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Links 24/2/2015: Xfce 4.12 a Week Away, GNOME 3.16 Previewed





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source switches gain more vendor traction
    The open source movement is making waves in the networking space as more vendors are opting to build open switches and routers in favor of proprietary technology. HP is the latest vendor to join the open source networking movement, and some are speculating that open networking could give Cisco a run for its money.


  • Weather Company CIO: 5 reasons why I believe in open source
    Since The Weather Company has been a major adopter of open source software, I’m often asked why we have chosen this path. Where is the value in taking the open source route to solve your business challenges? I’m a big advocate of open source, so I’m always happy to oblige. Here are my top five reasons:


  • Distributors Play Growing Role In Open Source Space


    If tech distributors want to survive in the market, they'll have to provide channel partners with more training and enablement on open source and cloud-based solutions. Here's how distributors have responded.


  • Nginx Gearing Up for HTTP2
    The open-source Nginx web server has been steadily gaining in popularity in recent years to become one of the most widely deployed web servers. To date, Nginx has delivered its traffic over HTTP 1.1, but at some point in the near future it will also enable HTTP/2.


  • HP deal marks milestone for open source networking hardware
    If you still harbored any doubts that the web is now driving the future of IT, last week's announcement that HP will offer disaggregated products for web-scale data centers via deals with Cumulus and Accton should be enough to convince you.


  • eBay’s new Pulsar framework will analyze your data in real time


  • eBay launches Pulsar, an open-source tool for quickly taming big data
    E-commerce giant eBay needs to deal with new usage data — to personalize content and detect fraud, among other things — within seconds. So engineers went and built something to perfectly meet the company’s needs: Pulsar.

    The company revealed details about the system for the first time today, and eBay is making it available for anyone to use under an open-source license.


  • New open source strategy revelations at IBM Interconnect 2015
    An opportunity for IBM’s individual businesses to come together and demonstrate how they best leverage each other’s technologies and capabilities, IBM InterConnect 2015 will touch on cloud, mobile, DevOps, security, asset management, Internet of Things, application integration, and smarter processes.


  • Getting started with Project Atomic
    I had some concerns about learning Middleman and HAML, but there was a solid 'fork-and-go' contribution mindset. I started lurking in the -devel list and the IRC channels to start, and picked a single piece of content that I thought could use an update. I got in touch with one of the project folks on IRC and asked about the best way to go about creating and submitting my first change.


  • Events



    • Protocol Plugfest: opening closed doors to interoperability together
      The "world wide web" has been such an amazing success in large part because it was based on open protocols and formats that anyone can implement and use on a level playing field. This opened the way for interoperability on a grand and global scale, and is why http and HTML succeeded where many others failed previously.


    • SCALE 13x, Day 3: The Finale
      First things first: It’s a safe bet that Ruth Suehle could read the Raleigh phone book and make it sound interesting, with or without accompanying Lowenbrau slides. So it would come as no surprise that of all the great keynotes that have been given at the Southern California Linux Expo, Ruth’s Sunday keynote makes anyone’s SCALE short list as an all-time great.




  • Web Browsers



  • Business



    • HP's Marten Mickos: Open Source Is Not a Business Model
      "Open source is a production model. In some cases, it is a distribution model ... . You need a business model for any business that you build, but open source in itself is not that business model. Just like if you have a manufacturing branch and you use robots or you don't use robots. That is a production question, but it is not a business model for the business you are in."




  • Public Services/Government



    • Reuse is key for Danish telemedicine project
      Reuse is one of the main reasons for the development as open source of OpenTele, a Danish e-health telemedicine project. The health sector is crying out for open source ICT solutions, says Mike Kristoffersen, a senior software architect at the Danish Alexandra Institute. “Doctors and hospitals are seriously locked into medical ICT systems, making it difficult to do research, even for small scale projects.”




  • Licensing



    • Samsung, OpenChain Aim to Build Trust With Open Source Compliance
      Samsung is a top-five contributor to the Linux kernel and contributes upstream to more than 25 other open source projects. Yet the public perception that the company doesn't care about open source has persisted, despite its efforts, said Ibrahim Haddad, head of the Open Source Innovation Group at Samsung in a presentation at Collaboration Summit last week.


    • Buyer Beware: Demystifying Open Source Software Licenses
      Not too long ago, acquiring software was pretty easy: gather requirements, meet with vendors to evaluate products, select the winner. Legal review took place late in the process, and the final terms that both customer and vendor could live with were generally agreed to quickly.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • 3D printers become viable tools in healthcare
      And with desktop 3D printers becoming increasingly affordable and reliable—and open source software such as Cura being versatile, easy to use, and free to update—barriers to further 3D printing innovation are quickly disappearing. What was once only available to well-funded practitioners has now become genuinely accessible to every patient, nurse, doctor, surgeon, hospital, and teaching facility.


    • OpenStack at Walmart, project reform status, and more


    • The Pi Tank – 3D Printed Open Source Smartphone Controlled Raspberry Pi Robot


    • How I upgraded my garden’s ugly drip system with a sexy OpenSprinkler
      After a few hours of work alongside an electrical engineering buddy this week, my home garden drip system became powered by a Raspberry Pi. I can control the entire thing locally from my iPhone and, to be frank, it’s pretty flippin’ cool.

      For some background, I’m a very lazy gardener. When my wife and I bought our house in 2012, our horticultural mission was Hippocratic (do no harm). In other words, we wanted—at the very least—to not kill the plants we inherited from the previous owners. So while some people relax when they do weeding or other green thumb-related activities, we find it tedious and uninspiring. I’m the guy who jumped at the chance to review the Estonian-made Click and Grow.


    • This guy is the Mark Zuckerberg of open-source genetics
      Three years ago, Bastian Greshake spit in a vial and sent it off to personal genomics company 23andMe for analysis. He’d spent years studying the genetics of other organisms, but didn’t know much about his own DNA. He was curious.


    • Open Access/Content



      • Purdue plans to expand open-source online coursework
        A plan to use online open-source curricula for more classes at Purdue University starting this fall could collectively save students up to $1 million.

        The Journal and Courier reports the plan would be an alternative to online programs that can cost students more than $100 per class to access.








Leftovers



  • Hardware



    • EZchip Announces 100 Core 64-bit ARM Chip
      An Israeli company known as EZchip has introduced their TILE-Mx processors that ship in up to 100-core 64-bit ARM configurations with up to 200 Gigabit Ethernet throughput.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • The End to Industrialized Farming
      In 2013 the United Nations released a report indicating that the world’s food needs could be met through organic, local farms. The United Nations report stated that food security, poverty, gender inequality, and climate change can be addressed with a significant shift towards organic, localized farming. In contrast with industrialized farming, organic and local farms cut down on the energy and pollution that transporting food requires. Another study revealed that organic farming utilized less water than industrialized farming, as well as a general reduction in pollution related to production.




  • Security



    • Lenovo Sued Over Superfish Adware


    • The Venture Capitalists Behind Superfish
      Lots of people are talking about the Superfish malware debacle. People are starting to understand just how bad this situation is.

      [...]

      I’d like to see the tech press dig into this. And the venture capitalists involved, particularly the board members, should talk about what they knew and didn’t know.


    • Laptop Buying Advice?
      My current Lenovo X201 laptop has been with me for over four years. I’ve been looking at new laptop models over the years thinking that I should upgrade. Every time, after checking performance numbers, I’ve always reached the conclusion that it is not worth it. The most performant Intel Broadwell processor is the the Core i7 5600U and it is only about 1.5 times the performance of my current Intel Core i7 620M. Meanwhile disk performance has increased more rapidly, but changing the disk on a laptop is usually simple. Two years ago I upgraded to the Samsung 840 Pro 256GB disk, and this year I swapped that for the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB, and both have been good investments.


    • How to delete Superfish from Lenovo computers permanently


    • Moving On From Superfish
      It’s true, RMS was right. The folks at LinuxBSDos.com are right. The world needs to use Free Software.


    • Lenovo's Superfish spectacle: 'Catastrophic' security failures discovered
      Last week, reports surfaced which claimed that Lenovo Notebooks have been issued to consumers containing a preloaded security flaw. Originally, the Chinese tech giant said the Superfish adware was not a security concern -- however, eventually the company realized and admitted that the software was able to install its own self-signing man-in-the-middle (MITM) proxy service which has the potential to hijack SSL and TLS connections -- a severe, nasty security vulnerability.


    • SSL-busting code that threatened Lenovo users found in a dozen more apps
      Richard went on to publish the SHA1 cryptographic hashes he used to identify software that contained the Komodia code libraries. He invited fellow researchers to use the hashes to identify still more potentially dangerous software circulating online.

      "We're publishing this analysis to raise awareness about the scope of local SSL MITM software so that the community can also help protect people and their computers," he wrote. "We think that shining the light on these practices will help the ecosystem better analyze and respond to similar situations as they occur."


    • Security advisories for Monday


    • Samba vulnerability (CVE-2015-0240)
      Samba is the most commonly used Windows interoperability suite of programs, used by Linux and Unix systems. It uses the SMB/CIFS protocol to provide a secure, stable, and fast file and print services. It can also seamlessly integrate with Active Directory environments and can function as a domain controller as well as a domain member (legacy NT4-style domain controller is supported, but the Active Directory domain controller feature of Samba 4 is not supported yet).


    • Samba 4.1.17 Security Release Now Available for Download
      The Samba development team has announced earlier today, February 23, the immediate availability for download of Samba 4.1.17, a security release that addresses the CVE-2015-0240 security vulnerability related to an unexpected code execution in Samba daemon (smbd).


    • Samb-AAAHH! Scary remote execution vuln spotted in Windows-Linux interop code
      Linux admins were sent scrambling to patch their boxes on Monday after a critical vulnerability was revealed in Samba, the open source Linux-and-Windows-compatibility software.




  • Finance



    • The Real Cost of Walmart’s Low Prices


      Like other large companies with globalized production chains, Walmart exploits workers outside of the United States, but the consequences of these exploitative practices impact everyone. In the U.S., social and economic pressures force Walmart employees to accept low wages.


    • 5 Insane Things You Believe About Money (Thanks to Movies)
      I bet every one of you can remember the first time financial reality smacked you in the face like a Hulk-thrown engine block. ("I work two jobs, shouldn't I be able to afford to get this festering wisdom tooth taken out?"). That's because unless your parents were wealthy, you left school knowing jack shit about how money worked. We have a trillion dollars in credit card debt to show for it, along with an upper class who just can't figure out what the rest of us are bitching about.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship



    • The Scary World That Is Arabic Twitter
      As an independent journalist who contributes to various organizations inside and outside the U.S., Twitter is my virtual newsroom. It is where I get story ideas, connect with sources and engage with my readers. On average I spend at least four hours daily on Twitter. As the Islamic State's (ISIS) atrocities started to dominate the news cycle during the mid part of last year, most of my Tweets have become very ISIS-focused. I tweet about their latest actions, and the reactions that followed. As an native Arabic speaker, I spend a big chunk of my time following Arabic hashtags, Arabic-speaking influencers, and news organizations, and boy, let me tell you what I found. The world of Arabic Twitter is a scary one. I'm stunned by the amount of support that ISIS enjoys on Twitter, and mostly among Arabic speakers.




  • Privacy



    • Mark Zuckerberg 'not sure' about Internet.org advertising
      Advertising is not a “near term” priority for Facebook’s Internet.org initiative to get more people online in the developing world, according to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

      Facebook launched the scheme in 2013 with fellow technology firms including Samsung, Qualcomm, Ericsson and Nokia as its effort to connect “the next few billion people” to the internet.

      The social network has since worked with mobile operators in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Zambia and Kenya to provide free access to basic internet services from their mobile phones.


    • Mark Zuckerberg Q&A: The Full Interview on Connecting the World
      Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has a big, expensive goal: to connect the world to the Internet. He spoke with Emily Chang about his plans, after returning from a trip through Southeast Asia and India last year as part of his Internet.org initiative. The interview airs Feb. 19 on Bloomberg Television's Studio 1.0. The transcript below has been lightly edited.


    • There's a massive new leak of confidential spy files from MI6, Mossad and the FSB
      Al-Jazeera has obtained hundreds of confidential "spy cables" from some of the world's top intelligence agencies, in what the news channel is calling "the largest intelligence leak since Snowden."




  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Here Comes the ACTA Attack - Again
      Three years ago I began a series of articles about ACTA - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA was originally about tackling counterfeit goods, but had a completely inappropriate digital chapter added, which tried to ride on the coat-tails of the initial plan by suggesting that digital copies were somehow as dangerous as fake medicines or aircraft parts. After a fierce battle that saw hundreds of thousands of Europeans writing to their MEPs, and even taking to the streets, ACTA was thrown out by the European Parliament.


    • Copyrights



      • The Australian Pirates Leave PPI
        The Pirate Party of Australia has been unhappy with the structure functioning of Pirate Parties International for some time and after the PPAU membership gave their board the power to potentially leave international organisation at their last national conference.


      • Draft copyright code published


        Rights holders and ISPs have published a draft of the Government mandated code intended to combat online copyright infringement.


      • Torrent Site Admin Can Pay Piracy Fine…in 227 Years
        After being chased down by a coalition of mainstream entertainment companies, a French court has just handed a former torrent site operator a six month suspended sentence. 'Boris P' must also pay two million euros in damages, an amount he predicts could be cleared in approximately 227 years.








Recent Techrights' Posts

The Slopfarms' Business Case (or Business Model) Never Existed and Nowadays, in 2026, They've Mostly Collapsed
Hopefully by year's end many slop suppliers will be offline and slopfarms that rely on them throw in the towel
IBM CEO and CFO Make It Hotter in the Kitchen
Who's gonna leave the kitchen while they cook the books?
Jim Zemlin's 'Linux' Foundation is the Real Link Between Linux and Pedophilia
It's about the deeds, not the words
 
Links 28/02/2026: Bill Epsteingate Admits Sex With Young Girls, "Epstein Files Are the Horror That Keeps on Giving"
Links for the day
IBM: Where Companies Come to Perish
thelayoff.com is censoring stories
Tech Layoffs Are Not Because of Slop, They're an Effect of a Rotting Economy and Tech Giants Being Too Deep in Debt
Block is rapidly sinking in debt
March in London Today Against Slop's Harms to Society (and the Environment), Starting at 12:00 GMT at the Microsoft OpenAI Office
Today there is a protest in London (UK)
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Have Officially Resumed, Microsoft's Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw Lied
"The former employees say this was a mass layoff"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 27, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 27, 2026
Links 27/02/2026: Block Cuts 40% of Its Workforce While Blaming Ponzi Scheme, Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros.
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/02/2026: Unlearning Literacy (Slop) and Firefox as Slop-ware
Links for the day
It Looks Like Linux Chief Linus Torvalds Made a Good Call Regarding Kent 'Slop' Overstreet
Having never met or even chatted to Overstreet, I'm not in a position to judge him
Links 27/02/2026: Slop Incompatible With Nuclear Codes, Chinese Slop "Chatbots Censor Themselves"
Links for the day
Please Report the European Patent Office (EPO) to Europol for Cocaine Abuse and Tampering With Witnesses and Media to Hide This Cocaine Abuse
there are already police reports connected to the matter
Like a Mafia: Kris De Neef and Nellie Simon, Who Help Campinos Cover Up Cocainegate at the EPO (Substance Abuse at the Highest Office), Are Bullying EPO Whistleblowers
They're all in this together [...] At this point, undoubtedly, the EPO is run like an organised crime operation. Nothing more, nothing less.
pulltheplug.uk Says the Internet Harms Us, Will March in London Tomorrow
Maybe the site is down due to high access demand
EPO Management Trying to Hide Cocainegate, Silence/Discredit Whistleblowers, and Probably in a Panic Due to the Strikes
At the moment, Johannes' mates are receiving over 100,000 euros as a reward for doing illegal drugs
The GNU Manifesto Turns 41 in March (Next Week)
And RMS turns 73 next month
The Sister Site is Still Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG) We Use in Techrights
We have a common mission and every week we make measurable advancements
Techrights is 100% Disconnected From Cheeto's America, the Problem is Hired Guns in London Helping Violent Americans Attack Us Domestically
Not a new problem, not limited to us
Greenland Needs to Disconnect From United States Tech to Protect Its Independence
The more Greenland protects itself from Social Control Media, the more robust or resilient it'll be to regime change
Open Source Endowment (OSE) Looking to Raise Money for Free Software, But It's Hard to Know who Runs the Open Source Endowment Foundation
Their Web site does not (easily) show who the Board of Directors includes
Apple Doesn't Want Anybody to Ask What Happened to Vision Pro
They lost a lot of money
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) on Slop and Breach of Confidentiality
They should absolutely not ignore this
If You Want More Verifiable (Auditable) Security, Use GNU Linux-Libre
GNU/Linux will never be 100% secure
Microsoft XBox Can't Stop Talking About Slop
Will we see more "prepared" (under embargo) Microsoft propaganda released simultaneously at 9PM tonight?
Rust Will Not Inherit the Earth, It Barely Deserves a Place on the Planet
Rust - like Haskell and many other short-lived fetishes - will come and go
Truth Versus Fiction: IBM's Collapse Due to Money Crunch, Not Slop Disguised as Code
core issue is financial
Almost 5,000 Known Gemini Capsules
It is now just 98 short of 5k
Priceless leaks found in crowdfunding campaign
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 26, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, February 26, 2026
[Video] "New RMS [Richard Stallman] Positive Media" Reaches Millions of Viewers This Week
Assuming 5+ million people will watch this on the first week, that's good publicity for the Free software movement
Another Quiet Slop Day Passes By
the number of slopfarms we can locate/track is fast decreasing
Gemini Links 26/02/2026: Sending a Thesis and Lupa/Onion ("Lupa now lists Gemini .onion addresses")
Links for the day
Links 26/02/2026: Bcachefs Man Bonkers, "Seven Journalists Convicted for Taking Photos at Courtroom"
Links for the day
Links 26/02/2026: "Peak Mental Sharpness" and "The Whole Economy Pays the Amazon Tax"
Links for the day
If You Value Privacy, Follow the Likes of Eben Moglen, Phil Zimmermann, and Richard Stallman, Not Back Doors' Boosters Who Mislabel Themselves as Security Experts
Signal is not really secure
"Community" Site Deleted by Jeffrey Epstein-Connected 'Linux' Foundation Had Interview Where Eben Moglen Spoke of GPLv3 and of DRM, Back Doors Etc.
Deleting what happened or what was said two decades ago
Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation) and Eben Moglen (Columbia Law School) Explained 25 Years Ago That Proprietary Software (and Proprietary Firmware) Would Lead to Back Doors
a fortnight after the 9/11 terror attacks in the US
Writer's Block is Not a Problem to Us, Only a Lack of Time
Or timewasting by aggressive militants who try to silence us [...] People who experience writer's block very often find it depressing (it feels unproductive) and sometimes come to the conclusion that perhaps writing isn't for them
Giving to the Community Versus Taking From the Community (or Worse, Attacking the Community)
some people bring no contributions, only harm
LLM Slop Will Try to 'Rewrite' History of UNIX and GNU/Linux
We occasionally see slopfarms spreading misinformation about UNIX, GNU, and Linux
March Plans for Techrights
next month we plan to start the series about how the SRA failed
Where Does the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Stand on Machine-Generated Legal Documents and Copy-pasting One Client's Lawsuit to Start Another (for American Serial Strangler)?
Now that many law firms cheat (copypasta, paper DOoS, LLM slop, breaches of rules, even defaming the other side) the SRA cannot keep up
Of Course Android is Not Free Software
That Android is not about freedom should not be so shocking
Talking About Blackboxes
Having just reposted a couple of articles from Alex Oliva
Microsoft Slop is Already Killing XBox
Microsoft will fail at alleviating such concerns
Two Weeks Have Passed and It Looks Like Conde Nast's Ars Sloppica Sacked "Senior" "AI" "Reporter" Benj Edwards But Did Not Remove All His LLM-Produced 'Articles'
the editorial standards at Conde Nast's Ars Sloppica are a joke
Alex Oliva (GNU Linux-Libre): Stricter is Less Popular
Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
Fraud and Crimes at Microsoft
A lot of these American companies simply cheat and even bribe
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 25, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 25, 2026
FSF's Alex Oliva on Hardware Black Boxes
Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva