Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 25/11/2012: Fedora Progress, GMO Misses





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Boid Twitter client ends official development, goes open source


  • Web Browsers



  • Open Access/Content

    • Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access
      I recently had lunch with as staunch an advocate for open access as you'll ever meet (I won't name him, because it would be rude to attribute casual remarks to him without permission). We were talking about plans to mandate free and open publication of publicly funded scientific research. In the USA, there's the Federal Public Research Act, and in the UK, there's the coalition government's announcement that publicly funded research should be made available at no cost, under a Creative Commons licence that permits unlimited copying.

      We'd been talking about Ben Goldacre's excellent new book, Bad Pharma, in which Goldacre documents the problem of "missing data" in pharmaceutical research (he says about half of the clinical trials undertaken by the pharmaceutical industry are never published). The unpublished trials are, of course, the trials that show the pharma companies' new products in unflattering lights – trials that suggest that their drugs don't




  • Programming

    • ARM Cortex-A15 Exynos5 Compiler Benchmarks
      The benchmarks in this article are of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS loaded up on the Samsung Chromebook with the Linux 3.4 kernel. The GCC 4.6.3 compiler was compared to GCC 4.7.2 with a number of C, C++, and Fortran benchmarks. The same compiler flags were maintained within the test profiles during the benchmarking process. In a future article will be LLVM/Clang compiler benchmarks as well as performance results from the Cortex-A15 compiler tuning.






Leftovers



  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • European companies 'using emissions trading to subsidise overseas rivals'


    • More than 1,000 new coal plants planned worldwide, figures show
      More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are being planned worldwide, new research has revealed.


    • Should I Reuse or Recycle My Old Computer?
      The decision to reuse or recycle an old desktop computer takes some consideration, but letting an old PC turn to electronic waste should never be an alternative.


    • Are You 28 Yet? No? Then You Have Never Seen a Cooler-Than-Average Month
      Blogging about climate change, or anything, can get repetitive fast. The reports come out and the news is tweaked, maybe, but familiar—the Arctic is still melting, average global temperatures are still rising, the oceans are still acidifying. This was the warmest month record ever recorded. No, this one was. No this. This.


    • It's Only a Mystery to Marco Rubio... The Sea Eats Miami
      After the 1992 super-hurricane Andrew, South Florida was in a state of shock, similar to coastal New Jersey and New York today. Andrew was a compact, category five hurricane. In South Dade where the impact was strongest, the morning after the storm, sun and blue skies prevailed. The strike zone looked like a bomb had gone off.

      Civic leaders quickly rallied under the proud banner, “We Will Rebuild”. How would South Florida rebuild? the blue ribbon panel asked. Twenty years later, the coastal areas of New Jersey and New York are facing a similar question after Superstorm Sandy. This time, the answers may be very different.

      Twenty years ago in Florida, talk of sea level rise and climate change was in the margins. The subject had a place in the corner, where Chicken Little’s nursed their wounds, far from sight and off the political radar.






  • Finance

    • The Giant Lie Trotted Out by Fiscal Conservatives Trying to Shred Social Security
      Trying to convince the public to cut America’s best-loved and most successful program requires a lot of creativity and persistence. Social Security is fiscally fit, prudently managed and does not add to the deficit because by law it must be completely detached from the federal operating budget. Obviously, it is needed more than ever in a time of increasing job insecurity and disappearing pensions. It helps our economy thrive and boosts the productivity of working Americans. And yet the sharks are in a frenzy to shred it in the upcoming “fiscal cliff” discussions.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • From Russia With PR
      Several opinion columns praising Russia and published in the last two years on CNBC’s web site and the Huffington Post were written by seemingly independent professionals but were placed on behalf of the Russian government by its public-relations firm, Ketchum.

      The columns, written by two businessmen, a lawyer, and an academic, heap praise on the Russian government for its “ambitious modernization strategy” and “enforcement of laws designed to better protect business and reduce corruption.” One of the CNBC opinion pieces, authored by an executive at a Moscow-based investment bank, concludes that “Russia may well be the most dynamic place on the continent.”




  • Censorship

    • Outrage at India arrests over Facebook post
      The arrest of two women on Monday over a comment on Facebook has sparked off widespread anger in India.

      One of the women had criticised the shutdown of Mumbai in her post, after the death of politician Bal Thackeray, while the other "liked" the comment.

      The women, accused of "promoting enmity between classes", were released on bail after appearing in court.




  • Privacy

    • Student expelled for refusing to wear RFID tracking chip badge
      After a student protested a pilot RFID tracking system in San Antonio, lawyers are now moving to stop expulsion.

      John Jay High School sophomore Andrea Hernandez was expelled from her high school after protesting against a new pilot program which tracks the precise location of all attending 4,200 students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School, according to Infowars.


    • Training spies in the era of cybersecurity
      Students learn how to rifle through trash, sneak a tracking device on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives.




  • GMO

    • Armyworms Develop Resistance to Genetically Modified Corn
      A second species of worm has evolved to withstand pesticides in genetically modified crops, the latest escalation of the natural arms race spurred on by GMOs. “Armyworms” — so called because their infestation of fields resembles a military onslaught — were able to eat DuPont-Dow corn containing a pesticide protein without adverse effects, according to a field trial conducted in Florida this year.


    • Corporate Giant Comes Out Against GMOs
      It has come to our attention that Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed healthcare organization in the United States, has advised its members against GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in food.

      In its Northwest Fall 2012 newsletter, Kaiser suggested membership limit exposure to genetically modified organisms.






Recent Techrights' Posts

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Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
barristers are expensive
 
Gemini Links 29/03/2026: Return to Gopherspace, "Zen of Marking Playing Cards"
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The Real XBox is Dead, So Microsoft is Calling Everything "XBox" Now
It even wanted to run a campaign to convince everybody that XBox is not actually a console
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IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 28, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 28, 2026
Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
"Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
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Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
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Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
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Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
IBM is not doing well
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026
"Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions
Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
"Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop
Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs
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Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere"
Links for the day
Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down
Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft
It's very important to remember what really happened
Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office)
Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too)
More to come soon (later today)
IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay
Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week
Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies
Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter
That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves)
"Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.
Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again"
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GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight
GNOME is having financial problems
Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus"
Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users
It's not about protecting children
Slop Plunge
we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On
Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs
They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026