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
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- Get it? Layoffs are "growth".
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- Links for the day
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- Plagiarism is not "theft" and copyright infringement is not "piracy"
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 07, 2026
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- Links for the day
- The Cyber Show Explains the Concept of "Data Rape"
- a metaphor some might find crude
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- 25 years ago or even 20 years ago many spoke of open/free beer (or "COLA")
- Syria: GNU/Linux Has Surged to 8% "Market Share"
- I don't have a convincing explanation for this
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- They just "ride" the (old) brand, that's all
- Statement on American SLAPP
- Crossposted from schestowitz.com
- Today The Register MS Published "SPONSORED FEATURE" and "SPONSORED POST" With "AI" 31 Times in Them
- This isn't a "Reality" or "Era of AI", it's a paid-for spam campaign
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- Links for the day
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXII - The Lozza Problem (in Length)
- Garrett's case was a waste of the Court's money
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- For search he is using CGI, not JavaScript
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- They've outsourced this session to the dictator's spying eye
- The GNOME Foundation's Code of Conduct Has Been Misused to Hide Corruption
- People who value free speech and freedom of expression won't touch social control media with a 10-foot bargepole
- Voting for Freedom of the Press
- American elections happen every 4 years
- What Brett Wilson LLP and Matt Garrett Don't Want People to See/Read
- Book-burning is counterproductive
- Book-Burning Mindset Does Not Work
- It makes the suppressed voices more widely known
- Microsoft's XBox in 'Freefall'
- XBox is practically finished
- IBM is Almost Defunct
- IBM is doomed. It just tries to test how much more patience the shareholders have.
- Criminalisation of Journalism
- "Journalist Derya Okatan arrested in Turkey for allegedly possessing classified material"
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXI - Hiding Behind the Veil of "Privacy" After Telling Nazi Things in IRC Channels of Techrights and Physically Threatening People
- To merely explain an abuse (or crime) requires naming people; that's a fundamental tenet of reporting
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- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: Greed, In Praise of Zotero, and The de-Google Path
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- IRC logs for Tuesday, October 06, 2026
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- Links for the day
- 20th Anniversary Next Month
- We are currently trying to agree on a plan for next month's celebrations
- Taking Photos With Richard Stallman (RMS)
- What's the point?
- GAFAM Attack on FreeDesktop
- Now they push lots of LLM slop into Linux
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- "Exchange of open letters"
- GNU/Linux Has Risen in France Since the Order to Adopt GNU/Linux (in Public Services)
- We can expect the same in countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands
- On Microsoft Hiring Freeze or No Permanent Jobs at Microsoft Anymore (Amid Many Silent Layoffs)
- Microsoft has changed what it can offer workers
- IBM Cannot Hide the Layoffs Forever
- we welcome whistleblower to tell us more and send us documents related to that
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Asking The Council to Get Rid of Corrupt Campinos
- We'll be covering EPO scandals around the time of that meeting
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: EU Kids Act, Practicality of Gemini, and Games
- Links for the day
- Links 06/10/2026: Data Breaches Epidemic and Turkey Blocking Journalists
- Links for the day
- The Whole Point of Computing is That Computers Are Deterministic (Speed With Predictable Accuracy)
- Unlike stochastic parrots that stochastically utter out lies
- It's Not a Linux Back Door If It's an Unpatched Device
- "Linux Backdoor" is a glaring misfit, a possibly 'obscene' term
- What is a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)? When Law Firms Become the Litigants.
- And the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) needs to be more serious about tackling this
- Brigading Against Women - Part XX - Attempts by Lozza to Deplatform Techrights and Tux Machines Only Days After I Sued Garrett and My Wife Also Sued Garrett (Shortly Before the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Joined)
- in 2024
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- Links for the day
- "SIRIUS CORPORATION LIMITED" as Evidence of the Financial Shell Games in the UK
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- It wasn't just gossip, it actually happened even if the media chose to look the other way (as usual)
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Fighting for Purpose, Gemlogs, and Gemtext
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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