red750

Twitter employees who were laid off over the past 24 hours aren’t leaving quietly.

“Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter,” Rachel Bonn, a content marketing manager, tweeted, beside a photo of herself. “8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access.”

Another former employee, Rumman Chowdhury, who worked on machine learning at the company posted a photo that showed that she had been locked out of her email. A message on her login screen read: “your password was changed less than an hour ago.” Alongside the photo, she tweeted, “Has it already started? Happy layoff eve!”

And a senior engineering manager, Joan Deitchman, on the same team shared on Twitter what she called her last Slack message to a team that she said is now “gone.”

“Know that this was a special team. One that stuck together to the end, full of integrity, supporting each other, and willing to stand up and do the right thing,” the message said. “There will probably never be a team like Twitter META again,” a reference to her team’s name.

The layoffs come nearly a week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and set about to quickly overhaul the social media giant. He hasn’t tweeted about the layoffs since they started. Instead he lashed out on Twitter about activists “trying to destroy” free speech by pressuring companies to stop advertising on his service. He said the exodus has resulted in a huge drop in Twitter’s revenue. Meanwhile, the profile language on Twitter’s corporate Twitter account, as if shocked by all the upheaval, has been switched to ask no one in particular: “What’s happening?!”

In the weeks leading up to the takeover, several news outlets reported about Musk’s layoff plans, including one that said Musk was planning to cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce of 7,500. The actual total is expected to be 50% of the company, or 3,700 workers.

Vladimir Putin’s generals have deployed “barrier troops” to threaten to shoot deserters as his army is dogged by low morale in Ukraine, British defence chiefs suggested on Friday.

His military commanders are also believed to be trying to keep their forces in place “to the death”.

In its latest intelligence update, the Ministry of Defence in London said: “Due to low morale and reluctance to fight, Russian forces have probably started deploying ‘barrier troops’ or ‘blocking units’.

“These units threaten to shoot their own retreating soldiers in order to compel offensives and have been used in previous conflicts by Russian forces.”

The briefing added: “Recently, Russian generals likely wanted their commanders to use weapons against deserters, including possibly authorising shooting to kill such defaulters after a warning had been given. “Generals also likely wanted to maintain defensive positions to the death.

“The tactic of shooting deserters likely attests to the low quality, low morale and indiscipline of Russian forces.”

Britain, the US, Ukraine and their allies are fighting an information war against Russia so their briefings need to be treated with caution, but are far more believable than the propaganda put out by the Kremlin.

Western officials told on Thursday how they believe Mr Putin is set to withdraw troops from Kherson, back from the west side of the Dnipro River, to the east, in a major setback for his invasion.

Ukrainian forces have launched counter-offensives in the southern Kherson province and in the north east of the country.

A Russian-installed official in southern Ukraine said Moscow will likely pull its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson and urged civilians to leave, possibly signalling a retreat that would be a major setback to Mr Putin’s war.

There was silence from senior officials in Moscow.

The Kyiv government remained cautious, suggesting Russia could be setting a trap for advancing Ukrainian troops.

“Most likely our units, our soldiers, will leave for the left (eastern) bank,” Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy civilian administrator of the Kherson region, said in an interview on Thursday with Solovyov Live, a pro-Kremlin online media outlet.

The area includes Kherson city, capital of the region of the same name, and the only major city Russia has captured intact since its invasion in February. It also includes one side of a dam across the Dnipro which controls the water supply to irrigate Crimea, the peninsula Russia has occupied since 2014.

Previously, Russia had denied its forces were planning to withdraw from the area.

Remember the old GMC DUKW amphibious vehicles the army had? (Colloquially called Army Ducks) They were used in the Deni flood in 1956, and one visited the high school for the kids to see.

Voters have told The Age they care deeply about integrity in government.

So news that Premier Daniel Andrews is being investigated as part of a probe into how a Labor-linked union was promised more than $3 million to run a training program, without a competitive tender process and against the advice of bureaucrats, should spell trouble for the government.

But while election campaigns are unpredictable, don’t expect the Victorian opposition to make huge improvements in the polls.

It is likely that the revelations about the previously unreported Operation Daintree, which has kept anti-corruption investigators busy for two years, will only amplify the public’s disillusionment with the broader political class and drive fed-up Victorians to park their votes with independents or minor parties on November 26.

Murky political scandals have the potential to damage both Labor and the Liberals because they serve as a reminder of how major party politics works behind closed doors.

I have been an Optus customer for longer than I can remember. I started when Optus were the only cable TV network. Later, my wife worked for them. Now we only have a mobile wifi modem with Optus, which my daughter uses with her iPad while at the footy or cricket.

I registered my name as a possible victim of the security breach. I received an email from Vicroads this evening to say they have checked their files and my details were not compromised, but just to be on the safe side, they will issue me with a new licence.

Trump supporters could lose 'millions' as shell company trying to acquire Truth Social faces liquidation,

On Thursday, Matthew Sheffield of The Young Turks reported that supporters of former President Donald Trump are facing the prospect of collectively losing millions of dollars they invested into Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), the special purpose acquisition company, or "blank check" firm that has sought to purchase the former president's Truth Social platform to take it public, as DWAC faces its liquidation deadline with little progress on completing the deal.

"In a call with investors, Patrick Orlando, the chairman and CEO of the struggling shell company announced that DWAC was going to reconvene on Nov. 22," said the report. "It was an ominous sign that Digital World had failed to receive authorization from 65% of shareholders to continue the company’s existence, despite months of trying. Under the terms of DWAC’s incorporation, the company was supposed to merge with a private firm within one year’s time or dissolve and reimburse its investors at a rate of about $10 per share."

"Liquidation appears more likely to be DWAC’s fate as Trump himself appears increasingly uninterested in the company (or its stockholders) as it has struggled to defend itself from a criminal investigation that executives engaged in prohibited insider trading and a separate inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission about allegations of illegal contact between DWAC officers and the leadership of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG)," said the report.

Russian soldiers are calling their ageing combat vehicles "aluminium cans" as frustration over the army’s poor quality equipment spreads through the ranks, the Ministry of Defence has said.

A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier in Kharkiv - Efrem Lukatsky /AP

In its daily intelligence briefing on the Ukraine war on Thursday, the MoD said Moscow’s soldiers “are likely frustrated that they are forced to serve in old infantry combat vehicles”.

As Ukrainian counter-offensives recaptured large swathes of territory in mid-October, Russia was losing more than 40 armoured vehicles per day, “roughly equivalent to a battalion’s worth of equipment”, it said.

The high attrition rate forced Russia to resort to take more than 100 vehicles out of Belarusian stocks.

"Armoured units and artillery are central to Russia’s way of war; the force in Ukraine is now struggling partially due to difficulties in sourcing both artillery ammunition and sufficient serviceable replacement armoured vehicles."

Russia rarely shares data on its losses of personnel and equipment in Ukraine, but Oryx, an open source research group, has visually confirmed that more than 7,500 Russian vehicles, including tanks, self-propelled artillery pieces and other armoured vehicles, have been lost since the conflict began in February.

Another costly miscalculation by Vladimir Putin has put Russian troops in fear of collapse as high pay wages drain the military's limited resources, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Insiders said Putin has made several critical missteps since his initial rash decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. As a result of the Russian president's decisions, the country has become fearful of going bankrupt as troops run on limited resources.

Simply put, the Russia/Ukraine conflict has not taken the path that Putin intended when he ordered his troops to invade the neighboring country over nine months ago.

As efforts by Russian troops were continuously squashed and met with power by Ukraine's military, Putin announced a draft in an attempt to revive his weakened front lines. The move turned out to have far greater damning effects on the country than Putin realized.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, higher salaries were promised to desperate Russians being sent to war. Russian military troops were given more than twice the average salary for a civilian.

There are reports that generals plan to go nuclear without Putin's approval.

Vladimir Putin’s hands are reportedly turning black as a result of the intravenous injections he is receiving to treat his myriad of alleged different health conditions, RadarOnline.com has learned.

In a sudden development to come just days after the 70-year-old ailing Russian leader was photographed with what appeared to be intravenous track marks along his hand, new footage shows Putin’s hands turning a dark and sickly-looking color.

According to Lord Richard Dannatt, a former British army chief who first claimed Putin had IV track marks on his hands, the Russian strongman is reportedly receiving injections in his hands because other parts of his body cannot take such treatments.

“Keen observers now are noticing that his hands are looking pretty black on top, which is a sign of injections going in when other parts of the body can’t take injections,” the former British army chief revealed.

“It’s interesting to note that, and just to watch whether he is as fit and well as he would like to portray,” he added. “It’s an interesting area to keep an eye on.”

Report from Newsweek:

Over 100 conscripted Russian soldiers staged a revolt, saying that they have not been paid by the Russian government since being mobilized.

The men from Chuvashia staged a strike in the training center in Ulyanovsk, reported independent Russian news organization 7x7 Horizontal Russia. The soldiers told the news outlet that they were promised 195,000 rubles (about $3,170) but never received the money, so they stopped fighting.

One of those striking said that all mobilized soldiers have been "deceived" and that "they are sent to war for a penny," according to a translation of a November 2 Telegram post published by 7x7.

Prior to riot police showing up to put an end to the display, another mobilized soldier reportedly said that Russian officials stopped letting soldiers' relatives visit and declined providing leave.

Gulagu.net, a self-described human rights project aiming to fight corruption and torture in Russia, posted on Telegram that soldiers questioned why they left their families without allegedly receiving financial support.

"The mobilized servicemen of the Chuvash Republic are turning to you!!" the Telegram post said. "We are risking our own lives, going to certain death for your safety and peaceful life!...We refuse to participate in the Special Military Operation and will seek justice until we are paid the money promised by our government headed by the President of the Russian Federation!!"

Either it's the speakers pronunciation, or the AI voice to text is crap. As I have said in the other thread, captions are OK on pre-recorded programs, where they have time to get them correct, and often ahead of the speach, but live to air they are way behind, and horribly inaccurate. Approximately one error every three lines. Like some of the posts on this forum, you have to work out what they should have said, while trying to keep up.

Closed captions today had Albanese as "Albany see". 

I was fined $430 and 3 points for being 0.6 seconds in the red arrow on a right turn at 9.30 pm.Taking my sick wife to hospital. I appealed. Dimissed. "We have to discourage this type of thing."

20 hours ago, red750 said:

Melbourne is forecast to have the coldest Cup Day since 1995

According to tonight's news, it was the coldest day since 1913, that's 109 years!

Not the slightest bit interested. No bets, no sweep.

You can see how cold it is. Four aircraft profiles in under two hours.

What else are you going to do on a cold, wet, public holiday with no car?