CPO Test Instance

South Africa has accused the US of using Kenyan nationals who did not have work permits at a facility processing applications by white South Africans for refugee status.

Seven Kenyans were arrested after intelligence reports revealed that people "had recently entered South Africa on tourist visas and had illegally taken up work" at the centre, said a statement from South Africa's department of home affairs.

The BBC has approached the US State Department for comment.

While the US is trying to reduce overall levels of migration, it says that members of South Africa's white Afrikaner community can get asylum because they face persecution - a claim South Africa's government strongly rejects.

In a warm bunker, lined with wooden logs, it is Dmytro’s job to monitor and help the drone crews on the frontline. Perhaps a dozen video feeds come through to his screen on an increasingly hot section of the front, running roughly from Pokrovske to Huliaipole, 50 miles east of Zaporizhzhia city.

Dmytro, 33, is with the 423rd drone battalion, a specialist unit only formed in 2024. He cycles through the feeds, on Ukraine’s battlefield Delta system, expanding each in turn. The grainy images come from one-way FPV (first person view) drones; clearer footage, with heights and speed, from commercially bought Mavic drones; at another point there is a bomber drone, available munitions marked in green.

Maksym, 29, and Serhii, 24, have just returned from five days on the front, part of a mixed crew of FPV and Mavic pilots. Now they are resting, one playing a video game, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, a post-apocalyptic shooter set in the exclusion zone surrounding the destroyed nuclear power plant – raising the obvious question of whether there is any similarity to their frontline work.

"It helps us do our job,” Maksym says, smiling. “If you are flying a jet in one of the battlefield games, it’s basically the same as flying a Mavic. It’s good practise.”

Many recent posts of his such as Keir Starmer appoints Jeff Bezos as his “first buddy”: Regulatory capture, right there out in the open make it clear that he isn't a fan of Bezos today, but he was once... as this post Cory Doctorow is wrong about the internet just reminded me, here is the opening of Chapter 2 of his 2008 novel Little Brother:

Was there some point where he explicitly acknowledged his change of opinion about Bezos and Amazon?

Or was the shift in his public comments on the subject more gradual?

(if i tag @pluralistic@mamot.fr maybe he sees this and can answer himself? Cory, if you do see this, forgive me for linking to one of your haters... personally I am looking forward to reading Enshittification 😄)

i want to pirating a adobe software is m0nkrus and is genP safe? and what better

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/33436684

Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a naval blockade of “sanctioned oil vessels” leaving and heading to Venezuela, sharply escalating his pressure campaign against Caracas.

The US has for months been building a major military deployment in the Caribbean – with the stated goal of combatting drug trafficking, but Venezuela views the operation as a campaign to oust Nicolas Maduro.

Trump said the armada – which includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier – “will only get bigger” until Venezuela returns “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us”.

The alleged Bondi attacker who survived a shootout with police has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been “inspired by Isis”.

New South Wales police charged Naveed Akram, 24, on Wednesday, after he was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries on Sunday night.

Akram was charged after waking from a coma on Tuesday, with the matter heard in court on Wednesday afternoon.

He did not apply for bail, and will next face court again on 8 April.

research grants

@science_memes

https://beige.party/@amiserabilist/115733891940911858

Next year I’m turning 50 & also become eligible for retirement. Retirement age in my country for the general population (men) is 65, but the judiciary has separate rules. I’m seriously considering retirement but I have older colleagues who are still working because they say with the life expectancy rising who knows how much that great pension in the present will be worth in the future, so why not keep it going for an additional source of income?

Mozilla Firefox is not a privacy browser anymore

Explanation: Plenty of European cultures and languages directly owe their existence (or nonexistent, see: Gaul) to the actions of the Roman Empire. The idea is that colonialism apologists like to say colonialism is too far into the past for its effects to matter to African development (and therefore it's not Europeans' fault for stealing incomprehensible amounts of wealth from the continent) while speaking in languages that wouldn't exist if not for nonsense a some Italians got up to millennia ago.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43794611

A Taiwanese government-backed drone alliance and a Polish uncrewed system industry group have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop a "non-China" drone supply chain and work together on key technologies.

The MOU, signed by the Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance (TEDIBOA) and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems (PISB) in Poland on Wednesday, would improve ties between the Taiwanese and Polish drone industries, the alliance said in a statement.

Beyond paving the way for creating a non-China supply chain and integrating drone systems, the MOU would also support laws favorable to the market and plans for joint testing at cross-border technology exhibitions, it said.

...

In an op-ed, a researcher Konrad Szatters published a comment in CHOICE (China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe):

This development sheds light on several broader issues. It offers insight into how CEE countries are reassessing their technological and security dependencies. It also suggests that Taiwan is finding practical, relatively low-profile, forms of engagement with Europe, and highlights that certain EU member states are willing to explore such avenues of cooperation. This creates an opportunity for Taiwan to strengthen its ties with Europe and make itself more indispensable for its partners, especially in the context of EU’s ongoing ‘de-risking’ from China. Finally, it highlights gaps in Europe’s own defense-industrial capabilities and shows the direction of choices certain governments may make when domestic supply becomes limited.

After today's update (v7.68.4), I cannot enter text in chats any longer: no matter how many times I touch the input field, the keyboard doesn't appear (but it works seamlessly in all other apps).

Is anybody else experiencing this problem? I submitted a bug report with log.

Mozilla Corporation has named its new CEO in replacing interim CEO Laura Chambers.

Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has been named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was SVP of Firefox from 2004 to July 2005 and then from July until now was the GM of Firefox at Mozilla. He's written a public message today in his first day serving as the new chief executive for Mozilla.

Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions."

Boost 1.0.28
Android 14

Images in cards seem to work fine, but when clicked to open in fullscreen it loads with a black screen and just stays black.

Has anyone encountered such behaviour?

EDIT:
I don't seem to be able to open images in external browser, it always opens in apps internal browser. I do have external browser selected as default.
I do suspect that it's the lemmy.zip image proxy quirk. The app seems to read that as a lemmy link despite me selecting external browser for the image.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47438942

China’s government has long sought to silence dissent abroad, but recently there’s been a disturbing escalation: harassment through sexually explicit letters targeting activists outside the country.

Hongkongers Carmen Lau and Ted Hui are exiled activists who face arrest warrants back in Hong Kong under the draconian National Security Law. They revealed last week that anonymous individuals were distributing in the United Kingdom and Australia sexually explicit deepfakes depicting them and their families. While police investigations in both countries could not trace the origins of these images, after Lau went public, a Chinese government spokesperson defended the pursuit of “wanted fugitives” as “legitimate and reasonable.”

There is evidence that the Chinese government was directly involved in a similar case in 2024, when anonymous online accounts circulated threatening and sexually suggestive posts targeting the 16-year-old daughter of Deng Yuwen, a US-based critic of the Chinese government, that were subsequently traced back to China’s security agencies. These tactics appear to have surged in recent years: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank, noted the increasingly gendered nature of online harassment against critics of the Chinese government as early as 2022.

[...]

Governments need to take effective steps against “transnational repression”—cross-border abuses against activists and their families. First, they should publicly condemn such acts, especially harassment designed to psychologically abuse, shame, and marginalize critics.

Second, they need to investigate cases thoroughly, track patterns of transnational repression, and establish reporting mechanisms for diaspora communities. The US and Australian governments have taken some of these actions; other governments should follow suit.

Third, governments should commit to transparency by regularly reporting on progress addressing transnational repression.

Finally, governments need to commit to prioritizing victims. Beyond a law enforcement response, authorities should provide resources to support victims’ digital security and mental health needs, so that those exiled may enjoy the same rights as everyone else in their new country and feel safe again.

[...]

As I'm walking to work (instead of cycling, which I normally do, in an effort to slow down the mind somewhat) I was thinking of what other things I could do to try and break the routine of a workday. What are other people doing?