Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 18/7/2013: Jolla Smartphone, UberStudent





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • The Day of GNU/Linux
      Some may argue that there will not be a “year of desktop GNU/Linux” etc. but there definitely is a day, in Italy at least.


    • Viva la desktop!
      To some, the desktop is an anachronism; a style of input that’s increasingly redundant in a world of tablets and smartphones. But I don’t agree, and I think there’s plenty of evidence to show the desktop is going to be around for some time yet. And more importantly, Linux may become the only viable option. I’m primarily a KDE user, and as such, I’ve been mostly shielded from the turbulence created by several desktops reinventing themselves. KDE went through a similar period and I’m glad it’s now firmly in the past. But like many Linux users, I have more than one installation and use more than one desktop environment.


    • Linux Format 174 On Sale Today - Upgrade your desktop
      We asked in the latest TuxRadar podcast for the reasons that you change distro. The most frequent one was the choice of desktop. But you don't have to ditch your whole distro in order to get a new user interface: you can follow our Technical Editor Ben's advice and find the desktop that's right for you, so you end up bossing your Linux machine around rather than it controlling you




  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Tom Friedman, Churchill and Immigrants
      And Churchill's generally racist views of non-whites are pretty well-established. He spoke of his "jolly little wars against barbarous peoples" and declared of the Kurds, "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes…[It] would spread a lively terror."


    • Bradley Manning Is Not a Royal Baby
      So that is the state of network television coverage of a whistleblower, held without trial for 3 years, who revealed information that made headlines in the most powerful news outlets around the world for months. That is how U.S. television networks are covering a trial where the U.S. government is attempting to argue that publishing information that finds its way into the hands of U.S. enemies is in fact "aiding the enemy"– a stunning legal strategy that holds the potential to criminalize investigative journalism.






  • Kernel Space

    • Could Linux 3.11 for Workgroups win the Desktop for Linux? Okay, probably not, but it's a good pun.


    • Linux Namesake Argues In Favor Of Being A Jerk
      Linus Torvalds views so-called "professional" behavior as a hindrance to progress, and his argument for more a freewheeling, less polite work environment is as convincing as it is brazen.


    • Intel Does Hardware Context Support For Ironlake
      Intel's Ironlake hardware may be very old and not nearly as nice as the latest generation Haswell parts, but shipped today was a new patch-set for implementing hardware context support.


    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon DRM Gets More Fixes For Linux 3.11 Kernel
        AMD's Alex Deucher has submitted another Radeon DRM pull request for the Linux 3.11 kernel to provide more fixes. This time the bug-fixes are "all over the place" for this open-source graphics driver.


      • Intel Working On Layered Rendering For Mesa Driver
        A set of twelve patches were published on Monday by an Intel OTC developer for allowing support for OpenGL layered rendering as needed for OpenGL 3.2 / GLSL 1.50 support.


      • Previewing The Radeon DPM Performance On Linux 3.11
        As promised, now that Linux 3.11-rc1 has been released, it's time for the new dynamic power management support of the Linux 3.11 kernel for AMD Radeon graphics. This first article previews the possible OpenGL performance gains for an AMD APU when enabling "DPM" for allowing the graphics core to properly re-clock based upon its workload.


      • Video Support Still Brewing For GLAMOR Acceleration
        Video acceleration support for the GLAMOR library, the open-source way of accelerating 2D X.Org operations via the 3D engine, is still coming and is being worked on by a student this summer.

        One of the 2013 X.Org GSoC projects is adding X-Video support to GLAMOR. GLAMOR is the 2D acceleration library required by the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs with the RadeonSI driver stack while it can optionally be used for older Radeon GPUs or Intel hardware too.


      • Mesa 9.2 Brings Some Performance Improvements For Intel IVB
        With Mesa 9.2 due to be released next month, here's the very latest Git benchmarks of Mesa 9.2-devel on an Intel Core i5 Ultrabook with HD 4000 "Ivy Bridge" graphics compared to the stable Mesa release versions going back to Mesa 8.0.


      • Benchmark: X.org VS Mir
        This is an interesting article by Paolo Rotolo, it’s a comparison of MIR (in the Xmir version that will be present on Ubuntu 13.10) and the current Xorg.




    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Ivy Bridge Graphics On The Linux 3.11 Kernel
        With the Linux 3.11-rc1 release, it's time now at Phoronix to start benchmarking the Linux 3.11 kernel. The first tests to run over the weekend were of Intel Ivy Bridge graphics, where a few regressions were spotted.


      • OpenGL Gets Faster With OS X 10.9 Mavericks
        Beyond Apple's forthcoming OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" release finally bring OpenGL 4.0 support to Apple hardware, there's also GL performance improvements to make OS X more competitive with other operating systems for gaming.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



  • Distributions



  • Devices/Embedded

    • Interview: Eben Upton
      A few months ago, armed with your responses from one of our podcast’s Open Ballot questions, we visited the Cambridge HQ of the Raspberry Pi Foundation to quiz its founder about hardware upgrades, education and what success has meant for the project. The result was an epic 7,000 word interview, the first half of which we published in Linux Format issue 173. But as we didn’t have enough space in the magazine, we thought we’d put the interview online in it’s entirety. And here it is!


    • The Raspberry Pi Needs a Roadmap
      The team behind Raspberry Pi should fix this promptly. Raspberry Pi has emerged as nothing less than the true solution that players like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) folks were looking for when they proposed creating sub-$100 computers. Raspberry Pis are making it into school systems in parts of the world where kids don't have computers, and there is even now a supercomputer consisting of many Pi devices lashed together with Lego pieces.


    • Standardized Media Streaming on Linux Devices with Open Source Cloud-dLeyna
      Few would dispute the value of standards for fostering interoperability, and here in the open source community that tends to be viewed as a particularly important goal.


    • Phones

      • Jolla gets ready to launch its smartphone
        Finnish smartphone startup wants to take on the established giants, UI-changing backplate, fridge-friendly OS and all.


      • New smartphone users reach 583,000 per week, says analyst


      • Ballnux



        • An Android Flip Phone Is In The Works By Samsung
          Flip phones, if you didn't know are the rage in Asian countries like Japan and Korea and they've always been that way. Even the advent of the Android, iOS and other touch sensitive devices hasn't managed to shake the trend which clearly shows how much that design is admired. Apparently, Samsung is reportedly working on giving the best of both worlds with an Android flip phone called Samsung Galaxy Folder. It sounds like an awkward design choice but it would certainly interest a flip phone admirer.




      • Android

        • 4K UltraHD media player runs Android 4.2 on Tegra 4
          NanoTech Entertainment is accepting pre-orders on a $299 4K UltraHD media and game player device that runs Android 4.2 on an quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4 SoC. Designed for gaming, multimedia play, and web browsing, the Nuvola NP-1 may well be the world’s most advanced Android media player.


        • With 8PB synced already, BitTorrent launches Sync beta with versioning, one-way syncing, and an Android app
          BitTorrent today announced the open beta release of its file synchronization tool Sync, and the debut of an Android app. You can download the latest version now for Windows, Mac, and Linux over at labs.bittorrent.com as well as for Android from Google Play.


        • You Can Install the Improved Android 4.3 Camera App on Most Android Phones
          Here’s some good news for the smartphone photographers out there who are sick of all the iPhone-only news that seems to flow down the pipeline daily. It turns out that anybody with an Android 4.0 and later phone can install a copy of the superior Android 4.3 camera app without even having to root their phone.


        • New Android eyewear butts heads with Google Glass
          GlassUp, an Italian startup, has started taking pre-orders on Indiegogo for an Android eyewear display system billed as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to Google Glass. The GlassUp device is a receive-only Bluetooth accessory to a nearby mobile device, providing a monochrome, 320 x 240-pixel augmented reality display of incoming messages and notifications.






    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets







Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers

  • Internet trolls: a guide to the different flavours
    It's relatively easy to deal with those who pour forth hatred online. But the greater threat comes from the more subtle spreaders of misery and doubt


  • Health/Nutrition

    • Genetically Engineered Burrito? Chipotle Labels GMO
      The fast food burrito chain Chipotle, which advertises "food with integrity," became the first restaurant chain in the United States to label genetically modified ingredients in its food in March 2013.

      Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have sparked concerns about potential human health effects and confirmed environmental effects. Chipotle has 1,450 restaurants as of June 2013 and $2.7 billion in annual revenue, so the labeling is no small potatoes.


    • Employer health mandate upheld (UPDATED)
      Lawyers for Liberty University have announced that they will seek to take the case back to the Supreme Court.




  • Security



    • How elite security ninjas choose and safeguard their passwords
      If you felt a twinge of angst after reading Ars' May feature that showed how password crackers ransack even long passwords such as "qeadzcwrsfxv1331", you weren't alone. The upshot was clear: If long passwords containing numbers, symbols, and upper- and lower-case letters are this easy to break, what are users to do?




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The diminishing glow of nuclear energy
      In France, Greenpeace activists got past security and climbed reactor structures at the Tricastin nuclear power plant. They unfurled a banner which read: TRICASTIN ACCIDENT NUCLÉAIRE: PRÉSIDENT DE LA CATASTROPHE? (Tricastin Nuclear Accident: President of the Disaster?). Earlier this morning, other activists projected a crack onto the superstructure of the plant illustrating that French President, Hollande, needs to shut down 20 nuclear reactors in the country by 2020 in keeping with his promise to cut nuclear power from three-quarters to half by 2025.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Americans for Prosperity Goes After ObamaCare (Again)
      Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative advocacy group founded and funded by David Koch, is spearheading an ad campaign aimed at young women attacking the 2010 federal health reform law dubbed "ObamaCare." It is spending more than $1 million to run the ad in Virginia and Ohio, with plans to expand it to a total of seven states.




  • Privacy



    • Broad coalition sues feds to halt electronic surveillance by National Security Agency


    • Mobile Privacy: Parliament debates data protection and the mobile industry
      We met with Helen Goodman MP last month to talk about mobile companies developing marketing and analytics products based on data about their customers without clear consent. After that meeting, she was able to secure the Commons debate on the issue.


    • Intelligence and Securtity Committee reports on PRISM
      The ISC has today made a statement on it’s investigation into PRISM, following the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      While it appears the investigation was limited to PRISM, as opposed to Tempora or any of the other programmes we now know to be operational, it reaffirms that the statutory basis for PRISM at least is the 1994 Intelligence Services Act.


    • Former Top NSA Lawyer Blames Civil Libertarians For 9/11, Says Hype About NSA May Lead To A Repeat
      Ah, Stewart Baker. We've mentioned him a few times in the past. He's the former Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security and General Counsel for the NSA. He's, as you may have guessed, strongly in the "pro-surveillance" camp, and has even attacked some of the journalists who revealed the NSA leaks, claiming that by revealing the truth they're no longer journalists, but advocates. He's taking part in a House Judiciary Committee hearing looking into oversight on the administration's use of FISA and his testimony is quite incredible. It goes way beyond what we've seen from others. While it repeats his baseless and confused attack that some journalists who were key players in this story were evil "advocates" rather than journalists, that's nothing compared to his lack of regard for the Constitution and basic civil liberties. In fact, he very clearly blames 9/11 on civil liberties advocates, and fears that all this talk about surveillance may lead to a repeat event.


    • Justice Department proposes curbing power to seize reporters' records
      The Justice Department has proposed changing its policies on leak investigations so that it would be more difficult to secretly seize reporters' records, in response to widespread criticism about the department's practices.


    • What Aren’t They Collecting?
      Back in the Founder’s time, paper was state-of-the-art for containing information so “papers” contained a person’s information. Today, in addition to paper, we have digital media to contain our information. Without probable cause, the blanket seizure of data on every American is unconstitutional.

      Judge Richard A. Posner contends that this data collection is not a grave threat to civil liberties.


    • Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy
      There have been several articles in the press recently about users flocking to DuckDuckGo in the wake of the recent NSA snooping revelations. If you are in this category this post is meant for you.

      If you use DuckDuckGo solely for the myriad of other benefits, such as reducing advertiser tracking, filter boxing, etc. move along nothing to see here. DuckDuckGo will provide you at least that level of “privacy”.

      [...]

      If Google’s servers can be compromised by a bunch of Chinese hackers, and if the computers controlling Iran’s uranium enrichment equipment can be compromised without even being connected to the internet, how long would a service like DuckDuckGo (or Verizon Internet Services) standup against a concerted effort by the NSA?


    • What Medical Tests Should Teach Us about the NSA Surveillance Program
      The National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting massive amounts of information about people in the United States and throughout the world. From details about every phone call to collections of people’s activities online–the US government is creating a monumental amount of data on each individual person in existence. The balance between privacy and security is always difficult, and the ethics of the NSA’s practices be will debated for the near future. However, as a physician I worry about something just as difficult. Excellent reasons exist why I as a physician do not order every test on every patient. I know that amassing too much data can be harmful.


    • About the Reuters article
      The latest effort to distract attention from the NSA revelations is more absurd than most

      [...]

      Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. It's particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and, secondarily, me, for supposedly "blackmailing" and "threatening" the US government. That is just absurd.


    • Nation Will Gain by Discussing Surveillance, Expert Tells Privacy Board
      A retired federal judge, who formerly served on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on Tuesday praised the growing public discussion about government surveillance fostered by the leaks of classified information by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whom the Obama administration has charged with espionage and who remains a fugitive.


    • Telstra found to be storing data for USA intelligence agencies
      Remember 1997? That’s when Carnivore was in use by the FBI. Soon after we heard rumours of an AT&T Room 641A, where the NSA would have a colocated interception facility that would tap into all communications being handled by that telco. Then all the rage about ECHELON, a SIGINT collection network operated by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States of America).


    • A Proposal To Reform FISA Court Decisionmaking
      Yesterday’s New York Times story on the secret legal opinions of the FISA court prompts a natural question: How should the FISA court reach its decisions, and how do we know it is doing so correctly? That breaks down into two questions. First, what procedures should the FISA court use to reach legal conclusions? And second, when or how should those legal conclusions be made public? The latter has received much more attention than the former. Like a lot of people, I tend to think that it wouldn’t impact national security for the FISA court to release more information about its decisions, at least in those cases when the judges consider abstract legal issues.. Perhaps the court could issue opinions in redacted form; perhaps it could simply release a summary of its legal conclusions and reasoning. Either way, a lot of people have voiced opinions on that issue. In this post, I want to focus on the first question that hasn’t received as much attention: What procedures should the FISA court use to reach its legal conclusions?


    • Making FISC More Adversarial: A Brief Response to Orin Kerr
      Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Orin Kerr has a thought-provoking post on one route to reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: have Congress give an adversarial role to the Oversight Section at DOJ’s National Security Division, such that security-cleared DOJ lawyers would “have a right to file a motion to oppose any application before the FISC,” and such a motion would then trigger litigation and a dispositive ruling with many–if not most–of the hallmarks of adversarial process. Such a reform, in Orin’s view, would thereby ameliorate, if not eliminate, at least some of the oft-repeated concerns with the ex parte FISC process. And as importantly from the government’s perspective, Orin would have such a motion follow the initial issuance of an order/certification by the FISA Court, so that the litigation isn’t slowing down the government’s ability to actually conduct the authorized surveillance. Such an approach, Orin writes, “offers a middle ground that may please no one.”


    • Facebook And Google 'Degrade Our Humanity,' Says 4chan Founder
      ...do not allow users to be anonymous.


    • Sony agrees to pay €£250K fine in UK for 2011 data breach, begrudgingly
      Remember the 2011 attack that crippled Sony's PlayStation Network, leaked almost a quarter million users' information and generally was a nuisance? It's still cleaning up after that mess. Earlier this year, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) slapped the company's European wing with a €£250,000 fine ($377,575), saying it should have been better prepared for the attack -- now Sony's agreed to pay up. The electronics giant still maintains that the charge is without merit, but ceded to the penalty to avoid disclosing details about its security procedures. Apparently, the two months of free PS+ wasn't enough to make everybody forget.


    • FISA court seeks release of declassified filings in secret Yahoo case
      The secret surveillance court that approved the U.S. government’s broad collection of millions of Americans’ e-mail and telephone records called Monday for the Obama administration to declassify and release as much as it can of one of the court’s early legal decisions sanctioning that collection.

      The chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the Justice Department to begin a review to see how much it can reasonably declassify from a 2008 opinion — a ruling in which the court allegedly ordered Yahoo to turn over the records of its customers’ online communications.


    • Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm
      A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.


    • German spy agency: 'No plan for NSA base in Wiesbaden'
      German intelligence authorities have denied a report that the US agency at the center of a major snooping scandal is building a new base in Germany. The US Army claims the facility will deal with military intelligence.


    • ‘America has no functioning democracy’ – Jimmy Carter on NSA
      Former US President Jimmy Carter lambasted US intelligence methods as undemocratic and described Edward Snowden’s NSA leak as “beneficial” for the country.

      Carter lashed out at the US political system when the issue of the previously top-secret NSA surveillance program was touched upon at the Atlantic Bridge meeting on Tuesday in Atlanta, Georgia.


    • Lawsuit accuses NSA of unconstitutional 'dragnet electronic surveillance’


    • NSA Admits to Examining More Data and Other News You Need to Know


    • 'Much bigger public outcry' needed to stop NSA surveillance
      Much of the American public is in favor of the NSA conducting widespread surveillance. So much, in fact, that a lawsuit challenging the NSA's power is unlikely to succeed, Steven Rambam, the founder and CEO of Pallorium investigative agency, told RT.


    • If you think the NSA is bad …
      Americans are apparently blasé about government eavesdropping.

      In the days after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that Washington spies extensively on its own citizens, polls found that about half of Americans have no problem with such snooping, as long as it protects them from terrorism.

      But a scandal unfolding here in South Korea illustrates how such domestic snooping can easily harm a democracy.

      The imbroglio — which has sparked student protests and candlelight vigils around Seoul — actually consists of two episodes rolled into one.


    • Apple, Google, Facebook Join Civil Liberties Groups for NSA Transparency Push
      The largest Internet companies in the United States have joined forces with top civil liberties groups to call on the White House and Congress to increase the transparency surrounding the government’s controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Twitter are among the tech giants that have signed a letter to the feds, asking for the right to disclose more information about national security data requests. Notably absent are the nation’s largest phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which have remained silent about their participation in the government’s snooping program.


    • US lawmakers grill Obama officials on NSA surveillance


    • Rift on display between tech industry, White House over NSA requests
      Tech companies and privacy groups petition the White House and Congress, urging "greater transparency" over secret demands for accessing private user data.


    • US official: New anti-leak measures set at NSA
      A top defense official says the National Security Agency is implementing new security measures because of the disclosures by former NSA-systems-analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden.


    • NSA Spying Leaves Washington Lonelier Than Ever
      So far, this attempt at justification has satisfied no one. Neither has U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s baffling claim of ignorance on the topic.


    • NSA official explains on how it spies on people who know people who know people who are terrorists
      A top official at the National Security Agency explained to members of Congress on Wednesday that it spies on people who know people who know people who might be terrorists.


    • Six degrees of separation, NSA-style
      Whether it’s ethically right or wrong to investigate deep into suspects’ networks of connections, the NSA certainly has the processing power to do it. “Three hops” away isn’t much when you can map potentially trillions of identities.


    • NSA Spying Draws Congressional Ire
      The lawmakers' criticisms came at a hearing with administration officials who sought to defend the once-secret government telephone snooping made public last month by former government contractor Edward Snowden.


    • Skepticism grows among lawmakers over NSA surveillance
      Both Republicans and Democrats express reservations about NSA programs during hearing.


    • Snowden Asserts that NSA and Israel Collaborated to Launch Cyber Attacks on Iran’s Uranium Facilities
      The interview of Snowden describes that prior to his release of classified intelligence documents, NSA and other nation's intelligence agencies conducted the broad surveillance. Snowden also asserted that NSA shares surveillance and cooperates with other nations including Israel.


    • The Latvians have invaded LinkedIn. Can the NSA be far behind?
      Unlike most sane people, I spend a lot of time fretting over LinkedIn. More specifically, I think about LinkedIn’s People You May Know feature. How does LinkedIn know I may know these people? What do my alleged connections say about me? And just where is LinkedIn getting its information? I have deep suspicions, but no proof.

      Lately, though, things have taken a turn for the absurd. Looking at my endlessly scrolling list of People You May Know, I discovered Latvians. Not just four or five Latvians – more like 40 or 50 Latvians, most of whom aren’t even distantly connected to me.




  • Civil Rights



    • The First Amendment Protects Satire And Rhetoric! lol j/k
      A nineteen-year-old has been jailed since March 27, 2013. He's been beaten — by other inmates, allegedly. He's been subjected to solitary confinement, sometimes stripped naked. The authorities have rejected calls for his release on a reasonable bail his family could possibly afford. All of this has happened because he wrote something online that concerned or offended or enraged the state.

      [...]

      The nineteen-year-old is Justin Carter. Carter, like many Americans his age (or mine, for that matter) plays online games and indulges in the exaggerated trash-talk common to that culture. In the course of an argument involving the game League of Legends, he got into a dispute with another player, who called him crazy or "messed up in the head." That is a rather mild epithet coming from an online gamer; it's nothing like Carter might have gotten if, for instance, he'd had the bad taste to Game While Female.


    • Stevie Wonder Boycotting Florida Following Zimmerman Verdict (Video)
      The singer refuses to perform in the state until its Stand Your Ground law is "abolished."


    • Challenges to Policies on Terror Are Halted




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Safeguarding the open internet for all
      The internet is a wonderful tool for openness, freedom and innovation. No wonder it is so important to so many citizens. And no wonder the debate over “net neutrality” can seem so charged.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality
      In the war against inequality, we’ve become so used to bad news that we’re almost taken aback when something positive happens. And with the Supreme Court having affirmed that wealthy people and corporations have a constitutional right to buy American elections, who would have expected it to bring good news? But a decision in the term that just ended gave ordinary Americans something that is more precious than money alone — the right to live.

      At first glance, the case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, might seem like scientific arcana: the court ruled, unanimously, that human genes cannot be patented, though synthetic DNA, created in the laboratory, can be. But the real stakes were much higher, and the issues much more fundamental, than is commonly understood. The case was a battle between those who would privatize good health, making it a privilege to be enjoyed in proportion to wealth, and those who see it as a right for all — and a central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy. Even more deeply, it was about the way inequality is shaping our politics, legal institutions and the health of our population.


    • Copyrights



      • Prenda fails to pay $455 appeal fee, leading to a $9,425 setback
        Copyright troll Prenda Law has become best known for the major setbacks it has faced in a Los Angeles case in the court of US District Judge Otis Wright. But the tough sanction order penned by Wright has been accompanied by setbacks in other jurisdictions as well.








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IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)
Sounds Like Fedora is Ready to Become Less of a Slave of Microsoft (GitHub)
This seems like a belated move in a positive direction
XBox is a Dead Microsoft Product in a Dying Industry
It's probable that another wave of XBox layoffs is just over the horizon (maybe even before month's end)
Progress on Techrights Site Search
Fun times
IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Means the Layoffs Are Silent, Barely Reported
Don't wait to hear about "Red Hat layoffs"
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Happy Disconnection, AWS Falling Apart, Closing of Gemlog Blue
Links for the day
Full Audio of Today's Richard Stallman Talk in the Technical University of Munich
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Microsoft XBox is Just Vapourware (Promises of Hardware That Doesn't Exist), Real Products Perish
just as developers lose interest in developing for XBox Microsoft is increasing the costs imposed upon them
Slopwatch: Fake Articles (Slop) in "Linux" Clothing in Google News (Noise)
all about what Google does
Links 21/10/2025: Even "Inventor of Vibe Coding" Rejects Vibe Coding, USPTO Experiments With Slop in Examination
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Talk Now Available for Viewing (Archived Copy, Not Live-streamed)
This recording is over 2 hours old
Links 21/10/2025: AWS-Induced Chaos and Social Control Media Curbs
Links for the day
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
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"
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
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
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