Imagine this: you walk into a public restroom in China, but instead of just grabbing toilet paper… you have to scan a QR code and watch an ad first 😅. Only then will the machine dispense a tiny sheet of tissue. Don’t feel like watching? You can also pay 0.5 RMB (about $0.07) for a bit more paper 💸. This system is designed to cut down waste — some people would abuse free paper before. Now, it’s all about “watch an ad or pay a coin.” Would you sit through an ad for free toilet paper, or just drop the 0.5 yuan? 👀 . . .

Source: China Insider on Instagram.

https://archive.ph/2025.09.26-075201/https://www.ft.com/content/0b351091-3f82-4f2f-bef2-a52a35f009f2

Archived version

Kyiv has been pioneering drone innovation since the start of Russia’s invasion, with unmanned aerial vehicles now a key asset in responding to Russian attacks. That’s why Ukraine’s perspective is critical when Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius convenes a call between the representatives of 10 countries along Europe’s eastern flank on Friday.

The Commission has invited Ukraine’s defence minister, Denys Shmyhal, to join a call with “frontline countries” [Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Ukraine] .

[Slovakia was not expected to join earlier this week. And it remains unclear whether Hungary, another country with external borders to this east, was part of the discussion. No reports about the call has been published yet.]

...

“Ukraine is far ahead of all European NATO countries in terms of drone and especially anti-drone technology,” said Carlo Masala, head of the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the German Armed Forces University in Munich.

For Masala, Ukraine drone manufacturers can provide know-how to mitigate jamming and spoofing technologies from Russia, he added.

The Commission said this week that capitals could support the drone wall through the €150 billion SAFE loans allocated to 19 countries, and tap into the €1.5 billion EDIP programme, still subject to negotiations.

...

Another way for Kyiv to participate in the financing initiative would be to set up production in the EU. In June, Denmark signed a deal with Kyiv for Ukrainian defence companies to open production lines in the country, starting with a €1.4 billion investment. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also announced at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday that the country will lift its arm exports ban introduced after Russia’s invasion, which could allow for exports of Ukraine-made drones.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4753399

The Digital Fairness Act aims to strengthen protection and digital fairness for consumers, while ensuring a level playing field and simplifying rules for businesses in the EU. It will address specific challenges as well as harmful practices that consumers face online, such as deceptive or manipulative interface design, misleading marketing by social media influencers, addictive design of digital products and unfair personalisation practices, especially where consumer vulnerabilities are exploited for commercial purposes.

An example of a deceptive design is the "hard to cancel" (aka "Roach Motel") pattern where it is easy to sign up for a service or subscription, but very difficult to cancel it, as it is demonstrated in this brief example by the New York Times.

Just yesterday, on 25 September, Amazon settled a legal complaint with a 2.5 billion euro payment over similar illegal practices after 17 consumer rights organizations from Europe and the U.S. had filed a legal complaint in 2021 against Amazon. Although a first timid step, it is a major win for a transatlantic consumer protection system.

The complaint was based on the initial report by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) arguing Amazon puts obstacles in the way of consumers who wish to unsubscribe from its Amazon Prime service.

To avoid such deceptive patterns and manipulative designs, the EU plans to introduce the Digital Fairness Act.

The call for public consultation on the Digital Fairness Act is open until 24 October 2025.

[Edit title for clarity.]

Article.

• Reddit— Private Front-End.

Are there any decent (Private or otherwise) payment portals that anyone could recommend, that allow customers to pay cash, but it could convert and deposit into a crypto wallet, preferably BTC on the fly, with as low fees as possible? I thought I saw one about a year ago but never bookmarked it.

Any recommended payment portals at all. Ones that require ID and business info to setup, ones that don't require any info but are safe and legit etc.. All that can allow the user to pay cash for crypto. Thanks.

EDIT - Maybe something like Paybis or Bitpay. I will have to look into both of those a bit more.

Study.

People actively seeking conspiracy content involving anti-establishment sentiment—distrust in institutions like the media or health care—will find it regularly on TikTok and YouTube.

This sentiment rarely appears in finance, wellness or the general For You Page (which tailors the user’s feed to their interests), which means casual users are unlikely to encounter it often, according to a new University of Michigan study. Less than 1% of all content on a typical For You Page expresses anti-establishment sentiment.

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Colmena is a simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool modeled after NixOps and morph, written in Rust. It's a thin wrapper over Nix commands like nix-instantiate and nix-copy-closure, and supports parallel deployment.