Technology

The Russian Air Force has demonstrated high confidence in the Su-57’s stealth capabilities, and has deployed the fighters for high intensity combat operations to parts of the Ukrainian theatre with particularly high concentrations of Ukrainian air defences.

The Su-57 program has prioritised reducing maintenance needs and operational costs to avoid the very low availability rates that have plagued America’s F-117, F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter fleets. One notable means by which this had been achieved is through reduced reliance on radar absorbent coatings, which was achieved by using innovative solutions such as radar absorbent fibreglass. In contrast to American stealth fighters which consistently cost far more to operate than their fourth generation predecessors, this approach allows the Su-57 to potentially achieve lower operational costs than its direct predecessor the Soviet Su-27, thus allowing Russia to move its fleet into the fifth generation without either significantly raising sustainment funding or contracting the number of fighters in service.

How cool is that?! AntennaPod creates a summary and stats of my year listening to podcasts directly on my device without sending it to the cloud!

My year 2024 in podcasts.

https://archive.ph/NmQn1

UPDATE: oh shit Verizon only has 5G but there's also apparently some companies called Brightspeed and GloFiber. anyone heard of them?

Hello, despite my 2 external hard disks I almost lost my data, so I decided to create a Google Cloud cold backup to store them.

Google Cloud is much more technical then a normal cloud service and I need some tips to configure it correctly to take it fully private.

I tried to create the cheapest configuration My account is:

• Single region
• "Archive" class
• "Uniform" bucket level access
• Public access: Not public

Is there anything else I should check to keep my data private? Thanks!

https://archive.ph/sIxUg

When questioned about its controversial cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, Google has repeatedly claimed the so-called Project Nimbus deal is bound by the company’s general cloud computing terms of service policy.

While that policy would prohibit uses that lead to deprivation of rights, injury, or death, or other harms, contract documents and an internal company email reviewed by The Intercept show the deal forged between Google and Israel doesn’t operate under the tech company’s general terms of service. Rather, Nimbus is subject to an “adjusted” policy drafted between Google and the Israeli government. It is unclear how this “Adjusted Terms of Service” policy differs from Google’s typical terms.

“The tenderer [Israel] has adjusted the winning suppliers’ [Google and Amazon] service agreement for each of the services supplied within the framework of this contract,” according to a 63-page overview of the Nimbus contract published to the Israeli government’s public contracting portal. “The Adjusted Terms of Service are the only terms that shall apply to the cloud services consumed upon the winning bidders’ cloud infrastructure.”

The language about “Adjusted Terms of Service” appears to contradict not only Google’s public claims about the contract, but also how it has represented Nimbus to its own staff. During an October 30 employee Q&A session, Google president of global affairs Kent Walker was asked how the company is ensuring its Nimbus work is consistent with its “AI Principles” document, which forbids uses “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” including surveillance, weapons, or anything “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. TikTok users spent heavily to buy merchandise from a range of vendors on the e-commerce platform TikTok Shop so far this holiday shopping season, according to TikTok estimates and a Reuters analysis of spending patterns measured by data from Facteus.

I think Docker opens up a lot of ways to repurpose an old phone and turn it into a home server. The advantage over using something like RPi is that you have a touchscreen built in, making it much easier to troubleshoot without having to plug in a monitor and a keyboard.

Given how abundant old phones are, seems like it would be cool to have an Android distro specifically designed for this use case. Especially if you could plug in a USB hub for stuff like external storage.

It’s really important to point out that our own interaction with tech may have changed to be extremely controlled, and seem like we have a dependency on corporations… but the original underlying structure still exists. We have power to exist independently, and create our own alternatives too.

At the core of it, we can participate our own way, if we know where to look.
You can still create websites, your own tools, distribute your own software… and how to do that is a very important understanding to cultivate.

Tech literacy is an imperative, especially in the era that we are in right now.

Byrne joined Meta in September 2021.

She and her team helped draft the rulebook that applies to the world’s most diabolical people and groups: the Ku Klux Klan, cartels, and of course, terrorists. Meta bans these so-called Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, or DOI, from using its platforms, but further prohibits its billions of users from engaging in “glorification,” “support,” or “representation” of anyone on the list.

Byrne’s job was not only to keep dangerous organizations off Meta properties, but also to prevent their message from spreading across the internet and spilling into the real world. The ambiguity and subjectivity inherent to these terms has made the “DOI” policy a perennial source of over-enforcement and controversy.

A full copy of the secret list obtained by The Intercept in 2021 showed it was disproportionately comprised of Muslim, Arab, and southeast Asian entities, hewing closely to the foreign policy crosshairs of the United States. Much of the list is copied directly from federal blacklists like the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist roster.

Byrne tried to focus on initiatives and targets that she could feel good about, like efforts to block violent white supremacists from using the company’s VR platform or running Facebook ads. At first she was pleased to see that Meta’s in-house list went further than the federal roster in designating white supremacist organizations like the Klan — or the Azov Battalion.

She was also unsure of whether Meta was up to the task of maintaining a privatized terror roster. “We had this huge problem where we had all of these groups and we didn’t really have … any sort of ongoing check or list of evidence of whether or not these groups were terrorists,” she said, a characterization the company rejected.

Byrne quickly found that the blacklist was flexible. "Meta’s censorship systems are “basically an extension of the government...”