Don't know about Apple. My impression is that they take privacy pretty serious. Android though has since a few version ago a green dot in the notification area that indicates when the microphone is active. Also you can set the apps to always ask the user if they want grant the permission for microphone recording. There are also buttons to deactivate the microphone and camera completely.

So yeah it's easier then ever with current Android versions to not be spied on if the user invests 5 mins to set the microphone and camera permissions of all apps to always ask when used. Like you said other spying IOT devices and data retention (at least for traffic data) at the provider level pose a much greater risk for surveillance.

In recent years, genetic studies have demonstrated that, at least paternally, the various Jewish ethnic groups and the Palestinians are related to each other. Genetic studies have shown that Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than the different Jewish groups are to their respective host countries. At the haplogroup level, defined by the binary polymorphisms only, the Y chromosome distribution in Arabs and Jews was similar but not identical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians

Not to mismatch with the people living in modern Israel which are often Western or East Europe descendants.

Just watched the first video. It's 6 years old but the evidence presented seemed undoubtedly like Instagram and FB were listening to conversations and aggregating the info together with geolocation and surfing behaviour. The insta CEO tried to deflect it with insinuating that the user must have searched for specific keywords previously but the journalists specifically tested it with words in conversations they never exposed their phones to before. 20 mins later they got AD's on insta.

That's a blatant overgeneralisation. The biggest mass protests in recent decades were against the AfD. Especially after their secret Wannsee Conference 2.0 in November 2023 (which sadly was ruled against the investigative collective Correctiv to be libel in favour of the AfD by a court 2 days ago), but also in the recent 2 years after multiple landslide wins of them in elections.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-far-right-democracy-protests-afd-nazis-2dce0ea7ed40fccd3f0ec1c46edcfd42

https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/03/correctivs-expulsion-masterplan-claims-at-afd-potsdam-meeting-false-berlin-court-says/

Yes, a concerningly huge amount of people fall for the propaganda of their charismatic mouthpieces like Alice Weidel, overwhelmingly in the east Germany ex-GDR federal states where neonazism is brooding since the 90s and the youth was successfully indoctrinated by their parents generations and the political education regarding our dark past was way weaker then in the West. Couple that with a perceived (and often actual) economical disadvantage of east Germany and the AfD's refined propaganda on TikTok and Facebook and you got this perfect storm.

Sadly in south Germany they got more strong over the years too, especially during Corona where the strategy was to fabricate a Corona and vaccination dictatorship, which fell on fertile ground with the boomers who more and more get duped by generative AI and tailored algorithms and CDU figureheads (who a lot of the boomers trust, because of their alleged economic competence), pondering a possible cooperation with the AfD.

But overall I think (hope) for many folks here the genocide in Gaza was an eye opener and they did a bit of research about Israel's past and are not not in favour unconditional support anymore. Guys like Smotrich or Ben-Gvir, the settler violence, the Nakba etc. aren't unknowns anymore. And we can very well distinguish between Jewish people and Zionism. The ones who seem to not be able to do that are some politicians and organisations who allege protesters of antisemitism and supress those violently. Just like in the UK and the US.

AFAIK Russia doesn't need them anymore from Iran as they got multiple production facilities for Shaheds themselves and upgraded them in the meantime. And even if they were selling them to Putler, that is definitely not happening right now.

Most of us embrace the technology. Only a few confused ones still proclaim loudly that it's unacceptable because it's still connected to animal exploitation. But they've probably never looked up how much meat can be grown from a small biopsy and therefore how many animals can be spared from all that's connected to meat production. Up until recently the highly unethical sourcing of fetal bovine growth serum needed for cultured meat would've made me an opponent too but as I understand this is practically solved:

https://vegconomist.com/cultivated-cell-cultured-biotechnology/companies-removing-fetal-bovine-serum-slaughter-free-meat/

I don't know if I'll eat it. I'm eating plant based for 6 years now and I really don't miss anything. Did my bloodworks recently and they came back fine.

I also don't know if this will be the holy grail for making the people turn away from the destruction of our planet that animal ag is. Looking at the statements of die hard meat eaters (especially carnivores) and the stances of current governments (especially the US under Kennedy) regarding tradition and rejection of science and how many blindly follow them and the advises of health quacks, I have strong doubts.

https://allchronology.com/2025/06/18/trump-the-rapture-and-the-real-reason-evangelicals-are-all-in-end-times-theology-goes-mainstream/

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, “it’s a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Last year a lot of those crazies proclaimed via social media, that the rapture was imminent and prepared themselves by undressing, writing last messages to the sinners who'll be left behind or they even sold their homes. Can't remember but it could actually have been when the 12 days war with Iran happened.

This rapture thing already should've happened a few times, just like with every end times prophecy. The fact the orange menace is in bed with the ultraorthodox christian movements (Dominionists, Seven Mountain Mandate) is well know since his first presidency. Same with their believes about the end-times. That he seems more like the anti christ is no problem for them as they believe, as stated in the article, that god will choose a flawed vessel for the mission.

Using Google play services free GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6 (so swipe even works with reduced screen estate) with the FUTO keyboard and this paragraph was completely written with its swipe feature. The only problematic words were GraphenOS and swipe.

Writing this by tapping again as I'm actually faster that way. But from what I can say, swiping works really good. I appreciate the authors effort but I won't pull in some Google library again (especially related to monitoring keyboard input) via a hackish way.

I'm completely satisfied with FUTO as an all-in-one solution already. The voice input using local models works especially good. I'm not 100% sure but I could swear the devs changed the key sizes in one of the current updates. They're perfectly sized now. The one thing I miss is a TAB key for autocompletition, when I'm logged in on a SSH terminal. But otherwise it's feature complete for me.

I remember those from two decades ago from a shopping channel. In Europe btw. So this has to be even longer around in the US or wherever it was invented. We got more shopping channels on public satellite TV in the meantime. This will probably be advertised around here too, still to these days.

Were (are, if you're still using it) you pleased with the results of the flowbee? Did it take you long to get a feel for it? The fact that it's collecting all the hair is a big selling point.

I'm cutting my hair with an electric shaver and a pair of good scissors for years now and probably saved thousands off euros. I don't think I'll switch to flowbee as I can by now not only cut my own but others hair too as I tried in lockdown when especially practicing barbers were a rare sight and only let you in their chair after telling the secret passphrase.

Just want to know if I can commend that product to beginners when the next pandemic rolls around.

He's been filmed flashing HH Nazi salutes to his goons on downtime from terrorizing innocent citizens. He IS a full blown Nazi.

While I wholeheartly agree with OP and believe Harris would have taken a different course than the self proclaimed zionist Biden and would've given voices like Mamdani, Omar, Sanders and AOC much more weight and I'm convinced that women have a much better potential to fundamentally change the world for good (there are micro loan programs only catered to women because they are so much more trustworthy), it's still a women named Marina Corina Machado who cheers for this and wants to sell out Venezuela to the US. And other women who I deeply trusted to do the right thing fail miserably all the sudden:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5ba3zjugf4kis434frdolgr3/post/3mbjb57n5uc2y

My favorite poster on Mastodon regarding the "Both Sides Bad" discussion always has excellent takes on topic of non- and protest-voting.

https://mastodon.social/@benroyce/115830646002048908

Multiple people in his vicinity including me tried to convince US citizens on Mastodon to vote for Harris to no avail. Some of them didn't even know about the Heritage Foundation and their plans and if they knew they said it wasn't in line with Trumps agenda.

Those color settings in nvidia-settings are only available on X11 which is basically the only reason (apart from the long postponed switch to an AMD GPU) I haven't switched to Wayland. Though desktop effects in KDE are more fluid under Wayland and frametimes in games maybe a bit better I just can't live with the washed out colors when gaming.