ING, Rabobank en andere Europese banken overleggen hoe ze de afhankelijkheid van Amerikaanse technologiebedrijven kunnen verminderen.

Epstein files place Perimeter Institute's Lee Smolin and other prominent Canadians under scrutiny

https://zomglol.wtf/@jamie/116059523957674208

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf

If you and your friends chip, it'll be a few bucks a pop per month to have your own private server with voice chat rooms and video chat rooms.

It's all opensource and contributes to the ecosystem. Best of all, no age verification because the data is yours.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7631871

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26901

A group of Texas legislators have delivered an urgent warning about the treatment of detainees in the country’s largest immigration detention camp, which sits on an Army base in El Paso.

“We have received numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment of detained individuals at the Camp East Montana migrant detention facility, located within Fort Bliss,” [said] Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos (D-102), who joined 35 other Democrats in the Texas state House on Tuesday to demand an investigation into the facility.

Camp East Montana was constructed in August as part of the Trump administration's effort to ramp up Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) "mass deportation" of immigrants. The selection of Fort Bliss has historical precedent, having previously been used as a site for the internment of Japanese people during World War II.

Using a secretive contract undisclosed to the public, the Pentagon awarded roughly $1.2 billion to a private contractor in July to construct a sprawling tent city to hold around 5,000 people rounded up by ICE.

"Almost immediately upon its opening, detainees, their families, and legal watchdog organizations began bringing attention to conditions that were deemed unsuitable for detainees, even by internal standards set by Immigration and Customs Enforcement," the legislators wrote in a letter to state Rep. Cole Hefner (R-5), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Veterans Affairs.

During the camp's first 50 days of operation, ICE inspections revealed that it had violated more than 60 federal detention standards. The report, compiled in September, was not released to the public, but was reported on by the Washington Post, which spoke with dozens of detainees.

"On ICE's webpage titled 'Detention Management,' it states that 'detention is non-punitive,'" the legislators wrote Tuesday. "Yet, according to reporting by the Washington Post based on sworn statements from dozens of detainees, the facility, for months, was being run like a prison in a country without standards for oversight, health, or safety for the inmates."

"There were complaints that the toilets and sinks didn't work for the first few weeks after the facility's opening last August. There were complaints logged that, for the first few weeks, the facility didn't adequately feed detainees. They also complained about another violation of ICE standards: the lack of access to telephones for detainees to communicate with family and legal representation," they continued.

Earlier this week, US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who visited the facility unannounced on Friday, disclosed that at least two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of Covid-19 had been identified at the facility.

"While the private corporation continues to pocket our tax dollars, it's clear the conditions are only getting worse," she said.

The state lawmakers also cited a letter sent by the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and several other civil rights groups in December addressing "cases of illegal, extrajudicial attempts to deport detainees to Mexico."

One inmate, a Cuban immigrant identified as "Benjamin," said he was threatened by guards who attempted to make him sign a letter agreeing to be deported to Mexico.

“The guards told him that if he did not, they would handcuff him, put a bag over his head, and send him to Mexico. Benjamin refused to sign the document, stating that he was scared to go to Mexico, because he had heard that migrants are often kidnapped, robbed, or killed there,” the ACLU letter said.

The letter also provided several examples of inmates being subject to physical and sexual assault at the hands of officers.

"People detained at Fort Bliss report that officers have crushed detainees’ testicles with their fingers, slammed detained people to the ground, stomped on detained people and punched their faces, and beaten detained people even after they are cuffed and restrained," it said.

The legislators also noted that three detainees have died in the facility in just two months.

On December 3, 48-year-old Guatemalan inmate Francisco Gaspar-Andrés was reported to have died of natural causes, namely liver and kidney failure, according to an ICE press release.

Since then, two other inmates have died. On January 14, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz was found dead of an apparent suicide, though the cause of death remains under investigation.

Prior to that, the Department of Homeland Security reported that the death of another inmate, 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos from Cuba, on January 3, was also a suicide.

However, witnesses have said they saw guards choking Lunas Campos and that he was heard saying, "I can’t breathe." His death has since been ruled a homicide after an autopsy revealed the cause of death to have been “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.”

The letter notes that while Lunas Campos was "convicted of heinous crimes," including sexual contact with an 11-year-old, "he was not sentenced to death by a judge or jury—he was killed by someone responsible for his care, for unknown reasons or circumstances."

"It is our responsibility as Texas legislators to ensure that we can trust that jails, prisons, and detention facilities in Texas operate to our high standards and expectations," the lawmakers said. "We must learn more, investigate, and provide answers to the millions of Americans demanding the truth. We must also ensure this does not happen again in any federal detention facility."

The call for an investigation comes as DHS plans to rapidly convert at least around two dozen warehouses into massive new detention centers across the country. At least three of these locations are planned for Texas. One of them, planned for the town of Hutchins outside Dallas, is expected to hold around 9,500 inmates.

The legislators said: "Human rights abuses, ignoring due process requirements, repeated violation of federal regulations, clear disrespect for the United States Constitution, and murder are unconscionable on any inch of American soil—but these crimes against real people are happening in Texas, and require proud Texans to stand up in defense of our Constitution and use our power to end this widespread abuse."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

https://urbanists.social/@danwentzel/116060608814020643

Exercise pumps up your muscles — but it might also be pumping up your neurons. According to a study published today in Neuron, repeated exercise sessions on a treadmill strengthen the wiring in a mouse’s brain, making certain neurons quicker to activate. This ‘rewiring’ was essential for mice in the study to gradually improve their running endurance.

Betley and his colleagues[...] decided to focus on the ventromedial hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates appetite and blood sugar. The team then zeroed in on a group of neurons in that region that produce a protein called steroidogenic factor 1 (SF1), which is known to play a part in regulating metabolism. A previous study found that the deletion of the gene that codes for SF1 impairs endurance in mice.

Betley’s team monitored the activity of SF1 neurons in mice running on a treadmill and found that these cells were indeed activated by exercise. Interestingly, one group of SF1 neurons became active only after exercise sessions ended. After several training sessions, the number of neurons that were activated post-run, as well as the magnitude of their activation, increased.

When the researchers examined brain slices from mice that had trained consistently over three weeks, they saw changes in the SF1 neurons’ electrical properties compared with mice that had not repeatedly exercised. These changes indicated that the neurons in the trained mice had become easier to activate. They also found that repeated exercise doubled the number of synapses — connections between the neurons — that were ‘excitatory’, or primed to fire off an electrical signal.

Finally, the authors used optogenetics — a technique that can activate or inhibit genetically engineered neurons with light — to ‘switch off’ SF1 neurons in the mice after they exercised. When these neurons were turned off, the mice didn’t improve their running performance over time, becoming exhausted more quickly than mice in which SF1 neurons were not switched off.

The research article itself (open access): Kindel et al.. Exercise-induced activation of ventromedial hypothalamic steroidogenic factor-1 neurons mediates improvements in endurance. Neuron. URL link. The graphical abstract does a very good job of explaining the research

The headline isn't that Onion-worthy but the ingress is:

AI said applicant's 'habitual' Chrome use could indicate a 'lack of adaptability' after screening interview

How do you like to bind your arrow keys, and why?

Ergo boards don't typically have dedicated arrow clusters, so we're left to bind them on some alternate layers one way or another.

Here are two prevalent layouts, along with some initial thoughts:

Homerow

Binding them linearly to a homerow on some layer.

Pros

• Arrows directly underneath your fingertips

Cons

• Less intuitive
• Pinky may be weaker when going right repeatedly

Pyramid

Bind arrows in a traditional pyramid shape, likely based on a homerow as well.

Pros

• Familiar layout
• Extra key available for pinky, e.g. a tab might be handy

Cons

• Finger movement required for up arrow
• Takes space on the row above, which might matter if you'd like to have a full row of other things there

Post pic is original art by the author, public domain, commission queue is already full.

Archived link

Someone builds a dangerous new device and asks you to trust them and everyone else who will use it in the coming years. You don’t know who will get to use this device, or to what end. This information is provided on page 300 of a 600-page document. Deeply worried? So are we.

Introduced in Bill C-15, a budget-implementation legislation, that “device” is an unprecedented power given to federal ministers to exempt virtually any entity from all federal laws and regulations—except the Criminal Code. In other words, “no one is above the law”…unless a federal minister decides otherwise.

...

The federal government is trying to downplay concerns by comparing this extraordinary new power to the use of so-called “regulatory sandboxes.” Regulatory sandboxes are targeted, highly transparent, tightly controlled and temporary environments for testing new technology to better understand their implications without facing strict legal liability. They have been precisely designed this way in Canada, Europe, South America, and elsewhere to be used in specific areas of public policy such as fintech, vehicle safety, aeronautics, innovative legal services and privacy protection.

Alas, the federal government is not identifying a list of specific regulatory hurdles that are ill-adapted to a new set of technologies and can be waived to allow small-scale pilots. Instead, the government is giving itself the sweeping power to sideline almost all federal laws and regulations, including the Canada Labour Code, our two federal privacy laws, the Hazardous Products Act and the Explosives Act.

...

While Bill C-15’s new power is temporary—it has a six-year cap—it has none of the other essential characteristics of a regulatory sandbox, nor is it limited to innovation.

Far from creating a regulatory sandbox, the federal government is designing a potentially boundless desert where any person, company, or individual, private or public, of any size, in any industry, in any sector, could seek authorization to bypass federal laws in the name of “competitiveness” or “economic growth.”

...

Laws adopted by democratically elected officials should not be seen as an inconvenience. Some of them are the result of hundreds of years of advocacy, debate, and hard-won reform. While laws must be capable of adapting as values evolve and as new challenges emerge, they also need to remain grounded in collective experience and respect values that have long defined the social contract—such as justice, dignity, and fairness. Canada’s core fabric, including its economy, climate action, health and environment are all at risk if the laws that structure and protect them can so easily be set aside by the executive branch of government.

...

Long ago, the people of Canada decided that a small group of people in a position of power should not make decisions behind closed doors that benefit the select few who have their ear. Division 5 of Bill C-15’s Part 5 directly threatens this fundamental principle. For the sake of our democracy, and for as many reasons as we have laws, this division must be removed from Bill C-15.

...

Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, has announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.

Ruemmler said in a statement on Thursday that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026”.

Up until her resignation, Ruemmler repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence and had been defiant that she would not resign from Goldman’s top legal post, which she had held since 2020.

While Ruemmler has called Epstein a “monster” in recent statements, she had a much different relationship with him before he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail; Ruemmler called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” in emails and said she adored him.

In a statement before her resignation, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said Ruemmler “regrets ever knowing him.”

During her time in private practice after she left the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat. The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender.

Hi

Disclaimer/TW : Vibe-coded project. You can hate me and insult me over that and i will understand it. But please bear with me for a minute

I wanted to share this abomination.

Basically i have been making helmfiles to deploy stoatchat and lasuitenumérique (which i previously shared : https://jlai.lu/post/32413174 )

But people kept asking me "but where docker-compose, k8s too complicated".
Instead of being the bigger person and maintain manually a separate compose.yml , i decided to overdo it myself and make an absolute ICBM of a script to kill a fly.

I checked, no one was stupid enough to go that far with such a project. Maybe it could ACTUALLY be useful for someone. So have fun with it.