Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 10/5/2014: Munich's GNU/Linux Success Story Told, CoreOS Introduced



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Arm Yourself with A Good Open Text Editor


  • Unreal Tournament opens up, GitHub releases open source Atom editor, and more


  • Web Browsers



    • What are the alternatives to Google Chrome and Firefox on Linux?
      Say what you want about web browsers on Linux, I just miss Internet Explorer. No let's be serious. A great thing about Linux distributions is in general that they come packaged with a good browser. If that browser is not your favorite, you can easily install another one (and you don't necessarily need a browser to download your favorite browser). For most users, however, this favorite browser will be Chrome or Firefox, and there are reasons for that: they are both good browsers. For more adventurous users, there is also Opera, which recently improved. But, there exist browsers out there which are a lot more exotic, with particular features and goals. I shall propose you eight examples: eight browsers which may not be as complete as Chrome or Firefox, but which are definitely worth checking out for their philosophies or design.


    • Mozilla





  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Moving towards an open source cloud with OpenStack
      Over the past years, I've played a leading role in helping to bring openness to the storage industry. At Nexenta, we inherited great technology from Sun Microsystems and went to market with an open core business model. This model, and a lot else, worked well and Nexenta has been called "the most disruptive storage company of the last 10 years" in part because of the impact we had on legacy, lock-in based proprietary vendors.


    • OpenStack Congress Set to Define IT Policy
      Martin Casado, Networking CTO at VMware, explains how the new OpenStack project will open up app, storage and networking policy.


    • Big Data a Big Priority for Most Organizations




  • Funding



  • BSD



    • OpenBSD Affirms That LibreSSL Will Be Portable
      In the fallout from the OpenSSL heartbleed bug, OpenBSD developers forked OpenSSL into LibreSSL. Initially the only supported platform for LibreSSL was OpenBSD, but the BSD developers are pushing harder now for platform portability.


    • LLVM 3.4.1 Release!
      This release contains bug-fixes for the LLVM 3.4 release and is both API and ABI compatible with 3.4.

      A few changes of note are:

      - varargs fix for X86. - Geometry shader support for R600. - A few c++11 fixes. - Various other fixes to the AArch64, ARM, PowerPC, R600, and X86 targets.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • Coreboot Keeps Getting Better Bay Trail Support
      Coreboot for Intel's low-power Bay Trail platform is a basic DPTF framework. The DPTF framework for Bay Trail isn't yet complete but is nearly working. DPTF is the Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework designed for "thin, quiet, and cool platform designs." As explained at 01.org, "Intel DPTF provides mechanisms for platform components and devices to be exposed to individual technologies in a consistent and modular fashion thus enabling a coordinated control of the platform to achieve the power and thermal management goals."




  • Public Services/Government



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



  • Standards/Consortia



    • Upcoming Maxwell GPUs Will Support H.265, But VP9 Is Uncertain
      NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 750 graphics cards back in February as their first products based upon their new Maxwell architecture. Sadly those GPUs didn't support any H.265 or VP9 acceleration, but at least it looks like the former will be supported by the next round of Maxwell GPUs.






Leftovers



  • One in 10 Americans think aliens abducted missing Malaysian plane


  • Science



    • New York City to turn phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots
      New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is fielding proposals to transform the city’s largely forgotten phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots, an ambitious project that would create one of the largest public Wi-Fi networks in the country.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • Climate change making food crops less nutritious, research finds
      Rising carbon dioxide emissions are set to make the world's staple food crops less nutritious, according to new scientific research, worsening the serious ill health already suffered by billions of malnourished people.

      The surprise consequence of fossil fuel burning is linked directly to the rise in CO2 levels which, unlike some of the predicted impacts of climate change, are undisputed. The field trials of wheat, rice, maize and soybeans showed that higher CO2 levels significantly reduced the levels of the essential nutrients iron and zinc, as well as cutting protein levels.


    • Vermont gov signs law to require labels on GMO foods
      Standing on the Statehouse steps before a legion of activists, Vermont's governor signed a new law Thursday that could make the state the first to require labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms — and also could make it the first to be sued over the issue.




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • The Wars to End All War
      And the searchlight stops at Ukraine, full of neo-Nazis, corrupt oligarchs, nuclear reactors, an unelected government, a wrecked economy, a simmering civil war. God help us. Old animosities and ideological divisions come back to life. The United States and NATO stand off against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Thirty-one people — maybe more — die in a burning building in Odessa. This kind of thing could be the pretext for a world war. Sanity is up in flames.



    • The Lawyer Behind the Drone Policy
      When the White House nominated David Barron to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, based in Boston, it expected the usual Republican opposition. Mr. Barron, a Harvard law professor, is known as a liberal who was pointedly critical of President George W. Bush’s national security policy. What it didn’t expect — but should have — was that Democrats would have some problems with the nominee, too.


    • Letter: Killing via drone is bad for America
      Dr. Cornell West was the guest speaker at the Tucker Missionary Baptist Church in Syracuse on Sunday past. I was amongst the standing-room-only crowd of people who understand the importance of Dr. West’s heartfelt concern for the well-being of all mankind.

      His speech titled “Connecting the Dots: Poverty, Racism, Drones” was a fiery condemnation of many of our government policies as well as the burgeoning hyper-rich who seem to have had their empathy gene extracted. Dr. West touched on many of our social ills and economic injustices that have wreaked havoc on the family unit and imbued too many young people with a value system that does not include altruism. He also condemned our onerous "criminal injustice" system.


    • Activists gather to protest militant drones
      An 8-foot-long metal replica of an MQ-9 Reaper drone towered above demonstrators as they read names of children killed in a CIA airstrike on Chenagai, Pakistan, in 2006.

      Eighty civilians were killed in that strike, including 69 children at a religious school.

      Members of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition gathered Wednesday at the Monroe County Courthouse, with signs calling for an end to drones use by the United States military. They read names of victims killed by drones in the Middle East through a megaphone.


    • Tell us more about drones
      We have a right to know what our government is up to
    • Air Force wants to buy deadly Reaper drones
    • Revised law could turn animal activists into terrorists
      When Amy Meyer saw a sick cow being pushed by a bulldozer outside a slaughterhouse, she did what any of us would in this age of iPhones and Instagram – she filmed it.

      Ms Meyer, 25, knew it was not only cruel, it was a public safety risk.

      Similar video footage had resulted in the largest meat recall in US history, when it was revealed that cows too sick to walk were being fed to schoolchildren as part of the national school lunch program.

      Instead of being praised for exposing this, Ms Meyer was prosecuted.

      Even though she stood on public property, she was charged with violating a new law in Utah that makes it illegal to photograph or videotape factory farms and slaughterhouses.

      This was the first prosecution of its kind in the US, but if the agriculture industry has its way, it won't be the last.
    • Science fiction may become reality with 'killer robots'
    • Excerpt: Richard A. Clarke’s ‘Sting of the Drone’
    • Obama, Putin, the Ukraine: A Symbolic Lynching
      The murder of a 17-year old German exchange student, Diren Dede, in the act of committing a midnight prank in a garage whose door was left open, video camera and sensors at the ready, alerting the homeowner who rushed for his shotgun, fired four blasts in the dark, legally/constitutionally protected by the Montana “Castle” law, killing the youngster—a law, receiving bipartisan endorsement, which amended a 2009 law specifying the imminence of mortal danger as grounds, now, eliminating the provision to allow unconditional license to kill on one’s property, IS America in microcosm circa 2014.
    • Imperialism and revolutionaries
      New TV show encapsulates the dissonance between US nostalgia for revolution and its current counter-revolutionary stance
    • Australians were killed by a US drone strike, and we deserve to know why
      The news that the US had killed two Australian “militants” in a drone strike was announced in mid-April. Christopher Havard and “Muslim bin John,” who also held New Zealand citizenship, were allegedly killed by a CIA-led airstrike in eastern Yemen in November last year.

      Readers were given little concrete information, apart from a “counter-terrorism source” who claimed that both men were foot soldiers for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, though they may also have been collateral damage (the real target being other terror heads).
    • Drone strike kills seven militants in Nangarhar province


    • US closes Yemen embassy amid fears of Qaeda revenge attacks
      The US embassy was closed to the public on Thursday in Yemen after a spate of attacks against foreigners and fears that al-Qaeda will seek revenge for a deadly offensive in the south.

      “The embassy is closed today. And this will remain in effect until further notice,” an employee at the US mission in a heavily-guarded neighbourhood in northeast Sanaa, told AFP.
    • FBI agent arrested in Pakistan on weapons charge
    • Detained FBI Agent in Pakistan Released on Bail


    • FBI agent detained in Pakistan is out on bail
    • CIA's Afghan cutbacks worry U.S. military


    • CIA, U.S. military at odds over Afghanistan pullback plan
    • NATO has left a mess in Afghanistan
      Today is "a day of honour" to mark our Afghan mission, courtesy of handouts by corporate Canada.

      Stephen Harper wants the photo-op but does not want to pay for it, though he did for the state funeral for his former finance minister, an occasion he used, in breach of protocol, to canonize the Conservative management of the economy.
    • The New Cold War: Libya, Syria, and the Ukraine
      Syria's not-so-civil war has been going strong for more than three years now and recently the news agency Reuters reported that "at least 150,000 people have been killed" in that time span.
    • Pakistan FM: Fake Vaccination Program to Blame for Polio Outbreak
      Dr. Afridi operated a phony vaccination program in early 2011 on behalf of the CIA, and with tacit support from the WHO. Instead of vaccinating children against polio, they were collecting the DNA of children to look for relatives of terrorists. The program led to the death of Osama bin Laden.


    • CIA Front, USAID, “Spreading Democracy”, Gearing Up in Ukraine – Suharto II?
      As the bodies of labor union reps and dissidents are piling up on the stairwells of Odessa and the streets of eastern Ukraine, today it is reported that USAID needs another couple million to support pro-Western “media outlets” in the run-up to the sham election to be held in the troubled state.






  • Finance

    • Around the World, Social Unrest Starts with Soaring Food Prices
      From 2008 to 2014, insurrectionist activity has sequentially erupted across the globe, from Tunisia and Egypt to Syria and Yemen; from Greece, Spain, Turkey and Brazil to Thailand, Bosnia, Venezuela and the Ukraine.


    • Robert Reich: 6 Principles Populists on the Right and Left Both Agree On
      More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class. “The game is rigged and the American people know that. They get it right down to their toes,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren.


    • Ukraine gets its Mafia-type loan
      It's essential to identify the conditions attached to this Mafia-style "loan".


    • Police 'have CCTV images' of Monaco heiress attacker


    • Workers of oppressed countries subjected to modern-day slavery
      Labor trafficking stands out among the most brutal features of capitalist society. Millions around the world are held in forced servitude, and traded like property among the global elite.

      An untold number of workers have been trafficked, obtained abroad or even within the United States, and held in compelled labor. According to the U.S. government, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into slavery in the United States every year, with foreign survivors more often found in labor than sex trafficking.


    • Why Passengers Cheered a Vermont Bus Strike
      An 18-day bus drivers’ strike in Burlington, Vermont, ended in a win April 3 when drivers ratified a new contract 53-6.

      Strikes are rare these days, and fewer still result in victories—so why was this one different? What generated public support for the strike, despite management’s aggressive plan to blame drivers for the loss of bus service for nearly three weeks?


    • Washington's Pivot to Ignorance: Will the State Department Torpedo Its Last Great Program?
      Take the current case of an unprecedented, unkind, under-the-radar cut in the State Department’s budget for the Fulbright Program, the venerable 68-year-old operation that annually arranges for thousands of educators, students, and researchers to be exchanged between the United States and at least 155 other countries. As Washington increasingly comes to rely on the “forward projection” of military force to maintain its global position, the Fulbright Program may be the last vestige of an earlier, more democratic, equitable, and generous America that enjoyed a certain moral and intellectual standing in the world. Yet, long advertised by the U.S. government as “the flagship international educational exchange program" of American cultural diplomacy, it is now in the path of the State Department’s torpedoes.


    • The Fulbright Program is the flagship of American cultural diplomacy. So why are we cutting it?




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Charter Schools Fail: New Reports Call Their ‘Magic’ Into Question
      When members of the U.S. House of Representatives consider, beginning today, a bill to incentivize the expansion of charter schools, you can expect there to be a lot of heat but not very much light in their discussion of the need for more of these institutions.



    • CMD Reporting on Walker Dark Money Criminal Probe
      In one of the first cases to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court's McCutcheon decision, a federal judge just tried to open the door to new levels of corruption in Wisconsin elections -- but the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals could still stop him. On May 6, federal Judge Rudolph Randa ordered a halt to Wisconsin's long-running "John Doe" criminal probe into allegedly illegal coordination between political campaigns (including Governor Scott Walker's 2012 recall campaign) and non-profit groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth that spent millions during the state's recall elections.




  • Privacy



    • US accuses Israel of ‘alarming, even terrifying’ levels of spying
      Friends do not spy on friends. That illusion about America’s attitude to its allies was conclusively debunked by Edward Snowden’s revelations about America’s National Security Agency and its British partner in global electronic eavesdropping, GCHQ. But by every account, the US is being repaid in kind by one of its closest international friends – Israel.



    • Congress Will Vote on an NSA Reform Bill that Won't Reform Much of Anything
      What do you end up with when you take a strong NSA reform bill championed by just about every civil liberties group and combine it with a widely derided one that threatened to expand the NSA’s power? A watered-down piece of legislation that takes baby steps toward limiting surveillance but still leaves some gaping loopholes that lets the government maintain the status quo.


    • Bill ending NSA bulk data collection moving quickly in U.S. House


    • Can the NSA Keep U.S. Metadata Safe from Hackers and Spies?
      It sounds like a system with gaping security flaws run by an agency that has shown itself incapable of guarding what it considers to be its most precious secrets. Say that no NSA employee ever abuses the detailed information it has about the private communications of Americans. Even with that guarantee, why should Americans trust the NSA to safeguard its data from foreign governments and hackers?

      I've yet to see any persuasive answer from NSA defenders.

      In fact, if you believe, like Edward Lucas of The Economist or John Schindler of the Naval War College, that Snowden is the unwitting dupe or witting agent of Vladimir Putin, then you're effectively saying that a foreign government has already breached a trove of NSA information that could be used to manipulate elections, blackmail some unknown number of Americans, and do all manner of other mischief.

      I don't think Snowden is a spy. But his success inclines me to think that the privacy of Americans will be much better protected, even absent any abuses by the NSA, if the NSA erases what it's gathered about us from its servers, rather than acting as if it can protect it all indefinitely. In the wrong hands, metadata on millions of innocents could do significant damage. Why trust the NSA and its contractors to keep it from the wrong hands?


    • Net tech bods at IETF mull anti-NSA crypto-key swaps in future SSL
    • NSA spying is causing Americans to self-censor their Internet activity
      An MIT researcher claims he’s quantified some of the troubling self-censorship civil liberties advocates worried would result from public knowledge of mass spying.

      The new study reports that Google users were slightly less likely (2.2 percent) to use search times that the National Security Agency flagged as potential national security threats.
    • The NSA’s Corporate Collaborators
      When a provider like Amazon is awarded a $600 million 10-year contract to provide the CIA with cloud services [18] do you suppose that Amazon is inclined to cater to government requests? Think of it this way: Roughly 70% of the intelligence budget goes to the private sector [19]. There are incentives for executives to go along.
    • Why Shouldn't Google Discuss Security With The NSA?
      I’m no great apologist for Google, but this is hardly evidence that the company was all that tight with the NSA. Given that the email exchanges took place months before the revelation that Google’s communications were being tapped – which the company claims it didn’t know – there’s no earthly reason why it shouldn’t take part in a national security initiative.
    • NSA's mass surveillance programme in interest of US citizens, says ex-director
      Speaking on the mass spying of US citizens, Alexaner just said the government agency was working in the best interest of the US citizen.
    • NTT says NSA activity is changing data center buying habits
      The survey quizzed 1,000 ICT decision-makers in France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the US. It found that nearly nine in ten (88%) of ICT decision-makers are changing their buying behavior. About a third (38%) have amended their procurement conditions.
    • The Snowden leaks; a meta-narrative
      The only way out of this I can see is to abolish the secret police and build out a new secure internet before the inevitable processes of institutional change generate a new rationale for spying on us. Unfortunately I see no way (at present) to pursue this agenda.
    • The Way the NSA Uses Section 702 is Deeply Troubling. Here’s Why.
      Section 702 has been used by the NSA to justify mass collection of phone calls and emails by collecting huge quantities of data directly from the physical infrastructure of communications providers.
    • 10 things we've learned about the NSA over the past year
      1. The appetite for domestic collection increased significantly after Sept. 11, both as a a cause of and a response to the Big Bang-like expansion of the national security state. The NSA expanded the reach and scope of its domestic collection activities as the the domestic threat exceeded. (I define domestic collection differently; it's the set of programs and analytical policies that touch a large volume of American-to-American communications in some way without individual FISA orders having been obtained.)
    • German NSA investigative panel to allow Snowden to testify
      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is to testify before a German panel investigating the activities of the spy agency. However, the panel has not yet determined whether he may travel to Berlin for the hearing.
    • German lawmakers want to interview Snowden
    • German authorities want to interview Edward Snowden about NSA spying
    • German Lawmakers Call On Snowden To Testify In NSA Investigation
      The debate on whether or not to call on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to testify in a parliamentary inquiry on the mass surveillance of German citizens by the American government came to an end on Thursday when committee members unanimously voted yes.
    • German lawmakers seek to interview Snowden over NSA spying
    • Would You Hire Former NSA Boss Keith Alexander For Cybersecurity Consulting?
      It is, of course, no surprise that former NSA boss Keith Alexander is now setting out a shingle for consulting work in the private sector.
    • Can Larry Klayman make history with his NSA lawsuit?
      Larry Klayman is back in his favorite place. The lawyer who launched hundreds of lawsuits against federal agencies, White House officials, Cabinet secretaries, judges, journalists, former colleagues, foreign governments, dictators, presidents, this newspaper and others who offended his hair-trigger sense of right and wrong, takes a seat at the long plaintiff attorney’s table in the august U.S. Courthouse two blocks from the Capitol.
    • Congressman Jim Cooper on the NSA Internal Watchdog Act
    • Ted Cruz: Thin Justice Argument to Dismiss Rand Paul NSA Suit


    • The relationship between the White House, Silicon Valley and its money? It's complicated
      Among the major tech players, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has been an especially high-profile figure. He launched an advocacy group that has been among the most active on the immigration issue.

      And he has been a vocal critic of the NSA's data collection, calling Obama to voice his alarm. Shortly after, Obama met with Zuckerberg and CEOs from Google, Netflix and other tech and Internet companies, pledging to safeguard privacy rights.


    • NSA broadens funding for 4 universities to advance the science of cybersecurity
      The National Security Agency is expanding funding for several universities to continue scientific research into cybersecurity.

      The intelligence agency awarded contracts to North Carolina State University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 and recently announced that these three universities along with the University of Maryland would receive additional funding.


    • Why There's No Such Thing As A Private Facebook Chat


    • You might want to pay for an e-mail service like the OpenBSD-running Neomailbox
      I don't look on the OpenBSD Misc mailing list very often, but today a message from that list introduced me to Neomailbox, which offers services that include secure, encrypted e-mail and anonymous web surfing for prices that are very reasonable.


    • Privacy Tool: Encrypt What You Can
      Encrypt the data you store. This protects your data from being read by people with access to your computer.


    • Should Google Kill Google Plus?


    • Help save Twitter – An appeal to all users.
      If people don’t want Twitter turning into another Facebook with in your face adverts all over the place, you need to say no now.

      If you block and dismiss any user who promotes their account/services, there will quickly be a message sent out that people are not interested in their marketing campaigns.

      I had intended on making a name and shame list of all the companies who would pay to push their products onto you, however I’ve spent the last hour blocking so many that it will take too long to list.

      So if you don’t want Twitter turning into Facebook, join me now. #nospamforme




  • Civil Rights



    • Death on the Job Report
      Workplaces are much safer today than when the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act was passed in 1970, which promised workers in this country the right to a safe job. The job fatality rate has been cut by 81 percent; more than 492,000 workers lives have been saved. But too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace tragedies continue to remind us. These tragedies are all preventable.


    • An American Retreat from Human Rights?
      Who knows, if that change is voiced loudly enough by you to your representatives, we might restore the glory to America's standing in the world, and America's standing to its own citizens. Write, call, or email your representatives today (see www.contactingthecongress.org). Ask them to support HRAC's call to demand greater support from the United States to respect international human rights norms. Ask them to push the conversation forward on joining the ICC. Ask them to support better protections for American soldiers during service and afterwards. We should be ashamed of the way we treat human rights standards right now and we should be ashamed at the way we treat our soldiers and veterans. We deserve better and we can do it with a united voice.


    • The Boston Marathon Bombing Interrogation and the Legal Suspension of Law
      According to a lawsuit filed by Tsarnaev's lawyers Wednesday, following his arrest in April 2013 Tsarnaev was denied repeated requests for a lawyer as he was continuously interrogated by FBI agents while complaining of his worsening medical condition due to gunshot wounds sustained to the head, face, throat, and jaw. Unable to speak, Tsarnaev wrote answers on a note pad. Defense attorneys were turned away from the hospital and federal agents lied to the suspect, saying his dead brother was still alive. All this before Miranda rights were read.


    • Is citizenship a right?
      ...British government has revoked the citizenship of 42 people, including 20 cases in 2013.


    • CIA torture report won't be made public for months
      The release of the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques — widely denounced as torture — is certain to take much longer than the 30 days sought by Senate Democrats.

      The panel’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at the beginning of April that she hoped the CIA would complete by now the process of excising from the report information deemed harmful to national security.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Sprint may start throttling its biggest data users
      Sprint subscribers are facing new limits on their supposedly unlimited data plans, at least in congested areas.

      The top 5 percent of data users may now get slower speeds during peak usage times, according to the legal and regulatory section of Sprint’s website. Speeds will return to normal when users leave a congested area or when demand subsides.


    • Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters
      Protesters set up camp outside the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Wednesday to fight plans they say will create a two-tier internet and hand control of the web to major corporations.

      The rally – reminiscent of the Occupy-style rallies that started in 2011 – started outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters at noon with protesters from Fight For the Future, Popular Resistance and others unfurling banners reading “Save the Internet”.


    • OPEN INTERNET BACKERS STAGE ‘OCCUPY FCC’
      Internet libertarians calling for the equal treatment of all Internet data have camped out in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, D.C., saying they won’t quit their Occupy-style protest until the regulator stands up for Net neutrality.

      About 15 people stood outside the FCC’s headquarters on Wednesday afternoon in a protest organized by the two groups, Fight for the Future and Popular Resistance. Five of the demonstrators said they were determined to set up camp overnight and stick around until May 15, when the commission is set to unveil proposed new Net neutrality rules — or perhaps longer, if the new rules don’t meet their expectations.


    • Net Neutrality: FCC Boss Smacked by Tech Giants, Internal Dissent
      FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faces mounting opposition to his proposed net neutrality rules as more than 100 Internet companies sent a letter expressing alarm over the direction laid out ahead of next week's vote and imploring regulators to protect the web's openness


    • Will the Italian Presidency of the EU Council Support Net Neutrality?
      The voice of the Italian presidency of the Council of the European Union could mark a real departure from the usual government talk chastising the vote on Net Neutrality adopted by the European Parliament! According to the information portal Euractiv, the Italian presidency could support the text voted by the Members of the European Parliament and be ready to defend it in front of the European governments and telecommunications industry. As the publication of the guidance report of the Council of the European Union about the Net Neutrality (scheduled for 5 or 6 of June) nears, La Quadrature du Net welcomes this encouraging position and asks European citizens to invite their governments to follow this example.




  • DRM



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • The Bizarro, Fact-free World Of Copyright Policymaking
        If you're a regular visitor to this website, you're likely used to the never-ending parade of horribles detailing how copyright has been used to censor documents, stifle innovation and generally wreak all kinds of unintended havoc.

        Even with this constant attention, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of exactly how world-champion strange copyright policy is. Only when it's placed alongside other government policies does it become clear exactly how it has evolved into a bizarro-world version of rational policymaking.


      • Pirate Bay Founder Launches Election Campaign For European Parliament


        In two weeks time citizens of all European Union member states will vote on who should represent them in the European Parliament. In Finland the local Pirate Party has a true Internet star on the ballot with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, who kicks off his election campaign today with a little bit of romance.


      • UK ISPs Agree to Send Out Music & Movie Piracy Warnings
        The music and movie industries and several of the UK's leading ISPs have reached terms on a deal to tackle Internet piracy. The arrangement will see the BPI and MPA monitoring people sharing files illegally and the ISPs sending them "escalating" warning letters.


      • No, Every Person Does Not Owe The Movie & Music Industry $67 Million, But Copyright Is Still Broken
        In a similar move, some folks at the Huffington Post have now estimated that every single man, woman and child on earth owes the combined music and movie industries on the order of $67 million. Each. Not cumulatively. Cumulatively, it would be $470,925,000,000,000,000,000 -- which is also 6.63 times the GDP of the entire planet.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day