marc hofer

Freelance journalist. Former Nairobi, Kampala, Beirut, Beijing and Brussels. Now back in Europe.

[🏴‍☠️Maddox🏴‍☠️ @realmaddox]

This is an insane story. The DOGE whistleblower who said that login attempts were made to the NLRB from Russian IP addresses minutes after DOGE got access had his brake lines cut and photos of him walking his dog from a drone taped to his door after Musk attacked him on Twitter

[marc hofer @marchofer]

Guys, come on …

[Soumaya Keynes @SoumayaKeynes]

When China spent decades building dominance in rare earths supply chains, what was it really trying to do? Build an economic weapon? Or something else?

I asked @jessicacweiss on The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes podcast this week...

https://t.co/RqPftAkwq7

[Bill Bishop @niubi]

It was absolutely intending to build an economic choke point with rare earths... just ask Japan after 2010. another bad take from the SAIS professor. Next time she is interviewed, please ask who invited her to the recent meeting in New York with wang yi, us china business council and ncuscr. Did one of the us orgs invite her and the other academics, or did the PRC side? And also ask who funds the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at SAIS. SAIS has not disclosed so far. As a sais alum that is disappointing, and given her intention to become the leading light of china policy for the Democratic Party, esp with her forthcoming book, we should have transparency on funding sources

[CR1337 @CR1337]

German 🇩🇪 police is buying and using data from the advertising industry.

This often includes location data, from which movement profiles of phones / their owners can be derived, reported by @netzpolitik_org:

"We asked all 16 state data protection authorities – none gave a specific legal basis for the use of commercial location data by the police."

[Vas Panagiotopoulos @criticalvas]

According to the German civil liberties organisation @freiheitsrechte, journalist Trung Khoa Lê and the organisation have filed a complaint with authorities in 🇩🇪Berlin over an alleged attempt to infect the reporter's phone with Predator spyware in 2023.

https://t.co/jtUrGOqXXa

[GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS]

@waozixyz GrapheneOS won't have any warnings for apps from unverified developers. Google is mainly shooting their own foot with these warnings. It's Google Play Integrity and Apple App Attest severely harming GrapheneOS and other present and future alternatives to the Apple/Google duopoly.

[Mary Kissel @marykissel]

Of note. I remember talking to media execs in Trump I and asking them to stop conflating our free press with CCP propaganda outlets. They refused, mostly because they wanted access to the China market. So naive.

[marc hofer @marchofer]

@fbermingham And Spain is jumping ship now ?

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

One year ago today, Trump "tapped" Palantir to compile a "master database" on all Americans.

Since then, Palantir added roughly $90 billion in market cap, landed 150+ new government contracts, grew government revenue by 84%, and commercial revenue by 137% all in a single year.

Big Brother’s business model is doing great.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Last week: @thenerve_news.

This week: the FT View.

We forensically tracked cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne’s donations against Nigel Farage’s crypto policy statements.

Yesterday the FT pulled out this same point in its main editorial & notes the similarity to Trump.
1/

[Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 @Yaqiu]

A Chinese dissident’s worst nightmare: You escape China, only to find the CCP still making your life hell — and the interpreter for the police in your new country, the person who is supposed to help you, turns out to be a CCP shill. https://t.co/i9YJv5JrC4

[Henry Gao @henrysgao]

Turns out the truck driver agreed to pick them up only because he suspected @lexfridman & co as spies:
https://t.co/GC0iIZcUsK

[CR1337 @CR1337]

A Reddit user found out that Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes - on a phone that cost $1,900 - talk about greed..

[marc hofer @marchofer]

A few years ago I had a discussion with an acquaintance about if we will enter a world where most business will only cater for the ultra rich, as they will be able to actually keep a whole economy afloat …looks like we are about to enter this world.

[Leyla @LeylaKuni]

The most demoralizing chart you will see today

[NetAskari @NetAskari]

Here is PART 2 of our investigation into the "Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel". A test dashboard design that gives us exclusive insight into the world of Chinese surveillance of foreigners by its police service. This time we will introduce a few more elements, plus what else we found on the server and some thoughts. Let's go! 1/9

[GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS]

@TechX1320 @thatguy3357 @clanceeinfinity @Techjunkie_Aman No, you're wrong. Using a device without crucial privacy/security patches and protections isn't fine. GrapheneOS adds very important privacy/security patches and protections missing in AOSP. LineageOS does the opposite. Most devices with LineageOS are missing years of patches.

[Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham]

Serbian president Vucic wrote a piece in SCMP before his trip to China this week calling for Europe to pull closer to Beijing. It's also an elegy to Xi Jinping...

Some extracts

https://t.co/33f4G016YU

[marc hofer @marchofer]

@ChinaBeigeBook @shehzadhqazi The original post …

[NetAskari @NetAskari]

EXCLUSIVE: How the track foreigners in China - We got rare access to demo system developed by the Ministry of Public Security in China for the prefecture of Zhangjiakou, to track and surveil foreigners visiting or being residents ( actually it applies to most nationals as well, but in this case it seems to be aimed at foreigners ). It is officially known as "Dynamic control platform for overseas personnel". 1/12

[GrapheneOS @GrapheneOS]

@TechX1320 @Techjunkie_Aman GrapheneOS is built for everyone and most people can benefit from using it. LineageOS and microG have drastically worse compatibility, usability, stability, privacy and security. You're trying to mislead people about GrapheneOS and trick them into using far less private options.

[Eric Parker @EricParker]

PSA: APKPure is distributing a malicious copy of Telegram.