Air Transat is cancelling its last two flights into Florida as of this spring, suspending all of its business into the United States.

The Russian government is trying to block WhatsApp in the country as its crackdown on communication platforms outside its control intensifies.

Despite being sued by Spotify, Anna's Archive has begun releasing the actual music files from its massive Spotify scrape.

Thailand is consistently ranked among the bottom 10 countries in the world for low birth rates. Its Total Fertility Rate has dropped to between 1.0 and 1.2 children per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement level required to maintain a stable population.

Attorney General Pam Bondi took to Capitol Hill this week with her burn book in hand and a message to Congress, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and the American people: Shut up, the Dow hit 50,000. She was right about the Dow Jones Industrial performance until the next day when stocks dumped out on news that AI might be real and that the economy added 400,000 fewer jobs last year than we originally thought. That’s the thing about building an entire narrative around the stock market. The stock market is not the economy. And the victims of Epstein’s crimes deserve better.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7204957

Archived link

• Focus Graphite's Lac Knife project in Quebec features 15% graphitic carbon content, approximately 3x higher than the industry average of 3-5%, providing significant cost advantages in a North American operating environment
• The company has secured $14 million in non-dilutive funding from Natural Resources Canada's Global Partner Initiative, with total cash position of $18 million and minimal near-term dilution requirements
• At $236 million capex for a 27-year mine life producing 50,000 tons annually, the project represents a fraction of typical critical mineral development costs, with potential for substantial debt financing coverage
• Focus is developing specialty large-flake graphite for military, defense, and aerospace applications, leveraging unique purification technology that preserves flake integrity without chemicals
• The company is in final stages of environmental permitting (ESIA completion expected within 3-4 months) and has already demonstrated material in missile applications, positioning for production in 2-3 years

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Unless I am blind or my search-fu is hugely failing me, I cannot for the life of me find any information on the recommended/minimum specs to self-host the matrix backend services. I'm trying to spin up a VM just to play around with it and see if I like it. Specifically, I'm looking at Synapse or Continuwuity. Any advice?

Looking for vCPUs, memory, storage.

Little Saint James no longer has a Pokestop after players called attention to its Jeffrey Epstein connections.

feddit.de
lemm.ee
lemm.one (technically still up but left unmaintained)

Several years ago I had a Discord community with hundreds of users. This was an IRL community, so it was very difficult to abandon but I did anyway. Tried to get people to leave but they were unwilling. So I handed it off to another member and deleted my account. Now that admin has contacted me again and let me know everyone is ready to leave. I found Fluxer yesterday while poking around #Discord on Mastodon and I think we're going to end up there.

Fluxer is still very early in development and they have plans for many advanced features in the roadmap but it's very feature-rich today. Current monetization plan is freemium + Patreon-like monetization. I understand that may be a dealbreaker for some but there aren't a ton of other great options, and everything is open source, and self-hostable, and if you do, you get all of the premium features for free, while still communicating with the main instance over federation (in roadmap). That still leaves it susceptible to Mattermost-style enshittification but honestly rolling back updates solves most of those style of problems.

Played Darksiders 3 some more.

Figured out what happens to souls after you die, a phantom / ghost like thingy start flying near the place, you just destroy it and get back the souls. Got a new powerup, and am at a place with many enemies. Turned it off the game when I kept dying. Will get back to it this weekend.

Also played some Xuan Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains.

So the game is apparently a port of the mobile version, which basically gives you lots of XP so you level up faster, making the game much easier. Which I like, since these older RPGs can be pretty tough.

The game has random encounters, which I am not a fan of, but you get the option to "Auto Attack" which makes these fights much faster, and with increased XP, it keeps the things moving fast. There is also a "Tame" mechanic which allows you to capture different monsters, and then with "Fusion system" you can merge different monsters or items to get different monsters or upgrade your equipment. You can also summon the monsters in battle, and they can help you attack the enemy.

There are also many side-quests and puzzles, but they are quite obtuse if you aren't used to these older games. The quests doesn't appear as anything special, you just talk to NPCs and they talk like other NPCs but mention some problem in it, so you have to fix their problem or whatever, without any log or marker or anything. Took me a bit getting used to, and actually missed a few side-quests in the first area.

The story and the world is pretty good though, even with subpar translation and the way font formatting is.

So far, I'll recommend it if you like older RPGs with good stories, and are willing to deal with some dated mechanics.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

Kulyk legally entered the U.S. in late 2023 along with his wife, 38, and daughter, who’s now 5. The family was sponsored by U.S. citizens as part of the Uniting 4 Ukraine program, a humanitarian program set up in April 2022 to allow Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war to live and work in the U.S. on “parole.”

Once the initial two-year parole period expires, entrants can file for re-parole to remain in the country longer. That’s exactly what Kulyk says he did. His wife and daughter’s applications were approved. But his remained pending.

He said he was putting groceries in his car on Jan. 1 when he was approached by three ICE agents.

“I explained to the ICE officers that the war was killing people, that my wife had a disability, that it was violence, terrorism which we had escaped from but one of them began to laugh,” Kulyk told The Daily Beast. “I asked why he was laughing and I was told that he was pro-Russian, wanted Russia to win the war.”

I'm planning to setup backup on my nas with the 3-2-1 backup rule.

For the backup disks I want full disk encryption, but I also want to be really sure that I don't lose the encryption keys if I lose my phone and computer where I have my password manager.

What is a good practice to store the encryption key(s)?

One thought I had was to have an unencrypted partition on the backup disks that stores an encrypted keepass database with the key.

Any tips or experiences are welcome.

PS. I want to avoid cloud-based options.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47379227

Russia has been able to continue its full-scale war against Ukraine largely due to extensive support from a specific country, according to a publication by Clash Report.

...

Despite public statements about aid from other countries, it is China’s resources that ... have been the decisive factor for the Kremlin.

Former head of British intelligence MI6, Richard Moore, stated that it was Beijing that provided Moscow with the most significant support during the war.

According to him, China’s contribution far exceeds that of Iran or North Korea, even though these countries are more frequently mentioned in the media due to weapons deliveries and personnel.

"I am absolutely certain that Putin would have already lost without the support from China that he received. Headlines often focus on North Korea providing approximately 12,000 troops for the battle near Kursk, or Iran supplying drone technology," Moore said.

...

The report shows that US support in 2025 fell by nearly 99% compared to the average for 2022–2024. Whereas the United States had previously allocated billions annually in military, financial, and humanitarian aid, 2025 saw a 99% drop in assistance.

There was only one "symbolic" military support package worth approximately €0.4 billion, and no new major financial or humanitarian commitments were recorded.

...

Against the backdrop of the steep reduction in US aid, European countries significantly expanded their contributions:

• military assistance from Europe increased by 67%.

• Financial and humanitarian support rose by 59%.

As a result, the overall volume of international aid to Ukraine in 2025 remained close to the levels of previous years, despite the sharp decline in support from the United States.

...

One of the key tools was the introduction of the PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirement List) mechanism, through which around 75% of missiles for Patriot systems and nearly 90% of ammunition for other air defense systems were funded by European partners in 2025.

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Forecasts for 2026 are optimistic thanks to the new EU Ukraine Support Fund, totaling €90 billion. Of this, €60 billion is earmarked specifically for supporting Ukraine’s defense industry, enabling the country to become more autonomous in weapons production.

Japan intends to join a NATO initiative allowing the supply of ammunition, equipment, and other US-made resources to Ukraine.

Additionally, in mid-January 2026, Albania joined the PURL initiative.

By the end of December 2025, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that more than 20 countries had joined the PURL initiative, specifically, 24.

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Web archive link

Republicans may be willing to stick with Donald Trump through almost anything, but his recent push to seize control of Greenland has turned off many in his own party, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the issue of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. That’s higher than the share who dislike how he’s handling foreign policy generally, suggesting that Trump’s Greenland approach has created a weak spot for the administration.

Even Republicans aren’t thrilled. About half disapprove of his attempt to turn the icebound landmass into American territory, something that Trump has insisted is critical for national security in the Arctic, while about half approve.