FreeCAD Version 1.1 Released
After an enormous amount of work and dedication from FreeCAD contributors we are delighted to announce that FreeCAD Version 1.1 is now released and available for download. There are significant amounts of improvements and new features.
https://blog.freecad.org/2026/03/25/freecad-version-1-1-released/
I want you to picture what immediately comes to mind when I say the phrase "the Strait of Hormuz is closed." Got that mental picture? Great. Because, if you're an American, odds are everything you're currently imagining is wrong.
You might be thinking that in order to "close the Strait", some amount of military presence is required. Some form of naval barricade. Ships with guns and mines and things. Or at the very very least, boats. And you would be wrong.
The Strait of Hormuz is not closed due to some physical barricade. It's closed because of paperwork. And, more specifically, insurance paperwork. And, even more specifically, American capitalist insurance paperwork. This sounds like the most boring subject ever - until you realize that it controls literally everything about the war, how the war ends, and how things ever get back to "normal". (Spoiler warning, they don't.)
On February 28, 2026, the same day Iran publicly announced that a peace deal was on the table in which America gets literally everything they ever wanted, America decided to set fire to Iran in the form of (deep sigh) "Operation Epic Fury". We live in the stupidest timeline. In less than an hour, American military forces bombed more than 1,000 civilian and military targets in Iran, and murdered more little Iranian girls attending elementary school than the Taliban ever did.
Ships going through the strait immediately saw their insurance rates rocket sky high. Why? Because war is one of the things that insurance covers, along with piracy, natural disasters, and foreign governments seizing your cargo. Before the bombing, ship cargo insurance ran about 0.02% of the value of the cargo they're hauling. On an average cargo ship carrying somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 million barrels of cargo worth approximately $100 million dollars, that's a rounding error. $20,000 per transit is nothing. Immediately following the bombing though, that insurance rate went up to 5% of the value of the haul. Or roughly FIVE MILLION DOLLARS per ship per transit. Put simply, that's like you waking up one day and finding out that because some idiot bombed the Toyota factory half a world away, your car insurance just went up to $50,000/ a month overnight.
And then, to make things worse, on March 2, the insurance companies just yanked everyone's insurance completely. They sent out letters saying that in 72 hours, all ships in the Strait of Hormuz would have their insurance cancelled. If you had infinite money, you couldn't buy insurance for your vessel. The actuarial tables took one look at the state of US involvement in Iran and just went FUCK NO. So, on March 5, 2026, every single vessel attempting passage through the Strait of Hormuz - an active war zone - quietly and completely lost all their insurance.
Now, what can ships do without insurance? Basically nothing. If you're an uninsured cargo vessel, no port is going to take you, your cargo won't make it through customs, your financing collapses, and your flag State pulls your registration. Basically the entire legal infrastructure underpinning global overseas trade says if you don't have insurance, you don't sail. So don't sail is exactly what everything and everybody did. America essentially cockblocked itself using capitalism.
Over the next few weeks Iran began allowing a few vessels through the Strait, from nations it considers non hostile. And by "allowed", what I mean is, the insurance companies decided that some non hostile nations such as China could buy insurance for their vessels. But there's a catch. They had to buy that insurance using Chinese yuan. Which, China was only too happy to do.
And then, THEN, something amazing happened. Something that hasn't ever happened before in the history of the world. Cargo ships started broadcasting their international country of origin AS CHINA. Japanese and Indian cargo ships started blasting the airwaves claiming "China owner" or "All crew and ship Chinese". They were hacking the embargo WITH BRANDING. And it worked! They bought insurance with Chinese yuan, and were allowed passage through the Strait. Problem solved! Everyone's happy!
Guess who isn't so happy about that, though. America. America, who is the largest exporter of petroleum and liquid natural gas in the world. Of course, Trump wants the Strait open. If America can't export its petroleum and petroleum based byproducts, because its ships, and its ships alone can't buy the insurance they need at literally any amount of American dollars, then American petroleum manufacturers start losing money. Which means Trump starts losing money.
So what does Trump do next? In his infinite wisdom, he decides to, in order:
- insult them
- insult their religion
- threaten them with annihilation
- send the Navy to physically blockade the Strait.
The Strait which was open before he bombed them, and is still open to everybody but him, and which he desperately needs to be open.
And I want you to just have a little think about what that "blockade" actually looks like. Because if you think the US Navy is just shooting down Japanese and Chinese and Indian and South Korean civilian shipping vessels with absolutely no response from those governments, you're a special kind of stupid. No, what this actually looks like in practice is a US Navy vessel is parked just outside the Strait of Hormuz asking everyone else - who has the legal right and paperwork to sail through the Strait - to please pretty please don't sail though. And then when they fucking ignore us and sail through the Strait anyway, the US Navy writes down the ship's identification number on a list and has a little cry about it.
So, here's the international state of affairs as it stands right now:
America is currently blockading itself, and ONLY ITSELF from passage through the Strait of Hormuz using its own Navy, because of actions taken by its own Air Force, which closed the Strait of Hormuz due to its own capitalist system, which is the only reason America even gives a shit about Hormuz in the first place.
Art of the fucking deal, folks.
Open Letter to European Citizens
The door to digital sovereignty is open, please come in
We ask European citizens, and through them those who govern European countries, to understand one important thing: the door to digital sovereignty does not open simply by choosing different software, but by understanding what sovereignty actually entails.
It requires open document formats, open fonts, continuity of expertise, and honesty about what "open" means.
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/31/open-letter-to-european-citizens/
RE: https://halo.nu/@theguardian_us_opinion/116084253302650102
Hi there, we've been building it for the last 15 years and more, you're welcome!
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Waymo admits that its autopilot is often just guys from the Philippines
Remote drivers intervene in unusual situations > **The takeaway: As robotaxis and other AI-based technologies proliferate, so does the myth that these systems are fully autonomous. During a recent Senate hearing, industry leader Waymo provided the latest reminder that AI relies on human labor – often low-paid – more than people realize. ** Waymo’s chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, recently noted that when the company’s robotaxis encounter unusual situations, they may request real-time input from a remote response agent, receiving human guidance when needed. While some of the contractors work in the US, many operate from other countries, such as the Philippines. The admission is another example of human workers, often contractors, supporting supposedly autonomous AI systems from behind the curtain. Tesla’s robotaxis still rely on human monitors sitting inside each vehicle. Contract labor has been at the heart of AI since OpenAI sparked the latest wave of investment in the technology several years ago. ChatGPT relied heavily on workers from across the world to train its underlying large language model, often for as little as $15 an hour with no benefits. Filipino remote workers also oversaw most of the orders taken through Presto Automation’s supposedly autonomous fast-food drive-thru system. Meanwhile, Amazon’s ill-fated Just Walk Out technology, which claimed to handle physical purchases automatically without involving cash registers, actually relied upon workers in India to monitor customers. Tesla’s robots, the primary reason why the company is discontinuing its most popular vehicles, became arguably the most notorious example of this phenomenon in late 2024. At the company’s “We, Robot” event, the robots admitted that they still relied upon human intervention, and a video of a unit falling over after mimicking the motion of its remote operator removing their headset went viral. However, the senators grilling Peña at the hearing were less concerned about the use of remote workers than the fact that many were not American. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey called the employment of foreign remote workers “completely unacceptable.” While input lag from workers operating halfway across the world presents a safety issue, lawmakers were also concerned about Waymo’s connections to China and other foreign countries. Although Tesla uses its own cars, Waymo employs vehicles from various countries, including China. The decision drew suspicions that the Alphabet-owned company is attempting to circumvent import restrictions on Chinese vehicles. When asked about the use of internet-connected Chinese cars on American roads, Peña emphasized that the autonomous driving systems are installed in the US. > Correction (Feb 10, 2026): The original version of this article described Waymo vehicles as “switching control” to remote drivers in unusual situations. Waymo says its remote fleet response agents do not directly operate vehicle controls, but instead provide real-time contextual information that the autonomous system uses while remaining in control of the vehicle. The article has been updated to clarify this distinction.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@leavex/115969097196838598
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