Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 22/6/2014: New Linux RC, FreeBSD RC



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Will Carriers Step Up to Open Challenge?
    Telecom service providers are being asked in multiple ways to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to supporting open source software and technology in the move to virtualization.

    The most obvious move those willing to embrace openness will make is joining the new open source project -- called Open Platform for NFV, or OPN -- that a number of telecom operators associated with the ETSI Network Functions Virtualization Industry Specification Group are setting up with the Linux Foundation , already home to OpenDaylight . (See Is Open Source the New De Facto Standard?)


  • Google Chrome PDF Engine is now Open Source


  • Google open sources PDF rendering


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Mozilla is Working on a Firefox OS-powered Streaming Stick à la Chromecast
        Mozilla took the world by surprised when it announced that it was developing a Firefox operating system that would be used for mobile phones, especially in developing markets. Now, there are already a few devices out there, but it seems that this isn’t the last step for the company whose name is still associated with the famous web browsers.







  • SaaS/Big Data



    • ForgeRock Raises $30M for Open-Source Identity-Relationship Tech
      ForgeRock's $30 million capital injection will help the company drive adoption of identity-relationship management technology.


    • OpenStack by the numbers
      Haven given that warning, I still think there's good value in project statistics. They say something about trajectory, and when used in conjunction with solid knowledge of why the numbers are what they are, they can tell a good bit about comparative success. And they can be inspiring. "Look what we've done" you can say to your community, as you provide them with the raw data about what they've created. They can also say something about the relative participation in a project, as with Chuck Dubuque's look at how to gauge the contributions of the various corporate contributors to OpenStack.


    • OpenStack: What It Is, What It Does
      OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage and networking resources throughout a data center, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. In general, it is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) operating system for building and managing cloud computing platforms for public, private and hybrid clouds.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • CMS



  • Education



    • Are there too many computers in the classroom?
      I could not disagree more with Dvorak. One of the things I always hated when I was in school was having to sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher drone on endlessly about a subject. It felt like it was taking forever for them to get to the point and present the information. Really, I remember doodling on my notebook while the teacher went on and on in what seemed like an endless monologue about whatever.

      Maybe that was just my perception at the time (I graduated high school back in 1987), but I would much rather have had faster access to all of the course information rather than waiting for the teacher to regurgitate it verbally to me. Oral communication in person is such a slow and ponderous way to transfer information compared to what you can do with today's computers and tablets.




  • Healthcare



    • Some patients are eager to share their personal data
      While many researchers encounter no privacy-based barriers to releasing data, those working with human participants, such as doctors, psychologists, and geneticists, have a difficult problem to surmount. How do they reconcile their desire to share data, allowing their analyses and conclusions to be verified, with the need to protect participant privacy? It's a dilemma we've talked about before on the blog (see: Open Data and IRBs, Privacy and Open Data). A new project, Open Humans, seeks to resolve the issue by finding patients who are willing—even eager—to share their personal data.




  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GCC Allowed To Add Offloading Library To Code-Base
      The GCC steering committee has ruled on allowing a foreign library for compute offloading into the GNU Compiler Collection.

      The first library in question is the poorly named "liboffload", which handles offloading work to Intel's high-end Xeon Phi compute cards. Permission was needed from the GCC steering committee for introducing a foreign library plus that there's some GPLv2.1 header files and new sources.


    • Democracy and Software Freedom
      It is striking that, despite talking a lot about freedom, and often being interested in the question of who controls power, these five criteria might as well be (Athenian) Greek to most free software communities and participants- the question of liberty begins and ends with source code, and has nothing to say about organizational structure and decision-making – critical questions serious philosophers always address.

      Our licensing, of course, means that in theory points #4 and #5 are satisfied, but saying “you can submit a patch” is, for most people, roughly as satisfying as saying “you could buy a TV ad” to an American voter concerned about the impact of wealth on our elections. Yes, we all have the theoretical option to buy a TV ad/edit our code, but for most voters/users of software that option will always remain theoretical. We’re probably even further from satisfying #1, #2, and #3 in most projects, though one could see the Ada Initiative and GNOME OPW as attempts to deal with some aspects of #1, #3, and #4


    • Staying free – should GCC allow non-free plug ins?
      To this extent, the argument between LLVM and GCC is a retread of the historic differences between GNU/Linux and the BSDs, between ‘open source’ and free software. Open source developers allow the code to be reused in any context, free or proprietary. Free software is restrictive in that it insists that the code, and any modifications to the code, must remain free in perpetuity. Advocates of free software would argue that the integrity of copyleft licensing has been instrumental in the spread of GCC, and has taken Linux and free software into places it would not otherwise have reached, and that free software cannot be bought or corrupted by commercial or corporate interests. Open source advocates argue that open source is more free because the user has no restrictions and can do what he or she likes, including developing closed source versions of the code.




  • Public Services/Government



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • PHP 5.6 Is Nearly Ready For Release, RC1 Is Out
      PHP 5.6 is on track for its official release this summer as a major update to PHP5 while those looking to do some pre-production testing, RC1 is now available.


    • Replacing freecode: a proposal
      Web frameworks have gotten much more powerful since the original Freshmeat was built 17 years ago; today, I think building a replacement wouldn’t be a huge project. It is not, however, something I am willing to try to do alone. Whether or not this goes forward will depend on how many people are willing to step up and join me. I figure we need a team of about three core co-developers, at least one of whom needs to have some prior expertise at whatever framework we end up using.


    • ESR Mulls Replacing freecode
      The concept is interesting. Distros do a lot of similar things as does Sourceforge, GitHub and Distrowatch. A site specializing in distributing release-announcements could have a niche. On the one hand, with the millions of projects that might use the service, the site might be too busy to be useful. On the other hand, a good search engine might make the site scale well. Perhaps Google could provide the searching function.




  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • After 47 years in print, Computerworld finally goes digital-only


  • Happy Midsummer Solstice! with A Kopimist Gospel
    Today is the Midsummer Solstice, which has been celebrated as a holy day by most religions throughout human history. and is also recognized by science as one of the four special days in the solar year.

    Kopimism is one of Sweden’s newest religions. On or about the winter solstice of 2011, the Swedish authority Kammarkollegiet — blessed be its name! — officially recognized by Kopimism as a religion, just like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and others.


  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition



    • American 'Healthcare' Exceptionalism: Highest Costs, Worst Care


    • The measles crisis
      Suspicion increased when Dr Shakeel Afridi was revealed to have been running a fake hepatitis vaccination programme for the CIA to help in its search for Osama bin Laden. Now with deaths that can be linked to a vaccine, and that too a vaccine purchased from India, our public health goals will be that much harder to achieve. Those responsible for the deaths should of course be held responsible but it will now become very difficult to contain the damage they have caused.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • The New Ground-Based Defense Missiles Cost $40 Billion We Could Use For A Lot of Other Things. Oh, and They Don't Work.
      A decade after it was declared operational for bogus political reasons - "you just needed to build them" - the $40 billion Ground-based Midcourse Defense System, or GMD, "cannot be relied on," says a blistering report from the L.A. Times. It has an "abysmal" record: It has failed more tests than it has passed, has "performed less well than people had hoped," has been hyped by U.S. officials who claimed it was more reliable than it was, has failed tests far less stringent than real-life scenarios would be, and over time has continued to perform worse, not better, despite years of tinkering, failing five of its last eight tests. It was also designed for a threat that likely doesn't exist, or in the immortal words of Charles Pierce, "not to defend ourselves against missiles but, rather, as a platform for international dick-waving." Oh yes, and members of Congress - the guys who battled over how much to cut food stamps - want a bunch more.



    • Why Bush and Blair Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes
      Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently stated that air strikes and drones should be used once again on Iraq to stem recent gains by extremists in that country. Mr. Blair is oblivious of the responsibility he shares with former U.S. president George W. Bush on account of one of the most serious breaches of international law in recent times. The prosecution of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush, along the lines of similar trials conducted in Argentina, Chile and Peru, is the only fitting response to such careless remarks.



    • S.Korean Soldier Said to Kill 5 Comrades at Border
      All able-bodied South Korean men must serve about two years in the military under a conscription system aimed at countering aggression from North Korea.


    • Washington Digest: House declines to put its foot down on Iraq
      “We must not let history repeat itself,” Lee said. “Calls to be dragged back into a war in Iraq must be rejected.”


    • Rolling Back the Clock? --Progressive Style?
      In 1981, my first professor in political science, the late Dr. Charles Benjamin, explained that roll-back-the-clock was the plan of the new Ronald Reagan administration in terms of American foreign policy. We had just come out of the Carter era--the only time that USA presidential leadership had sincerely tried to put the CIA and NSA leadership in their societal places (subservient to the executive branch and constitution) and had unveiled a practicing Human-Rights policy that would support popular people's rebellions against dictators around the globe. During the Carter term, from Central America to the Middle East, the USA foreign policy had allowed people's movements to have their day in the sun.


    • What Megyn Kelly Should Have Asked Dick Cheney
      The former vice president got his comeuppance on Fox News last Wednesday, producing a minor news story.

      Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz had published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal advocating renewed U.S. military involvement in Ira to prevent a seizure of power by the al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS (or ISIL) and opining, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

      Citing this comment, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly unexpectedly snapped, “But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well sir.” She referred specifically the false accusation about weapons of mass destruction used to sell the Iraq War. A flustered Cheney fumbled his interrogator’s name (“Reagan, um, Megyn”) before declaring, “You’ve got to go back and look at the track record.” (As though Megyn were doing something other than precisely that.) “We inherited a situation where there was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement in weapons of mass destruction. … Saddam Hussein had a track record that nearly everybody agreed to.”

      In other words, the unfortunately mistaken but universal belief in Saddam’s WMD preceded the Bush-Cheney administration, was part of its heritage but in no way its invention. Everybody was honestly mistaken. Thus he utterly rejects personal responsibility for crediting, promoting it, and using it to justify a war he badly wanted.
    • Rand Paul Defends Obama Against Dick Cheney
      “Do you think Dick Cheney is a credible critic of this president?” host David Gregory asked Paul, quoting from Cheney’s op-ed in which Cheney wrote, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”


    • Utah is where Army learns to fly drones better
      Two types of drones — the MQ-1C Gray Eagle and the RQ-7 Shadow — began flying in tandem with the Apaches. The drones’ cameras and sensors transmit the intelligence to the Apache crew — showing it what lies over the hill so the Apaches don’t have to expose themselves to find a target to attack or don’t fly into an ambush.


    • Drone strikes more right than wrong, Key says
      New Zealand has no issue with US drones striking terrorists in Iraq, PM John Key told TV1's Q+A this morning.

      "They sometimes go wrong and that's a great tragedy.

      "On balance of benefit, are they more often right than they're wrong? I think the answer is 'yes'," he said following a meeting with US President Barack Obama.


    • No consensus on 'targeted' military action in Iraq
      President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that the United States is "prepared to take targeted and precise military action" in Iraq if the situation on the ground requires it. The president added that if he decides to take military action in Iraq, he would consult with Congress and world leaders.


    • Iraq veterans now wonder if all their sacrifices were for naught
      Mike Dizmang thinks about the Iraqi children who shook his hand and smiled when he told them that all would be OK in the end.


    • The Drone Memo Cometh
      In response to consolidated lawsuits filed by the ACLU and The New York Times, the Second Circuit recently ordered the Obama administration to disclose (with redactions) one of the legal memos authorizing the government’s premeditated killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi, an American citizen. The government has challenged certain aspects of the court’s decision, apparently with some degree of success (more on that below), and it has managed to defer the release of the memo by two months. To its credit, though, the court appears unwilling to allow the government to delay the release of the memo indefinitely. If the court holds to a plan it set forth ten days ago, it will publish the memo itself this coming week.


    • US aid of f $96 million approved for Pakistan
    • The crisis of ISIS in Iraq: was America the midwife?
      Communities Digital News published a report outlining strong circumstantial evidence that arms transferred from the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi before the attack on September 11, 2012, ended up in Syria and are now being used against the Iraq government. Media reports and Pentagon / State Department statements have confirmed that U.S. weapons are being deployed by ISIS in Iraq.

      More disturbing information is emerging to bookend these revelations. The United States probably trained elements of the ISIS militia, which has accounted for the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Syria and now in Iraq.
    • Why The MSM Is Such A Farce
      hen again one only has to remember the MSM basically cheering on the the preemptive illegal invasion and all the breathless bullshit emanating from "embedded" journalists to see how effing useless they are.
    • Isis threat justifies greater surveillance powers in UK, says Liam Fox


    • John Prescott: I’m proud to have served with you Tony but we DID cause Iraq mess
      The Sunday Mirror columnist and former Deputy Prime Minister says it's time to learn from the past and leave Iraq and its neighbours to sort out this mess


    • The Iraq Surge 'Worked' All Over Again
      Treating "the US troop surge worked" argument as a fact, as Engel is doing, is very dangerous–since it logically suggests that it is only the presence of US troops that can keep Iraq safe. That is a recipe for a never-ending war.


    • Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction


    • Iraq and Your Gas Tank
      When it comes to US foreign policy and warmaking in the Middle East, you're not supposed to talk about oil. To suggest it plays a serious role in US decision-making is to invite taunting about conspiracy theories.


    • Russia Reignites The Proxy War: Putin Offers “Complete Support” To Iraq Prime Minister Scorned By Obama
      It was the bolded text that was of biggest interest because as we noted the next day, when discussing the next steps for ISIS, we said that “One wonders how long until the mercenary force finds its latest major backer, because for all the western, US-led intervention, both Russia and China are oddly missing from the scene. We expect that to change soon.”


    • Where Is the Accountability on Iraq?
      Can someone explain to me why the media still solicit advice about the crisis in Iraq from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)? Or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)? How many times does the Beltway hawk caucus get to be wrong before we recognize that maybe, just maybe, its members don’t know what they’re talking about?


    • Capitalism's Bullets in Latin America: Invisible Empires, State Power and 21st Century Colonialism
      "Soccer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war," wrote Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. For many people in Brazil, a war has indeed broken out surrounding the current World Cup. Poor communities have been displaced by stadiums and related infrastructure for the event, the high level of security has increased police violence, and the enormous economic costs of the World Cup are seen by many as a blow against the rights of the country's most impoverished people. As a result of these controversies, the international sports event has been met with wide-spread protests.


    • Assange Urges Ecuador to Counteract Massive U.S. Spying
      The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, felt that despite being a small nation, Ecuador can pursue the cessation of US mass espionage against its citizens, according to an interview published here today. The Australian publisher and journalist considered that Ecuador can pass laws to mandate that companies providing services within the country use audited industrial standard encryption by default.

      In an interview with the El Telegrafo, Assange said the best model for small nations like Ecuador is the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which aimed to make Iceland into a competitive jurisdiction among the market of jurisdictions for companies wishing to provide internet services.




  • Transparency Reporting



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



    • The Teaching Class
      Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone paying tuition should care.


    • Spain’s new king sworn in amid anti-monarchy rally (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
      ​Several people have been detained at an anti-monarchy protest near Madrid’s heavily guarded central square following the coronation of Felipe VI as Spain's new king.


    • BBC and press ignore massive demonstration against austerity in London
      It seems the BBC are capable of tracking down a single Scot in Brazil who cheered a goal against England but fail to notice 50,000 demonstrating on their doorstep.


    • Miami Sues Banking Giant Over Predatory Mortgages
      The city of Miami on Friday filed a lawsuit in a federal court against JPMorgan Chase & Co., accusing the banking giant of a pattern of discriminatory loan practices "since at least 2004" which sparked foreclosures and violated the U.S. Fair Housing Act.

      "JPMorgan has engaged in a continuous pattern and practice of mortgage discrimination in Miami since at least 2004 by imposing different terms or conditions on a discriminatory and legally prohibited basis," Bloomberg reports lawyers for Miami as saying in the complaint.



    • Tens of thousands march in London against coalition's austerity measures
      Tens of thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday afternoon in protest at austerity measures introduced by the coalition government. The demonstrators gathered before the Houses of Parliament, where they were addressed by speakers, including comedians Russell Brand and Mark Steel.





  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • The Koching of America — and of PBS
      A few months back the filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin got some bad news. The PBS funding that they had counted on to complete their documentary on campaign financing was being withdrawn. This setback came not long after PBS took the unusual step of warning David Koch (of right-wing billionaire donors “the Koch Brothers” fame) that he had been negatively portrayed in another of the networks documentaries, and giving them a chance to respond.


    • Fox Covers Up a Benghazi Story
      So why no mention of the suspect's stated motive now? Fox News has aired more than 2,000 segments on the Benghazi attacks. Like other right-wing media with the Benghazi bug, Fox News claims that the White House deceived the public by not immediately branding the incident an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist attack, but instead claimed that it was a spontaneous reaction to the notorious internet video. The motive for the deception, goes the theory, was the White House's desire not to remind voters that Al-Qaeda was still active two months before a US presidential elections (e.g., Special Report, 5/14/13.)

      Indeed, the conspiracy-mongering got so out of control at one point that the Republicans, with Fox News at their backs, attempted to turn a State Department email mentioning that the anti-Muslim Internet video had caused incidents at a number of US embassies into a smoking gun–evidence, they said, that State Department was trying to repeat inaccurate talking points to be used on Sunday morning chat shows (e.g., Kelly File, 5/1/14). They were ultimately unsuccessful, as more level-headed media corrected the record (e.g., Slate, 4/30/14).


    • How Fox News Has A Conversation About Islam


    • Steve Wozniak wants you to support Mayday.US and get money out of politics
      Apple co-founder, nerd legend, and all-round Good Guy Steve Wozniak has recorded an excellent video explaining why he's supporting Larry Lessig's Mayday.US super PAC, which is raising $5M to elect lawmakers who'll promise to vote to abolish super PACs and effect major campaign finance reform.




  • Censorship



  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



    • No answer yet on how many elected politicians have been monitored by police's domestic extremism unit
      Two Green Party politicians have criticised police chiefs who recorded their political activities on a secret database that tracks 'domestic extremists'


    • US demotes Thailand and Qatar for abysmal human trafficking records


    • Sign the petition to provide reparations to the Chicago Police torture survivors


    • Guildford Four's Gerry Conlon dies of cancer in Belfast, aged 60
      Belfast man who was wrongly jailed for 15 years devoted his life after release to campaigning for justice


    • How the CIA Stole 'Dr. Zhivago'
      As The Zhivago Affair reveals, Feltrinelli was not the novel’s only publisher: The CIA played a central role in promoting and disseminating Pasternak’s novel. “The CIA, as it happened, loved literature,” Finn and Couvee write, and the agency was involved in the shipment of some one million books behind the Iron Curtain, including Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Nabokov’s Pnin. It became an urgent American agenda to place Doctor Zhivago in the hands of Russian readers. At a 1958 exposition in Brussels, attended by many Soviet visitors, the Vatican pavilion gave out free copies of Zhivago. In the words of a CIA memo, “this book has great propaganda value.”


    • Benghazi suspect faces US criminal court
    • Daphne Eviatar: Sending Benghazi suspect to Gitmo would be obstruction of justice
    • Kangaroo courts and guns on the table: The week in quotes
      Activist Margaretta D’Arcy made a strong presentation to an Oireachtas committee on the use of Irish airspace and Shannon Airport by, in particular, the US Military and CIA.
    • Revealed: Police investigate evidence that six CIA torture flights landed in Scotland
      POLICE are investigating evidence that a CIA jet landed in Glasgow after carrying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to a secret torture prison in Poland.

      And the Sunday Mail can reveal that elite detectives are also probing five other stopovers in Scotland, which researchers suspect were part of CIA “rendition circuits” to move terror suspects between secret jails and torture sites.


    • Risen's Petition Denied
      According to sources however, Eric Holder has declared, “As long as I’m attorney general, no reporter will go to jail for doing his job.”


    • UK government urged to prevent US use of Diego Garcia for renditions
      Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee has called on the UK Government to restrict the use by the US of Diego Garcia, a British overseas territory, for renditions.


    • Miracles, secrecy and Obama
      To make matters worse, agencies can’t deal with the explosion in electronic information. The CIA is believed to generate 1 petabyte of classified records every 18 months, or the equivalent of 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets of documents.


    • Canadian woman who stopped car on highway to save ducklings found guilty of causing two deaths
      25-year-old Emma Czornobaj stopped her car on the left lane of a highway near Montreal in 2010 after spotting a group of stray ducklings on the road. A motorcyclist and his daughter were killed after slamming into her car.


    • 'Cash cow' spy cars to be banned
      The "overzealous" use of spy cars by councils to issue parking fines will be reined in as the government seeks a better deal for the High Street.
    • Telling Folk Heroes From Monsters
      Even if hackers like Mr. Swartz are still a problem for us to reconcile in real life, maybe it is in the movies, with their capacity to empathize with the outré, their ability to present difficult, morally prismatic antiheroes, that we can properly come to terms with them. Especially now, in a world so vividly shaped by complex agents of change like Mr. Assange and Edward J. Snowden, we may need movies to help us comprehend our shades of gray.


    • Immigration And Mindless Partisanship – OpEd
      Many news articles have reported record deportations under Obama, while his anti-immigration critics have argued that a sensitivity to novelties in classification expose a president lax on border enforcement. Adjusting for all this, it appears that the truth is somewhere in the middle: Overall, the Obama administration has conducted deportation policies qualitatively similar to the last administration’s. Whether one concludes a slight decline or increase, the more important fact is that there has been no radical shift since he took office, and certainly not one toward liberalization. Obama’s proposal for reform last year was in fact quite reminiscent of Bush’s plan. Although conservatives tended to find Bush too liberal on immigration, a June 2007 poll showed that 45 percent of Republicans favored their president on these policies, down from 61 percent just a few months before.
    • Brazilian police criticised over raid on protest camp
      Several people were injured by rubber bullets and teargas canisters in Tuesday's dawn attack by police on a tent community occupying a historic wharf known as Cais José Estelita.



    • Police say they have not counted how many politicians they have been monitoring
      It seems as though we may never know how many elected politicians have been monitored by the police's 'domestic extremism' unit.

      And the reason? Police say that they have not counted how many there are.

      In response to a freedom of information request from the Guardian, Scotland Yard said that the national 'domestic extremism' unit "has not conducted any research to count how many elected politicians are currently recorded in any way in its files."


    • Iran's morality police: patrolling the streets by stealth
      President Rouhani vowed to rein them in, but they are still in force quietly keeping check on Tehran's dress code


    • Groups Appeal to UN for 'Humanity' as Detroit Shuts Off Water to Thousands
      'By denying water service to thousands, Detroit is violating the human right to water.'


    • Brutal Repression Of Anti-FIFA & World Cup Protests in Brazil: at least 109 Arrested, countless Wounded
      Clashes in São Paulo ongoing, activists erected barricades and police have begun trying to disperse them with gas bombs. Protestors trashed a high-class car dealership and a bank on their way to the barricades, the cops could not keep up.


    • Spain: Piss Off The New King, Get Arrested For Displaying Anti-Monarchy Flags
      At least 5 people were arrested by the Spanish police for displaying flags for the Republic during the crowning ceremony of an imposed king aimed to reboot the fading support for the monarchy.

      Since 2008, it is legal to carry flags in support of the republic in Spain, but police arrested old people, young people, parents in front of their kids, intimidated and abused dozens for speaking against the king on the streets, or for wearing anti-monarchy signs. The ones who shouted ”€¡Viva la República!” (Long live the Republic), during the ceremony, were arrested on the spot, officials said that it was for the crime of “opposing resistance to the authorities“.


    • Report: California Illegally Sterilized Dozens of Female Inmates
      Last year, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) accused California of sterilizing over 140 female inmates between 2006 and 2010 without required state approvals.

      One doctor, James Heinrich, was responsible for the two-thirds of the tubal ligation referrals during that period from the biggest offender, Valley State prison.

      Asked by CIR about his startling record, Heinrich justified the money spent sterilizing inmates by claiming it was minimal "compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more." He has since been barred from future prison work.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • The EFF wants to improve your privacy by making your Wi-Fi public
      Conventional wisdom dictates that to maintain your security and privacy, you should encrypt your Wi-Fi network. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that partially opening up your home Wi-Fi network could actually enhance your privacy, and is working on a tool to make it easier to do so.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • TTIP Update XXIX
      Since the text itself is pretty dry, WikiLeaks has asked one of the world's top experts on these trade agreements, Professor Jane Kelsey of the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland, New Zealand, to provide a commentary. I strongly recommend reading her analysis, since it explains what all those innocuous-sounding phrases really mean. Here is her summary of what the new leak tells us...


    • Copyrights



      • Dotcom’s Disruptive Music Service First to Support FLAC Streaming
        After several years of development, Kim Dotcom's much-anticipated music streaming platform Baboom is gearing up for its public release. Baboom aims to disrupt the music industry by closing the bridge between artists and fans. This includes a higher revenue share for artists and free music streaming in a lossless format for fans.


      • EU Commission Set to Unveil New Anti-Piracy Action Plans


        The EU Commission will next week announce new strategies for dealing with online piracy and counterfeiting. These non-legislative measures will include an EU action plan aimed at fighting IP infringement, plus a strategy to protect and enforce IP rights in third countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the aim is to "follow the money".


      • Digital Content Online Should Be Free, Children Say


        A new survey of young children and adults has found consensus on what should be charged for content online. In both groups, 49% said that people should be able to download content they want for free, with a quarter of 16-24 year olds stating that file-sharing was the only way they could afford to obtain it.








Recent Techrights' Posts

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Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
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They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
 
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What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
"When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
"Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
"Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
Links for the day
Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
Morale at Microsoft is really bad
Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
Not bad for this "Fosschild"
Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: "Goodreads for Gemini" and Defence of "The Small Web"
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2025: Anger and Morale Issues at Microsoft, Wars and Conflicts Get Digital
Links for the day
CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
Since January there was only one noticeable outage
Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
"Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
Attack of the Slopfarms
FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
Not My Problem, I Don't Care
Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
The EPO is basically a Mafia
Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
Health first, not monopolies
Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
the point of life isn't to make more money
Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
Or gutter, toilet etc.
What Matters More Than "Market Share"
The goal is freedom, not "market share"
Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
Links for the day
Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
This is not politics
UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025