I wasn't able to find an upload in the fediverse this time. If you prefer to watch somewhere else:

Bluesky
Non YT
YT

Ever noticed how things tend to die a little too soon? So have we.

That’s the topic of our latest report.

Read more at forbrukerradet.no/shortlife

Let’s make quality the norm again

A more circular economy is not only important for the environment. It can also strengthen consumer rights and improve societal resilience. In this report, we show how consumer policy can make circular choices easier, safer and more attractive for consumers.

For the first video of the series, titled "The Enshittificator", see here

Key points:

What Wildberries probably is a Russian version of an earlier Amazon, when Amazon was not worth much and was struggling to find its way to become a major business, but in a much smaller, sanctions-plagued market like Russia

Thinking that if you take down Wildberries all Russian retail trade will collapse is wrong. No, it will not. Retail is one of the fastest-recovering, most flexible, and most fluid industries. Russia can live without it. It did so only a few years ago.

The main conclusion from Ukrainian strikes, sanctions, and all these sources of pressure is that the pressure is working. The cracks are visible. Ukrainian strikes are adding fuel to the fire, significantly and visibly exacerbating the crisis

The article also goes into more details related to the June partnership between Wildberries and VTB (“Foreign Trade Bank"), one of the biggest Russian players and second-biggest bank after Sberbank, and how big of a whole it is for them

This consultation is on the future of the Woodside Viaduct, a crumbling 1960s elevated motorway that cuts off North and North West Glasgow from the city centre. Temporary propping works that were meant to take 2 years and cost £35m will now take at least 6 years and £150m.

Transport Scotland now want our opinion on three options: Repair the viaduct for up to £200m extra, replace it for up to £500m extra, or remove it for under £125m.

For comparison Strathclyde Partnership for Transport say it would cost an initial £300m to create a world-class bus service as good as any in Europe for the entire region.

Transport Scotland's consultation document claims that removing the motorway causes the most pollution, even though the exact opposite happened when other cities removed urban motorways.

Center 795 was stood up in late 2022, its mandate was framed around assisting the Russian war effort in Ukraine through battlefield intelligence, special operations, and sabotage behind enemy lines

[...]

Alimov spoke Russian. Durovic spoke Serbian. Neither commanded the other's native tongue at the level sufficient for operational communication. Their solution was straightforward and, as it turned out, catastrophic: they used Google Translate, converting Durovic's Serbian field reports into Russian for his handler, and Alimov's Russian instructions back into Serbian for his agent.

The messages themselves were transmitted through encrypted applications that the men believed to be secure. But Google operates through servers in the United States, which fall squarely within the reach of an FBI surveillance warrant. Armed with a court order, investigators were able to access the logs of these translations directly from the service provider, reading the clear-text content of the entire operational communications thread in real time, even as Alimov and Durovic believed themselves protected by end-to-end encryption.

The surveillance logs, portions of which have been quoted in a newly unsealed U.S. grand jury indictment, read at times like an absurdist document: two operatives of Russia's most secretive assassination unit conducting a murder-for-hire plot through a consumer translation tool, their every instruction and status report preserved in legible, timestamped entries on an American company's servers. It was, as a source close to the investigation later noted, even better than a wiretap because it arrived transcribed.

Source: https://eupolicy.social/@finnmyrstad/116141082378515849

❓️Have you noticed that digital products and services are getting worse? So have we!

➡️We have published a report about enshittification, on how and why digital products and services keep getting worse - and how we can turn the trend (hint: open tech, enforcement, public policy++)

Obviously @pluralistic is a big inspiration and help in this work.

More than 80 groups in Europe and the US has joined in a call to action.

More here: www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

Enjoy this short film!

I was sent this map without a source but I thought it was impressive nonetheless. It shows the SeaWorld parking lot in yellow. The green dot is where Orcas spend their lives.

edit: This is Seaworld San Diego, California

This is the question posed on CityNerd video titled "Walkable Cities But They Keep Getting More Affordable"

If you ditched your car, could you afford to leave the suburbs for a great urban neighborhood?

Ray Delahanty answers the question in the 26 biggest US cities.

The analysis assumes the all-in cost of owning and operating a car is $1,000 per month, including purchase, insurance, fuel, and maintenance.

In the city, transportation costs might total about $250 per month for transit passes, biking, ride-hailing, and other small expenses.

This results in an effective $750 per month increase in the housing budget for city center residents who do not own a car.

The results of the video are quite interesting, as you can get more m² in walkable areas in most cities

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63497933

Dallas has obtained unique drawings showing the scale of the modernization of Plant No. 9 in Yekaterinburg.

This plant is a key manufacturer of artillery barrels for the Koalitsiya and Msta self-propelled howitzers, tank guns for the T-90 and T-14 Armata, as well as for the modernized T-62 and T-72 tanks.

Over the past ten years, Russia has been actively purchasing German, Italian, and Taiwanese machine tools. Even now, despite sanctions, the plant plans to install 22 units of foreign equipment. How did they get there?

The results of the joint investigation with @Tatarigami_UA are available on this link.

Transcription from 256 Cyber Assault Division:

You’ve probably seen this story making the rounds online: russian soldiers are trying to activate their Starlink terminals by finding Ukrainian citizens willing, for 30 shekels, to register them in their own name.

No surprise there: the enemy’s abrupt switch from reliable “capitalist” connectivity to domestic low-tech workarounds has seriously degraded their communications – disrupting coordination and putting a dent in assaults and drone activity across the frontlines.

Knowing how desperately russians will hunt for any way to bring Elon’s terminal back online –and the risks resumed comms creates for the Ukrainian defenders – we, together with InformNapalm and MILITANT, decided to help. We did so by creating a network of channels and bots that appeared to offer activation services for a fee.

In one week, we received:

• 2,420 submissions with enemy Starlink details and precise geolocations;
• 31 messages from would-be collaborators eager to act as registered holder for activation;
• $6,000 in “donations” from russian troops who were frantically looking for a fix to their comms problem.

Bottom line:

• Information on enemy terminals was passed to Serhiy Sternenko so they can be permanently neutralized;
• Data on would-be collaborators is already being processed by the competent Ukrainian authorities;
• The shekels we “farmed” off the enemy will cover several urgent fundraisers for Ukraine’s Defense Forces.

Another thread with details: https://xcancel.com/InformNapalm/status/2021908711791636943

Monsanto, and its German owner Bayer, maintain that glyphosate does not pose a health risk, and government officials say that residues of glyphosate and other pesticides found in food products are almost always so low that they are not considered harmful.

But international scientists affiliated with the World Health Organization have classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans, and recent studies out of Europe have found glyphosate herbicides pose not just cancer, but other health risks.

You can find the results on Healthy Florida First

Dallas has obtained unique drawings showing the scale of the modernization of Plant No. 9 in Yekaterinburg.

This plant is a key manufacturer of artillery barrels for the Koalitsiya and Msta self-propelled howitzers, tank guns for the T-90 and T-14 Armata, as well as for the modernized T-62 and T-72 tanks.

Over the past ten years, Russia has been actively purchasing German, Italian, and Taiwanese machine tools. Even now, despite sanctions, the plant plans to install 22 units of foreign equipment. How did they get there?

The results of the joint investigation with @Tatarigami_UA are available on this link.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63422484

Google alert: CAD files and build playlist are hosted on google services

https://www.powercircuits.nl/home/open-source-tadpole-tilting-cargo-trike

Fully Built, Open Source Design

This is an image of the final build. It looks cool and it's great to ride (but still needs a few improvements).

The build videos playlist: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL3uwHLwN7YKrodkpyXISvayLdFsccHNWB&si=lt0YrWmcryd8LzgT

CAD drawings - v7 - Feb-2026

There is a donation button on the source page as well

Google alert: CAD files and build playlist are hosted on google services

https://www.powercircuits.nl/home/open-source-tadpole-tilting-cargo-trike

Fully Built, Open Source Design

This is an image of the final build. It looks cool and it's great to ride (but still needs a few improvements).

The build videos playlist: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL3uwHLwN7YKrodkpyXISvayLdFsccHNWB&si=lt0YrWmcryd8LzgT

CAD drawings - v7 - Feb-2026

There is a donation button on the source page as well

Autoverkehr reduzieren geht: „Autoparkplätze weichen Fahrradwegen, 30er-Zonen und eine bevorzugte Ampelschaltung für Fahrräder und Öffis erhöhen den Verkehrsfluss: Mit dem Plan Vélo legte der Anteil der mit dem Fahrrad zurückgelegten Kilometer in Paris in sechs Jahren von drei auf elf Prozent zu.“

These committed homeowners, in Arizona - USA, are transforming their barren front yard to bird and pollinator habitat adding desert shrubs and native flowering plants.

This property created an gorgeous xeriscape adding 21 native plants which has already attracted 15 insects species (8 of which are pollinators), a variety of reptiles and more than 20 new birds were seen enjoying the new landscape.

This is what it looked like before:

Source: https://www.birdcount.org/arizona-2025/

Source: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Tjobdr0Lyh0
Starts at 4:07

Here is a small corner which is now teeming with life! With some thought and planning, sometimes several species can be grown close together to create a stunning visual impact in a previously uninspiring spot.

An Alberta gardener set this corner alight with colorful native flowers

Source: https://www.gardenforbirds.org/what-about-this-spot-advice-on-garden-issues/

As mentioned by CompactFlax:

Despite the captions Hemerocallis is not native to North America, but serves here as a colourful addition, adding some red depth.

Sticking only to native plants doesn’t always give a pleasing result (especially in more extreme climates); it’s perfectly ok to mix them in with nonnative (noninvasive) species to add some variety. Having some native plants is better than a manicured lawn and entirely nonnative species!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/62519649

[...]
Paris has shown that it is possible to redistribute public space quickly and effectively, preserving the city’s historic charm while creating streets that prioritize people over cars. The result is a city where parents ferry children to school by cargo bike, commuters glide past the Seine on protected lanes, and cycling is no longer a daring choice—it is a practical, everyday reality.

The Paris cycling change did not happen by accident. It was driven by political will, strategic use of data, and a willingness to rethink how street space is allocated
[...]

Paris school street (Dutch Cycling Embassy)