India said it was reopening its embassy in Kabul after four years for "closer cooperation" with Afghanistan. Afghanistan's foreign minister was in New Delhi on Friday as part of a six-day trip to India.
Dumb ploy in favor of the meat lobby. Consumers aren't confused, they clearly know it's a different product than meat. Stores put it in a separate section. We have hundreds of products with non-literal names to help consumers understand what they are trying to be.
The reality is that meat agriculture is bad for the environment, bad for public health (both individual health and for how it spreads disease), and is less shelf stable. It isn't going anywhere, though, so stop trying to put barriers in front of better choices.
Even the picture used in the thumbnail highlights how hard it is to ‘accidentally’ purchase a veg patty over a beef patty. There’s variations in the type of meat patties available like Angus, wagyu, smash, etc. but that’s not being regulated. No one is accidentally buying ‘sparkling protein’
And in the end, nothing changes except the packaging soon says "vegan burger alternative" instead of "vegan burger". Then the meat industry jacks up the price and people buy more and usually cheaper vegan alternatives.
I wonder if sausages with skin not made from intestine will still be allowed to be called sausages, since that's what a sausage is supposed to be made from.
I guess they'll have to come up with a new name for blood sausage too.
Interestingly, those names carry different meanings in different languages. For example, a "Wurst" in Germany (which now has to be meat) is either the meat based food product or alternatively a sausage shaped object. So the whole EU ruling makes even less sense because it removes long established meanings from words or makes those illegal.
Yes, but also why does the government need to be involved?
I understand wanting clarity in good naming and standards, but I'll never confuse a tofu burger or reconstituted mycelium protein nuggets with actual meat.
There is no real risk to the consumer in having language like tofu burger and veggie steak
This is exactly what is happening here. Heavily processed plant pulp being named like meat to deceive the customers, otherwise almost nobody with even a shadow of good taste would eat this shit.
I'm very much against the self righteous types of vegans that go around reminding everyone like they're an Arch user.
But... This is a stupid waste of EU time and resources. We have a lot more pressing matters to concern ourselves with than something literally nobody is confused about.
Some people in certain positions must be incredibly petty to even suggest this.
I've had militant vegan neighbours when I was a student. I don't know how they did it, but they found ways of turning every conversation about them and their "superior" life choices.
Then there are the vegans I sometimes meet during my summer work ours; the ones standing on the street and bothering everyone walking past them in a very persistent manner. Like a jehova's witness.
I'm not saying every vegan is like this. I think I've met more vegans that didn't rub it in everyone's face than ones that did. But consider yourself lucky that you haven't met anyone like that in twenty years.
Yeah, these are our biggest problems. Perks of living between but not under Putin and Trump. It's stupid though, but at the same time a big issue. Mega corps (in the meat and dairy industry) having too much influence, pushing these dumb laws. It sounds innocent, but there's a much bigger issue behind it. Same as in the US, how it all started and how it created the country's current downfall: Mega corps destroying society for their own profits.
The UK’s terror law watchdog has insisted China is a “threat to national security” and he is investigating the matter after the collapse of the trial of alleged Chinese spies.
Jonathan Hall KC suggested the explanation given on the matter was inadequate and the public deserved fuller clarity, as Sir Keir Starmer meanwhile insisted no ministers were involved in the pulling of the case.
The Prime Minister reiterated that responsibility lay with the previous Conservative administration which was in power at the time of the alleged offences.
It came after two former top civil servants questioned his explanation for the pulling of the prosecution of Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher.
[...]
Former cabinet secretary Lord Simon Case said intelligence chiefs had warned of the threat from China for years, while his predecessor Lord Mark Sedwill expressed puzzlement about why the trial fell apart because Beijing was “of course” a threat to the UK.
[...]
Critics have pointed to Sir Keir’s attempts to build relations with the world’s second-biggest economy as a possible reason for the Government’s reluctance to label China an “enemy” or threat.
Lord Sedwill, who served as national security adviser from 2017 to 2020, during which time he was also Cabinet secretary, said he was “genuinely puzzled” about the collapse of the trial.
“The truth is that of course China is a national security threat to the UK directly, through cyber, through spying and so on, and indirectly because of some of their aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and elsewhere,” he added on The Crisis Room podcast.
I realize my title has little to do with the post, lol, tired ADHD brain. I did have the thought that if someone were to be ambitious and motivated enough, the Red Dwarf code could be used to build direct access to BlueSky content into a Fediverse client.
But then, I'm always the guy in the corner pining for the good ole' days of Trillian for IM, the one client to reach them all ^_^
I was recently playing around with Constellation and - partly as a statement but mostly as a personal challenge - used it to build ATProto notifications support into my ActivityPub enabled web app (writeup here, I'd post from that but I think lemmy.world blocks it since I sent it too many invalid activities or whatever).
I already had the ability to follow someone on atproto by resolving their handle and hitting their PDS directly (without authentication - that's all public), and I also turned Bridgy Fed on. With Constellation, I was able to (a) find the bridged atproto version of each ActivityPub post I made, and (b) find any likes, replies, or reposts related to each post.
When a Bluesky post hits my inbox and I click on it, my app checks to see if that user is also using Bridgy Fed, and if they are, it shows me their post over ActivityPub instead, so I can like or reply to it.
More broadly, it might be interesting if someone made an app that used a PDS as its primary datastore, but also had ActivityPub S2S support built into it. I know wafrn can do both protocols, but I think in its case it mirrors posts to a separate PDS kind of like you're describing.
PandaCap is freaking awesome! Pretty much just what I had in mind when I posted previously about a single client to act as inbox for all ActivityPub and RSS/Atom content, only I had imagined it as a browser plugin or full on custom browser so that the content from the inbox would be opened in a client of the user's preference based on post type.
Really awesome project! including DeviantArt etc is really great for the art angle.
The only feature I would miss here vs. other clients is the search function as you mention. I assume that is omitted because it is a lot of work to implement. Have you looked at extending your project with someone else's code for that function? I know sometimes that is more trouble than help, but it would really take the project to that next level of "completely full featured client".
I have looked at wafrn, definitely a cool project and I like that it handles both protocols, but it has some limitations that hold me back from switching to it as my main client. I didn't know it was using a PDS in that way, do you mean it uses a server side PDS to mirror ATProto content or is it PDS per user?
I'm not exactly sure how it works in wafrn - I haven't looked into it myself - but last I heard, they were using blacksky's PDS (lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51892713) which I'm guessing means all their users (at least the ones who've turned atproto on) get mirrored to that particular PDS.
The search functionality missing from Pandacap is in some ways intentional; I don't personally like searching for anything in the fediverse or in Bluesky, because I run into a lot of text posts, photos, screenshots or whatever that I don't have context for and that I haven't mentally prepared myself to see. But there's also the technical issue that right now, Pandacap doesn't index incoming posts in one place; they either go to the inbox, go to notifications, or get ignored. If search were to be implemented, perhaps it could take the form of an external ActivityPub instance that indexes posts, and Pandacap would just hit its API or something.
The other issues with Pandacap are that it's single-user, and that it's on the Microsoft stack, so no one can really use it unless they're willing to sign up for Azure and know their way around it enough to get it deployed. But that keeps overheads down for me compared to running a VPS.
I've never tried loading a PeerTube post in Pandacap but I wonder if it would try (and fail) to display the video in an image tag, or if it would just show up as a text post.
Wafrn (tumblr alternative with fediverse and bluesky support) has started using an alternate relay; this means that they depend on none of bluesky's infrastructure to work.
Bluesky post by @[url=did:plc:72wa4qoe4ssxx2az3xljtq5d]Gabbo the wafrn guy[/url] saying: "Thanks a lot to @rudyfraser.com for hosting the blacksky PDS. After confirmating thatis ok, wafrn now uses blacksky's relay! In the next update other wafrns may also use the relay"
I think it could be. Cosmos DB might have to be replaced with a different EF Core provider - not sure which would be most appropriate but I'm sure something would work. Key and image storage could just be done on disk.
No man, he's trying to use this thing to divide Europe. US (not only Trump, even all previous presidents) don't like EU, it's a problem for the geopolitical monopoly of US. In this historical period, US need to reaffirm their economical superiority and want to call their vassals to the order. But EU is an obstacle to the US vassalage project, so they want to destroy it. They help anti-EU movements and at the same time the pro US parties. They impose double taxes and military expenditure (that is another tax). They pretend to EU trades only with US and US vassals by requiring economic taxes against China and support to Israel. They put at war the EU in Ukraine to stress it's economy. And now, their just using another opportunity to stress the relationships between UE states, because now Italy, Hungary, Polony, and France (which is a soon-to-be right-wing US friend) need to take position about it, and are just looking forward to have another opportunity to divide EU.
Yes, the US looked forward the war in Ukraine because it was another obstacle for the EU economy and its dependance on Russia and the commitment of the EU in it. It was also a way to make EU more tied to the US vassals than what it was before
Not to mention their continued efforts in destabilising MENA which has tangible negative effects on the whole Mediterranean area and to the rest of Europe
Oh wow yeah, that must be why we’re seeing all the Bundeswehr and Armee de Terre and Wojsko Polskie and so on casualties in the war as they fight against Russia.
Except that’s utter bullshit and none of it is true. What the fuck are you smoking?
I don’t disagree that the current US regime is doing its best to undermine EU unity, but at the same time, don’t parrot idiotic and patently false Kremlin talking points.
Before the war started, Biden’s administration executed one of the most shrewd and incisive applications of intelligence sharing and publication to categorically disprove not only Putin’s smoke screen of “we’re totally not planning on invading Ukraine”, but also pretty much their entire casus belli.
After the war started - and before the current regime took power - there was a frustratingly long period of time where the US more or less hung Ukraine out to dry, and we only started seriously supporting them (in a similarly frustratingly piecemeal and nannying fashion) pretty far into the active phase of the war.
There’s an argument to be made that the Biden admin’s policy towards the war was aimed at bleeding Russia out; while I agree that there’s something to that with regard to the outcome of that policy, I honestly think Jake Sullivan (Biden’s NS advisor) being such a categorical limpdick with infuriatingly outdated worldviews, particularly with regard to Russia, was the primary driver of why things were so stingy and halting for so long. The attrition was much more an effect of that hemming and hawing, and much less the actual intent - at least, until towards the very end of the administration’s tenure… at which point leaning into the attrition strategy was blindingly fucking stupid, considering the incoming regime’s obvious predilections.
I don’t think it’s coherent to try to tie the Biden admin’s policy - frustrating, myopic, and stuttering as it was in many ways - to how the current regime is trying to orchestrate things, for several reasons:
Orangeboi is still kind of obviously super Russophilic for deeply suspicious reasons
Orangeboi et al have an extremely transactional, zero-sum, and kissingeresque worldview, and are demonstrably quite frustrated that Ukraine isn’t acquiescing to being treated like a nice little obedient pawn
Orangeboi personally dislikes Zelenskyy, and orangeboi is notorious for letting petty personal disputes dictate his actions, and is further notorious for holding the most insanely stupid and spiteful grudges far beyond the bounds of logic and reasonability
Orangeboi detests his political opponents, to the point where his regime is disassembling pretty much every single thing not associated directly with him, simply out of spite and animosity
The war in Ukraine didn't start during the Biden administration, it started in 2014 with the Euromaidan, where both Russian and Western assets certainly played a role in the events, resulting in the annexation of Crimea and the "civil war" in Donbas where Russian paramilitaries and unmarked actual militaries operated.
I support the Ukrainian peoples' right to self determination and reject war as tool to settle disputes, but saying the US has no responsibility in starting the war is just dishonest. If they wanted they could have assuaged Russia, it's not like they actually care about Ukrainian people, but it was in their interest for this war to happen, so they stoked the fire. Is it solely their responsibility? No of course, Russia is the one actually waging war, but please let's be objective.
Oh - I didn’t by any means intend to say the US has no culpability in the war. We absolutely do. A huge contributor to the active phase kicking off in 2022 was the US and the UK essentially abrogating their parts in the Budapest Memorandum - specifically, their guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty to Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine surrendering their nuclear weapons to Russia (which Russia repaid by, of course, doing a shadow invasion in 2014 and an active/open invasion in 2022).
I blame Obama and Merkel for doing fuck-all in 2014. I believe Obama was interested in doing more, but Merkel dug in her heels because of that sweet, sweet oil from Nordstream I (and the at-the-time potential for NS II). She is never to be sufficiently damned for being a core enabler/useful idiot in this clusterfuck of a war that Ukraine is being subjected to. There are not a lot of politicians who fell further in terms of my respect for them than Merkel.
Bleak. But still you're perpetrating the picture the US likes to paint of themselves: the de facto sheriff of the world. Which has always been delusional (but something voters really go for apparently), and getting more so by the minute.
I also need to add that Russia's invasion was a European problem in early 2022. Sure, US influence had already been a thing in Ukraine, but imho all that has been blown up by Russia's troll army after the fact. Even "NATO coming too close" or some such - painting Russia as the victim, not perpetrator - wasn't a talking point until long after the war started. Seriously, Finland joining NATO? That's entirely your fault, Putler. That said, of course NATO-Russia relations have never been very good, almost by design.
Incredibly stupid even if he could, they hold the straight of gebalter which is one of the most important if not the most important military location in the world. Stupidity is the reason authoritarians destroy their own countries more so than even corruption.
All the American politicians that managed to persuade foreign states to voluntarily join an "alliance" where one "ally" is dominating everything, decisions, how much land for bases and so on, are all rolling in their graves now
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS These media sources are slight to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor cons…
Does the article have any problems you'd like to point out, or are we just being weird and racist for the fun of it? The Straights Times is Singaporean, not Chinese. The only link I can find between The Straights Times and the government of China is from a few months ago when the CEO met with several Chinese state-run news agencies to discuss collaborating to "tell the story of the two countries’ development and people-to-people friendship." That's the only link I can find. The Singaporean news outlet is most definitely not "a state owned newspaper by the Chinese government."
Edit: The Straights Times is republishing this article by Reuters. Any complaints you have would be directed there, not at The Straights Times. You're being weird.
The U.S. president demanded that alliance members allocate 5 percent of GDP to defense spending. Spain was the only country to refuse to commit to the benchmark.
This article doesn't even say why Spain isn't committing to the 5% target. The article OP crossposted says why in the first few sentences:
But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at the time that he would not commit to the 5 per cent target, calling it “incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision”.
Not sure how the Politico article is better in this case since it seems less informative.
Because the source is important, and Politico is generally more trustworthy.
With both articles, you can now probably trust what's in them (and maybe use context clues to figure out a little bit about the biases of both authors). But until seeing the story corroborated by a reputable source, I will not take it at face value.
So what does the dumbass think Spain is suddenly doing or not doing? Did he see someone from Spain speaking Spanish on TV? Does he think since Mexicans speak Spanish that Spain is also Mexico?
A) because they have more money than they know what to do with it.
B) because they think that greasing his palms will help them schmooze and collude with even more ultra-wealthy people, and get them even more money and influence.
Isn't that the same Infosys that is involved in scamming the H1B visa programme by using "projects" with non profits to bypass the H1B cap? I think it is.
Human trafficking with more steps, making a small group of people obscenely rich.
Naphtha is a primary feedstock in the petrochemical industry for producing olefins and aromatics, which are then used to manufacture a wide array of products, including plastics, synthetic resins, synthetic fibers, and various other chemicals.
Naphtha export loadings from Russian ports to Taiwan more than doubled in August month-on-month to around 370,000 metric tons and totalled 1.8 million tons in the first eight months of 2025, according to LSEG data.
China, Singapore, Malaysia and Turkey were among the other top destinations for Russian naphtha export supplies in August.
Milei had been struggling with market turbulence after a defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections seen as a bellwether for crucial mid-terms later this month.
The US has stepped in to bolster Argentina's floundering economy, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday announcing a $20 billion economic support package and the purchase of Argentine pesos aimed at stabilising the South American nation’s…
Argentina successfully repaid US$4.341 billion in debts under President Javier Milei’s leadership, signaling a commitment to restoring investor confidence. Despite ongoing economic challenges, sign…
because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (billionaire former hedge mgr) is friends with another billionaire (Rob Citrone) who is heavily invested in the right wing Milei government.
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.
Thats simply not true of the UK, the Crown earns billions off the back of the peasents. One example, every sea borne wind turbine pays a tithing to the king so UK citizens have more expensive electricity as one example.
The palace has staff in parliament to advise it if there is legislation it might deem inappropriate to the crown, they obterfer often.
No legislation is legal until it gets Royal Ascent ie the asshole signs off on it. Similarly on Australia where he abdicates rhe job to the GG, HIS representative (not ours).
The Crown has a massive land portfolio and rent seeks billions from many.
The UK crown is toxic as fuck, just becase we have normalised their repugnant behaviour means nought.
The previous Queen witch oversaw the slaughter of millions in the Mau Mai uprising in Kenya as another example
Trumps an arsehole no doubt but he's there becase that's what people wanted, they even had a look back on 2016 amd said we want this shit again bitot was their choice The king should be hung and the royalty disbanded.
So.. What are these two idiots going to do in a few months to a year when the dollar finally crashes under the weight of all the tariffs and other monetary malpractice committed by the fascists?
"The United States will deploy up to 200 troops to Israel to establish a task force to support stabilization efforts in Gaza, but no Americans are expected to be deployed into the Palestinian enclave, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The U.S. military's Central Command will stand up the task force, known as the Civil-Military Coordination Center, or CMCC, one of the officials said.
The CMCC's job will be to facilitate the flow of assistance into Gaza, including security assistance and humanitarian aid, officials said.'"
Heard from Sabby Sabs commentary:
Timestamps: 1. 10:54.000 - 39:49.000 Trump Deploys Troops to Gaza
Austin ordered about 2,000 U.S. forces to be prepared to deploy if needed in the coming days and weeks. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday that the units have not yet been identified. She said the troops would be able to respond quickly, particularly to provide intelligence and surveillance, transportation and medical assistance.
Its normal to be depressed in western society. We have all the food we could want but we have to work all the time for someone else, and its hard to get enough money to buy your own place.
Still, we have it better than most of the planet i guess. We dont starve, we dont have wars. Even though they are trying hard to add wars, since its so profitable.
After the Nazi invasion of Denmark this placed them in danger; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of Germany, and were it discovered that Laue and Franck had done so, they could have faced prosecution. To prevent this, de Hevesy concealed the medals by dissolving them in aqua regia and placing the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid.
Imagine if they announce "Donald..." drumroll "Duck!" and a little RC car rolls up to place the prize on and a big screen shows an animated Donald Duck receiving it overlayed over the RC. Trump would probably have a senile moment just staring and not understanding, lmfao.
The drone strike on Pakistan happened before he won
The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher.
The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable ground wars, but the programme has drawn much criticism.
If Norway just created a Noble Prize, would he notice the difference? And if you surprised him with it in person, no one could ever point out that it wasn't the Nobel prize as trump can't stand to ever be wrong so he'd say that's the one he really wanted all along.
Problem solved, someone can nominate me for the second Noble prize.
What worries me is what he will do after he doesn't win that prize and is no longer incentivised to maintain that extremely superficial pretense of "peace" that he's already awful at.
I don’t think deserving things (or not) is really a relevant consideration for people like that. They just have things that they want for whatever reason and the power (or not) to have them
Remember how Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft? He just asked to look at it then walked out of the room with it. I bet Trump would do exactly the same thing with a Nobel medal if he had the chance.
Trump did nearly the same thing with some young injured military guy's Purple Heart. Trump told him much he admired it, obviously fishing, so the guy offered it to Trump, probably never imagining that Trump would actually take it.
Instead, Trump said "I've always wanted one of these!" And kept it.
I had to look this up. Omg holy crap, that might have actually happened. How sad. Honestly after that I kinda hope they just made him another one and didn't tell pooty LOL.
He knows he's dying and is having an end of life crisis. He desperately wants to be liked by the same type of cunts that pick nobel piece prices as sail on mega yatchs before he starts getting fucked in the ass by Satan.
Overgrown toddler mentality. He doesn't use logic, doesn't consider other people, fairness, accomplishments, optics, etc. He just wants it, hasn't been told 'no' enough, and has Big Feelings about it...
The Nobel Peace Prize -once granted by a jury of scholars- has been given by politicians to other politicians for years now and has become just as worthless as you'd expect. Trump should definitely have one, just because he likes golden things so much. Maybe they should create a special category, the Trump Nobel Peace Prize, just as the economists did with their "Nobel prize" for economy (or whatever). The latter is not a Nobel prize at all, but who cares. Maybe put double gold on it or better put two medals and extra cheese in a burger roll. I bet Trump would like that,
Nah, one of his psycho followers with a tongue so far up his ass they can taste his boogers will create it for him, trying to suck up. Just like all the other absolutely insanely bizarre shit they’ve been saying/doing/trying for the last few months.
It's only "real" if your definition of "Real NOBEL Prize" doesn't include NOBEL Prizes being set up by somebody called Alfred Nobel, which is kinda like calling a Theatre Play done by somebody working at the Shakespear Globe a "Shakespear Play".
You will noticed that modern plays in Shakespear style are called Shakespearian Plays, not Shakespear Plays.
All this neatly illustrates how the Theatre World is actually more genuine than the Economics World.
Yeah, I consider it real because they're administered by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel didn't set up any of the prizes himself - they were created after his death by the foundation set up to d execute his will.
The Ig Nobels already have an occasional peace prize (the exact list of prizes changes year to year) but they're far too cool for Trump to get one.
The 2025 peace prize went to "Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language"
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious peace prize, held its final meeting on Monday, the Nobel Institute said Thursday, a day ahead of the announcement of the 2025 laureate.
This means a decision was made about the laureate or laureates before the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Hamas,"
We will be lucky if we have a democracy after his term.
It looks like he’s reforming the government so that it follows the dictates of the President who is wholly owned by the billionaire oligarchs of the world.
That civil war is a few years late. Not going to happen, everybody's glued to TVs and social media, too bothersome to get out of the couch and do something.
What if we get it in his head that he hasn’t built any pyramid yet. At his age, Khufu had probably completed and was buried in his pyramid; the one that is still visible today, five millennia later. Where is Trump’s? What legacy will he leave us? He needs to start building asap
Once he gets convinced and starts appropriating funds for that, we only talk about that. Non stop. That way he doesn’t make any progress on his fascist agenda. Just a narcissist tar pit.
What could go wrong? Worst case scenario we have an American pyramid that is not a casino or a hunting and fishing store.
Jesus Christ tells us to love each other. Even the sick and the mad, we should love. Turning a mental disorder into an insult isn't what Jesus would want. Jesus would be friends with people who have narcissistic personality disorder, because they're society's rejects, and because Elohim has been for six thousand years the god for the oppressed.
Trolls are people who try to upset others. I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by encouraging you to love the mad. But I'm doing neither, and I think your sense that I'm "trolling" in a weird way is your mind's way of telling you that. I'm here to spread understanding and empathy, not hate.
You just called Trump an oppressed in a very round about way in your last comment. Thats troll behavior. The man himself was pleaded to by a priestess to not stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime and he then proceeded to stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime. Jesus would want us to protect these immigrants.
I believe you think I called Trump oppressed. May I guess as to why? I think it's because you're of the opinion I simply must agree Trump has NPD, so if I call people with NPD oppressed, I am including Trump. But the only mental disorder I think Trump has is dementia. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a disorder. It disables or distresses the one who has it. Trump does not look disabled or distressed to me, so he does not have the disorder. I'm far more concerned about the innocent people you're vilifying who have a disorder you've chosen to treat with hate. They've done nothing to harm you. Please, think about what Jesus would do. Love your neighbour instead. And then we can all team up and sacrifice the orange Antichrist on a pyre.
We are all each of us capable of the same love, the same kindness, the same wisdom, and the same miracles as Jesus Christ.
23 “Truly[d] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Yeah, like they're going to give the Peace Prize to the guy that renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of WAR. Hard to imagine a worse mixed message.
Easier to argue that even WWII wasn't a defensive war (not that I think we should have stayed out of it, just that everything since then has been for sure us causing problems).
It's complicated. (Ignoring for the moment that we deposed the sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai'i for a strategic outpost and tropical farmland.) Japan wasn't trying to invade the United States at all, they didn't want us to interfere with their attacks on the rest of the South Pacific and thought crippling our fleet would buy them the time to do that. And we were already putting pressure on Japan with a naval blockade so it's not like Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. (And we had been supplying their enemies.) It's not really a "defensive war" for the US like it was in Europe.
I didn't forget about pearl harbor, that's why I said arguably WWII, I think that's the last time the US experienced a military attack. I'm not including terrorism here, but you could argue 9/11 was a military strike. I wouldn't tho.
Yeah, IIRC I wouldn't say that was a war of defense but it was certainly defense of an ally. Yeah the US got blindsided, then MacArthur got it into his head that he could unite Korea and loads of American and allied soldiers died. From what I've read, it was a bad one. I'd highly recommend the coldest winter by David Halberstam for ppl who want to learn about this monumental fuck up.
He's actually done a phenomenal job of redefining the limits of USA politics. I mean, he's completely destroying our country, and at a rate that even I have to acknowledge is kind of impressive, despite being horrifying.
Sadly, I don't think they give out the Nobel for that. But maybe we can get him one of those trophies little kids get for playing sports.
Not actually trying to sum it all up in a quick phrase. This here is just a late night kinda one of those “Yo, that sounds right” kind of thingy things. If you wanna bust my ball sac, let’s talk sports. I hope we are all on the same side politically speaking. If not politically on the same page then your mother is a Munt.
He's like Scooby Doo who would do anything for a Scooby Snack, or Kel who would do anything for orange soda.
Except Trump won't do anything. Like he literally won't do anything. He'll just say he did something amazing and then shit his diaper and retreat back into his mansion.
Give him one in physics and make it the sort of thing only an absolute moron would think is praise, like for his unique demonstration of angular posture; or in normal speak because he leans like a Pisan tower at a Houston rap concert
And Obama's drone strikes live rent free in the minds of an entire generation of people in the middle east. Still weird as fuck that he got a peace prize, but it would be much weirder if Trump received one.
Haha. Wouldn't it be awesome if the next POTUS after Drumpus, was awarded a Peace Prize LOL ? It would be the only reason to wish Mushroom Dick a slightly longer life, so that he can enjoy that moment too.
I was wondering about that as well so I looked into the dates. Apparently Obama got the award in October 9, 2009, and some of the first controversial drone strikes under his administration were in March and April of 2009. Dude came out the gate drone striking and the Nobel Committee just ignored it.
I'm laughing that the committee awarded the prize to a Venezuelan. Trump is going to be raging all day - all caps screeching about how he deserved to win, how Maria Machado is a loser, about how many conflicts he resolved etc. His government is going to be striking out against Venezuela (despite the winner being an opponent of the regime), Norway and the Nobel Prize organization. Fox will be on a rage fest too and all his proxies too. I guarantee that we'll see esteemed members of Nobel getting detained at US borders, being deported etc because Trump is a sore loser little bitch.
I think it's worse than that. His cult members are sore for him. Trump probably won't flag everyone he wants detained, but his disciples will do it for him to please daddy.
Not that I think Trump's not petty enough, I think he's not capable enough.
Your instance is heavily censored, both in terms of that filter, and also your instance admins who are very, very ban-happy towards people who don't share the same views they do. I recommend switching to a less controlling instance if that sounds like a problem to you.
I hadn't heard that they gave it to someone else until I read your post.
That's hilarious. Any day that Trump is unhappy is a good day. I love to see unhappy billionaires because they always thought their money would make them happy, and it doesn't. Their solution is that they'll finally be happy if they have even more.
Now we're going to have to hear him cry about it for the next year, like the world-class sore loser that he is. He'll probably try to get his followers to storm the Nobel HQ.
The bright side is that maybe he'll go around settling wars and conflicts around the world. Maybe we can steer his naked ambition to do some good.
Cool. How about them Epstein files? If you want a peace prize, they should be released to settle the matter finally. Then you can have your participation trophy Mr. Poopypants.
Why not offer a participation trophy called the ‚Noble Piece Prize‘? At his reading level he’ll not notice any difference and no one is going to tell him.
Even if this pause on Israeli imperialism lasts, he's simultaneously extrajudicially bombing foreign civilians, on purpose, in international waters. And bragging about it.
He also thinks he's smart, attractive, beloved by all Americans, and good at golf. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. It's never occurred to him that he might not deserve anything he wants, from companies to political victories to sexual conquests to accolades.
"But amid the naked ambition behind Trump’s push for peace in Gaza, even those who have been highly critical of the war have hailed the deal as a major achievement."
It seems like they are celebrating too early. Getting the hostages back doesn't end the war. Once the hostages are returned, they'll go right back to genocide.
Narcissism is scary and ridiculous thing. I actually know a guy who desperately wants to get a Nobel Literary Prize because "he deserves it!". Except no one rightfully gives a fuck. He's an old timer who ended up migrating to US after WW2 with a whole can of worms and then some regarding his national identity. Depending on his mood he's either Ukrainian or American, I'd say he's 100% narcissist who is all about clout. Dude never made it as a writer and gained notoriety in Ukraine due to his outsider status first and yet he's so vain it is kinda morbidly funny - like he insists he's the most experimental Ukrainian writer (even though he disregards every other writer as primitive and retarded) or that he did this or that first (like who gives a fuck?). But even with all these "accomplishments" he struggles to publish anything in Ukraine because wants publishers to cover the expenses and give him "the bag" for their trouble and when he fails at that he blames it on "Ukrainian people being ungrateful".
When you're looking for a peace prize while pitting US citizens against each other, you know it's because whatever "immunity" you got won't be enough to hide from your crimes. - People aren't dumbasses donny.
He knows he'll never see the inside of a jail cell. He knows he doesnt have the decade or so that trial would take, even if the house and senate magically flipped this midterm and the dems were able to impeach him and his court.
Major media and social media seem to promote the winner - Maria Corina Machado - despite that she is a Trump fan, and Israel supporter. Also in Mastodon she is trending.
Maria Corina Machado had strong political ties with Netanyahu’s Likud party and has said on Twitter that “Venezuela’s struggle is Israel’s struggle” when it comes to the matter of terrorism
Just make a Nöbel Prize, throw a big fake ceremony and give him one, making sure it's bigger than the Nobel medal yet also make it of yellow shiny plastic.
They're all saying it. Every time I see somebody they're saying the same thing. They say mister trump you're the most peaceful guy I know. I heard somebody say that once and now they're all saying it.
They all come up to me and stop and they say sir, I'm sorry to hear you lost the prize to a very nasty person. A real nasty person. I hear she didn't even win in her own country you know, and I shake my head and I say it's too bad, the state of things. A big shame. You know who else was big? Palmer. Let me tell you about palmer ...
If they award the obese orange lard souffle a Nobel Peace Prize, then that will just be another achievement that's become meaningless. It would be like giving Hitler a Peace Prize for not invading Poland a bit earlier. And Donny 2 Inches body count is in the same magnitude as Adolfs, and still growing. Associating Hitlerpig with anything prestigous will demean and pervert it. EVERYTHING Donny 2 Dolls touches or is associated with, DIES !
Its probably out of character for them, but the Nobel Commitee should make an announcement of things they consider disqualifiers for the prize to see if they can push him into relenting on his fascism.
You know, "we will not consider any leader as a candidate who imposes or utilises martial law to rule their country. We will not consider any candidate who orders international killings of civilians. We will not consider any candidate that ignores their own countries constitutional protections when it comes to foreign nationals living in its territories, etc.
I think they should give a NPP to Little Marco, or Steve Witkoff (ewww..), just on the chance that maybe Donny 2 Weeks will stroke out in rage.... Or another to Obama, LOL.
Yeah well the person the Nobel committee gave it to is a Trump supporter and wants the US to intervene in Venezuelan politics. They gave it it Trump by proxy even if he is too stupid to realize it.
"I believe that people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life," the prime minister commented on the new proposal.
Former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has called for a more flexible work schedule, consisting of a four-day workweek of six hours per day. Marin said that a flexible work schedule would give employees more time to spend with their families.
But for the guy bothered by snow, great news, winters in the southern Finland, especially in the coast, have mostly turned to just a 5 month long wet and windy autumns instead!
Well, with that Atlantic current dying down, Europe might not have to worry about things getting warmer for much longer. Scandinavia especially might get quite a bit colder, like comparable to northern Canada.
Oh if the Gulf Stream stops we are totally fucked - Finland is almost exactly at the same latitude the Northwest Territories of Canada. The capital of Finland would basically get Yellowknife type temperatures, and that would essentially be the warmest place in the entire country.
If that ever happens I'm just going to kalsarikänni myself to death in the snowbank.
I think Sweden would be a better bet. They've had bigger trials and Finland's current right wing crony capitalist government would rather see 6 day work weeks with 12 hour shifts to please their corporate overlords.
My first thought as well. So often we see ex leader spouting this type of thing after the fact. But during their time, they toed the party line to keep the working class down.
The idea floated in august 2019 when Sanna Marin was Minister for Transport and Communications (she did a tweet about that). Since then, it has not been introduced officially to the government agenda. (Source : Reuters)
Neither legislating a 60h workweek, nor a 40h workweek, nor a 6d workweek, nor a 4d workweek, CAN fit all diverse kinds of people.
Some are unhappy when NOT working all the time!
Many autistic workaholics would need2 jobs, to be happy in her idea of good, but it wouldn't ever work right ( 8d work every 7d week??
There NEEDS to be some way for there to be 2 categories of employees: workaholics & humans,
& the measured higher social-support ( including late-life health-care ) amplification for the workaholics obliges a higher tax-rate for companies employing those, in proportion with the percentage of 'em working that way.
( I'd be in the workaholics category, not in the "family" category, just so you understand I'm deeming my own category to be more-costly to social-support systems.
But the Industrial Revolution was on us, not on the family-people.
We are the blockheads who keep bashing-away at making technology work right, see? )
Sorry, my point is that there are fundamentally-different-motivations, & that fundamentally-different-motivations have to be treated differently, legally .. exactly the same as people-without-family can probably work significantly more hours per week than can people-with-children-to-care-for.
It isn't a question of just putting overtime above 40h/week, it is a question of having 2 distinct populations in the same workforce, & you don't make the law ignore 1 of them, not the with-family people, AND not the without-family people.
The idea is to place an upper limit on corps for the definition of a full time work week. If you want to work more, go ahead, but your employer shouldn't be able to compel you to work past that max number of hours in return for benefits. It's tricky because there's a legal component and a cultural component to it. Also some businesses will push back (especially service industry) because they will need to change their whole hiring and scheduling.
That's the right direction but it needs to make sure that the wages stay the same, otherwise everything becomes a part-time job and people are forced to find an additional job to get to their original earnings.
That’s equally valid of course, but unless you mean your birth family and not your own, the more appropriate and commendable route would be to remove yourself from the wrong family situation and figure out a new, working, one. It’s no benefit to anyone, least to yourself, if it’s not working out. Everyone will be happier for it ultimately, even if it requires some tough choices and a whole bunch of compromises, adaptation and potential heartbreak in the short term.
I mean the same is true for birth family too, but at least there it doesn’t matter as much, since often the first priority and the more day-to-day impactful one will be your own immediate family, so you can simply minimize the need to ever interact with them.
And there’s the moral implication, that you didn’t choose your birth family. But you did choose your own immediate family. So there’s a responsibility there in the latter that isn’t present in the former.
Unless the situation is that you didn’t choose your immediate family either. If it’s not working out, it’s even more of a reason to figure out a way out.
Unless there’s no way out. In which case, and only in this case, your sentiment seems agreeable and hopefully the situation doesn’t last. And if it does, hopefully you get as much time off as possible.
So is a 4 day work week with 8 hours per working day.
I honestly think a lot of hours we spend working are spent "working." I know my, and my colleagues, 40 hour weeks certainly are less than 40 hours but I also don't get paid enough so I think it's a fair trade off.
I do get my shit done though and work late if I have to so it isn't like I'm screwing anyone.
Seriously though I think we need to accept that we just don't need the standard to be 40 hours of labor as the expected time. We arrived at it artificially and can just as easily walk away from that and into a brighter future with less work and more time with our family and friends. I'm sure we would even see productivity gains as folks are happier and healthier.
I mean, if we all collectively, as a species decided we wanted a post-scarcity society where everyone is guaranteed whatever they need to live including food, shelter and healthcare, we could do it with relative ease. We have the infrastructure and technology to reduce work for everyone by a drastic degree, and many people would be freed up to study, develop science and make the system even more efficient.
But we're not even at the point of a 4-day workweek being acceptable broadly, we're not that unified species, we're FAR from it. Baby steps my friend. Baby steps.
I love how it's always former politicians and officials who come out to advocate for better things in the world.
Like, you had power when you were in office, you could have at least made the effort to broach this with the people so the next elected official with power can keep the cause alive so we eventually get better outcomes. The endorsement of people without political capital has barely a shred of power in the real world chessboard of political give-and-take.
Edit: Did some research, found what I expected, that it never even made it to government and was just "some shit she said" at an event and made a tweet about.
I found a user-repost of an old article in newsnowfinland.fi, no idea the reputability of the site or its politics but I tend to believe it based on the fact that the "proposal" never really went anywhere nor had any momentum in Europe. I tend to be very cynical about these stories because I've had enough CEO's who said similar sentiments and never made any effort to actually do the thing, because largely, liberal democracy haaaaates the idea of giving people any actual hints of socialism and social care, and tend to just serve the softer arm of capital.
How Finland’s fake four-day week became a ‘fact’ in Europe’s media
We take a look at how media outlets in the UK - and in Europe, Asia, Australia and USA - were all caught out by a Finland story that was just too good to be true. Because it wasn't.
Have you heard the news? Prime Minister Sanna Marin (SDP) is doing something radical.
“Finland’s new prime minister, 34-year-old Sanna Marin, has announced plans to introduce a four-day week” says the Guardian, underneath the statement that Marin has “promised” a short working week.
“Finland’s new prime minister calls for four-day working week” says the Independent.
Britain’s commercial television channel ITV writes that “Finland PM calls for four-day working week and six-hour days.”
“Four-day working week and six-hour shifts to be introduced in Finland” trumpets Metro.
Meanwhile in the Daily Mail, with millions of readers every day, the headline is “Finland to introduce a four-day working week and SIX-HOUR days under plans drawn up by 34-year-old prime minister Sanna Marin.”
The story is not just confined to UK media outlets either: over the course of 12 hours on Monday it’s been repeated in a Belgian media website; and been the topic of a call-in during an Irish radio programme. It’s been published in Australia, India and the USA as well.
And it’s not true.
Not only are these proposals not included in the Finnish government’s policy programme, multiple government sources told News Now Finland on Monday evening that it’s not even on the horizon. SDP politicians and party activists gather at 120th anniversary event Turku, 19th August 2019 / Credit: Jukka-Pekka Flander, SDP
Charting the origins of the story
So how did this fake news story begin, and how did the misinformation spread so quickly?
Back in August 2019 some senior Social Democrat politicians and party activists gathered in Turku on Finland’s southwest coast, for an event to mark the organisation’s 120th anniversary.
The weather was warm, the drinks were flowing, and the Turku Workers’ Association brass band – resplendent in their scarlet blazers – played traditional tunes while the guests sang along.
After then-PM Antti Rinne had made a speech, it was time for a panel discussion.
The participants included Sanna Marin – at the time Minister of Transport; Tytti Tuppurainen, Minister for European Affairs; Ville Skinnari, Minister of Development and Trade; and Antti Rönnholm, the SDP’s Party Secretary.
They sat under a canopy on a small raised stage, with a potted ficus and some SDP banners for decoration.
A moderator posed questions and kept everything moving along, but the whole event that day was about a celebration of the party’s history rather than formulating policy – which had anyway already been enshrined in Rinne’s government programme just two months before.
At one point during the discussion Sanna Marin floated the idea that Finland’s productivity could benefit from either a four-day working week, or a six-hour working day (she never suggested both).
Marin also tweeted about it at the time, noting plainly that it was an SDP party goal to reduce working hours – but to be clear, again, this was never official government policy.
The comment got some modest media attention in Finland but the news cycle soon moved on. Composite picture showing some of the misinformation about PM Sanna Marin
Tracking the spread of the fake news story
Four months after the Turku event, on 16th December 2019, Austrian news outlet Kontrast picked up the story.
Journalist Patricia Huber quoted Marin as saying that day: “A 4-day week and a 6-hour work day. Why shouldn’t that be our next step? Are eight hours really the last truth? I think people deserve to spend more time with their family, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of their lives – like culture. That could be the next step in our working life.”
It’s the key quote to follow here, and it matches almost exactly to what Finnish media quoted Marin as saying at the time. So in that sense it’s accurate.
The next time the story crops up is 2nd January 2020, when Brussels-based newspaper New Europe published an article by journalist Zoi Didili whose headline was “Finnish PM Marin calls for 4-day-week and 6-hours working day in the country.”
It gives the impression that this is an initiative announced after Marin became PM with the opening paragraph “Sanna Marin, Finland’s new Prime Minister since early December has called for the introduction of a flexible working schedule in the country that would foresee a 4-day-week and 6-hours working day.”
It gets several things wrong in that one sentence, and while it does reference the SDP’s Turku event, it doesn’t actually quote Marin saying there should be a four-day week, or six-hour days, and frames the whole context as if it’s a new initiative since Marin became PM.
It’s this article which seems to have sparked other stories especially in the British press, who quote Marin’s comments about people deserving to spend more time with their families, but offer no context or timeline for the original information. File image of computer, cyber / Credit: iStock
How should the government respond to fake news?
This is not the most damaging piece of fake news, but the way it’s been picked up, adapted, and crucially not fact-checked by so many otherwise credible media outlets is worrying in an era where people are quick to spread information without verifying its veracity.
“If the misinformation is harmful then you should really attempt to address it as soon as possible. But always consider that the misinformation is likely to travel faster than the truth, so you are looking more at damage limitation rather than anything more effective” says Fergus Bell, CEO of Fathm, a consultancy for the news industry with a specific focus on countering misinformation in media.
“It is useful to have a communications team that know how to spot stories that might be surfacing – this is going to be the quickest way to put out a correction as quickly as possible” he advises.
It’s sound advice, and may have been hindered in Finland by Monday’s public holiday with civil servants and politicians trying to enjoy a day off. But Bell says that countering misinformation might anyway have a limited impact.
“Because of the way misinformation can spread a rebuttal might only fan the flames of the misinformation and give it life. Drawing additional attention to it isn’t going to make it go away any faster.
From mega-embassies to alleged spies, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is struggling to recast the U.K.’s relationship with China to create a best of all worlds situation. But the U.K. doesn’t have the clout to pull this off successfully, and Labour doesn’t seem to realize this. It wants to both cooperate and challenge, without any plan for what happens when Beijing won’t play ball.
[...]
The U.K, along with the rest of its allies, is supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion, the worst conflict on European soil since World War II. China, whatever its denials, is aiding and abetting Russian aggression.
[...]
China has escalated this economic pressure into an explicit threat. [...] Back in the spring, China warned the U.K. that it would retaliate if Labour decided to classify China as a top-tier threat under the foreign influence registration scheme, which would have heightened the risk of criminal penalties for anyone who failed to disclose their activities with a Chinese state entity. In the end, Labour did not classify China as a top-tier threat.
[...]
It’s not hard to make the leap that China is likely applying similar pressure on the Starmer government to approve its proposed “mega-embassy” at the heart of London. Even though the application was shot down by the Tower Hamlets Council in 2022, China resubmitted an identical version of the application after Starmer became prime minister.
[...]
The irony is, it is because both Whitehall and the Chinese diplomatic staff in London mismanaged their handling of the alleged spy case that it may be politically impossible to approve the new embassy this autumn. And if what currently looks like a brewing scandal comes to the boil and there is a high-level resignation or firing, the ramifications could be more long-term.
Gray Sergeant, a research fellow in Indo-Pacific Geopolitics at the Council on Geostrategy, recently wrote a Substack post about the U.K.’s position on Taiwan, pointing out that last month Chinese jets practiced attack runs on a Royal Navy frigate in the Taiwan Strait. China-U.K relations, he concluded, “cannot, and should not, be good.”
While Trump’s plan offers the important possibility of a pause or end to Israel’s genocide, the worst of Trump’s plan for Gaza is embedded in its long-term vision. The plan amounts to a blueprint for external neocolonial domination over Gaza, under which Palestinians will have no formal ability to assert their rights or determine their future. Trump’s plan for Gaza denies Palestinians self-determination and says nothing of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Under the plan, Trump would personally chair an Orwellian “Board of Peace” that would rule over Gaza, with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side. The Trump-run “board” would convene an unnamed “panel of experts” who would create a “Trump economic development plan” that would “rebuild and energize Gaza.” But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.
Protection of political, economic and commercial interests has led to FIFA’s ‘double standards’ in countering anti-Israel protests and calls for sanctions, say experts.
Fediverse Report 137 - this week’s fediverse news
[ul]
[li]altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platform
Fediverse Report 137 - this week's fediverse news
altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platforms
Mastodon is getting Starter Packs, with more details on the design, soliciting feedback
A New Social announced a new version for Bounce, which allows you to transfer your account from the fediverse to #bluesky
AltStore, an alternative app store for iOS, is joining the fediverse. The store launched early last year as an alternative to Apple’s own App Store, thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. AltStore has been growing over the last year, and is now taking the next steps. AltStore is now connecting to the fediverse via their own Mastodon server. The integration that AltStore has build consists of every app on the store automatically also becoming a fediverse account, hosted on their AltStore Mastodon server. They explain: “Using ActivityPub, we plan to federate apps, app updates, and news alerts from AltStore to the open social web. Each AltStore source will receive its own ActivityPub account, which can then be followed by any other open social web account. You’ll be able to like, boost, and reply to everything, and most importantly all these interactions will appear natively in AltStore.” For now, they are using the microblogging format (ActivityPub ‘Notes’), but AltStore plans to publish new native ActivityPub objects specifically for software releases, that can be used by other fediverse app market places.
The organisation also has raised 6M USD in VC funding for further development. They believe that the long-term success of the AltStore is tied closely to the success of the open social web, and they are donation 500k USD to various fediverse projects. AltStore is donating 300k USD to Mastodon, and the other 200k USD is split across various fediverse projects: the bridging software Bridgy Fed (which AltStore uses to also connect their store to Bluesky), the fediverse clients Ivory, Phoenix and Tapestry, the mastodon server mstn.social (as operator Stux is also a regular publisher to the AltStore), and the platforms Akkoma, PeerTube and Bookwyrm, as well as the Fedify ActivityPub software framework.
Recently I wrote about how the app stores are the most likely choke point that authoritarian governments will use to apply pressure to force open social web platforms into compliance. Alternative ways of distributing apps that fall outside of the control of two Big Tech platforms is a crucial part of keeping the open social web open. AltStore connecting their marketplace to the fediverse is a great step into taking back control from these two gatekeepers, although much more work remains to be done. Over on ATProto people are also experimenting with distributing apps and software packages via the protocol, and the space of app distribution via open protocols is primed for more experimentation and projects.
Mastodon has shared more information on their upcoming plans to introduce ‘Packs’ to Mastodon. The design is based on Bluesky’s Starter Packs, which is a list of accounts you can create and share for other people to easily follow. Mastodon is taking a careful approach to designing the feature, and is actively soliciting feedback from the community. The main change that Mastodon is making is in giving people control over if and when they can appear in a Pack, as well as giving people the ability to easily remove their account from a Pack if they so desire.
One of the pain points for Starter Packs on Bluesky is that people got included on Starter Packs with no easy way to remove them from the list. When the Starter Pack got popular, that resulted in an account getting lots of new followers, but in a way that collapsed the context of the account, resulting in conflict. One of the challenge points with Starter Packs is that the identity of an account does not always match with what they are actually posting about. For example, if someone has a PhD in philosophy and sometimes posts about that, they might get added to a philosophy Starter Pack. But in practice they might mostly post about US politics, or reposts anime, which creates a mismatch in expectation and friction between the original account and the new follower from a Starter Pack.
Bluesky’s Starter Pack have gotten a lot of praise for their effectiveness in onboarding entire communities at the same time during migration waves, when entire communities move from one platform to another all at once. This seems to be one of the major reasons for Mastodon to also adopt a similar feature with Packs. But for Bluesky, the feature has turned out to be a mixed bag, with the developer who created Starter Packs being decidedly mixed on the feature herself. She says that Starter Packs are indeed highly valuable during migration waves, but that in other times they are susceptible to abuse for engagement-hacking, as well as the context collapse earlier. Mastodon is taking a careful approach with their Pack feature, and they are actively engaging with the learnings from Bluesky, so it’ll be interesting to see how the feature will turn out in Mastodon.
You can soon transfer your social graph from Mastodon to Bluesky, with the new version of Bounce. Bounce is a tool by A New Social, the organisation behind the bridging software that connects various open social web protocol. With Bounce, you can move your account from one social networking protocol to another. The organisation earlier released a version which allows you to port your Bluesky account to the fediverse. With the new update, which will be available on October 20, you can now do the same in reverse: move from the fediverse to Bluesky.
The projects by A New Social, both Bounce and Bridgy Fed, represent an effort to give people more control over their own digital identity and social graph. Both ActivityPub and ATProto give people the option to move their account to a different platform on the same protocol. With tools like Bounce, this capability is enhanced even more, with the ability to move an account to a different protocol as well. For people more interested in moving from Bluesky to the fediverse, the tool Slurp now allows you to import your Bluesky posts into your fediverse account.
Fediverse podcasting platform Castopod now has a repository for plugins for the platform. With plugins people can customise their Castopod instance to their own needs. As anyone can create plugins, this allows for greater diversity in development of the software. Castopod also announced during this week’s Fediforum that there are now over 1000 podcasts using Castopod.
A pro-Russian propaganda network has targeted the fediverse and Bluesky, “promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations”, IFTAS reports. Their findings are based on the work of the antibot4navalny research team, which notes that the campaign makes use of the Bridgy Fed to get their accounts that impersonate news organisations into Bluesky.
The ActivityPub framework Fedify has gotten a 192K EUR grant by the Sovereign Tech Fund to further strenghten the ecosystem. The grant will be used for further development of the framework. Fedify is already in use by Ghost, and is also supported by Ghost.
Mastodon is soliciting feedback for their new Terms of Service for their mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers. The organisation originally proposed a new ToS in June, but retracted those after criticism from the community.
China is increasing military activities near Taiwan and honing its ability to stage a surprise attack, as well as seeking to undermine trust in the government with "hybrid" online warfare tactics, the defense ministry said today.
Taiwan has faced increased military pressure from Beijing during the past five years, including at least seven rounds of major war games around Taiwan since 2022.
"The Chinese communists have adopted routine grey zone harassment tactics, combined with joint combat readiness patrols, targeted military exercises and cognitive warfare, posing a comprehensive threat to us," the defense ministry said in a report released every two years.
[...]
Beijing is also using "hybrid warfare" to weaken people's trust in the government and support for defence spending, and using artificial intelligence tools to weaken Taiwan's cybersecurity and to scan for weak points in critical infrastructure, it added.
"Through both conventional and unconventional military actions, it aims to test its capabilities for attacking Taiwan and confronting foreign forces," the ministry said.
[...]
The report said China is using a "professional cyber army" to manipulate social media accounts and flood them with misinformation to sow division in Taiwanese society and weaken trust in the government.
Chinese state media outlets and collaborators have also worked to weaken the will to fight, it said.
The ministry added China has also been using deepfake technology to make videos and utilising AI to "generate polarising political rhetoric".
[...]
The report was released one day before Lai gives his key national day speech. China last year held war games after that same event in what it said was a warning to "separatist acts".
China won't get a damn thing if they invade. Taiwan has bombs strapped to every server, computer, and machine. The moment China steps one foot on the island, everything they are invading for goes up in smoke. It'll cost them a million fighters lives for a bombed out island. Sadly, China isn't going to let that stop them. They have 3 years to take the Taiwan while America continues to crumble under Trump. Right now I doubt our military is prepared for any boots on the ground war because Trump just insulted every general and military personnel.
At the time of his arrest in 2015, Gui Minhai held only Swedish citizenship. Chinese officials have frequently stated that foreign passports do not protect individuals who were born in the People’s Republic of China, an interpretation that violates the Vienna Convention.
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial where he has been denied proper legal representation and access to Swedish consular services.
His current whereabouts are still unknown.
On 9 October, an overwhelming majority of 546 out of 593 Members of the European Parliament voted of a resolution calling on the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Commission and EU member states to urge China to release Swedish publisher Gui Minhai.
JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION pursuant to Rules 150(5) and 136(4) of the Rules of Procedure replacing the following motions: B10-0412/2025 (The Left) B10-0414/2025 (Verts/ALE) B10-0429/2025 (Renew) B10-0431/2025 (S&D) B10-0433/2025 (PPE) B10-0435/202…
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial
The first sign of the American order came when a Houston TV station aired video showing people in the courtyard of the consulate apparently burning documents on Tuesday night.
Demonstrations went ahead despite calls from politicians and police leaders for the protests to be postponed in wake of the Manchester synagogue attack.
Americans will believe this about a Swede distributing anti-Communist agitprop, then lose their fucking minds if they see a Confucius Center or a Mosque open up in their neighborhood.
As the world observes the 36th International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction under the theme Fund Resilience, Not Disasters, China emphasizes the importance of science and technology in strengthening its disaster prevention and response capabilities.
However, it is that seemingly arbitrary three-times-a-year limit applied to the People section that is most concerning. Why not four? Why not as many times as a user wants?
Possibly because deleting or recreating the data is resource-intensive on the servers. It might actually be a good sign that Microsoft really removes the data, not just mark it inactive, when you turn the feature off.
"Microsoft OneDrive is rolling out AI face recognition for your photos." To disable (for now), go to Privacy & Permissions → People section. (if you are in EU, maybe it is deactivated by default) source: https://x.com/ProtonDrive/status/1978109833690665463
Yeah but they are taking your data from the laptop your mum bought yesterday and put all the family vacation pictures on. Mum didn't know she had to kill off OneDrive or Microsoft will hoover up and monetise your memories.
Fortunately not... I'm generally the one responsible for IT maintenance with my parents' as they get older. Disabled OneDrive long ago since they don't use it.
No, you really, truly can’t “rugged individualism” your way out of a societal problem. Remember that wedding you went to a few months ago? Someone uploaded this photos and now your social graph has been recorded. When your friend’s kid had a birthday party a few weeks ago? You were uploaded and graphed again. When you were out at that restaurant and you were in the background of someone’s date selfie? Graphed again.
The only solution to this problem is real data protection law, like the GDPR in the EU.
Oh, I definitely agree. We need better privacy and data protection laws here in Australia too. In the meantime, however, I do what I can to minimise my footprint. I'm well aware that other people are going to be the weak link!
I'm having computer issues in that after a couple of minutes of running windows crash, I get a blue screen and windows forces a restart.
That's NOT my problem.
it's a very good feature. if you have too much work and need a longer break, just restart a few times. i may need to change my work laptop from macbook to a windows
This is why I decided to dual-boot Ubuntu and Win10 until I'm fully comfortable on Linux. Every single thing about Win11 just makes my skin crawl.
Last week it was the news that they're eliminating methods to install the OS at all without being signed into a MS account. The degree of snooping had no plausible explanation other than for Microsoft to harvest and sell your data.
As someone who was in your exact position several years ago, nice!
I'd recommend Linux Mint to newcomers though. It's based on Ubuntu and is even easier to get comfortable with (much better GUI for updates and app "store"), but it strips out all the Microsoft-like stuff that Canonical have been doing in recent years.
Pop!_OS (also based on Ubuntu) and Bazzite are also meant to be beginner friendly, and are particularly geared towards gaming on Linux, especially the latter.
Great thing about Linux is you can change your distro whenever you want.
If you're uncertain, or not ready to go through the process just yet, you can always just boot Bazzite off a USB drive and play around with it for now.
Preventing their shitty brute force protection from allowing someone to get a users MS account password because they are FORCING users to use a non-local account?
The computer would have to store a hash locally to authenticate that account offline, so this is very likely why this is here. Because they've enabled a path to brute forcing their cloud accounts without their servers knowing.
The windows shithole is just layers of bad design all the way down.
I think that’s why it’s recommended to encrypt files containing personal information with a separate tool before uploading them to any cloud service. It prevents big data from automatically processing your Information and protects you from leaks.
Why do you think no one asks for stuff like this? Facial recognition is one of the best features of photo storage systems as it lets you easily find all of your photos that have certain people in them. It’s fantastic for making shared albums with family members where any pics of certain people are automatically added once recognized.
Onedrive having it makes using Onedrive for photo storage and sharing a much better experience.
Only if it can be done locally. I don't want my fucking face going out to a bunch of asshole corporations databases any more than absolutely necessary. Shit like this is why I don't let people take my picture.
Not sure why people are talking about the “you can only enable or disable it 3 times a year” as if it’s an issue? This is generally a thing you’d either turn off or on once, depending on what it defaults to. Why would anyone need to turn it on or off 3 times in a year?
I would assume that the "arbitrary limit" is actually based on something like the amount of processing power that it could take to go through every single photo/file that is uploaded.
Anyway, even if it is arbitrary - what reason would anyone have to turn it on and off more than 3x a year? It's something you'd decide you either want or you don't.
However, it is that seemingly arbitrary three-times-a-year limit applied to the People section that is most concerning. Why not four? Why not as many times as a user wants?
If it works the same way Immich does, probably because they have to retrain the models every time you turn it back on and want to aboid poeple turning it on when they need it, then off again, then back on, ... Although a less shitty mehod would be to limit the amount of times you can turn it on but I guess that iterferes with their goal of harvesting your data.
A simple, lightweight PowerShell script to remove pre-installed apps, disable telemetry, as well as perform various other changes to customize, declutter and improve your Windows experience. Win11D...
One of the best-known photographers in Mexico. Her work looks away from the sensational images of violence that have for years defined the nation, and instead looks inwards, to the traditions, faces, and unusual sights seen everyday.
Iturbide came to photography later in life. She was the eldest daughter of a wealthy, conservative couple. In 1962, she married the photographer Pedro Meyer and had three children. It was after the death of her daughter in 1970, aged just 6, that Iturbide turned to photography.
The 5th image is perhaps her best-known photograph. Nuestra Señora de Las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), it was originally published as part of her photo essay Juchitán de las Mujeres (1979-86), a project which began with Iturbide's support of feminist causes.
Iturbide was also involved in documenting the indigenous cultures of Mexico. This image, Mujer Ángel, in which a woman carries a tape recorder on her journey to ancient cave paintings. was shot in 1979 in the Sonora desert, when Iturbide was living with the Seri Indians.
In many of her photographs there is a sense of playfulness and strangeness. These qualities are at odds with many people's expectations or experiences of Mexico. Iturbide has always strived to look beyond the lurid headlines, to the absurdity of life.
Folk stories and religious themes are common throughout her work. Particularly when the visual language of the catholic church meets ancient native traditions and the realities of contemporary life.
Iturbide started photographing landscapes and birds. She had heard the Seri Indians talk of the significance of birds, and she began to incorporate living and dead birds into her art; symbolic of strength and fragility, freedom and vulnerability.
In the mid-1980s she photographed Mexican-Americans in Eastside Los Angeles, many of whom were involved in street gangs. The cholos and cholas of the White Fence Gang would later feature in the anthology A Day in the Life of America (1987).
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
Reminds me of from 1995. It was built from behind-the-scenes footage captured from live satellite feeds from the 1992 Presidential election and the 1992 Rodney King LA riots.
I just watched that for the first time a couple weeks ago. Very enlightening. The bits with Larry King were also completely insane. I would love to see the debate he moderated between Clinton and 'Poppy' Bush in an alternate timeline. That could have been pure chaos.
The Green party of England and Wales, at its conference last week, passed a landmark – and long overdue – motion backed by the Greens’ new, Jewish party leader Zack Polanski demanding the proscription, or banning as a terrorist group, of the so-called ‘Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF), in reality an arm of the terror state occupying Palestine, as well as calling for an apology by the UK to the Palestinian people for the ‘Balfour Declaration’ that paved the way for the theft of their land to create Israel as an ethnostate.
The Green Party: IDF are terrorists
It is the first time a UK political party has named the IDF as a terror group, despite the Israeli regime’s genocide and endless crimes against the Palestinians for the past two years and for decades before that.
The motion calls for:
The Israeli military (IDF) to be banned under UK counter-terrorism law, so that participation in or praise of its operations could be criminalised;A formal apology from the British government to the people of Palestine for the Balfour Declaration;An immediate cease of Israeli military operations in Gaza, a withdrawal of forces, and the guarantee of humanitarian access – food, water, medical supplies – to civilians;Support for the International Criminal Court’s case of genocide, and a full arms embargo on Israel;The end of British training, intelligence sharing, and spy-plane flights over Palestinian territory;Use of British shipping resources to deliver aid to Gaza and the West Bank;Deployment of a UN peacekeeping force into Gaza and the West Bank to protect Palestinian lives.
There is, of course, zero chance of the Starmer government classifying the IDF – and therefore itself for aiding it – as terrorists, or of either Reform or the Tories, both strongly Zionist, doing so either. All the more reason to do everything to ensure a Green/Your Party coalition is in government after the next general election.
Now that I know what's really going-on: it's a policy of Netanyahu's "Israel".. it makes much more sense.
( Thank you Lemmy.World for informing me of that doctrine, the other day )
It also makes-obvious that you have to meet force with force proportionately, such that any player who always throws-around disproportionate-destruction so as to always-increase their control-of-the-world, you HAVE to hit them with force-equal-to-what-they're-throwing-around, XOR you are accommodating-their-gaining-control-of-our-world.
Same as always, G-D's law is reflective, and that means equal-and-opposite-force. ( yes, same as physics )
The really-sad thing about Netanyahu's "Israel" is that their own scripture, like Jeremiah & Isaiah, identify that their relationship with their god is cyclical: with-god then against-god .. and when they go against-their-god, then their-god torches them.
So, IF their scripture holds-true, and their god is as it/"he" stated in their scripture, THEN Netanyahu's "Israel" should be toast, shortly.
if their god won't torch them, or enforce-their-torching, THEN their god is .. evil, apparently, or intermittent, or .. periodic, or something.
So, the Scientific thing to do, is simply .. wait & see.
Let's see if their scripture is right, & they're getting torched, shortly..
If so, then maybe their god is someone of integrity..
( for a bit more context, Jews are ordered to NOT read all of Isaiah, apparently, by their rabbis:
1 entire chapter of it is forbidden because it looks too-much like it backs the root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph.
The whole concept of rabbis outranking the prophets of Judaism .. I find that hard to reconcile with logic, you know?
but ideological-contortionism is normal, among humans.. )
whatever. From what I've read, zionists insist that Ezekiel .. iirc it is 39 .. vetoes all Jeremiah & Isaiah, & blesses their genociding of ALL peoples around them..
Therefore genociding Palestinians is just the beginning, right?
Rabies is rabies.
Ideological-rabies is ideological-rabies, it doesn't matter whether it is "zionist" or "christian" or "islamist" or "capitalist"/moneyarchist/oligarchist or "buddhist" or "hindutva" or "atheist" or "confucian" or "marxist" or "leninist" or "right-wing" or "fascist" or mass-shooter or ANY ideological-rabies:
we've got the inherent right to fight against ideological-rabies!
Same as the right to fight against the biological rabies, & ebola, too.
Healthiness is a right!
Always was, always will be.
Anyone opposing healthiness-is-a-right is .. representing wrongness.
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
“Generally, our users choose the encryption that they apply to their communications to suit their specific application or need,” says a spokesperson for SES, the parent company of Intelsat. “For SES’s inflight customers, for example, SES provides a public Wi-Fi hot spot connection similar to the public internet available at a coffee shop or hotel. On such public networks, user traffic would be encrypted when accessing a website via HTTPS/TLS or communicating using a virtual private network.”
Can't decide the side of the fence I am on for this. Of course the vast majority of Internet traffic across the world is unencrypted. Anyone could be on the line between me and this Lemmy instance, just as they could if there was a satellite between us. However, you're also broadcasting it to like 25% of the globe and not even making any kind of physical infrastructure efforts.
Quest can't entirely guarantee nobody will snoop a fiber line, but they do bury them.
At the start of 2023, we sunsetted the HTTPS Everywhere web extension. It encrypted browser communications with websites and made sure users benefited from the protection of HTTPS wherever possible.
I mean, some parts of the protocols we use for the Internet need to be in the clear to work, DNS comes to mind. If you want that kept private as well you need to use something like tor.
But regardless, what people generally actually care about keeping secret is the content, not the protocol.
I mean, some parts of the protocols we use for the Internet need to be in the clear to work, DNS comes to mind. If you want that kept private as well you need to use something like tor.
Not really. We also have DNS over HTTPs, DNS over TLS, and DNSCrypt which are all becoming more popular. But that's still application level data that I'm not really talking about.
But regardless, what people generally actually care about keeping secret is the content, not the protocol.
A lot of information can be gleaned from protocol metadata though. Source, destination, which applications are being used, maybe more depending on protocols. Not exactly information I want to be easily available to the public, but also not exactly critical either.
Typically satellites have beams they turn on and off to service different areas, with one beam pointing towards the RAN that receives the data rather than just repeating a broadcast out to everywhere the satellite can theoretically reach. For mobile telecom backhaul via satellite it is standardized that the data should be encrypted for untrusted transport links so this seems to me like an issue of not following specs.
I remember reading that drug cartells in South America are using disused military communications satellites.
These satellites simply takes a signal recieved on one band and rebroadcast it on another band over a wide area, so as long as the satellite can pick up your signal you can basically talk to an entire continent at once, all while remaining anonymous.
Nope, lol. These suckers are fucking ancient. There isn’t any processing, you can’t overload something that isn’t actually reading the data or using a protocol.
They still use energy, no? To relay signals on another frequency. That should come from somewhere, and also the more different signals, the more noise. And without their input frequency being regulated, there must be lots of noise.
I'm not talking about technical things, just that IRL on regulated frequencies one can do something because people using it for bullshit are legally prosecuted. Depends on wavelength, of course.
But OK, now I think I get what you are talking about.
Well the biggest steps I'm going to assume are having a satellite dish, knowing where to point it, knowing what to send, then hope that someone is listening. Much easier for a hooligan to throw a rock at someone or find a can of spray paint
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.
Saatvik Green Energy, one of India's biggest solar module makers by capacity, said on Thursday it is shunning the once-promising U.S. export market as it is no longer "worth the risk" due to the thorny tariff issue
Are these likely to be used to get people off home coal though? To do that you need to replace the infrastructure that uses coal with electric. That's no small undertaking.
There's the tarrifs and theres the bizarre anti-renewable energy sentiment harbored by the current administration.
Personally, I think that's just coming from power utilities pushing the idea that, "it's cool if WE build a solar array but it's not cool if YOU do it."
No, it's stupidier and more nakedly corrupt. Fossil fuel companies gave Trump over a billion dollars in political donations, and fossil fuel jobs look "manly" and have "big trucks."
That's about it. He can appeal to rural voters in rural states working dying jobs while the companies he gives trillions in subsides to give him billions in donations back. For that, he'll kill the planet faster and trap millions in low wage, dangerous jobs instead of just letting solar and wind naturally ramp up.
If 4chan continues to ignore Ofcom, the forum could be blocked in the UK. And 4chan could face even bigger fines totaling about $23 million or 10 percent of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. 4chan also faces potential arrest and/or "imprisonment for a term of up to two years," the lawsuit said.
Legislative and regulatory changes or actions at the state, federal, or international level may adversely affect the use, transfer, exchange, and value of virtual currency.
That means they agree their business can be affected by international regulations.
I know, its hard to believe your eyes, but it does say they can be adversely affected by international legislation and regulations if they want to do business there.
They could always opt to use a US-based payment processor that doesn't deal with international payments.
It specifically talks about the value of crypto currency, which can be affected by any number of external events. I'm going to assume you're simply trolling now.
Your company’s policies, procedures, and activities which relate to the Services, in each case to the extent reasonably necessary for Coinbase to comply with any applicable laws, rules, and regulations (including money laundering statutes, regulations and conventions of the United States or other jurisdictions), or the guidance or direction of, or request from, any regulatory authority or financial institution.
Not you again... genuinely convinced this user is a bot. He made this same argument a month ago on a now deleted post almost verbatim. I disputed his claims with evidence and they continuously moved the goalpost through the entire argument. either braindead or just software please ignore.
Not who you replied to, but: there is no legal, ethical, or moral, requirement for a business of one country to comply with the laws of another. If there was, all business would be beholden to the most overbearing government on any one subject. And just to specifically state it before it’s brought up, being tied into the international banking system doesn’t change that; if a state doesn’t want its citizenry doing business with a particular entity, it’s on them to stop it on their side or come to an agreement with the other’s government. Which does happen, especially with the conglomerate hegemony of components of the international banking system, but naturally that means that the only time any entity of a state is forced to comply with the laws of another is when their home-state demands it, which ultimately isn’t the laws of the other.
4Chan doesn’t have their own personal payment processor that they’re responsible for. They’re tied into processors like stripe and accept all payments that make it to them on the US side. So long as it is legal, which is typically the only way that a payment actually goes through as processors refuse the obviously illegal cases like encompassing embargoes. If the UK doesn’t want payments going to 4chan through a processor that operates in their country, it’s on them to stop the payment processor on their end.
The UK knows this, the fines are just one step towards them petitioning processors.
Imagine for a moment that 4chan is a business that sells alcoholic beverages in the US. Now imagine the UK has instituted prohibition and banned the consumption of alcohol.
now, some enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to buy, smuggle, and then sell those beverages inside the UK.
Clearly, the government has intended to ban the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of it.
Now the UK government is trying to shackle hefty fines against an American company for having the "audacity" of selling a product to an individual within the confines of the US.
again, the UK banned the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of. 4Chan isn't forcing UK citizens to drink the alcohol. They are simply selling the product, within their country of origin, to individuals who want to purchase it.
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly "protected"?
So in your scenario here, some enterprising individuals start off by smuggling alcohol into the UK. By definition according to Merriam-Webster, smuggling is: "to import or export secretly contrary to the law and especially without paying duties imposed by law".
According to UK laws, this has the following consequences:
Penalties for Drug Smuggling The legal consequences of drug smuggling in the United Kingdom are robust and intricate. These penalties are designed to deter and punish those involved in the illicit trade of controlled substances, and they vary significantly depending on the nature and scale of the offense.
Prison Sentences Convictions for drug smuggling can result in substantial prison sentences. The duration of imprisonment varies based on factors such as the type and quantity of drugs involved, the defendant’s role in the operation, and any previous criminal history. For Class A drugs like heroin or cocaine, sentences can range from several years to life imprisonment. The courts take a particularly stern stance on those involved in large-scale drug trafficking operations, often imposing the harshest sentences.
Fines In addition to imprisonment, courts may impose hefty fines on individuals convicted of drug smuggling. These financial penalties are meant to act as both a punishment and a deterrent. Fines can be substantial and are typically proportional to the severity of the offense and the defendant’s financial means.
Confiscation Orders The UK’s legal system has mechanisms to prevent criminals from profiting from their drug smuggling activities. Courts can issue confiscation orders requiring the defendant to surrender any assets or wealth acquired through drug smuggling. This means that criminals face prison time and fines and risk losing ill-gotten gains.
Forfeiture of Assets In cases where assets such as vehicles, boats, properties, or other possessions were used to commission drug smuggling offenses, law enforcement agencies can seize these assets through forfeiture proceedings. This serves as a punishment for the offender and a means to disrupt criminal enterprises.
Travel Restrictions Convictions related to drug smuggling can result in travel restrictions imposed on the individual. These restrictions may include bans on leaving the country to prevent the convicted person from continuing their criminal activities abroad. Such measures are implemented to ensure that those involved in drug smuggling cannot easily evade justice by fleeing the country.
Lets move to the selling of the illegally imported alcohol:
You can be stopped, fined or arrested by police if you’re under 18 and drinking alcohol in public.
If you’re under 18, it’s against the law: - for someone to sell you alcohol - to buy or try to buy alcohol - for an adult to buy or try to buy alcohol for you - to drink alcohol in licensed premises (such as a pub or restaurant)
However, if you’re 16 or 17 and accompanied by an adult, you can drink (but not buy) beer, wine or cider with a meal.
If you’re 16 or under, you may be able to go to a pub (or premises primarily used to sell alcohol) if you’re accompanied by an adult. However, this isn’t always the case. It can also depend on the specific conditions for that premises.
It’s illegal to give alcohol to children under 5.
For the sake of your argument, we'll remove the law that says its illegal to sell alcohol to children, I guess? Regardless, it might be some enterprising individuals that are selling it, but they are selling the alcohol in the UK. In UK currency, To UK residents. In the UK. We are getting into possibly exchanging UK currency for US currency, which is a whole new can of worms, but we can save that for later.
Now to your question:
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly “protected”?
Easy answer is yes. They should be fined for smuggling alcohol into the UK, which is what the current law calls for.
Now hypothetical for you.
Imagine for a moment that the UK has banned looking at alcohol if you are under 18. Doesn't matter if you look at alcohol if you are over the age of 18, but you just can't legally look at alcohol if you are under 18.
Now someone comes along named 4chan and builds a giant building in the UK that has a ton of alcohol inside of it. There isn't anything outside of the building. Its only inside where the alcohol is. They don't have protections in place that prevent anyone under 18 from going inside the building. Anyone can come in and look. You can be 5 years old, or 100 years old. As a matter of fact, tons of people from all over the UK come and visit this building daily, even children.
Now the UK government comes along and says, "Hey 4chan, you need to verify that anyone that goes into your building is at least 18 years old, because if someone under 18 looks at the alcohol in there, thats against the law."
4chan ignores the UK and continues letting anyone inside, not verifying anyone's age. Not only that, but they're actually selling alcohol to children in there, and letting children make their own alcohol as well.
Should the UK be allowed to fine/arrest 4chan until they meet the demands?
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly “protected”?
I went ahead and edited it for you so it says enterprising individuals.... which you end up asking about 4chan anyways
now, some enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to buy, smuggle, and then sell those beverages inside the UK
Wouldn't it be more akin to those individuals putting the alcohol into 4chan's trucks that are taking other stuff to the UK? (and worse with 4chan's knowledge)
In that case do you think it's unreasonable that the uk government imposes penalties for 4chan refusing to remove the alcohol that they know is there from the trucks.
And then if 4chan then refuses to pay said penalties start to not allow them to bring any trucks into the uk at all?
the "trucks" in your example are the users computers/phones.
the highways are the Internet, which is owned and maintained by the UK government after their "gate".
the alcohol is the content.
4chans trucks deliver to the UKs "gate" and the UK user does the rest from there on the UK highways.
if the UK doesn't want the alcohol in their country, they need to stop their citizens from purchasing it and block it from entering their country at their "gate".
this is what any reasonable country would do. they (UK) already do it for actual physical products like potassium bromate, azodicarbonamide, and certain artificial food dyes like Yellow 5 and Yellow 6.
Are they going to sue or fine the companies that manufacture those products? no. They're going to ban the products that use them and then go after the individuals that smuggle them in.
the "trucks" in your example are the users computers/phones.
No it's the packets being sent from the 4chan server.
Stopping every single packet (or in the real world truck) to check it isn't feasible, do that and you get 20 mile queues up the m20 (and the digital version of that). Plus any government trying to so it like that would get accused of tax payers money due to the insane amount of resources that would be needed.
Placing the responsibility on the company makes sense, so does issuing penalties for non compliance. The company that has a fine issued against them can of course ignore it if they're set up outside the country that issues the fine. But they should then expect the country issuing the fine to escalate. If they don't pay and don't comply they can expect to have any assets in the uk seized and eventually get blocked from operating entirely. And probably have any executives arrested of they enter the country. Ofcom can't just jump to getting a court order though because they need to be fair and give 4chan a chance to comply if they want to.
The problem with the online safety act is that it exists at all, and that they expect people to use third party authentication services many of which are operating from countries with poor data protection regulations. That said, as iit does exist the logic of saying that companies are the ones responsible for what people access from their servers does make sense.
It's a process. They need to issue the fine first to give them a chance to pay rather than jumping to blocking it. If they continue to refuse to pay that's where it'll go.
I guess thats not a threat? Not sure what else youd classify that as. "If you step on our turf you're going to be jailed" is just peaceful language haha
You have to obey the law of whatever country you are currently occupying, even if the rule is bad shit crazy, actually especially if the rule is bat shit crazy. There are plenty of people who have done nothing wrong who would be arrested if they step foot in China, but that doesn't really bother anyone because they don't step foot in China.
Also it would be interesting to see what they would even be charged with, since offcom don't really have authority to issue arrest warrants. Ofcom barely have the authority to enforce UK law in the UK. Otherwise the likes of GB news wouldn't exist.
You have to obey the law of whatever country you are currently occupying.
They're not "occupying" or even operating here. all the servers have been in Texas since 2008. The British gov are attempting to legislate feature implementations for companies that aren't operating in britain. it's ridiculous.
Apparently they are operating in the UK though apparently they are selling some kind of pro service, so they are operating in the UK. To be clear it's a stupid law, but it is the law.
Well, they are operating in britain, their website is accessible in britain and as such the UK can decide whether the website is accessible or not. The uk can't really punish them other than blocking their site if they don't comply, though.
I agree the law is stupid but them not having servers in britain is mostly irrelevant.
It's an interesting idea that countries could only fine websites that operate in said country. Could get away with a lot by finding a permissive country to do what would otherwise be illegal and worth of fines.
"Selling user's private information illegally? Buddy, Tuvalo don't care"
Then get your asses in order. If you have doubts, the French across ye pond taught pretty well how to use guillotines to achieve it. Didn't you guys also have a mask guy do the same?
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.
The thing is, an indeterminable amount of users (and admins!) are feds, so despite giving the appearance of lawlessness, it’s actually fully compliant!
Imagine running a website for 20 years, changing absolutely nothing, and one day you're being targeted because someone else on the other side of the planet changed something at their end.
“Block us then. We’re not paying your fines and you’ll never arrest us as we’ll never step foot in your country. Get fucked.” That’s about the response I’d have I think… attached with a photo of tubgirl or something for the classic lawls.
Yeah, and a county could say "you can't do business in our county anymore" and block them
A country can ban dildos, but they don't get to tell a foreign factory they can't make dildos. If an importer orders dildos anyways, that's between the importer and customs. Which in this case the importer is the ISP
Otherwise the internet as we know it is very much over, and what we have instead is a mesh of country-nets.
which, TBH, doesn't seem so bad to me. as an european, i'm personally sick of all the sick (as in, unwell) culture from america swapping over via the internet and poisoning people's minds.
i mean, all the culture war is literally instigated by american capitalists to disrupt society and to disrupt the people's coherence, to make them weaker and therefore easier to exploit.
If it wasn't for continuous exposure to american influence, europe would long have drastic left-wing political reforms, i guess.
Oh yes, because it's not like Nigel Farage, Victor Orban and a bunch of other populists didn't make use of US companies and advisors (and russian funds...) on how to best fracture societies to their end. Clearly nuking the internet would put an end to that, and all would be well.
My server is in the corned of my bedroom. How the hell can I be operating in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Norway, or The UK if my bedroom is in none of those countries?
Yes. You can impose as much laws as you can enforce them. Don't want your citizens to buy anything from me, stop shipments at your border. Want to stop payments, talk to your banks. Want to stop access to my servers, block them at your routers.
Why the fuck should I enforce your rules for you? You made them, you figure out how you will make them work.
GDPR can only be enforced if the business wants to continue to do business in Europe. There are lots of non-European businesses that do not enforce GDPR rules but they can't sell products or services in Europe.
But of course 4chan doesn't sell any products or services anywhere, it's not a business, so it's a bit hard to see exactly how this could be enforced.
More likely than dining then for calls I don’t want to get they they facilitate by selling my data. Linda of like the scale car warrantee mail you get because the DMV sold your data.
This is a case of stupid laws that still don't understand the internet (35+ years in to wide use, mofos)
If an http GET request initiated from country A traverses routers and wires around the globe to grab some data from a server in country B, then we have to accept that the owners of the server are not "operating in country A" and in fact the user in country A is responsible for import.
If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.
All that is tongue in cheek to say they can fuck right off.
Also why the fuck would you piss off 4chan with their years of stalking, ddosing, swatting, etc of successful campaigns against anything they felt wrongged or even just annoyed them.
Because these people have never even heard of it. The whole party is a bunch of absolute technophobes. You should see that online advertising it's pathetic.
Yeah it's a stupid law and they were told it wouldn't work by industry experts. But the politicians that were in power when all this was first been decided were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don't like something, it's realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.
Then Labour got in and for some reason implemented the stupid law anyway despite having heard none of the consultations, and of course now it turns out that the consultations told them not to do it. Now I'm sure the industry experts would have been ignored anyway but Labour look really daft now.
They have basically accepted that this law is unworkable and is basically going to be ignored by everyone, but they still have to go through all of the pantomime of trying to enforce it. I'm sure eventually they'll quietly kill it because the whole thing has been such an embarrassment for them.
Th US has taken it to step further. Somehow they've managed to convince a significant junk of the population that a tariff is not a tax, and that the tariff is paid by the importing country, even though that's not how tariffs work. They don't require reality to actually do anything, they just require the populace to be mind numbingly stupid. Fortunately, they are.
It's pretty ironic, the United States was founded on the back of unfair taxation, and yet financial literacy is probably lower in the US than it is in any other country in the world.
I think it's well established by now that this bunch of Labour politicians too are "arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself".
That would amongst other things neatly explain why they went around and implemented the stupid law.
It also doesn't help that they're being advised by people who don't understand the world anymore and who's last real contribution was probably in the 1970s. The fact that they can't even capitalise on the fact that Boris Johnson has been found guilty of misappropriation of government funds is just ridiculous and shows how incompetent they are as politicians.
If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.
What used to be called The Great Firewall of China. It used to be unthinkable for western countries.
You can't blame this on old people. This is only happening now that the Boomers are on the way out. People who sent international letters or made international phone calls were aware that they were communicating with a different country with different laws. I think we are seeing this now, because now we have people who experience the internet as something happening on their own phone, at their location.
The UK didn't ban leaded petrol until 1999 meaning most millenials will suffer from the boomer-loony disease as they were poisoned during their childhood.
Let's also not forget that fuel for light aircraft still contains lead :/
Funnily enough the CIA (yes, the CIA) was largely involved in keeping the internet a free and open space for all, heck they even contributed encryption algorithms to keep data private and such ...
The reason why the free internet existed for so long was because it was a big ideological project for the US. (the internet is the space of all ideas and as such represents the platonic/christian concept of heaven). It's only now ending because it's served its purpose. The people have exchanged ideas worldwide, and that only needs to happen twice, similarly to how you can only infect yourself with the same virus once (because the second infection does way less impact), you can only infect yourself with the same idea once. So, once the worldwide ideas are exchanged, the internet serves very little purpose anymore.
If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK. It's not reasonable to make the argument that you should be able to do business with a country and opt out of its laws simply by running the physical servers abroad. We don't tolerate it for wire fraud or CSAM, but nobody's rushing out to defend the sovereign rights of child abusers and scammers.
I don't agree with the Online Safety Act on its own terms, but this is a dud of an argument.
By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.
No. Every ad platform out there has the advertiser choose what region to advertise in. Nobody wants to pay to advertise in countries where they don’t sell their products. Likewise websites have the option not to serve countries they don’t want to comply with the laws of, and indeed many do this exact thing.
The whole argument being presented is being intentionally naive about both the technology and the law. Y’all are arguing based on how you WANT the world to be rather than how it is.
And as a website you don't deal with any of that, you just implement an ad platform's ad window and they serve whatever regional ads are relevant to your visitors. So yes, practically all websites with advertising would be operating in every country worldwide, by your logic.
Again you’re just factually wrong. The website operator has a wide degree of control over what can appear on their site in the admin panel. They even have the choice of which platform to go with if they don’t. And even if they didn’t, it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
To repeat, I'm not supporting the Online Safety Act, but this whole argument seems to rely on the fictional notion that innocent website operators don't know where their data packets are being sent, which hasn't been true since the 1990s.
it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
Given that's how the entire Internet works, it does stand on its own terms. The UK isn't influential enough to force the entire Internet to follow suit. They can take it or leave it.
I think this sentiment is common but misses some important things. First: the UK is a big market of internet users, so losing it is not insignificant. Second: most people will not bother with a VPN because it's annoying or costs money. Third: from the UK's perspective, banning non-compliant sites is a good thing.
Recognising all this is important, because it's part of resisting such censorious laws.
It's the 4th largest country of origin for 4chan from what I can find. It doesn't sound like you're actually responding to what I said is being missed. Guess you don't want to.
The argument 4chan uses is laughable. "Freedom of speech of every American?" Tere is no such protection in the US right now.
No one is watching the news? Trump is killing freedom of speech. Anyone dares to advocate equality is getting fired or estorcised. All rainbow, trans or minority rights signs are being eliminated. Our rainbow sidewalk in my city was repainted. Diversity programs are dismantled. Any minority names program is being renamed. Less black people are being hired in the white house than ever.
Even now som states require you to prove your identity before your can log into Internet.
I agree, but letting a foreign government dictate what you can and cannot say on your site is dangerous. If 4chan capitulates then countless other sites are on the chopping block.
I agree, but letting a foreign government dictate what you can and cannot say on your site is dangerous. If 4chan capitulates then countless other sites are on the chopping block.
British government fines an American company, based in America, for serving data from American servers that was compliant with American law.
This whole law is complete overreach. It's like banning a book and then getting mad at the author when one of your citizens buys one on holiday and brings it back with them
Yeah, how come the EU gets to regulate American services with all their data privacy laws? The EU is a tool of the governments to assert control over us, the common people. Plain and simple
Ignoring that the UK isn't part of the EU, the EUs privacy laws extend to all European citizens, and it has treaties with most of the world (including the US) allowing it to enforce those.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Iran.[2] The list of crimes punishable by death includes murder; rape; child molestation; homosexuality; drug trafficking; armed robbery; kidnapping; terrorism; burglary; incest; fornication; adultery; sodomy; sexual misconduct; prostitution;[3][4] plotting to overthrow the Islamic government; political dissidence; sabotage; arson; rebellion; apostasy; blasphemy; extortion; counterfeiting; smuggling; recidivist consumption of alcohol; producing or preparing food, drink, cosmetics, or sanitary items that lead to death when consumed or used; producing and publishing pornography; using pornographic materials to solicit sex; capital perjury; recidivist theft; certain military offences (e. g., cowardice, assisting the enemy); "waging war against God"; "spreading corruption on Earth"; espionage; and treason.[5][6] Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016,[7] and at least 507 executions in 2017.[8] In 2018 there were at least 249 executions, at least 273 in 2019, at least 246 in 2020, at least 290 in 2021, at least 553 in 2022, at least 834 in 2023,[9] and at least 901 executions in 2024.[10] In 2023, Iran was responsible for 74% of all recorded executions in the world, with the UN confirming that at least 40 people were executed in one week in 2024.
Frankly, 4chan users or operators would probably have violated some of those, were they under jurisdiction of Iranian law.
Pretty sure 4chan is Japanese owned now so I'm confused. I guess they still operate out of the USA. Idk. Currently owned by Hiroyuki Nishimura, who also owns 2channel. He acquired 4chan from Christopher Poole 2015. Good Smile Company is a major investor but he's still in charge.
Lots of corpo structures are just large parent companies that actually just own a bunch of smaller companies so that the parent company gets the profits while the smaller companies make the risky products and can be bankrupted at any minute.
The company I work for does that. We just bought a couple companies that were competitors in a risky but profitable market. The full idea is that if one company gets sued to oblivion, we let that company die, move all the employees and customers to the backup company, and call it a day.
They could go after the owner. I believe he lives in Japan, all the UK has to do is send an extradition request to the Japanese government, bing bang boom all done.
Which they would laugh at. Even the Chinese government would laugh at such a request. It isn't something that is considered universally a crime, like robbery and murder, but the type of shit they are asking for is so fucking unprecedented and unreasonable it's stupid.
It would be like if the UK demanded that France immediately extradite all legal handgun owners in France (where handguns are legal) because it is a crime to possess one in Great Britain and therefore they are criminals. Makes no sense.
Damn fucking straight. I hope it starts an privacy movement so big they realize that all the laws passed since 2000 against terrorism were abject failures and repeal all of them.
Canada is trying to pass major surveillance shit on par with the patriot act on steroids and effectively nullify the need for warrants, all in the name of 'strong borders' and anti terrorism even though it literally gives many US owned and operated companies full and complete access to digital information on Canadians, ironically weakening borders in every way.
And for what? What is the terrorism threat? Al-Qaeda was a always a joke, and the fact that 9/11 happened was far more due to a monumental failure of all intelligence services combined and not due to a lack of resources. Terrorist schemes have been thwarted in the past without the need for extensive surveillance... and most plots are still thwarted primarily by informants and insiders speaking to authorities. The whole 'we need to be super proactive ' has yielded shit results.
Most of the stuff that they claim was 'prevented proactively ' was literally entrapment. They found some mentally ill and/or lonely people who would have done nothing on their own, but ended up being goaded into stupid crap when undercover agents flirted with them, encouraged them, and even offered weapons and explosives for them to use, and if they agreed... well, that's when they nabbed them. No terrorism would have occurred if agents didn't do shit.
Have you ever wondered why so many people are highly distrustful of people talking about doing violent shit? Fed posting? Its because agents have such a long ass history of doing that that you cannot tell who is and who isn't a Fed.
4chan's actual legal response to this can be summarized as "We are incorporated in Delaware which has not been subject to UK law since 1783. See the Treaty of Paris".
Offcom has been drinking, came home in a blackout and committed domestic abuse of 4chan. Does Offcom even internet? Alternative plot twist, Offcom is trolling 4chan.
I wanna say that Offcom is doing a good job and trying to protect British people in good faith but I feel like they are being used as a cudgel by the British ruling class to advance an anachronistic agenda. Don't forget, they fired their expert drugs advisor for telling them that MDMA is comparable to horse riding in terms of safety. They want certain things to be true, regardless of the scientific accuracy.
Probably why they didn't do it in the first place.
They barely pay for moderation. Who is going to pay for that survey? And also why would they? Obviously most of the people on that site are under 18. That's when I used it.
What other demographic clicks the horny ads they run?
WhatAmLemmy
in reply to schizoidman • • •like this
massive_bereavement e hpx9140 like this.
kbobabob
in reply to schizoidman • • •like this
massive_bereavement likes this.
massive_bereavement
in reply to kbobabob • • •