Futurology Today

At Panchsheel Inter College in Uttar Pradesh, students now study inside a new school wing built not from concrete or traditional brick, but from sugarcane. The innovation was born at the University of East London (UEL) and its creators argue it could reshape how buildings are made and how the planet pays for it.

Sugarcrete combines the fibrous residues of sugarcane, called bagasse, with sand and mineral binders to produce lightweight, interlocking blocks. Lab tests show that Sugarcrete has strong fire resistance, acoustic dampening, and thermal insulation properties. It’s been tested to industrial standards and passed with flying colors. In terms of climate impact, the material is a standout. It’s six times less carbon-intensive than standard bricks, and twenty times less than concrete, by some estimates.

Yet the real excitement doesn’t only come from what Sugarcrete is, but how it’s made and used. It is purposely ‘open access’ in order to establish partnerships to produce new bio-waste-based construction materials where sugarcane is grown. Unlike conventional building materials locked behind patents, Sugarcrete can be made by anyone with the right ingredients and basic manufacturing tools. That choice decentralizes construction innovation, allowing small-scale producers — especially in the Global South — to lead.

It’s likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250422233152/https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-is-dead-its-toxic-legacy-is-everywhere/

Archived

In Spain there is growing concern over the use of Chinese technology from Huawei in processes closely tied to national security. According to local media in the European country, the current government signed contracts with the Shenzhen-based company to provide servers to its law enforcement and intelligence agencies—going against the European Union's recommendations.

According to official Spanish government documents published by The Objective, the Interior Ministry armed its agencies with Chinese Huawei OceanStor 6800 V5 servers to store wiretaps obtained prior to judicial authorization.

These contracts with Huawei were given after the arrival of the Government of the current Executive headed by the socialist Pedro Sanchez. Prior to the Socialist Party Government, they were revoked by the centrist Popular Party, which replaced Huawei, contracted for the first time by the governments of the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Rodríguez Zapatero himself is under scrutiny by the center-right opposition in Spain, accused of lobbying in favor of the Chinese company.

[...]

Several Western governments have warned about the dangers that lie in the use of Huawei's technology for national security tasks.

[...]

The world has changed dramatically since the start of the second Trump administration. But how best to describe this shift? Many see it as potentially the end of American democracy, or the end of the Atlantic Alliance and the United States’ prime role in global multilateral institutions.

Here’s a less obvious take: maybe Trump’s ascent portends the end of Big Solutions. The latter have been necessitated by the eruption of Big Problems—i.e., global predicaments that are potential civilization killers, including climate change, worsening economic inequality, the spread of persistent toxins throughout the environment, and the accelerating loss of wild nature.

Meanwhile, can small solutions work? Many environmentalists have been promoting them all along. There is a rich literature on localization, degrowth, community resilience, and Indigenous attitudes and practices, and small environmental orgs have sprung up to further these strategies. Proponents of small solutions don’t claim that these actions will enable humanity to continue its current growth trajectory while canceling growth’s negative impacts on people and the planet. Rather, Small Is Beautiful promoters say we should preserve and repair as much as we humanly can of nature and durable human culture, and do this individually and in our households and communities, where we have the most agency. Small-scale, localized approaches can also build adaptive capacity and resilience as Big Solutions fail.

Has started to grind my gears, since there is no way to quickly explain that I'm happy with the current situation (I live in the nordics, not the US). Historically I would be considered a conservative, since I don't see a need to progress (atleast at an accelerated rate). However that term is now used to define reactionaries, which are people who reacting to the changing society wants to regress to a earlier time.

Why must we change the meanings of such obvious words?

China’s ambassador says Beijing is offering to form a partnership with Canada to push back against American “bullying,” suggesting the two countries could rally other nations to stop Washington from undermining global rules.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps-tariffs/article/china-says-it-wants-to-partner-with-canada-to-push-back-against-american-bullying/

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Hello Lemmings! For the past year or so, I've been working on a solo project, and I'm kinda close to being finished with it! It's a punk rock album, made with mostly open-source tools (the only non-FOSS stuff is a couple of plugins that didn't have good open-source alternatives)!

I've seen other folks promote their games here, but so far I haven't seen any music done this way, and I was wondering if it's maybe not allowed? Some sort of Lemmy faux pas? If it is, indeed, allowed, then what communities would be amenable to maybe a twice weekly post? Should one make their own community for this purpose? What about a general purpose community for self-promotion, i.e. "imadethis" back on the old place? As you can see, much to consider. (I don't have anything out yet, so this post in itself is not self-promotion.)

What say ye, o wise Lemmings?

From Thy Pygmy Owl Tours

A striking short-eared owl takes a quiet step through its natural habitat, its piercing yellow eyes glowing against soft mottled feathers. With a tilted head and lifted foot, it pauses-curious, cautious, utterly captivating. The blurred greens and browns of the field melt away, leaving only the raw beauty of this wild moment. Grace, stealth, and untamed wonder, frozen in time.

Archived

• Pipeline: A Chinese prison is part of the pipeline that delivers fentanyl to the U.S., ProPublica found in a review of U.S. and Chinese documents and interviews with investigators.
• Fallout: Opioid overdoses have killed more Americans than the number of U.S. deaths in several wars combined.
• Permissive: Veteran federal agents told ProPublica that China has failed to cooperate and even interfered with drug investigations; China insists it has cracked down.

China’s vast security apparatus shrouds itself in shadows, but the outside world has caught periodic glimpses of it behind the faded gray walls of Shijiazhuang prison in the northern province of Hebei.

Chinese media reports have shown inmates hunched over sewing machines in a garment workshop in the sprawling facility. Business leaders and Chinese Communist Party dignitaries have praised the penitentiary for exemplifying President Xi Jinping’s views on the rule of law.

But the prison has an alarming secret, U.S. congressional investigators disclosed last year. They revealed evidence showing that it is a Chinese government outpost in the trafficking pipeline that inundates the United States with fentanyl.

[...]

Although China tightly restricts the domestic manufacturing, sale and use of fentanyl products, the nation has been the world’s leading producer of fentanyl that enters the United States and remains the leading producer of chemical precursors with which Mexican cartels make the drug. Overdoses on synthetic opioid drugs, most of them fentanyl related, have killed over 450,000 Americans during the past decade — more than the U.S. deaths in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

The involvement of a state-run prison is just one sign of the Chinese government’s role in fomenting the U.S. fentanyl crisis, U.S. investigators say. Chinese leaders have insistently denied such allegations. But U.S. national security officials said the Yafeng case shows how China allows its chemical industry to engage openly in sales to overseas customers while blocking online domestic access and enforcing stern laws against drug dealing inside the country. Beijing also encourages the manufacture and export of fentanyl products, including drugs outlawed in China, with generous financial incentives, according to a bipartisan inquiry last year by the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

[...]

A thief flags you down, grabs your phone and makes you unlock it using your thumb.

A cop opens the cop car door, grabs your hand and unlocks your phone, or even easier, face unlock.

Granted, guns and torture are rather effective as well, but is anyone entirely against fingerprint unlocking?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21259033

archived (Wayback Machine)