cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/32339919

The Nectar project offers 'advanced data analysis' using a wide range of sensitive personal information

A controversial US spy tech firm has landed a contract with UK police to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.

Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects.

Trade union membership, sexual orientation and race are among the other types of personal information being processed.

The project has sparked alarm from campaigners who fear it will trample over Britons’ human rights and “facilitate dystopian predictive policing” and indiscriminate mass surveillance.

Numerous police forces have previously refused to confirm or deny their links with Palantir, citing risks to law enforcement and national security. However, forces in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have recently confirmed working with the firm.

Liberty Investigates and i have learned that those projects involve processing data from more than a dozen UK police forces and will serve as a pilot for a potential national rollout of the tech giant’s data mining technology — which has reportedly been used by police forces in the US to predict future crimes.

It’s not just a Spanish problem. Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters plan to take to the streets on Sunday.

Similar demonstrations are slated in several other Spanish cities, including on the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza, as well as in the Italian postcard city of Venice, Portugal’s capital Lisbon and other cities across southern Europe — marking the first time a protest against tourism has been coordinated across the region.

Spaniards have staged several large protests in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities in recent years to demand lower rents. When thousands marched through the streets of Spain’s capital in April, some held homemade signs saying “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods.”

Hubba hubba awoooga now that's a legume

(A funny meme for you, if you’re wondering about the picture)

So to preface, like everyone else, I came from reddit, a website that I left due to some subs that I don’t want to name as they are personal to me.

The reason I left is because it got flooded with stupid people, and I realised that the only reason I kept using Reddit was to argue with those fools.

But the thing is, that simply cutting out reddit didn’t solve my problem, which is that I really hate a lot of people and I’m not even going to deny it.

A lot of them deserve it tho, I’m mostly talking about those jerks who try to stample on others to feel better about themselves. I hate how this word got “ruined” but to be precise I’m talking about “bigoted” people.

Anyways l just because they “deserve” the hate (or don’t) I still feel angry after meeting people like this and I honestly don’t know what to do now.

EDIT: made formatting better

Archived version of CNN article (archive.org)

If you don't see a beanis that means you are the beanis

For occasional torrent creation, qBittorrent has Tools > Torrent Creator, but suppose one has hundreds of folders from which to create individual torrents. A quick internet search yields forum posts from more than ten years ago mentioning dead projects. For example, this Reddit post from 2013 mentions qMakeTorrent, which is no longer maintained.

How are people doing this in 2025? I reckon one could write a bash or python script for this, but are there any user friendly tools out there that are built for this purpose and still actively maintained?