The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) will add an AI chatbot to its GOV.UK app in early 2026, before rolling it out across the GOV.UK website

Ideally it creates a CSV file and stores it on an SD card or something. I'll even use on that requires an app as long as that app doesn't make me create an account.

UPDATE:

I went with a Withings BP cuff. It doesn't meet the above criteria at all, but I already had a Withings account from years ago before I was concerned about privacy so I wasn't giving my info to someone who didn't already have it.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55485315

Why would I want AI to play the game other than for testing?

https://nitrogen.minedojo.org/

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55485027

German car exports to the United States dropped by nearly 15 percent in the first three quarters of 2025

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55484035

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44098631

Payment arrears by Russian state-owned companies to domestic businesses have surged in 2025, rising nearly threefold year-on-year, the Vedomosti business daily reported Monday, citing data from the state-backed SME Corporation.

The increase concerns contracts awarded under Russia’s public procurement law for state-owned enterprises known as 223-FZ.

According to the SME Corporation, 548 complaints worth nearly 4.03 billion rubles ($51 million) were filed this year compared with 200 complaints totaling 1.5 billion rubles ($19 million) in 2024.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said in November that it had opened 1,173 administrative cases over non-payment in public procurement since the start of the year, a 20% increase from the total number of such cases in 2024.

...

“The problem of non-payments by state corporations is systemic and very serious,” Alexei Kuchmin, founder of the AIR Group, told Vedomosti. He said companies often delay payments for one to three months, effectively using suppliers’ funds as interest-free loans.

Kuchmin added that companies most active under 223-FZ operate in IT and telecommunications, as well as construction and industrial manufacturing.

Delayed payments under 223-FZ became widespread from late 2024, driven by falling revenues at state companies and the high cost of borrowing amid elevated interest rates, Alexander Kalinin, president of the Opora Russia business association, told Vedomosti.

...

Several major state-controlled companies have reported deteriorating financial results:

• Rosneft, Russia’s largest state oil producer, saw its profit fall threefold in the first half of the year
• Gazprom posted a net loss of 170 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) in its core gas business over the first nine months
• Russian Railways (RZhD) became loss-making for the first time in five years, cutting spending on construction and procurement by 40%.
• Uralvagonzavod, the country’s largest tank manufacturer, has begun mass layoffs due to financial difficulties
• Sberbank has announced plans to cut about 20% of its workforce.

The government has decided to set up a working group to monitor the situation amid the surge in payment arrears, Vedomosti reported, citing two sources present at a Dec. 16 meeting of the SME Corporation’s board.

...

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40648087

Recently on 19 December, 2025, India decomissioned its Sindhughosh Class Submarine (Kilo Class), INS Sindhughosh, which was also the lead submarine of its class. This submarine has been decomissioned after 4 decades of its roaring service.

This Submarine was commissioned in 1986 as a variant of Soviet Kilo Class. This is a proof of long Indo-Soviet cooperation, friendship and brotherhood.

As it is decommisioned now 9 remain of this same class in Indian Navy, which are set to be decommisioned soon.

This is a time to take pride but also worry, because if this remains the pace, India will find it hard to increase the number of its submarine fleet. India has achieved self-reliance in the case of destroyers, frigates and corvettes. It would not be wrong to call Indian Navy as the most efficient and effective among Indian Army, Navy and Airforce.

Recently the Cabinet Committee for Security (CCS) passed the funds for indigenously building 2 Nuclear Attack Submarines (SSN) and furthermore the funds ofr remaining 4 will also be cleared and passed. This shows that India has achieved self-reliance in the case of Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN) and SSN, but disel electric submarines and Air Independednt Propulsion System (AIP) remain significant challeneges to be overcomed.

The Navy does say that all of this will be fixed after Project 75-I through which India will gain all necessaary technologies especially the AIP system to build its first own fully designed and developed, Made In India submarine.

We just need to make sure that we don’t lag behind in timeline due to delays.

What do you think, do let me know in the comments.

If you like the Idea of this community please join “BharatDefense”. Its a humble request to all Indians.

Thanks

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6252199

Archived version

[UK] General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the first sea lord, [said] that Moscow was renewing investment in the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI) team and that Britain could not afford to ignore the threat posed by Russia’s advanced underwater capabilities, which were “improving all the time”.

The unit of expert submariners is responsible for mapping and potentially disrupting seabed infrastructure — such as internet cables and gas pipelines — on which Britain and its Nato allies rely for communications and power supplies.

“We’ve seen GUGI’s subsurface capabilities restarting,” Jenkins said in an interview. “We know that they’ve had some issues with that programme. It appears that they have reset that programme. So we’re expecting them to deploy again.”

GUGI can operate submersibles at extreme depths, which “gives [Moscow] the option for physical action, if they want it,” he added.

While GUGI has been conducting underwater missions for several decades, its actions are highly classified and UK naval chiefs have, until recently, refused to acknowledge its existence or discuss what they know of its activities.

...

Jenkins — who was appointed first sea lord and chief of the naval staff in May this year — declined to say exactly what “physical action” by GUGI might constitute.

But naval experts have suggested that Moscow could plant explosives at the nodes where cables meet.

“You have an aggressive regime with an acknowledged capability, an acknowledged desire to implement sabotage and transition towards points of tension, and you have a facility that enables them to go to depths with submersibles on mapped infrastructure that is sensitive to us,” Jenkins said. “That doesn’t seem like a good combination to me.”

...

“The Russians continue to invest in these [naval] capabilities, and they’re improving all the time . . . we should take that threat very seriously, because the comfort that we take from being an island that is separated from continental Europe is a false comfort,” added Jenkins.

...

His comments come as spies and defence chiefs have drawn attention to the increasing threat of Russian sabotage in the UK and across Europe.

In her first public remarks since taking the helm of the Secret Intelligence Service in October, MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli last week accused Moscow of “testing” Britain with “grey zone” activities including state-sponsored sabotage, cyber attacks and drone harassment at airports and military bases.

...

Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield.

Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called “zone-effect” weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems.

Analysts who haven’t seen the findings say they doubt such a weapon could work without causing uncontrollable chaos in space for companies and countries, including Russia and its ally China, that rely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communications, defense and other vital needs.

The suspected gunmen in the Bondi Beach attack threw explosives at the start of the deadly incident and had practised shooting weeks before, according to new court documents.

They allege the pair "meticulously" planned the attack for months and, two days prior to the shooting, visited Bondi for reconnaissance.

Fifteen people were killed and dozens more injured when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on 14 December. Explosives, including a "tennis ball bomb", failed to detonate, the documents said.

Naveed Akram, 24, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of terror. A second gunman - his father, Sajid Akram - was shot dead by police at the scene.

Donald Trump named Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Sunday as his special envoy to Greenland, reigniting Danish and Greenlandic alarm over Washington's plans for the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island.

Trump has said several times over the years that Greenland, a Danish territory that is now largely self-governing, should become part of the U.S., citing security reasons and an interest in the island's mineral resources. Landry has praised the idea.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Monday he would summon the U.S. ambassador to Copenhagen, saying he had been particularly upset by Landry's support for Trump's aim of making Greenland part of the United States. Greenland's prime minister reiterated that the island would decide its own future.

Chinese embassy staffers attempted to interrupt an award ceremony of an international tea competition in France when the organizer introduced Taiwan and displayed the Republic of China flag, a Taiwanese tea farmer said in an interview published today.

Hsieh Chung-lin (謝忠霖), chief executive of Juxin Tea Factory from Taichung's Lishan (梨山) area, on Dec. 2 attended the Teas of the World International Contest held at the Peruvian embassy in Paris.

Hsieh was awarded a special prize for his Huagang Snow Source Tea by the nonprofit Agency for the Valorization of Agricultural Products (AVPA).

...

During the ceremony, two Chinese embassy staffers in attendance stood up and shouted “Taiwan is just a province of China” and “Taiwan is part of China,” video of the event showed.

The organizer ignored the disruption and continued the ceremony, while attendees booed the staffers and gave Hsieh a round of applause.

...

AVPA is a non-governmental organization founded in 2005 that holds contests attracting more than 700 producers from around the world every year, according to its official Web site.

This year’s competitors included tea producers from the US, Japan and Sri Lanka.

...

Can we please ban posts that are little more than unsubstantiated rumours?

Keep seeing posts that are fully just "I heard from a guy that heard from a friend who heard from a co-worker that HL3 comes out with the Steam Machine" as the full post

Sometimes links to whole "news" (used very fucking loosely) articles that are the exact same thing

You like kissing beans, don't you?

Mediazona reports that over a thousand Russian citizens have been murdered or beaten to death by Russian soldiers since 2022, with the perpetrators evading punishment by returning to the front. Where sentences are passed, these are often more lenient than would otherwise be the case, with the victim’s criticism of Russia’s war against Ukraine on several occasions treated as an ‘extenuating circumstance’.

Mediazona’s study has looked in many cases at professional soldiers, not the huge numbers of convicted criminals, including many murderers, recruited from prison colonies. A separate study recently found that just in the first six months of 2025, as many as 25 thousand men had criminal proceedings terminated, or sentences waived by agreeing to kill Ukrainians.

Russia began recruiting convicted prisoners in the summer of 2022. This was initially presented as Yevgeny Prigozhin recruiting for ‘his’ Wagner private military company’. The latter had, however, worked closely with the Russian defence military in both Ukraine and Syria, and the recruitment was clearly in agreement with the Kremlin, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, was, after all, responsible for signing the prisoners’ pardons. By 2023, the defence ministry had taken over, and, as of 2025, there have been reports that men who do not want to agree to fight are subjected to beatings and / or threatened with additional sentences if they don’t sign the military contract.

...

While killers, rapists and perpetrators of other violent crimes may never spend more than a few days in detention, Ukrainians, abducted from occupied territory, as well as Russians who speak out against the war are being sentenced to 15-20 years, or more, on fictitious ‘terrorism’, ‘sabotage’ or ‘spying’ charges, or imprisoned for 7 years or more for telling the truth about Russian war crimes. Unlike in most cases where a sentence was for a real crime, such political prisoners have zero chance of being released early, except in inter-state prisoner exchanges. It has also become tragically clear that even gravely ill Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian political prisoners will not be released even where Russian legislation prohibits their imprisonment.

...

Russia is notorious for treating fighters as cannon fodder, and the chances are clearly high that men who avoid long sentences or prosecution by agreeing to fight against Ukraine will be killed in action. The Russian defence military has long done away with the original deal offered to convicted prisoners which saw many able to return, free and ‘pardoned’, after a relatively short amount of time. They will, however, be released if badly injured, with this also applying to those first-time confessed killers, even those accused of horrific crimes.

They include Alexander Gook, a 49-year-old lawyer from Sverdlovsk oblast, who almost certainly killed and dismembered 42-year-old Olga Soroka and murdered her six-year-old son. Olga’s head was found in a compost heap, with Gook believed to have dumped other parts of her body in plastic bags and dumped them, together with the child’s body, in a rubbish bin.

The victims’ families are appalled that Gook was never even put on trial with the ‘case’ terminated soon after charges were laid against him.

...

In an article entitled ‘Machine guns issued to maniacs’, Siberian Realities described how, for example, two multiple killers had been taken on by Russia’s defence ministry. The latter, in 2025, signed a contract with 64-year-old Vagan Sarafyan, who was awaiting trial for a double murder, with this only a couple of years after he served an 18-year sentence for another murder.

Serial killer Yuri Gritsenko was a year younger when, in 2024, he signed a contract with the defence ministry, with this enabling him to end a 22-year sentence slightly early. Because of his physical state of health, he was not sent into battle but added to a medical evacuation unit. No concern appears to have been felt about the wisdom of sending a person who had already served a 9-year sentence for one murder when, in 2001, he attacked at least 15 women in Moscow and Moscow region, killing four of them. The attacks were savage and carried out with a hammer.

...

Web archive version

Russian forces have forcibly detained and deported about 50 Ukrainian civilians from the village of Hrabovske in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy region, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, confirmed in a Telegram post on December 21.

Lubinets said Russian troops illegally detained residents of the border village on December 18, held them without access to communication or proper conditions, and on December 20 transported them into Russian territory. He described the actions as a grave violation of international humanitarian law, including unlawful detention and the forced deportation of civilians.

...

Officer of the Main Communications Directorate Dmytro Lykhovii confirmed in a comment to Ukrainian Pravda that up to 50 civilians, mostly elderly men and women who had previously refused evacuation, were taken from the village. One of the abducted residents is reportedly 89 years old.

According to Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, fighting continued overnight as Ukrainian forces moved to push Russian troops out of the area.

...

Addition:

In a report, British newspaper The Times said the fifty civilians were "abducted in ‘medieval’ border raid on Ukrainian village." -- (archived linkhttps://archive.ph/8XvG9#selection-1795.0-1801.266)

... Viktor Trehubov, the head of the Joint Forces Communications Department, said: “It looks like some kind of more localised provocation in an area that was not a key area before. It’s not about strategic goals, it’s about kidnapping people for some kind of political or information attack.”

... Ukraine has previously accused Moscow of systematically abducting civilians from occupied or contested areas, actions Kyiv said violated international humanitarian law.

Russia has also forcibly transferred thousands of civilians, including children, from occupied territory during the war. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants over the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a charge Moscow denies.

Never before have Australians witnessed their alternative government blame their current government for a terrorist attack. In the midst of that, we have seen what the Jewish Council of Australia has called a “divisive pro-Israel wishlist” adopted as the only answer.

NSW premier Chris Minns has used the massacre to announce his government will adopt gun reform discussed at national cabinet as part of a major crackdown on protests. Neither Minns or his Liberal counterpart Kelly Sloane, who is in wholehearted agreement, have managed to explain how further limiting protest would make anyone safer or improve social cohesion.