Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

One resident said that “everyone is very scared” as the situation in Dubai continued to deteriorate.

“There is footage of missile interceptions all over the city,” they said. “I am packing a suitcase just in case … not that we can leave, because airspace is closed. It is the thing we have all been frightened about happening, and now it has.”

This is a developing story. More to follow very soon.

EDIT 1

Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei was killed a few moments ago, a senior Israeli official told journalists off the record.

Footage of Khamenei’s body was allegedly presented to Prime Minister Netanyahu a few minutes ago. No official statement has been published.

EDIT 2

Videos in Farsi published on social media show some people cheering in Tehran from their apartments.

https://x.com/ManotoNews/status/2027835583146463736

These videos are not authentified. They could very well be true or AI.

EDIT 3

Headline of Maariv newspaper is now "Khamenei is killed"

"After decades of absolute rule, Israel confirms that the end of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has come"

EDIT 4

Reuters says Khamenei has been killed according to an Israeli official.

Iran DENIES the information and says Ayatollah Khamenei is fully in command.

https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-crisis-live-explosions-tehran-israel-announces-strike-2026-02-28/

EDIT 6

Some Iranian opposition accounts are celebrating.

Association of French-Iranian women says "YES, Finally"

https://x.com/femmeazadi/status/2027836456119443519

Iranian Sana Ebrahimi publishes video of herself dancing.

https://x.com/__Injaneb96/status/2027841112610676910

EDIT 7

Politician Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Canadian Opposition, claims Ayatollah Khamenei is killed

https://x.com/PierrePoilievre/status/2027845628391526774

EDIT 8

I̶D̶F̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶i̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶K̶h̶a̶m̶e̶n̶e̶i̶

The IDF said several Iranian leaders are killed, including the Defense Minister and Ali Shamkhani, the closest advisor of the Ayatollah

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-confirms-killing-top-iranian-leaders-including-top-defense-official-ali-shamkhani/

EDIT 9

Iranian Researcher Khosrol Isfahani published videos of people honking in the streets on social media

https://x.com/KhosroIsfahani/status/2027839875500912833

EDIT 10

Donald Trump told NBC News that he feels reports about the death of Khamenei are correct.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-responds-reports-ayatollah-death-rcna261149

it's that simple.

While I have several substacks bookmarked, so far this is my only subscription, and the author very kindly gifted it to me. If you can afford to support this author's speaking truth to power, please consider it, and please consider supporting ~~deadlines~~, dessalines, nutomic, and altmediaguy. They whisper truth through the angry and loud CIA/Mossad propaganda, that has become overgrown poison ivy in the Western world.

Regime could try to retain control of streets as US and Israel have expressed no intention of mounting ground invasion

Though Iranian military sites and its air defence systems were also targeted by coordinated US and Israeli bombing, beginning in the morning, the most significant attack was on Khamenei’s compound in Tehran.

. . .

Khamenei’s fate remains uncertain, but its intention was: an attempt to effect regime change in Iran through bombing and killing with no credible justification in international law. It is a tactic that is disturbingly easy to start, but its results are profoundly uncertain.

Last summer during the 12-day war with Israel, Khamenei had named three potential successors should he be killed. Reports earlier this month indicated that Khamenei had named four layers of succession for key government and military jobs, in an effort to ensure regime survival in the face of a US-Israeli attack.

“There is no sign that the US or anybody else is going to put boots on the ground, so the monopoly of force domestically remains with the Iranian regime,” said HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “The only way that changes [is] if there is an uprising with mass defections.”

MBFC
Archive

The opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California's top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances. But in reality, many of the messages that may have swayed the powerful regulatory agency to scrap the plan were generated by a platform that is powered by artificial intelligence.

Public records requests reviewed by The Times and corroborated by staff members at the South Coast Air Quality Management District confirm that more than 20,000 public comments submitted in opposition to last year's proposal were generated by a Washington, D.C.-based company called CiviClick, which bills itself as "the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform."

A Southern California-based public affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage the opposition campaign, including in a sponsored article on the website Campaigns and Elections. The campaign "left the staff of the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) reeling," the article says.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nocturnal.garden/post/552459

For a hobby of mine, there's an outdated lore wiki on Fandom. I dislike Fandom and would like to host an alternative. It's supposed to be accessible to all kinds of people.

I started with mediawiki as that's what Fandom and Wikipedia are using, so people would be familiar with page structures at least and maybe the editor.

It turned out to be a bit of a pain though. It only has unofficial container images, the documentation is outdated and (what I consider as) core functionality like WYSIWYG editor or simple infoboxes has to be added by extensions or templates. I'm in the process of setting it all up and wondering if it's worth it (and if I want to maintain it). There's so many wiki projects it's hard to keep track, what are y'all using for stuff that's used by larger communities and simple to use with close-to-default settings?

Tehran carries out extensive retaliatory strikes on Israel and US air bases as region is plunged into fresh conflict

Israel and the US have launched a war on Iran, unleashing waves of air attacks across the country in an attempt to bring about regime change and plunging the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.

The sudden offensive triggered Iranian retaliatory strikes throughout the day across a swathe of the Middle East, with explosions reported in Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In a televised address, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated that the strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has not been heard from since the strikes began and satellite imagery has shown that his secure compound was heavily damaged in the initial barrage.

MBFC
Archive

Update:

Reuters is reporting that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is dead. According to a senior Israeli official, Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since 1989, is dead and his body has been found.

Axios, citing an Israeli official, is also reporting that the Israeli ambassador to the US has informed US officials that Khamenei was killed.

. . .

A reminder that we don’t have any official confirmation yet, but the Israelis do seem confident that he was killed.

The Guardian

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43845541

Feb. 28, 2026

When Hossein woke up in his eastern Tehran home on Saturday morning to the sounds and news of US and Israeli strikes, he immediately tried to contact his parents.

He called again and again, but no one answered.

“The last time I spoke to my parents was last night. I had asked them many times to leave Tehran. I told them that since they are retired, they should at least go to the north for now," he tells Middle East Eye, struggling to hold back tears.

“But they refused. They said this is not a life – leaving our home every couple of days.”

Hossein says his parents’ home was completely destroyed by Israeli strikes on Saturday.

Iran remains one of Russia's most important allies, particularly since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, the Iranian regime "has brought so much evil to Ukraine."

Zelensky met with Pahlavi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 13, condemning cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.

Tehran supplied Russia early in the war with Shahed-type attack drones, which Moscow later adapted into its own Geran-1 and Geran-2 models for relentless strikes on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

For the Kremlin, the timing of Iran's crisis couldn't be worse.

MBFC
Archive

Operation Epstein's Fury

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/59925291

The system can function in air with 20% humidity or less. But these 1,000 liter a day machines are not small, at around shipping container size.

game recognizes game

North Carolina’s Michael Phillips revealed that he had a 0.38in member in bid to reduce stigma of the condition

Can you spot what all of Trump's foreign interventions have in common, in terms of upward pressure on the price of something perhaps?

Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, the market faces two distinct scenarios. In the first, a diplomatic breakthrough in Geneva could remove the risk premium overnight, causing a sharp "flush out" of long positions and a rapid descent in prices. In the second, a military escalation could see prices briefly spike toward $100 before the sheer weight of the global surplus and the potential for a global economic slowdown bring prices back down to earth.

Strategic players are already positioning for these outcomes. European majors like Shell PLC (NYSE: SHEL) and BP PLC (NYSE: BP) are continuing to pivot their capital expenditures toward low-carbon energy and natural gas, hedging against a long-term decline in crude profitability. Meanwhile, U.S. independent producers are focusing on capital discipline, prioritizing "value over volume" to ensure they can remain profitable even if the $63 average proves to be the high-water mark for the year.

Also see https://www.whalesbook.com/news/English/commodities/Oil-Prices-Geopolitical-Risk-vs-Looming-Supply-Glut/699d8e5b04a25a58c84f055e

The current market pricing appears to be overweighting geopolitical risk at the expense of fundamental oversupply indicators. The significant inventory builds in 2025 and projected surplus for 2026, coupled with strategic export management by Saudi Arabia and Russia aimed at price support rather than volume expansion, suggest limited upward potential.

If geopolitical tensions de-escalate without a corresponding reduction in output or a significant demand shock, the 'geopolitical premium' could rapidly evaporate, exposing the market to downward price pressure. Furthermore, the energy sector's elevated P/E ratios may not be justified if the anticipated supply surplus materializes, leading to a valuation reset.

Historical interventions by Saudi Arabia to drain global oil gluts demonstrate a capacity for market manipulation that could reverse current price trends. The recent surge in USO ETF performance of 9.68% over the last month and Brent crude's 9.20% monthly rise may reflect speculative positioning vulnerable to a fundamental correction.

Hi. I'm kinda of a noob in the world of self-hosting and matrix, for that matter. But I was wondering how heavy is it to host a matrix server?

My understanding how matrix works is each participating server in the room stores the full history and then later some sort of merging happens or something like that.

How is that sustainable? Say in 5 years matrix becomes mainstream and 5 people join my server and each also join 3 different 10k+ people rooms with long histories. So now what I have to account for that or people have to be careful of joining larger rooms when they sign up in a smaller-ish server?

Or do I not understand how Matrix works? Thanks.

Footage shows Iranian ballistic missile hitting US Navy 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain. Direct strike on NSA Bahrain as Iran retaliates across Gulf.

Tempus is an open-source and lightweight music client for Subsonic, designed and built natively for Android.

This app works with any service that implements the Subsonic API, including:

• LMS - Lightweight Music Server - personal fave and my backend
• Navidrome
• Gonic
• Ampache
• NextCloud Music
• Airsonic Advanced

https://github.com/eddyizm/tempus/releases/tag/v4.12.0

My last release post was for v4.6.0 so I've included whats changed since that post.

What's Changed

Highlighting these 4 features that people have wanted for some time and were well received. Added screenshots for each below

• feat: added slide out enhanced navigation for tab mode and optionally portrait mode

• feat: Android Auto: improve media service browsing

• feat: Support specifying a client certificate for mTLS auth

• feat: Playback speed controls for music

• feat: radio logos support for AndroidAuto

• feat: Port remove song of playlist from tempus ng

• fix: artist sort by name case sensitive

• feat: prefer downloaded files over network calls

• feat: Implement duration and seeking for transcodes

• feat: increase items per row on landscape view

• fix: album art now displays on android auto

• fix: give user feedback when trying to add podcast/radio on unsupported backends

• docs: Clarify Android Auto enablement

• fix: instant mix issue and continous play clean up

• chore(i18n): add missing keys, update Chinese translation and alphabetize

• chore(i18n): Update Polish translation

• feat: Ability to toggle visibility of artist biography

• chore: Add Romanian (ro) translation

• chore: French localization update

• chore: updated readme and added known issues for airsonic work around

• fix: toast for made for you click indication

• fix: sort playlist view

• feat: sort preference for playlists

• fix: use existing future when adding tracks, dialed random album track down

• fix: Check for OpenSubsonic extensions also with password authentication

• fix: Proper raw stream detection

• chore(i18n): Update Spanish translation

• feat: add configurable server timeout

• fix: Avoid crash when server has no songs

• fix: updated dialog import to address crashing on android 15

• Fix missing Replay Gain metadata from .m4a files

• fix: Improve Synced Lyrics

• feat: Add selector for playlist visibility

• chore(i18n): set links as untranslatable

• fix: Addressing some UI/UX quirks

• fix: keep observer until data is received

• fix: added dynamic application id from gradle variant

• fix: Use Bluetooth tethering connection

• fix: visual glitches on landscape navbar

• fix: radio playback "source error" on android auto

• fix: speed button overlaps with shuffle on landscape

• fix: local url used in share link instead of server url

• feat: added radio metadata to display

• feat: improve playlist chooser dialog UI

Full Changelog: https://github.com/eddyizm/tempus/compare/v4.6.0...v4.12.0

note app-tempo* <- The github release with all the android auto/chromecast features

app-degoogled* <- The izzyOnDroid release that goes without any of the google stuff.

As usual, any dev contributions appreciated as I am not actually a java/mobile dev, so my progress is significantly slower than those who do this on the daily.

Big thanks to all the folks who have been contributing. We have a new icon designed but I could use some help if anyone wants to do a PR to implement it.