Futurology Today

Could be from a show and/or movie.

Would be moving from Mullvad, would appreciate opinions on the current landscape of VPN’s from those who keep a better eye out. TIA.

Some Google TV Streamer owners have noticed playback issues in the Disney+ app following recent updates, and there's one possible workaround.

Transmeta was set to revolutionise the CPU market, but the market changed alot while they tried to build their revolution. Despite Transmeta no-longer being a CPU manufacture, they did change at least one thing that's still with us.

Summary

Sher Abbas Stanikzai, a senior Taliban official, publicly criticized the group’s ban on education for Afghan women and girls, urging Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to reverse the policy.

Speaking in Khost province, he condemned the bans as unjust and unsupported by Islamic law, depriving 20 million women of their rights.

This marks Stanikzai’s strongest call for change.

The international community, including Malala Yousafzai and the U.N., continues to pressure the Taliban on this issue, linking education access to potential recognition of their government.

Artist: U U Zan | pixiv | twitter | danbooru

Full quality: .png 1 MB (2577 × 2499)

anew. unending. forever.

the rakesteppers of all time. the best to ever trip on their own shoelaces. fumbling world champs.

Alejandra Whitney-Smith has plans for president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week: spend a week in a cabin without technology.

“It [inauguration weekend] coincides with my birthday weekend, which I usually do spend in DC, but when the election happened, I told myself, ‘Oh, no, I can’t be here,’” said Whitney-Smith, whose mother was working at the Library of Congress during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021. “I just remember that feeling of fear for her and then also just concern for me being in the city. I just knew for me – I didn’t want to be around that sort of hostile negative energy.”

The DC resident said she will hunker down in a cabin with four friends during inauguration weekend and do some vision boarding, reflection and reconnection. As for the re-election of Trump, she says it, “represents the ugly side of America that people don’t want to acknowledge”.

Long known as one of Africa's great beach destinations, a new generation of Sierra Leoneans is eager to show visitors that the formerly war-torn nation is now safe and reintroduce it to the world.

Sitting in the shade of a palm tree on Tokeh Beach, one of Sierra Leone's many postcard-worthy, white-sand waterfronts, Peter Momoh Bassie told me his story. "I am not ashamed to say I was part of the rebels because I was captured by force," he said, looking out over the emerald-coloured water. "I never killed anyone," he added.

Stories like Bassie's abound in Sierra Leone, a small nation in West Africa with more than 300km of coastline sandwiched between Guinea and Liberia. The country's 11-year civil war that ended in 2002 killed more than 50,000 people and displaced 2.6 million more. The rebels captured Bassie when he was just 11 years old. He was held captive for six years, managing to escape – and get caught again – three times.

Today, Bassie works as a tour guide for Tourism Is Life, one of many Sierra Leonean travel companies eager to show the world that the nation is now safe and introduce visitors to its many rainforests, beaches and rich cultural experiences.

Retelling stories like these is at the heart of what Bimbola Carrol does. Twenty years ago he founded VSL Travel after seeing mostly negative coverage of his country. "I felt that if we were looking to get back on our feet, we needed to show people another side of Sierra Leone," he told me.

Today, Carrol organises a range of trips: to the small village of Rogbonko in the Northern Province where travellers can stay in thatched-roof huts with the local community, or to the Western Peninsula near Freetown to spot the white-necked rockfowl, one of Africa's rarest and most peculiar birds. "Everyone who comes to Sierra Leone falls in love with our nation," said Carrol. "We are lagging behind other countries, but the world is starting to take note. For me, that is cause to be optimistic about the future."

The propensity for users to enter customer data, source code, employee benefits information, financial data, and more into ChatGPT, Copilot, and others is racking up real risk for enterprises.

I know this is old news by now, but I was not sure how to activate vertical tabs on all of my browsers. It certainly is not obvious, so I wanted to include the instructions here in case anyone else wants to try it out.

Type about:config into the address bar of Firefox. You'll be greeted with a warning that you are accessing advanced settings - click "Accept the Risk and Continue." Search for the boolean preference sidebar.verticalTabs and set to true. That's it! Enjoy your vertical Tabs!

Edit: You may also need to set sidebar.revamp to true if it is not already/automatically set.

Syrian phone shop owner Abdel Razzaq Hamra was thrilled to finally be working in peace after years of being harassed and detained by security personnel enforcing an Assad-linked company's monopoly.

Before president Bashar al-Assad was ousted last month, his security forces would raid the central Damascus district where dozens of mobile stores operate in search of phones without the Emmatel company logo.

"If they would find one device without an Emmatel sticker, they would confiscate everything," said Hamra, 33.

Shuddering from fear as he recounted the story, he said he had been detained three times since 2020, lost $10,000 worth of confiscated goods and been beaten in jail.

"They accused me of not working with Emmatel... so they put me in a jail cell for 101 days," he told AFP.

War profiteers connected to the Assad clan have long dominated the country's economy, monopolising entire sectors, stifling competition and terrorising businesses.

Created in 2019, Emmatel is owned by Syrian businessman Khodr Taher, also known as Abu Ali Khodr.

The US Treasury Department has accused him of supplying the Syrian army's notorious Fourth Division -- headed by Assad's brother Maher -- including through the creation of a private security firm that acted as its "informal executive arm".

Assad's wife Asma is also allegedly linked to the company, the Treasury has said.

Emmatel was a distributor of telephones and IT products, including a slew of mobile phone brands.

Both Taher and Emmatel have been under US sanctions since 2020 for their links to the Assad government.

At least one Emmatel store was looted after Assad's fall, videos circulating online show, and its other branches are no longer operational.

Mustafa Khalayli said he was now out of work after closing down his mobile phone shop, which had employed five people. He had been detained for a year and lost $40,000 in confiscated merchandise to successive raids.

"Every day you would go into work and kiss your family goodbye like it was the last time," Khalayli said.

"We were at risk of getting arrested at any moment over a mobile phone."

Khalayli said two officers and about 20 security personnel combed his shop for three hours in search of any phones he had not bought from Emmatel. But when they found nothing, they brought him in anyway, later accusing him of bogus charges and confiscating the phones, he said.

"They just wanted to take away my merchandise," he said. "It's pure theft".

Bigger phone companies had also been forced to close or downsize, shopkeepers told AFP.

Phone shop owners said security forces linked to Branch 215 of the Military Intelligence would raid their shops, while Shabiha -- pro-Assad militiamen -- also stalked the stores.

Shopkeeper Mohamed al-Malhas said "Branch 215 was more of a gang than anything else".

Mohammad Gemmo, 25, said constant harassment and extortion forced him to close his shop and sell phones in a makeshift stall on the street.

He was arrested and asked to pay thousands of dollars to get out.

"But I couldn't afford it," he said, so he spent five months in detention.

"Before, selling phones was like committing some big crime," Gemmo said.

"No one dared to buy anything that did not have the Emmatel stamp," he added.

"Now, thank God, it's over."

The condensed looter shooter experience

Gunfire Reborn is a looter shooter with an Asian aesthetic and a short, but extremely replayable campaign, which runs for less than an hour. It supports four-player online co-op, but this time, I was running solo. In short, it's the full Borderlands experience without the questionable writing and Randy Pitchford.

You travel across multiple lands to purge the corruption (an ARPG classic), fighting terracotta soldiers in their crypts, sniper birds in the desert, samurai fish at the shores, and polar bears up in the frozen mountains.

Within the past few years since exiting early access, Gunfire Reborn has had seasonal events, like Path of Exile's leagues, adding a bit of extra spice to the campaign. The fourth season (Star Link) started just a few days ago, so I thought it was a good time to get a run in with a character I wasn't familiar with.

This run: Zi Xiao

In the head video, I'm playing as Zi Xiao, an owl who commands the stars with cards. I'm using Golden Bow, which deals immense amounts of single-target damage but is terrible with dealing with large packs of monsters. Good thing Zi Xiao's abilities can make up for it! With the best cards, I call the stars to strike down an area in front of me.

Oh yeah, I somehow managed to get more than 100% accuracy in this run. I wonder how the game is counting that.

Yeah, it really is a fast, Asian Borderlands

Gunfire Reborn is transparently inspired by Borderlands. It features the same three core elements of Borderlands: fire, corrosion, and shock, and has the same focus on scavenging for weapons. One difference is that it relies on mechanically unique weapon designs, compared to the part-by-part weapon generation system that Borderlands has. Still, like any proper ARPG, there are piles of modifiers that can appear on any item.

Why not try…

• An octopus that sucks moisture from enemies to power a water laser
• A shotgun that's really a small, handheld demon that eats fish and sneezes death
• A star compass that rather than shooting bullets, projects a damaging ring around you that you can grow and shrink
• The Unkempt Harold, straight from Borderlands 2
• A brick

Yeet.