Could VPNs Be 'Banned'?
With the UK apparently floating ideas of a VPN ban it's got me worried about the future of anonymity online. Now people have already pointed out that a VPN ban doesn't make sense because of all the legitimate uses of one and wouldn't even be enforceable anyway, but that got me thinking.
What if governments ordered websites (such as social media sites) to block traffic originating from a VPN node? Lots of sites already do this (or restrict your activity if they detect a VPN) to mitigate spam etc. and technically that wouldn't interfere with "legitimate" (in the eyes of the gov) VPN usage like logging onto corporate networks remotely
It's already a pain with so many sites either blocking you from access or making you jump through a million captchas using VPNs now. I'm worried it's about to get a whole lot worse
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Can anyone end the Ukraine war if Kiev refuses every compromise?
Can anyone end the Ukraine war if Kiev refuses every compromise?
Why every attempt at a Ukraine deal collapses under pressure from Kiev and BrusselsRT
No, and again, that doesn't apply in any way. Russia isn't going to surrender when they are winning the war, it isn't a real option. Either Ukraine and Russia successfully broker a peace deal, or Russia continues advancing at an increasingly rapid pace. That's the reality of the situation, the war is increasingly unpopular in Ukraine and corruption from the Banderites in charge is causing erosion of support.
There isn't a realistic way for Ukraine to win millitarily.
How to transfer a lot of storage?
I want to transfer 80 TB of data to another locatio . I already have the drives for it. The idea is to copy everything to it, fly it to the target and use or copy the data on/to the server.
What filesystem would you use and would you use a raid configuration? Currently I lean towards 8 single disk filesystems on the 10 TB drives with ext4, because it is simple. I considered ZFS because of the possiblity to scrub at the target destination and/or pool all drives. But ZFS may not be available at the target.
There is btrfs which should be available everywhere because it is in mainline linux and ZFS is not. But from my knowledge btrfs would require lvm to pool disks together like zfs can do natively.
Pooling the drives would also be a problem if one disk gets lost during transit. If I have everything on 8 single disks at least the remaining data can be used at the target and they only have to wait for the missing data.
I like to read about your opinions or practical experience with similar challanges.
I'd use XFS as it's excellent at copying big files of data (7z. img/iso/qcow2, 4K Videos).
For large amounts of smaller files (Like photos, odt, and PDFs), I'd use Ext4.
U.S. Army secretary warned Ukraine of imminent defeat while pushing initial peace plan
U.S. Army secretary warned Ukraine of imminent defeat while pushing initial peace plan
The meeting between Army secretary Dan Driscoll and the Ukrainians was the latest example of the rift inside the Trump administration about how to end the war.Dan De Luce (NBC News)
“The message was basically — you are losing,” one of the sources said, “and you need to accept the deal.”
Are they losing?
For the past three years, the news from Russia has been about young men leaving the country because Putin keeps updating the laws around the draft/conscription to feed his war machine.
I'm sure Ukraine is in a similar position, but it doesn't sound like a clearcut win for Russia, either.
They are very obviously losing right now. Ukraine is suffering from a critical manpower shortage, the west is not able to provide them with weapons, the economic situation in Ukraine is unravelling, and there's a huge political scandal.
Meanwhile, the news from Russia for the past three years has absolutely not been that. Even Ukrainian media admits that kyivindependent.com/bloomberg-…
I guess UK regime propaganda is still trying to pretend otherwise though. Given that Russia isn't gang pressing people into service it's not clear what basis the Brits have for their bombastic claims.
The reality is that Russian economy is stable and growing, it's able to outproduce the west militarily, and its trade is now oriented towards BRICS. Given the stark difference between Russia and Ukraine in terms of available manpower, resources, and economy, it's pretty clear to anybody who can do grade school math that Russia is going to win the war.
Bloomberg: Russians who left abroad increasingly return home, boosting economy
Around 1 million Russians left the country after the start of the all-out war due to their opposition to the invasion or out of fear of mobilization.Martin Fornusek (The Kyiv Independent)
Given that Russia isn't gang pressing people into service
I wouldn't take that as "given".
And with the new law, draftees are immediately banned from leaving the country.Those who fail to show up at a recruitment office promptly will soon face a raft of new restrictions related to banking, selling property and even gaining access to a driver's license.
Already before the reform, people who refused orders to serve in the military have faced a possible prison sentence of up to 10 years. (NPR)
As part of their efforts to combat draft evasion, authorities earlier this year launched an electronic register of conscripts to serve online summonses in some Russian regions. They also introduced a series of legal restrictions for those who ignore the summonses, including banning their bank transactions, suspending their driver’s licenses and blocking foreign travel. (AP)
I quoted the NPR and AP articles, since you seem allergic to reporting from the UK.
I wouldn’t take that as “given”.
There is zero evidence for that being true. Meanwhile, the fact that it's happening in Ukraine is very well documented responsiblestatecraft.org/ukra…
I quoted the NPR and AP articles, since you seem allergic to reporting from the UK.
You're confusing the regular draft for the reserves that Russia has had since the soviet times with the war draft here. There was exactly a single time that there was a call up back in 2022.
Finally, you only have to consider the size difference in overall population. Even if there was the same rate of desertion on both sides, then Ukraine would still lose.
Ukraine's 'Busification' — forced conscription — is tip of the iceberg
Western media is largely ignoring that Kyiv has to rip young men off the streets amid recruitment shortages and desertionsIan Proud (Responsible Statecraft)
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Your responses have nothing to do with the parts of my comment that you're quoting.
In the first quote (I wouldn’t take that as “given”) I was responding to your claim that Russia wasn't press-ganging citizens into service. I then quoted two articles which themselves cited Russian sources (I'm pretty sure the State Duma is Russian) that said the Russian government was changing the draft rules and imposing severe penalties on people attempting to avoid the draft.
The second quote was pretty straightforward (I quoted the NPR and AP articles, since you seem allergic to reporting from the UK.), so I don't know how you went from that to "confusing regular draft for reserves", but I'll respond to that, too.
I'm not confusing the regular draft for reserves. Both sources explicitly use the terms "draft" and "conscript" to describe the people I'm talking about.
And I directly addressed your claim explaining that there is no evidence of gang pressing happening in Russia, and that you were referring to the regular reserves draft that's been happening long before the war.
I’m not confusing the regular draft for reserves. Both sources explicitly use the terms “draft” and “conscript” to describe the people I’m talking about.
Yes, you are absolutely confusing the draft with the call up to the front line. I'm also guessing that you didn't actually read the article you linked because its says the same thing I'm saying:
The bill’s authors say the measure is intended to ease pressure on military conscription offices and streamline their activities, which includes performing the physicals and assigning conscripts to various military branches.Even though the bill will make conscription a year-round process, it stipulates that conscripts will enter military service only during a few spring and summer months as before.
All Russian men aged 18-30 currently are obliged to serve in the military for one year, although many avoid the draft by using deferments granted to students, those with chronic illnesses, and for other reasons.
Even your own source is admitting that there is no increase in conscription happening.
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You keep changing the argument you claim I'm making.
Here's the comment, as a reminder.
I called into question your claim that press ganging (coercion into military service) wasn't happening, by citing sources that the Russian government was changing the rules of the draft and imposing severe penalties on people who tried to avoid it.
The sources you cited literally support what I said:
Even though the bill will make conscription a year-round process, it stipulates that conscripts will enter military service only during a few spring and summer months as before.
Do you even understand what the term press ganging means?
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You've tried to move the goalposts twice now, by:
- Claiming my argument is about a "call up to the front line". (I've said draft/conscription since the beginning.)
- Claiming my argument is that an increase in conscription is happening. (I implied press-ganging was happening, and said nothing about a change in the amount of conscription happening.)
I am and have been ignoring anything you threw out that tried to weasel away from the central argument:
The Russian government is coercing (which is how press-ganging is used to mean in normal conversations; this is not an academic conference) people into military service.
Conscription/the draft already technically meets that definition, but piling on prison sentences, suspending drivers licences, banning leaving the country, and restricting bank transactions all make it clear that Russian men are being coerced into military service.
I have not moved the goalposts. My position has been perfectly consistent. You are misusing a loaded term to fabricate a narrative.
Let's be crystal clear since you are struggling with the definition. Press ganging is not a synonym for conscription. It refers to the illegal and forcible impressment of individuals into military service. What that looks like is kidnapping people from streets or their homes outside of any legal framework. That's what you implied is happening in Russia, and it is a blatant falsehood.
What you are describing in Russia is the legal process of conscription, which includes standard penalties for evasion. These penalties like fines, license suspensions, and travel bans are common consequences for dodging a mandatory draft in many nations, including many US allies. To call this press ganging is deliberate sensationalism.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the very phenomenon you mistakenly accuse Russia of is a well documented reality. There have been numerous verified reports of recruiters literally grabbing men off the street and from public transport to forcibly conscript them, often without any paperwork or due process. That is what actual press-ganging looks like. It is happening there, not in Russia.
Your argument tries to blur the line between a legal state run conscription system and outright criminal abduction. They are not the same. The goalposts have not moved. You are just trying to score a point on a field that does not exist in reality. The facts are clear, and your conflation of them is intellectually dishonest.
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That's three times now. We'll add:
- Claiming I'm trying to "fabricate a narrative" as if there's some massive conspiracy.
to the list.
Do you seriously think I'm some part of some government operation to "weave a story"?
I'm a rando on the internet who thinks Russia is coercing men who don't want to be in a war to become soldiers.
Whether they corner them with infrastructural tactics or send armed men in unmarked vans to kidnap them off the street is immaterial.
Whether these tactics are practiced by Russia or by "many nations, including US allies" is immaterial.
It would be press-ganging and coercion if Ukraine did the same thing. It's press-ganging and coercion if the United States does it.
Standing on ceremony behind a dictionary definition and whether government says it's legal is such a weird stance to take when the issue is these people don't want to serve in the military, and the government is coercing them into it.
The only person inventing massive conspiracies in this conversation is you. Now you can add straw man arguments to the growing list of nonsense you are producing.
I think you are nothing more than a troll who argues for the sake of it, without a single honest bone in your body. You are the epitome of a reddit debate bro, substituting sophistry for genuine argument in a pathetic attempt to score imaginary points. You are very transparent.
You keep trying to conflate two entirely separate issues, a sad attempt at an argument I have already dismantled in detail. You have brought forward nothing new and you're just regurgitating the same old drivel here. Take the L and move on.
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I think you are nothing more than a troll who argues for the sake of it, without a single honest bone in your body. You are the epitome of a reddit debate bro
You won't or can't address my argument above, so you switch to personal attacks.
You introduced the word "press-gang" and tried to turn this into an argument about the dictionary definition of the word.
You also tried to retroactively rewrite my argument. (You're not talking about the draft, you're talking about the reserves. You're not talking about the draft, you're talking about "calling up to the front line.")
And you claim that I'm trolling?
My position has been that Russia has been coercing citizens into military service and I've been consistent on that point.
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I’m also guessing that you didn’t actually read the article you linked because its says the same thing I’m saying:
Articles aren't for reading, they're for headline skimming so you can look like you have sources. If they fail, there's always another one to try, you can even pretend that means evidence is overwhelming!
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As part of their efforts to combat draft evasion, authorities earlier this year launched an electronic register of conscripts to serve online summonses in some Russian regions. They also introduced a series of legal restrictions for those who ignore the summonses, including banning their bank transactions, suspending their driver’s licenses and blocking foreign travel. (AP)
dude I've been reading about the ukrainians running kidnapping squads grabbing kids off the streets for like two years straight but uh yeah sure it's russia having manpower issues
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Whether or not Ukraine has kidnapping squads doesn't mean Russia can't also be having manpower issues.
Both can be true at the same time.
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I didn't say either of those things you're saying.
This is what I said :
I'm sure Ukraine is in a similar position, but it doesn't sound like a clearcut win for Russia, either.
If it's mirrored on both sides, then why the fuck would you bring it up as a reason to think Ukraine isn't losing?
What you're doing is actually moving the goal posts, by the way
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why the fuck would you bring it up as a reason to think Ukraine isn't losing?
I was bringing it up as a reason to think the case for Russia winning wasn't a clear slam dunk.
Resorting to conscription to fill your ranks is not something you do when you're "obviously winning".
And before you make a claim about Ukraine resorting to conscription, too, at no point have I claimed Ukraine was "obviously winning" either.
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Why is that a reason, if that particular factor is a wash for both sides?
Resorting to conscription to fill your ranks is not something you do when you’re “obviously winning”.
Uhuh. So when the Soviets were flattening Berlin they weren't obviously winning? When the US had sunken the entire Japanese Navy and were systemically saturation bombing the Japanese mainland, they weren't obviously winning?
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I quoted the NPR and AP articles, since you seem allergic to reporting from the UK.
Lol, "because you don't like these extremely biased sources, I quoted some sources with the exact same extreme bias"
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I usually try to cite multiple sources because one or all may be biased, but it's less likely that multiple sources will misrepresent reality in exactly the same way.
It is possible, but it is less likely.
I quoted all three in my original response, and he only responded negatively to the one based in UK, implying that he considered the other two met some minimum standard of quality.
He also quoted those same sources in his responses to me. If he thought the same way you do, I would have expected him to dismiss them outright, like you are.
but it’s less likely that multiple sources will misrepresent reality in exactly the same way.
Not when you're selecting sources that all have the same bias. Like, how many sources are you citing that aren't Western neo-liberal and Zionist aligned? Zero.
implying
So he didn't say that, you're just assuming.
If he thought the same way you do, I would have expected him to dismiss them outright,
Or he would cite them to demonstrate that even media that shares your bias supports his position
It's possible, but he didn't say that, and our argument continued without your help.
It is weird that you're white-knighting so hard for him.
Why are you here?
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The NPR article I linked above was citing a Russian source.
The AP article was citing Russian legislation, which I assume (and I could be wrong) is public record.
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Putin backs US plan for ending Ukraine war as Trump gives Kyiv deadline to accept
President Zelensky says Ukraine faces one of the most difficult moments in its history, as the White House pushes its plan.BBC News
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Taiwan puts $40 billion toward buying US weapons and building a defense dome
Currently, Taiwan has set an increase in its defense budget to 3.3% of its GDP for 2026, allocating $949.5 billion Taiwan dollars ($31.18 billion). U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Taiwan raise its defense spending to as much as 10% of GDP, a proportion well above what the U.S. or any of its major allies spend.Lai had previewed the announcement in an op-ed for The Washington Post on Wednesday, saying the special budget would be used to purchase arms from the U.S. He told reporters Wednesday, however, that the budget has nothing to do with the government’s tariff negotiations with the U.S.
US empire and wealthy capitalists aren't the same thing, although their interests sometimes align.
All the billionaires in Taiwan are Taiwanese.
Wealthy capitalists, if they're not based in the US, have moved to those places, not to Taiwan.
An intermediary.A native of a colonised country who acts as the agent of the coloniser.
I don't get the point you're trying to make.
I said the wealthy capitalists went to not!Taiwan because the billionaires in Taiwan were already there.
Who is or is not a comprador has nothing to do with where wealthy capitalists relocate.
I don't get the point you're trying to make
Then you're trying very hard not to get it. Try harder, I believe in you👍
I was saying that the billionaires were not moving to the island of Taiwan.
You're talking about US Empire, which, as mentioned in my other responses in this thread, is irrelevant to the physical movements of billionaires.
Even if Taiwan declared itself to be US Empire island #76, it would not change the fact that billionaires did not move to the island of Taiwan.
I was saying that the billionaires were not moving to the island of Taiwan.
Man, you really are a dishonest little troll aren't you: "oh I was just saying this thing completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Oh, you thought I had a point? Nope, just making random statements for no reason."
Fuck off
This was the statement I was responding to:
It’s basically an island that all the wealthy capitalists ran away to after China imposed economic democracy.
Here was my response :
Wealthy capitalists, if they're not based in the US, have moved to [Singapore (or Switzerland, or the UAE)], not to Taiwan.
Where was what I said dishonest or irrelevant?
Edit: reorganized for legibility
They aren’t caught between anything. Taiwan is very much aligned with western imperial countries. It’s basically an island that all the wealthy capitalists ran away to after China imposed economic democracy. They love America and America loves them.
Wealthy capitalists, if they're not based in the US
Are you talking about this part? If so, what I was saying was that billionaires moved to either the US or the three countries I mentioned.
That means the billionaires from China also did not move to Taiwan.
You can also look at the wiki for Taiwan's billionaires. Only one was born in China and not Taiwan (Hong Kong, specifically), and I'm pretty sure he moved to Taiwan way before the events we're taking about in this thread.
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)
Must've not looked into it very hard. A single search will reveal to you the same thing a much deeper dive into academic works will.
Did you not read or understand this part?
A single search will reveal to you the same thing a much deeper dive into academic works will.
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.
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
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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.
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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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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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crunchy
in reply to freedickpics • • •Save End-to-End Encryption in the U.S. - Internet Society
Allison Cross (Internet Society)bl4kers
in reply to freedickpics • • •Walk_blesseD
in reply to bl4kers • • •Oi oi, wotsalldisthen? U got a permit for that VPN, innit?
Jason2357
in reply to bl4kers • • •James R Kirk
in reply to freedickpics • • •Zerush
in reply to James R Kirk • • •VPN are not the solution either, even in occidental coutries, there are a lot of webs which are not accesible with a VPN or Proxy, mostly streaming sites, eg. Rakuten and others.
Auli
in reply to Zerush • • •Zerush
in reply to Auli • • •Snowflake is another thing, often used by journalists in totalitary countries.
usenix.org/conference/usenixse…
Lfrith
in reply to James R Kirk • • •Auli
in reply to James R Kirk • • •NarrativeBear
in reply to freedickpics • • •How can you ban a VPN (virtual private network)?
I have a VPN setup at home and at my parents home, I can connect either as if I was at either location physically. My office has VPNs for connecting between offices and connecting from remote locations. And dont get me started about being and to purchase a VPS in any country you want, and run a VPN on it.
Does this mean people and companies can no longer setup their own VPN's.
If this is about privacy and anonymity, evey bowsers on any device has a unique identifying fingerprint that allows it to be identifiable even using a VPN. So what is this ban even targeting?
The Hidden Tracking Method Your VPN Can't Block -
- YouTube
www.youtube.comISOmorph
in reply to NarrativeBear • • •UK is one of the forerunners in regard to online ID checks, for example for porn sites. Brits now regularly use VPNs to escape those checks
NarrativeBear
in reply to ISOmorph • • •Though a VPN does not provide you with guaranteed anonymity, it only allows you to access webpages and local services as if you were at that physical location, or on that specific network.
Connecting to your work office VPN and browsing Facebook does not make you anonymous, it's just makes you look like you are sitting in the office.
ISOmorph
in reply to NarrativeBear • • •NarrativeBear
in reply to ISOmorph • • •And this is my point actually, what are they trying to ban, is it the use of a VPN completely, or is it for only VPN that spoof locations out of country. (Which is what allows someone to circumvent the age-id, at the moment.)
Now that being said I work with people in the UK and they VPN into our office for network access and project file access. Does anyone see how this could impact access for Brits working with global firms for example?
PortNull
in reply to NarrativeBear • • •That's the whole point of the discussion: what does "VPN" mean in this context? Is it only these VPN providers that let you be elsewhere, or VPN technology and traffic in general. The prior could be limited by blocking traffic to specific IP addresses that belong to VPN providers, albeit in a very laborious and expensive cat and mouse game. The latter would affect all VPN traffic including that which is used to safely connect to work sites for example. Which would be stupid and damaging.
Even if VPN providers could be banned at IP level, what's stopping you from spinning up a host in another country, setting up wireguard on that?
I understand they are frustrated that their excellent child protection plans and user information gathering is so easy to circumvent, but their proposed solutions are just absurd.
If you have a VPN then chances are you have a credit card, which means you are an adult, which means you can access porn. The VPN is your age verification 😀
Zerush
in reply to PortNull • • •Anyway, age verification has only one reason, access and control of user data, nothing else. The resposability of the children is by the Parents and not by webpages or services, apart impossible to control the access by childrens, when they use the PC of the parents to websites which already have the ID from the adults. Nobody else as the parents can control it.
Apart it isn't a rule which is worldwide, with countries without age control in their server, easy accesible from everywhere but out of the control by goverments.
PortNull
in reply to Zerush • • •Auli
in reply to NarrativeBear • • •delta_fsociety
in reply to freedickpics • • •Auli
in reply to delta_fsociety • • •chaoticnumber
in reply to freedickpics • • •I have moments when I think "I might get banned for this", this is one of those moments.
You may try to ban vpns but you can not really, people usually find ways around censorship. We are notorious for this stuff, as a species.
Its infuriating to me when people just roll over for the powers that be. They may ban some nodes, others will pop up, those will get banned too and so the cycle of cat and mouse begins.
You can host your own vpn with wireguard. It takes a bit of figuring out, sure, but you can literally do so with a raspberry pi. Stick it in a network of choice and voila.
Oh they may control stuff, but this is not a game that can be won, human repression is a futile effort, it may work for a while, but there is a reason why regimes fall. See the wall of Berlin and so many other examples.
Fret not friend, for hope dies last.
Auli
in reply to chaoticnumber • • •sqgl
in reply to Auli • • •I had my Internet crippled in China in 2012 after I used Hamachi to log into my home computer in Australia.
The crippling got worse if I repeated my action eventually disabling the internet completely for about an hour.
I played this game a few times to pick up on the pattern.
herseycokguzelolacak
in reply to freedickpics • • •Anything can be made illegal. Enforcement is tricky. At the moment it is very easy to block Wireguard protocol at the ISP level, some even do it. But that would probably push Wireguard and others to invest more in obfuscation.
As a sidenote, it bugs me that Wireguard does not support obfuscation out of the box, and you have to put it on top of wireguard.
eleitl
in reply to freedickpics • • •Auli
in reply to eleitl • • •pulsewidth
in reply to Auli • • •People used to not use VPNs too - until they realized how useful they can be by spread in pop culture and increasing tech awareness of the general public.
If commercial VPNs are banned the tech savvy will move onto a replacement immediately, and the knowledge will slowly expand through social circles and social media until it has similar penetration in society.
A VPN ban would be both harmful (to business and consumers short term) and pointless.
eleitl
in reply to Auli • • •Buckshot
in reply to eleitl • • •I do this. I already had a cloud vps with a vpn on it for remote access so i figured i might as well set it up to route traffic as well.
Still get loads of sites blocking me
Jason2357
in reply to eleitl • • •eleitl
in reply to Jason2357 • • •You know the endpoint is known good since you're the admin and the IP is not in a known VPN exit blocklist.
Of course economically it makes sense to share tunnels with family and friends.
artyom
in reply to freedickpics • • •Lots of places are applying that sort of regulation already. Problem is, how do you know which IPs are VPNs? There are some obvious ways, and many people block some VPNs already but you can't block every VPN. I can spin up a VPN right now and open it up to users in other countries. It's impossible.
The gov could theoretically maintain a repository of "known" VPNs that they could require sites to block, though. They could even force them to be blocked at the DNS level. This would probably be fairly effective.
But that's also most certainly going to be abused as well.
filcuk
in reply to artyom • • •Jason2357
in reply to filcuk • • •IphtashuFitz
in reply to artyom • • •Jason2357
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to Jason2357 • • •Okay, and how will they know which ones those are?
I don't think you read that entire sentence. I wasn't talking about spinning one up for my personal use.
UltraGiGaGigantic
in reply to freedickpics • • •Anything is possible. Except being free of course.
Just human things.
stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]
in reply to freedickpics • • •Yes they can ban it, you will face repercussions if you violate that ban just like if you violate the ban your country probably has on heroin or machine guns.
You can get around it by using doh and a http proxy configured in your web browser, not at the os level.
/home/pineapplelover
in reply to freedickpics • • •Yeah, next they'll shut down computer servers
Stupid
Zoma
in reply to freedickpics • • •ftbd
in reply to freedickpics • • •IphtashuFitz
in reply to ftbd • • •Jason2357
in reply to ftbd • • •sqgl
in reply to ftbd • • •ftbd
in reply to sqgl • • •sqgl
in reply to ftbd • • •I don't know what a software "stack" is but government can packet sniff to see if that kind of software is used but the vendors in this cat and mouse game apparently can sometimes fool the packet sniffers.
China cannot block all VPN's so it is looking good for us geeks. However we need to educate the masses.
utopiah
in reply to sqgl • • •Well that's kind of the earlier point, the working masses already know. What they might not understand is that they can use a VPN outside of the office and how it benefits them.
communism
in reply to freedickpics • • •I imagine it'd be a jurisdiction issue for what you propose. If, say, the UK mandates that websites block VPN nodes, that will affect websites served from the UK (creating a Great Firewall of Britain). But what about websites served outside the UK? Those websites can't possibly tell if a user is from the UK and using a VPN, vs outside the UK and using a VPN, so they can't only block UK visitors—they'd have to block all VPN traffic, which is probably not worth it from a business point of view. I suppose the UK could then deem that website illegal in the UK and block them, but then that'd only block the website for non-VPN users in the UK... But if the website owner is outside the UK they can't be punished for violating that law.
More probable (though I still think unlikely) is that a country could sniff for e.g. Wireguard packets and block those. But again that's unlikely because of businesses using VPNs to let employees access company intranets at home.
Jason2357
in reply to communism • • •irmadlad
in reply to freedickpics • • •yeehaw
in reply to freedickpics • • •stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]
in reply to freedickpics • • •To go a little further, I used the example of heroin and machine guns in my other reply, but there are lots of countries where people licensed to use these (or technology that’s similar like oxycontin) are allowed or there exist analogs (like bump stocks or binary triggers) that avoid the law.
Heck, in the us any knucklehead can get on the good boy list for heroin or machine guns they just need to pass a bunch of checks and submit to a series of audits and inspections.
The point of banning vpn use would be to keep people from using the technology to skirt identity laws, not to prevent the use of the technology altogether, so it’s likely any ban would take the form of legal wording that looks like “use of computer networking technology to conceal ones identity or aid or abet or perpetrate any crime is unlawful under this section.”
So again, yes they absolutely can do it and no it wouldn’t mean corporations would suddenly have to turn in all their edge devices.
I’m really surprised that on this instance no one has replied with the “laws are threats made by the dominant social economic class” copypasta. Fake ahh anarchists…
Xartle
in reply to freedickpics • • •