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The report by the Montreal Institute for Global Security examines how the Chinese Communist Party operates across Canada and other G7 countries through networks tied to business, academia, media and politics.

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The report concludes Chinese influence efforts can operate in legal grey zones, relying less on overt coercion than on economic incentives, institutional dependence and long-term relationships. Universities, municipalities and media outlets can all become vulnerable to these forms of influence, it says.

Democracies must avoid paranoia and indiscriminate suspicion toward diaspora communities, Matthews said in an interview with Canadian Affairs. But they must also be alert to the fact that Beijing’s threats are real and systemic.

“We should stop pretending that it’s harmful or hateful to call out a government when it’s interfering in our democracy,” he said.

The report comes amid heightened scrutiny of foreign interference in Canada following repeated warnings from Canada’s security establishment that China poses a national security challenge.

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The Montreal institute’s report describes Canada as a particularly “permissive environment” for foreign interference among G7 countries.

Canada’s history of multiculturalism, decentralized political system, and large Chinese diaspora population have created conditions that can be exploited by foreign actors, the report says. Canada’s Chinese population reached roughly 1.7 million people in 2021, with nearly half born in China.

Successive governments have been slow to respond partly out of fear that criticism of Beijing would be interpreted as hostility toward Chinese Canadians, says Matthews.

“Was it multiculturalism? Was it a fear of politicians that [countering interference] would be framed as being racist towards Chinese people rather than calling out the Chinese government?” he said in the interview. “That could be it.”

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But many of the strongest advocates for tougher action are from diaspora communities targeted by transnational repression campaigns, Matthews notes.

The report also highlights concerns surrounding universities and research partnerships.

According to the report, Canada’s strengths in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology have made Canadian institutions attractive targets for efforts to acquire sensitive research, intellectual property and advanced technologies.

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The report argues that no single democracy can effectively counter foreign interference alone. It calls for a coordinated, G7-wide strategy that focuses on intelligence sharing, research security, cyber capabilities, and strong transparency rules.

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Matthews says Canada should resist the temptation to see China as a simple alternative to an unreliable southern neighbour.

“Yes, we’re trying to set ourselves as a country dealing with a more transactional United States under President Trump, but China is not necessarily the answer,” he said.

“There are a whole set of risks” when dealing with China, said Matthews. “And I would say the risks are far larger than the rewards.”

Microsoft just dropped a bombshell at Computex 2026 by unveiling the most powerful device ever to bear the Surface name. The newly announced Surface Laptop Ultra is a direct answer to Apple and its dominant MacBook Pro lineup. Built in a deep partnership with NVIDIA, the new flagship laptop runs Windows on Arm and completely redefines professional computing.

Ever since the Surface division came into existence, I’ve always wondered why they didn’t go all in and make an ultra-powered device. As the MacBook Pros started gaining rave reviews from YouTubers, I started waiting for Microsoft’s response, and now we finally have it. Surface Laptop Ultra is arriving in stores this fall, 2026.

Surface Laptop Ultra N1X brings 128GB unified memory and a mini-LED display The hardware specifications for the Surface Laptop Ultra are absolutely staggering. The chassis weighs less than 4.5 pounds (~2kg) and houses a prominent dual-fan cooling system designed to prevent aggressive thermal throttling during heavy rendering workloads. Microsoft is offering the sleek device in Platinum and Nightfall color finishes.

Opening the lid reveals a beautiful 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra touchscreen. The panel features a sharp 2880 by 1920 resolution at 262 pixels per inch. The screen hits an incredible 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness, easily making it the brightest display Microsoft has ever shipped on any device.

Delaware is home to more corporations than people. Human people, that is, as under longstanding state law and the US Supreme Court’s infamous 2010 ruling, corporations are people, too.

A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town’s “population”—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.

“What is a ‘person?’ When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question,” Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.

Roughly 2,000 U.S. diplomats have been laid off or forced to retire, taking with them decades of institutional knowledge, crisis response experience and highly specialized language skills.

FYI - not AI. I just waste too much time mucking about with Photoshop.

paywall removed: https://archive.ph/xGwsz

I am switching to Databasus for backing up my databases. Postgres has been fine but on two separate mariadb databases, Databasus cannot create read only users. Everything is on docker compose on separate stacks with a bridge network backup-db between the database containers and Databasus.

I think the problem is that the normal user only has permission for the single database but not universal, so have something I can try but I can't seem to actually login to the databases with the root passwords set in .env a long time ago (along with the normal user / pw which seen to be used fine by the apps). My Nextcloud database is one of the issues. The root PW env variable is the one taken from there database documentation.

Trying to access through "docker exec -it <db_container_name> mariadb -u root -p"

I have already tried setting the -h flag as localhost, 127.0.0.1, <db_container_name> and <nextcloud_app_container_name>.

I tried changing the root PW too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

https://fixupx.com/Illusory_Ace/status/2058868392874938719

Bless him! Video on Streamable

Cross posted from https://hexbear.net/post/8653184

(deadass tho, only good use for ai)

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi Facing Ethics Investigation and Possible Disbarment After Ouster - South Florida Media

How do you monitor your homelab network for internal attackers? E.g. you have a publicly available service and theres a vulnerability that you miss or you pull a bad update and suddenly someone has access to your VM/machine/container. How could you increase the chances of automatically detecting that?

The built in IDS in opnsense seems pretty useless, and doesn't really help detect if e.g. someone is trying to exploit services between your vlans (I could be using it wrong though).

Crowdsec in opnsense is nice but it seems to also be primarily for protecting from malicious actors coming from the WAN.

I've heard about the opnsense zenarmor plugin but you have to agree to a privacy policy to use it?

Another option I guess would be collecting firewall logs and making custom notifications for things that you think would be suspicious on your network.

I also know update cooldowns and not exposing anything could largely solve this too, but the monitoring and alerting question really interests me.