It sounds like there’s a variant of the PFM-1, the small “butterfly” mine, that does self-destruct (the PFM-1S). I don’t believe that the larger ones generally do, though, and if so, a search doesn’t turn up material on them.

My understanding is that the mine designs that Russia (and Ukraine) have in inventory tend to date to the Cold War, too.

It’s been defunct for at least a decade if not more.

Are these the games that you’re talking about?

https://jiggmin2.com/

It looks like a lot of them may be archived here, as searching for “lego” turns up about 600 results. At least some of those look like officially-branded things.

Kurdish Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq are preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran, and the U.S. has asked Iraqi Kurds to support them, Kurdish officials have told The Associated Press.

I haven’t been following the whole Turkey thing, but this is the sort of thing that I’d imagine would get the Turkish government twitchy, since they’ve traditionally been worried about an independent Kurdistan showing up, as part of that would likely overlap with part of Turkey.

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

Kurdish areas:

https://stickdeatharchive.github.io/

This site aims to archive as many of the original StickDeath.com games and animations as possible!

Unfortunately, StickDeath.com is gone and it has been excluded from the Internet Archive for reasons unknown. This site aims to host as many of the original StickDeath swf files as possible.

Thanks to the discovery of an active internet archive of the original StickDeath website, most of the animations have been recovered! However, some favorites are still missing, such as most of the wrestling ones, and most of the animated shorts.

Flash is dead, but the open-source Ruffle can play many Flash things, and I suppose could probably play them.

On one hand, that’s good.

On the other hand, it does provide some very sobering perspective on how hard it will be to demine Ukraine, a much larger task.

Yeah, the later images being posted are definitely soldering irons. I think that TurboWafflz is asking whether maybe the thing in the original Star Trek image that OP put up is intended to be a soldering iron, which is a fair question.

I’ve used probes with little hooks on the ends myself, but I imagine that there are pointy probes out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election

Significant differences have been noted by the Hungarian media in the numbers produced by different polling companies.[23][24][25] In January 2026, political scientist Gábor Török observed that the large differences between government- and non-government-affiliated pollsters was a new phenomenon in Hungarian politics. He suggested that the differences as they stood a few months out from the election were “unexplainable on research grounds”.[26]

Government-aligned:

Independent/opposition-aligned:

Interesting.

I mean, it’s telling you to update the Address Library mod. If Fallout 4 gets an update, it may take them a bit, but they should roll it out.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47327

You probably want the current version of that. If Fallout 4 just updated, then you may need to wait for it to be updated.

That thing is required to know where in memory other mods need to fiddle to do stuff outside of the APIs that Bethesda provides, so it’s extremely dependent on the version of Fallout 4 — basically, it being updated means that all the other mods can rely on it knowing what the relevant addresses are and don’t have to be updated themselves. If Fallout 4 gets updated, you’re probably going to need to update it.

EDIT: Some people who run heavily-modded Fallout just buy the thing via GOG to avoid Steam pushing updates entirely, so that they don’t have a window where an update comes out but relevant mods haven’t been updated. You can prevent Steam from doing updates via breaking the update mechanism, but as of 2026, Steam normally updates games automatically, and GOG’s mode of operation is to only update manually.

My own view is that the real issue is that Bethesda really should (a) expose some of the stuff that Address Library provides via supported APIs to mods, so that Address Library isn’t necessary, and (b) should use Steam’s beta branch functionality to establish a “stable” branch for people running mods to have an option for. Not really what Steam intends the feature for, but there isn’t really a better way to both permit updates and deal with the “mod authors need time to update their mods” issue in 2026 in Steam.

EDIT2: I don’t think that you can directly blame Bethesda for Fallout 4 updates breaking compatibility there, aside from maybe not providing APIs for some stuff that mods would like to do so that they don’t need Address Library. Address Library is twiddling values in memory. It’d be unreasonable for Bethesda to commit to having a fixed memory layout across versions; no game developer is likely going to do that.

Depends pretty wildly on what you like.

Some things that I do:

I never want automatic locking — I always lock my machine manually when leaving it, with Super-\ (Super normally being the Windows key). I also want my monitor to power off after a few seconds in that mode, and then wake back up if I start typing. I also want to use a black screen rather than swaylock’s default white.

in my ~/.config/sway/config:

set $mod Mod4

# Handle session-locking triggered by stuff like loginctl lock-session
exec_always swayidle -w \
             lock 'myscreensaver.sh'

# Bind Super-backslash to trigger a session lock
bindsym $mod+backslash exec "loginctl lock-session""

in ~/bin/myscreensaver.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# Script that handles things necessary to "lock" the system when I'm away

# Pause any music that mpd is playing
mpc pause

swayidle \
    timeout 5 'swaymsg "output * dpms off"' \
    resume 'swaymsg "output * dpms on"' &
swaylock -c 000000
kill %1

By default, X11 (and Wayland, apparently, though I’ve spent less time looking at Wayland’s APIs) don’t “store” clipboard state – they just facilitate transferring copied data from one application to another application where it’s being pasted. This means that if one copies data in one application and then closes that application, the clipboard contents go away. I don’t really like this behavior. One way to avoid it is to use a “clipboard manager” — a piece of software that saves a copy of the data itself. If you install clipman and wl-clipboard, you can do this:

In ~/.config/sway/config:

# Make clipboard persist after application termination
exec_always flock -n $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY-wl-paste wl-paste --watch clipman store

I want to get notifications when my laptop battery is low. Install poweralertd, and then in ~/.config/sway/config:

# Power notification support
exec_always flock -n $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY-poweralertd poweralertd

I don’t use it that much, but Sway has a “scratchpad”, where one can stuff a window that one is working with. With this, I send the current window there with Super-Shift-minus then make it pop back up as a floating window with Super-minus:

# Scratchpad
bindsym $mod+shift+minus move window to scratchpad
bindsym $mod+minus scratchpad show

I have a mute button on my laptop’s keyboard. I make that mute the default PipeWire sound sink. In ~/.config/sway/config:

bindsym XF86AudioMute exec "wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ toggle"

I swap Caps Lock and left Control. This is how traditional Unix keyboards worked, and is generally more-friendly if you are using the Control key a lot more than Caps Lock. I’d consider this almost a precondition to use emacs without making your left pinky miserable. In ~/.config/sway/config:

input "type:keyboard" {
      xkb_options ctrl:swapcaps,compose:menu,compose:ralt
}

That also sets my menu key (on my desktop) and right Alt key (on my laptop, which doesn’t have a menu key) to be Compose. That way I can do things like type “ö” by hitting Compose o and then the double-quote key, or an em-dash (“—”) with Compose hyphen hyphen hyphen.

I don’t like keeping my mouse pointer visible unless I’m actually moving it. In my ~/.config/sway/config, this will hide it after three seconds:

# Hide mouse cursor after a period of inactivity.
seat seat0 hide_cursor 3000

I like to have a way to, using the keyboard, hide the latest notification shown by swaync, the default Sway notification manager. In ~/.config/sway/config:

bindsym $mod+grave exec "swaync-client --hide-latest"

Then Super-backtick will hide the most recent notification to show up.

Sounds like we’re going to have two and China is going to have two:

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

Operational

Megaconstellations

• Amazon Leo — Amazon’s constellation will consist of 3,236 satellites operating in three orbital shells. Service began in 2025.
• Guowang/SatNet — a Chinese megaconstellation project created by SatNet, a firm backed by the CAST.[43] it plans to be constituted of over 13,000 satellites by the project’s end.[44]
• G60/Qianfan — a Chinese megaconstellation project developed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) to deploy 14,000 satellites by 2030. The first stage consists of 1,296 satellites to provide global coverage; 648 of these are to be launched by the end of 2025 to provide regional network coverage. The first launch was on August 6, 2024.,[45] second batch of satellites were launched on 15 October 2024.
• Starlink — a subsidiary of SpaceX, its satellite constellation provides high-speed Internet and some phone services. Regular service began in 2021.[46]

One thing that I’ve found that I like is having my waybar not normally visible. When I need to glance at the bar, I can just hold the Sway modifier key to make it temporarily show up.

in ~/.config/sway/config:

bar {
    swaybar_command waybar
    mode hide
}

More screen space for whatever I’m actually doing. If something is so critical that it needs to grab my attention (e.g. battery low on a laptop) then I have it set up to send a message to the notification manager.

Not what you asked, but regardless of whatever else you’re doing, I would take any really critical data you need, encrypt it, put it on a laptop or other portable device, and bring it with you. Trying to throw together some last-minute setup that you rely on and can’t easily resolve remotely is asking for trouble.

Another fallback option, if you have a friend who you trust and can call and ask them to type stuff in – give 'em a key before you go and call 'em and ask 'em to type whatever you need if you get into trouble.

I don’t think that there’s a lot that I could recommend, because almost everything that you’d want to do would depend heavily on your particular situation.

Note that you probably can get the display replaced for less than the cost of a new laptop, but it sounds like you guys already bought a new one, so…shrugs.

I found it when searching how to make gifs in Linux.

So, the files there — at least some, if not all — are WebP, not GIF. Which is probably generally desirable, as for most content, WebP is going to provide better compression and visual quality.

(I’m assuming that you’re talking about animated video files.)

EDIT: Actually, WebM would probably be preferable to WebP for video.

goes to benchmark a video snippet

$ yt-dlp 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lENnRGei8&pp=ygUJc3VycHJpc2Vk'
$ ffmpeg -i Boy\ Surprises\ Childhood\ Best\ Friend\ Dressed\ As\ FedEx\ Driver\ \[_5lENnRGei8\].mkv out.webm
$ ffmpeg -i Boy\ Surprises\ Childhood\ Best\ Friend\ Dressed\ As\ FedEx\ Driver\ \[_5lENnRGei8\].mkv out.webp
$ ffmpeg -i Boy\ Surprises\ Childhood\ Best\ Friend\ Dressed\ As\ FedEx\ Driver\ \[_5lENnRGei8\].mkv out.gif
$ ls -Ss1h out.*
497M out.gif
 95M out.webp
 18M out.webm
$

Of course, another option is for people to dramatically curb their use of social media, or at a minimum, regularly delete posts after a set time threshold.

Deletion won’t deal with someone seriously-interested in harvesting stuff, because they can log it as it becomes available. And curbing use isn’t ideal.

I mentioned before the possibility of poisoning data, like, sporadically adding some incorrect information about oneself into one’s comments. Ideally something that doesn’t impact the meaning of the comments, but would cause a computer to associate one with someone else.

There are some other issues. My guess is that it’s probably possible to fingerprint someone to a substantial degree by the phrasing that they use. One mole in the counterintelligence portion of the FBI, Robert Hanssen, was found because on two occasions he used the unusual phrase “the purple-pissing Japanese”.

FBI investigators later made progress during an operation where they paid disaffected Russian intelligence officers to deliver information on moles. They paid $7 million to KGB agent Aleksander Shcherbakov[48] who had access to a file on “B”. While it did not contain Hanssen’s name, among the information was an audiotape of a July 21, 1986, conversation between “B” and KGB agent Aleksander Fefelov.[49] FBI agent Michael Waguespack recognized the voice in the tape, but could not remember who it was from. Rifling through the rest of the files, they found notes of the mole using a quote from George S. Patton’s speech to the Third Army about “the purple-pissing Japanese”.[50] FBI analyst Bob King remembered Hanssen using that same quote. Waguespack listened to the tape again and recognized the voice as Hanssen’s. With the mole finally identified, locations, dates, and cases were matched with Hanssen’s activities during the period. Two fingerprints collected from a trash bag in the file were analyzed and proved to be Hanssen’s.[51][52][53]

That might be defeated by passing text through something like an LLM to rewrite it. So, for example, to take a snippet of my above comment:

Respond with the following text rephrased sentence by sentence, concisely written as a British computer scientist might write it:

Deletion won’t deal with someone seriously-interested in harvesting stuff, because they can log it as it becomes available. And curbing use isn’t ideal.

I mentioned before the possibility of poisoning data, like, sporadically adding some incorrect information about oneself into one’s comments. Ideally something that doesn’t impact the meaning of the comments, but would cause a computer to associate one with someone else.

I get:

The deletion of data alone will not prevent a determined party from gathering information, as they may simply record the information as it becomes available prior to its deletion. Moreover, restricting usage is not an ideal solution to the problem at hand.

I previously mentioned the possibility of introducing deliberate errors or misinformation into one’s own data, such as periodically inserting inaccurate details about oneself within comments. The goal would be to include information that does not significantly alter the meaning of the comment, but which would cause automated systems to incorrectly associate that individual with another person.

That might work. One would have to check the comment to make sure that it doesn’t mangle the thing to the point that it is incorrect, but it might defeat profiling based on phrasing peculiarities of a given person, especially if many users used a similar “profile” for comment re-writing.

A second problem is that one’s interests are probably something of a fingerprint. It might be possible to use separate accounts related to separate interests — for example, instead of having one account, having an account per community or similar. That does undermine the ability to use reputation generated elsewhere (“Oh, user X has been providing helpful information for five years over in community X, so they’re likely to also be doing so in community Y”), which kind of degrades online communities, but it’s better than just dropping pseudonymity and going 4chan-style fully anonymous and completely losing reputation.

I imagine it’s rephrased “Copilot”.

If you’re just looking to experiment to see what software’s out there, if you can live without 3D acceleration, I’d probably recommend just setting up a VM on the desktop and running Linux in that.

If you’re wanting to use it on a semi-serious basis, kind of depends on what price range you’re wanting.

In the past, I’ve tended to use ThinkPads, which are not the cheapest brand out there, and are generally business-oriented rather than gaming -oriented. However, I prefer physical buttons, and they do have a built-in Synaptics trackpad with three physical buttons; Linux makes more use of the third button than does Windows, so this is convenient. They also had a long-running reputation for solid build quality (i.e. not having problems with hinges breaking or similar issues).

In general, I’ve been less-happy with newer ThinkPads, and last I looked, many no longer have physical buttons.

That may not matter to you if you don’t care about physical buttons or use a mouse/external trackpad/trackball or similar all the time with laptops.

ThinkPads also don’t typically have terribly bright screens, which again, may or may not matter to you.

the resulting error messages normally at least give you something to search for

lp0 on fire

And:

#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main (void) {
    errno=ENOANO;
    perror("");
    return 0;
}

Yields:

$ ./a.out 
No anode
$

Note that on current, systemd-based systems, one probably wants sudo journalctl -kb to show kernel messages for the current boot.

dmesg reads from the in-memory kernel ring buffer. That can be desirable in some cases, but as the name suggests, the “ring buffer” is a “ring” — it has a finite amount of space and eventually, the old stuff gets overwritten by the new stuff. The idea is that a userspace logging daemon, like journald (or syslogd on most older systems) has time to pull the data from the ring buffer out to (potentially much larger) log files on disk.

journalctl will also post-process the output to do things like convert the time-from-boot to a wall clock time, which is generally more useful for correlating with other things.