otter

Investigation | Using easily accessible advertising data, Le Monde was able to pinpoint the identities, home addresses and daily routines of several dozen people working for sensitive official entities.

The identities of French spies are among the Republic's most closely-guarded secrets. Revealing them is even a criminal offense. Yet, with just a little technical know-how, one can track down the home addresses of certain agents, and thereby discover their identities, daily routines and even those of their loved ones, all of which represent risks to their safety and that of their families and their agencies.

The blame lies with the advertising industry, an insatiable and unregulated sector with no regard for transparency, which extracts billions of personal data points from people's smartphones every day. This data, which can be used to track people's movements particularly precisely, down to a few meters, is then resold. Evading such tracking, except for users with flawless digital hygiene, is nearly impossible.

Staff members working for all of France's most sensitive institutions are affected: intelligence officers, personnel responsible for protecting the country's top officials, high-ranking police officers, members of the elite National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) unit, military personnel stationed at critical nuclear weapons bases, defense company executives, prison staff, and even nuclear power plant staff.

You can find information about outages in your area on this page:

https://www.bchydro.com/power-outages/app/outage-map.html

Excerpt:

The first climate migrants to leave the remote Pacific island nation of Tuvalu have arrived in Australia, hoping to preserve links to their sinking island home, foreign affairs officials said on Thursday.

More than one-third of Tuvalu's 11,000 population applied for a climate visa to migrate to Australia, under a deal struck between the two countries two years ago.

The intake is capped at 280 visas annually to prevent a brain drain in the small island nation.

Excerpt:

Machias Seal Island is a tiny tear-shaped island — about 550 metres long and 250 metres wide — located in the Bay of Fundy off New Brunswick.

Both Canada and the United States have tried to claim the island, which is mostly uninhabited except for a lighthouse keeper and some researchers studying the island’s seabird colonies.

Sen. Jim Quinn, who is from New Brunswick, says he was upset to see an American tour company website describe the island as being “on the Maine coast.”

“That’s unacceptable in this day and age, especially with where we are with our neighbours to the south,” he said. “That administration has made various claims about Canada and its 51st state and all of these things.”

Machias Seal Island is a migratory bird sanctuary maintained by the Government of Canada. The lightkeeper is flown in every few months from the Canadian Coast Guard and only two small tour boat companies, one of which is Canadian and the other American, are allowed to visit the island during certain months.

Source: https://www.litterboxcomics.com/too-close/

Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/capital-3

A major earthquake of magnitude 7.6 has hit Japan's north-eastern region.

The quake occurred at 23:15 (14:15 GMT) at a depth of 50km (31 miles), about 80km off the coast of the Aomori region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said,

It prompted tsunami warnings which have now been downgraded to advisories, while waves of 40cm (16in) were seen in some places.

Local media reports that some people in the region have been injured, while trains have been suspended as a precaution.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/Bside/p/1540475/indie-studio-released-10000-game-assets-to-help-devs-avoid-ai

Two-person indie studio Chequered Ink launched a pack of 10,000 game assets to "give budding developers an alternative to AI", which includes over 9,000 graphics for platformers, RPGs, puzzle games, board games, and more, as well as over 700 sound effects.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/56300933

starting in late March 2026, there will be a new limit of 5 high-traffic communities per moderator. Only communities with greater than 100k weekly visitors count toward this limit, and there are no limits on communities under that amount.

For those who are impacted (less than 0.1% of active mods), we’re rolling out in several phases over 6 months to ensure mods have sufficient time to prepare. We notified all impacted moderators last month, and you can also check your status anytime here.

More details in the thread.

We could also consider policies around this on an instance level. I don't think it's that big of a problem yet, and "X communities with >Y users" might not be the best metric for us, but it's worth discussing