Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 11/8/2013: Fedora Flock, Qualcomm Changes Course on Blobs





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 4.1.1 RC1 Arrives with New Features
      The Document Foundation has announced that the first Release Candidate version for LibreOffice 4.1.1 is now available for the Linux platform, bringing a lot of bug fixes and improvements.




  • BSD

    • FreeNAS 9.1 Screenshots, and Some Suggestions
      freenas-ixsystems-new-logoFreeNAS 9.1 has been released. We have read the blog posts, the press releases, and we probably all agree that this FreeBSD based NAS is becoming better and better with each release. FreeNAS is still ‘growing up’ and new features are added to each new version.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • gNewSense 3.0 released


      Most notably, gNewSense 3.0, codenamed "Parkes," is now based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. gNewSense is a fully free GNU/Linux distro and one of the growing number of GNU/Linux distributions that are endorsed by the FSF for providing and recommending only free software. gNewSense now runs on three architectures: i386, amd64 and MIPS.


    • Video: You broke the Internet. We're making ourselves a GNU one.
      This is the video from the talks given by Christian Grothoff, Carlo von Lynx, Jacob Appelbaum and Richard Stallman in Berlin on August 1st. The talks are in English, even though the welcoming words are in German.




  • Programming

    • Open Line on GitHub
      Felix Geisendörfer recently wrote Vim Trick: Open current line on GitHub. The idea is to open a repository with GitHub in a browser for the current file and line number in Vim.






Leftovers

  • YouTube founders take on Vine and Instagram with MixBit video app


  • Hot Startups Tap Google's Legal Talent
    The attorneys atop six hot tech ventures have at least one thing in common: They've Googled it.


  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression





  • Finance

    • The legal jujitsu of Goldman Sachs
      Vanity Fair has timed the publication of its latest 11,000-word Michael Lewis opus perfectly to coincide with Fabrice Tourre being found liable on six counts of misleading investors while he worked at Goldman Sachs. Lewis also profiles a former Goldman employee charged with serious misdeeds; in his case, it’s Sergei Aleynikov. And in both cases — Aleynikov and Tourre — the government ended up in a position of overstretch.




  • Privacy

    • NSA revelations remind me of Cold War Romania: Column
      For Marcel Proust, a madeleine cookie triggered a flood of childhood memories. For me, cookies usually signify less about memories of childhood and more about information collection, often surreptitious, through bits of code inserted on unsuspecting users' computers. Recently, though, revelations about the NSA's information-collection efforts have brought together thoughts about surveillance and memories of my childhood.


    • 'Nobody is listening to your calls': Obama's evolution on NSA surveillance
      Barack Obama insisted on Friday that the NSA reforms he has proposed would have happened all along and that his views on surveillance programs had "not evolved". But since the president first responded to Edward Snowden's revelations in June he has rejected any suggestion that more safeguards were required.


    • Four Ways To Escape The NSA Dragnet
      Start by switching to an alternative search engine, using an alias on Facebook, and supporting allied nonprofits. This article was written by Nick Pearson, the CEO of IVPN. IVPN is a privacy platform, and Electronic Frontier Foundation member, committed to protecting online freedoms and online privacy.


    • EU among priority spy targets for NSA: report
      The European Union is ranked as a key priority in a list of spying targets for the US National Security Agency, German weekly Der Spiegel said Saturday, citing a document leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

      The classified document, dated April 2013, states that the US secret services are especially interested in gathering intelligence concerning the 28-member bloc's foreign policy, international trade, and economic stability, the magazine reported.


    • What the Chomsky-Žižek debate tells us about Snowden's NSA revelations
      Rather than backing one or the other thinker, why not embrace both to inform a leftist critique of the surveillance scandal?

      [...]

      In light of the recent NSA surveillance scandal, Chomsky and Žižek offer us very different approaches, both of which are helpful for leftist critique. For Chomsky, the path ahead is clear. Faced with new revelations about the surveillance state, Chomsky might engage in data mining, juxtaposing our politicians' lofty statements about freedom against their secretive actions, thereby revealing their utter hypocrisy. Indeed, Chomsky is a master at this form of argumentation, and he does it beautifully in Hegemony or Survival when he contrasts the democratic statements of Bush regime officials against their anti-democratic actions. He might also demonstrate how NSA surveillance is not a strange historical aberration but a continuation of past policies, including, most infamously, the FBI's counter intelligence programme in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s.


    • NSA FISA Surveillance: Attention Shifts To Email Surveillance


    • LIVE: Lavabit Closing – The Beginning of an NSA Coverup?


    • Two email providers close rather than comply with NSA data requests
      Two encrypted email providers closed down Thursday to avoid being forced to turn over user data to the federal government, The New York Times is reporting.


    • The guys that fight dodgy megacorps and surveillance-happy governments
      Our freedom to share information, speak our minds, come up with new ideas and keep our lives private is being threatened. Governments are continually seeking new ways to monitor what we're doing, while big businesses are constantly trying to lock us into their products. Bit by bit, our freedoms are being eroded.


    • N.S.A. Said to Search Content of Messages to and From U.S.
      The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.


    • Edward Snowden, the Espionage Act and First Amendment Concerns
      Last month, Edward Snowden, a former government employee and contractor, disclosed to newspaper reporters information about US intelligence activities that he obtained during the course of his work. Specifically, he revealed that the NSA engaged in widespread, warrantless surveillance of domestic and international telephone and Internet communications and also engaged in cyber spying on other governments, including allies. The revelations caused a public stir, especially given the questionable constitutionality of the NSA's domestic surveillance. But far more press, much of it hyperbolic, has focused on Snowden himself. Many officials and observers have called him a traitor while others labeled him a hero and a whistleblower who exposed massive government wrongdoing. The federal government recently brought criminal charges against him for theft of government property and violations of sections 793(d) and 798(a)(3) of the Espionage Act. These crimes carry possible prison sentences of up to thirty years and signal that the government does not view Snowden as a whistleblower. What are the implications of these particular charges for Snowden, especially in light of the First Amendment, which exists largely to protect public criticism of government and serve as a check against government wrongdoing?


    • Constitution Check: Is the Chief Justice’s power to pick judges of the secret wiretap court a bad idea?
      Lyle Denniston looks at a growing debate about Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ power to select judges who sit on a top-secret court – a power assigned to him by Congress.


    • If Bruce Schneier ran the NSA, he’d ask a basic question: “Does it do any good?”
      For the last two months, we’ve all watched the news about the National Security Agency and its friends over at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which approves secret orders on behalf of the NSA and other spy agencies. But more often than not, a lot of these articles take the same basic structure: documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden show X, and then privacy advocates and civil libertarians decry X for Y reason.


    • NSA Surveillance: Obama is Using Loophole to Conduct Domestic Spying
      Ever since Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s wiretapping to the world, President Obama have been trying to assuage Americans' fears and apprehensions over domestic spying — and much to no avail. Obama's latest effort came on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where Obama made clear that America does not have a domestic spying program. Unfortunately, the facts show otherwise.


    • The president is wrong: The NSA debate wouldn’t have happened without Snowden
      At Friday’s news conference, President Obama was asked by Chuck Todd whether the debate that has arisen in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations made Snowden a patriot. Obama disagreed.


    • Assange blasts Obama for denying Snowden's role in NSA reforms
      While praising US President Barack Obama’s Friday surveillance reforms as a "victory of sorts for Edward Snowden," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange delivered a written blow to the administration for its “hypocritical” treatment of the subject.


    • Snowden Who? U.S. and Russian Officials Say NSA Leaker Not Part of ‘2+2’ Meetings
      A canceled summit and the rogue NSA contractor’s asylum had some expecting fireworks at the bilateral talks with Kerry and Hagel. Somehow, it was business as usual.




  • Civil Rights



    • Why Your Cell Phone’s Location Isn’t Protected by the Fourth Amendment
      In a major decision last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the location of your cell phone when you place a call is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, which guards against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”


    • FLOSS after Prism: Anonymity by default
      In my last blog post I discussed that we have to protect the user’s privacy better by giving the user the choice to decide which data gets submitted to services. In this blog post I want to share some thoughts about the case that the data is submitted and how to protect the user in such a case.




  • DRM

    • Publishers object to Department of Justice’s punishment for Apple in eBooks case
      Five publishers have filed objections with the US Department of Justice regarding the DOJ’s choice of punishment in a recent anti-trust ruling against the Cupertino company. The ruling found Apple guilty of conspiring to fix e-book prices, forcing customers to pay a higher price. The proposed punishment would require them to cut off their current agreements with the five publishers in question and avoid entering new agreements for five years that could prohibit competitiveness in the market.


    • Apple faces major day in court on patents and e-books
      It’s a big day for Apple in court today, as the Cupertino-based company remains entangled in a massive web of litigation that seems to have ensnared the entire tech sector.

      First, the company will be squaring off against the Justice Department in a hearing about possible remedies for the company’s practices in developing its e-book business, which a judge recently ruled were in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Ambry hits back at Myriad’s “bad faith enforcement” of breast cancer gene patents
      For many years, all testing of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in the US was under control of one company: Myriad Genetics of Utah. But many expected that monopoly to be over when the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Myriad can't claim patent rights to those genes. In fact, the court ruled, such "isolated" DNA sequences can't get patents at all—although a lab-made form of the gene called the cDNA version still can.






Recent Techrights' Posts

At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots)
They make fake stories with provocative headlines and then boast that these get many comments
[Meme] Swiss Lawyers/Attorneys Who Fake Qualifications and Rob People
Switzerland mostly guards its reputation by censorship of media
Just How Slow Has the News Industry Become?
We're drowning in garbage from fake publishers
BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In
Many of the people there are Microsoft boosters and they use slop as "filler" (for marketing)
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Phasing Out 3G, Brian Kernighan Books, Tcl/Tk, Time to Ditch x86
Links for the day
BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles"
Published 5 minutes ago by Brian Fagioli...
WordPress is for the 'Old Web'; the New Web Necessitates Static Pages
There are purely practical reasons to move away from WordPress and the likes of it
Biggest Debt Leap in Years, More Than Half a Trillion Dollars in Just One Month
We remind people (almost every year) that it's also "buynothingday"
 
More Than 3 Years After Vista 11's Release More Chinese Computer Users Still Use Vista 7 (Than "11")
it was "officially" released October 5, 2021
In Switzerland, GNU/Linux Reaches Record Highs, But What About the Corruption?
Pocock is a disappointed citizen of Switzerland
Things That Still Work OK (But We're Being Shamed for Using)
Using old stuff is nothing to be shamed of (or afraid to do)
Free Software is About Collaboration
WordPress limits it
Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam
A Fish Rots From The Head Down
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 12, 2024
PERA Bill in US Senate Strives to Crush Caselaw, Making Patents on Mathematics and Algorithms 'Great Again'
Follow the money
Evolution of euthanasia & WIPO UDRP similarities exposed by W. Scott Blackmer
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 12/11/2024: A Lot of Censorship and SWNS at 50
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/11/2024: Invidious Down and YouTube Addiction
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: Hey Hi (AI) Failures and COP29 Fakers
Links for the day
Latest Rumours of Red Hat Layoffs
Rumours or gossip is how almost everything starts
Windows Falling to All-Time Lows and Microsoft Has Nothing to Replace It With
It's mostly Android (Linux) replacing Windows
Cybershow Has a New 81-Minute Episode on Digital Sovereignty and International Cyber-Relations
it is a high-quality show
Activism in the Digital Realm Can Never (and Must Never) Rely on GAFAM
This simply means that tech activists must completely abandon any hopes of finding allies in Google or IBM or whatever...
Golden Dawn(ald) and What GAFAM Means to Liberal Techies
In one single screenshot
IBM CEO Says Donald Trump as President-Elect is Good for IBM in New Interview With CNBC
most unprincipled CEO ever?
GNU/Linux Up to 6.1% in Finland (Almost 9% If One Counts ChromeOS Too)
Home of Linux (the kernel)
BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles'
everything is now suspect in BetaNews
It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead
What happens to LLM slop when Brian Fagioli dies?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 11, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 11, 2024
Free Software and Love of Nature
It's not a coincidence that many Free software activists are also lovers of nature
Silicon Valley and GAFAM Were Never Liberal
spineless CEOs and founders aren't against Trump
Windows and 'The Desktop' Floundering
Microsoft should be extremely worried
WordPress is Bad for the Planet (Even If Many Still Use It)
the costs nobody wishes to talk about
Gemini Links 11/11/2024: Closed Systems and Verify You Are Human To Continue
Links for the day
Running Twitter at a Loss and Then Profiting From Trumpism
How very liberal of Jack Dorsey, the greedy "Liberal" who only prioritised money
Microsoft, Which Benefits From Donald Trump, is Normalising Donald Trump
Some people still wrongly believe that Microsoft is left-leaning
ChromeOS and GNU/Linux Growing in Spain (Almost 10% Now)
Whether this persists next month and next year will certainly matter
When You Upload Talks of Richard Stallman to Proprietary YouTube
Also: notice they work to abolish the word "whitelisted"
Free Software is Probably a Lot Healthier for You
Does Free software help people live longer and/or live better for longer?
Sweden: ChromeOS + GNU/Linux at 17%, an All-Time High
According to statCounter
Windows Collapsed to Only 12% of the Operating Systems Market in India, Says statCounter
Windows falls to 64% on desktops/laptops in India, dips to 12% overall
Links 11/11/2024: Mastodon Year 2 in Review, Freshworks Laying Off 13% of Staff
Links for the day
[Video] Daniel Pocock Warning About Someone Like Elon Musk Buying and Misusing Twitter Almost 7 Years Ago
Daniel Pocock spoke about Facebook and Twitter while attending the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland
[Meme] It Takes Only Words to Destroy Malicious People and Pathological Liars
Trying to silence us is foolish. Boasting about this in public is worse than foolish; it's a legal liability.
Dead Blog ('Hoisted By His Own Petard')
The saying "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" is also applicable here
Debian Voters Clearly Supportive of Richard Stallman (Founder of GNU/Linux), But Debian Leaders Keep Giving Voting Rights to Microsoft Staff
It can be seen that the pro-Stallman positions are dominant
WordPress is Unfit for Purpose in 2024
The Web itself changed a lot and the majority of Web traffic is pure junk
[Meme] Remember That Microsoft and Trump Already Have a "Targets List"
Microsoft loves Trump bailouts
Service Notice: IRC Downtimes RESOLVED
We believe we've solved this entirely (or hope so), but it may take another week to know for sure
Linux 'Not Inclusive' 6.12 (Trumpism Inside Linux Foundation Affirmed)
They can make a codename for this release: Linux 'Not Inclusive' 6.12
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is Dead. Cause of Death: Microsoft Bribes.
At the core, Linux Foundation and OSI adopted lies as a business model
Joan Meyer correctly linked Gideon Cody raid on Marion County Record to Kristallnacht
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Trans People Misused to Attack a Project or Developer Who Has Nothing to Do With Them
And why that truly hurts all trans people
Our 18+ Years of Freedom-Fighting
We always fight back
Gemini Links 11/11/2024: Men Losing Grip and "You're Relaxing Wrong"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 10, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 10, 2024
Nobody Knows What's in Our Fridge! Wow, Spooky!
Freedom means you can also purchase things anonymously
Freedom Must Always Be Fought For (All the Time)
Ridicule of "freedom fighters" in the digital realm is typically orchestrated by dictators or wannabes.