GNU News (December-January)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
Summary: GNU, FSF, and Free software news from the past month or so
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Richard Stallman today met Mr Rahul Gandhi, Vice President of the Indian National Congress and shared his views on digital surveillance system, unique identification project, free software in education and governance in a meeting that went on for one hour. Mr Joseph Mathew, Secretary of SPACE also participated in the meeting. Mr Gandhi showed keen interest in Stallman's views on various issues relating to information technology.
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To commemorate the occasion of GNU completing 30 years and SPACE 10 years, the free software community in Thiruvananthapuram is also organising an exhibition on free software and free knowledge on Education Freedom Day, which falls on January 18 at the Museum. The exhibition will focus on free software and free hardware for education and privacy protection. Various free software projects like Fedora, WoMoz, and HackerSpace will be part of the exhibition.
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GnuCash is more than a simple checkbook register, although it can be used for that purpose. Its real power is in the features supporting small business use and managing multiple accounts. Its basic features are intuitive, but if you don't have a bookkeeping background, be prepared to spend some time with the user guide in order to fully appreciate its advanced capabilities.
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But the researchers, including Adi Shamir, a co-inventor of the widely-used RSA encryption algorithm, have shown how within one hour it was possible to extract a 4096-bit RSA private key used to decrypt email from a laptop running the OpenPGP-based mail encryption tool, GNU Privacy Guard.
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After earlier this month delivering LLVM Clang 3.3/3.4 benchmarks for the new compiler infrastructure out of Apple, today are results that directly compare the new LLVM Clang 3.4 performance against the stable GCC 4.8.2 compiler and GCC 4.9.0 development compiler under various C/C++ benchmarks.
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An Intel engineer has published a patch-set providing a new GCC compiler architecture target for Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs.
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Novena Project aims to create an entirely open source laptop, from the iron down to the bits, and a prototype already exists
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to Gluglug X60 laptops. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. This is the first laptop to receive RYF certification from the FSF.
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FOSS is the last place to suspect “back doors” or traps.
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Computer scientists have devised an attack that reliably extracts secret cryptographic keys by capturing the high-pitched sounds coming from a computer while it displays an encrypted message.
The technique, outlined in a research paper published Wednesday, has already been shown to successfully recover a 4096-bit RSA key used to decrypt e-mails by GNU Privacy Guard, a popular open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Publication of the new attack was coordinated with the release of a GnuPG update rated as "important" that contains countermeasures for preventing the attack. But the scientists warned that a variety of other applications are also susceptible to the same acoustic cryptanalysis attack. In many cases, the sound leaking the keys can be captured by a standard smartphone positioned close to a targeted computer as it decrypts an e-mail known to the attackers.
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The Free Software Foundation today has come out for "the first time we've ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is." The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer's freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?
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GNU Binutils was updated this morning and some of the major changes for these binary tools updates include supporting several new processors.
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To read more about all of these and see the honorable mentions not listed here, make sure to head back to the full hive five feature.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- 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
- 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
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- 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
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- 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
- GNU/Linux Did Not Start in 1991 and America Wasn't Discovered by Europeans
- it'll be 43 next month
- 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
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- Links for the day
- The Tragedy of Software Developers Making Up Narratives and Making Excuses for Plagiarism (of Their Own Work, Too)
- one lingering issue is that many who vote in Debian GRs receive money from slop companies
- Evri Makes Us Optimistic About the Collapse of the Slop Pyramid Scheme (Bubble)
- Do not be seduced by false promises of "automation" or "intelligence" where only automation may exist but no intelligence at all
- Congrats to Linux.org for Adopting or Getting Back to IRC
- This is the way the Net ought to work and was originally designed to work [...] IRC as a protocol turns 38 this month
- Links 24/08/2026: "Journalism Can Help Expose Bad Science And Trigger Real-World Change"; Further Suppression and Censorship in China/HK
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/08/2026: Soul Mentality, Words to Live by, Mozz.us Gemlog Resumes, Smol Conversations
- Links for the day
- Today The Register MS Published Greenwashing Spam for the Slop Pyramid Scheme, It Mentions "AI" 29 Times
- More people need to talk about the role of the media in this pyramid scheme
- Slop Plagiarism and Chatbots Are Killing Evri (They Infuriate and Insult Clients)
- Slop destroys companies and leads to misery (miserable clients, time-wasting)
- Links 24/08/2026: Re-defining the IndieWeb and "Data Center Backlash Bursts Into the Midterms"
- Links for the day
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- Those corporations do not oppose slop, they participate in it
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- authorities said they would migrate to GNU/Linux or consider moving in that direction
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- Disconnected from the law
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 23, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 23, 2026
- Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Turning 60, PineTime, and Simulation Hypothesis
- Links for the day
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- Are people now expected to change a car as often as they replace a mobile phone and, if so, how fast would costs add up?
- The Sniff Test
- Be sceptical of "CoCs"
- Cloudflare Sees a Quarter of Requests in China Coming From GNU/Linux Today
- Will 23% ever be the average for GNU/Linux rather than a mere peak?
- You Can Lose Some Battles and Still Win the War
- Winning or losing isn't something for a scoreboard
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- the average was almost 10%
- Things Not to Fear Missing Out on
- Life is too short to pay attention to social control media
- Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Exercising Again, Tackling Phone Addiction, and Putting Graal Online Back Online
- Links for the day
- Northern Africa: GNU/Linux Measured at Around 5%
- by Clownflare
- PIPs and Lawsuits: On the Future of IBM Trying to Spit Out Its Own Staff at Minimal Cost
- "I'd rather be laid off than be put on a PIP"
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- When will 14% be the average?
- Links 23/08/2026: Water Crises, Illegal Tariffs, and Carney Confronts US Over Patent Imperialism
- Links for the day
- Links 23/08/2026: Slop "Children's Stories Contain Bizarre Patterns" and "Butterflies at the One Garden"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 159 Out of 200: Telling Courts False Information and Spoon-feeding Them Insults, Hoping or Expecting Them to Repeat These Insults
- When lawyers trick courts into repeating something false
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- borrowed money has long been used to bribe the media
- "AGI" is Decades Old and It Never Found a Viable Business Model or Real, Actually Useful Use Cases
- I keep reminding people of local firms (right here in Manchester) doing the same thing the media now calls "AGI"...
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 22, 2026
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- What does this company even sell anymore?
- Clownflare Data US-Centric
- We are assuming that for national security reasons not many sites in Chinese (or based in China) outsource their traffic to Clownflare
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- Links for the day