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A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea is offering a rare – and unsettling – glimpse into the extent of control Kim Jong Un's regime exerts over its citizens, down to the very words they type. While the device appears outwardly similar to any modern smartphone, its software reveals a far more oppressive reality.
The phone was featured in a BBC video, which showed it powering on with an animated North Korean flag waving across the screen. While the report did not specify the brand, the design and user interface closely resembled those of a Huawei or Honor device.

It's unclear whether these companies officially sell phones in North Korea, but if they do, the devices are likely customized with state-approved software designed to restrict functionality and facilitate government surveillance.

One of the more revealing – and darkly amusing – features was the phone's automatic censorship of words deemed problematic by the state. For instance, when users typed oppa, a South Korean term used to refer to an older brother or a boyfriend, the phone automatically replaced it with comrade. A warning would then appear, admonishing the user that oppa could only refer to an older sibling.

Typing "South Korea" would trigger another change. The phrase was automatically replaced with "puppet state," reflecting the language used in official North Korean rhetoric.

Then came the more unsettling features. The phone silently captured a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a hidden folder that users couldn't access. According to the BBC, authorities could later review these images to monitor the user's activity.

The device was smuggled out of North Korea by Daily NK, a Seoul-based media outlet specializing in North Korean affairs. After examining the phone, the BBC confirmed that the censorship mechanisms were deeply embedded in its software. Experts say this technology is designed not only to control information but also to reinforce state messaging at the most personal level.

Smartphone usage has grown in North Korea in recent years, but access remains tightly controlled. Devices cannot connect to the global internet and are subject to intense government surveillance.

The regime has reportedly intensified efforts to eliminate South Korean cultural influence, which it views as subversive. So-called "youth crackdown squads" have been deployed to enforce these rules, frequently stopping young people on the streets to inspect their phones and review text messages for banned language.

Some North Korean escapees have shared that exposure to South Korean dramas or foreign radio broadcasts played a key role in their decision to flee the country. Despite the risks, outside media continues to be smuggled in – often via USB sticks and memory cards hidden in food shipments. Much of this effort is supported by foreign organizations.

Ibis is a federated encyclopedia with numerous features. If you want to start a wiki for a TV series, a videogame, or an open source project then Ibis is for you! You can register on an existing instance or install it on your own server. Then you can start editing on the topic of your choice, and connect to other Ibis instances for different topics. Federation ensures that articles get mirrored across many servers, and can be read even if the original instance goes down. Ibis is written in Rust and Webassembly, fully open source to make future enshittification impossible.

With this version Ibis can finally federate with other Fediverse platforms such as Lemmy (example) and others. If you notice any federation problems please open an issue. Note that Mastodon currently ignores activities sent by Ibis for unknown reasons. See the article for more details how federation works.

There are many improvements to signup and account management. Admins can configure OAuth so that users can login with existing accounts from other platforms. Email is also supported now, with a config option email_required to enable email verification for new users. Notifications can also be sent by email if desired. And there is an account settings page to change password and email.

When creating a new article, users can choose which instance it should reside on. Admins can remove articles, making the config option article_approval obsolete. Various other parts of the api were also changed. Additionally the code was split into different crates for faster development. There have also been many bug fixes and minor improvements.

If you are interested what a federated wiki can do, join and give it a try. You can register on ibis.wiki, open.ibis.wiki or other instances. You can also install Ibis on your own server. It is very lightweight and can easily run on an existing server alongside other software. This release includes an additional installation method using Docker. To discuss the project, report problems or get support use the following links:

Lemmy | Matrix | Github

Here is a (somewhat messy) list of all the changes in this version.

Comparing 0.2.4...master · Nutomic/ibis

A federated online encyclopedia. Contribute to Nutomic/ibis development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

wikibot

2025-05-23 07:30:50

Ibis 0.3.0 - Fediverse Integration OAuth and More

Ibis is a federated encyclopedia with
numerous
features.
If you want to start a wiki for a TV series, a videogame, or
an open source project then Ibis is for you!
You can register on an existing instance like ibis.wiki or
[[Setup_Instructions@ibis.wiki|install it on your own server]].
Then you can start editing on the topic of your choice, and connect to
other Ibis instances for different topics.
Federation ensures that articles get mirrored across many servers, and
can be read even if the original instance goes down.
Ibis is written in Rust and Webassembly, fully open source to
make future enshittification impossible.

---

With this version Ibis can finally federate with
other Fediverse platforms such as
Lemmy (example) and others.
If you notice any federation problems please
open an issue.
Note that Mastodon currently ignores activities sent by Ibis for
unknown reasons.
See the [[Ibis_Federation@ibis.wiki|federation article]] for more details.

There are many improvements to signup and account management.
Admins can configure OAuth so that users can login with existing accounts from
other platforms.
Email is also supported now, with a config option email_required to
enable email verification for new users.
Notifications can also be sent by email if desired.
And there is an account settings page to change password and email.

When creating a new article, users can choose which
instance it should reside on.
Admins can remove articles, making the config option article_approval
obsolete. Various other parts of the api were also changed.
Additionally the code was split into different crates for faster development.
There have also been many bug fixes and minor improvements.

If you are interested what a federated wiki can do, join and give it a try.
You can register on ibis.wiki, open.ibis.wiki or
other instances. You can also install Ibis on your own server.
It is very lightweight and can easily run on
an existing server alongside other software.
This release includes an additional installation method using
[[Setup_Instructions@ibis.wiki|Docker]].
To discuss the project, report problems or get support use the following links:

Lemmy
| Matrix
| Github

Here is a
(somewhat messy) list of all the changes in this version.

GitHub - Nutomic/ibis: A federated online encyclopedia

A federated online encyclopedia. Contribute to Nutomic/ibis development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

US immigration authorities are collecting and uploading the DNA information of migrants, including children, to a national criminal database, according to government documents released earlier this month.

The database includes the DNA of people who were either arrested or convicted of a crime, which law enforcement uses when seeking a match for DNA collected at a crime scene. However, most of the people whose DNA has been collected by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency that published the documents, were not listed as having been accused of any felonies. Regardless, CBP is now creating a detailed DNA profile on migrants that will be permanently searchable by law enforcement, which amounts to a “massive expansion of genetic surveillance”, one expert said.

The DNA information is stored in a database managed by the FBI called the Combined DNA Index System (Codis), which is used across the country by local, state and federal law enforcement to identify suspects of crimes using their DNA data.

Wired first reported the practice and the existence of these documents, and estimates there are more than 133,000 migrant teens and children whose DNA has been collected and uploaded to Codis. One of them was just four years old.

Full translation:

By 2030, all SAP company cars are to be electric. The fleet manager of the German software company told Handelsblatt about the experiences gained so far during the transition.

According to the report, the German fleet currently consists of around 19,000 cars, of which just under 5,000 are purely electric. Steffen Krautwasser reported that the selection and availability have improved significantly recently. However, there is still a lack of more affordable family cars on offer.

Electric car industry leader Tesla is not represented in the SAP fleet – ‘not for political reasons, but because the residual values are difficult to calculate given the brand's erratic pricing policy and because the workshop network is still too patchy for SAP's requirements,’ writes Handelsblatt.

In addition to the still high prices, range is considered one of the biggest obstacles for electric cars. However, Krautwasser does not see the latter as a general problem. Concerns among employees that they would no longer be able to get to customers quickly and safely have not materialised. ‘Well over 95 percent of our current electric car users want another purely electric vehicle as their next car,’ he reported.

For acceptance, it is ‘extremely important’ that charging at work runs as smoothly as possible. To this end, SAP is now expanding the infrastructure for supplying electricity to electric cars at its locations. There are currently 1,750 SAP charging points at 14 German locations. In the medium term, the network is expected to grow to 3,700 charging points.

‘We have found that you don't need a charging station at the location for every car,’ said the SAP fleet manager. Employees work from home or at customer sites, charge on the road or drive routes where charging once a week is usually sufficient. The company itself prefers charging to take place in the employee car park: This is because electricity for large customers on site is usually cheaper than on the road or at employees' homes. Employees are explicitly made aware of this.

Hi everyone, I am trying to repurpose a Ryzen 1700 system for a home server, but not exactly sure what the best solution for my needs is, and how to find additional resources.

More context, I have 4 8th hdds (wd blue drives; would’ve preferred reds but, alas). I intended to run these in raid10, but open to other ideas also. These are connected via sata directly to Mobo. I’d like to selfhost a nice NAS stack, to include: my own office 365 / google docs thing, file storage, and storage and playback of music and video files. I’d like to run jellyfin and a myriad of ‘arr things. Please send any and all suggestions. Should all of these run on a single virtual machine?

Alongside this, probably in a separate virtual machine, I’d like to run a home assistant instance with some mild transcoding (I think) going on in regards to some cameras I have around the house.

I also think I’d run tail scale to vpn back in?

What I’ve researched so far is proxmox and casaos (lightly). Casaos is alluring mostly because it seems like an easy on ramp, with lots of visual configuration. I enjoy CLI config, but visual configs are easier to discover settings and options that might not occur to me. I’d ideally favor stability here, as I like to tinker, but don’t have a huge amount of time for it.

Am I on the right track with all this? Any pitfalls? Any must have self hosted software I should be sure to include? Should I set up the storage pool in proxmox first as raid10? Any general advice? Words of encouragement? I’ll take it all.

Apologies if this is the wrong forum — if so, please feel free to delete (and direct me hopefully to a more appropriate locale).

Edit: forgot to mention, system also has a slower ssd boot drive, and a 1070 I plan to pass thru as needed.

Sean Sherman walks through an expansive commissary kitchen in South Minneapolis, his eyes lighting up with excitement. He isn’t taking in the kitchen as it is—dormant but well-equipped with an industrial smoker, a walk-in sausage-making area, and plentiful storage space. Instead, he’s seeing the future of his Meals for Native Institutions initiative, when the space is up, running, and realizing a long-term vision to introduce more Indigenous foods into the American food system.

Sherman, an Oglala Lakota tribal member with an unassuming demeanor, a soft smile, and a signature long braid hanging down his back, has endeavored to revitalize Native American food traditions since 2014, when he founded The Sioux Chef, a catering and educational enterprise. His focus is on “decolonized” food—made without Eurocentric ingredients such as beef, pork, chicken, dairy, wheat flour, and cane sugar—most notably at his acclaimed Minneapolis restaurant, Owamni.

Sherman still cooks at his restaurant, but these days, he has his sights set on a triad of initiatives that bring him closer to the goal of making the U.S. food system more inclusive and indeed more Indigenous. The opening later this year of an Indigenous Food Lab satellite in Bozeman, Montana, is part of that vision. So too is his cookbook Turtle Island (Clarkson Potter), which I coauthored, covering Native foodways across North America.

But in this moment, Sherman is most excited about Meals for Native Institutions, which will provide schools, hospitals, penitentiaries, and community centers with large-format Indigenous foods.

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