Defense secretary announces a new strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, bringing total killed in US strikes to at least 64 people

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

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

Three killed in US military strike on alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza pyramids billed as world’s largest archaeological facility for single civilisation

Archived version: archive.is/20251031052901/theg…

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

Egypt’s vast $1bn museum to open in Cairo after two-decade build

^{Eromo Egbejule (The Guardian)}

A 38-year-old woman and a man, 37, appeared before a French magistrate over the museum theft that shocked the world.

Archived version: archive.is/20251101183227/bbc.…

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

Woman charged over Louvre jewellery heist

Prosecutors say two men have already "partially recognised" their involvement in the museum theft.

^{Jaroslav Lukiv (BBC News)}

The Russians in temporarily occupied Mariupol plan to open the Drama Theatre, which they themselves destroyed with two aerial bombs in March 2022, at the end of this year.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/pravda.com.u…

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

Russians claim to have rebuilt Mariupol Drama Theatre destroyed by their own airstrikes, reopening planned for December – photos

^{Anna Kovalenko (Ukrainska Pravda)}

https://sentientrant.com/cybersecurity/signal-protocol-whatsapp-encryption/

Russia's foreign ministry denounced on Saturday "excessive military force" by the United States in the Caribbean Sea deployed as part of a drive against drug trafficking and reaffirmed its support for Venezuela's leaders.

Archived version: archive.is/20251101230532/reut…

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

A US agent tried to bribe Nicolás Maduro's pilot to divert his plane for capture, part of a 16-month covert operation that ultimately failed to topple the leader.

Archived version: archive.is/20251102060757/euro…

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

US attempted to capture Venezuela's Maduro by bribing his pilot, report claims

^{Jerry Fisayo-Bambi (Euronews.com)}

Lions, tigers and bears that managed to survive in substandard conditions at a now-shuttered zoo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, paced weakly in their claustrophobic cages on Thursday, waiting their turn to receive urgent veterinary care for the first time in years.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/abcnews.go.c…

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

Years after notorious zoo closed, the stranded animals are finally being rescued

Lions, tigers and bears that managed to survive in substandard conditions at a now-shuttered zoo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, paced weakly in their claustrophobic cages on Thursday, waiting their turn to receive urgent veterinary care…

^{ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press (ABC News)}

Officials say another 11 were wounded and the victims included children.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/aljazeera.co…

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

At least 23 killed in supermarket explosion in Mexico’s Sonora state

^{Al Jazeera}

Bluesky is experimenting with a dislike button and changes to replies as a way to improve the quality of interactions on its platform.

Bluesky experiments with dislikes and 'social proximity' to improve conversations

^{Ian Carlos Campbell (Engadget)}

https://sentientrant.com/cybersecurity/signal-protocol-whatsapp-encryption/

v12.4.0 Release Notes

Release notes tell you what's new in Floorp.

Your feedback The Floorp Projects welcomes. You can submit bug report and new feature code on GitHub, and check the Floorp of source code used for this release.

We would like to express our special thanks to all the developers, users, and contributors who contributed to this release.

Floorp 12 Upgrade FAQ: 'Why did this happen?' and answers to common questions ​

We apologize for the lack of sufficient prior notice regarding the mandatory upgrade to Floorp 12, and for any issues this may have caused.

This blog post explains why this happened and serves as an FAQ for common questions about Floorp 12, including troubleshooting migration from v11.

Please read this guide if you are facing issues or have questions:\
blog.floorp.app/en/notice/2510…

✨ New Features ​

• Due to popular demand, we have re-added the Profile Manager feature.

Changed ​

• Added information about Floorp Hub at the top of the Settings page (about:preferences).

✖ Bug Fixes ​

• Fixed a potential error caused by undefined Workspaces in various components.
• Removed the default badge from the Profile item display.
• Fixed an issue on Linux where the background was not applied correctly when customizing the Toolbar.
• Fixed an issue where the feature to Reopen a closed tab with the Mouse Gesture was not working correctly.
• Improved state management for Panels and tabs for Workspaces and usability, and improved the feature to retain the last displayed tab.
• Fixed an issue where loading Workspaces failed when upgrading from Floorp 11 if they contained special characters.
• Other minor bug fixes have been made.

My name is Abeer, a mother of four children. We lost everything because of the war — our home, our safety, our source of income, and even our loved ones. We have survived bombings more than once, but each time we come out with nothing left.

My husband was injured, and now I am alone, struggling to take care of my children. We have no food, no milk, no diapers, no shelter. Every day is a fight to survive.

Please, I’m asking from the bottom of my heart — stand with us, help me provide my children with food, milk, diapers, and a small tent to keep them safe. You are our only hope.

Anyone who wants to help can find the link in my bio or contact me directly.

🙏 Please don’t scroll past — your kindness can save us
#HelpGaza #StandWithGaza #GazaChildren

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/arts/design/climate-change-art-museum.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yE8.vrTI.Cuv9Cl_-tKvh

The largest federal workers' union this week threw its support behind a Republican government funding bill, ratcheting up pressure on Democrats.

But many of the top labor unions told ABC News that they continue to back the strategy taken up by Democrats, breaking with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers losing out on pay and staring down the threat of layoffs.

Many labor unions, a key bloc within the Democratic Party, support the push for an extension of Obamacare subsidies and remain eager to fight a president they view as an adversary of workers, some labor analysts and union officials said.

Top labor groups break with federal union's support of Republican measure to end shutdown

The largest federal workers' union backed a Republican government funding bill.

^{Max Zahn (ABC News)}

Former President Barack Obama told Zohran Mamdani “your campaign has been impressive to watch,” and suggested that he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election.

Former President Barack Obama called New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, praising his campaign and offering to be a “sounding board” into the future.

The private, roughly 30-minute phone call, which has not previously been reported, was described by two people who participated or were briefed immediately on what had been said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation.

Mr. Obama said that he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election on Tuesday. They talked about the challenges of staffing a new administration and building an apparatus capable of delivering on Mr. Mamdani’s agenda of affordability in the city, the people said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-barack-obama-election.html

3.27.0 Hotfix 6

• Increased the chances of finding body parts from in-area Breach encounters.
• Unstable Breaches now progress slower until they collapse, particularly in the very early game. Note: You are not expected to be able to Stabilise the Unstable Breaches early on.
• Ailith's "Conjure a wall of the Dreamer's Flame" is now removed when the Breach Hive encounter ends.
• Vruun, Marshal of Xesht now always drops a breach ring. Ruthless versions of the boss have a common chance to drop a breach ring.
• Fixed a bug where the "Gain an Enhanced Flame" skill during Hive encounters was not visually giving you the flame, and it dealt damage but didn't burn down walls.
• Fixed a bug in the in-game market browser where the 'min' and 'max' filter options for "Sockets" and "Links" would not work.
• Fixed a bug where some list prices in the in-game market browser would display as '-1' of a currency.
• Fixed a bug where some versions of the Nebulis Void Sceptre unique could spawn with the pre-3.27.0 modifiers. These changes will not affect existing items.
• Fixed 2 instance crashes.

You will need to restart your client to receive the client fixes in this patch.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 6 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

White House officials, at the start of the shutdown, were certain the Trump administration was better positioned to battle the left during a funding lapse.

In early October, several Trump administration officials had a friendly pool going of how long the shutdown would last. The White House, at the time, was confident Democrats would quickly fold.

No one guessed more than 10 days.

The account, relayed by a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, underscores just how much the administration miscalculated the Democrats’ will to keep the government closed even amid furloughs and imperiled social programs like food assistance.

As the shutdown heads into its second month, Donald Trump is increasingly frustrated. On Thursday, he called for Republicans to abolish the filibuster to reopen the government — a plea he knows is futile, but that demonstrates his growing irritation with Democrats, said a second person close to the White House.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/31/nobody-thought-it-was-going-to-last-this-long-trump-increasingly-frustrated-as-shutdown-approaches-record-length-00632230

A Michigan defense lawyer is disputing FBI allegations that his 20-year-old client and four others planned a terror attack on Halloween weekend

Michigan lawyer says the Halloween terror plot that FBI Director Kash Patel described never existed

^{Josh Funk (The Independent)}

Robbery in Lyon left five employees slightly injured after explosion in latest high-profile incident to hit country

Archived version: archive.is/20251031120751/theg…

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

Six arrested after €12m armed raid on gold refining lab in France

^{Ashifa Kassam (The Guardian)}

No injuries reported as FAA staffing shortage and weather cause widespread delays

https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/united-airlines/two-united-airlines-jets-involved-in-ground-collision-at-new-yorks-laguardia-airport/

Israeli occupation soldiers in the West Bank prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olive trees, before being filmed stealing olives from the same groves.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/middleeastey…

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

Israeli soldiers steal olives after blocking Palestinian farmers

^{Middle East Eye}

1Password warns that the biggest cybersecurity threat now comes from inside as employees using AI and unapproved apps without oversight widen the Access-Trust Gap.

Employees are the new hackers: 1Password warns AI chaos is breaking corporate security

^{Brian Fagioli (NERDS.xyz)}

Kenya's government says 30 other people are missing following downpours in the west of the country.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/bbc.com/news…

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

Kenyan landslide kills 21 after heavy rainfall

^{Dearbail Jordan (BBC News)}

The smart vacuum cleaner was remotely bricked for not collecting data.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/manufacturer-issues-remote-kill-command-to-nuke-smart-vacuum-after-engineer-blocks-it-from-collecting-data-user-revives-it-with-custom-hardware-and-python-scripts-to-run-offline

Rescuers and aid workers across Jamaica on Saturday are struggling to reach communities still isolated four days after Hurricane Melissa hit the island. Melissa has left devastation in its wake, snapping power lines and toppling buildings, disrupting food and water distribution and destroying crop fields.

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

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

Aid workers struggle to reach communities cut off by Hurricane Melissa

^{FRANCE 24}

US president says he ordered Pentagon to begin planning for action, without mentioning Muslim persecution

Archived version: archive.is/20251101230127/theg…

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

Trump threatens to go into Nigeria ‘guns-a-blazing’ over attacks on Christians

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

Authorities say there has been an explosion at Harvard Medical School, but no one was injured. It appears to have been intentional.

https://apnews.com/article/harvard-medical-explosion-boston-a72804f99ba68661eb0460ad97fcbc21

Long lines have formed at food pantries across the U.S. as federal food benefits were cut off due to the government shutdown.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/apnews.com/a…

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

Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.

🌟 Community Highlights 🌟

• !Audiobooks@slrpnk.net - Share and discuss interesting books of an audible nature!
• !Lunarpunk@slrpnk.net - Explore the darker aesthetics of Solarpunk.
• !Soilscience@slrpnk.net - A science based community to discuss and learn all things related to soils (Get all up in that dirt! Woah, hold up, okay that's like maybe too much dirt- Oh you're eating it. No that's cool, I'm chill with it now).

🏵️ Meta Post Image Breakdown: Cempasúchil 🏵️

Cempasúchil, also called marigolds, is the flower traditionally used to honor the dead during Dia de los Muertos. Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a multi-day Mexican Holiday. It is celebrated the first two days of November, with November 1st dedicated to the remembrance of dead children.

⛔ Defederation from MAGA.place and HillariousChaos.com ⛔

We briefly broke our habit of not commenting on electoral political developments in !meta in December 2024 when we reported that the United States had elected a fascist government. Our characterization of Trump's regime and the MAGA movement as a US-localized version of the regimes of Mussolini, Franco, and Hilter has only been proven more and more prescient, as masked government agents attacking and kidnapping protestors, citizens, and immigrants in defiance of the rule of law. Trump's regime builds expensive concentration facilities and gaudy palatial vanity projects while pushing working Americans deeper into poverty.

We've joined instances from DBZer0.com to Lemmy.world in adding maga.place to our blocklist, defederating SLRPNK.net from the servers entirely. This prevents them from attracting new users by federating our posts and comments, and prevents their users from harassing SLRPNK members. The maga.place instance joined the Fediverse one month ago, and appeared on our radar when the admin began appearing in SLRPNK posts and communities.

We're not the first to block Hilariouschaos.com either, which also hosts fascist content and tolerates right-wing trolls. We've been side-eyeing this server for a while, but the eager collaboration between HC users and maga.place has made the fascist trends on HC unambiguous enough to take action.

This is consistent with our defederation standards. We've always encouraged good faith discussion between a spectrum of ideological and political positions, and stood up for our members to moderate their communities according to their politics, even when it contradicts our own. We have also ejected members who consistently engage in trolling, bad faith argument, and spreading demonstrably false information. When an instance has cultivated a significant culture of trolls and bad faith actors, we have defederated from those instances. We've blocked Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml on that basis.

Our blocklist is not limited to instances that tolerate modern forms of fascism, but all fascist instances belong on our blocklist. Fascism is a fundamentally irrational political position, and is impossible to defend rhetorically with good-faith argument. Reality is the source of ideological truth. Among people who hold these positions, this relationship is flipped, and ideological truth is the source of reality. This is why they so easily dismiss evidence out of hand that contradicts their narrative, and the Admin of maga.place's reliance on claims of 'fake news' regardless of the source and credibility illustrates this point.

Several servers we federate do not block maga.place. This means maga.place won't see your posts or comments on these servers, and you won't see content posted from maga.place to these servers either since we began the block. It also means members of these servers will see content from both us and maga.place, and may encourage more fascists to join these instances to get around the block. Posts on these servers will appear alongside posts from blocked servers, despite there being no other interaction besides proximity.

We encourage other admins to add maga.place to their blocklist as well to prevent cultivating a fascist audience. Trolling is a form of censorship, a performance of irrationality intended to frustrate people engaging in good faith and drive them away from platforms that tolerate this behavior. The casual dismissal of scientific consensus without evidence and other irrational antics takes a much darker turn once the political power of trolls is great enough to make their critics disappear. Incarceration, deportation, and murder for political thought are all much more significant forms of censorship in comparison to federation blocks.

While most instances institute these blocks without comment, others engage in a form of internal comment or debate. Sh.itjust.works engaged in a public discussion, and is currenly voting on the issue (only SJW members should participate in the vote thread). A similar discussion occurred on Lemmy.ca, and they ultimately decided to defederate.

The politics of voting on the Fediverse probably deserves its own discussion; at SLRPNK, we wear our ethos on our sleeve, and we feel acting within the bounds of our server's ideals should not require a bureaucratic process. We are committed to transparency and open discussion, hence we walk a middle ground between seeking a formal public mandate and silent executive action.

Due to the nature of our server, most of what I've said is probably taken for granted by most of our members. Solidarity and coalition building are powerful tools in resistance to fascism. I've dedicated a large portion of this meta post to this discussion in solidarity with all of the members of other platforms who are also calling for their admins to defederate from instances that encourage fascist trolls. I'm tagging the admins of several instances who still federate to welcome them to join the conversation here and on Sh.itjust.works as well.

⚡Solar-powered Servers ☀️

Since we are getting into the dark months of the year again here is a quick update on how our solar-power production is going: In October it has been rather rainy at out server location (due to several Atlantic storms passing by), therefore only 67% of the total electricity needs could be covered by the solar panels. The average over the last three months was 83%, with the downward trend starting in September (88%). The additional grid-power was mostly wind and geothermal energy and the good news is that this nearby geothermal power-plant is currently being renovated and expanded (and will include a modern thermal spa soon as well, yay).

📡 Technical Updates 📡

We did a quick server OS update earlier today, which went smoothly, so there isn't much to report on. Overall we have still some pending hardware changes to reduce energy consumption a bit, and those will require some unscheduled server restarts. We also discussed the updated plans for the potential Piefed migration in the server upgrade thread here, tl;dr: the main blockers should be gone now, but we need to set up a Piefed test instance and investigate the database structure for creating a migration script. As a preparation, we already have a working object storage setup on our servers now, which should make media storage easier to expand in the future. The first test case for it is a new PeerTube instance that our hosting organization f-hub.org recently added.

💬 Open Discussion 💬

Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction 😀

SLRPNK Community Resources:

• Community Wiki - Moderators, you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
• Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
• Etherpad - Collaborative document editor

::: spoiler ⬛ Union Resources 🟥
These are unions from around the world who can train you to become an effective organizer to form a grassroots union with your co-workers!

• 🌍 Global: IWW (Français) - (Español)
• 🇦🇷 Argentina: FORA
• 🇦🇺 Australia: ASF-IWA
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: FOB
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: ARS, CITUB
• 🇩🇪 Germany: FAU
• 🇬🇷 Greece: ESE
• 🇮🇹 Italy: USI
• 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Netherlands & Belgium: Vriji Bond
• 🇪🇸 Spain: CNT
• 🇸🇪 Sweden: SAC
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: UVW
  :::

poVoq

2025-10-26 23:08:14

Scheduled maintenance for server upgrades next weekend

Likely Saturday, 1st of November.

We need to do some server OS upgrades and a some other things that will cause a few hours downtime.

Maybe I will already start with some smaller things this week, that should only cause a short down-time for reboots.

Once that is done, I will look into running a Piefed test instance to investigate how to do the database migration from Lemmy. If everything goes smoothly, we might be able to do the Lemmy to Piefed migration end of this year or early next year.

Here is the unlisted demo video from their newsletter:

Key bits:

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching its Adobe-rivalling Affinity creative suite as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts. Unlike Affinity’s previous Designer, Photo, and Publisher software, which were a one-time $70 purchase, Canva’s announcement stresses that the new Affinity app is “free forever” and won’t require a subscription.

Affinity’s one-time-purchase model was one of the most appealing things about its older software offerings, standing in stark contrast to Adobe’s controversial subscription-based creative suite. While Canva’s own design platform can be used for free, it also locks most of its capabilities behind subscription paywalls, which raised concerns that Affinity would adopt Canva’s subscription-based approach following the acquisition. The company is trying to put those fears to rest for good by repeatedly mentioning how “free” the new Affinity app is, but the AI integrations will likely be met with some resistance by creatives who oppose the technology.

I'm glad they didn't add any subscription pricing, and while I don't know if they'll actually be able to fund it through the optional AI subscriptions alone, at least it can be used offline for those who want any AI things. Now my only complaint is the lack of a solid Linux client.

Affinity’s new design platform combines everything into one app

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching Affinity as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts

^{Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)}

Here is the unlisted demo video from their newsletter:

Key bits:

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching its Adobe-rivalling Affinity creative suite as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts. Unlike Affinity’s previous Designer, Photo, and Publisher software, which were a one-time $70 purchase, Canva’s announcement stresses that the new Affinity app is “free forever” and won’t require a subscription.

Affinity’s one-time-purchase model was one of the most appealing things about its older software offerings, standing in stark contrast to Adobe’s controversial subscription-based creative suite. While Canva’s own design platform can be used for free, it also locks most of its capabilities behind subscription paywalls, which raised concerns that Affinity would adopt Canva’s subscription-based approach following the acquisition. The company is trying to put those fears to rest for good by repeatedly mentioning how “free” the new Affinity app is, but the AI integrations will likely be met with some resistance by creatives who oppose the technology.

I'm glad they didn't add any subscription pricing, and while I don't know if they'll actually be able to fund it through the optional AI subscriptions alone, at least it can be used offline for those who want any AI things. Now my only complaint is the lack of a solid Linux client.

Affinity’s new design platform combines everything into one app

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching Affinity as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts

^{Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)}

"I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that's where the big money is going to be."

‘Godfather of AI’ says tech giants can’t profit from their astronomical investments unless human labor is replaced

^{Jason Ma (Fortune)}