cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55172156

The renewed contract will see Palantir continue to provide the DGSI agency with its "proprietary software platform, as well as the integration, support and assistance services that are necessary for... deployment and operational use," it said in a statement.

The renewed contract will see Palantir continue to provide the DGSI agency with its "proprietary software platform, as well as the integration, support and assistance services that are necessary for... deployment and operational use," it said in a statement.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/59778774

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43807418

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A key component of the study [to be conducted in Romania] is the characterisation of low-conflict sites—areas with minimal risk to biodiversity and communities and which meet essential technical criteria for renewable energy development. These areas are broader than the RAAs defined in Directive (EU) 2023/2413, and while not all low-conflict sites will become RAAs, mapping them nationwide will support responsible renewable deployment both within and beyond designated acceleration zones.

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Beyond identifying low-conflict areas for clean energy development, the study will serve as a dialogue platform bringing together national and local authorities, grid operators, energy associations, academia and civil society. This collaborative space will help address challenges, share perspectives and strengthen informed decision-making in shaping Romania’s renewable energy future.

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U.S. senators are probing whether Big Tech data centers are driving up local electricity bills by socializing grid upgrade costs onto residents. Some of the tactics they're using include NDAs, shell companies, and lobbying. Ars Technica reports:

In letters (PDF) to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cited a study estimating that "electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years" in "areas located near significant data center activity." Prices increase, senators noted, when utility companies build out extra infrastructure to meet data centers' energy demands -- which can amount to one customer suddenly consuming as much power as an entire city. They also increase when demand for local power outweighs supply. In some cases, residents are blindsided by higher bills, not even realizing a data center project was approved, because tech companies seem intent on dodging backlash and frequently do not allow terms of deals to be publicly disclosed.

AI firms "ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents, operate through what appear to be shell companies to mask the real owner of the data center, and require that landowners sign NDAs as part of the land sale while telling them only that a 'Fortune 100 company' is planning an 'industrial development' seemingly in an attempt to hide the very existence of the data center," senators wrote. States like Virginia with the highest concentration of data centers could see average electricity prices increase by another 25 percent by 2030, senators noted. But price increases aren't limited to the states allegedly striking shady deals with tech companies and greenlighting data center projects, they said. "Interconnected and interstate power grids can lead to a data center built in one state raising costs for residents of a neighboring state," senators reported.

Under fire for supposedly only pretending to care about keeping neighbors' costs low were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Equinix, Digital Realty, and CoreWeave. Senators accused firms of paying "lip service," claiming that they would do everything in their power to avoid increasing residential electricity costs, while actively lobbying to pass billions in costs on to their neighbors. [...] Particularly problematic, senators emphasized, were reports that tech firms were getting discounts on energy costs as utility companies competed for their business, while prices went up for their neighbors.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a sweeping criminal complaint in Sweden accusing 30 Nobel Foundation officials of misappropriation, facilitating war crimes, and turning the Peace Prize into what he calls “an instrument of war.”

Assange is asking Swedish authorities to immediately freeze the 11 million SEK prize money before its transfer to Machado. The complaint says Nobel administrators breached their fiduciary duty by approving a payout to a figure who has openly advocated foreign military intervention.

️ Assange cites statements in which Machado supports US military escalation around Venezuela and endorses strikes that would kill civilians. Nobel officials, he argues, “converted an instrument of peace into an instrument of war.”

Polish security services have detained a 19-year-old man, accusing him of seeking to establish contact with the "Islamic State" terrorist group and of plotting an attack on a Christmas market. They did not specify where.

China is exploiting partnerships with U.S. researchers funded by the Department of Energy to provide the Chinese military with access to sensitive nuclear technology and other innovations with economic and national security applications, according to a congressional report published Wednesday.

The authors of the report say the U.S. must do more to protect high-tech research and ensure that the results of taxpayer-funded work don’t end up benefiting Beijing. They recommended several changes to better protect scientific research in the U.S., including new policies for the Department of Energy to use when deciding whether to fund work that involves Chinese partnerships.

The investigation is part of a congressional push to raise a firewall blocking U.S. research from boosting China’s military buildup when the two countries are locked in a tech and arms rivalry that will shape the future global order.

The German government media commissioner and others tell DW that Russia is "afraid" of free expression and a free press. It follows the Justice Ministry in Moscow labeling Deutsche Welle an "undesirable organization."

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6164123

Archived version

A security doctrine published by the European Commission has identified solar inverters from Chinese suppliers as a high-risk dependency.

The document, on how to strengthen EU economic security [opens pdf], outlines how the bloc plans to react to growing external economic threats. It says the commission’s immediate focus will be on six priority high-risk areas, identified as reducing strategic dependencies for goods and services; attracting safe investment into the EU; supporting Europe’s defence, space and critical industrial industries; securing EU leadership across critical technologies; protecting sensitive data and shielding Europe's critical infrastructure.

The communication goes on to specifically highlight reliance on solar inverters as an example of a security risk due to supplier concentration, cyber-manipulation risks, access to grid-relevant operational data and the possibility of actors infiltrating supply chains. Today, around 80% of Europe’s PV systems rely on Chinese inverters.

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Mainstream semiconductors, battery electric vehicles, key components for drones and detection equipment at EU borders are listed as other high-risk dependency areas in the communication.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) has released a statement saying it strongly supports the strategic shift outlined in the document.

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The council says it particularly welcomes the council’s intention to “support the development of trusted suppliers of critical subcomponents in the EU and in trusted third countries so that there are viable alternatives” and reiterated that European and other Western manufacturers remain on the technological forefront, with the manufacturing capacity to meet all of European demand.

ESMC is calling for a series of actions, including the establishment of an EU-level whitelist of trustworthy inverter vendors based on cybersecurity and jurisdictional risk criteria that is integrated into NIS2, the ICT supply‑chain toolbox, NZIA Articles and all relevant EU network codes. It also says EU member states should be permitted to deny grid connection to inverter hardware from high-risk vendors.

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The council has established an Inverter, Storage and Energy Management Systems Forum, open to ESMC members and eligible Western non-members, that it says will work with grid operators, energy-security agencies, standardization bodies and other stakeholders to advance Europe’s digital and energy resilience.

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UPDATE EDIT:
Man it is crazy to watch the dashboard and console at the time. Even with no HDD's spinning, and as much RAM as I can give the Scale VM, services just slowly takes over the RAM, until the console shows kernel panic.

core was solid for so long with everything i threw at it.

it runs out of memory after services soaks up all the RAM, ZFS cache is choked down to 3gb out of 16.

• xeon E3 1265LV2
• Asus p8z77-v-deluxe
• 32GB DDR3
• hba passed through to truenas running a mirror pool

VM for truenas is running on the local proxmox SSD.

• proxmox 9.1.1
• TrueNAS scale 25.10.0.1 but i tried a 24 version also

once the install starts crashing, the VM will still crash after booting up without the HBA card

I've seen a few posts with other people having the out of memory issues (OOM) but almost every reply says it will be fixed in the next update, which is older than what we've got now.

it did run okay enough JUST long enough to make the mistake of updating the ZFS flags, so now i can't roll back to core.

does scale have this issue because it's virtualized? would it run better on bare metal?

anyone tried xigmaNAS? freeBSD based again at least.

Unraid looks okay, but paywall?

open media vault?

any advice or discussion is appreciated!

South Africa has accused the US of using Kenyan nationals who did not have work permits at a facility processing applications by white South Africans for refugee status.

Seven Kenyans were arrested after intelligence reports revealed that people "had recently entered South Africa on tourist visas and had illegally taken up work" at the centre, said a statement from South Africa's department of home affairs.

The BBC has approached the US State Department for comment.

While the US is trying to reduce overall levels of migration, it says that members of South Africa's white Afrikaner community can get asylum because they face persecution - a claim South Africa's government strongly rejects.

Archived version

• Italy completes first solar auction excluding Chinese gear
• Average price 17% above ordinary renewable auction
• Auction backs EU push to cut reliance on Chinese components

Italy awarded more than 1.1 gigawatts of capacity to 88 projects in its first auction exclusively for solar projects built without equipment manufactured in China, setting an average price of 66.38 euros per megawatt hour.

The tariff is 17% higher than the average price for a renewable auction earlier this year that had no restrictions on equipment origin, according to data from Italy's electricity services agency (GSE).

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The auction is among the first in Europe to apply non-price criteria linked to the European Union's Net-Zero Industry Act, a package of measures that aims to curb reliance on low-cost renewable components from China.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/43794185

In a warm bunker, lined with wooden logs, it is Dmytro’s job to monitor and help the drone crews on the frontline. Perhaps a dozen video feeds come through to his screen on an increasingly hot section of the front, running roughly from Pokrovske to Huliaipole, 50 miles east of Zaporizhzhia city.

Dmytro, 33, is with the 423rd drone battalion, a specialist unit only formed in 2024. He cycles through the feeds, on Ukraine’s battlefield Delta system, expanding each in turn. The grainy images come from one-way FPV (first person view) drones; clearer footage, with heights and speed, from commercially bought Mavic drones; at another point there is a bomber drone, available munitions marked in green.

Maksym, 29, and Serhii, 24, have just returned from five days on the front, part of a mixed crew of FPV and Mavic pilots. Now they are resting, one playing a video game, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, a post-apocalyptic shooter set in the exclusion zone surrounding the destroyed nuclear power plant – raising the obvious question of whether there is any similarity to their frontline work.

"It helps us do our job,” Maksym says, smiling. “If you are flying a jet in one of the battlefield games, it’s basically the same as flying a Mavic. It’s good practise.”

A group of endangered “galaxy frogs” are missing, presumed dead, after trespassing photographers reportedly destroyed their microhabitats for photos.

In early 2020, he found seven members of the “magical” species in the Western Ghats rainforest in India, but could not visit them during the Covid pandemic. When he went back later, the frogs had disappeared, according to a report from the ZSL.

At first he suspected brown mongooses of causing the damage, but they are not strong enough to overturn a log. Then he asked his tracker if he had seen anyone.

These nature photographers had been turning over logs in their search for the endangered species, according to the trackers. When they found them, they would capture and prop up the frogs for photos. But they didn’t wear gloves, even though these delicate creatures breathe through their skin and are incredibly sensitive.

“We’re really hopeful that we can encourage people to act more ethically so that incredible species like the galaxy frog can continue to thrive for millions more years.”

Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a naval blockade of “sanctioned oil vessels” leaving and heading to Venezuela, sharply escalating his pressure campaign against Caracas.

The US has for months been building a major military deployment in the Caribbean – with the stated goal of combatting drug trafficking, but Venezuela views the operation as a campaign to oust Nicolas Maduro.

Trump said the armada – which includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier – “will only get bigger” until Venezuela returns “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us”.

The alleged Bondi attacker who survived a shootout with police has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been “inspired by Isis”.

New South Wales police charged Naveed Akram, 24, on Wednesday, after he was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries on Sunday night.

Akram was charged after waking from a coma on Tuesday, with the matter heard in court on Wednesday afternoon.

He did not apply for bail, and will next face court again on 8 April.

The unthinkable has happened. The US is Europe’s adversary. The stark, profound betrayal contained in the Trump administration’s national security strategy should stop any further denial and dithering in Europe’s capitals. Cultivating “resistance Europe’s current trajectory in European nations” is now Washington’s stated policy.

But contained within this calamity is the gift of clarity. Europe will fight or it will perish. The good news is that Europe holds strong cards.

The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every Maga voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival. AI investment now rivals consumer spending as the primary creator of American economic growth. It accounted for virtually all (92%) GDP growth in the first half of this year. Without it, US GDP grew only 0.1%. Despite Donald Trump’s posturing, he is on shaky economic ground.

Trump’s political coalition is shaky, too. In July and again this month, he has been unable to force Senate Republicans to pass his AI moratorium bill, which would have prevented states from drafting their own AI laws. The Steve Bannon wing of Maga fears that AI will displace workers en masse, and is appalled by what children are exposed to on digital platforms. Maga voters particularly mistrust big tech’s political power. Tech is a dangerous topic for Trump.