US warns countries not to join French, Saudi UN conference on Palestine: Report
The US is lobbying foreign governments not to attend a UN conference next week sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a US diplomatic cable reported by Reuters.The cable, sent to countries on Tuesday, warns them against taking "anti-Israel actions" and says attending the conference would be viewed by Washington as acting against US foreign policy interests.
France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is a US ally in Nato. Saudi Arabia is one of the US’s closest Middle East partners.
Sunwapta Falls, Icefields Parkway, Jasper NP
Sunwapta Falls
Easy two mile out and back trail located along the icefields parkway south of Jasper. The main falls are located at the beginning of the hike and the trail follows along the river downstream, revealing several more waterfalls as you go. River access can be had at the end of the trail as it leaves the canyon. The upper area gets a ton of usage, as does the second falls which are fairly close by and have a good viewing area. Thins out a little beyond that, but its a short hike so stays fairly busy.
The second falls (not including the big chute that comes out from the upper falls). Drops around 15 ft before going into another chute.
The outflow from the uppermost waterfall rushing under the bridge above. Over time it has carved a curving path into the rock on the side with this viewpoint.
Looking downstream from this large waterfall just off the trail. When hiking, you will be afforded other angles of the falls as you continue the trail. The Catacombs Mountains can be seen in the distance.
US warns countries not to join French, Saudi UN conference on Palestine: Report
The US is lobbying foreign governments not to attend a UN conference next week sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a US diplomatic cable reported by Reuters.
The cable, sent to countries on Tuesday, warns them against taking "anti-Israel actions" and says attending the conference would be viewed by Washington as acting against US foreign policy interests.
France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is a US ally in Nato. Saudi Arabia is one of the US’s closest Middle East partners.
Can you be tracked for marketing purposes on a "dumb-phone"?
I'm aware that carrying a phone means that I can be tracked with cell towers and that's fine.
But is there some sort of tracking that can be done on modern dumb-phones that make relevant ads show up(on spotify/youtube) that are based on where the phone has been?
Thanks I'm a newb
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I would unironically love if there were enough people in my life that also wanted to live that way to make it viable... Also the lack of functioning payphones these days would be challenging.
The place (at least in the USA) where I've found the most functional-looking payphones was actually Hawaii... And even then, so many are decaying and non-functional. I've had a silly idea to go back and just roam around and photograph as many as I can.
Sidelines No More
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Republicans Want to Defund NPR. To Survive, It Needs To Do Some Soul-Searching.
Republicans Want to Defund NPR. To Survive, It Needs To Do Some Soul-Searching.
NPR's job is to produce news for every American. Its partisan lean is undermining that mission.Zaid Jilani (The American Saga)
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My wife and I listen to NPR fairly regularly, she donates, I do not.
My argument is as long as they are taking money from companies like Archer Daniels Midland and the Koch Foundation, they don't need MY money.
Local stations (not NPR, but NPR affiliates) even take money from fucking Monsanto(!)
Use supervisor or desktop Linux for TV gaming PC + NAS?
To give a bit of context : I'm upgrading my whole desktop computer so I now have a spare computer for gaming on the TV. I'm thinking of using it mainly as a gaming "console", but might be interested in embedding a NAS as well, and possibly some Docker containers for Home Assistants etc...
So the question : should I just install a normal Distro like Arch, setup a network share and Docker containers, or should I use a proper hypervisor like Unraid and have a VM for couch gaming etc...?
What issues could I expect with both? Are performances impacted with the hypervisor? (I don't plan on doing competitive games on the TV) or is troubleshooting going to be easier on a standard distro?
Did someone do such a setup and have some feedback?
Never properly used Linux before, but I'm a Windows power-user and am looking to transition part of my setup to Linux.
The GPU is going to be an RTX3070 if that matters
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Have you considered/tried streaming games from your primary desktop PC? Obviously very dependent on your situation's specifics, but that's one of the things I do with the Linux htpc I have set up.
And then you wouldn't have to worry about games and NAS stuff competing for system resources.
I'd personally go the hypervisor route (I'm using proxmox, truenas, and an arr stack on my NAS). It keeps things compartmentalized (especially network configurations) and usually keeps me from breaking *everything at the same time.
Top Chinese scientists flee Boston area as Harvard, MIT fall in rankings; Silicon Valley also hit
- Thousands of Chinese researchers and scientists are leaving top jobs in leading US universities and companies, to take positions in China.
- The Cambridge area of Massachusetts is home to Harvard, MIT, and scores of leading companies, and was the number one source of returning Chinese research and engineering talent.
- In second place is the Palo Alto-Berkeley cluster, which includes Stanford, University of California, and Silicon Valley.
- The migration of top scientific and engineering talent back to China is accelerating, but began nearly a decade ago. And while the political situation between China and the United States certainly is a major motivation for many scientists to return, more important is the quality of the education systems.
- Chinese universities are now claiming the top spots across all the hard science disciplines, while American colleges are tumbling.
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It's both stupid expensive and the jobs don't pay enough anymore. I can make the same salary as an engineer working a trade or any other white collar job.
I'm sure the growing distrust in science and general stupidity didn't help either.
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The legislation was opposed by companies such as Amazon and the statewide nonprofit Oregon Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, an industry group, where executives see private investment as vital to their business strategy.
“We universally agree that the way to protect clinics from closure and maintain the broadest patient access to outpatient care is to keep the existing, and multi-ownership models alive and well,” wrote Ryan Grimm on behalf of the association and the Portland Clinic, a private multispecialty medical group, in a March letter to lawmakers.
“In some communities, there is no hospital to swoop in to the rescue, or no hospital in a financial position to save a clinic,” he wrote.
The bill does not go into effect immediately and it contains a three-year adjustment period for clinics to comply with the restrictions. Institutions such as hospitals, tribal health facilities, behavioral health programs and crisis lines are exempted.
Mein Gott, a ray of sanity! Listen it's not everything a constituent can hope for but it's a giant step in the right direction. Congratulations, Oregon!
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Musk targets June 22 launch of Tesla's long-promised robotaxi service
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company will start offering public rides in driverless vehicles in Austin, Texas, on June 22.
Nintendo says your bad Switch 2 battery life might be a bug
It might just be the Switch 2, though.
Nintendo says your bad Switch 2 battery life might be a bug
If you’re dealing with what appears to be poor battery life on the Nintendo Switch 2, the company has a support document with steps you can try to fix it.Jay Peters (The Verge)
Musk’s threat to sue firms that don’t buy ads on X seems to have paid off
Some advertisers return to avoid suits, but Lego and Pinterest rebuffed threats.
Wikipedia pauses AI-generated summaries pilot after editors protest
Editors almost immediately criticized the pilot, raising concerns that it could damage Wikipedia's credibility.
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Apple’s updated parental controls will require kids to get permission to text new numbers
More child safety features.
Apple’s updated parental controls will require kids to get permission to text new numbers
Apple is introducing new child safety features, including one that will give parents more control over who their kids can communicate with.Jay Peters (The Verge)
Anxiety is the most common mental health problem – here’s how tech could help manage it
Anxiety is the most common mental health problem – here’s how tech could help manage it
Devices that deliver mild, constant electrical current can alter our brain activity.The Conversation
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World first: brain implant lets man speak with expression ― and sing, Device translates thought to speech in real time.
World first: brain implant lets man speak with expression ― and sing
Device translates thought to speech in real time.Naddaf, Miryam
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Study co-author Maitreyee Wairagkar, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues trained deep-learning algorithms to capture the signals in his brain every 10 milliseconds. Their system decodes, in real time, the sounds the man attempts to produce rather than his intended words or the constituent phonemes — the subunits of speech that form spoken words.
This is a really cool approach. They're not having to determine speech meaning, but instead picking up signals after the person's brain has already done that part and is just trying to vocalize. I'm guessing they can capture nerve impulses that would be moving muscles in the face, mouth, lips, and possibly larynx and then using the AI to quickly determine which sounds that would produce in those few milliseconds those conditions exist. Then the machine to produces the sounds artificially. Because they're able to do this so fast (in 10 milliseconds) it can get close to human body response and reproduction of the specific sounds.
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40,000 cameras expose feeds to datacenters, health clinics
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What is the catch with Epic Games' free games?
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DOOM: The Dark Ages on Steam
DOOM: The Dark Ages is the prequel to the critically acclaimed DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal that tells an epic cinematic story worthy of the DOOM Slayer’s legend.store.steampowered.com
Standard resolution for me is FHD. Heavy duty games 
If it is true, that is. Any source? DOOM: The Dark Ages requires 16 GB in GPU on recommended and ILL's system requirements are TBA.
When I read your comment, I could not stop thinking about those exclusive games that Epic Games have every now and then. I highly dislike that!
Hardware companies need money. Yes, Doom need at least 16GB Ram for running the game in 1024x768 pxs, as said windowed and ILL for sure need more when the release it. It's programmed onsolence, while current PC can survive almost 15 years or more, they try it with the soft to make these obsolete. Apart of the prices for these games, DOOM>€100 and ILL for sure isn't cheaper. OK. the graphics are stunning, but this don't make a game better than others, these games anyway, apart of the graphics, offers normally an gameplay pretty lineal.
My favoritefirst person game since almost 10 years is The Dark Mod, nice graphics, not worse as in commercial games, intelligent gameplay, it don't need an NASA computer to run it, almost any cheap Laptop is enough, works on Windows, Linux and Mac and is 100%free. 170 community made missions, more released every few month, you can download and add these in the same game menu.
The Dark Mod - Stealth Gaming in a Gothic Steampunk World | The Dark Mod
THE DARK MOD is a FREE first person stealth game inspired by the Thief series by Looking Glass Studios. Download and play hundreds of missions for free.The Dark Mod
- The Last Night on Crookshank Line
- The Lieutnant 4 - A Reciprocal Gambit
Thanks! Will try them out sometime 😀 Last time I tried download missions (which was maybe 2 months ago), I got 404. Hopefully that issue will be fixed now.
Edit: the error was not 404, but "Cannot connect to server". I had to execute a command to make it work. Will give one of these missions a shot now.
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple today shared an update on new ways to help parents protect kids and teens online when using Apple products.Apple
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple today shared an update on new ways to help parents protect kids and teens online when using Apple products.Apple
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple expands tools to help parents protect kids and teens online
Apple today shared an update on new ways to help parents protect kids and teens online when using Apple products.Apple
Remember when corporations avoided politics on social media?
Study finds Twitter surge starting in 2017, most of it Democratic-leaning by surprising range of firms, with negative effects on stock price
Remember when corporate America steered clear of politics on social media?
Study finds Twitter surge starting in 2017, most of it Democratic-leaning by surprising range of firms, with negative effects on stock price.Christina Pazzanese (Harvard Gazette)
Brazil’s panda bond plan illustrates yuan’s growing international appeal
GT Voice: Brazil’s panda bond plan illustrates yuan’s growing international appeal
Brazil's plan to sell its first sovereign debt in the Chinese market is an important step for Brazil in expanding its financing channels and strengthening financial cooperation with China, as well as a clear indication of the growing appeal of the yu…www.globaltimes.cn
Researchers find the first known “zero-click” attack on an AI agent; the now-fixed flaw in Microsoft 365 Copilot would let a hacker attack a user via an email
Aim Labs | Echoleak Blogpost
The first weaponizable zero-click attack chain on an AI agent, resulting in the complete compromise of Copilot data integritywww.aim.security
The thing is I agree with nearly every premise of superdeterminism. But the conclusions seem stretched.
I love the idea of not abiding to the strict assumptions set forth by Bell’s theorem. The idea that determinism doesn’t have to hide within the simple hidden variable model bell’s theorem disproves to be true. The idea that we are essentially always part of the experimental system. The questioning of the objective rational experimenter with free will ideal.
Yet I haven’t seen any serious mechanism explaining how the required correlations between experimenter choices and particle states could have been embedded in the universe’s initial conditions in such a finely tuned manner, given that experimentally, the outcomes are indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics.. I just can’t imagine how this could likely be the case without adding quasi-conspiratorial assumption.
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'Fortnite' Lobbies Can Now Have Up to 92% Bots - Players Are Furious Over Supposed OG Season 3 Update
‘Fortnite’ Lobbies Can Now Have Up to 92% Bots – Players Are Furious Over Supposed OG Season 3 Update
'Fortnite OG' lobbies may now have as little as eight real players, according to a report from a prominent Epic Games leaker.Brent Koepp (VICE)
Bitcoin devs scramble to protect $2.2tn blockchain from looming quantum computer threat
Bitcoin devs scramble to protect $2.2tn blockchain from looming quantum computer threat
Quantum computers pose a threat to Bitcoin’s security. Developers are rushing to future-proof the network. Michael Saylor is unconvinced this is a problem.Tim Craig (DL News)
Trade war truce between US and China is back on
Trade war truce between US and China is back on
Donald Trump says agreement struck with Beijing covers rare earths.Financial Times (Ars Technica)
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Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
Text to avoid paywall
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.
“Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,” one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundation’s announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. “This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word ‘machine-generated’ is used instead.”
Two other editors simply commented, “Yuck.”
For years, Wikipedia has been one of the most valuable repositories of information in the world, and a laudable model for community-based, democratic internet platform governance. Its importance has only grown in the last couple of years during the generative AI boom as it’s one of the only internet platforms that has not been significantly degraded by the flood of AI-generated slop and misinformation. As opposed to Google, which since embracing generative AI has instructed its users to eat glue, Wikipedia’s community has kept its articles relatively high quality. As I recently reported last year, editors are actively working to filter out bad, AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called “Simple Article Summaries,” explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, Wikimania, where “Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.” Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with “machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.”
In one experiment where summaries were enabled for users who have the Wikipedia browser extension installed, the generated summary showed up at the top of the article, which users had to click to expand and read. That summary was also flagged with a yellow “unverified” label.
An example of what the AI-generated summary looked like.
Wikimedia announced that it was going to run the generated summaries experiment on June 2, and was immediately met with dozens of replies from editors who said “very bad idea,” “strongest possible oppose,” Absolutely not,” etc.
“Yes, human editors can introduce reliability and NPOV [neutral point-of-view] issues. But as a collective mass, it evens out into a beautiful corpus,” one editor said. “With Simple Article Summaries, you propose giving one singular editor with known reliability and NPOV issues a platform at the very top of any given article, whilst giving zero editorial control to others. It reinforces the idea that Wikipedia cannot be relied on, destroying a decade of policy work. It reinforces the belief that unsourced, charged content can be added, because this platforms it. I don't think I would feel comfortable contributing to an encyclopedia like this. No other community has mastered collaboration to such a wondrous extent, and this would throw that away.”
A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that it’s still interested in AI-generated summaries.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “This two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.”
“It is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course,” the Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson added. “We welcome such thoughtful feedback — this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly collaborative platform of human knowledge.”
“Reading through the comments, it’s clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March,” a Wikimedia Foundation project manager said. VPT, or “village pump technical,” is where The Wikimedia Foundation and the community discuss technical aspects of the platform. “As internet usage changes over time, we are trying to discover new ways to help new generations learn from Wikipedia to sustain our movement into the future. In consequence, we need to figure out how we can experiment in safe ways that are appropriate for readers and the Wikimedia community. Looking back, we realize the next step with this message should have been to provide more of that context for you all and to make the space for folks to engage further.”
The project manager also said that “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important implications, and we intend to treat it as such, and that “We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement. An editor moderation workflow is required under any circumstances, both for this idea, as well as any future idea around AI summarized or adapted content.”
Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.“Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,” one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundation’s announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. “This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word ‘machine-generated’ is used instead.”
Two other editors simply commented, “Yuck.”
For years, Wikipedia has been one of the most valuable repositories of information in the world, and a laudable model for community-based, democratic internet platform governance. Its importance has only grown in the last couple of years during the generative AI boom as it’s one of the only internet platforms that has not been significantly degraded by the flood of AI-generated slop and misinformation. As opposed to Google, which since embracing generative AI has instructed its users to eat glue, Wikipedia’s community has kept its articles relatively high quality. As I recently reported last year, editors are actively working to filter out bad, AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called “Simple Article Summaries,” explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, Wikimania, where “Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.” Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with “machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.”
In one experiment where summaries were enabled for users who have the Wikipedia browser extension installed, the generated summary showed up at the top of the article, which users had to click to expand and read. That summary was also flagged with a yellow “unverified” label.
An example of what the AI-generated summary looked like.
Wikimedia announced that it was going to run the generated summaries experiment on June 2, and was immediately met with dozens of replies from editors who said “very bad idea,” “strongest possible oppose,” Absolutely not,” etc.“Yes, human editors can introduce reliability and NPOV [neutral point-of-view] issues. But as a collective mass, it evens out into a beautiful corpus,” one editor said. “With Simple Article Summaries, you propose giving one singular editor with known reliability and NPOV issues a platform at the very top of any given article, whilst giving zero editorial control to others. It reinforces the idea that Wikipedia cannot be relied on, destroying a decade of policy work. It reinforces the belief that unsourced, charged content can be added, because this platforms it. I don't think I would feel comfortable contributing to an encyclopedia like this. No other community has mastered collaboration to such a wondrous extent, and this would throw that away.”
A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that it’s still interested in AI-generated summaries.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “This two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.”
“It is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course,” the Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson added. “We welcome such thoughtful feedback — this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly collaborative platform of human knowledge.”
“Reading through the comments, it’s clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March,” a Wikimedia Foundation project manager said. VPT, or “village pump technical,” is where The Wikimedia Foundation and the community discuss technical aspects of the platform. “As internet usage changes over time, we are trying to discover new ways to help new generations learn from Wikipedia to sustain our movement into the future. In consequence, we need to figure out how we can experiment in safe ways that are appropriate for readers and the Wikimedia community. Looking back, we realize the next step with this message should have been to provide more of that context for you all and to make the space for folks to engage further.”
The project manager also said that “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important implications, and we intend to treat it as such, and that “We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement. An editor moderation workflow is required under any circumstances, both for this idea, as well as any future idea around AI summarized or adapted content.”
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
WikiProject AI Cleanup is protecting Wikipedia from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued the rest of the internet.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
— Upton Sinclair
One of the biggest changes for a nonprofit like Wikipedia is to find cheap/free labor that administration trusts.
AI "solves" this problem by lowering your standard of quality and dramatically increasing your capacity for throughput.
It is a seductive trade. Especially for a techno-libertarian like Jimmy Wales.
Ghostty in review: how's the new terminal emulator?
A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.
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Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza
The single explosion destroyed more than 4,000 embryos and over 1,000 vials of sperm and unfertilized eggs. Dr Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the obstetrician who established the clinic, summed up the implications of the attack in an interview with Reuters: “5,000 lives in one shell.”The strike was an act of reprocide: the systematic targeting of a community’s reproductive health with the intention of eliminating their future. In the context of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, reprocide serves as a tactic. Indeed, genocide includes its definition, “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within a particular national, ethnic or religious group.
The bombing of the IVF clinic was one spectacular example, but as a Palestinian women’s rights activist from Gaza, I have lived and witnessed how Israel uses reprocide within a settler colonial framework that seeks not only territorial domination but demographic erasure—a process that began long before October 7, 2023.
When I was 15 years old, following the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008–2009, Israeli soldiers began wearing and distributing t-shirts that depicted a pregnant woman in crosshairs above the slogan “1 Shot 2 Kills.” I recall the fear felt by the pregnant women I knew. The t-shirts prompted people around me to recount stories of pregnant women being killed or wounded during other moments of extreme violence in Palestinian history, from the start of the Nakba in 1948 to the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. Underscoring the eliminationist nature of this violence, Israel remains among the world’s leaders in assisted reproduction technology, actively encouraging birth rates among Jewish citizens.
In an effort to trace the effects of reprocide amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, between October 2023 and October 2024, I collected ethnographic evidence—voice notes, text messages, emails and phone calls—from those enduring or witnessing reproductive violence. Analyzing their accounts alongside official reports from Gaza reveals the many ways Israel has weaponized reproduction, some more obvious than others: from the direct assaults on reproductive health and infrastructure to the conditions it forces women and men to reproduce under to sexual violence and its role in reproductive erasure.
Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza - MERIP
Hala Shoman reports on reprocide as a tactic of eliminationist violence.Marya Hannun (MERIP)
Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza
The single explosion destroyed more than 4,000 embryos and over 1,000 vials of sperm and unfertilized eggs. Dr Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the obstetrician who established the clinic, summed up the implications of the attack in an interview with Reuters: “5,000 lives in one shell.”The strike was an act of reprocide: the systematic targeting of a community’s reproductive health with the intention of eliminating their future. In the context of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, reprocide serves as a tactic. Indeed, genocide includes its definition, “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within a particular national, ethnic or religious group.
The bombing of the IVF clinic was one spectacular example, but as a Palestinian women’s rights activist from Gaza, I have lived and witnessed how Israel uses reprocide within a settler colonial framework that seeks not only territorial domination but demographic erasure—a process that began long before October 7, 2023.
When I was 15 years old, following the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008–2009, Israeli soldiers began wearing and distributing t-shirts that depicted a pregnant woman in crosshairs above the slogan “1 Shot 2 Kills.” I recall the fear felt by the pregnant women I knew. The t-shirts prompted people around me to recount stories of pregnant women being killed or wounded during other moments of extreme violence in Palestinian history, from the start of the Nakba in 1948 to the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. Underscoring the eliminationist nature of this violence, Israel remains among the world’s leaders in assisted reproduction technology, actively encouraging birth rates among Jewish citizens.
In an effort to trace the effects of reprocide amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, between October 2023 and October 2024, I collected ethnographic evidence—voice notes, text messages, emails and phone calls—from those enduring or witnessing reproductive violence. Analyzing their accounts alongside official reports from Gaza reveals the many ways Israel has weaponized reproduction, some more obvious than others: from the direct assaults on reproductive health and infrastructure to the conditions it forces women and men to reproduce under to sexual violence and its role in reproductive erasure.
Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza - MERIP
Hala Shoman reports on reprocide as a tactic of eliminationist violence.Marya Hannun (MERIP)
GNUmer
in reply to asudox • • •Fedora. There's a video of him explaining why he uses Fedora instead of Debian.
Edit: Link to Fedora's pages and a Youtube video on why Linus does not use Debian (or debian-based distros)
fedoraproject.org/wiki/Is_Fedo…
- YouTube
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Resplendent606
in reply to GNUmer • • •Also, incase you're wondering, Richard Stallman uses Trisquel GNU/Linux.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisquel…
Linux distribution
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)like this
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PenguinCoder
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •Why not just Debian without non-free, at that point?
Resplendent606
in reply to PenguinCoder • • •Because Debian does not meet the strict requirements of the FSF. It includes non-free blobs in the kernel and the FSF claims Debian "steers" users with recommendations for installing non-free plugins or codecs. Some "contrib" packages, while free themselves, exist primarily to load separately distributed proprietary programs. There are also references in the Debian documentation and official channels that suggest obtaining non-free software for functionality.
edit: typos
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kemnz
in reply to PenguinCoder • • •I saw an interview where he was saying he objected to Debian adding non-free blobs so he had them put on GNU's shit list.
Dude is cuckoo for coco puffs.
Resplendent606
in reply to kemnz • • •While I think it would be too hard for most people to be completely free of proprietary software, atleast he is practicing what he preaches. It is a nice goal to someday get there, but I don't think its realistic at the moment.
Kind in mind, though, he is 72 and I don't think he even codes anymore. His computer use probably only consists of mostly Emac (for all text based work) and a web browser (which I read he has a very particular method that involves something similar to wget, lynx, and konqueror). His computer use is very light (I imagine) compared to many Linux users.
While I aspire to and appreciate what the FSF advocates, I don't see a realistic path for myself as a Linux gamer. The proprietary firmware limitations alone would keep you on 2015 hardware.
Source: kottke.org/15/05/how-richard-s…
How Richard Stallman does his computing
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kemnz
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •I’m not just talking about the free software stuff.
He’s on the record blaming victims of Epstein and chastising a developer for stepping back for the birth of his child, amongst a host of other crazy things.
Truly crazy stuff.
Resplendent606
in reply to kemnz • • •I knew about the Epstein thing and it is pretty offensive but unsurprising. What is surprising is what I just read about the developer in 2005 who mentioned taking time off for the birth of his daughter, essentially implying that contributing to Emacs was a more valuable contribution than having children. That is messed up.
Even worse, apparently there were also old blog posts where he discussed the legalization of sex with minors and child pornography, arguing that certain acts should be legal "as long as no one is coerced" and are only illegal due to "prejudice and narrow-mindedness."
He's not a great guy. I appreciate the work he has lead with free software, but he's said some pretty screwed up stuff.
Sources:
blog.codinghorror.com/spawning…
npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/f…
Spawning a New Process
Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror)marcie (she/her)
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •Mwa
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •LupusBlackfur
in reply to kemnz • • •Yes...
Stallman is nutty, obsessive, and drunk on his own fame. 🙄 🤡 🤦♀️ 🖕 💩
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Mwa
in reply to PenguinCoder • • •kirk781
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •I once gave Trisquel a try back in the day. It's one of those FSF approved distros right? My use case was more ahem, standard rather than anything programming related. Either case, one evening, I ran into a dependency hell trying to install a simple Direct Connect client onto it and no matter how much I tried I couldn't succeed.
I then decided to move back to Debian. Either case, most distros have Eiskaltdcpp (as one example of a client) in their repos, except for Trisquel. This was multiple years ago. I am currently on Void.
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Resplendent606
in reply to kirk781 • • •This is the experience I imagine I would have trying it. It is probably what anyone with a modern system would experience with proprietary firmware. From what I read, Trisquel's core philosophy is to include only free software and Eiskaltdcpp most likely relies on some non-free dependencies.
I like Debian. I am currently trying Fedora and it has been good, too. Void is on my list of "distros to someday try" as it sounds super interesting using runit, XBPS, and not relying on systemd.
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kirk781
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •Yes, Trisquel can be a pain to be used as a daily driver. Whilst I admire the philosophy behind it's concept, it definitely leaves a lot of end work to be done by the user.
I have used Fedora for quite some time in the past . I think Fedora and now discontinued Cent OS were two RPM based distros (I think Fedora now uses Dnf as well) I have used. Cent OS I liked decently, it wasn't as bleeding edge as Fedora and for a long time I dual booted Cent OS and Debian.
Void is decent independent distro. Ironically I don't have any anti systemd feelings and just gave it a try for heck of it and stuck to it. I think there is a musl version of Void as well but that makes things only complicated.
𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
in reply to kirk781 • • •I feel the same way about Artix. I had it on my laptop for a while, and it was a regular PITA. I think I may have made it harder on myself, because while getting rid of systemd was fine, I was also trying to do without NetworkManager and on a laptop that wasn't a great idea. I never did find a good, reliable set-up that managed access point hopping as well as nm.
Really, thinking back, Artix was fine; it really was just the roaming WiFi handling that gave me grief, and I did that to myself.
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𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
in reply to kirk781 • • •(I'm replying to you twice b/c totally different topics)
Tell me more about your Void experience. I've been meaning to give it a shot, except I don't get as much enjoyment out of fussing with distros as I used to. What are the pain points? Under Artix, I used dinit which I really liked, but I tried s6 first and absolutely hated it. I didn't try runit; how is it?
What I'm most interested in is xbps, because IMO it's the package manager that makes or breaks a system. I'm quite fond of pacman and have encountered far fewer dependency hell situations than I did with either rpm or deb, and rolling release is a must. xbps looks kind of like a rolling stable release?
kirk781
in reply to 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 • • •Void is rolling release IIRC. The package manager is quite fast and gets the job done. The pain point is that Void has a lower selection of package in its repos compared to say, Arch. Some good stuff is there (for example I was looking for a third party Spotify client ncspot? Back in the day and it was packaged in Void's repos) but if someone uses niche stuff a lot, there can be issues.
Of course there is Flatpak support. And the system itself is comparatively lean and fast. I don't think my installation of Void came with plenty of pre-installed apps.
It ships in two builds : glibc or musl. The latter one is less favored because it only makes life tougher honestly. Runit support is a strong point of it though personally I don't have any anti systemd qualms.
The documentation is basic and okayish. I still often go to Arch Wiki since that's honestly the most detailed. Also, I just found that it's the highest rated distro on Distro Watch. I have distro hopped a long time and Void is decent. I still hold Debian in higher regard since it's slightly easier for a novice to get used to (though it's repos can be hold often old versions of software) and also because it was my main entry point to the Linux world.
Mwa
in reply to kirk781 • • •𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
in reply to kirk781 • • •That's what I thought, but the main website says Void focuses on stability over being cutting edge, which would imply some sort of release cycle. Or, maybe they just update packages less frequently.
It's hard to beat Mint as a novice distro, for sure.
kirk781
in reply to 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 • • •𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
in reply to kirk781 • • •Mint eschews all of the Snap crap, though, doesn't it?
Jesus, please tell me it does. I've been recommending it to beginners. I thought it was sanitized.
kirk781
in reply to 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 • • •Ferk
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •GNU Guix transactional package manager and distribution — GNU Guix
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corsicanguppy
in reply to Resplendent606 • • •Your phone was right: this isn't a word.
polle
in reply to GNUmer • • •Mwa
in reply to GNUmer • • •like this
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in reply to Mwa • • •like this
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Mwa
in reply to pineapple • • •vandsjov
in reply to GNUmer • • •like this
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janNatan
in reply to asudox • • •I'm not an expert, but I believes he codes the Linux Kernel on Asahi these days.
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/0…
Linus Torvalds uses an Arm-powered M2 MacBook Air to release latest Linux kernel
Andrew Cunningham (Ars Technica)Zetta
in reply to janNatan • • •janNatan
in reply to Zetta • • •black0ut
in reply to janNatan • • •Count Regal Inkwell
in reply to asudox • • •like this
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limelight79
in reply to Count Regal Inkwell • • •sik0fewl
in reply to limelight79 • • •like this
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LeFantome
in reply to limelight79 • • •Steamymoomilk
in reply to Count Regal Inkwell • • •I think
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bieren
in reply to asudox • • •like this
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in reply to asudox • • •like this
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in reply to Enzy • • •like this
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in reply to asudox • • •like this
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in reply to b34n5 [comrade/them, he/him] • • •like this
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Beagle
in reply to asudox • • •He does not use any distro, he uses the Kernel directly 😀
(joke)
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llii
in reply to Beagle • • •Beagle
in reply to llii • • •JustVik
in reply to Beagle • • •Archy
in reply to asudox • • •