cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44341035

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44340351

...

[Putin said that the task] had been accomplished: inflation would end the year below 6%.

Yet the Central Bank undercut that narrative almost immediately. Contrary to expectations, it lowered the key rate from 16.5% to just 16%.

If inflation truly is below 6%, that implies a real interest rate of roughly 10% — among the highest in the world. Brazil, often cited as an outlier, sits at 9.2%, while Mexico at 5.3%. Turkey and Argentina, despite having interest rates of around 38% and 29% respectively, do not even make the list because inflation there is near or above those levels.

[Russia Central Bank Governor Elvira] Nabiullina’s remarks after this month's rate meeting seemed to support this. Inflation has declined, she said, but not sustainably. The 6% figure only appeared in weekly data, which is not a reliable basis for identifying trends. And although inflation fell in November, it rose in October.

And beginning in January, it is expected to accelerate again, driven by a higher value-added tax (VAT), now applied to a wider swath of businesses, and by another round of increases in utility tariffs.

...

Nabiullina, who once cloaked bad news in careful technocratic language, sounded increasingly like a Soviet official reciting a familiar formula: yes, there are shortcomings, but the strengths outweigh them. When all else fails, there is always the reassurance that the economy is “returning to a trajectory of balanced growth.”

In other words, the economy is shrinking — but it is shrinking according to plan.

...

The government’s long-term budget forecast was striking in two respects. First, its sheer horizon: projections extend to 2042. Second, its candor: the budget is expected to remain in deficit throughout that entire period.

Even here, Soviet habits are evident. Oil is optimistically forecast at $69 a barrel by 2031. Officials stress that oil revenues will gradually give way to tax income. Putin promised that the higher VAT is not permanent, though he did not say when it would end. One might reasonably suspect it will end in 2042.

The date itself feels telling. It invites a grim literary echo of Venedikt Yerofeyev and Vladimir Voinovich’s dystopian “Moscow 2042.” It is hard to believe the choice was accidental.

...

Then, too, Soviet decline was accompanied by triumphant propaganda. The language has changed, but not the function. Soon, Russians will be told daily how Ukrainian and European “militarism” obstructs Russia’s desire for peace. The euphemism of “forcing peace” requires no invention; it was tested long ago.

If this déjà vu is more than psychological, it is possible to sketch a timeline for how long the Russian economy will last. Oil prices collapsed in 1985. Though the Soviet Union survived until 1991, its economy became effectively nonviable by 1989.

...

But the Soviet example suggests that public patience can end suddenly and collectively. Military spending now stands at 7.3% of GDP, according to a presentation by Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, a figure comparable to late-Soviet levels.

...

Even if fighting were to end, Russia will be paying for this war for years, not least through high interest costs on government bonds. This year alone, the state issued nearly 8 trillion rubles’ ($102.5 billion) worth.

Meanwhile, the government is already propping up struggling sectors ranging from carmakers and aircraft manufacturers to railways, coal, metals and oil.

Even defense enterprises are faltering. Workers at the Kingisepp Machine-Building Plant, a strategic supplier to the Navy, recently complained of unpaid wages. The company’s director responded angrily, accusing them of petty self-interest at a time of national struggle.

...

Whether this story concludes suddenly and almost bloodlessly, as the Soviet collapse did, or drags on in a long and painful decline is impossible to know. History does not repeat itself exactly.

But when economic narratives begin to sound this familiar, it is hard not to start counting the years.

Web archive link

Venezuela has said it has carried out its largest release of political prisoners this year, claiming to have freed 99 people detained for taking part in protests after the 2024 election, widely believed to have been stolen by the dictator Nicolás Maduro, as it comes under increasing military pressure from the US.

Civil society organisations have treated the news with caution and stressed that the releases were insufficient, noting that at least 900 political prisoners remain in the country.

The Maduro regime refuses to acknowledge the existence of political prisoners and said it had freed, in the early hours of Christmas Day, 99 “citizens who were deprived of their liberty for their participation in acts of violence and incitement to hatred following the electoral process of 28 July 2024”.

It framed the move as an expression of its alleged commitment to “peace” and its “unrestricted respect for human rights”, at a moment when the country is facing what it described as an “imperialist siege and multilateral aggression” by the US.

Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office (URE) has concluded the country’s first-ever auction for offshore wind power, awarding contracts to three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 gigawatts (GW).

The agreements provide for guaranteed prices for electricity produced from the wind farms, with the state making up the costs if prices are lower but receiving excess revenues if they are higher.

...

The auction was seen as a crucial step in ensuring the viability of Poland’s nascent offshore wind sector. The country currently has no offshore wind farms in operation, with the first – Orlen’s Baltic Power, which did not take part in the auction – scheduled to come online next year.

...

Following its successful completion, Poland’s was the largest such auction anywhere in Europe this year, exceeding the combined total of Germany and France, note analysts at Pekao, a bank.

...

The three projects that reached such agreements in the auction were state energy giant Orlen’s Baltic East, with a capacity of 900 megawatts (MW); the 975-MW Baltica 9 project of another state firm, PGE; and Bałtyk I, a 1,560 MW project developed by private Polish firm Polenergia and Norway’s Equinor.

Web archive link

Cattle ranchers are making less money in the US despite beef prices at an all-time high. In the meantime, Trump started importing beef from Argentina to lower beef prices, but only achieved to lower cattle prices.

Trump supporting cattle ranchers weren't happy

Please don't tell me "see a therapist" I know that already.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55735872

The link has the scans and "an attempt at doing a DeepL machine translation of the whole thing", so be aware some stuff will be lost in translation.

Some of the stuff confirms my suspicions:

The key point we focused on was getting new staff to understand our production philosophy.

I don't remember if I read it somewhere, but this kind of supports the idea that Metroid Prime Remastered was a way to get the Retro staff up to speed with Prime development.

It sounds like it wasn't a full reboot at Retro Studios too, so they kind of had to move along with what they inherited from Bandai Namco.

Anyway, interesting read, hopefully there'll be a human translated version soon and more developer interviews for this title.

The EU’s overhaul of pharmaceutical rules will speed up drug approvals but falls short of making Europe more competitive with the US and China, the Dutch Association for Innovative Medicines (VIG) said.

VIG had long warned that, without proper investment incentives, the EU’s pharma package overhaul risks accelerating the outflow of research and capital from Europe.

The move followed the announcement of a U.S. arms-sale package valued at more than $10 billion that drew an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own.

Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.

The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, L3Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis, while defense firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey is one of the executives sanctioned, who can no longer do business in China and are barred from entering the country. Their assets in the East Asian country have also been frozen.

The announcement of the U.S. arms-sale package, valued at more than $10 billion, has drawn an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own and says it must come under its control.

Nigeria provided the US with intelligence on jihadists before the strikes that took place in the country on Christmas Day, its foreign ministry said on Friday.

On Thursday, the US president, Donald Trump, said the US military had carried out strikes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria, after spending weeks decrying the group for targeting Christians.

Now, Nigerian foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, has told broadcaster ChannelsTV that he was on the phone with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and that Nigeria “provided” the intelligence.

“We spoke twice. We spoke for 19 minutes before the strike and then we spoke again for another five minutes before it went on,” Tuggar said.

He added that they spoke “extensively” and that President Bola Tinubu gave “the go-ahead” to launch the strikes.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55734567

I was wandering how much thermal expansion would be on earth if all of it started at like 0°C and went to 50°C

Japanese strike-back capabilities and coastal defences to be boosted while Beijing accuses Tokyo of fuelling a ‘space arms race’

Japan’s cabinet has approved a record high defence budget as tensions with China continue to spiral, with Beijing this week accusing Tokyo of “fuelling a space arms race”.

The draft defence budget for the next fiscal year – approved on Friday – is more than ¥9tn ($58bn) and 9.4% bigger than the previous budget, which will end in April. The increase comes in the fourth year of Japan’s five-year program to double its annual arms spending to 2% of GDP.

The budget plan focuses on fortifying strike-back capability and coastal defences with surface-to-ship missiles and unmanned arsenals. To defend the coasts, Japan will spend ¥100bn yen to deploy “massive” unmanned air, sea-surface and underwater drones for surveillance and defence under a system called “Shield” planned for March 2028, defence ministry officials said.

Archive link

The trend appeared irreversible. Villages in Romania have been steadily emptying as between four million and five million citizens have left the country since the fall of communism in 1989. Yet, the small town of Varfu Campului has oddly seen its population double in a decade, growing from 3,420 residents in 2011 to over 7,000 in 2021. In this northern town near Ukraine, nearly 10,000 people were registered on the electoral rolls in 2024, but some polling stations recorded just 2% voter turnout during the municipal elections held in June that year. This unusual pattern raised suspicions among the authorities.

In November 2024, several dozen search and seizure operations uncovered the deception: There was no economic boom or baby boom, but instead nearly 10,000 citizens from Moldova, Ukraine and Russia had fraudulently obtained Romanian identity papers, establishing fictitious residences in Varfu Campului, sometimes without the prior consent of property owners. Fake documents, exchanged for bribes, had reportedly been issued for years by civil registry officials from two offices, with the complicity of local residents.

Well, hello there.

I run several services on my NAS at home.

I have a domain which always points at home and redirects port 80 to wikipedia.

Almost all ports are not forwarded, only for those which i want to have access to.

Example:

• Paperless
• Syncthing
• FreshRSS

Now i work on my corporate computer and i cant access my services.

Why?

It blocks connections which go to a specific port.

Now i would love to access freshrss on adress:

Www.domainexample.com:1234

Which gets blocked.

Any ideas?

Messing with the local pc is of course forbidden.

So, just a light post, I upgraded my Pi4 last night and found the Linux firmware breaks a 32bit install.

I've been meaning to change to 64bit for months, but as it's my DMZ box for torrents, radicale, etc, then it's just finding the right time to convert an adhoc setup into my ansible scripts.

Luckily I had a SD backup from September to get it running again

So, what have you broken over the holidays?

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55733801

At least 41 people have been killed and almost one million displaced since the hostilities resumed.