So, this whole thing kicked off because I hit a wall with local storage - it just doesn't grow with you forever, you know? Plus, putting all my eggs in the basket of other companies felt a bit risky with all the changing rules and government access stuff these days.

What I ended up with is pretty cool: a personal file vault where I'm in charge. It treats any outside storage like it can't be trusted, and all the encryption happens right on my computer. I can even use cloud storage like S3 if I need to, but I never lose control of my own data.

Honestly, it just kinda grew on its own; I never set out to build a product. I'm mainly sharing it here to see how other folks deal with these kinds of choices.

You can check it out at https://www.leyzen.com/

Just wondering, as i am bored an curious because I'm in a position in life where i can get a job/cant travel to work. I remeber before I switched to lemmy and back when I used reddit, most people would promote their affiliate stuff or something, which really bothered me as it was quite common.

What legitimate ways are there to make money on the side from online without having a job? If you have questions, please leave a comment.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6220086

An estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children are believed to have been deported and/or forcibly transferred from occupied territories into Russia. Some have allegedly been illegally adopted by Russian families, with their names – and in some cases even their place of birth – altered, making reunification even more difficult.

Diplomatic efforts to engage directly with Moscow have yielded almost no results, with just 20 Ukrainian children returned, according to Russian authorities. The few children who have been returned had been displaced in occupied Ukrainian territory, not in Russia, says [human rights lawyer Kateryna] Rashevska, making the need for international accountability imperative.

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An estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children are believed to have been deported and/or forcibly transferred from occupied territories into Russia. Some have allegedly been illegally adopted by Russian families, with their names – and in some cases even their place of birth – altered, making reunification even more difficult.

Diplomatic efforts to engage directly with Moscow have yielded almost no results, with just 20 Ukrainian children returned, according to Russian authorities. The few children who have been returned had been displaced in occupied Ukrainian territory, not in Russia, says [human rights lawyer Kateryna] Rashevska, making the need for international accountability imperative.

...

Archived link

On Nov. 28, a Russian attack lasting more than 10 hours struck Ukrainian cities, with Kyiv as the main target. The Kyiv Independent […] spent the night with a Kyiv family sheltering in a parking garage with their three children.

As Russian drones and missiles reached the city, the family followed their routine in the shelter and shared how their perception of the war has changed over the years — and why they continue to stay in Ukraine despite the regular, deadly attacks.

...

Sánchez appears to support all viable options and is content with all possible outcomes on major international issues, avoiding taking sides and emerging unscathed from major disputes among his EU counterparts.

...

[After a meeting with Yolanda Díaz, the leader of his left-wing junior coalition partner Sumar ... amidst a worsening government crisis following new bombshell corruption scandals, coupled with sexual harassment allegations against the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE), the left is now putting pressure on Sanchez.

But prime minister said he has “no problem” with Díaz discussing a government crisis, or with the Mercosur agreement that he so vigorously defended being postponed, or with the repayment loan being rejected in favour of another scheme. For Sánchez, everything seems fine as long as he guarantees his own political survival.

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You can only post if you're on a bus but the topic can be literally anything. You can comment even if you aren't on a bus

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The country’s interior minister, Igor Taro, said the border guards had entered Estonia after crossing the Narva River on the vessel at around 10am on Wednesday.

The Estonian foreign ministry will summon the Russian chargé d’affaires after the alleged intrusion.

...

For months, Russian drones and planes have been entering Nato airspace in what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation against the alliance, which is supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

This has included fighter jet incursions into Poland and Romania, weather balloons being sent over the Lithuanian border from Belarus and sightings of drones near airports in Denmark.

...

In September, three Russian military jets violated Estonia’s airspace for 12 minutes in an “unprecedentedly brazen” incursion, according to the government. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said it was the fourth time that Russia had violated Estonian airspace in 2025.

...

The latest incursion came hours before the Estonian prime minister, Kristen Michal, visited Brussels for a summit with EU leaders over whether to approve a €90bn (£79bn) loan to fund Ukraine’s war effort using frozen Russian assets.

During a press conference at the summit, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that all the signals showed that Moscow was not seriously interested in peace with Europe ... Warnings are growing across the continent that Europe must be ready for further Russian aggression.

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cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/32477404

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/32477353

This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you (or the one you are in already).

I recently moved into a new development dystopian American burboclave. I ran unopposed for head of the home owner association's events committee, and I want to foster an actual community with stuff like game nights, holiday parties, team sports and the like. Right now, the only digital space we have is a WhatsApp (🤮) group chat with like 1/2 the community in it. Going forward, I'd like a feature set like Discord or Slack (polls, roles, channels, voip, moderation, decent mobile & desktop browser experience, etc.) that we can physically host in the community. Nice-to-haves are containerization, backup, migration, and high availability mirroring. Incidentally, I'd love to get ideas on hardware I could host this on. I hear used corporate blade-style servers are good bang for your buck, but I don't know how to begin shopping for one of those.

tl;dr newby friendly SW and HW for self hosting a Discord-esque platform? Apologies if this is a low-effort or a Let Me Google That For You situation; I'm baby

Edit: thank you all very much for your thoughts and advice. I'll research and test the software that was suggested with the knowledge that the site I stand up will likely be used by few or no people.

Responding to a deadly terrorist attack, authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales promised on Dec 19 to introduce a law that would give officials enormous powers to restrict speech and assembly.

The proposed law joins a series of restrictions that have been floated at the federal and state levels in recent days: to further tighten gun laws, to crack down harder on hate speech, to adopt new measures against anti-Semitism and to expand deportation as a tool of punishment.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55358420

In November, Ukrainians purchased 3,908 Chinese passenger cars, which is 4.8 times more than last year. The vast majority of them are electric vehicles, accounting for 93% of the total volume.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city state's central bank, said in a statement on Monday that the appointment of DBS as an RMB clearing bank will "support further growth of the offshore RMB market in Singapore, and facilitate the use of RMB for trade, investment and other economic activities in line with regional needs".

In a separate agreement, the Singapore branches of ICBC and Bank of China will launch a pilot programme to allow travellers from Singapore to open and top up digital RMB wallets for merchant payments in China by year-end.

Both countries also agreed to commence an "over-the-counter" bond market arrangement.

Hi, I've been using material files on Android, and I especially like how you can share anything to it, and it will give you the option to save it as a file.

However, recently, it has lost its ability to save files. I think it doesn't have permission anymore, with no ability to reenable. So, I was wondering if anybody else can recommend a good file browser and file manager for Android?

Edit: thanks for the recs! I'm trying them out.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47623628

The U.S. on Friday dropped its effort to deport a Chinese national who helped document Beijing's alleged abuses against Uyghur Muslims to Uganda.

[...]

Guan Heng, a Chinese citizen-journalist, fled the U.S. in 2021 after taking video of alleged concentration camps in China's western Xinjiang region. He released the video after arriving in the U.S., where he applied for asylum.

[...]

Guan was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August for illegally entering the country, part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. He remains in a New York state detention center.

His detention and threatened deportation to Uganda has stirred controversy, not least because he helped document abuses in China that the U.S. government during Trump's first term deemed "genocide."

His supporters and lawyer say Guan faced almost certain persecution if deported to Uganda. The East African country, where Beijing has considerable political and economic clout, this year entered into an agreement with the U.S. to take in nationals from third countries. "We just got a letter informing that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) will not seek to remove Mr. Guan to Uganda," his lawyer Allen Chen [said].

[...]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43978801

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The British government said Friday it is investigating a “cyber incident” following news reports that hackers linked to China have gained access to thousands of confidential documents held by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Trade Minister Chris Bryant said the investigation began in October and the government believes there is a “fairly low risk” that anyone’s personal information has been compromised.

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The allegations come at a sensitive time in Britain’s relationship with China as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government tries to rebuild trade and diplomatic links that have been strained by concerns about Chinese spying and human rights abuses.

Starmer reportedly plans to travel to China in late January, the first time a British prime minister will visit the country since 2018. Meanwhile, the government has delayed a decision on China’s plans to build a massive new embassy in London amid criticism that it could be used as a base for espionage.

The destruction of food supplies by crop pests is being supercharged by the climate crisis, with losses expected to surge, an analysis has concluded.

Researchers said the world was lucky to have so far avoided a major shock and was living on borrowed time, with action needed to diversify crops and boost natural predators of pests.

The key global crops, wheat, rice and maize, are expected to see the losses to pests increase by about 46%, 19% and 31% respectively when global heating reaches 2C, the scientists said.

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Russia carried out cyberattacks against infrastructure and websites in Denmark in 2024 and 2025, Danish authorities say in a new assessment published this week describing new cases not previously reported.

Moscow was responsible for “destructive and disruptive” cyberattacks on a Danish water utility company in 2024 and a series of denial of service attacks which overwhelmed Danish websites ahead of regional and local elections last month, Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service said in a statement Thursday. The water company said the attack caused pipes to burst, leaving homes temporarily without water.

Jan Hansen, the head of the Tureby Alkestrup Waterworks southwest of the capital Copenhagen, said his advice to other companies was not to cut costs on cybersecurity and to take out cyber insurance. The attack happened, he said, because the waterworks switched to cheaper cybersecurity, which was not as secure as that previously.

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The Danish intelligence service said the attacks were part of Russia’s “hybrid war” against the West and an attempt to create instability. It said Moscow’s cyberattacks are part of a broader campaign to undermine and punish countries which support Ukraine. Russian hackers have previously been accused of carrying out hacks on other water facilities in Europe — including on a Norwegian dam where Norwegian authorities said hackers opened valves to allow water to pour out.