I checked now, and apparently there is none - but LibrePay claims to accept “direct debit from an euro bank account”, so small donations over Librepay should not feed any banks. :)

Regarding e-mail: “riseup.net” requires that a long-time user vouch for a new user and invite them. If the new user quickly turns into a complaint magnet (there’s a coming-of-age period after which their actions are considered their own), both the user and the inviter will be held responsible (kicked off the service). I think (hope) they aren’t so strict with VPN, but they have limited people and could not administer a mess made by a big bunch of people.

Needless to say, none of my (anarchist) comrades have ever been kicked off RiseUp, but they don’t send spam or threats, they just send their cat pictures encrypted with GPG, causing the authorities endless work. :)

Just like every reasonable service, RiseUp has a few technical mechanisms to ensure they aren’t compromised (disk and inbox encryption, etc) but obviously those can’t help against a dedicated and well-resourced adversary.

So, whatever e-mail server you use - use PGP / GPG. :) Then the adversary must compromise your device. If you are hardcore, encrypt and sign on an offline device. Then the adversary must breach the air gap.

(I used to sign releases for some anonymity-related project years ago. Those were the times when I seriously took measures because others depended on me. Currently, not so much.)

P.S. As for the lack of resources at RiseUp: this can be alleviated by donating to them. Which reminds me, I should set up a small regular donation to their representative organization in the EU.

Under the divine guidance of Elon Musk, I strongly doubt if emperor Trump will break any big tech. More likely he’ll pat them on the back (while requiring more surveillance data to be submitted).

Livelsberger, who died in the blast,

Actually, it’s a bit more interesting. According to an article that the BBC published, he shot himself in the head while in the car. From his viewpoint, it seems that the blast was just a fancy after-effect.

“Mr Livelsberger’s cause of death was suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Clark County Coroner’s office.”

Poor quality bombers

I’ve seen a source (poor quality source, won’t quote) that identifies the likely suspect as a former green beret. Also, CNN says:

Authorities suspect that the driver had a background in military service, according to several law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.

They should not be poor quality bombers. In fact, they should be able to build a decent bomb by heart in several ways, if they learned anything at all.

I’m at loss regarding what this guy actually intended to happen, and whether he achieved that.

• Hypothesis A, inspired by claims of links to the New Orleans attack: failed terrorist suicide bombing?
• Hypothesis B: intended to do big time vandalism and live, but something went wrong?
• Hypothesis C: some sort of a suicide pact?

Don’t be silly. The thing is full of perfectly good oil (that would contaminate everything of you sank it), but which can pay for part of cable repairs, once nobody pays up from the Cook Islands or the “owner” company.

For ease of reading, the investigation he refers to:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

In short: fake artists with stock music (changing labels and other camouflage applied). Likely goal: to depreciate streaming counts for actual artists and increase profit margins.

What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC). The PFC program raises troubling prospects for working musicians. Some face the possibility of losing out on crucial income by having their tracks passed over for playlist placement or replaced in favor of PFC; others, who record PFC music themselves, must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative. But it also raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to music. It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed completely.

I would recommend Signal and maybe Tox (protocol, has several clients).

Signal is a nonprofit. They make it a point not to collect your data. Just the phone number. Military folks seem to like them.

Tox is not a centralized entity at all, anarchists seem to like it. Multiple Tox clients exist and use a common protocol and network. Messaging happens via peer-to-peer, lookups make use of servers. For messaging to occur, both communicating parties have to be online, so don’t expect much convenience.

That would actually be one of reasonable choices. Most e-cars today are over-engineered and too complex for the users’ good, but Leaf has been on the market for very long, has gone though many generations and repair shops generally know their way around it (even I have taken apart a Leaf’s battery). If Nissan’s engineers aren’t fools, they have solved most issues.

Tesla is a smartphone on wheels, and a maintenance nightmare. Also, it has the highest rate of fatal accidents in its category. Even if it didn’t earn Elon a penny, I’d not recommend it.

Living on latitude 60 where being homeless can (and sometimes does) kill - I think the first step is giving a person who is homeless a place where they can set up a (semi)permanent home. That will go a long way towards solving the underlying issues which a shelter system cannot address.

A relevant paper from the EU Commission:

In February 2008, the Finnish government adopted a programme aimed at halving long-term homelessness by 2011. Referring to the “Housing First” principle, which considers that appropriate permanent accommodation is a prerequisite for solving other social and health problems, the programme seeks to reduce and gradually abandon the use of conventional shelters and change them into supported rented accommodation units.

Outcomes via OECD:

While there is no OECD-wide average against which to compare Finland’s homeless rate of 0.08%, other countries with similarly broad definitions of homelessness provide points of reference, such as neighbouring Sweden (0.33%) or the Netherlands (0.23%). [1]

Finland’s success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of “quick fixes.” Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020).

Getting better outcomes than neighbours is a reliable indicator that a policy does work.

P.S.

Regarding Musk:

“Downregulate Musk” will be my anwer to any mention of this election-buying oligarch, probably for a while. A kneejerking far rightist is no person to call any policies.

Actually, let’s make it interesting, drop me maybe 10-15 ft above his head.

I would predict success, martyrdom (75% chance) and impressive headlines. :D

If you could convince his bodyguards that the main computer of an alien spaceship sent you as a sick joke to prevent nuclear war, they might spare you for bargaining. Whether you’d be spared long enough for revolution to happen and get home - not sure.

As a practising anarchist, I would also volunteer, my everyday items even include several cans of pepper spray, a multitool and a heavy laptop with a detachable battery (to commit some battery).

There are use cases for this router, but please don’t get the plastic clone sold by the same Chinese company that assembles the real thing. (The plastic clone costs a third, but doesn’t have detachable antennas and doesn’t accept mainstream OpenWRT because it uses an almost unknown CPU.)

Myself, when I need a high capability router (for me “capability” typically means “range”) I turn towards a Raspberry Pi and Alfa AWUS1900 wireless card. Yes, it lacks in throughput (USB is a severe bottleneck)… but with a bit of tweaking, you can talk out to 2 kilometers if terrain allows. :)

Power corrupts. If you have the opportunity to help a family member without any blowback, eventually the opportunity will soften you up.

And then the same power goes to Trump, who’s not in need of corrupting, since he’s already fully baked.

I guess it would be better if a power to bypass the justice system wasn’t available. A creative and unethical person can do a lot of things with it. Bad things.

I don’t know the details. Wikipedia estimates Chinese losses as 26 000 killed, 37 000 wounded with 420 tanks and 66 guns lost. Vietnamese losses are estimated at 30 000 killed, 32 000 wounded, 185 tanks, 200 guns and 6 missile launchers lost - so it’s safe to assume they didn’t use butter knives.

Their preferred method of bombing might have been artillery, though - due to the lack of high capacity bomber aircraft, and due to lack of air superiority. Despite this, Wikipedia also mentions:

“The 372nd Air Division in central Vietnam as well as the 917th, 935th and 937th Air Regiments in southern Vietnam were quickly deployed to the north.[61]”

The Vietnamese source article is here. A relevant part seems to be this:

“When the border war began, the Ministry of National Defense also decided to send part of the 372nd Air Division (Hai Van Group) to the North to perform missions. From February 18 to March 3, 1979, squadrons of the 917th Air Regiment (Dong Thap Group), 935 (Dong Nai Group) and 937 (Hau Giang Group) including 10 UH-1 helicopters, 3 U-17 reconnaissance aircraft, 10 A-37 attack aircraft, and 10 F-5 fighter-bombers were deployed at Hoa Lac, Kep, Bach Mai and Noi Bai bases, respectively.”

I’m unable to find more details or an account from the Chinese side.

“To bombard someone with letters” is an expression actively used in the English language.

China hasn’t dropped bombs in, what, 60 years?

Almost correct. The last war-sized conflict China took part in was the 1979 Chinese-Vietnamese war [1]. That was 45 years ago. Battle-sized events between China and Vietnam have occurred up to 1991 [2], that would be up to 23 years ago. Skirmish-sized events with India are as recent as 2021. [3]. As for what occurs in Gaza, I agree. Bad stuff has been happening there. Going by the tonnage of things blowing up, Gaza is a gang shootout compared to Ukraine, though.

Series produced, not mass produced - I sincerely hope they won’t reach mass production, that would be harmful.

Also, they have no version with a cluster warhead. Shahed 136 drones (the most common version) have unitary warheads, some with high explosive (some with enhanced shrapnel production) and some with blast (thermobaric) effect.

A hypothetical version with cluster bomblets would of course damage solar arrays on a larger area (it helps get around the inverse square law), but the cost is: less explosive and more casing material - the bomblets would make holes in panels, but most panels would remain standing and keep producing something.

For information, this is what the result of a single cluster bomblet looks like.

There is a troubling aspect, though - most of solar inverters aren’t capable of operating as an island today. Cost-cutting and dumbing-down has occurred.

However, if a village has at least one household with a hybrid inverter capable of generating a frequency for others to follow - and some people who know what they’re doing - some level of disaster preparedness is possible even with today’s tech. (If the grid fails, one disconnects everyone behind the local substation from the big grid, brings online an inverter working in island mode, and syncs other inverters to it.)

Of the things you mention, transformer stations and baseload power stations are a real problem. One can build them inside a concrete shell, but nobody can rebuild them all.

Of course, it’s a fact of life that one cannot operate a grid without baseload generation. So baseload (thermal power stations) are the typical target. Solar parks are not. If you get a drone to a fuel tank or turbine hall, you have achieved 1000% more than landing in a solar park.

I’ve seen photos of a hole left by “Iskander” in a solar park (I cannot guess what kind of a “genius” fired it). Crater radius about 10 meters, various grades of destruction out to 50 meters. That’s a 500 kg warhead. With only 50 kilograms, would expect it to take out a circle with a radius of 25 meters. That’s some 2000 square meters, containing about 1000 square meters worth of panels. At today’s prices, panels cost about 25 € per square meter. So the damage in panels (excluding frameworks and cabling and work) is about 25 000 €. The cost of the Shahed / Geran drone is probably in the same class. But not every Shahed reaches its target - in fact, most of them don’t - so firing one at a solar park would not be economical.

Notes made after a storm: a panel with a 30 cm slash from flying plywood keeps producing, just somewhat less.

Nope, I think I must have written my reply while it hadn’t propagated here.