The race to lead the New Democrat Party is officially underway.

Voting opened on March 9 and ends March 29, when the party will gather in Winnipeg for the NDP convention.

Five leadership contestants are in the race to replace former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh: Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson, labour leader Rob Ashton, activist and documentary filmmaker Avi Lewis, social worker and Campbell River Coun. Tanille Johnston and organic farmer Tony McQuail.

Sanjay Jeram, a political science lecturer at Simon Fraser University, said Ashton, McPherson and Lewis have emerged as the race’s three front-runners.

Lewis has been able to fundraise more than twice as much money as the next candidate, with nearly three times as many people contributing to his campaign.

National homes sales edged down in February from the previous month, and the benchmark home price fell 4.8 per cent compared to the same time last year, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said on Tuesday.

CREA chief economist Shaun Cathcart said February's data showed a "continuation of the quieter levels of activity" seen in January, but he said the association expects "pent-up" demand to boil over during the spring season.

New listings were down 3.9 per cent in February compared to January, and the sales-to-new-listings ratio also narrowed. CREA said price declines in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta offset gains made in other provinces.

The MLS Home Price Index showed that the national benchmark home price was $661,100 last month, close to the prices seen in the spring of 2021.

It gets my goat that people think it's a good option. There are plenty of articles explaining some of the many issues with it, but a few are:

1. It's run by anti-LGBTQ+ crypto bros.
2. It has ads right out of the box.
3. It collected donations towards people who never signed up for them - then held them to ransom in exchange for the kind of information you should never share on the Internet.
4. They're a for-profit advertising company. "Privacy-centric" my elbow.

If confirmed, death would make Larijani the most senior Iranian figure to be killed since Ali Khamenei on first day of war

Israel says it has killed a linchpin of Iranian politics, the national security chief, Ali Larijani, in overnight strikes, a claim that if confirmed would make him the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on its first day.

Iran has yet to comment on either claim. If confirmed, Larijani’s death would remove a pivotal figure at the heart of the regime’s political and security establishment at a moment of acute crisis and represent devastating blow.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike killed the Basij paramilitary force commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures.

When he was 22 years old, he moved from Japan to Toronto to study English, but he says he wound up in rural Nova Scotia working excessive hours at a campground for a total of $300 for nearly a year’s work.

“It's really, really sad. And I was crying sometimes because I don't know who I can trust,” the man, now 24, said in an interview.

CBC News is not revealing the man's name or showing his face to protect his privacy.

The RCMP say he is a victim of labour trafficking, a form of human trafficking that they say is of growing concern across Canada. Labour trafficking calls to the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline held steady for an average of 24 cases a year from 2020 to 2022, jumping to 57 calls in 2023, and 100 in 2024, according to a report produced by the Canadian Association to End Human Trafficking.

Police and experts agree the number of cases is likely much higher than the data suggests, because labour trafficking is a significantly underreported crime.

In relation to the latest case, Nova Scotia RCMP have charged Trevor Annon, 65, of southern Ontario with trafficking in persons, receiving financial or material benefit, false pretense and extortion. He’s also facing a fraud charge in relation to another victim.

A year after the “Buy Canadian” movement started sweeping the country, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is cracking down on grocery stores that promote imported food as Canadian.

So far this year, the federal food regulator has issued two fines to Loblaw-owned grocery stores for this type of violation. The CFIA is also investigating Canadian labelling and advertising practices at grocer Sobeys’ head office, CBC News has learned.

“Canadians have been clear that they want to support Canadian businesses and buy Canadian products,” said the agency in an email. “The CFIA will take the appropriate action to protect Canadians from misleading claims.”

Two players from the Iranian women’s soccer team have joined a practice session with a professional club in Brisbane in their first publicly-shared appearance since it emerged they had been granted asylum in Australia.

Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh were pictured smiling and wearing the club’s colors as they posed alongside a women’s elite squad in photos posted to Instagram by the Brisbane Roar on Monday.

The update came as the rest of Iran’s soccer delegation left Malaysia bound for Oman, apparently capping a tumultuous episode that saw Australia’s government offering most of the squad humanitarian visas after the team was knocked out of the Women’s Asian Cup. Seven women initially accepted the asylum offer before five changed their minds and said they would return to Iran.

This changes everything for European companies, institutions and politicians.

I've just started a project of mapping out the independent music ecosystem in Aotearoa, and I've been trying to find local independent music forums to list. There used to be a bunch, like punkas.com, and HTown.co.nz, but those parrots are stone dead, and I can't find any live ones so far. Surely at least some of the kiwi DIY music communities have online space that aren't on FarceBook or DarthReddit ('I have changed the deal on API access, pray I don't change it futher')? But I've tried the somewhat skeletal search systems in both PieFed and Lemmy, and so far, tumbleweeds.

-Please god I just want to see an American carrier burning before I die, nothing else matters, I'll do anything please

-Respectable WOKE

🏳️‍🌈

Source: SoarAtlas on X/ Twitter.

Extra:

• SolarAtlas.

Shared by:

• Clash Report.

This article was published in Corriere della Sera today. Automatic translation below (with some corrections):

The urgent need for Europe: to quickly achieve self-sufficiency in digital services

*Survey DisclAImer by SWG

For 55% of citizens, the priority is to invest in artificial intelligence to avoid dependence on other countries But restrictions on AI are necessary*

Corriere della Sera, 17 March 2026

• Riccardo Luna

The blocking of digital services by the United States is a plausible hypothesis for almost nine out of ten Europeans. It is the most sensational data of the research conducted by the DisclAImer observatory that will be presented today to the European Parliament during an event in which the two Italian vice presidents Pina Picierno and Antonella Sberna will take part; so will the MEPs Brando Benifei and Letizia Moratti; the Director General of the DG Connect of the European Commission Roberto Viola and the president of the Delors institute Enrico Letta.

The observatory was created a few months ago, with the contribution of Intesa Sanpaolo bank, as part of the project of Corriere della Sera and Cineca, to deepen the impacts of artificial intelligence through research conducted by SWG. The first report was on journalism. This second report, made by interviewing a sample of citizens from twenty-seven EU countries, is entitled " Our Digital Sovereignty", an issue that has become increasingly urgent every day since the start of Donald Trump’s second term, given all the tensions that are currently unfolding. The fundamental problem is that the European Union over time has accumulated a considerable technological lag, in the meantime carving out a role as regulator of the digital revolution. How important is this delay? And does the restart imply a waiver of the rules? Around these two questions revolves the whole research.

As for the first issue, for six out of ten Europeans technological delay exists but only 12 percent of respondents say that "there is no hope anymore"; 77 percent believe that if we wake up we can still compete with the United States and China. Among the most pessimistic are precisely the Italians; Spaniards and Poles are more confident in resilience. This delay is experienced as a tangible risk for the functioning of critical infrastructure (in the lead: industry, defence and banks) and therefore for democratic resilience. In fact, the hypothesis that the United States one day "for reasons of political or commercial expediency, may limit or suddenly interrupt European countries 'access to their digital services, causing unimaginable damage" is seen as a concrete and current risk by 59 percent of respondents, a figure that speaks volumes about how our perception of the world has changed in the first twelve months of Trump's presidency (the questionnaire was administered at the end of January).

With these premises, a European route to artificial intelligence and the cloud (to name two of the most relevant technologies), is seen as a top priority by the majority of respondents (55 percent, a figure that is growing strongly in southern European countries). How to get there? Here we come to the second major theme of the questionnaire: a judgment on the regulatory approach taken so far by the EU. In fact, in the last decade significant legislation has been enacted to regulate privacy (GDPR), digital services and markets (DSA and DMA) and finally the development of artificial intelligence (AI Act). These regulations have been a major source of hardship and contention for American tech companies, but some argue that they have also hindered the growth of large European firms in these sectors.

What is the opinion of European citizens regarding this regulatory initiative? Has it stifled innovation? The verdict is surprising: for six out of ten Europeans, rules and principles are our real strength in technological development while the race of countries such as the United States is seen as "unregulated and irresponsible". This is a very clear-cut assessment that comes just as discussions are underway in Brussels on how to ease certain restrictions, particularly regarding privacy and artificial intelligence.

This vision of technological progress centred on values and principles is also reflected in the perception of the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. Public opinion appears split exactly down the middle, although concerns about applications in the fields of justice, healthcare, and law enforcement are worth noting, with particularly high levels of caution in Spain, Italy, and Poland. The main risks are similar: fake news and the creation of fake, highly realistic videos. There is significant demand for ways to combat the phenomenon: in fact, one in two Europeans is willing to sacrifice freedom of expression, a figure derived from the 46 percent who call for “the rapid removal of dangerous or illegal false content.”

Finally, an answer that opens up some interesting possibilities. The question was: where can we attract talent to help Europe close the technological gap? Twenty-one percent believe that think that we should look at Africa and other developing countries; but as many as 51% think that we should bet on Americans or Europeans who emigrated to the United States for study or work. Like Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic, who recently broke with the Pentagon about some military uses of the Claude linguistic model. The mayor of London offered him to move there with his whole company. But if there were a similar proposal from a European country or the European Union, public opinion would be in favour.

Parmesan? This is Jack Colby. Listen real close, I've got a message from the big cheese.

(tersely) Oh yeah? what the fuck does Mister Mozzarella have to say to me, huh?

Its your son Reggiano. He's come up short.

Fuck's that Gouda do with me huh?

Well Mr Mozzarella doesn't like to wait for his money. Normally he'd just grate the kid and be done with it, but he owes the Swiss, see?

I don't like where this is heading..

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44314509

I have been in the process of writing some help guides, and one of my friends graciously lent me his Steam Deck so that I could verify that Fluxer would work on it as well. And I'm happy to say it does. Although I did not plan on just posting a Fluxer Help-Article on Lemmy, I figured while waiting on the Fluxer team to start accepting pull requests and me getting done with my guides, someone might be looking for step-by-step instructions for their Steam Deck. So here it is. Feedback and discussion is of course welcome.

---

In this Help Article we will guide you step-by-step through the process of installing and integrating Fluxer into your application menu on the Steam Deck. Although not required, access to an external physical keyboard is recommended.

The Steam Deck is running a custom version on Linux that is based on Arch, and the CPU architecture is x86-64. This means we could either use the AppImage(x64) option or the tar.gz(x64) option from the download drop-down on https://fluxer.app/downloads

Since integrating the AppImage into the application menu requires additional steps such as manually retrieving the icon .png file this guide will focus on the installation process for the tar.gz.

Before we explain how to install Fluxer from the tar.gz file, let's take a moment and go through what a tar.gz file is. tar.gz are actually two abbreviations put together. "tar" from Tape Archive (sometimes referred to as a tarball) which is an archive file format and the "gz" at the end is short for Gzip(which in of itself is short for Gnu Zip) and it is a compression format. When combined you get an archive that is neatly packed in one file that is now also take up less space.

- Okay, why was that important to start off with?

Well, since it is a compressed archive, that means we can't just double click it and hope it will do much more than perhaps open the preinstalled unarchiver on our system. The fact is, a tar.gz file does not necessarily even have to contain any executable, even if it is an application. In this case with the Fluxer - tar.gz it does contain a executable.

Note: The steps outlined in this help article will primarily be performed using the terminal. The keyboard shortcut to open the terminal is "Ctrl + Alt + T" or you can open it from the application menu under the "system" category and it is referred to as "console".

Installing Fluxer

Let's begin by entering desktop mode on the Steam Deck. Long press the power button on the top of the Steam Deck, this should make a menu appear, from that menu choose "switch to desktop".

Then open the web browser and download the tar.gz(x64) from https://fluxer.app/download.

Once downloaded navigate to your download folder through the terminal by typing the following command:

cd ~/Downloads

Where Downloads is either the default download location, or the folder you chose to save the tar.gz file.

Tip: You can press "tab" on your keyboard to complete the file/directory name. If there are multiple files/directories with the same beginning of the filename it won't auto complete. But if you press tab again, it will show you all possibilities with the same beginning. This is referred to as "Tab Complete".

Now it is time to extract our tar.gz we can do this by using the tar command. Type the following command into the terminal:

tar -xzf fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64.tar.gz

Tip: The options x, z, f stand for extract, decompress gzip, and specify the file. "Specify the file" might seem a bit cryptic, but remember tar is as old as tape drives. In essence the "f" option just says, what comes next is the filename.

You could run Fluxer here and now, cd into the directory we just extracted and then type the following command in the terminal:

./fluxer

But lets install it properly. Because right now, Fluxer only works if you navigate to its folder and run it manually from the terminal. If we move it to a standard system location and create a desktop entry, we will integrate it with your system. This means Fluxer will appear in your application menu, and you can launch it like any other installed program.

Note: make sure you are located inside the fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64 folder for the next step. Use the cd command followed by the folder name if needed.

Next we need to create two directories, copy the Fluxer files and make a symbolic link to the executable that can later be used by the application menu to launch Fluxer.

Type the following commands into the terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fluxer cp -r * ~/.local/share/fluxer/ mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ln -s ~/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer ~/.local/bin/fluxer

Each line followed by return or enter.

Now that the Fluxer has been installed we want to have it appear in our application menu, to achieve this we need to let the system know where to find it. Lets begin by creating a .desktop file with the Nano editor in the terminal.

Type the following command into the terminal:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

Write the following into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxer
Exec=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/resources/512x512.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network;Chat;

Note: Change "USERNAME" to your username

Once done; press Ctrl + O to write out (functionally the same as Save), then Ctrl + X to exit Nano.

And now lets validate the .desktop file, by typing the following command into the terminal:

desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

If this returns no errors we can continue and make our .desktop file executable

Type the following command into the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

And lastly lets update the desktop database. Type the following command into the terminal:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

You will now be able to access Fluxer through your application menu and it will sit in the correct category.

Note: Fluxer will not run properly if added to your steam library as a non steam game on the Steam Deck and launched from within game mode. - This is no longer true

Edit: After some troubleshooting I realized that there seemed to be an issue with the sandboxing and steam wanting to run the app in 32-bit environment.

Solution: All that should be required to solve the situation is to add env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% to the launch option in properties for Fluxer in steam. I did how ever first try and fix the sandboxing issue so if for you the issue persists after adding the launch options. cd into ~/.local/share/fluxer and run the following two commands in the terminal:

sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox