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.

Situational Awareness (essay)

Ex-openAI Employee just revealed it all

How's this for a bombshell - – the US must make AI its next Manhattan Project

A forest of evergreen notes

Jon M Sterling, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, has created his own ‘mathematical Zettelkasten’, which he also calls ‘a forest of evergreen notes’.
He maintains a very interesting website, built using a tool he created, named, appropriately enough, Forester.
The implementation of his ideas raises all sorts of ideas and questions for me, almost all enthusiastic. Here are a few in no order at all:
Andy Matuschak coined the term ‘evergreen notes’, which Jon Sterling has further developed with great elegance.

Before seeing Jon Sterling’s site, I had held a simple distinction between the Zettlekasten and the Wiki. I don’t really wish to re-open an old argument, but just want to make a small observation. For me, a Wiki is a public- or semi-public facing product in its own right, a kind of publication, whereas a Zettelkasten is a method or process to produce public-facing artifacts, but it isn’t one of these artifacts itself. But now I wonder whether you can’t do both back-stage and front-stage at the same time. In other words, it looks to me like Jon Sterling is creating a Zettelkasten by my definition (it’s a process to produce public-facing artifacts such as articles and presentations), but he’s working with the garage door open (it’s a kind-of product in its own right). This is an interesting thing to watch, and it’s always fun to experience the mystique of the studio.

https://www.jonmsterling.com/index.xmlJon Sterling

This website is a “forest” created using the Forester tool. I organize my thoughts here on a variety of topics at a granular level; sometimes these thoughts are self-contained, and at times I may organize them into larger notebooks or lecture notes. My nascent ideas about the design of tools for scientific thought are here. I welcome collaboration on any of the topics represented in my forest.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/22/international-criminal-court-seeks-arrests-israel-hamas-gaza

by Owen Jones

The deaths, the atrocities – all were predicted. Those who ignored all the warnings should be held responsible too