https://stephango.com/file-over-app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data...

Today, we are creating innumerable digital artifacts, but most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service. Even the files on your hard drive use proprietary formats that make them incompatible with older systems and other tools...

You should want the files you create to be durable, not only for posterity, but also for your future self. You never know when you might want to go back to something you created years or decades ago. Don’t lock your data into a format you can’t retrieve.

About - Inside the Outside

Whether we simply enjoy being in the landscape or are involved in its representation the question we will all confront at some stage is ’How do we relate to the landscape?’. There is the inescapable awareness that we are of nature and yet apart from it. And although we can see and even imagine nature, it is beyond our abilities to fully comprehend it. Plus we all become aware that the land is not only changed by the hand of people, it can also change us.

Being in the landscape (and representing the landscape) is to simultaneously inhabit two worlds, the one before us and the one inside us. And when those two worlds collide and intermingle the result can often surprise.

When John Muir wrote “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” (John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir.) he expressed a key element of that two way transformative potential.

Taking inspiration for their name from Muir’s words the Inside the Outside collective are a diverse group of photographers that share an awareness of that potential and for whom it has become an essential element of their work. It is a question they commonly explore, but in highly individual and personal representations of the land around them.

Dealing as it does with the reality of what is before us, and also with the often unspoken ability to express something of our inner selves, photography is the perfect medium to explore our relationship with the land. And it also the perfect medium to mediate between those two simultaneous worlds of being there experiencing and the revelations that occur when we open ourselves to the creative possibilities of that liminal space.

Our aim is to share ideas, derive greater insight and inspiration by working together, exhibit our work collectively and to run associated events, talks and workshops.

Inside the Outside’s core founding members are: Al Brydon, Joseph Wright, Rob Hudson and Stephen Segasby.

Libredirect

A web extension that redirects YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and other websites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends.

The Continent is a free (of cost, ads and trackers) news publication for Africans by Africans

The Continent is a weekly newspaper produced by African reporters, photographers, illustrators and editors. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp, Telegram channel, Signal or e-mail, and has become the continent's most widely distributed newspaper.

It is designed to be read on a mobile screen, with mostly short news pieces of 250 to 400 words, and a few longer pieces of about 900 words. Editions are sent out as a PDF on Fridays.

Led by a small team of nine (all working remotely) and having published contributions from nearly 200 journalists, writers, photographers and illustrators from across Africa in the past year, The Continent has covered numerous important and urgent stories, starting with reliable information from African researchers and public health experts on the Covid-19 pandemic, and on to other ground-breaking reporting: the injustice of “vaccine apartheid” with rich countries hoarding Covid-19 vaccines; the impact of Nigeria’s sudden and dramatic Twitter ban (applauded by none other than Donald Trump); a tender photo essay on being queer in Uganda, in a country where it is dangerous to be LGBTQ.

The Continent is published by the All Protocol Observed, a registered non-profit based in South Africa. It was initially funded by the editorial team, but has since attracted donor and commercial funding. So a refreshing difference is no adverts and also no tracking. You receive the PDF weekly via your channel of choice (or you can just download it from their website), and you can reshare this with anyone you wish to.

Credit to Jan Wildeboer @Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: for sharing this on the Fediverse."

Hebrew version:   https://www.mekomit.co.il/עדויות-חיילים-ירינו-בלי-א

‘I’m bored, so I shoot’: The Israeli army’s approval of free-for-all violence in Gaza

Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please.

In South India, these are seen a lot, as soon as it starts to rain.


Xenobolus carnifex - Wikipedia

Xenobolus carnifex is a species of spirobolidan millipede found in South India and Sri Lanka.[1] It is a common species and can become a household pest, infesting and damaging thatched roofs, creating a "continual shower of faecal pellets", and invading food and water supplies.[2] X. carnifex ranges from 58 to 65 mm (2.3 to 2.6 in) in length...

‘This used to be a beautiful place’: how the US became the world’s biggest fossil fuel state

No country has ever in history produced as much oil and gas as the US does now and Louisiana is ground zero

https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/
W3C Group Draft Note 10 June 2024

The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a positive social benefit. As we continue to evolve the web platform, we must therefore consider the consequences of our work. The following document sets out ethical principles that will drive the W3C's continuing work in this direction.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth
"The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one"

So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.

(see original article for links).

Linux-based postmarketOS v24.06 supports over 250 devices, taking on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS
Dannie van der Merwe

Linux-based postmarketOS v24.06 supports over 250 devices, taking on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS

The appeal of running Linux on personal devices lies in the freedom it offers. postmarketOS does not require account setups, does not push cloud storage, avoids pre-installed bloatware, and does not follow privacy-invasive AI trends. Instead, it focuses on free software, user control, and extending device usability beyond the original vendor's support.

This release includes many device ports previously accessible only in the bleeding-edge version, now available in the stable release. While some devices may only boot Linux, they offer unique use cases, such as running a web server on an old phone powered by a portable solar charger.

Many supported devices are still in test, but they include many "ancient" phones as well as many Chromebook devices. It appears to have a choice between GNOME or KDE.

The only challenge I foresee, really, is going to be app support. Most users are used to millions of available Android or iOS apps to access gaming, banking, media streaming, etc. Whilst most of this will probably work fine, I foresee some challenges with some banks which still insist that you use their banking app on a non-rooted phone. For example, one of my banks will insist that I use biometric authentication on their Android app even if I want to log in with my desktop browser. Also, if you're a smartwatch user who wants to track their exercising say with the Strava app, this may not be for you.

But there are very many users who may not have these requirements where this OS could work really well, especially from a privacy perspective, and providing support for older phones that no longer get any app updates.

postmarketOS is based on Alpine Linux, which is so tiny (less than 10 MB in size) that development of pmOS can be done quickly on any Linux distribution.  Writing packages is easy, by the way: as long as you know how to write shell scripts, you are good to go.

The linked article brought this OS to my attention, and they do also provide a link to the OS' main website.