Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/6/2010: HP and Linux, GNOME Shell 2.31.4 is Out



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Tech Exchange talks to Tectonic
    The latest episode of OTE podcast features an interview with Tectonic in which we talk about open source software in Africa.


  • Open Source Geographic Tracking?




  • Events







  • Web Browsers

    • Android Becomes Flash Mobile's First BFF


    • Uncertain future for Flash
      And it's not just YouTube that uses Flash, almost all video sites do, as well as online games sites and entertainment sites. An older survey of websites by browser maker Opera found that in most countries around 30% of websites were built in or contained Flash elements. And in some countries that was as high as 40% or 50%. So it's safe to say that as much as 30% of the web relies in some or other way on Flash.


    • Mozilla: We're not 'on board' with Google's plugin spice
      Mozilla says it has "no official position" on NPAPI Pepper, the revamped browser plug-in API developed by Google for use with Native Client, a plug-in that runs native code inside its Chrome browser.






  • SaaS

    • Red Hat says everybody gets a cloud
      At its Boston developer summit Red Hat is pushing the theme that every company can have its own cloud with the first in a line of Cloud Foundation tools.








  • Programming

    • Take more note when Eclipse code drops on schedule
      Five years into my tenure on this beat and I still read, in comments, snark about open source programmers being amateurs, coding in their parents’ basements, in their pajamas.

      This was always a false image. Not that I have anything against a good parent’s basement, or a nice comfortable pair of jammies. And when open source was being born, at the bottom of the dot-bomb, there was high unemployment in the code-o-sphere.

      But the coders and the coding were always professional. There have always been a lot of people in open source who knew how to make the coding train run on time.








  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • Security/Aggression

    • Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as 'domestic extremist'
      For John Catt, protest has never been about chaining himself to a railing or blocking a road in an act of civil disobedience. The 85-year-old peace campaigner's far milder form of dissent typically involves turning up at a demonstration with his daughter, Linda, taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene.


    • Senator Moves To Form Federal "Cyber-Emergency" Agency
      The President would gain the power to unilaterally declare a national cyber-emergency and order operators of "critical infrastructure" to immediately implement "response plans" as provided for by the act. Those who fail to do so would be subject to fines, while those who comply would be protected from civil liability for any damages they might cause in doing so — government speak for "you can break people's stuff and they're just out of luck."


    • FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives








  • Environment

    • Ushahidi tracks the Gulf Oil Spill: Open Source Crowdsourcing at Work
      Together, crowdsourcing and open source are a potent combination especially during possible emergencies. In this case, the Ushahidi based Oil Crisis Map has helped share data across communities and has openly presented the magnitude of the oil spill. Also, it has enabled people on the ground to actively participate in solving this crisis using current and accurate information.

      Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony") itself emerged from another emergency - monitoring a disputed Kenyan election in 2007 with a mash-up of eyewitness reports onto a Google map. Today Ushahidi has developers from Kenya (where it started), Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the US. Ushahidi was also used in Project Vote Report India for India's 2009 general elections to track election irregularities.








  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Reporters Without Borders unveils first-ever “Anti-Censorship Shelter”
      Reporters Without Borders today launched the world’s first “Anti-Censorship Shelter” in Paris for use by foreign journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are refugees or just passing through as a place where they can learn how to circumvent Internet censorship, protect their electronic communications and maintain their anonymity online.








  • Copyrights

    • Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP
      Yesterday, we reported that ASCAP said that organizations like Creative Commons were undermining their copyrights. Today, we’ve received an official response from Creative Commons with regards to the letter writing campaign.

      In the same article, we discussed how Creative Commons was, contrary to what ASCAP said, not about undermining anyone elses copyrighted material, but rather, giving artists an option that was not the Public Domain (no rights reserved) nor Copyright (all rights reserved).

      Eric Steuer, a Creative Commons spokesperson, thanked ZeroPaid for the earlier posting as being well-thought out and was happy to respond to ASCAPs letter










Clip of the Day



CLUG Talk 25 August 2009 - Experiences as a Novice Linux User (2009)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Recent Techrights' Posts

Mainstream Media is Paid to Link "AI" Criticism/Boosting to Jeffrey Epstein Enablers, in Effect Showing How Corrupt This Media Became
Many readers will have noticed what was a paid-for PR campaign of a global scale
GNU/Linux Does Not Need Social Control Media to Succeed
When it comes to Social Control Media, Richard Stallman was right
SLAPP Censorship - Part 163 Out of 200: Attack on Computer Science and on Computer Security (or Associating Back Doors and Kill Switches With "Security")
Nowadays there are many who pretend to be security professionals
 
Gemini Links 27/08/2026: Oklahoma, Tennessee, Haiku OS, Digital Resistance, and Staying Offline
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2026: Facebook to Pay Up to $17.1 Billion to Cover Up Known Harms, Nepal Landslide Kills Many
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published Paid Spam That Says "AI" 19 Times
1.5 hours ago
RSS is King: Why Having Subscribers or Followers in Sites You Neither Own Nor Control is Loss of Autonomy and Search is Mostly Slop (Plagiarising Sites, Not Linking to Them)
Because digital connections in third parties aren't assets; they endow another party with tremendous power over people (e.g. MElon getting to decide who can and cannot reach people or what messages to "dim down")
Claims of Tens of Thousands of 'Silent Layoffs' at IBM (and Red Hat)
Looking at recent activity in thelayoff.com, about 80% of the comments and posts are about PIPs
Links 27/08/2026: "Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops" and Microsoft's GitHub Actions Breaks Down Again (Too Many Layoffs, Loss of Knowledge)
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux and ChromeOS at Over 13% in Bahamas
Narrowing down to desktops and laptops, and judging by Web requests that go through Clownflare, many people there use GNU/Linux or Google's 'bastardised' version of it (with spyware preloaded)
Richard Stallman Complains That Linux Gives a Bad Name to GNU and Asks for Feedback on What's Wrong with Systemd (and Wayland)
Maybe some people want to send him a detailed, polite explanation
Increasing Focus on Patent Injustices
We'll soon cover the EPO a lot more
There's No "Next XBox"
Nothing comes ahead except layoffs and price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 26, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Gemini Links 27/08/2026: Conditioning, Lagrange 1.21, and Computer Games
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2026: Patent Troll InterDigital Utilises Software Patents in Unconstitutional Court, "WikiHow Launches Copyright Infringement Suit Against" LLM Plagiarism
Links for the day
The Register MS Has New Fake Article ("SPONSORED FEATURE") With "AI" 21 Times In It
The Register MS is one among many culprits
Gemini Links 26/08/2026: “Doomsday Clock”, Rwanda Genocide, and Boasting About Using LLMs Instead of Writing Code (Due to Employer's Pressure)
Links for the day
No Allure in Omarchy, the Political Hyenas Only Give it More Free Publicity
To me, Omarchy seems like a weak project because of the slop (an HR problem)
Twitter is Not an API or a Communication Site, It's a Really Bad Site That Forces You to be Enslaved by Its Algorithm (Amplifying Its Owner's Worldviews)
the crackdown on Nitter means we should all avoid accessing or linking to x.com (Twitter)
Don't Let Bastards and Haters Grind You Down
They say "jealousy is the sincerest form of flattery"
GNU/Linux Rose in Caribbean Islands
combined population is measured at 44,182,048
IBM's Quantum Computing Lies Explained Again by Sabine Hossenfelder
To become a CEO at IBM one must lie
Controlling Culture and Social Behaviour by Digital Locks
if you don't fully control the technology in your possession, then you're not using that technology, this technology covertly uses you
Goodbye, Dolly
This week we say "goodbye, Dolly."
Links 26/08/2026: Election Bribery (aka Vote-Buying) Deemed "OK" in the US, "Nitter is Shutting Down After a Cease and Desist Letter" by MElon
Links for the day
Analogue So Much Better and Faster
From what we can gather, the tram ticketing system does not use Windows; we never saw it crashing or rebooting (or showing some Windows logo) in decades, so we assume it runs some kind of Linux
Linux Today Dumped All Social Control Media Last December
Linux Today seems to have concluded that all Social Control Media is just a waste of time
Don't Say X.com is OK Because People Can Access It by Alternative Means
Can Mozilla please clarify who inside Mozilla greenlit a return to X.com?
The Reach of techrights.org Is Increasing
We are on the side of women victims
SLAPP Censorship - Part 162 Out of 200: An Outline of Events
An outline of events
Pushed to Live
We still have some other work - stuff related to the editing of pages - which is work in progress and has been subjected to testing for many months
GNU/Linux Measured at 10% in Germany, Based on Cloudflare
It's peaking late at night
Richard Stallman's GNU Project Began 42 Years Ago With GNU Emacs and More
GNU Project announced almost 43 years ago (next month it's the anniversary)
Fake Articles "Sponsored by HPE" Published in The Register MS
Selling proprietary products as 'alternatives' to other proprietary products
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 25, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Gemini Links 26/08/2026: Journal Plans and Extending Finger Protocol
Links for the day
How Many Web Requests From "Linux"...
If one was to assert that "Linux == Android" or "Android == Linux" (it's not that simple), then "Linux" already accounts for about 30% of Web requests
An Explainer About Injunctions Done Wrong - Part I - Saving Money Where Money Cannot be Saved
Of course Garrett not being able to afford his own case is a key factor here
Links 25/08/2026: "U.S. Marines Cancel Drill With South Korea", "UK Prime Minister Burnham Arrives in Ukraine"
Links for the day
Not for the First Time This Week, Site Called "It's FOSS" is Promoting Software That is NOT FOSS (And It Knows It)
Is this an editorial choice? Advertising? What is it?
Gemini Links 25/08/2026: Geometry and FidoNet History, "Goodbye I2P and Yggdrasil, Welcome Telnet!"
Links for the day
Links 25/08/2026: Microsoft Salaries Leaked Again, "Oasis Photograph Sparks Copyright Lawsuit"
Links for the day
Microsoft Trots Out Its Propaganda Agent Preston Gralla to Make It Sound Like Microsoft Breaks Up With China (Reality: Microsoft Got Dumped by China)
This discredits any publisher that plays along
GNU/Linux Did Not Start in 1991 and America Wasn't Discovered by Europeans
it'll be 43 next month
SLAPP Censorship - Part 161 Out of 200: Low Standards in Defamation Cases Just Muddy the Waters and Distract From Legitimate Cases
The judge at the trial said that Garrett's case was a waste of the court's money
Rolling Out Some Changes Soon
To the regular reader no change will be seen
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 24, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, August 24, 2026
Gemini Links 25/08/2026: Separated by Plexiglass, Low-Tech Information Networks, Jörg Rippel Comes to Geminispace
Links for the day