cypherpunks01

"The work was originally published in The New Yorker, which had planned to run it over four issues but instead dedicated the entire edition of August 31, 1946, to a single article"

TO OUR READER: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use.

The Editors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book)

Yes, I buy most of that, nothing is black and white. Hamas definitely controls Gaza and are the ones with guns, and certainly took whatever advantage they could and continue to. The commenter I was responding to just said "UNRWA gives the aid to Hamas" which I didn't find justified by any reputable source at all.

Many details on the ground are hidden in a fog of war and propaganda from all sides. I just think a couple measures of success of food distribution are to step back and ask, "are people able to get food without being killed on a daily basis?" and "is the population generally receiving food and not starving to death?". And it seems pretty clear to most of the world the answers to these are emphatically "No" since the time the GHF was put in control of food distribution, and when all established aid groups were blocked from providing humanitarian assistance.

Cutting off food supply drives up the prices, both causing mass starvation and providing a great opportunity for Hamas and other entities to resell food at huge profits. If there was more than adequate food instead, then nobody would be starving to death, and Hamas would not gain much benefit from reselling food.

Sorry but there's zero point in providing justification for this. Even the IDF said "it was a mistake that followed a misidentification" and that it "it shouldn’t have happened" [1]. Everyone's in agreement on this point.

[1] https://x.com/IDF/status/1775290147426152931

No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...

https://archive.is/1bllc

PHRI was founded by an Israeli who served in the IDF, among other Israeli physicians.

There's nearly 200 citations in their report, citing a wide variety of Israeli and international media, medical journals, statements by the IDF, etc.

https://www.phr.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Genocide-i...

I think the most common string of arguments is that Hamas steals all the food being brought into Gaza, causing extreme food scarcity. Then Hamas corners the market on all food, raises food prices with its monopoly, and extracts big profits from the rest of the Gaza population. The claim, in conclusion, is that well-intentioned aid organizations bringing food into Gaza to feed starving people are actually funding Hamas.

The argument has proven totally wrong, because as every single humanitarian organization that operates in Gaza has repeatedly warned in recent months, famine conditions are the direct result of Israel generally disallowing food and other aid into Gaza since March. Had Hamas actually diverted billions of dollars into their food storage tunnels, then logically they would've continued selling it at market price when demand is high now. But actually in reality, there's nothing to buy. [1]

The market solution to prevent Hamas from profiting off food is to first allow in enough food to Gaza such that babies are no longer starving to death, and to then bring in so much food supply that prices decrease until it's no longer economically profitable to resell food, because it's widely available. That solution is never brought up for some reason.

[1] ‘There is nothing to buy’: Gaza’s descent into mass starvation https://www.ft.com/content/e5d7bcbb-4c9d-47b8-b716-6bd58ad57...

Right, except that all credible reports from the US government and senior Israeli military officials indicate there was never any large diversion of UN aid to Hamas. It was just a fog-of-war story made up by the Israeli government as a supposedly plausible reason to hermetically seal Gaza and prevent millions of civilians from receiving food.

Sources:

NYT: No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say

https://archive.is/1bllc

Reuters: USAID analysis found no evidence of massive Hamas theft of Gaza aid

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/usaid-analysis-fou...

Oh wait, except that's not true.

Retired Maj Gen Yoav Har-Even described how the IDF's drone operators mistook an aid worker carrying a bag for a gunman, and then targeted one of the World Central Kitchen vehicles with a missile.

The IDF then described how two people escaped that vehicle and got into a second car, which was hit by another missile from a drone.

The military confirmed that there were survivors from the second explosion, who managed to get into the third vehicle - which was then also hit by a missile.

By the end, all the aid workers were dead.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68742572

Agreed that bombing the 1st vehicle of aid workers was a mistake. Then bombing the 2nd vehicle was a mistake, and the 3rd vehicle bombing was also a mistake.

Unfortunately this still hasn't happened yet. There are almost no good options for reasonable size Androids anymore. Zenfone 10 is pretty good, especially with the headphone jack, but it's already out of print and will be obsolete before long. And smaller would be nicer.

Any other current gen recommendations?

Were the landing gear switches and fuel cutoff switches pretty close to each other here?

North Korea recently executed what I believe is the largest known theft in history, $1.5 billion in ETH stolen from the ByBit exchange. It was easily traceable to a state-run North Korean hacking group. No police at the door, and ETH only had a temporary dip.

I'd think that if NK was sitting on a $1-10 billion Bitcoin bug, they'd execute it too before it got fixed or exploited by someone else.

No, this could not allow for faking Bitcoin or Ethereum TXs. This type of vulnerability mainly concerns "zero-knowledge" proof methods, which do not occur inside the Bitcoin or Ethereum base layers. Some teams are building ZK proofs on top of these and other blockchains though, so those systems could be vulnerable, though they are still largely experimental.

How does the CT system generally accomplish the goal of append-only entries, with public transparency of when entries were made?

Is this actually a good use case for (gasp) blockchains? Or would it be too much data?

This article is missing what I think is a pretty important PSA on the topic of bacteria in honey:

Honey commonly contains small amounts of the anaerobic bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism.

This is why you should not feed honey to infants, because their immune systems cannot safely handle any amount of it yet. Even though the levels apparently are small enough for the rest of humans to consume worry-free.

Did all the pay-per-article services fail (like Blendle) or are there any decent ones remaining?

“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance said. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”

Maybe it's a legal loophole where the President can unilaterally wage war on specific concepts, people, and physical locations, as long as they keep saying it's not a war against a foreign nation.

"Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled," Trump told a National Guard Conference. "I’ll get it settled very fast. I don’t want you guys going over there."

Someone should really investigate what happened to the 15-year Iran nuclear agreement that set limits on stockpile size and enrichment levels, and allowed international inspector verification.

Bad reporting.

“There was no centralized data breach at any of these companies,” Diachenko said when I asked him to clarify whether any of the datasets actually came from Facebook, Google, or Apple.

Bob Diachenko, a Cybernews contributor, cybersecurity researcher, and owner of SecurityDiscovery.com, is behind this recent major discovery.

https://cybernews.com/security/billions-credentials-exposed-...

Surely the police will start mass collection after the technology is commercialized, to solve theoretical crimes. And then claim that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy, since you freely decided to leave the house and knowingly start shedding DNA in public.

You can go a little bigger than a town in northern Norway - the US Department of Health and Human Services is outputting tokens which cite non-existent studies too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/29/maha-rfk-jr...

https://archive.is/TFUSl

AI-directed bombings of persons are already known to have occurred on a large scale, in Gaza.

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Yes, perhaps in other places they are associated with China, but Americans generally don't know that fireworks were invented in China, and probably not super aware that all cheap consumer fireworks are manufactured there too.

Hasn't happened yet, but I can't wait for the first shots in the US "war on fireworks". It's a natural extension of recent culture wars, combining many familiar elements of climate policy debate, worry over China, the inalienable rights of Americans to buy things that explode, etc. Have any big municipalities replaced their July 4th fireworks with drone displays?

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

A surprising amount of Americans refuse to drink tap water entirely, in their own suburban homes with quality municipal water, or anywhere else they travel, holding the opinion that plastic bottled water is safer and better. Of course bottled water is regulated far less than tap water, and contains an ungodly amount of microplastics from manufacturing and storage.

Under-sink RO systems seem pretty great to me, anywhere you live. With a small holding tank, municipal water pressure is enough to drive small RO cartridges, requiring no electrical power to run, and giving more than sufficient flow rate for all drinking water. I think the biggest downside is a few hundred dollars in initial setup, and cartridges every year or two. This seems safer than relying on the changing opinions of experts as to what amount of harmful chemicals are safe to drink.

If you've found a method to write software that is 100% bug-free, we're all ears.

Reminds me of the story the other day, "Meta found 'covertly tracking' Android users through Instagram and Facebook" with the STUN requests being sent from web pixels back to localhost Meta apps (FB/IG).

I just don't think anyone can be using Facebook/IG, especially persistent mobile apps, while have any real concern about tracking.

Does FB still run their Tor onion service? That seemed to be the only possible way to use these products in the past without being subject to extreme tracking.

Seems that it can also text your friends (so you don't have to)

Android app store says merlinhelp@cornell.edu

Definitely submit full OS and hardware details, and adb logcat crash logs if you can. There's a million possibilities of the cause of the problem, with all the different android hardware out there.