Hard Pass

A Violent Israeli immigrant to Canada threatens Canadian protesters in their own country with a nail gun shouting "Every f*cking Palestinian will die!" But then they tell us to fear Muslims. Gives truth to saying every “accusation is a confession”

This week saw the news that Rideau Cottage, “temporary” home of the prime minister, is “inadequate.” The house is small and insufficiently secure for a head of government.

While I’m not inclined to argue that politicians ought to be living large at taxpayer expense as a rule, I’m embarrassed that the country routinely wrings its hands over where the prime minister lives and how he travels. Politicians need certain tools to do the job of governing a contemporary mass state. Debates about housing or travel, such as they are, don’t reflect serious disagreements over public policy or even our shared or disputed values. Instead, they’re occasions for nitpicking, pettiness, and supreme displays of insecurity. They’re silly and bad for us.

Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney is living at Rideau Cottage, just as Justin Trudeau did before him. He’s there because the official residence of the prime minister, 24 Sussex Drive, is a mess. It’s literally uninhabitable. The good news is that, in February 2024, the home was declared rodent and asbestos free. The bad news is that’s a declaration one hopes a G7 country wouldn’t have to make. It’s the sort of thing that ought to be implicit. Does your head of government live in a house full of carcinogens and rat droppings? Of course not! Why would you even ask? For a long time, Canada did have to ask the question, and the answer speaks to a national smallness that ought to be understood as a big shame.

2025 old. still laughable to read

https://x.com/zeynepmyenisey

EDIT: This happened back in 2025. Will leave as I’m sure I’m not the only one that didn’t know, but I saw it on hacker news and didn’t realize it was a year old. My bad.

In an odd approach to trying to improve customer tech support, HP allegedly implemented mandatory, 15-minute wait times for people calling the vendor for help with their computers and printers in certain geographies.

Callers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy were met with the forced holding periods, The Register reported on Thursday. The publication cited internal communications it saw from February 18 that reportedly said the wait times aimed to “influence customers to increase their adoption of digital self-solve, as a faster way to address their support question. This involves inserting a message of high call volumes, to expect a delay in connecting to an agent and offering digital self-solve solutions as an alternative.”

Intelligence and cybersecurity experts are warning the Liberal government about national security risks posed by allowing Chinese electric vehicles onto Canadian military bases.

Critics and some experts are even calling on Ottawa to ban the cars from Canadian Armed Forces bases and other sensitive sites due to onboard sensors they say could collect and transmit sensitive information to the Chinese government.

Their warning comes after Poland and Israel instituted similar bans on EVs built by Chinese companies like BYD Auto over the past year — and as Conservative politicians in Canada raise the alarm over the threat of so-called “spy cars.”

Dennis Molinaro, a counter-intelligence expert at Ontario Tech University and a former national security analyst, said the federal government should follow the example of Poland and Israel.

“Absolutely, Canada should be doing the same,” he told The Canadian Press. He said a national security law in China that appears to compel private companies to funnel intelligence back to Beijing could make the cars a security risk.

David Shipley, CEO of Beauceron Security, said the risks are high enough that Parliament should at least haul military brass and senior bureaucrats in front of a committee to testify about National Defence’s plans for managing those risks.

“The Chinese sometimes send us a good signal about what the risks are,” Shipley said. “They banned Teslas from their major political events and military bases for the same reason Israel is banning their BYDs.”

...

And now this individual, with this journalist, is writing some book about being a dissident in the age of fear, and this question of, are they going to talk about Gaza at all? I kind of doubt it. Maybe they will. And I think of other people who resigned alongside me, who I feel extremely fortunate to be at the Quincy Institute, to have had an academic background, and to have had some of these other connections, whereas, for those for whom resigning was to really burn every professional bridge they'd ever built.

...

It was six months between October 7 and when I resigned. And during that time, I submitted a dissent cable. I signed on other dissent cables. I was involved in some internal efforts to try to advocate for a different policy. And this gets a little bit to kind of what Samantha Power said in her statement about when the President and those around him have made a decision, you can't impact it, and you just have to kind of do what you can within that.

But then it's like, okay, well, if that's the case, then you step away; you don't go along with it. I think another super important thing as progressives, or as people are thinking about where we go from here, is that I worry a lot about the fact that so many of these figures inside the Biden administration really haven't paid any kind of a reputational price. They've landed these cushy gigs at Harvard, nice consulting firms, or lucrative law positions. They're all fine, and there hasn't really been this grappling with enabling genocide. And also the pigheadedness of the Biden administration and then, subsequently, the Harris campaign to double down on unconditional and illegal support for Israel was a crucial factor in why the Democrats lost the election.

Interview with writer of article by Majority Report

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?__goaway_challenge=js-refresh&__goaway_id=f1d8f29bc6379ecb5b9d612d484accb7&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Finv.nadeko.net%2F&v=kdBJmNuMqHM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdBJmNuMqHM

Research.

The technology, called Fragile Object Grasping with Tactile Sensing (FORTE), combines advanced tactile sensing with soft robotics.

The breakthrough could improve robot performance when a light touch is needed, such as in health care and manufacturing.

Mourning Glory, art by Tony Garifalakis. At MONA museum in Hobart Tasmania.

not screaming like his passengers

"Zelda, I assure you this is vital to preventing Ganondorf from destroying Hyrule" Link dresses in an intracate revealing blue outfit with lots of jewelry for a +2 bonus to some stat and for no other reason

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44509965

https://x.com/zeynepmyenisey

This appears to be an actual car...

The company is reducing Copilot entry points on Windows, starting with Photos, Widgets, Notepad, and other apps.