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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

At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
They frame layoffs as a "success story"
Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
Naming Culprits in Switzerland
Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
This isn't innovation but repression
Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
 
J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
Links for the day
IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
Links for the day
Writing About Corruption
Fraud is everywhere
The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
International Buzzwords Machines
IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
Who's next in the pipeline?
IBM Was Never the Good Guy
its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
IBM does not care what's legal
Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
The Web is seriously ill
Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
Links for the day
More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
The end of the library is part of the cuts
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
Microsoft is in pain
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
A pleasant surprise
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
Links for the day
Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
Links for the day
Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
Is he back off the wagon?
GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
Will Campinos survive 2026?
The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
Slop is a Liability
Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
IBM is a fairly nasty company
Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
Links for the day
Still Condoning Child Labour and Exploiting Unpaid Children Developers as PR Props (to Raise Monopoly Money)
These people lack morals. So they project.
"Security, AI or Quantum" on "the IBM Titanic"
Who's RMS?
Hours Ago The Register MS Published Microsoft Windows SPAM "Sponsored by Intel." The Fake 'Article' Says "AI" 34 Times.
The Register MS isn't a serious online newspaper
EPO People Power - Part XXXV - Where Else Will Corruption and Substance Abuse be Tolerated?
We need to raise standards
Status and Capital
People who do a lot are too busy to boast about it and wear fancy garments
IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
IBM is dead man walking
Turbulence Ahead
I last rebooted my laptop in 2023
Google News Rewards Plagiarism With LLMs (About Linux, Too)
Google is in the slop business now
Links 14/01/2026: Failing Economy and Conquest Abroad as a Distraction From Domestic Woes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: The Ephemerality of Our Digital Lives and "Summer of Upgrades"
Links for the day
Projection Tactics - Part III: Silencing Inconvenient Voices Online
If X gets banned in the UK, it'll be hard to see what the spouse says in public
Outsourcing on Microsoft's Agenda, Offshoring Also
"In some cases, India hiring is poised to replace certain roles previously based in the U.S."
Links 13/01/2026: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams Passes Away With Cancer, Ban on X/Twitter Considered for CSAM Profiteering
Links for the day
The Goal is Software Freedom for All
Anything to do with "Linux Foundation" is timewasting
Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
software freedom just 'gets in the way'
Under IBM, in Order to Game the Stock Market, Red Hat Resorted to Boosting the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Human History
This is what IBM turned Red Hat into
Revision handed Microsoft the keys to the distortion of the past/history
This isn't the first time The Register MS rewrites computing history in Microsoft's favour, as we pointed out several times in past years
What Will Happen to GAFAM After the US Defaults Rather Than Bails Out the Market?
Or tries to topple every government that doesn't play by its rules?
EPO People Power - Part XXXIV - Bad Optics for the European Union (for Failing to Act and Tolerating Cocaine Use in Europe's Second-Largest Institution)
There are principles in laws which tie awareness with complicity
EPO's Central Staff Committee is Now Redacting (Self-Censoring) Due to Threats From the EPO "Mafia"
"On the agenda: salary adjustment procedure for 2025 (as of January 2026)"
"AI" (Slop) 'Demand' Isn't Growing, It's Fake, It's a Pyramid Scheme
They try to resort to 'creative' accounting (fraudulent schemes like circular financing)
Difficult Times at IBM and Microsoft Ahead of Mass Layoffs (Probably Before This Month's Results Unless Postponed to 'Prove' Rumours 'Wrong')
IBM and Microsoft used to be tech giants. Nowadays they mostly pretend by pumping up their stock and buying back their own shares.
Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro
People Don't Want "Just Enough", They'll Look for Quality
That's why slopfarms will go away or become inactive
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: 3D and Tiny Traffic Lights Pack
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Slop Waning Whilst Originals Perish
Slop is way past its "prime"
XBox's 'Major Nelson' Loses His Job Again, This Time in a Microsoft Mono Pusher
Microsoft hasn't much of a future in gaming. XBox's business is in rapid decline and people who push Mono to game developers are the same