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in reply to geneva_convenience

Cuomo shills are getting desperate

It's okay to just let the leftists win an election, you know?

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don't like this

in reply to Mr_WorldlyWiseman

No no, perfection must be the enemy of good, otherwise how will anything ever improve? We have to let the worst people win so the world gets worse and then magically everything will be fixed by revolution.


in reply to frankenswine

Bernie's ex foreign policy advisor. Explains a lot why Bernie consistently has such awful foreign policy takes. He surrounds himself with AIPAC warmongers.

Hasan Piker did an awful softball interview with him a while ago where Matt Duss flops out one Zionist talking point after another and Hasan doesn't call him out somehow youtu.be/Gfv2uzVb3Pw

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'Their resilience is a lesson to us all': The maritime lions hunting seals on the beach


So on the one hand, it's an amazing story of adaptability in the face of climate change:

"In 2015, the lions found the sea again and started hunting coastal prey on the beach, after a drought decimated their usual inland prey of ostriches, oryxes and springboks. "The seals were a blessing," says Van Malderen. "Climate change has pushed these desert lions to the edge, forcing them to adapt in extraordinary ways, to survive along the beaches of the Atlantic coast.""

OTOH - It's devastating for the seal population who likely had become accustomed to land being a safe haven from ocean predators.

"Van Malderen has watched Gamma grow up, first encountering the lioness when she was three months old. She is now three-and-a-half years, "almost an adult," she says, adding that the lioness has become a fearsome hunter capable of killing 40 seals in a single night."

in reply to jordanlund

I feel like they are hunting seals because they can't hunt other animals because the population of other animals is too low.
in reply to jordanlund

'Their resilience is a lesson to us all': The maritime lions hunting seals on the beach


What, a lesson to humans? To be able to go anywhere and eat anything? We're the global champions at that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

Humans are omnivorous, capable of consuming a wide variety of plant and animal material, and have used fire and other forms of heat to prepare and cook food since the time of Homo erectus.

They are apex predators, being rarely preyed upon by other species.

By using advanced tools and clothing, humans have been able to extend their tolerance to a wide variety of temperatures, humidities, and altitudes.[131][138] As a result, humans are a cosmopolitan species found in almost all regions of the world, including tropical rainforest, arid desert, extremely cold arctic regions, and heavily polluted cities; in comparison, most other species are confined to a few geographical areas by their limited adaptability.

The combined biomass of the carbon of all the humans on Earth in 2018 was estimated at 60 million tons, about 10 times larger than that of all non-domesticated mammals.

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in reply to Severus_Snape

Rich powerful man once met another rich powerful man. Give me some more, no meat on this bone.
in reply to Severus_Snape

So he met Epstein and is currently receiving big money from top Friends Of the IDF donor Larry Ellison to rule Gaza?


Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data


Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those space-based radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information constantly raining from the sky. You would, to a surprising and troubling degree, be wrong.

Roughly half of geostationary satellite signals, many carrying sensitive consumer, corporate, and government communications, have been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping, a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed today in a study that will likely resonate across the cybersecurity industry, telecom firms, and inside military and intelligence agencies worldwide.

https://www.wired.com/story/satellites-are-leaking-the-worlds-secrets-calls-texts-military-and-corporate-data/

reshared this

in reply to geneva_convenience

Still waiting to see the inevitable hack of a communications constellation (starlink and the likes) resulting in worldwide outages and / or a worldwide firework show.


Right to protest under ‘sustained attack’ across the west, report finds


The right to protest has come under sustained attack across the west, according to a report highlighting the growing criminalisation of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) pays particular attention to the UK, the US, France and Germany, where it says governments have “weaponised” counter-terrorism legislation as well as the fight against antisemitism to suppress dissent and support for Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

in reply to geneva_convenience

Labour has already been neutered in the US and Canada (to a lesser extent).
in reply to geneva_convenience

And soon enough they'll write about the mysterious rise in violent attacks on politicians and the business elite by lone wolfs.
in reply to WanderingThoughts

I can't help but feel nervous when world leaders start talking about and confounding Israel/Jewish people, especially with the rise in authoritarian politics.

I don't think I have a certain fear, but I worry about strong emotions/race/and politicians.



Right to protest under ‘sustained attack’ across the west, report finds


The right to protest has come under sustained attack across the west, according to a report highlighting the growing criminalisation of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) pays particular attention to the UK, the US, France and Germany, where it says governments have “weaponised” counter-terrorism legislation as well as the fight against antisemitism to suppress dissent and support for Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

in reply to 小莱卡

Peaceful protests fulfill a very important role: organizing people. and giving moral legitimacy to any "less legal" means of protesting such as blocking highways.

The peaceful protest is a very important part of the subsequent not so peaceful protest.

in reply to geneva_convenience

The western states have the sterilization of protest down to a science, granting permits along preestablished routes and promoting liberal reformist types as the "real" leaders as well as using other civilians as disruptors instead of going in with the cops as a first recourse.

Banning protests and going for naked repression is pretty much exactly how you get protestors gravitating toward organizations that aren't permit fetishists with NGOs.


in reply to Sahwa

They want to be on the winning side.

They don't understand that they'd be the next targets.

in reply to Sahwa

A lot of these dictatorships saw that cooperation with Israel got them on the good side of the US and Europe and helped them against Iran. But once Israel bombed multiple Arab countries, it made that connection unpopular and made dictators hesitate. Once Israel bombed Qatar, it shattered that perception. Now Israel is seen as the bigger threat over Iran by far.



Macron accuses rivals of fuelling instability as he dismisses calls to resign


The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has accused rival political parties of fuelling instability as he brushed aside calls by the opposition for him to resign amid France’s worst political crisis in decades.

“Many of those who have fuelled division and speculation have not risen to the moment,” Macron said of French opposition parties, as he arrived in Egypt on Monday to attend a summit on Gaza. He said rival “political forces” were “solely responsible for this chaos” after they “instigated the destabilisation” of the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu.

Lecornu, a Macron ally, held his first meeting with France’s new government after he appointed a mix of stalwarts from Macron’s centrist grouping, as well as a few faces from the upper ranks of the civil service and civil society. New arrivals included Jean-Pierre Farandou, who headed the state-run railway, SNCF, and is now labour minister.


in reply to geneva_convenience

looking for real estate opportunities I assume. They invited the rich zombies club.
in reply to geneva_convenience

Because he is gay, he is lgbt, he is jewish, he is Gaza.

Remember that unhinged speech he gave? I remember.



UK, France and Germany unite to turn Russian assets into Ukraine aid, unlocking up to £250 billion for Kyiv


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43902528

Archived

[...]

In a move co-ordinated with France, Germany and the United States, Sir Keir Starmer said the UK was willing to unlock up to £25 billion of Russian money held in the UK for the war effort.

The decision, after months of talks among the G7 and other western allies, may release as much as £250 billion to Ukraine in tranches to fund weapons purchases and prop up its war economy.

In a joint statement with President Macron of France and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, Starmer said that the three leaders had agreed to “increase pressure” on Putin to counter his “stalling tactics and abhorrent attacks in response to peace talks”.

They said: “To that end, we are ready to progress towards using, in a co-ordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces and thus bring Russia to the negotiation table. We aim to do this in close co-operation with the United States of America.”

Starmer is also understood to have discussed the plan with President Zelensky of Ukraine. Downing Street said that the UK, France and Germany were “united in wanting to drive progress towards using the full value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to end the war”.

[...]

in reply to Hotznplotzn

The UK is believed to hold more than £25 billion of Russian financial assets that were seized after the invasion of Ukraine [...]
Belgium holds €190 billion (£165 billion) worth of assets in Euroclear, the Brussels-based central securities depository, and France holds €19 billion (£16 billion).

[...] under a plan being worked up by EU and G7 leaders, countries would issue up to €172 billion (£149 billion) in loans to Ukraine by swapping Russian cash linked to the immobilised assets for zero-interest bonds. Ukraine would have to pay back the loan only if Moscow paid war reparations, which is considered unlikely.


Instead of directly transferring the assets, they are using them as collateral for loans to strip the legal risk. The result should be indistinguishable as long as russia is eventually sentenced to pay reparations.




Madagascar soldiers join protestors, refuse orders to shoot demonstrators


Groups of Madagascar soldiers joined thousands of protestors in the capital Saturday, AFP reporters said, after announcing they would refuse any orders to shoot demonstrators.

Fresh youth-led demonstrations in Antananarivo drew large crowds in one of the biggest gatherings since a protest movement erupted on the Indian Ocean island on September 25.

in reply to Sam_Bass

They kinda did during the war on Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos. Just need them do the same on the domestic front this time.
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in reply to maniacalmanicmania

What are you talking about? There absolutely was no mass refusal from the military to follow orders either in Vietnam or domestically when deployed against American protestors and the "silent majority" actually cheered them on.
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in reply to bthest

I think they’re talking about “fragging,” or the practice by veteran units of killing green officers who gave orders likely to get people killed. I have no idea how common it was, or if it was even anything more than urban legend.
in reply to FlyingCircus

Fragging in Vietnam did happen. Wikipedia lists at least three incidents, one of which was attempted multiple times.
in reply to Sahwa

Now they need to go shoot the people who issued the orders. Happy endings all around.
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in reply to technocrit

What airlines are agreeing to take these flights? Many of these immigrants have already risked their life to get to the US. It feels super risky.
in reply to AdamEatsAss

Probably all of the US ones, they are hurting for passengers with the lack of people wanting to come here.


Israel refuses to release abducted Palestinian doctors, will not let foreign medics enter Gaza either


cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/79582

Israel is continuing to force the collapse of Gaza’s devastated healthcare system, despite the supposed ceasefire – during which it has killed well over a hundred people through continued bombing and shooting.

Israel is refusing to release kidnapped Gaza medics


The occupation has refused to release doctors abducted during the genocide, such as Kamal Adwan Hospital’s Hussam Abu Safiya, kidnapped almost a year ago by Israeli forces after they destroyed most of the hospital and murdered many of its medical staff, and field hospital director Marwan al-Hams, abducted in July. Abu Safiya has been beaten, starved and repeatedly tortured in an Israeli jail. Soldiers also took Al-Hams’s daughter Tasneem, a nurse, last week.

The colonial regime has also refused entry to international volunteer doctors trying to return to Gaza to help treat the wounded and starving during the ‘ceasefire’, as surgeons Victoria Rose and Graeme Groome explained during an interview yesterday:

thecanary.co/wp-content/upload…

Israel has murdered over 1,500 healthcare workers, some of those tortured to death in prison. Israel has over 350 healthcare workers abducted and being held in prisons, under inhumane conditions and frequent torture and violence. The occupation has destroyed or severely damaged all of Gaza’s hospitals and medical experts say that more than four hundred people a day in Gaza are dying from hunger and disease.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox


From Canary via this RSS feed

in reply to floofloof

It's not personal, there just aren't that many ways to commit genocide with this ceasefire going on.
in reply to floofloof

Doctors are valuable. Why release a high value slave.

Maybe some of those anti semitic sentiments people hold are grounded in reality...



It's Zohver


xcancel.com/zei_squirrel/statu…

For the liberals who think it it doesn’t matter he claims Israeli captives are being tortured while not even mentioning the same for the Palestinians in extermination camps: your medicare won’t matter to him either. Stop torturing billionaires.

Palestine is the ultimate litmus test.

#USA

adhocfungus doesn't like this.

in reply to geneva_convenience

This reads to me as someone who is a Zionist trying to pretend like they are a leftist attacking Mamdani from the left.
in reply to DancingBear

This reads to me as someone who is a Zionist trying to pretend like they are a leftist attacking leftists from the right.


The Right's Secret Plan to Help Billionaires Buy Elections


I'd not heard about the Montana initiative. But it's not surprising ... it's an interesting state, politically, as the main throughline seems to be "leave me the fuck alone, and if others aren't hurting me, let them do what they want." You know, rugged individualism that we at once enshrine as the basis of the American spirit and also call "woke."

In a way, I'm glad Orwell didn't live to see how far short he fell with Nineteen Eighty-Four. We see Ingsoc fully formed, but the road there is left as an exercise for the reader.

The better analogy at this point is V for Vendetta.

On the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Roberts Supreme Court, one point of consensus persists: Most Americans believe money corrupts the political process — and they want to overturn the Citizens United precedent that empowers oligarchs to buy elections.

And yet, in two little-noticed cases — including one spearheaded by Vice President J.D. Vance — the high court could soon do the opposite, eliminating the last restrictions on campaign donations and obstructing law enforcement’s efforts to halt bribery.

As we recount in our new book Master Plan, the Citizens United case was the culmination of conservatives’ 50-year master plan to deregulate the campaign finance system and legalize corruption. What started as an incendiary memo from soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell became one ruling equating money with constitutionally protected speech and another extending personhood rights to corporations.


in reply to OctopusNemeses

People have been dropping the preceding adjective. It used to be that temp bans were handed out for first violations or accumulated minor violations, with the severity of the violation dictating whether it was a temporary ban of hours, days, weeks, or months.

Really egregious violations, or a pattern of temp bans not changing the users behavior would trigger a permanent ban.

I also hate the use of “ban” alone to mean temporary. The default use of “ban” should, does, mean permanent. If it’s temporary, it should be specifically conditionalized as such. I don’t really know when this started or how we got here, but it’s fucking annoying.

in reply to borari

The temp adjective has been dropped for a decade or 2 which is why permabans have been called permabans not just bans.


It's Zohver


xcancel.com/zei_squirrel/statu…

For the liberals who think it it doesn't matter he claims Israeli captives are being tortured while not even mentioning the same for the Palestinians in extermination camps: your medicare won't matter to him either. Stop torturing billionaires.

Palestine is the ultimate litmus test.




UK: Foreign Secretary says China does pose a security threat to Britain, says she is ‘deeply frustrated’ at collapse of spy trial


cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43887424

Archived

UK: Foreign Secretary says China does pose security threat to Britain, says she is ‘deeply frustrated’ at collapse of spy trial after Labour refuses to call Beijing an enemy

[...]

Yvette Cooper admitted the UK faced a “whole series” of risks from Beijing, days after the chief prosecutor said a case against two alleged spies collapsed because the Government had failed to brand China a threat to national security.

[...]

Ms Cooper was asked whether, during her time at the Home Office, she saw a dossier outlining the fact that China had frequently been referred to as a threat to Britain’s national security.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Let me be clear that we know China poses threats to UK national security from things like transnational repression and espionage to hostile cyber activity as well, and we have said so.

“And they also of course are a trading partner and they are a crucial partner in the process for example on tackling climate change. But I am deeply frustrated about this case because I of course wanted to see it prosecuted.”

[...]

Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, had been accused of passing foreign policy information to a high-ranking member of the Chinese government, charges that were denied by both men.

A Whitehall investigation into Chinese spying was also suppressed by Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, after lobbying from the Treasury.

[...]

China sceptics have long called on successive governments to formally shift their diplomatic stance and call China a threat to reflect concerns around security, surveillance and human rights abuses.

[...]

Chinese state-backed hackers targeted the Electoral Commission and accessed the voting records of 40 million people from August 2021. The breach was not identified until more than a year later.

China was also blamed for hacking the Ministry of Defence in May 2024, with hackers gaining access to payroll information including bank details, names and addresses.



China retaliates against U.S. port fees with new charges on American ships


  • China on Friday announced that starting Oct. 14, it will start charging U.S. ships for docking at Chinese ports.
  • The move was a direct response to similar U.S. port fees on Chinese ships set to take effect the same day.
  • The U.S. only accounts for 0.1% of global shipbuilding, versus 53.3% for China, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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in reply to Sahwa

The US foreign relation policies are completely brainrotten to a degree that it feels masochistic. They keep hitting themselves over and over, and it makes less and less sense.
in reply to Wildmimic

Lol okay I hear you. But think like if you were a Russian asset just trying to do as much damage as possible and steal as much USD and convert it to a useful currency before you crash the dollar and cripple your enemy. Would that make it more clear?


North Korea displays long-range missile at parade


Kim Jong Un's leadership delivered a speech as his military showed off a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a massive parade. Kim also held talks with Russia's Dmitry Medvedev.
in reply to MicroWave

And it was built in 1940, so old it doesn't even work anymore, so they parade it around to feign feign feign



"detect-fash" Feature Developed (and Rejected) for Systemd


I would say, finally, in an era of bitter political struggle even in the free software world, finally we see a good humoured hacker joke again
in reply to Donaldist

Cute how the only term he has for the "left" is "extreme left".
in reply to 0x0

I suppose if you're that far right the gap between yourself and other points on the political spectrum is quite a gulf.
in reply to Donaldist

aww it's a joke? I actually want this. I'm tired of being surprised by this crap.


How do I create my own community and is it allowed on my instance?


I'm on SJW mainly because it's somewhat popular and it supports vpn usage.

I use voyager as my main means of interacting.

What's the word, friends?

in reply to Whostosay


How do I create my own community


try the "Create Community" button maybe?

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in reply to Ace

Alright you beautiful shitter. I'll give it a go

So where is that in voyager, maybe?

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in reply to Whostosay

While Voyager has mod tools, I'm not sure if you can create a community in the app.

You might need to do the initial setup on the website: sh.itjust.works/create_communi…

Afterwards you should be able to take mod actions on the app

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in reply to Whostosay

Voyager is a reader. You need to open Lemmy on a web browser to see all functionality.
in reply to aeronmelon

I appreciate it, I think I used a burner email for this account and I have no idea what the password is so I may be momentarily shit out of luck






in reply to Paragone

Not every salt is easily soluble in water. Salt in a chemical sense is a compound made up of multiple ions. Marble and pretty much all rocks/minerals are also salts in a chemical sense and you don't see our mountains being washed away by one rainfall. So saying they use a thorium salt is not in itself a problem, depending on which salt they use.

I couldn't find any definitive answer, but from what I found on Wikipedia is that they mostly use Thorium dioxide at the moment, which is practically insoluble in water and alkaline, by slightly soluble in acids.

So no, salts don't all dissolve. It completely depends on the specific salt and its properties.

But yeah, nuclear industry in general is pretty hands off with regard to accountability and taking care of the long time effects.

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in reply to Wrufieotnak

I knew, when writing, that some salts are functionally insoluable ( lithium-fluoride, I'd read, pretty-much doesn't dissolve in water ).

I'd hoped that I'd phrased it carefully-enough, but obviously didn't.

Definitely thank you for identifying that the salt specific to thorium-salt reactors isn't at room temperature going to be easily dissolveable into our environment..

but .. I've also learned that hot-chemistry can be drastically different from room-temperature chemistry, & after all the .. gaslighting .. of various industries, through the past decades..

I want systematic & thorough testing to see what that salt can react with, under its entire temperature & pressure regime, before anybody signs-off on it.

"hands off" is a very polite way of saying it, Hoomin..

& I'd never thought of marble as a salt, you got me on that point!

_ /\ _



What would you do with a device like this


Was given this little wintel box by a friend fairly recently, but I haven't yet even powered it on. I don't have a power cable for it unfortunately but when I do, what do you think I should do with it? What would you do with it?

I think it could potentially be just a basic lightweight desktop for web browsing and such, maybe a little smart tv box or something like that to replace the Chromecast I'm ashamed to admit I use, maybe run some basic self hosted stuff like pihole or home assistant? Could probably be a little emulation machine for retro games but I doubt it would be capable of much more than that. But I'm not sure there's too many ideas! I need suggestions people

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in reply to ayyo

NetBSD. This box seems to have a vanilla x86 processor and it has plenty of resources (for NetBSD, that is). You can't use this as a daily driver, but it should be good enough to learn UNIX and/or self-host some stuff.
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in reply to ayyo

I used one of these (might even be the exact same model) as a little music player attached to an old soundbar. I could connect via ssh and play music through the speakers. The main challenge was finding a distribution that worked well with the internal sound card, since I wanted to use the aux output for sound. I don't think that I ever tried connecting a monitor to it, but it worked well for what I used it for, right up until I needed the sound bar for something else.

in reply to cyrano

Earth was past 7 of 9 planetary boundaries to support human life.... before AI happened. That is again, boundaries to support HUMAN LIFE.

Article from when it was 6/9:

scientificamerican.com/article…

in reply to cyrano

The coal and O&G industries have been pushing themselves as suppliers to power AI, so don't blame AI without blaming the coal and O&G industries.
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in reply to SpaceCowboy

AI people choosing renewables have nothing to do with this.
in reply to betanumerus

But they aren't choosing renewables, they're choosing coal. People are responsible for the choices they make.
in reply to SpaceCowboy

Some companies choose renewables, other don't. They aren't only one person.
in reply to betanumerus

How many of the AI companies that chose coal actually produce something worthwhile? Seems like the first the these nuScience fuckers should do with their digital overmind is create clean power.
in reply to Duamerthrax

Using renewables to power AI for optimizing uses of renewables somehow is a good idea and I'm sure someone is working on it, but not everyone.
in reply to betanumerus

We don't need AI to know how to use renewables. We're just unwilling to implement then on a sociality scale.
in reply to Duamerthrax

I am totally willing to implement renewables. Whether you use it to power cars, homes, datacenter or AI and why, that's anther discussion.
in reply to betanumerus

People get distracted over the fate of the pure speculative frenzy could be an AI bubble, and the harm to the hapless speculators and banksters could have a minor impact on the rest of the economy.

Reality is far worse than an AI bubble. It is a US mission for a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel that is too big to fail. Bubble in AI investments becomes unlikely, but total destruction of rest of US economy/prosperity becomes assured when the "plebs able to eat in America bubble" bursts is a sacrifice that a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel is willing to make.

If Americans are still able to afford to eat, then China or Iran wins.

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Canadian amusement park threatens to euthanise 30 beluga whales


A Canadian amusement park is threatening to euthanise 30 beluga whales after the government blocked its request to send them to China.

The park is said to have told ministers that it was in a "critical financial state" and unable to provide adequate care for the whales

in reply to schizoidman

Is letting them go not an option here? How is it either they kill them or they send them to China? Like I realize that releasing captive animals isn't always ideal, but considering the alternative here.
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does Linux have kernel level cryptographic encryption


i had this idea that a program can edit files in an encrypted environment. WinRaR with higher level of encryption would be the best way to describe it. but i was wonder if the files on a linux HDD or SDD are encrypted.

I do have this idea that you can save encrypted files to a cloud server and pull it out and unencrypted by a light weight program

in reply to PixelPilgrim

I do have this idea that you can save encrypted files to a cloud server and pull it out and unencrypted by a light weight program


Sounds like Cryptomator would work for you.

in reply to PixelPilgrim

KDE has built in "vaults" now that sound maybe like what you're looking for.


Repeated deadly cough syrup scandals pose hard questions for India’s drug regulators


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/50737089

Diethylene glycol (DEG) is an organic compound that is commonly used as an industrial solvent in antifreeze mixtures and brake fluids. But, in India, DEG is ending up with worrying frequency where it should never be – in cough syrups for children.


in reply to schizoidman

The pharmaceutical variant has a strictly controlled presence of DEG, if any, unlike the cheaper commercial kind, which has far higher levels of the compound, making it unfit for human consumption. Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.

Known as the “pharmacy of the world”, India accounted for 3 per cent of the world’s total pharmaceutical exports in 2023. It is particularly known for exporting affordable drugs, especially to Africa and other developing regions.

In May 2023, following the scandals abroad, the CDSCO mandated a testing protocol for cough syrups in designated Indian laboratories before export.

But no such testing was mandated for the domestic market, which has many small manufacturers producing low-cost medicines. It has now asked all state governments to submit a list of cough syrup manufacturers, while initiating a joint audit of these companies.

The failure to prevent repeated cough syrup scandals has also brought up a whiff of alleged corruption. Mr Sukesh Khajuria, a public health activist who has been helping families of the 2019-20 victims in and around Jammu seek justice, alleged that the Indian government had failed to rein in corruption within the country’s drug regulatory set-up.

“Pharma companies have hidden partnerships with the party in power,” he claimed.

A 2024 report published on Scroll, an Indian online news website, said that 35 pharmaceutical companies in India had contributed nearly 10 billion rupees (S$146.4 million) to political parties. Of these, at least seven companies were being investigated for poor-quality drugs when they made their contributions.


Well. If the state doesn't fix it from a licensing side, I guess it'd be possible for a company to fill the gap. Like, certify drug manufacturers.

The difference between certification and licensing is that a certifier can't prohibit a company from doing business if it isn't certified. But...it does mean that a purchaser, at least as long as they know what certification to look for, can look for a given certification.

You can make a certification company that places any restrictions it wants to certify a product or company, so that eliminates roadblocks to getting that side of things moving. 'course, the certifier has to build reputation for the certification to mean much.

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in reply to tal

In the US, isn't that what the UL (Underwriters Laboratories) electrical designation is? A separate entity that certifies?

I think it is separate from the government.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safe…

Unlike Energy Star, which is part of the US government's EPA, and thus it was, or was threatened with, reduced in capacity by Trump.

in reply to tal

Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.


i'd note that there's zero technical reason why DEG would end up in PG. reaction of water with ethylene oxide gives you ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol and higher analogues and these are then separated by distillation. propylene glycol is made from propylene oxide instead, and it's more expensive than ethylene oxide. diethylene glycol has little use on its own, at least compared to other glycols

however,

The physical properties of diethylene glycol make it an excellent counterfeit for pharmaceutical-grade glycerine (also called glycerol) or propylene glycol
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in reply to schizoidman

"Hard questions." Bull shit. The "question" is to make great profit selling to the most populous country with proper safe guards. Or to make astronomical profits by selling a knowingly tainted product that kills people.


Germany: Merz pledges to resist 2035 EU electric car switch


cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/50682852
in reply to schizoidman

Well, that’s pretty stupid 🤦‍♂️
It’ll most certainly not save the German auto industry.
in reply to schizoidman

But why? Like, I get why he's doing it, it's because he's bought by the car and oil industries, and for some weird reason the VW Group really doesn't want to make electric cars, but what's the please-elect-me-again reason? Are they just really hoping enough people who hate electric cars are going to love them for this? 'Cause that votersegment is disappearing fast.
in reply to MBech

We need MORE pollution. I just love fine particles myself. I go vroemvroem everyday hoping to give lung cancer to kids
in reply to schizoidman

Sorry mr Kaellenius, but the fact that you now make 100k EUR giant screens on wheels with loose interior trim has nothing to do with them being electric.

Signed, someone who actually used to like the cars MB made.

Also the EQE never got a wagon version but the T-modell is super popular for the normal E-class. And the EQC was crossover only, no normal car version at all...

BMW meanwhile went from a beautiful generation of cars to something truly ugly the same time they started making EVs properly and Volkswagen/Audi UX has been shit for at least half a decade now, I HATE operating any of the cars they've made this decade.

Idk what I'm gonna buy when 2000s and 2010s German cars are no longer maintainable, but I don't think it'll be German.