenz: globale Governance, ähnlich der nuklearen Rüstungskontrolle. Der Vergleich ist nicht zufällig. KI ist längst eine strategische Waffe – unsichtbar, allgegenwärtig, unkontrolliert.
Freiheit im Zeitalter der Antwortmaschinen
Döpfner und Altman verhandeln schließlich, was auf dem Spiel steht: die Freiheit des Wortes. Für Altman ist sie „einer der schwierigsten, aber zentralsten Werte der westlichen Zivilisation“. Für Döpfner ist sie Geschäftsgrundlage und Überzeugung zugleich. Beide wissen: Wenn Wahrheit von Algorithmen berechnet wird, wird Journalismus zur Gegenmacht – oder verschwindet.
Altman plädiert für neue ökonomische Modelle: Mikropayments für Inhalte, faire Vergütung für journalistische Recherche, eine Rückkopplung von digitalem Nutzen und menschlicher Arbeit. Eine Idee, die Döpfner offen aufnimmt. Der Verleger und der Entwickler eint die Einsicht, dass Information eine Ressource ist, die sich nur dann erneuert, wenn sie einen Wert behält.
Der wahre Inhalt
Die Premiere von „MD MEETS“ ist deshalb mehr als ein Medienereignis. Sie markiert den Moment, in dem KI, Medien und Politik ihre gemeinsamen Bruchstellen öffentlich verhandeln. Altman und Döpfner sprechen über Technologie – und meinen Zivilisation.
Für Europa ist das Gespräch eine Einladung, die eigene Zukunft nicht länger als Beobachter, sondern als Akteur zu gestalten. Wenn Döpfner Altman fragt, was er Europa rät, antwortet der nüchtern: „Reguliert die großen Risiken, aber lasst die kleinen zu.“ In diesem Satz steckt eine Doktrin für die neue Epoche – und vielleicht das letzte Zeitfenster, um nicht endgültig Zuschauer im Theater der Superintelligenz zu werden. Für Sohn@Sohn wäre es wichtig, auf eine granulare Regulierung zu verzichten. Die trifft in der Regel die Kleinen und nicht die Großen, gell Herr Voss…..
Es ist, als ob die EU immer wieder die gleiche, düstere Melodie spielt: Regulierungswut, ein Synonym für Bürokratie, das sich wie ein Klammergriff um Innovation und Unternehmertum schließt.
She didn't seem particularly happy or well treated. Pretty angry even. But she's such a trooper that she changed the topic of her own suffering to the suffering of Palestinians.
She was pretty emotional at times. She only really smiled the once. You can see that it fucked her up a little bit, she's just got enough fire not to let it bother her on camera and mostly get on with what she feels like needs to be said. That is my read of it at least, from my uninformed perspective.
Reminds me of US COVID hospital workers begging not to be labeled as heroes, for a variety of reasons.
If you're not doing something material to further the movement, you're complicit in the status quo. I know we all have our own conditions and circumstances, but even small actions are important. Praiseworthy resistance shouldn't be heroic, it should be normalized.
The new owner of Paramount, David Ellison, participated in an Israeli government-led plot to surveil and suppress pro-Palestine activists in the US, leaked emails show. Originally dubbed “12 Tribes,” a reference to the dozen Jewish billionaires solicited to underwrite the operation, the scheme sought out American faces to fund surveillance firms run by Israeli intelligence veterans on behalf of Tel Aviv, as it targeted American citizens participating in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The files show former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was tasked with recruiting wealthy Westerners to fund surveillance firms operated by Israeli intelligence veterans as they stalked and harassed people whom the government of Israel suspected of harboring pro-Palestinian sympathies.
In the emails, Hollywood talent agency executive Adam Berkowitz identified Ellison as “very interested” in “helping out with [undermining] the BDS movement.” Berkowitz introduced Ellison to the Israeli general in a group email: “Benny meet david.
The new owner of Paramount, David Ellison, participated in an Israeli government-led plot to surveil and suppress pro-Palestine activists in the US, leaked emails show. Originally dubbed “12 Tribes,” a reference to the dozen Jewish billionaires solicited to underwrite the operation, the scheme sought out American faces to fund surveillance firms run by Israeli intelligence veterans on behalf of Tel Aviv, as it targeted American citizens participating in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The files show former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was tasked with recruiting wealthy Westerners to fund surveillance firms operated by Israeli intelligence veterans as they stalked and harassed people whom the government of Israel suspected of harboring pro-Palestinian sympathies.
In the emails, Hollywood talent agency executive Adam Berkowitz identified Ellison as “very interested” in “helping out with [undermining] the BDS movement.” Berkowitz introduced Ellison to the Israeli general in a group email: “Benny meet david.
Because it is. The leaked info is over email so there's no physical picture of all these figures together in one room. These are just the pictures of people who are implicated in it.
Three and a half years into its all-out war against Ukraine, the Kremlin is waging a parallel battle at home — this time against Internet freedom.
The Russian authorities are tightening their digital grip and rolling out sweeping new measures to keep people online in check.
Russian authorities' efforts to block calls via the Telegram and WhatsApp messengers have been going hand in hand with the creation of a Kremlin-controlled "national messenger" called Max, intended to replace foreign equivalents.
"(The Kremlin) has now matured to the point of imposing total control over people's conversations," Russian columnist Sergei Parkhomenko told the Kyiv Independent.
"Before, there were concerns that people might protest, and the authorities would have to somehow explain themselves — but now there's no need to explain anything to anyone: there is only one answer — 'There is a war going on, and therefore you, citizens, no longer have any rights."
Parkhomenko believes that "this is why Putin started the war — to gain the ability to harden his rule more and more, and thus guarantee his hold on power for eternity (or so he hopes)."
Analysts say the latest efforts to stifle Internet freedom are a logical step in the regime's evolution towards totalitarianism. The Kremlin is seeking to emulate China's Great Firewall, a comprehensive censorship system that Beijing has used for decades to crack down on dissent online.
The Russian authorities and VK, the company that developed Russia's Max messenger, did not respond to requests for comment.
Russia's efforts to introduce China-style Internet censorship began before the full-scale invasion.
In 2014, following the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, Kremlin-friendly companies took control of Vkontakte (VK), Russia's largest social network, and its owner, Pavel Durov, left the country amid government pressure.
Roskomnadzor, Russia's agency tasked with controlling and censoring mass media, began blocking Durov's Telegram messenger in 2018 after the messenger refused to provide encryption keys to the Federal Security Service (FSB), citing a terrorism investigation. Durov said then that it was impossible technologically and that giving the keys to the FSB would imply changing its encryption mechanisms and enabling the Kremlin to censor the messenger.
Demonstrators hold a stylized icon painting depicting Telegram founder Pavel Durov during a protest against the blocking of the popular messaging app in Russia, at a May Day rally in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on May 1, 2018. (Olga Maltseva / AFP via Getty Images)
However, the agency lifted the ban on Telegram in 2020.
The reasons for the change in the agency's position are unclear.
The attempt to block Telegram was followed by large-scale protests, and Roskomnadzor's efforts proved to be ineffective due to technological issues.
Durov visited Russia more than 50 times from 2014 to 2021, including on the day when the ban on Telegram was lifted, according to Russia's IStories investigative journalism project.
The report triggered speculation that Durov could have reached a deal with the Russian authorities.
After the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the country's authorities also banned Facebook and Instagram, citing the platforms' policies of not censoring calls for violence against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian soldiers. Meta, the owner of the platforms, eventually backed down and banned such calls, but they were blocked anyway.
In 2024, Roskomnadzor also started slowing down access to YouTube, citing the video hosting service's decisions to block Russian propaganda channels and its refusal to block anti-Kremlin content.
In March 2025, there were also disruptions in Telegram's operations in Russia, and it was banned in the country's Chechnya and Dagestan regions.
In August 2025, Roskomnadzor started blocking calls on Telegram and WhatsApp.
Roskomnadzor claimed the apps have become "the main services used to defraud and extort money, and to involve Russian citizens in sabotage and terrorist activities."
Analysts believe that this claim is just an excuse.
"This has nothing to do with Internet fraud," Parkhomenko told the Kyiv Independent. "Fraudsters will continue to use (and are already using) Max or any other tool in the same way."
In contrast with the Telegram block in 2018, now the Russian authorities are blocking Telegram and WhatsApp more effectively because they have acquired a new censorship technology — Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) boxes, Leonid Iuldashev from eQualitie, a Canadian IT company that develops tools for circumventing censorship, told the Kyiv Independent.
As the Russian authorities tried to block Western social networks, they also took steps to launch a domestic alternative.
In March, the Russian IT company VK released the Max messenger.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law in June to create "a national messenger."
On Sept. 1, the Russian government officially authorized Max as the "national messenger."
It became mandatory to install Max on all new electronic devices. Max also became the default messenger for government and banking services.
Meanwhile, Russia's biggest mobile operators allowed their subscribers to use Max free of charge.
The messenger is completely controlled by the Russian government.
VK, which developed the messenger, is owned by Russia's state gas giant Gazprom and tycoon Yury Kovalchuk, known as Putin's personal banker.
VK's CEO is Vladimir Kiriyenko, the son of Putin's Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko, a Kremlin heavyweight responsible for the country's entire domestic policy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and his first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko (L) observe an exhibition prior to the All-Russia’s Open Lesson in Yaroslavl, Russia, on Sept. 1, 2017. (Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images)
Max requests access to the camera and the microphone, as well as geolocation, contacts, files, Bluetooth, notifications, and biometrics. The messenger also logs all activity within the app and collects information about users' age, gender, phone numbers, emails, and social media IDs.
Although Western messengers also request similar information, providing such access to Max is more dangerous since its official policy states that it can submit any information to the authorities. Experts believe that Max will be routinely used to spy on users.
Russian residents interviewed by the Kyiv Independent provided different perspectives on the introduction of the national messenger and bans on Western social networks.
A 40-year-old Russian photographer who supports "restoring the Soviet Union" told the Kyiv Independent that she would not use Max, WhatsApp, or Telegram because she is against what she called a "digital concentration camp."
The Max Messenger logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Thomas Fuller / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
"I don't have a smartphone and have never had one," she said. I have a dumbphone and a laptop. I've predicted this whole digital concentration camp more than three moves ahead."
A 60-year old teacher who supports the war against Ukraine told the Kyiv Independent she has not yet installed the Max messenger but is not afraid of using it.
"I don't have any anti-government thoughts," she said. "I'll have to switch to the Max messenger — otherwise, I won't be able to access many (government) apps or use them fully."
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the fear of reprisals.
Since May, Russia has also experienced frequent fixed-line and mobile Internet shutdowns all over the country. The authorities argued the shutdowns were necessary to counteract Ukrainian drone attacks, but analysts believe it is part of Russia's efforts to tighten control over people's online presence.
In August, Russia experienced 2,129 Internet shutdowns — an all-time record, according to the Association for the Protection of the Internet. The global number of Internet shutdowns in 2024 was 296, according to Access Now, a U.S. group that fights Internet censorship.
The Russian authorities have also cracked down on VPN services that allow users to circumvent blocks.
"The logic is simple: if anything is out of control of the siloviki (Russia's intelligence and law enforcement agencies), it is a threat and has to be banned."
Russia passed a law in 2020 to ban virtual private networks (VPNs) used for bypassing blocks. Initially it was not enforced strictly. However, the authorities have stepped up efforts to block VPNs since then.
Starting from Sept. 1, 2025, Russia also banned VPN ads and introduced fines for searching "extremist materials" — essentially any information critical of the Kremlin — using VPNs.
Iuldashev from eQualitie said that the Kremlin is trying to block all major VPNs.
"But while they do it, VPN developers develop new protocols at the same time," he said. "We are still able to provide access to free Internet to people from China, Russia, Vietnam, and other countries. It's impossible to block everything."
By introducing sweeping restrictions on the Internet, Russia is copying China's censorship system, called the Great Firewall. Max is modeled after WeChat, China's state-controlled national messenger.
Iuldashev said that the Kremlin aims to achieve the same results as China, but the Russian system is more decentralized.
"China has fostered domestic substitutes for international services, and they ruled out most Western platforms from the outset," he said. "Russia, on the contrary, has allowed many Western platforms for years, and then they started (blocking them)."
He said that "it's hard to imagine that Russia can build a (China-style) centralized censorship system in this very diverse landscape of networks.
News footage on a giant screen outside a shopping mall in Beijing, China, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands during a welcoming ceremony before their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on May 8, 2025. (Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images)
"But the decentralized model also looks quite effective," Iuldashev added. "It's just another way to achieve the same result."
He also said that Russia is seeking to mimic the censorship technology of Iran, which is among the worst countries in terms of Internet freedom.
There is also speculation that Russia may shut down the Internet completely, similarly to North Korea.
But Iuldashev thinks a permanent shutdown is unlikely.
"On the technical level, it's possible," he said. "But it's strange to compare it with North Korea, because North Korea has never had a proper Internet. But Russia has all the possible connections to the global Internet."
He argued, however, that temporary and regional Internet shutdowns are likely if there are some political risks.
"They don't need to actually shut down the whole country," he said. "They can just shut down a particular place."
Iuldashev said that Russia started to create a "sovereign Internet" right after annexing Crimea in 2014. Now, however, this process has accelerated.
Ryhor Nizhnikau, a Russia expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said that "Russia has been moving towards online control and 'Internet sovereignty' for years."
"The logic is simple: if anything is out of control of the siloviki (Russia's intelligence and law enforcement agencies), it is a threat and has to be banned," he told the Kyiv Independent.
Arkady Moshes, a Russian-born researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said that "this should be viewed as an element of Russia transiting from authoritarianism towards totalitarianism, which implies total control."
Another Russian political analyst said that creating a China-like censorship model "requires additional technical improvements and overcoming users' inertia."
The analyst spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
"Even if they are not politicized, they are very reluctant to give up the conveniences of everyday life. So far, the state is not totalitarian enough to move everyone over to Max, but it is striving for that and will continue to do so," the analyst added.
The March 15-17 presidential election was the most rigged in Russia's modern history, according to evidence published by election experts, observers, and media.
Estimates of vote rigging range from at least 22 million votes to about 31.
I recently re-tried NOSTR (I technically have an old account I rarely ever use), specifically on Primal and the Fountain Podcasts app, and I really enjoyed how simple it was: just sign in, and BAM—you’re in.
No fuss, no extra steps.
It got me wondering—why doesn’t the Fediverse work like that? I know that using special login codes might be too complex for most people, but why not allow usernames and passwords instead?
Imagine a single sign-in for the entire Fediverse. You wouldn’t need to worry about instances, and onboarding could be much simpler.
Has this idea been considered, or is there a technical reason why it wouldn’t work?
Idk about nostr, but yes, the decentralized nature of the fediverse makes this very hard/impossible. Who has the authority on what's your login? What if I don't want a user to login on my instance because they're a known spammer? Etc
Nostr is a lot smaller than fedi so these questions are still being answered there, and they do have their own problems with spam. Since users are identified by keys and can theoretically pop up and start posting on any node, it makes some questions of handling spam and abuse potentially function a lot differently than they are on fedi. If you were gonna do a shared blocklist it would need to be a shared blocklist of keys, etc. As for the emergent properties of that and how it affects the character of the network... probably just gotta keep watching how it plays out.
It would have to be in a way that doesn't chain you to one central identification server that could ban everyone, but also still handles moderation actions properly.
People would probably also want their identity to be portable (movable to other source instances) which will mean different things to different fediverse services in terms of what would move, and things like handling username collisions. We can't even lift and shift between instances of the same service yet, whete it should be a simple one to one.
Most of all, a huge part of the conceptual point of the fediverse is that you should be able to interact with the rest of it from any point inside it (with exceptions for intentional defederation between some servers). On a conceptual level, you shouldn't need to create a login for mastodon when you can post to mastodon from lemmy, and vice versa. You create your login on the type of fediverse system you want the interface of, on a server instance you agree with the moderation policies of, and then you interact with whatever you want from there.
In practice it's not so simple, but that's largely seen by the various devs as a software interoperability thing, not a sort of single sign on identity thing.
Even aside from the whole "we should centralize the fediverse" thing, there's something I've never really understood about threads like this
Imagine a single sign-in for the entire Fediverse. You wouldn’t need to worry about instances, and onboarding could be much simpler.
I don't see where that would make any notable difference.
I currently have three different accounts that I use regularly and two more that I use off and on, and I just happened on another instance that looked interesting, so set up an account there day before yesterday, and will certainly do the same somewhere else in the not very distant future. That's what I've done the whole time I've been here - I start accounts, sometimes I use them and sometimes I don't, sometimes the instance shuts down, whatever. I just keep juggling some number of accounts, and always have. So I should be a prime use case for this sort of thing.
And I just can't see the value at all.
I can get to any of the accounts I currently use regularly with a single click, since they're all pinned to my home page. And I can get to any of the others with two clicks, since they're bookmarked. In the event that I get logged out of any of them (which pretty much never happens), I can log back in in about five seconds. And that's it - that's the full extent of the labor I have to put in
But every time someone trots out this centralized identity idea, it's presented as if it's some sort of wonderful labor-saving thing - as if it will save us all from the horrifically onerous drudgery of having to log in to separate accounts And I just don't see it. It's already almost entirely effortless.
Nostr offers this (completely portable identity) without centralizing anything, that's the selling point. Similar to cryptocurrency, your Nostr account is tied to a key. If you possess that key, you can connect to any Nostr node (assuming you meet their criteria - some require payment, some might have banned you, etc) and post to your account. This makes individual Nostr servers wayyyyy less important than servers are on fedi, and cuts fedi style inter-instance drama off at the knees, because servers are really just conduits for posts to flow. Yes they can differentiate themselves on e.g. uptime or performance or spam filtering, but at the end of the day they are just a conduit, not a community like fedi servers can be and often are.
Right now on fedi it's a pain in the ass to move accounts to a different server, if the one you are on supports it at all. Identity is only poorly portable at best. Mastodon only kinda sorta supports it in a janky way and there are plenty of bugs. Whereas on Nostr, which servers carry your posts doesn't even matter nearly as much as it does on fedi, where it matters a lot. It doesn't matter 0% on Nostr, but the importance is vastly de-emphasized.
It's just different approaches, with different advantages and disadvantages. Censorship resistance from the perspective of the user is a much more emphasized goal in Nostr's design.
Nostr definitely has some interesting/good implementation details, and on a spectrum of ease of censoring users, Bluesky is on one end, Fedi is in the middle, and Nostr (if it gets big enough) is on the other end.
But also with Nostr, I really hope you backed up those account keys, because if you didn't and you lose your device, your access to that account is gone forever.
Every way of decentralizing a social media system has advantages and disadvantages.
I do wish cross-posting between fediverse types (microblogs, link aggregators, image sharing) was as easy as cross-posting within them.
I know it's technically feasible to comment on a Lemmy post from your mastodon account (at least, that's what I was told), but it's not easy or intuitive.
I think the point there is that immigration is used as a way to paper over the fact that living conditions in a country discourage people from actually having kids. It would not be necessary if people had maternal leave, sufficient time to raise children, social services, and so on.
Which simply means that those countries also have societal pressures which favor not having children despite the measures they may be taking. Birth rates don't decline because of magic, it's a response to systemic pressures. It should be obvious that it's possible to create different pressures within the society that favor different choices.
You have to be full blood Japanese to be considered Japanese and to be a citizen. So any Japanese who marry someone not Japanese is a large net loss for the society. Plus it's impossible to become a citizen through immigration unless you're somehow full blood Japanese.
Oggi, considerato lo stato inevitabile dell’assoluto, sono abbastanza sicura che godo… ma, in realtà, un po’ sarà anche da stamattina che godo… per non dire in verità ieri sera tardissimo… Situazione assurda, lo so, ma tutto ciò è per via del fatto che, il nuovissimo software benedettissimo che ho finito or ora (…o ieri sera, […]
nuova aggreganza con la goduria integrata: rilascio aggregatore di feed Aggregodo (Aggregoctt v3 ma per bene)
Oggi, considerato lo stato inevitabile dell’assoluto, sono abbastanza sicura che godo… ma, in realtà, un po’ sarà anche da stamattina che godo… per non dire in verità ieri sera tardissimo…Situazione assurda, lo so, ma tutto ciò è per via del fatto che, il nuovissimo software benedettissimo che ho finito or ora (…o ieri sera, appunto, ma sono uscite rognine che ho dovuto sistemare al volo oggi), non si chiama Aggregoctt ennesimo, bensì AGGREGODO!!! E con una premessa così, cazzarola se c’è da goderne pesantemente… 🔥🎆🎇🧨
Alla fine, si: il mio incubo peggiore, ma allo stesso tempo il mio nuovo momento più ricco, si è avverato; ed assurdamente è da una settimana intera che ci sto lavorando… no, non c’è motivo di temere che io abbia acquisito la pericolosa skill della pazienza dal nulla, è solo che ho potuto lavorarci giusto ogni tot a pezzetti, per via delle varie palle personali, ma via avanti così ed alla fine è già uscito fuori circa quello che volevo, che già andrà a sostituire quel ripiego bizzarro che a questo punto è durato due settimane nemmeno… ma la goduria è appena cominciata. 😈
Chi sempre vuole giusto spiare i miei feed, quindi, adesso può farlo con , sperando possano essere gradevoli ed evidenti i dettagli bboni…I feed hanno le icone (automatiche, ovviamente), c’è una modalità di lettura integrata (spenta di default per evitare rogne che non sto a spiegare, anche perché è ancora sperimentale e da finire di acconciare; si attiva dal menu), e l’interfaccia è fatta col gradevole bellissimissimo Material Design v1, che fa bella figura su desktop e mobile (…anche se manca la modalità scura, che devo quindi implementare io a breve, mannaggia). Ma queste sono solo le scemenze, tipo… 🙏 Con non poca magia, sono riuscita pure ad implementare un sistema di scraping HTML per generare feed da siti stronzi che non li offrono, maa… non con l’XPath meloso che usano altri aggregatori (non tutti eh, la maggior parte a dire il vero non offrono proprio una mazza), bensì con una sintassi decente e per certi versi più potente… al punto da avermi permesso di creare feed da Facebook e Threads con poche righe di configurazione, e sulla mia istanza infatti già ne seguo qualcuno (e aumenteranno solamente!!!). E, ovviamente, l’aggregatore genera dei suoi feed (Atom) per l’uso con altri lettori, dell’intera libreria o di specifici feed, inclusi questi umma umma… (…Peccato che, al momento, proprio i feed per cui questa cosa più serve appaiono mezzi rotti, perché ho dimenticato delle robe, ma abbiate pazienza e aggiusterò.) 🤯
Non vado troppo nei dettagli tecnici, perché altrimenti lo so che ogni essere umano fa zzzzzzz, ma tanto per tutti i computeristi (e i selfhostisti, semmai ce ne siano) il codice è liberosu GitLab e su GitHub…e non è nemmeno spaghettoso! (Inaspettato, visto che ne ho scritto grandi porzioni a stomaco non troppo pieno, quindi mi sarei aspettata che la brama dello gnam potesse prendere più il sopravvento… ma forse in parte è anche grazie al fatto che stavolta ho scelto di usare TypeScript e NodeJS, che giuro, Python di questo passo mi farà venire dei tumori, con tutte le paturnie che mi sta facendo invece subire per Pignio…) 🏗️
Come cose da fare per forza, ce ne sono ancora varie… come ottimizzare la lettura dal database, che al momento su alcune pagine è un troiaio come lentezza… oppure aggiustare la ricerca globale, che ho accidentalmente rotto nel provare a migliorare le prestazioni della pagina principale (e che colmo sarebbe sennò) — ovviamente accorgendomene solo in produzione, e non poco prima durante lo sviluppo (e te pareva che non va sempre così con me!!!) — ma anche implementare tag e/o categorie per i feed (altrimenti, quando ne metterò centinaia saranno dolori), che però attualmente non riesco a decidere come fare… Una cosa è certa, però, almeno: tutte le rogne sono risolvibili, e per ora si deve dunque pensare solo a godere del potere dell’aggregazione acquisito per mezzo dell’Aggregodo… (Ah, e serve pure un logo, mannaggia.) 👻
(Tra l’altro… come si vede, ho implementato 3 viste per gli indici: una griglia di carte, simile al primo Aggregoctt ma più densa, una lista con miniature, che ho copiato spudoratamente dall’RSS-ripiego di cui sopra, ma che ho fatto in modo per me più gradevole, e una che chiamo “a flusso”, che è utile principalmente per i post dei social, che sono corti e da vedere anche senza cliccare… E stavo a proposito di quest’ultima quasi per dire che l’ho copiata accidentalmente dall’RSS-bizzarro, ma a guardare meglio la mia mostra le immagini bene, e invece l’altro le taglia a 16:9, oltre al fatto che la grafica ombreggiata del mio secondo me fa risaltare meglio all’occhio i post… quindi, se non dispiace, con oggi godo veramente infinito.)
Tyler Robinson, the suspect of the Charlie Kirk's assassination, almost got away with it all. This is how the FBI really caught him. Support my independent work: / thehatedone
The FBI is telling you that the manhunt for the suspect of Charlie Kirk's assassination was a result of a historic investigation with the use of the most advanced intelligence techniques available to law enforcement.
But the reality will tell you a different story. A story that is now very well reported and reveals how the suspect was actually caught. In what's about to follow, I'll explain to you every detail of the surveillance and intelligence behind the manhunt for Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter at Utah Valley. In reality, it is not clear whether anything the FBI did actually helped track down the suspect.
The most damning admission of this fact is that after a full day of endless investigation, full 24 hours after Charlie Kirk was shot, the FBI, Kash Patel and local law enforcement were so confused they had “no idea where” the suspect was and they weren’t even sure whether he still was in Utah or not.
By the time the police did finally catch Tyler Robinson, he was so far away from the scene of the shooting that had he simply kept running, he probably would’ve gone away with it. He was arrested 250 miles away, in his parental home in St. George, Utah, whole 33 hours after the shooting.
MSU researchers are developing FarSight, a drone biometric recognition system using face, body & gait recognition, with a $12M grant to ID people at a distance.
That's the summary of the video. In the video he argues all that surveillance tech is not worth it because eventually what worked was a traditional policing method. I.e. arguing to defun surveillance and instead invest in traditional methods
Its a channel relevant to privacy, so I'm sharing it. If you think 10min is too long and the description is not enough, its on you to find the info you want.
Its the privacy com and people post about privacy, so you know why your here to begin with.
I didn't watch the video but theres like software that can identify you based on how you walk. So if you walk completely differently than you normally do, like by putting rocks in your shoes and limping, you can hide who you are
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Huawei’s Zurich Computing Systems Laboratory has released SINQ (Sinkhorn Normalization Quantization), an open-source quantization method that reduces the
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davel
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