"Australians have rushed to download a host of lesser-known apps in response to a wide-ranging social media ban that has booted teenagers off more popular platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Snap. Lemon8, an app owned by TikTok owner ByteDance, was the most downloaded lifestyle app on Apple this week followed by photo-sharing app Yope, according to the iPhone maker’s app store charts. Coverstar, a US video-sharing app that markets itself as a safe space for children, was third, while RedNote, the Chinese social media app also known as Xiaohongshu, has also gained users. Even WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Meta, has benefited as under-16s sought out a new place to maintain social networks. The interest in different platforms comes after Australia this week became the first country in the world to ban under-16s from holding accounts for 10 apps deemed to be potentially harmful to teenagers and children."

Client Challenge

#Australia #SocialMedia #AgeVerification #SocialMediaBan

"President Donald Trump has shattered the limits of executive authority by ordering the summary executions of individuals he deems members of designated terrorist organizations. He has also tested the bounds of his presidential powers by creating a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations, established under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7. Are Americans that the federal government deems to be members of domestic terrorist organizations subject to extrajudicial killings like those it claims are members of designated terrorist organizations? The White House, Justice Department, and Department of War have, for more than a month, failed to answer this question. Lawmakers and other government officials tell The Intercept that the pregnant silence by the Trump administration has become especially worrisome as the death toll mounts from attacks on alleged members of “designated terrorist organizations” in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and as Trump himself makes ever more unhinged threats to imprison or execute his political adversaries."

The Intercept

White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List

The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would order the killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other...

#USA #Trump #NSPM7 #StateOfException #PoliceState

"A fusion reactor must first heat hydrogen to temperatures hotter than the sun, turning it into plasma, the fourth state of matter. Then it needs to hold this violent plasma together for long enough that the atoms fuse and disgorge energy. China, the United States and other countries are now racing to develop the machines that can pull all this off and survive to do it again and again, reliably enough to power a grid. The world’s two superpowers are in a tightening contest to dominate the energy future. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. is intent on producing oil, gas and coal and selling it abroad. Its chief economic rival, China, has become the world’s dominant supplier of clean energy in the form of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. Fusion could change the calculus for both nations and the globe. Whoever conquers it could build plants around the world and forge new alliances with energy-hungry countries. But the Americans and the Chinese have very different strategies for getting there. The United States is counting on private industry and American innovation to deliver results, with government agencies providing targeted support. From coast to coast, a fleet of start-ups has brought new urgency and ingenuity to the quest. On the other side of the world, China’s government has made fusion a national priority, marshaling resources at daunting speed. Recently, a Shanghai start-up essentially matched an engineering breakthrough by America’s best-funded fusion company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in much less time. Over the summer, the Chinese government and private investors poured $2.1 billion into a new state-owned fusion company. That investment alone is two and a half times the U.S. Energy Department’s annual fusion budget." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-energy.html #Energy #Nuclear #Energy #Fusion #FusionReactors #RenewableEnergy

"As the dust settles after COP30 in Belém, the scale of the failure becomes impossible to ignore. The world is on a path toward catastrophic warming, ecological systems are collapsing, and millions across the Global South face annihilation, not in the distant future, but today. The world’s political and economic elites arrived in the Amazon to negotiate when the 1.5°C target had already slipped out of reach, and they left with little more than symbolic gestures. No binding emissions cuts. No serious plan to phase out fossil fuels. No meaningful climate finance for adaptation. No accountability for the destruction already unleashed. The gap between official international climate policy and the lived reality of a warming world has never been wider. In Belém, that gap became a chasm. The world is heading towards roughly 2.8°C of warming by the end of the century. This is not a scenario compatible with human dignity — or even, for many, with life itself. Rising seas, extreme heat, drought, and flooding are eroding food security, displacing communities, and driving inequality to historic heights. The economic costs of climate disasters are skyrocketing, but the social and human costs are immeasurable: lives lost, livelihoods shattered, ecosystems irreversibly damaged."

COP 30: entrenching the crisis of climate politics - Amandla

#COP30 #ClimateChange #ClimatePolicy #GlobalWarming

RT @LundukeJournal When a single company controls your entire digital life (account, backups, communications)… it can all be taken away from you in an instant. And, for most people, there’s nothing you can do about it. Consider this a cautionary tale. “My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years, has been permanently disabled. This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity. It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.”

hey.paris

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectivel...

RT @TheHackersNews Apple patched two bugs hackers were already using. New updates fix active attacks across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Safari, Watch, TV, and Vision Pro. ⚠️ One bug lets attackers run code from bad web pages. ⚠️ Another breaks memory. 🌐 All iPhone and iPad browsers were affected. 🕵️ Apple says the attacks were highly targeted. This is Apple’s 9th zero-day fix in 2025. 🔗 Update now — read here ↓

The Hacker News

Apple Issues Security Updates After Two WebKit Flaws Found Exploited in the Wild

Apple fixes two exploited WebKit bugs targeting specific users, issuing security updates across iOS, macOS, and Safari.

RT @HedgieMarkets 🦔McDonald's removed its AI-generated Christmas commercial after it went viral for being terrible. TBWA and The Sweetshop, the agency and production company behind the ad, tried to scrub it from the internet along with a defensive statement from Sweetshop's CEO. The statement claimed "for seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-house AI and post specialists working in lockstep with the directors." McDonald's responded by blaming its Netherlands branch and insisting any coverage reference "McDonald's Netherlands" for accuracy. (...) My Take McDonald's spent seven weeks with 10 specialists working around the clock to produce an AI commercial so bad they had to pull it down and scrub it from the internet. The Sweetshop's defensive statement about how hard they worked makes it worse, not better. If you need 10 people barely sleeping for seven weeks to wrangle AI into producing 45 seconds of content, you should have just hired a traditional production crew. It would have been faster, cheaper, and better. The most telling part is McDonald's desperately trying to blame the Netherlands branch and insisting media outlets specify "McDonald's Netherlands" in coverage. That's damage control for a test that failed. Global brands give international segments freedom to test innovations in smaller markets before scaling them up. I think McDonald's Netherlands was the guinea pig for AI commercials that headquarters wanted to roll out globally if they worked. They didn't, so now it's all about containing the fallout. Omnicom laying off 4,000 employees while expanding AI systems shows the real motivation. These firms want AI to become the norm so they can cut human employees and maintain margins. The problem is the output is trash and audiences hate it. Companies keep trying anyway because the financial incentive to replace workers is too strong, even when the product is worse and customers reject it. Hedgie🤗

X (formerly Twitter)

Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) on X

🦔McDonald's removed its AI-generated Christmas commercial after it went viral for being terrible. TBWA and The Sweetshop, the agency and product...