cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50778341

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Archived

Driven by economic hardship and political discontent, a growing number of Chinese nationals are trying to reach the EU via the Balkans, their route to the United States made more difficult by the loss of a visa-free regime with Ecuador and growing hostility under Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

[...]

In 2024, more than 620 illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals were recorded on the Western Balkan route, according to statistics from the European Union border agency, Frontex, plus a further 30 travelling via Greece and Albania.

In 2022, the figure for the Western Balkan route was just 88. In 2025, it hit 706.

[...]

In China, youth unemployment remains high. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 18.9 per cent last August. In 2023, the figure hit a record high of 21.3 per cent, amid signs of an economic slowdown.

Some Chinese migrants on the Balkan route said that they decided to leave China after their small businesses suffered during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The country’s shrinking economic opportunities and intensified social controls in recent years have also fuelled dissent; some Chinese are losing hope of a better life, especially for their children.

[...]

For more than a decade, the Balkan route has been a major pathway for refugees and irregular migrants mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia trying to reach the EU.

Given China has visa-free arrangements with both Serbia and Bosnia, Chinese nationals have an advantage – they are able to travel directly to Belgrade and cross without visas into Bosnia.

This is a double-edged sword, however, said Milica Svabic, a lawyer affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Able to slip into Serbia and rent private accommodation, Chinese nationals are “completely invisible”, said Svabic. “They’re invisible to state institutions [and] NGOs, and this can open the door to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation.”

Many also turn to smugglers to cross into the EU.

[...]

In then years under its current leader Xi Jinping, China experienced a mass exodus as asylum seekers surpassed one million, according to the China-focused NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The number is even more staggering considering the increasing exit controls (including exit bans) placed on determinate categories of Chinese citizens by Chinese authorities. The continuing upward trend also serves as a stark reminder that China’s domestic human rights abuse is not the mere “internal affair” as it so often likes to claim.

[...]

Franco-German tank manufacturer KNDS is planning to invest heavily in Germany in order to expand production, the company's boss said on Thursday.

In the past three years, production capacity has already been tripled, said KNDS Managing Director Jean-Paul Alary, touting planned investments totalling more than €1 billion ($1.2 billion).

Alary confirmed plans for a dual IPO in Paris and Frankfurt this year, saying the exact timing would depend on market conditions.

KNDS makes weapons systems such as the Leopard 2 main battle tank and the 2000 self-propelled howitzer. The company was formed through a merger of Germany's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and French company Nexter.

KNDS is currently owned by the German family behind Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and the French government.

Alary said that KNDS will continue specializing in land systems and aims to supply the armed forces of European allies and partners.

Currently, 24 European armed forces use KNDS weapon systems.

• Release Date: 2026
• Price: TBA
• Link: TBA
• Platform: Nintendo Switch 2
• Description: Fantasy War Strategy RPG Series Brigandine's Newest Installment: Brigandine Abyss! Coming in 2026

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that the government’s decision to outlaw the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was unlawful, but it kept the ban in place pending an appeal.

MUNICH (AP) — An annual gathering of top international security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the United States and Europe opens Friday, bringing together many top European officials with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.

• Release Date: April 2nd
• Price: $24.99
• Link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/darwins-paradox-switch-2/
• Platform: Nintendo Switch 2
• Description: Darwin’s Paradox is a cinematic puzzle‑platforming adventure where you play an unlikely hero navigating a dangerous world filled with strange sea creatures, environmental puzzles, and unexpected visitors.

Play the Tactical Octopus Action demo today with the special "Snake" skin.

He made-a da booba flower (that means tity)

With the new Discord changes and the controversy causing people to leave the platform, I decided it was a great excuse for me to finally try to ditch discord. I mostly used discord for my creative endeavors through the years (collaborating on projects, help with software - looking at you Blender and Godot, and etc) but now I really only have my small community that I was trying to start back up based on my board game project.

As someone who drifts from project to project, and often tries to find other people who want to participate in projects - this forum is meant to fill two needs:

‣A communication and contributor hub for the various open source and creative commons projects I am currently working on, as well as a centralized location to access information and assets for said projects.

‣ A place for other creative individuals to network, collaborate, and share their own projects - or even simply chat and meet like minded individuals.

I am a huge advocate for the creative commons, open source software, and the overall Libre community that counters the capitalist models that are so prevalent in the online space. While members of this community don’t need to share these same ideals, I would like to foster a community that can lift up and encourage others who contribute to this space. It would be nice if we could create a community where people help and contribute to each others creative endeavors and improve the FOSS/CC community.

And honestly, I kind of miss the days when forums were the primary form of communication, before discord - so I am excited to see if this community can take off at all.

The community is extremely sparse at the moment, but if any of you would be willing to check it out and stick around for a while to see if we can grow - I would be greatly appreciative. If anyone has feedback for improvement or ideas for direction of the forum, I would love to hear any and all constructive criticism.

And to get ahead of the "Lemmy/Piefed is a forum" comments:
I personally think there is great value in mega-forums like Lemmy, PieFed, and Reddit, and while there are subs for niche topics, the idea of a standalone forum for my specific purpose seems like it has more of an opportunity to create the “small, close-knit” type of community that doesn’t seem to fit within the sphere of these mega-forums.

I could totally be wrong, and maybe its nostalgia, but something about a good old forum seems to bring something different to the table in my eyes.

The Epstein files show not only how he abused women and girls while mixing with powerful people, but also how he tried to influence politics in Europe.

According to the published materials, Epstein and Bannon regularly exchanged views on political developments – at times seriously, at others using lewd humour.

Unwanted pre-installed software, known as bloatware, is the bane of new computer buyers. We give the lowdown on the worst offenders and how to get rid of ones you don’t need.

Epstein files place Perimeter Institute's Lee Smolin and other prominent Canadians under scrutiny

The headline isn't that Onion-worthy but the ingress is:

AI said applicant's 'habitual' Chrome use could indicate a 'lack of adaptability' after screening interview

Hi

Disclaimer/TW : Vibe-coded project. You can hate me and insult me over that and i will understand it. But please bear with me for a minute

I wanted to share this abomination.

Basically i have been making helmfiles to deploy stoatchat and lasuitenumérique (which i previously shared : https://jlai.lu/post/32413174 )

But people kept asking me "but where docker-compose, k8s too complicated".
Instead of being the bigger person and maintain manually a separate compose.yml , i decided to overdo it myself and make an absolute ICBM of a script to kill a fly.

I checked, no one was stupid enough to go that far with such a project. Maybe it could ACTUALLY be useful for someone. So have fun with it.

Update : now called https://dekube.io/ . Take kubernetes stacks, make compose. Hell.

Balotelli joined Al-Ittifaq last month and has now claimed he was subjected to racial abuse during a game on Wednesday

A consequence of the centralization of the web into fewer and fewer providers and monopolies is that talks of piracy dwindled on the internet over the years. Then with the streaming boom of the mid-2010s it was completely dead.

Now piracy has become a dirty word that people fear to utter. You can be banned on social media for talking about it, and most people just avoid the topic entirely. It's like jaywalking (you probably know the history but it was a 'crime' started by auto manufacturers to claim the streets back from pedestrians).

Talks of "it's on the pirate bay" have been replaced with 'it's on netflix. it's on hulu with ads. it's on amazon prime and they have a deal right now.'

And yes, this was really things people said. They would readily tell you to go look for it on thepiratebay, you had entire websites that hosted episodes of your favorite shows for streaming. I remember watching the simpsons on wtso, literally watch-the-simpsons-online. It wasn't just the circles I was in back in the day, people really talked more openly about piracy. Even when as far back as the early 2000s there were attempts already by the RIAA to equate piracy with violent crime.

People use debrid services they pay for just to watch shows when you can still torrent things as easily as before. They rationalize it as being cheaper than paying for streaming services - but I pay 0$ for stremio+torrentio addon. Maybe debrid services have their extra uses but they just seem like kind of a luxury from the way people talk about them. And yes torrenting works perfectly fine on a VPN.

Even wilder (but not unexpected) there are people who tie their self-worth to paying for streaming services. Apparently you're 'poor' if you don't pay 20$ a month for netflix. Even in the era of DVDs we already knew it was ludicrous to ask someone to pay 20$ for a DVD. IP gatekeeps media from people, it doesn't allow it to be made.

The message is clear: if you don't have money, you don't deserve to experience culture.

The economic arguments had been thoroughly discussed and concluded back in the 2000s already; studies showed that people who pirate are not likely to buy the content so there was no 'lost sale'. Piracy also makes a copy, it doesn't remove the original, so it's not the same as stealing.

For a while this gained traction, and then monopolies emerged and completely shut down any talk of piracy in the public sphere.

There's a talk of convenience, that it's more convenient to open up netflix or steam and buy the game or movie there. But is it? You have to login, provide payment info, etc. At its hardest pirating a game consisted of downloading the torrent, installing, running keygen, and then going on cdfreeworld or whatever it was called to download the no-cd fix. Today it's even easier, most games come in a portable format.

And yet it's never been easier to pirate things. Books, games, shows, are still just as accessible as they've ever been, maybe even more. Used to be emulating a nintendo DS at the time it was in production was out of reach of most people on their home computer, and you had to buy a super expensive microSD card that had maybe 256MB of space on it to run an R4 in your DS. Today, you can easily emulate the nintendo switch on a home machine. You can root your 3DS super easily by just following a guide, and even download games directly from an app on it (but I found it to be very slow bc of the wifi protocol the 3ds uses).

Not only that but piracy preserves material. All those IPs that holders just sit on and do nothing with because they might have a profitable idea for it down the line. All those books that don't get reprints that can still be read, and those games that can still be played when you can't find them in stores any longer.

Not only that but it creates fans who will go on to purchase media. It keeps licenses alive, so there's benefits to the capitalist corporations too. They just want to pretend it's a solved problem because they fear it hurting their bottom line. A lot of artists got discovered in the music industry by being widely pirated, which got them a record deal.

You also own your media this way; it's on your hard-drive. I remember when Steam became a giant in the video game selling business, people were worried about how you didn't really own the games. Steam can ban your account at any time and you'd lose everything you've ever bought from them. You have no recourse.

Emulators also help preserve games. Nintendo's own NES emulators aren't great, they fail at a lot of tasks. This is "just" the NES so they're pretty basic games, but this failure on tests means that emulation is not 1:1 accurate as if on a real machine and can start behaving strangely. Open-source emulators are better than the 'official' ones from the IP holders.

Even on here we self-censor about piracy and other topics so as not to draw attention to the lemmyverse. It's become a ubiquitous dirty word and in good company one must pretend not to know what piracy even is, because corporations demand it.

Torch is a barebones self hosted chat system built for the terminal. Rapidly deploy long-term worldwide encrypted communication with a onion static address.

The server is a rudementry TCP relay which does three things. Accepts incoming connections, tracks connected clients, rebroadcasts live encrypted blobs and the last 100 messages.

The clients utilizes python cryptography library and handles AES encryption, provides a TUI with ncurses, and handles a few local commands.

Simulate rooms by changing your encryption/room key and hide messages you cannont decrypt with /hide

The system operates in ram, when the host terminates the session the history is gone.

A single file installer that builds dependencies, creates source directory, concats client / server python programs, and configures the hidden service, and manages the program operations.

This is IRC built to leverage the Tor infrastructurem. No network configuration, opening ports, purchasing of domains, or third party services.

Deploy on mobile via Termux, or your favorite distro.

Source

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/176626

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