The defense secretary’s efforts to block or delay promotions to general or admiral for some officers has raised concerns that he may be targeting them because of race, gender or affiliation with the Biden administration, sources say.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.

The process within the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines is structured to ensure the most qualified officers get promoted.

Hegseth’s decision to intervene in the process has raised concerns among some officials within those military branches and the White House, the nine U.S. officials familiar with the situation said.

https://t.me/exilenova_plus/18477

https://t.me/exilenova_plus/18484

Been digging through a bunch of 70s era comics I bought a million years ago for collage purposes. Thought this was cute, though I'm secretly hoping someone comes along and ruins it.

For the newest piefed release, I worked on a new feature, that allows community admins to choose a "community theme", which overrides the users theme while they are browsing the specific community. This works for every user on piefed, that has the newest version, it unfortunately won't show up on lemmy, because they have a completely different theming system.

There are already some cool themes to choose from (the themes, that the users could pick from before), but the idea with this, is that you can create your own themes for your community and propose it to our Codeberg repository. There are so many cool ways, to make your community stand out, I am imagining maybe a swirling background for a balatro community, a theme that makes posts looked like ripped out pages and a custom comic-book hand as a cursor for !nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social or other comic communities, maybe the hercules, or irix theme for retro communities.

I am sure you have many ideas, that are even cooler and I really hope that piefed get's even more wild and interresting with this update!

(PS: I know that the screenshot is of a lemmy community and that this wouldn't work, it's just meant as an example)

Incident prompts political scrutiny across Hungary as Viktor Orbán trails in polls before next Sunday’s election

Serbia has said it found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond, sparking claims by Hungary’s leading opposition candidate of a possible “false flag” operation aimed at influencing the country’s elections.

On Sunday, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had been informed by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, of the discovery near an extension of the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to central and eastern Europe.

The incident comes one week before Hungarians are due to cast their votes in a pivotal parliamentary election, in which Orbán’s 16-year hold on power is facing an unprecedented challenge from Péter Magyar, a former top member of the ruling Fidesz party.

https://x.com/wartranslated/status/2040837773091864718

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

"They're not the biggest group of roommates, but they're by far the fastest growing," said the site's communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

It'd be nice to not be pushed into subscriptions or downloading an app to make a mobile website readable.

And these usually take up the first page of results, so I can't help but feel that the plain, actually usable websites are buried. What else do you guys use?

Pretty comfortable 20-minute hike to the top of the island after a three-minute ferry ride to Kashima.

A Chinese company's publication of AI-enhanced satellite images of US bases in the Middle East is helping Iranian forces identify targets, US intelligence believes.

The ABC has been briefed on the intelligence by a source inside US defence, who says the images are endangering lives.

Chinese geospatial artificial intelligence and software company MizarVision, which the Chinese government has a small ownership stake in, has been publishing detailed satellite images with tagging data of multiple US military sites in the lead-up to, and during, the Iran war.

The imagery showcases an AI tool that identifies and tags military forces across vast areas, a capability that once required the resources of a national intelligence agency.