Hello and welcome to our community tradition of a weekly discussion thread. Before we begin we here at GZD would like to wish Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin a happy birthday. Now please join us in singing for he is a jolly good fellow as we cut the cake!

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40346171

Jessica Corbett
Dec 14, 2025

“Obviously massacring unarmed men, women, and children at a Hanukkah celebration is antisemitic terror,” Nathaniel added in a separate thread. “Just like massacring unarmed men, women, and children in Gaza and the West Bank is anti-Palestinian terror. There are no moral exceptions regarding the slaughter of civilians.”

Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah said, “Basically Netanyahu is saying that Australia got what it had coming for not supporting his genocide in Gaza even more than it already does.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40346058

Jessica Corbett
Dec 14, 2025

“The images out of Bondi Beach in Australia this morning of a vile, antisemitic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration are shocking, disgusting, and heartbreaking,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a US Senate candidate.

I wash my hands after going to the toilet. It's kinda gross. I'm sorry I'll do better

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40211941

Thank you, Ken Klippenstein.

Kippenstein’s recent discussions of Att. Gen. Pam Bondi’s Memo “Ending Political Violence Against ICE” and Pres. Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo/NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized” — as well as his presentation on Democracy Now! — makes it frightening clear that the “legal” framework of a Trump dictatorship is being put in place.

Just a year ago, Chinese manufacturers, fearing a new trade war, rushed to push out exports following the election victory of Donald Trump, who had pledged to slap punishing tariffs on imports from China over America’s widening trade deficit.

A year later, Trump has delivered on his promise. But China has pivoted – and exported more.

In a striking display of resilience, the world’s second-largest economy notched a record trade surplus of $1 trillion in just the first 11 months of the year – a milestone no other nation has achieved.

The stunning outcome – underscoring that the American market is not entirely irreplaceable – has bolstered Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s confidence in taking a hardball approach with Trump throughout this year’s protracted trade war. While the two countries have dialed back tensions and returned to a fragile trade truce after Trump and Xi’s meeting in October, a final agreement remains nowhere in sight.

The EU’s actions were a “great help,” Philip Morris International said in an email.

When the world’s largest tobacco company needed help lifting international restrictions on its products, it enlisted an unlikely ally: the European Union, a leader in tobacco control.

EU officials met with Philip Morris International representatives at least six times from September 2022 through 2024, according to documents released through public records requests.

The tobacco giant’s agenda: Enlist EU officials’ help in loosening restrictions or setting favorable tax rates on its products — including IQOS, a heated tobacco device key to the company’s future — in 10 countries outside the EU.

Thailand’s government said a rocket attack from Cambodia on Sunday killed a 63-year-old villager, its first civilian death reported as a direct result of combat over the past week along the border of the two Southeast Asian nations.

Both countries confirmed that large-scale fighting, which was set off by a skirmish on Dec. 7 that wounded two Thai soldiers, continued Sunday. The two sides are battling over longstanding competing claims to patches of frontier land, some of which contain centuries-old temple ruins.

More than two dozen people on both sides of the border have officially been reported killed in the past week’s fighting, while more than half a million have been displaced.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40176828

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/lxcyO

https://archive.ph/HMegJ

Paywall Bypass Link: https://archive.is/3G4fp

Dec 14 (Reuters) - Roomba vacuum cleaner maker iRobot (IRBT.O), said on Sunday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection, and would go private after being acquired by Picea, its primary manufacturer.

The company, which raised concerns about staying in business in March, filed for bankruptcy in the District of Delaware as it grapples with macroeconomic and tariff-related uncertainties.

More than a third of the nation's 11,000 citizens applied for the new climate visa — a deal forged between the two countries to preserve Tuvaluan culture as the atolls disappear.

The intake is capped at 280 visas annually to prevent a brain drain from the tiny island nation.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chile’s ultra-conservative former lawmaker José Antonio Kast secured a stunning victory in the presidential election Sunday, defeating the candidate of the center-left governing coalition and setting the stage for the country’s most right-wing government in 35 years of democracy.

Add context: Under former dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime (1973-1990) many were tortured ( ca. 10 K) and killed (ca. 3/4 K)

This is a genuine question. I've always had an interest in learning languages and I have a list I want to learn. I am already somewhat decent in Spanish, so I'm picking up that, practicing my Portuguese, going to learn French and Italian, maybe German, learning Polish, and possibly Russian.

I already canceled the idea of living in Russia due to obvious reasons, but will I have any need to learn the language? Will it be useful? Will that be offensive? Many people HATE Russia and the language.

Thousands of contracts and documents outline the contours of DHS’s surveillance capabilities: geolocation, facial recognition, DNA testing, eye scans, spyware, licence plate cameras, credit reports and more. AI tools cross-reference datasets, while mobile apps give field agents information at their fingertips.

At the same time, the proliferation of data brokers and digital, “open-source” intelligence has made surveillance easier than ever. Unlike the government programmes revealed by Edward Snowden over a decade ago, DHS has not needed to build extensive in-house capabilities — vendors now offer sweeping tools at relatively low cost.

A wide array of private corporations, from global powerhouses to niche start-ups, have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, including AT&T, Thomson Reuters, Palantir and Clearview AI. Some have hired lobbyists with ties to the White House to capitalise on ICE’s growing ambitions.

Individual surveillance technologies should be understood within the “mass surveillance context”, says Emily Tucker, a professor at Georgetown Law School. “All this stuff is being used together.”

Former officials say internal safeguards have been sidelined. “There’s less oversight and more willingness to break the rules,” says Deborah Fleischaker, who served as DHS’s privacy officer and ICE chief of staff under Biden.

“Things are just unbound,” she adds. “People are doing things that have never been done before, in ways that have never been done before, with fewer safeguards in place.”

More than a dozen former senior government officials familiar with Trump’s deportation push spoke with the FT, most on the condition of anonymity fearing retribution.

They hold a range of views about the administration’s policies and left the department for a variety of reasons, but all shared concerns about the volume of data collection, the lack of oversight, and the shift from criminal to immigration work. Many raised fears that surveillance tools may soon be used on left-wing groups and protestors who ICE claims are threats to its agents.

An FT analysis of federal procurement data shows ICE has spent at least $353mn on surveillance contracts this year, up 27 per cent from 2024. In July, Trump’s spending bill gave ICE $29bn for operations on top of its existing annual budgets for the next four years, empowering the agency to buy more tools.

ICE is hiring staff to monitor social media, seeking contractors in Vermont and California to gather “information obtained from commercial and law enforcement databases as well as publicly accessible, open-source and social media platforms.”

ICE is also hiring old-fashioned private investigators. A tender posted last month seeks contractors to “use all technology systems available” to find addresses for persons of interest, including “physical observation”. The agency says it has approximately 1.5mn names it will divide among these vendors, who can earn between $7.5mn and $281mn based on the number of people they locate.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection also collect DNA from detainees and asylum applicants, according to a privacy disclosure. One attorney says he was representing a US citizen who was given a cheek swab while incorrectly detained. Samples are stored in an FBI database where they are queryable by a range of law enforcement agencies.

ICE has also signed a contract with BI² Technologies, a vendor selling handheld eye scanners. Former officials questioned the need for the devices, noting that the agency held few, if any, iris scans to search. “My first question is why?” a former privacy official says. “What do you expect to get out of this? If they’re just out there collecting irises and biometrics, that’s a problem for me.”

“They’re spending a lot of money on things they might not even use, to benefit people who are maybe close to the administration,” says Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy nonprofit monitoring ICE’s surveillance purchases. “They’re moving very fast.”

Procurement records also show that ICE has obtained tools previous administrations found problematic.

In August, ICE removed a hold on a $2mn contract with the Israeli spyware firm Paragon Solutions, which sells a phone-hacking tool called Graphite. It has been used by the Italian government to target European journalists with iMessage and WhatsApp attacks, according to researchers at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

The contract was paused by the Biden White House, which had banned the use of spyware sold by foreign companies with human rights concerns. Paragon was subsequently acquired by US-based private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, which also controls Department of Defense contractor REDLattice.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/31427438

Beijing is pouring vast resources into fusion research, while the U.S. wants private industry to lead the way. The winner could reshape civilization.

I've been de-googling, de-microsofting, and de-Amazoning my life.

One thing I still use for self hosting is AWS Route 53 for Domain Name Services (DNS).

I don't feel ready to self-host DNS.

Do you all have recommendations for reliable and ethical DNS hosting providers?

Or is self hosting some DNS records less of a big deal than I'm imagining?

Advice on either would be welcome. Thank you!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/55016857