Archived

[...]

Kadyrov stated that over the three and a half years of the invasion, Chechnya had sent 60,000 fighters, including 22,000 “volunteers,” into Ukraine.

[...]

Although these figures are likely overstated — with the count based not on individual people, but on renewed contracts, as Novaya Europe notes — Chechen units still need regular reinforcements. As a result, the hunt for so-called “volunteers” has been an ongoing process in the republic.

“Coercion to sign contracts began at the end of 2022. We started noticing that in every district of Chechnya, directives were issued specifically to search for so-called ‘targets,’” says Said-Ali Abubakirov, head of the political opposition movement NIYSO. According to Abubakirov, in leaked group chats obtained by the opposition, security agents referred to future volunteers as “candidates.”

[...]

Police stations, traffic police regiments, and other units were instructed to recruit 25 to 50 “volunteers” each. Some agencies even exceeded these quotas, NIYSO confirms. According to the activists, law enforcement officers used group chats to trade potential recruits among themselves.

[...]

According to human rights activists, security personnel used group chats to trade potential recruits among themselves.

“They literally sell people there: ‘I have a few people for 100,000 rubles, a few for 200,000…’ Even the chiefs argue among themselves: ‘how come our department didn’t find a single guy in a day, or a week?’ They have their own regulations, their own quotas to meet. And when they exceed the quota, they start treating it as a business, literally selling extra people. I saw it in so many words: ‘I found a candidate. I can sell him to another officer so he can meet his quota.’ Total madness.”

[...]

Bad video from How Money Works; says that poverty is down across the world but that's just not true, only in Asia. I agree the news is sensationalist, but the person uses slides for leaders such as Putin and Xi Jinping when it comes to saying that "These leaders have nothing to lose when they leave the Earth" but what about the Western leaders?

Very poor video. Doesn't mention the two genocides happening in Gaza and Papau New Guinea. Or the other ethnic cleansings.

• DLC / Expansion of Rain World (Requires original game to play)
• Price: $14.99 ($13.49 till 9 October)
• Link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/rain-world-the-watcher-70050000059185-switch/

Meta is introducing a subscription service in the U.K., allowing Facebook and Instagram users to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free experience.

I was expecting lemmy to sort posts by upvotes but this is not the case: I often find a post with 70 upvotes further down the thread than a post with 20 upvotes.

what decides what goes up and what down?

Embrace Factory Farding*

*Brought to you by a nice can of

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Archived

European Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi on Thursday signalled his openness to a taxation system on products high in sugar, fat, and salt to help finance public health during a meeting with the European Parliament’s health committee.

Asked by Renew MEP Vlad Voiculescu about his thoughts on taxing highly processed food, the commissioner concluded that it is “something we can reflect on” within the framework of the Commission’s cardiovascular health plan.

“We need a good measurement tool, because we’ve had these debates and, in general, they always end up in an ideological discussion about depriving people of their choices, about imposing conditions on industries, rather than about protecting public health,” Várhelyi said.

[...]

Belgium’s prime minister has poured cold water on the European Commission’s proposal to use immobilised Russian central bank assets to fund a ‘reparation loan’ to Ukraine.

The move throws a giant wrench in the EU executive’s plan to use the cash balances associated with €200 billion in frozen assets to support Kyiv’s budget needs and reconstruction.

Most of the assets are held in Euroclear, a Brussels-based clearing house – making Belgium a key player in EU negotiations.

“Taking Putin’s money and leaving the risks with [Belgium]. That’s not going to happen, let me be very clear about that,” Prime Minister Bart De Wever on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

“If countries see that central bank money can disappear if European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone,” he added.

So I'm moving from a PC setup at my desk towards just a laptop that I can use around my 1 room apartment. I'm not sure what I should do for my audio setup though. I looked into wifi-speakers, from what I read they are the home setup alternative to bluetooth speakers, whose purpose is more particularly for mobile use. Wifi speakers also have the advantage of usually coming with a power cord, instead of a battery. My use case for the speakers would be to listen to music and to have decent sound when watching videos. I have some questions though.

• Would such speakers work with Ubuntu, which is what I run on my laptop. Do I need any speakers in particular, or would all be compatible?
• What advice could you give me on what speakers to buy. A lot of what I see has built in 'smart home' bullshit which I want nothing to do with. I would just want plain and simple speakers, that I could connect to through wifi.
• Is this even the smart thing to choose, or should I go for something like a docking station instead and just link up regular speakers to the docking station? That would feel a bit weird, considering that I would probably only hook up the speakers through the docking station and nothing else. I don't want a second monitor or anything like that, and I'm fine with internet through wifi. Also with a docking station I wouldn't be able to use the laptop around the room, or atleast not with sound.

Any advice is welcome. Please consider that I am not tech savvy in the slightest.

British authorities detained a man in his 40s over a series of cyberattacks that grounded flights at major European airports. Such attacks against transport hubs are on the rise.

A new call recording app is gaining traction for offering to pay users for voice data from calls, which is sold to AI companies.

Update: Viral call-recording app Neon goes dark after exposing users' phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts