cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43721471

By Daniel Trotta
February 25, 2026 2:34 PM EST
Updated ~11:55 PM

Summary

• Heavily armed Cuban exiles came from US, interior ministry says
• Cuba says some suspects were previously wanted for 'terrorism'
• Incident takes place amid heightened tensions between US and Cuba
• Rubio says no US personnel involved, it was not a US operation

Archive/non-paywall link.

We deserve our own state. Whose shit should we take?

• The Chocolate Factory announced the Google Threat Intelligence Group-led actions on Wednesday and said that, in partnership with other teams, it terminated all Google Cloud Projects that had been controlled by UNC2814, a group that GTIG has tracked since 2017. They also disabled all known UNC2814 infrastructure and accounts, and revoked access to the Google Sheets API calls used by the Chinese snoops for command-and-control (C2) purposes.
• "As of Feb. 18, GTIG's investigation confirmed that UNC2814 has impacted 53 victims in 42 countries across four continents, and identified suspected infections in at least 20 more countries," the threat hunters said in the report.
• The security sleuths uncovered this campaign during a Mandiant investigation into suspicious activity in a customer's environment. Specifically, this binary, "/var/tmp/xapt," initiated a shell with root privileges, and then executed a command to retrieve the system’s user and group identifiers to confirm it had successfully escalated to root.
• Google suspects the payload was named xapt, after the command-line tool in Debian and Ubuntu systems, to make it easier to hide in the victim's environment and look like a legitimate tool.
• The intruders also used a novel backdoor, Gridtide, that abuses legitimate Google Sheets API functionality to disguise its command-and-control (C2) traffic. Mandiant has linked Gridtide to UNC2814.
• The intruders also used a novel backdoor, Gridtide, that abuses legitimate Google Sheets API functionality to disguise its command-and-control (C2) traffic. Mandiant has linked Gridtide to UNC2814.
• After breaking in, the spies moved laterally via SSH, performed reconnaissance, escalated privileges, and then deployed the Gridtide backdoor using a command, "nohup ./xapt," that allows it to run even after the user closes the session.
• "Subsequently, SoftEther VPN Bridge was deployed to establish an outbound encrypted connection to an external IP address," the threat intel team wrote. "VPN configuration metadata suggests UNC2814 has been leveraging this specific infrastructure since July 2018."
• The C-based backdoor uses Google Sheets as its C2 platform, can execute shell commands, and can upload and download files. In this case, the attacker deployed Gridtide on an endpoint containing personal information - likely to identify and track persons of interest - including full name, phone number, date and place of birth, voter ID and national ID numbers.

You can't make me log off. I Will be back!

The lack of progress happening in New Zealand to reduce child poverty is both "hugely disappointing" and "unacceptable", the Children's Commissioner says.

Data released by Stats NZ on Wednesday for the year July 2024 to June 2025 showed one in seven children are living in hardship.

About 17,900 households were interviewed for the research.

The number of children that were recorded as living in material hardship was 14.3 percent - one in seven.

There was no significant change in that from the year recorded prior or since 2018.

In the latest statistics, a child recorded as facing material hardship was recorded as being in a household going without seven or more of 18 necessities.

Those included being unable to pay for utilities on time, having to put up with feeling cold and putting off doctors visits.

That was a change to the year prior where the threshold for material hardship was six or more.

A total of 25.1 percent of Māori children were recorded in material hardship which was not statistically different to the year prior.

For Pacific children, that figure was 31 percent, which was also statistically unchanged.

I'll use an example:

If the subtotal is $37.58 after taxes, just put -$37.58 for tips. Since the total is just subtotal + tips, 37.58 + -37.58 = $0.00.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/59786706

Indonesia has urged the European Union (EU) to immediately comply with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Panel ruling last year in the palm oil dispute, in order to restore market access for Indonesian palm oil products.

Trade Minister Budi Santoso said Tuesday (Feb 24) marked the end of the 12-month implementation, or reasonable period of time (RPT), granted to the EU to adjust its policies and regulations into conformity with WTO provisions following the Panel’s ruling.

Budi explained that the WTO ruling on Jan 10, 2025, found that the EU policy had discriminated against Indonesia’s palm oil-based biofuel products compared with biofuel products produced in the EU and other countries, providing legal clarity that the EU policy violated the WTO’s principle of non-discrimination.

Indonesia has urged the European Union (EU) to immediately comply with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Panel ruling last year in the palm oil dispute, in order to restore market access for Indonesian palm oil products.

Trade Minister Budi Santoso said Tuesday (Feb 24) marked the end of the 12-month implementation, or reasonable period of time (RPT), granted to the EU to adjust its policies and regulations into conformity with WTO provisions following the Panel’s ruling.

Budi explained that the WTO ruling on Jan 10, 2025, found that the EU policy had discriminated against Indonesia’s palm oil-based biofuel products compared with biofuel products produced in the EU and other countries, providing legal clarity that the EU policy violated the WTO’s principle of non-discrimination.

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour has renewed his call for the government to sell its 51 percent stake in Air New Zealand after it reported a significant half-year loss.

The airline posted a bottom-line loss of $40 million in the six months ended December, compared to last year's profit of $106m.

Seymour said Air NZ had been doing "politically motivated stuff" when it couldn't take off and land on time for a decent price.

"Get woke, go broke. We hear about electric planes, glossy reports on climate change, paper cups in the Koru Lounge. What they can't seem to do is take off and land on time," he said.

As of early 2026, Prompt Engineers in the U.S. earn an average salary of approximately $100,000–$125,000 annually, with typical ranges spanning from $60,000 to over $200,000 depending on experience, location, and company. Top earners and senior roles at major tech firms can command significantly higher salaries, sometimes exceeding $200,000–$300,000 annually.

Yooooo you think I could bullshit my way into one of these? I'm pretty good at making stuff in stable diffusion and I can vibe code with google gemini telling me what to do.