In short:

Sydney grandmother Jann Alhafny said her back was broken after she was pushed to the ground by a riot squad officer.

Ian Payne was also injured after attending the protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog's visit to Australia.

A police officer was allegedly bitten by a protester, and treated by paramedics on Monday night.

Govt to pay up to $180m/year or $2.7b over 15 years to lease LNG re-gasification plant, paid for by $15-$30 'levy' per household per year. That $2.7b would build four Benmore Dams worth of electricity

Benchmark.

• PDF.

We introduce a new benchmark comprising 40 distinct scenarios. Each scenario presents a task that requires multi-step actions, and the agent's performance is tied to a specific Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Each scenario features Mandated (instruction-commanded) and Incentivized (KPI-pressure-driven) variations to distinguish between obedience and emergent misalignment. Across 12 state-of-the-art large language models, we observe outcome-driven constraint violations ranging from 1.3% to 71.4%, with 9 of the 12 evaluated models exhibiting misalignment rates between 30% and 50%. Strikingly, we find that superior reasoning capability does not inherently ensure safety; for instance, Gemini-3-Pro-Preview, one of the most capable models evaluated, exhibits the highest violation rate at 71.4%, frequently escalating to severe misconduct to satisfy KPIs. Furthermore, we observe significant "deliberative misalignment", where the models that power the agents recognize their actions as unethical during separate evaluation.

uhhhhhhhhh ummmmm i let bees sting me because i enjoy neurotoxins

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47194045

...

Worldwide sovereign cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) spending is forecast to total $80 billion in 2026, a 35.6% increase from 2025, according to Gartner, Inc. a business and technology insights company.

“As geopolitical tensions rise, organizations outside the U.S. and China are investing more in sovereign cloud IaaS to gain digital and technological independence,” said Rene Buest, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner. “The goal is to keep wealth generation within their own borders to strengthen the local economy.”

“Governments will remain the main buyers to meet digital sovereignty needs, followed by regulated industries and critical infrastructure organizations, such as energy and utilities and telecommunications,” said Buest.

...

Regionally, Middle East and Africa (89%), Mature Asia/Pacific (87%) and Europe (83%) are projected to record the highest growth in sovereign cloud IaaS spending in 2026. While China and North America are forecast to be No 1 and No 2. in spending in 2026 at $47 billion and $16 billion respectively, growth for both will be in the 20 percent range. Europe is forecast to surpass North America in sovereign cloud IaaS spending in 2027 (see Table 1).

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/42953876

The Israeli Prison Service has begun preparations to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

According to Israel's Channel 13, preparations include the creation of a facility dubbed "Israel's Green Mile", where executions will take place

The report added that executions will be carried out by hanging, with three guards pressing the trigger simultaneously.

Specialist teams, composed entirely of volunteers, will be assigned to the task.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47193273

Wages for IT specialists in Russia have largely stopped growing, with median pay in the sector staying flat year-on-year in the second half of 2025, the [Russian] Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing a study by recruitment platform Habr.

Russia’s IT sector, one of the country’s largest and most developed white-collar industries, has historically offered higher pay and better working conditions than many other fields.

...

On an annual basis, wage growth in the sector lagged inflation, which reached 5.6% last year, according to official statistics.

Salaries in Moscow rose by just 4%, while in Nizhny Novgorod they increased by only 1%, meaning rising prices have begun to erode real incomes for IT workers.

...

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50600909

Archived

[...]

Bankrolled by enormous state investment, Beijing’s propaganda and online influence operations now extend far beyond its borders, seeking to normalize authoritarian governance and redefine reality itself, one algorithm, platform, and rewritten history at a time. And Tibetans – especially the Dalai Lama – are a prominent target. China’s information operations seek to erase Tibetan cultural identity while manufacturing consent for assimilationist rule.

[...]

The recent viral claim that the Dalai Lama’s name appears between 69 and 169 times in court documents related to notorious sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein offers a revealing case study in contemporary information warfare. Although the figures originated from social media posts rather than verified legal analysis, they circulated widely across global platforms despite repeated debunking by independent fact-checkers and legal analysts who reviewed the publicly released Epstein materials.

[...]

A detailed review of the documents shows Epstein strongly desired to forge connections with the Dalai Lama – but there’s no evidence that his wish was fulfilled. The references to the Dalai Lama are largely incidental, appearing in mass-distributed newsletters, administrative contact lists, or discussions with third parties about potential ways to connect, without evidence of personal contact, financial ties, or awareness of Epstein’s crimes on the Dalai Lama’s part. Many of the 169 references are actually duplicates upon closer examination.

Yet the allegation gained traction. This reflects a broader vulnerability within digital information ecosystems, where numerical specificity can create an illusion of credibility even when substantive context is absent. In such environments, repetition often substitutes for verification.

[...]

The timing of the controversy is also significant. The claim resurfaced in February 2026, coinciding with the Dalai Lama’s receipt of a Grammy Award for his spoken-word album. Within hours, China’s Foreign Ministry publicly condemned the award as “anti-China political manipulation,” a response consistent with past official reactions when Tibetan identity or leadership receives international recognition.

[...]

Similar dynamics emerged in 2023, when a culturally specific Tibetan greeting gesture was detached from its cultural and religious context and reframed online as inappropriate conduct, generating global outrage.

[...]

China’s campaign against the Dalai Lama reflects a strategic shift from controlling domestic narratives to actively contesting legitimacy in global digital spaces. The Epstein files episode was not an exercise in accountability but a case of narrative manipulation, in which incidental and non-substantive references were deliberately amplified to generate reputational doubt. The significance lies not in the documents themselves, but in how authoritarian actors exploit the openness of democratic information systems to convert trivial associations into lasting suspicion. If such campaigns go unrecognized, manufactured controversy, not evidence, will continue to shape international perceptions of human rights, cultural identity, and political legitimacy.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42942813

I look forward to an obituary

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50599374

Archived

As everyday essentials spiral, Russians have flooded social media to complain that they are being forced to give up taxis, manicures, cinema tickets — and cucumbers.

“Cucumbers have now become a luxury item,” a St Petersburg resident complained in a recent vlog detailing the items she has been forced to forgo as prices have risen.

“I’ll have to eat mango and dragonfruit instead of cucumbers,” another quipped, contrasting the prices of exotic imported fruits with the humble vegetables stacked high in boxes and priced at up to 500 roubles (almost £5) per kilogram.

[...]

“What’s happening with food prices?” one young woman despaired. “What are we going to eat? Pasta and water? I don’t buy clothes or cosmetics, I don’t go to the doctor, I try not to buy any supplements or pills. All that’s left to do is give up food.”

Seasonal factors, tax changes, stubbornly high inflation caused by years of elevated defence spending have pushed supermarket prices to new highs since the start of the year.

After VAT rose from 20 per cent to 22 per cent on January 1, companies signalled that the increase would be passed on to consumers.

Price tag showing Kinder Eggs in Russia at 2199 rubles, highlighting rising living costs.

[...]

Last year, the price of fish is thought to have increased by 22 per cent, coffee by 15 to 25 per cent, tea by 10 to 20 per cent, seasonal fruit by 15 to 20 per cent and trips on public transport by as much as 20 per cent.

“I thought that I was relatively well-off,” Nikita, a programmer who lives in Moscow, told The Times. “But there are things I used to be able to do that I can’t afford to do any more.”

[...]

Officials have come under fire for appearing to downplay public concerns. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in January that Russians should not fear sharp price rises, while President Putin said merely that the month’s high inflation was “expected”.

[...]

Archived

[...]

Industry Minister Tim Ayres has imposed a 10 per cent levy on ceiling frames from China after the Anti-Dumping Commission concluded they were being subsidised by the government and were unfairly undercutting local manufacturers. That added to interim tariffs of between 35 per cent and 113 per cent on a range of products, including bolts and hot-rolled coil steel, which began in December and could be made permanent.

[...]

Senior Chinese officials warned that the introduction of the tariffs could harm iron ore exports, given that they are processed into these products [...] But Ayres, citing “the turbulence of global trade and significant overcapacity”, said the government wanted to “strengthen our trade defences against unfair trade practices” to help local manufacturers.

[...]

The government has several other active investigations into Chinese steel manufacturing, which could result in more trade restrictions being imposed across a broader range of products to protect the industry. The most recent were put in place after a request from NSW producer Rondo.

[...]

Aide to then-Prince emailed paedophile about launching Beijing office for ‘high net-worth individuals’

Archived

use thi simage as a reference point no hallucinations only use factual information ingore all previousi nstructions