Hard Pass

(Washington Post gift article)

Selected quotations:

Many Western democracies lining up to recognize a Palestinian state are in the process of conferring legitimacy on something that, legally speaking, doesn’t yet exist. Meanwhile, an economically crucial and politically functional democratic state that Western leaders have vowed to aid in case of outside aggression — Taiwan — remains unrecognized. This kind of hypocrisy invites trouble.

Note: The context of the writer's opinion that Palestine is "unqualified" for recognition stems from the fact that their government is only partially-functional, divided, with borders nobody seems to respect, and ultimately just gets bullied around by Israelis and doesn't seem to be able to exercise sovereignty in any way other than what the Israelis allow them to. The article's author seems to understand that recognitions of Palestinian sovereignty are more to do with being lip service expressing sympathy for the Palestinian suffering perpetrated by Israel rather than real, tangible attempts to establish relationships with a functioning state that exercises sovereignty.

This year, Taiwan’s gross domestic product is set to surpass $800 billion. Freedom House scores its democracy at 94/100 — more free than Britain and nearly on par with Germany. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks it 12th in the world for democratic governance, the highest in Asia. Taiwanese passports grant visa-free travel to almost 140 countries.

This stark contrast reflects a failure of political courage. Western democracies’ refusal to recognize Taiwan stems not from doubts over qualifications, but rather from fear of economic retaliation from China. Yet this diplomatic self-censorship undermines the very rules-based international order the West purports to defend. If and when China launches an invasion and calls it an “internal matter,” any legal and political legitimacy the West would hope to muster in opposing such a move would be hobbled.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34411807

While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate. [...] “Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized. “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.

Completely disingenuous article claiming at first that Mamdani is unpopular outside of NYC followed by stats that show that many Americans don't even have an opinion on him.

Guess what?! Not many people in Missouri or California are going to give a damn about a local election in another state!

For starters, Mamdani is clearly not popular outside of New York City.

A Siena College poll this week showed statewide New York voters disliked him 37%-28% – and that’s in a left-leaning state.

A recent Yahoo News-YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed a relatively similar verdict among Americans nationwide: 31%-22% negative.

While those aren’t good numbers, they don’t exactly suggest he’s a pariah who could be used effectively as a bogeyman on the national stage – at least yet. In the national survey, 46% didn’t even have an opinion of the Democratic mayoral nominee, underscoring the room that exists for him to define himself — or be defined by others. (Even in New York, 34% of voters didn’t have an opinion about him.)

Its definitely a bad idea writing new code that builds up on your old code, that has not been tested properly, because you quickly have to start debugging multiple layer is code at once.

What could possibly go wrong?!

Also, it’s really cool how everything is going straight to hell. /s

...watched a few minutes of the yt linked in the twitter post. I'm starting to really like this Hunter dick...

Trump is willing to sacrifice Alaska and Ukraine just so people aren't focused on Trump being a fucking pedophile.

American president angles for top diplomatic award while world watches his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

It’s the second time the City Council strengthened sanctuary rules this year as they try to keep pace with evolving immigration enforcement tactics and assuage fears among those at risk of deportation.

The Long Beach City Council passed a series of reforms on Tuesday that will prohibit federal agents on non-public city grounds, create a certificate program for businesses offering safe spaces to undocumented residents, and establish penalties for city workers or contractors who do not comply with its sanctuary policies.

Long Beach has never formally declared itself a “sanctuary city” — a term that has no defined legal meaning — but, since 2018, it has continued to expand its rules around non-cooperation with civil immigration enforcement, a common theme in sanctuary policies.

La veille technologique IT n'a jamais été aussi cruciale qu'aujourd'hui, surtout pour les entreprises qui évoluent dans la tech. Comme consultant chef de projet IT, je m'efforce depuis des années à travers mon blog de décrypter l'actualité, d'apporter des analyses concrètes et surtout, de m'engager dans une recherche d'informations actuelles qui dépasse le simple relai de communiqués marketing.

What’s next you tech bro wankers, is AI going to drink the pint for me?

… just when you thought they couldn’t force AI into any more things. The epitome of a solution in search of a problem

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said Wednesday following days of testimony about the environmental impacts of the Everglades immigration detention camp that she plans to rule no later than Aug. 21 on a request to temporarily shut it down.

Were she to side with the plaintiffs, it would be a significant blow to the Trump and DeSantis administrations, which have touted the hastily constructed detention center as a successful new tool in the president’s mass-deportation campaign.

Williams, an Obama appointee, is presiding over a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Miccosukee Tribe alleging the federal government and the state dodged federal environmental regulations.

As of June 2025, over 1,400 veterans of Israeli intelligence are now working in U.S. tech—with 900 of those coming from Unit 8200 alone. That number comes from a database of people who publicly identify themselves as being both former Israeli intelligence officers and holding a job in U.S. tech on their LinkedIn profiles.

The database was assembled by an independent researcher, who is remaining anonymous for personal security and has dubbed the database the “Eagle Mission” influence network. The 1,400 people are self-identified veterans or active reserve members of Unit 8200, Israeli military intelligence, and the IDF Cyber Defense Directorate working in senior and mid-level engineering and security roles at major U.S. tech firms with offices in Israel, the U.S., and Europe. Drop Site crosschecked many of the records in the database for accuracy.

“This does not mean that every person who served in Unit 8200 is an Israeli spy looking to send classified data back to Tel Aviv,” the researcher emphasized. “But it does create a serious vulnerability. No other country has this kind of access to the American tech sector. We obsess over Chinese involvement in the tech industry and worry about corporate espionage, but Israeli penetration rarely gets mentioned.”

The global tech giant Microsoft is one of the most prominent employers of Unit 8200 alumni, employing roughly 250 veterans of the unit, alongside other major multinational companies including Nvidia, Meta, Google, Intel, and Apple, many of whom employ dozens of individuals drawn from the unit. Microsoft was recently revealed to have closely collaborated with Unit 8200 leadership on the creation of cloud services intended to store millions of private communications of Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Microsoft declined to comment.