Links 6/1/2013: Steam Extending Games Sale, CIA Whistleblower Blown
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2013-01-06 17:09:21 UTC
- Modified: 2013-01-06 17:10:37 UTC
Contents
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Another Debian developer! Miriam has a low-drama setup. She simply uses Debian to do what she needs to do. I find it interesting that she desktop hops a bit (she’s now working with GNOME), but at the same time, it’s very cool that she’s open to trying new desktop environments. In general, her setup seems to be evolving over time, which is inspiring to those of us who are a bit entrenched in our own workflows.
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Desktop
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Earlier this year, Windows 8 was launched with great expectations. Microsoft banked on it to be a game-changer both for the tablet world as well as the desktop computer world. According to Redmond, the latest iteration of the most popular operating system in the world is a bridge between the tablet and the desktop. With a sleek, redesigned, and touch-friendly interface, Windows 8 was all set to become yet another milestone for Microsoft.
However, Steve Ballmer’s expectations were crushed when the early reviews didn’t turn out to be that good. Windows 8, along with its contentious Metro interface, was criticized for its lack of usability and confusing design. Many users posted videos of their friends and family having a hard time figuring out how to use the software. In fact, the dramatic departure from the familiar Start-button oriented user interface has irked many users.
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Over the last year or so I’ve managed to divest myself of most of my Apple products in a project I call #noapple. The last remaining piece of Apple equipment I used frequently was an 11-inch MacBook Air (MBA) that I would dual boot with OS X and Ubuntu.
I was able to use it mainly booted to Ubuntu, but there were certain things that were a little bothersome. For example, the trackpad driver under Ubuntu wasn’t nearly as smooth as it was under OS X, and it was extremely sensitive, having little of what is called “palm detection”. Quite frequently, in the middle of typing something, the cursor would jump to some random part of the document when my palm barely brushed the trackpad.
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Applications
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The way things have formed in our everyday computer usage experience right now, the overwhelming majority of users rely on the internet for both work and entertainment.
This has naturally transformed our music listening habits, making our local collection almost useless with on-line services offering everything you need and modern music players changing their approach because of this.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Games
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Though Holiday 2012 has come and gone and most of the world has returned to work, Valve's decided that Christmas isn't over yet for Steam users.
The Steam Holiday Sale, originally running from December 20 to January 5has been extended to January 7. The last day of Steam sales, a date of sales reprisals, has been tweaked into "The Encore Weekend", meaning that the most popular sales during the Holiday Sale will be reprised.
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Valve on Friday updated its Hardware & Software Survey for December 2012, and the news is very good for Microsoft. Yet the company wasn’t the only one to go home with a big win at the end of last year: even Canonical has good reason to celebrate.
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It seems that a Linux based Steam console will be out this year an engineer at Valve (Ben Krasnow) has confirmed!
I may be tempted to get it, would love to lazy on my sofa and play some games...that I already own and on Linux! One great thing about this is that we should get access to our existing libraries.
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Stuffomatic originally posted about their game Andy's Super Great Park which was previously Windows and Ubuntu only, that is not the case any more they now support other distro's by using a static build!
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It seems that a Linux based Steam console will be out this year an engineer at Valve (Ben Krasnow) has confirmed!
I may be tempted to get it, would love to lazy on my sofa and play some games...that I already own and on Linux! One great thing about this is that we should get access to our existing libraries.
The main problem I can see with this is that it will of course be controller based game play, so it means we will need a lot of developers to put in game pad support.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Krita developer Sven Langkamp has introduced 3 new features for Krita. These features are Freehand path tool, ability to paint any shape with the Krita brushes and QML export. These features or enhancements will be made available in Krita 2.7.
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Screenshots
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu on phones is a bold move from Canonical and they will need a lot of money for the marketing campaign. They can also start by forgetting or taking pictures of their phones in a bar, somewhere.
This is a really old tactic and it’s not really effective anymore. Forgetting or spotting a phone in a bar might have been interesting a few years ago, but so many other companies did it that it’s no longer an effecting tool.
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Ubuntu Phone OS has been unveiled and it has received pretty stellar response so far. If you didn't see it in action yet, check out the video below.
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Flavours and Variants
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Netrunner 12.12 is not a perfect distro. But it is so much better than what its live session can give you. In fact, this is probably the most critical part, because people often judge distributions and decide whether to use them based on the few minutes of live CD testing. And considering what Netrunner can offer you, you might almost be tempted to give it a pass. But do not.
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If you’re a computer enthusiast and you’re not content with buying ready-to-use computers off the shelf and you don’t mind tinkering around the operating system, then open-source computer systems are probably the sort of device you’re after. Well if you are you might be interested to learn that SolidRun has taken the wraps off their latest offering, the CuBox Pro which is an upgrade over its predecessor and comes with 2GB of DDR3 RAM on board, which according to its creators makes it the world’s first ARM-based open source development platform to support 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The CuBox Pro will measure 2-inches cube and weighs 91grams and comes in either high polish or matte finish.
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Phones
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Android
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Now that the new year is here, you might be feeling a little crazy trying to organize all of those resolutions in your head. I've always found that jotting down those thoughts helps with the process of putting goals into action. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps available in the Google Play Store that offer this sort of thing: a place for Android users to put down their streams of consciousness, store photos that haven't been archived, or leave a mental note.
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Security
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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In a feature story for The Times (London), journalist Iona Craig reports a Times investigation found “Saudi Arabian fighter jets joined the United States’ secret war in Yemen.” The support came in a year when the number of drone strikes in the Arabian Peninsula more than doubled and surpassed the number of drone strikes in Pakistan.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there were 25 confirmed US operations in 2012 up from 13 confirmed operations in 2011. There were 58 possible US operations in 2012 up from 17 possible operations in 2011.
A US intelligence source reportedly claims, “Some of the so-called drone missions are actually Saudi air force missions.” Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA officer, says, “We outsource this problem [of AQAP] to the Saudis, make it their problem. It is their problem.”
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Do the threats facing whistleblowers under Obama's presidency mean Americans know less about what their government does?
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As the Pentagon's former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction
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Harold Hongju Koh has become a symbol of national security policies that many feel are not significantly different than those of the Bush administration that he once criticized.
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Kiriakou is an American hero. He refused to participate in torture, helped expose the program -- including the systematic use of torture, renditions and secret black sites -- and said on national television that torture was wrong. Instead of being rewarded for his courage and moral rectitude, he is currently the only person to be criminally prosecuted, and soon to be jailed, as a result of the Bush-era torture regime.
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Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.
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Former CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou is inches away from pleading away years of his life to jail while the former chief of the CIA headquarters-based RDI (Rendition, Detention, Interrogation) group is sitting pretty enjoying his retirement in Virginia.
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When victims of al-Qaida attacks want to talk to reporters at Guantánamo, retired Navy Capt. Karen Loftus squires the so-called “victim family members” to Camp Justice’s press shed and introduces herself as their escort.
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Finance
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Censorship
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Privacy
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Brooke speaks with George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove who says those types of arguments misunderstand privacy entirely.
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Civil Rights
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Finally, trying to close off public and press access to government officials to stem leaks hasn't worked in the past - and with the Internet, there's even less reason to believe it would work today. Government secrecy is needed in some matters, and laws on treason and espionage already are on the books. Case in point: Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, facing trial in March for leaking huge amounts of secret documents to the global web organization WikiLeaks.
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Congress and the president have yet to reestablish the proper balance between national security and civil liberties.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
- "The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
- An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
- Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
- Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances
- Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend
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- Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Programming, StarGrid, Brand-New Palm OS Strategy Game in 2025, and Chatbot as Addiction Mechanisms
- Links for the day
- The African Lion and the American Cowards
- Safaris exist for people to watch and enjoy animals
- Amazon Web Shenanigans Perfectly Timed for Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
- Maybe listen to him instead of looking for excuses to ridicule the messenger
- Mission:Libre Has Taken Off (Project by Carmen Maris)
- there will be a lot more to report on next month (after the event)
- Techrights to Publish More EPO Leaks Next Week
- We're meanwhile also doing lots of work on search, whose interface now looks better
- Links 21/10/2025: 'The Lost Art' of Neon Signs and Twitter (X) to Enable Identity Theft (or Handle Theft) as a Service
- Links for the day
- Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
- What a disgrace
- Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
- We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
- Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
- Happy hacking
- "No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
- "No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
- Every Morning
- Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
- Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
- very intellectually-dishonest human being
- A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
- Perl also runs the sister site
- The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
- What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
- analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
- Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
- People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
- “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
- Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
- We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
- Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
- That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
- When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
- What has Microsoft Canonical become?
- More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
- It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week
- Google News is Now Promoting a Parasitic Slopfarm Called "findarticles.com", Where Plagiarism of "Linux" Articles is Rampant
- Does Google even care about the slop epidemic? Google itself is a vendor of slop now (and it calls it "Gemini")
- Gemini Links 20/10/2025: Pumpkin Carving, "Hey Hi", and Other Buzzwords
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Google News Promoting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
- What is the value of Google News if so many results in it are fake 'articles?
- Our Uptime This Year Was Better Than AWS (Also a Lot Cheaper)
- We never used "the cloud"
- Amazon Web Shenanigans
- An ongoing, experimental endeavour
- Death of Elias Diem: FSFE mailing list archives hidden
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
- Links for the day
- They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
- we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
- Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
- Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
- Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
- Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
- Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
- Everything here will persist as normal
- Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
- Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
- The "Infinite Bread"
- The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
- Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
- If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
- In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
- The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
- Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
- Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
- Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
- Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
- Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
- 4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
- Liberation From 'The Feed'
- They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
- Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
- We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles
- Today (a Day Before Richard Stallman Talk at TUM) There's a Patent Propaganda Event at TUM
- Perhaps an opportunity for Dr. Stallman to rebut this "invention to patent" nonsense/fantasy (conflating monopolies with innovation)
- OpenSource or "Open Source" as a Brand is Dying, Let's Get Back to Talking About Software Freedom
- Those of us who actually want to reform the industry and put users in control of their systems/devices will recognise that "Open Source" was selling a lie or got-co-opted by liars
- 19 Years in Numbers: Techrights' Anniversary Countdown and Retrospective
- In 2019 we began improving our workflows and, accordingly/predictably, we became a lot more productive
- Slop Turns People Off (LLMs Lack Intelligence, They're Just Plagiarism Powerhouses That Fail to Deliver Any Real, Measurable Value)
- "More" (or "MOAR") isn't always better
- IBM Red Hat Has Re-calibrated or Adjusted to Bubble Economics, False Promises, and Slop/Plagiarism
- This won't end well
- Fake Numbers, Fake Claims, Fake Economy, and Media Grifters That Prop Up Fraud
- Grifters like The Register MS won't be looked upon kindly after the bubble implodes
- For Some, the GNU Web Site is Not Accessible This Week
- They seem to have gone into some kind of lock-down mode
- Richard Stallman Back at the "Rudolf-Diesel" Hörsal "MW 2001" in About 40 Hours
- He spoke there before; there's a very high seating capacity there
- Symptoms of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs in XBox
- A crashing franchise
- Psychiatrist confession: Germanwings crash & Debian toxic culture recognized before suicides
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 19/10/2025: Scentjacking 101, Slop Hype Boosters, and Steam Next Fest
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: The Serial Slopper, LinuxSecurity, and Google News
- Let's hope slopfarms die as soon as possible
- Links 19/10/2025: Cambodia Scam Centres, Slop Hurting Wikipedia Traffic
- Links for the day
- As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
- French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
- 25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
- there's nothing unreasonable about it
- A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
- Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
- Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
- Links for the day
- US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
- GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
- LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
- Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
- Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
- some weeks ago
- All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
- Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
- The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
- Each year it gets worse
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025