Zelenskyy faces the biggest corruption scandal of his presidency
On November 10, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) exposed an alleged $110 million corruption scheme at state-owned nuclear company Energoatom. The charges are supported by a fifteen-month wiretap and over seventy searches carried out as part of a major investigation called Operation Midas.
According to NABU officials, the investigation uncovered a criminal enterprise run by Timur Mindich, a film producer and a former business partner of Zelenskyy. Additional suspects include former Minister of Energy and recently appointed Minister of Justice Herman Halushchenko; former Naftogaz CEO and Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov; former Minister of Defense and current National Security and Defense Council member Rustem Umerov; and Ihor Myroniuk, former deputy head of the State Property Fund and former advisor to Halushchenko.
Mindich fled Ukraine the day before his premises were raided and is reportedly now in Israel.
Zelenskyy faces the biggest corruption scandal of his presidency - Atlantic Council
Amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, Ukraine in now facing the largest corruption scandal of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidency over alleged kickbacks in the graft-prone energy sector, writes Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti.Peter Dickinson (Atlantic Council)
My hard drive keeps clicking like files are being accessed but I'm not doing anything in that filesystem and the indicator light doesn't indicate any usage.
I'm running a NAS on Fedora Server with LUKS encrypted Btrfs hard drives in a USB-C multi-bay enclosure. I noticed that one or both of the hard drives keep making the same sound as when I'm lightly reading or writing files from it (the closest it sounds like to my ear is something like copying to a Wi-Fi connected device where there is a bottleneck somewhere other than the hard drive, so it has bursts of activity a few times a second between idle time). Using iostat -x on my two main hard drives, I do see periodic activity every 10 or so seconds but I'm definitely not accessing anything in them, and the activity indicators on the USB enclosure are still and not blinking to indicate activity.
Should I be worried about this? To my paranoid mind it feels like something is slowly reading my files with some exploit to bypass the indicator light to fly under the radar. But I just did a clean install of Fedora Server 43 (over the previous installation which was 42) and I never installed anything outside of the official package manager and Docker registry. I've also never had this issue on Fedora Server 42 as far as I know, and the NAS is on my desk so I feel like I would have heard it ages ago if it was something frequent. There's also no unexpected network activity on the Cockpit dashboard that would indicate that files are being uploaded, though I feel like if some malware can suppress the indicator light on a USB enclosure it can probably also hide its network traffic.
Is there something standard it's doing that could explain this? Like does Fedora 43 more frequently tell the drive's controller itself to do things like defragmentation or bit rot prevention when it's idle? That's the only explanation I can think of where the drive is clicking but no data is actually being transferred that would trigger the indicator light, since the operation would be entirely within the drive itself.
![stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]](images/person-80.jpg)
GitHub - martinpitt/fatrace: report system wide file access events
report system wide file access events. Contribute to martinpitt/fatrace development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
What dystopian surveillance things from your country you can't escape?
Or have to go through great lengths to escape.
In my country you can't buy any medicine without showing your ID... I mean, you technically can, but if you are registered they "give" like an 80% discount, so everyone thinks it's a great deal, not realizing that's the normal price, they are just pretending you can still go and buy a simple cold medicine without sharing your ID, phone, email, and street address with the drug store and whoever they decide to sell that information to, you just have to pay absurdly more. Yeah, you can lie about all the other information, but not really about your ID number. Probably soon, to get the "discount", you are going to have to verify your email or phone number as well.
Sidetracked a bit but last week I was in the UK. I tried to visit a website (not porn actually, just private messaging on BlueSky) and it asked to verify my age. Initially I thought "Meh... OK... let's see the process" which then lead to installing an app maybe (I'm not sure tbh as I was in rush). Clearly I didn't want to do it because the DM was potentially urgent (scheduling to meet someone ASAP) ... so what did I do? I switched from my browser to my VPN, connected from Austria, refreshed... no age verification. It took me a grand total of 5s to bypass the system.
TL;DR: maybe you can actually escape even though you are convinced you can't.
No, you're confusing trade itself for capitalism, and severely downplaying the immense siphoning of material wealth that goes on, especially at an international scale. Capitalists steal the value created by workers, workers are not on an even playing field with capitalists. They sell the only commodity they can, their labor power, while capitalists leverage their ownership of capital to fix labor prices around subsistence wages.
Regulation can't fix capitalism or save it from the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. We need to move onto socialism, where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and production and distribution are oriented towards satisfying needs rather than profits.
Not necessarily. Capitalism functions by the following circuit:
M-C...P...C'-M'
Money is used to buy commodities, such as machinery, raw materials, and labor power, then production happens, then higher value commodities are the result of said production and sold for greater sums of money. M' is fed back into this system, and M'' is output at the end, over and over. The increase in value comes from unpaid labor, ie wages that don't actually cover all of the value created, because capitalists cannot profit otherwise.
Socialist systems don't have equal pay for everyone (that isn't the goal to begin with), but also don't have this system of capital ownership as the principle aspect of their economies and as such private ownership is phased out over time in these countries.
I think you will see plenty of private ownership in any country. Unless you accept the paper only "public property" with a ruling class of "I am the state" philosophy.
Every country has billionaires, in capitalist countries they buy politicians and in authoritarian countries they are the politicians, but inequality is there nonetheless.
Publicly run industry doesn't normally function with the same circuit of turning money into a larger sum of money that I described, nor are administrators a "ruling class." Inequality in distribution exists, but isn't necessarily the problem, equalitarians that seek equal distribution for everyone are exceedingly rare. There's a qualitative difference in outcomes for the working classes in socialist countries where public ownership is the principle aspect that manifests in dramatic uplifting of their material conditions, whereas the point of the capitalist system is said inequality. The sheer scale of inequality in capitalist systems far surpasses socialist countries.
In the USSR, for example, the gap between the wealthiest, ie professors and scientists at the top and the average factory worker towards the bottom, was about ten times. In capitalist countries, that number skyrockets to billions. In the PRC, which has a socialist market economy, the number of billionaires is going down while the GDP and GDP per capita of the PRC is growing dramatically year over year, alongside real wages.
Yes, Stalin was not ruling class. Not at all. Benevolent caretaker. Same as Maduro, the Kims and Xi.
PS: lol at professors being the wealthiest in the USSR. Big lol.
By this logic fat shaming is acceptable?
I mean, yeah, in many contexts. For example, when a professional athlete shows up to training camp after putting on a bunch of fat in the off-season, that's fair game. It's literally their job to maintain their bodies and if we're allowed to criticize their job performance then we're certainly allowed to criticize their maintenance of their physical fitness. There's obviously a clear parallel here between that and other public figures where their intelligence may be fair game for criticism.
More broadly, when people are engaged in unhealthy habits of any kind (from smoking to sleep deprivation to overwork/stress to terrible relationship decisions to unhealthy eating/exercise habits), I think it's fair game for loved ones to point that out and encourage steering their lives back towards healthier choices. I'm not advocating that we go and make fun of strangers, the range of acceptable conversation in our day to day relationships is going to be different.
No, that's not OK to mock people's medical conditions, and it's always a good idea to exercise some empathy and humility to know that things might not always be as easy for others as for yourself. But I've never been on board with the idea that fatness is somehow off limits, in large part that I don't believe that most people's fatness is inherently innate. Correlations between moving to or away from high obesity areas (most notably between countries or between significant changes of altitude, but also apparent in moves between city centers and suburban car-based communities) make that obvious that fatness is often environmental.
TLDR: I make fun of Trump's fat ass all the time.
Amazon in discussions with USPS about future relationship
Amazon.com (AMZN.O) said Thursday the e-commerce giant is in discussions with the U.S. Postal Service about its future relationship and considering its options before its current contract expires next year.
The Washington Post reported Thursday new Postmaster General David Steiner plans to hold a reverse auction in early 2026 that might create more competition within the Post Office for Amazon's business by offering access to postal facilities to the highest bidder, rather than directly to Amazon. It would make the company compete with national retail brands and regional shipping firms.
People’s Republic of China (PRC) State-Sponsored Actors Use BRICKSTORM Malware Across Public Sector and Information Technology Systems
In comedy of errors, men accused of wiping gov databases turned to an AI tool
Two sibling contractors convicted a decade ago for hacking into US State Department have once again been charged, this time for a comically hamfisted attempt to steal and destroy government records just minutes after being fired from their contractor jobs.The Department of Justice on Thursday said that Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, of Alexandria, Virginia, deleted databases and documents maintained and belonging to three government agencies. The brothers were federal contractors working for an undisclosed company in Washington, DC, that provides software and services to 45 US agencies. Prosecutors said the men coordinated the crimes and began carrying them out just minutes after being fired.
In comedy of errors, men accused of wiping gov databases turned to an AI tool
Defendants were convicted of similar crimes a decade ago. How were they cleared again?Dan Goodin (Ars Technica)
Why the F is a single contractor able to delete an entire DB without any kind of sign off by a manager for that operation, unless they were and to sign off for each other.
Imagine if a junior messed up the command? Every system I've worked on has had these controls mainly for the latter issue, by the former also shouldn't have been possible.
Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.
Valve tells Ars its “trying to unblock” limits caused by open source driver issues.
Have you looked at the HDMI Forum member list and board of directors?
- hdmiforum.org/members/
- hdmiforum.org/about/hdmi-forum…
It includes pretty much every manufacturer who makes decisions which ports to include on their devices. They have no interest in DisplayPort adoption.
HDMI Forum Board of Directors - HDMI Forum
The HDMI Forum is a non-profit corporation governed by an elected Board of Directors from member companies. The Board approves and directs Working Groups to develop specifications for the HDMI... Read More »HDMI Forum
Jan. 6 Pipe Bomber Finally Arrested Half Decade Later
The FBI sucks at its job but wants you to salute them anyway
EU's Top Court Just Made It Impossible to Run a User-Generated Platform Legally
EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally
The Court of Justice of the EU—likely without realizing it—just completely shit the bed and made it effectively impossible to run any website in the entirety of the EU that hosts user-generated con…Techdirt
like this
Pentagon Claims It “Absolutely” Knows Who It Killed in Boat Strikes. Prove It, Lawmaker Says
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1160…
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said, “If there is intelligence to 'absolutely confirm' this, the Congress is ready to receive it.”The post Pentagon Claims It “Absolutely” Knows Who It Killed in Boat Strikes. Prove It, Lawmaker Says appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
Pentagon Claims It “Absolutely” Knows Who It Killed in Boat Strikes. Prove It, Lawmaker Says.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said, “If there is intelligence to ‘absolutely confirm’ this, the Congress is ready to receive it.”Nick Turse (The Intercept)
'A Human Rights Disaster': Report Details Torture and Chaos at 'Alligator Alcatraz'
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1159…
Two immigration detention centers in Florida have gained notoriety for inhumane conditions since Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, in close alignment with President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant agenda, has rapidly scaled up mass detention in the state, and a report released Thursday detailed how human rights violations at the two facilities amount to torture in some cases.
Amnesty International published the report, *Torture and Enforced Di**sappearances in the Sunshine State*, with a focus on Krome North Service Processing Center and the Everglades Detention Facility, also known by its nickname, "Alligator Alcatraz."
As Common Dreams has reported, many of the people detained at the facilities have been arbitrarily rounded up by immigration agents, with a majority of the roughly 1,000 people being held at Alligator Alcatraz having been convicted of no criminal offense as of July.
Amnesty's report described unsanitary conditions, with fecal matter overflowing from toilets in detainees' sleeping areas, authorities granting only limited access to showers, and poor quality food and water.
Some of the treatment amounts to torture, the report says, including Alligator Alcatraz's use of "the box"—a 2x2 foot "cage-like structure people are put in as punishment—which inmates have been placed in for hours at a time with their hands and feet attached to restraints on the ground.
— (@)“These despicable and nauseating conditions at Alligator Alcatraz reflect a pattern of deliberate neglect designed to dehumanize and punish those detained there,” said Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights with Amnesty International USA. “This is unreal—where’s the oversight?”
At Krome, detainees have been arbitrarily placed in prolonged solitary confinement—defined as lasting longer than 15 days—which is prohibited under international law.
"The use of prolonged solitary confinement at Krome and the use of the ‘box’ at 'Alligator Alcatraz' amount to torture or other ill-treatment," said Amnesty.
The report elevates concerns raised in September by immigrant rights advocates regarding the lack of federal oversight at Alligator Alcatraz, with nearly 1,000 men detained at the prison having been "administratively disappeared"—their names absent from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detainee locator system.
"The absence of registration or tracking mechanisms for those detained at Alligator Alcatraz facilitates incommunicado detention and constitutes enforced disappearances when the whereabouts of a person being detained there is denied to their family, and they are not allowed to contact their lawyer," said Amnesty.
The state of Florida has not publicly confirmed the number of people detained at Alligator Alcatraz.
One man told Amnesty, "My lawyers tried to visit me, but they weren’t let in. They were told that they had to fill out a form, which they did, but nothing happened. I was never able to speak with them confidentially.”
At Krome, detainees described overcrowding, medical neglect, and abuse by guards when Amnesty researchers visited in September. ICE has constructed tents and other semi-permanent structures to hold more people than the facility is designed to detain.
The Amnesty researchers were given a tour of relatively extensive medical facilities at Krome, including a dialysis clinic, dental clinic, and a "state-of-the-art" mental health facility—but despite these resources, detainees described officials' failure to provide medical treatment and delays in health assessments. Four people—Ramesh Amechand, Genry Ruiz Guillen, Maksym Chernyak, and Isidro Pérez—have died this year while detained at Krome.
"It’s a disaster if you want to see the doctor," one man told Amnesty. "I once asked to see the doctor, and it took two weeks for me to finally see him. It’s very slow.”
Researchers with the organization witnessed "a guard violently slam a metal flap of a door to a solitary confinement room against a man’s injured hand," and people reported being "hit and punched" by officials at Krome.
In line with the Trump administration, DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers have sought to make Florida "a testing ground for abusive immigration enforcement policies," said Amnesty, with the state deputizing local law enforcement to make immigration arrests and issuing 34 no-bid contracts totaling more than $360 million for the operation of Alligator Alcatraz—while slashing spending on healthcare, food assistance, and disaster relief. Florida has increased the number of people in immigration detention by more than 50% since Trump took office in January.
The organization called on Florida to redirect detention funding toward healthcare, housing, and other public spending, and to ban "shackling, solitary confinement, and punitive outdoor confinement" in line with international standards.
"At the federal level, the US government must end its cruel mass immigration detention machine, stop the criminalization of migration, and bar the use of state-owned facilities for federal immigration custody," said Amnesty.
Fischer emphasized that the chaotic and abusive conditions Amnesty observed at Alligator Alcatraz and Krome "are not isolated."
"They represent a deliberate system of cruelty designed to punish people seeking to build a new life in the US,” said Fischer. “We must stop detaining our immigrant community members and people seeking safety and instead work toward humane, rights-respecting migration policies.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Alligator Alcatraz Is an 'Extrajudicial Black Site,' Immigrant Advocates Say as Detainees Disappear
According to the Miami Herald, over 1,000 detainees in Florida’s immigrant internment camp have effectively “disappeared,” with family and attorneys unable to track their whereabouts.stephen-prager (Common Dreams)
It can be hard. I have yet to see an elegant way to navigate threaded chains of comments. It's like "UltimateGamer386 [actual content]". On Reddit, at least Old Reddit, the upvote and downvote controles were the only buttons and were located immediately before the actual comment, so you could go from button to button, then press down arrow to read the comment.
I have enough vision to navigate to some degree, at least on a desktop. For laptop or phone it has to be a screen reader. I really should be reading braille more.
I was just thinking the other day that a dedicated semantic tag for user replies like or or would be nice, and they could be nested.
I wonder if semantic tags like
<
article>, with controls embedded in
<
nav> or similar tags, could work anyway.
Study reveals that dark web users show significantly higher levels of depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and digital self-harm compared to surface web users
FAU Study Finds Connection Between Poor Mental Health and Dark Web Use
A new study of 2,000 U.S. adults shows dark web users report much higher rates of depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and digital self-harm than surface web users.www.fau.edu
‘I’m begging you’: what Snapchat knew about addicted users— Concerns were raised within the social media company about the effect of key features on users’ anxiety, addiction and body image
‘I’m begging you’: what Snapchat knew about addicted users
Internal emails show concerns within the company about the platform’s effect on teens’ mental healthEffie Webb (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)
[Announcements] Announcing Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids
Check out some of the media coverage below!
::: spoiler Spoiler
- thenerdstash.com/one-of-the-mo…
- escapistmagazine.com/news-path…
- escapistmagazine.com/news-path…
- sportskeeda.com/mmo/path-exile…
- sportskeeda.com/mmo/path-exile…
- destructoid.com/path-of-exile-…
- dotesports.com/path-of-exile/n…
- destructoid.com/we-finally-got…
- thegamer.com/path-of-exile-2-f…
- neowin.net/news/path-of-exile-…
- game8.co/games/Path-of-Exile-2…
- jeuxvideo.com/news/2049192/pat…
- buffed.de/Path-of-Exile-2-Spie…
- mein-mmo.de/path-of-exile-2-ch…
- gamestar.de/videos/druiden-und…
- eurogamer.net/path-of-exile-2-…
- ign.com/videos/path-of-exile-2…
- pcgamer.com/games/rpg/path-of-…
- mmorpg.com/previews/take-a-fir…
- comicbook.com/gaming/feature/p…
- polygon.com/path-of-exile-2-dr…
- pcgamesn.com/path-of-exile-2/t…
- gamingtrend.com/previews/path-…
- wccftech.com/path-of-exile-2-t…
- ungeek.ph/2025/12/path-of-exil…
- mmorpg.com/previews/build-your…
- thegamer.com/performance-is-fi…
:::
Path Of Exile 2 Players Can Expect "25 Percent Higher Frame Rates" In 0.4 Patch
You should expect a lot more frames in the new patch, especially on consoles.Harry Alston (TheGamer)
[Patch Notes] 0.3.1e Patch Notes
0.3.1e Patch Notes
- Added support for the upcoming The Last of the Druids announcement and new Supporter Packs.
- Enabled the Exile's Treasurer Hideout Decoration microtransaction for use in Path of Exile 2.
- Enabled the Echoes of the Maven Boots microtransaction for use in Path of Exile 2.
- Fixed a bug where the shatter visual effect was not playing.
- Fixed a bug where the Cauldron Map Device microtransaction was no longer tracking its relevant statistics.
This patch may take roughly 15 minutes to become available to download on PlayStation after it has been deployed.
Early Access Patch Notes - 0.3.1e Patch Notes - 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
[Patch Notes] 3.27.0e Patch Notes
3.27.0e Patch Notes
- Added support for the upcoming The Last of the Druids Path of Exile 2 announcement and new Supporter Packs.
- Added the Keepers of the Flame soundtrack to the Hideout Music Player.
- Fixed a bug where the Champion's Podium Map Device was not updating pillar animations in some situations.
Patch Notes - 3.27.0e Patch Notes - 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
EU's Top Court Just Made It Impossible to Run a User-Generated Platform Legally
EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally
The Court of Justice of the EU—likely without realizing it—just completely shit the bed and made it effectively impossible to run any website in the entirety of the EU that hosts user-generated con…Techdirt
Technology reshared this.
contradictory to existing laws (eg section 230).
Section 230 is US law; this article is about the EU and GDPR.
Operating in multiple countries often requires dealing with contradictory laws.
But yeah, in this case it also seems unfeasible. As the article says:
There is simply no way to comply with the law under this ruling.In such a world, the only options are to ignore it, shut down EU operations, or geoblock the EU entirely. I assume most platforms will simply ignore it—and hope that enforcement will be selective enough that they won’t face the full force of this ruling. But that’s a hell of a way to run the internet, where companies just cross their fingers and hope they don’t get picked for an enforcement action that could destroy them.
like this
But that’s a hell of a way to run the internet, where companies just cross their fingers and hope they don’t get picked for an enforcement action that could destroy them.
the number of startups that i've worked for that operate like this would probably make you laugh. lol
'Intellexa Leaks' Reveal Wider Reach of Predator Spyware
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1168…
Highly invasive spyware from consortium led by a former senior Israeli intelligence official and sanctioned by the US government is still being used to target people in multiple countries, a joint investigation published Thursday revealed.
Inside Story in Greece, Haaretz in Israel, Swiss-based WAV Research Collective, and Amnesty International collaborated on the investigation into Intellexa Consortium, maker of Predator commercial spyware. The "Intellexa Leaks" show that clients in Pakistan—and likely also in other countries—are using Predator to spy on people, including a featured Pakistani human rights lawyer.
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology," said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.
🚨Intellexa Leaks:"Among the most startling findings is evidence that—at the time of the leaked training videos—Intellexa retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer systems, even those physically located on the premises of its govt customers."securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2025/...[image or embed]
— Vas Panagiotopoulos (@vaspanagiotopoulos.com) December 3, 2025 at 9:07 PMPredator works by sending malicious links to a targeted phone or other hardware. When the victim clicks the link, the spyware infects and provide access to the targeted device, including its encrypted instant messages on applications such as Signal and WhatsApp, as well as stored passwords, emails, contact lists, call logs, microphones, audio recordings, and more. The spyware then uploads gleaned data to a Predator back-end server.
The new investigation also revealed that in addition to the aforementioned "one-click" attacks, Intellexa has developed "zero-click" capabilities in which devices are infected via malicious advertising.
In March 2024, the US Treasury Department sanctioned two people and five entities associated with Intellexa for their alleged role "in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology used to target Americans, including US government officials, journalists, and policy experts."
"The proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks to the United States and has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses and the targeting of dissidents around the world for repression and reprisal," the department said at the time.
Those sanctioned include Intellexa, its founder Tal Jonathan Dilian—a former chief commander of the Israel Defense Forces' top-secret Technological Unit—his wife and business partner Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou; and three companies within the Intellexa Consortium based in North Macedonia, Hungary, and Ireland.
In September 2024, Treasury sanctioned five more people and one more entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium, including Felix Bitzios, owner of an Intellexa consortium company accused of selling Predator to an unnamed foreign government, for alleged activities likely posing "a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States."
The Intellexa Leaks reveal that new consortium employees were trained using a video demonstrating Predator capabilities on live clients. raising serious questions regarding clients' understanding of or consent to such access.
"The fact that, at least in some cases, Intellexa appears to have retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer logs—allowing company staff to see details of surveillance operations and targeted individuals raises questions about its own human rights due diligence processes," said van Bergen.
"If a mercenary spyware company is found to be directly involved in the operation of its product, then by human rights standards, it could potentially leave them open to claims of liability in cases of misuse and if any human rights abuses are caused by the use of spyware," he added.
Dilian, Hamou, Bitzios, and Giannis Lavranos—whose company Krikel purchased Predator spyware—are currently on trial in Greece for allegedly violating the privacy of Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis and Artemis Seaford, a Greek-American woman who worked for tech giant Meta. Dilian denies any wrongdoing or involvement in the case.
Earlier this week, former Intellexa pre-sale engineer Panagiotis Koutsios testified about traveling to countries including Colombia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan, where he pitched Predator to public, intelligence, and state security agencies.
The new joint investigation follows Amnesty International's "Predator Files," a 2023 report detailing "how a suite of highly invasive surveillance technologies supplied by the Intellexa alliance is being sold and transferred around the world with impunity."
The Predator case has drawn comparisons with Pegasus, the zero-click spyware made by the Israeli firm NSO Group that has been used by governments, spy agencies, and others to invade the privacy of targeted world leaders, political opponents, dissidents, journalists, and others.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
'No One Is Safe': Phone Numbers of 14 World Leaders on Pegasus List
"If 10 prime ministers and three presidents can't be safe from mercenary spyware, what chance do the rest of us stand?" asked one critic. "Since the hacking industry is incapable of self-control, governments must step up."kenny-stancil (Common Dreams)
Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X (Twitter) - FSFE
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) permanently deleted its account on X (formerly Twitter) on December 4, 2025, citing the platform's increasing hostility and misalignment with their values[^1].The FSFE explained that while they initially used Twitter to promote free software values and connect with policymakers and journalists, the platform had become "a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control"[^1]. They specifically criticized X's algorithm for prioritizing "hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism"[^1].
While leaving X, the FSFE continues to maintain some presence on other proprietary platforms to reach wider audiences, but strongly encourages supporters to follow them on decentralized alternatives in the Fediverse, specifically their Mastodon and Peertube accounts[^1].
[^1]: FSFE - Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X (Twitter)
Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X (Twitter) - FSFE
The Free Software Foundation Europe deleted its account on X. The platform never aligned with our values and no longer serves as a space for communication....FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe
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EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally
EU’s Top Court Just Made It Literally Impossible To Run A User-Generated Content Platform Legally
The Court of Justice of the EU—likely without realizing it—just completely shit the bed and made it effectively impossible to run any website in the entirety of the EU that hosts user-generated con…Techdirt
Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X (Twitter) - FSFE
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) permanently deleted its account on X (formerly Twitter) on December 4, 2025, citing the platform's increasing hostility and misalignment with their values1.
The FSFE explained that while they initially used Twitter to promote free software values and connect with policymakers and journalists, the platform had become "a centralised arena of hostility, misinformation, and profit-driven control"1. They specifically criticized X's algorithm for prioritizing "hatred, polarisation, and sensationalism"1.
While leaving X, the FSFE continues to maintain some presence on other proprietary platforms to reach wider audiences, but strongly encourages supporters to follow them on decentralized alternatives in the Fediverse, specifically their Mastodon and Peertube accounts1.
Opening the cage: the FSFE flies away from X (Twitter) - FSFE
The Free Software Foundation Europe deleted its account on X. The platform never aligned with our values and no longer serves as a space for communication....FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe
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Technology reshared this.
i struggle to understand why people and institutions stick with the likes of twitter or reddit.
it's easy to understand that it's because that's were the masses are, but the mission/message you're putting out there while doing so includes the consent that genocide and ethnic cleansing are fine with you and/or your institution.
Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting
Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information.
Attendees
- Julian (@julian@activitypub.space)
- Ted Thibodeau Jr (he/him) (OpenLinkSw.com) // GitHub:@TallTed // Mastodon:@TallTed
- Jesse Karmani (jesseplusplus@mastodon.social)
Agenda
- Mastodon context issues (backfill not possible at the moment)
- Context (topic/thread) deletion and moving between audiences (communities/categories)
- Draft FEP for the above
- Deleting entire tree vs. one post. with_replies or Remove(Context)?
- Cross-posting (stalled?)
Mastodon context issues
- Backfill not possible,
contextremainsnull - Claire and David are aware, can this be reproduced locally? @jesseplusplus
- Mastodon keeps track of the conversation, but not what the root-level ID is; Frequency keeps track of the parents. This was new to Mastodon codebase (all internally)
- Possibly the code shared for this is not working
- Jesse will take a look (diff b/w Decodon and Mastodon)
- Ted:
in-reply-totracking is akin to parent tracking - Jesse: Not quite; Mastodon now tracks root-level ID (that's the piece that might not be working.)
Mastodon reading context?
- The other (harder) half: FEP f228
- Jesse made David aware of the possibility of using f228 to backfill
- Asked whether this would conflict with existing reply tree crawling — suspect it will not.
- Expected 6–12 months out (or more)
- tl;dr — no update available, but none was expected either.
Context Relocation and Removal
- Pre-Draft FEP
- ActivityPub.Space Discussion
- Genesis of this FEP from needs of ActivityPub.Space. It bridges Microblogiverse and Threadiverse by importing discussions by hashtag (#activitypub among others)
- Lots of curation needed as people tend to use the #activitypub hashtag when discussing non-AP things
- Also non-English content, etc. (ActivityPub.Space is English-focused as we have two mods, Julian and another temporary mod from toot.wales/IFTAS)
- Pre-draft shared with Rimu (rimu@piefed.social) and Felix (nutomic@lemmy.ml) for their thoughts, discussion (linked above) started last night for some additional input.
- No opposition to
Move(Context)as it is not a functionality that is implemented by anybody at the moment- Hooray for greenfield AP dev!
Out-of-band discussion
Remove(Context)received some pushback from Lemmy. This was expected as both Lemmy and Piefed currently useDelete(Object)- Felix is recommending that
Delete(Object)can supplywith_repliesproperty to explicitly denote that the entire reply tree is to be deleted. - Julian is recommending that
Remove(Context)be used to explicitly denote that the reply-tree/container itself is removed, context can be resolved to determine which exact object IDs to delete if needed,Removealso tells you which audience/community it was removed from. - Rimu OK with either approach.
- Felix raised objection to the wording that
Delete(Post)is shown under "backwards compatibility" — Julian will update to reflect equal priority on both approaches.
ForumWG discussion
- Julian admits that it is likely much much easier for Lemmy to update their handling of
Deletevs. creating a new handler forRemove. - Julian notes disconnect with current behaviour (
Delete(Object)) and new behaviour (same, butwith_replies) and the actual effect (removal from the community); you cannot actually delete someone else's content because it does not satisfy same-origin constraint (yes, sometimes, but not always.) - Currently at an impasse as to how to proceed, but Julian encourages parties present to contribute to the discussion and review the FEP.
- Would prefer alignment as opposed to supporting both
RemoveandDelete(Object) w/ repliesgiven that it is unlikely both will be implemented widely.
Action Items
- [ ] Jesse: investigate
nullcontextissue; Mastodon - [ ] Julian: Revise and publish FEP f15d
Relevant Mentions
melroy@kbin.melroy.org bentigorlich@gehirneimer.de
TallTed - Overview
Technical Evangelist for @OpenLink / @OpenLinkSoftware. Mac Geek. Human Middleware. Shamanic Witch. Shapeshifter. Singer. Drummer. Dancer. Dreamer. - TallTedGitHub
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Re: Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting
silverpill@mitra.social said in Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting:
> 1. It assumes that a context always belongs to one group.
Yes that's correct. There was the potential for a context to belong to multiple audiences but social issues preclude further research.
Specifically, moderation gets very messy when contexts are cross posted to diametrically opposing audiences, and so that's not something I am equipped to work through right now.
Secondly, the assumption is already there that a context only belongs to one audience. We will not change that expectation.
Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting
@julianFEP-f15d: Context Relocation and RemovalI have two objections to this proposal. We discussed them before in Moving topics/contexts between communities...⁂ ActivityPub.Space
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Re: Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting
silverpill@mitra.social said in Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting:
> 2. Treating collections (dynamic views) as static objects that can be moved, deleted etc is not compatible with client-side signing.
You mentioned this before, but I am not sure what you are referring to. Do you mind elaborating?
Minutes from 4 December 2025 WG Meeting
@julianFEP-f15d: Context Relocation and RemovalI have two objections to this proposal. We discussed them before in Moving topics/contexts between communities...⁂ ActivityPub.Space
Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready
Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready
A post about everyone in Seattle hating AI.jonready.com
You've moved my opinion on this definitely, I have never been inside that world, but I engage with it all the time because of my work.
Rather than being something strange and wrong, it's just a thing that works, and that's why you guys adopt it. Like rubber duck programming.
Server prices set to jump 15%, PCs 5%, as memory costs spike
Server prices set to jump 15%, PCs 5%, as memory costs spike - channel sources
Exclusive: Major OEMs are plotting double-digit hikes as DRAM and NAND shortages bitePaul Kunert (The Register)
Israel-backed gang leader killed in Gaza; Israel strikes Lebanon amid talks; ICE in New Orleans
Israel-backed gang leader killed in Gaza; Israel strikes Lebanon amid talks; ICE in New Orleans
Drop Site Daily: December 4, 2025Drop Site News
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Israel-backed gang leader killed in Gaza; Israel strikes Lebanon amid talks; ICE in New Orleans
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39867577
Israeli attacks kill six people across Gaza, with 16 others injured, in the past 24 hours. Yasser Abu Shabab, leader of Israel-backed gang, is killed. Israeli tanks roll into Gaza City. Israel and Hamas trade casualties in Rafah. Israeli forces used bulldozers to hide the bodies of Palestinians killed while seeking aid at Zikim. President Donald Trump says the ceasefire is “moving along.” Israel strikes four towns in southern Lebanon in a new military operation announced Thursday. Lebanon and Israel hold first direct talks in 40 years. Israeli raids near Tubas in the West Bank. Israel is building a fence through the Jordan Valley, on the model of its West Bank wall. DHS launches another raid in a major American city, this time in New Orleans. Trump pardons Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar on his bribery case, primarily because he shares his right-wing immigration views. Legal experts warn Microsoft about its complicity in the Gaza genocide. Changes in medical record-keeping at the Department of Veterans Affairs portend disaster. Romanian navy intercepts a Ukrainian-manufactured drone. Indian police kill 12 Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh. A bomb in northwestern Pakistan kills three police officers, while Afghanistan-Pakistan talks stall. Fighting intensifies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Israel-backed gang leader killed in Gaza; Israel strikes Lebanon amid talks; ICE in New Orleans
Israeli attacks kill six people across Gaza, with 16 others injured, in the past 24 hours. Yasser Abu Shabab, leader of Israel-backed gang, is killed. Israeli tanks roll into Gaza City. Israel and Hamas trade casualties in Rafah. Israeli forces used bulldozers to hide the bodies of Palestinians killed while seeking aid at Zikim. President Donald Trump says the ceasefire is “moving along.” Israel strikes four towns in southern Lebanon in a new military operation announced Thursday. Lebanon and Israel hold first direct talks in 40 years. Israeli raids near Tubas in the West Bank. Israel is building a fence through the Jordan Valley, on the model of its West Bank wall. DHS launches another raid in a major American city, this time in New Orleans. Trump pardons Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar on his bribery case, primarily because he shares his right-wing immigration views. Legal experts warn Microsoft about its complicity in the Gaza genocide. Changes in medical record-keeping at the Department of Veterans Affairs portend disaster. Romanian navy intercepts a Ukrainian-manufactured drone. Indian police kill 12 Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh. A bomb in northwestern Pakistan kills three police officers, while Afghanistan-Pakistan talks stall. Fighting intensifies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.Israel-backed gang leader killed in Gaza; Israel strikes Lebanon amid talks; ICE in New Orleans
Drop Site Daily: December 4, 2025Drop Site News
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Why Are New Appliances So Bad? [41:02]
- YouTube
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.www.youtube.com
I don't keep up on the appliance world very much, but for many years I have been under the impression that when replacing one it's always a good call to NOT get the Samsung.
I have literally never seen reason to doubt that rule.
I'm actually pretty happy with my current appliances, but I don't stick all to one brand and I stick with the simpler cheaper designs. If paying for the next higher tier brings higher build quality or upgrades the core function's power/capacity, then I'll probably go for it.
FBI arrests suspect in Jan. 2021 pipe-bombing case
The suspect has been charged with placing the bombs, which did not detonate. The allegations, if proven, would end a longstanding mystery that sparked a multitude of conspiracy theories over who planted the pipe bombs before a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol aiming to stop Joe Biden from being installed as president. Authorities have not yet determined a motive, a law enforcement official said. But the suspect has been linked to statements in support of anarchist ideology, said two people briefed on the arrest.
The FBI’s case against the suspect is not based on a new breakthrough, according to two sources, but instead on a review the FBI conducted in recent weeks of evidence that had already been gathered and which the department had in its possession. The sources requested anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive case. That voluminous trove of material was largely collected in 2021 and 2022.
FBI arrests suspect in Jan. 2021 pipe-bombing case
Authorities say the suspect placed viable explosive devices outside the RNC and DNC offices the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.Ken Dilanian (MS NOW)
New Report Exposes Torture, Abuse, and Medical Neglect in Florida Migrant Jails
New Report Exposes Torture, Abuse, and Medical Neglect in Florida Migrant Jails
An Amnesty official noted that the abusive conditions the organization observed at the facilities “are not isolated.”…Julia Conley (Truthout)
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Chicago Promoted Two Police Officers After Investigators Found They Engaged in Sexual Misconduct
One of Chicago’s newest police sergeants had been deemed “unfit to serve” after an investigation uncovered evidence that he created a fake Facebook account and spread a nude photo of a woman he was sexually involved with, then lied to investigators about it.
Another new sergeant had been found to have engaged in conduct that “seriously undermines public faith, credibility, and trust in the Department” after he was accused of sexual assault and domestic violence.
The officers’ promotions this spring were not due to an oversight. Department officials knew about their disciplinary records, but those records could not be considered as the department evaluated their fitness for promotion.
Chicago Promoted Two Police Officers After Investigators Found They Engaged in Sexual Misconduct
The Chicago Police Department’s promotions system allows officers’ disciplinary records to be ignored. Despite years of reform efforts, nothing has changed.cengiz.yar@propublica.org (ProPublica)
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Affordable Care Act premiums are set to spike. A new poll shows enrollees are already struggling
The enhanced premium tax credits set to expire at the end of this year have been at the center of recent tensions in Congress, with Democrats calling for a straight extension and several Republican lawmakers vehemently opposed to the idea. Their inability to agree on a path forward fueled a record 43-day government shutdown earlier this fall.
President Donald Trump and some Republicans in Congress have circulated proposals in recent weeks to offer a short-term extension or reform the Affordable Care Act, but no plan has emerged as a clear winner. Meanwhile, the window for Americans to shop for next year’s plans is well underway with less than a month to go until the subsidies expire.
KFF’s poll reveals that marketplace enrollees — most of whom say they would be directly impacted by the subsidies expiring — overwhelmingly support an extension. The survey found this group is more likely to blame Trump and Republicans in Congress than Democrats if the tax credits are left to expire.
Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era
Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era
The grand idealism of the free and open internet might be over for now, but in its place falls a more practical mindset.Mozilla Foundation
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For This Prestigious Contest, Photographers Capture the Planet's Most Stunning Landscapes
For This Prestigious Contest, Photographers Capture the Planet's Most Stunning Landscapes — Colossal
A panel of judges chose three top winners, with the first place award of Landscape Photographer of the Year presented to J. Fritz Rumpf.Kate Mothes (Colossal)
Wireless EV charging hits 90% efficiency in Swiss real-world trials
Bonus video of Swiss-German in the wild included. If you think German sounds harsh, you'll love the Zuerich dialect. At least it's all done in sing-song fashion, as is called for.
A real-world trial by scientists in Switzerland has demonstrated that wireless EV charging can achieve up to 90 percent efficiency compared with conventional cable-based systems, while offering far greater convenience.Supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the cantons of Zurich and Aargau, the project, called INLADE, was carried out by researchers from Empa in collaboration with the electric utility Eniwa AG.
Through this first-of-its-kind initiative, the team tested wireless inductive charging under real-life conditions in Switzerland. They are certain that what has long been routine for phones and electric toothbrushes could soon become a reality for EVs.
“The aim was to test the existing technology in everyday use, clarify technical and regulatory issues and demonstrate its potential for the energy transition,” Mathias Huber, from Empa’s Chemical Energy Carriers and Vehicle Systems lab, said.
Wireless EV charging hits 90% efficiency in Swiss real-world trials
Swiss researchers have achieved 90 percent efficiency with wireless EV charging, proving inductive systems can match plug-in performance.Georgina Jedikovska (Interesting Engineering)
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CookieOfFortune
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •RiverRock
in reply to CookieOfFortune • • •Saapas
in reply to RiverRock • • •RiverRock
in reply to Saapas • • •Saapas
in reply to RiverRock • • •RiverRock
in reply to Saapas • • •Saapas
in reply to RiverRock • • •Saapas
in reply to RiverRock • • •RiverRock
in reply to Saapas • • •I am in awe at your academic rigor
Saapas
in reply to RiverRock • • •Did you not read or understand this part?