technocrit

The policy change follows years of Meta and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot of political convenience toward President Donald Trump and his base. Following Trump’s second electoral victory, Meta quickly changed its speech rules to allow for anti-transgender slurs and dehumanization of immigrants, The Intercept previously reported, aligning the company with longtime MAGA culture war grievances.

Asked about the new restrictions on the word “antifa,” Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin pointed to a March transparency report that noted the company would “remove QAnon and Antifa content when combined with content-level threat signals.” The report does not explain what those signals are. Meta did not respond when asked if the company had discussed its antifa speech rules with the Trump administration.

Meta largely outsources the enforcement of its Community Standards rules to low-paid contractors whose interpretation and application of the policies can vary. The company’s automated, algorithmic content moderation systems are also famously glitchy. This combination can result in erratic censorship, particularly when political ideology is classified as violent or terroristic.

The policy change follows years of Meta and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot of political convenience toward President Donald Trump and his base. Following Trump’s second electoral victory, Meta quickly changed its speech rules to allow for anti-transgender slurs and dehumanization of immigrants, The Intercept previously reported, aligning the company with longtime MAGA culture war grievances.

Asked about the new restrictions on the word “antifa,” Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin pointed to a March transparency report that noted the company would “remove QAnon and Antifa content when combined with content-level threat signals.” The report does not explain what those signals are. Meta did not respond when asked if the company had discussed its antifa speech rules with the Trump administration.

Meta largely outsources the enforcement of its Community Standards rules to low-paid contractors whose interpretation and application of the policies can vary. The company’s automated, algorithmic content moderation systems are also famously glitchy. This combination can result in erratic censorship, particularly when political ideology is classified as violent or terroristic.

The 41-year-old, an American-born Kuwaiti national, was arrested on 2 March while visiting family in Kuwait. He has been arbitraily detained since then with limited access to his lawyer.

The reasons for Shihab-Eldin’s arrest remain unclear, but the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that it came after he made a series of social media posts related to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The posts included footage of a US fighter jet crashing into a US air base in Kuwait. The CPJ emphasised that he had shared publicly available footage and images.

The press freedom organisation added that Shihab-Eldin is likely charged with spreading false information, harming national security, and misusing his mobile phone - which it says are routinely used against independent journalists by the Kuwaiti authorities.

A sweeping bill advancing through France’s parliament is set to criminalise wide areas of speech on Israel, with penalties of up to five years in prison.

The legislation, due for its first reading in the National Assembly on 16 April, has secured broad backing across the political spectrum, including support from the far right.

The proposal is spearheaded by French MP Caroline Yadan, a leading figure among lawmakers who openly describe themselves as “unconditional” supporters of Israel.

She represents the 8th constituency for French citizens abroad, where Israel accounts for a significant share of voters, and has made defence of Israel central to her political agenda.

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane is a vocal supporter of the Iran war from his perch as a Fox News senior strategic analyst, regularly arguing that the United States and Israel should escalate their joint military campaign and avoid diplomatic off-ramps. In addition to his TV gig, Keane also sits on the boards of directors of two defense contractors which potentially stand to benefit from the conflict with Iran — a fact that Fox appears not to have disclosed to its viewers since the beginning of the war.

In today’s world, “Armageddon” refers to a worst-case scenario, a total breakdown of normal functioning. That is exactly where the LA28 Olympic mobility plan finds itself. Los Angeles Metro requested nearly $2 billion in Federal funds for its plan, and expected to receive it, but the Trump administration’s budget unveiled last Friday excluded it.

Without those funds a fluid, Mayor Karen Bass‘ proclamation of a “no-car Games” is impossible. To fully understand the shortcoming, consider this: to create a bus fleet suitable for the Games, it must temporarily acquire, operate and store nearly 1,750 additional buses (the number has been scaled down from 3,000 to 2,700 to 1,750, whenever a critical milestone was not met). At the same time thousands of operators, mechanics and support personnel have to be hired, trained and State-certified.

It is a shock beyond Metro’s ability to absorb it. Without these funds, Los Angeles’ transportation system could hit the breaking point. “Without the full level of funding requested, the complete scope of the Games Enhanced Transit System would not be feasible, as the cost of operating this temporary system exceeds Metro`s available operating resources,” the agency has said.

...

Google, the owners of YouTube, has removed a channel on the platform belonging to a pro-Iran group producing Lego-themed videos mocking Donald Trump.

"Upon review, we’ve terminated the channel for violating our Spam, deceptive practices and scams policies," a YouTube spokesperson told Middle East Eye.

"YouTube doesn’t allow spam, scams, or other deceptive practices that take advantage of the YouTube community."

Explosive Media's content largely consists of animations ridiculing the US war effort against Iran and poking fun at the US president.

The Times editorial, surveying this reality, informs its readers that the regime deserves no sympathy. Had Iran launched a comparable preemptive strike on Washington—killing the president, his officials and family members during active negotiations, while simultaneously killing over 100 American children—the Times and the entire political establishment would have responded with a fury that would have made the reaction to September 11 appear measured. The demand for accountability would have admitted no qualification.

The Iranian dead receive none of this. The children among them are unacknowledged. The widows of assassinated officials generate no moral consideration. The “no sympathy” formulation erases them from the moral universe within which the editorial’s readers are invited to evaluate the war—a universe in which Iranian lives constitute a categorically different order of existence from American lives, one that imposes no obligations of acknowledgment or accountability on those who have taken them. This is not incidental to the editorial’s politics. It is their moral foundation, designed to ensure that Phase Two can be organized and prosecuted with the same indifference to Iranian human life that characterized Phase One.

The Times editorial, surveying this reality, informs its readers that the regime deserves no sympathy. Had Iran launched a comparable preemptive strike on Washington—killing the president, his officials and family members during active negotiations, while simultaneously killing over 100 American children—the Times and the entire political establishment would have responded with a fury that would have made the reaction to September 11 appear measured. The demand for accountability would have admitted no qualification.

The Iranian dead receive none of this. The children among them are unacknowledged. The widows of assassinated officials generate no moral consideration. The “no sympathy” formulation erases them from the moral universe within which the editorial’s readers are invited to evaluate the war—a universe in which Iranian lives constitute a categorically different order of existence from American lives, one that imposes no obligations of acknowledgment or accountability on those who have taken them. This is not incidental to the editorial’s politics. It is their moral foundation, designed to ensure that Phase Two can be organized and prosecuted with the same indifference to Iranian human life that characterized Phase One.

The Times editorial, surveying this reality, informs its readers that the regime deserves no sympathy. Had Iran launched a comparable preemptive strike on Washington—killing the president, his officials and family members during active negotiations, while simultaneously killing over 100 American children—the Times and the entire political establishment would have responded with a fury that would have made the reaction to September 11 appear measured. The demand for accountability would have admitted no qualification.

The Iranian dead receive none of this. The children among them are unacknowledged. The widows of assassinated officials generate no moral consideration. The “no sympathy” formulation erases them from the moral universe within which the editorial’s readers are invited to evaluate the war—a universe in which Iranian lives constitute a categorically different order of existence from American lives, one that imposes no obligations of acknowledgment or accountability on those who have taken them. This is not incidental to the editorial’s politics. It is their moral foundation, designed to ensure that Phase Two can be organized and prosecuted with the same indifference to Iranian human life that characterized Phase One.

The United States FCC recently announced a ban on new consumer-grade routers produced outside of the US. This does not affect existing devices that were already authorized, and there is a carve-out for manufacturers to apply for a conditional approval. It's difficult to say what the medium or longterm effects of the ban will be.

This got me thinking about what could be used as a makeshift router in a pinch. As it so happens, any computer that can run Linux and has networking interfaces can function as a router. This blog post by Noah Baily documents the process using various old computers and components as custom routers over the years.

These makeshift routers are not going to win any bandwidth speed races, but they're perfectly capable of routing traffic for IoT devices or basic browsing. They're also useful for capturing traffic to analyze or sharing internet access from WiFi to Ethernet or vice-versa.

This guide documents the setup process and capabilities of using a Raspberry Pi as a router. It does not require a particularly powerful computer, even the older Pi 3 B+ that lots of us have tucked away in an old parts bin works fine for this.

Our images of the Roman Empire are dominated by the monuments and lifestyles of wealthy urban elites. An important new history shifts our attention to the 90% of Rome’s population whose brutally exploited labor made it all possible.