Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 30/9/2015: New Kernels, Nexus Devices





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • 5 key trends in open source
    Open source's technology leadership, along with an exponential increase in the sheer number of projects, leads to a final, somewhat ironic observation: It's still tough to be an independent vendor of open source software. Those few vendors who stick to the traditional pay-for-support-only model tend to struggle, whereas an increasing number of "commercial open source" companies offer multi-tiered subscriptions that recall the proprietary world. In the latter case, less capable community versions sometimes remind you of old-fashioned "free trial" software.


  • Exclusive Interview: Emby Founder Luke Pulverenti
    Before Emby, I had limited open source experience. I submitted small bug fixes here and there to different projects that I took an interest in. The Media Browser project was always fully open source, and with the re-branding to Emby we felt that was the best way for the project to continue moving forward.


  • FCC Rules Endanger Open Source Wireless Router Firmware
    Open source wireless router firmware may become tougher to install in the United States, if not illegal. That's if device manufacturers interpret new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules involving radio frequencies to mean that user-modified software should be banned.


  • Bromium Makes Open Source Security Research Tool Available
    The open source community generally hasn’t produced many security analysis tools. For the most part, the tools required to do malware research are available only under a commercial license from security vendors that sell security software and hardware.
  • An inside look at open source at Twitter
    Twitter has about a couple thousand engineers across the company working on a variety of technologies, from as deep as the Linux kernel to front-end Javascript libraries. It's hard to pick anything in particular, but recently we have graduated Apache Parquet from the Apache incubator and are working on adding stateful service primitives to the Apache Mesos project so we can run MySQL in a Mesos cluster.


  • Maintaining momentum in an open-source community
    Building an open-source community takes dedication, hard work and no small number of late nights. As a community gets started there is generally a sense of momentum, ownership and deep commitment. But what happens once your community becomes established and successful? Inevitably volunteers are going to cycle in and out. As a community leader, you need to consider methods to bring in new members, spread the workload and communicate where and when the project could use help. How can you maximize growth and maintain your momentum?


  • Doors opening for open source data visualization tools
    Open source data visualization technologies have matured to the point where users say the available tools can handle large amounts of their visualization workloads.


  • Personal, Corporate, and In-Between Fraud


  • How Would Software Freedom Have Helped With VW?
    Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen's use of proprietary software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were universal? Likely so, as I wrote last week. In a world where regulations mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices, and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means other than software to hide their treachery.

    Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago that I won't live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary software before a groundswell of support demands universal software freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.


  • Noteworthy Open Source Projects: Bitcoin to Storage
    The volume of new open source projects is staggering. In years past, it was sometimes difficult to find enough quality projects to fill a lenghthy list, but this year there were more than enough—so many, in fact, that it's likely we overlooked some deserving projects.


  • HashiCorp Unveils Otto Open-Source App Delivery Tool
    In addition to Otto, HashiCorp launched Nomad, an open-source scheduler for deployment and resource maximization.


  • How open source can help businesses reclaim control of IT
    In an age where data availability and visibility is crucial, many organisations have found that their existing infrastructure has severely limited their options. Sometimes this is down to poor system design that prevents interoperability, but in others the intention is deliberate – a practice known as ‘vendor lock-in’.


  • Dropbox open sources Zulip chat app
    File hosting service Dropbox, Inc has released its Zulip chat application under an open source Apache Foundation licence.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Mozilla creates web tools and practices for open science
        Mozilla's mission is to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web.

        The Science Lab represents an important community of practice where we can model training around open data and open source, project-based learning, and offer fellowships and mentorship programs to further leadership development around these areas.






  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Databases



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • Five years of LibreOffice
      LibreOffice was launched as a fork of OpenOffice.org on September 28, 2010, by a tiny group of people representing the community in their capacity of community project leaders. At the time it was a brave – although necessary – decision, because it was rather clear to everyone that OpenOffice.org was not going to survive for a long time under Oracle stewardship.

      In fact, the group of 16 founders launched an independent free software project under the stewardship of The Document Foundation, to fulfil the promise made by Sun ten years before – at the time of the first announcement of OpenOffice.org – of an independent free software foundation capable of pushing forward the free office suite to the next level.


    • Celebrating 5 years of LibreOffice


    • LibreOffice Celebrates Its Fifth Birthday as the Sole Microsoft Office Contender


    • Five years of LibreOffice


    • Coming soon... Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2
      A new OpenOffice update, version 4.1.2, has been in preparation for a while. Born as a simple bugfix release, it became an occasion for some deep restructuring in the project: several processes have now been streamlined (and some are still in the works), new people are on board and infrastructure has been improved.

      Now the wait is almost over, and we are approaching the final phases before the 4.1.2 release. But we still need help with some non-development tasks, like QA and final preparations (press release, release notes and their translation).


    • LibreOffice Conference Brings Updated 5.0.2
      The second minor release to the milestone 5.0 branch was announced at the start of this year's LibreOffice Conference, taking place in Aarhus, Denmark. Italo Vignoli posted to the Document Foundation blog of the latest LibreOffice release saying, "The LibreOffice 5.0 family is the most popular LibreOffice ever." Today's update brings over 110 fixes in several key areas.


    • LibreOffice Celebrates Five Years
      In two lengths, the book begins with those who initially announced the news of the fork. Charles Schulz, Leif Lodahi, and Micheal Meeks are among those included. Available in two lengths, the PDF book begins September 28, 2010 and ends with Lodahi's template pitfalls post from Saturday. The full-length version contains 1227 pages verses the 668 of the shorter.


    • Templates - Avoid the pitfalls


    • OpenOffice Ain't Dead Yet and TDF Conference
      The last release of OpenOffice, 4.1.1, was released almost one year ago and most folks have written the project off as dead or on life support. But Bruce Byfield today said it's not dead yet and, in fact, may have made it over the hump. Meanwhile, The Document Foundation has been planning upcoming conferences and analyzing their success. In other news, some new goodies are in the pipeline for Mint Xfce and MATE users and Bryan Lunduke said the System 76 Serval Linux laptop is "ideal."




  • CMS



    • Acquia Funding Tops $173M as Drupal 8 Release Nears
      While the open source Drupal content management system (CMS) is freely available, there is money to be made in support and services. This is where Acquia, the lead commercial vendor behind Drupal, comes into play.

      Acquia today announced a new $55 million Series G equity financing round, with investors Centerview Capital Technology, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Split Rock Partners.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • Nasty DataBasin bug fixed
      DataBasin's Select-Identify, an invaluable tool for many working with salesforce.com, showed erratic behaviour: extremely hard to reproduce even by sometimes re-running the same query on the same data set, the operation would just stop without any error in the console log, trapped exception or else.

      After extensive debugging I found the problem in the queryMore method of the API implementation in DataBasinKit. If queryMore had to return just one record, it would malfunction. Technically this happened because the size reported by Salesforce.com in the queryMore is not the size of the objects of the queryMore, but of the original query.


    • so I heard GNU turns 30 !


    • Interview with Noah Swartz of Privacy Badger
      We conducted an email-based interview with Noah Swartz of Privacy Badger. Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that detects and blocks third party tracking. If Privacy Badger notices a third party site that it thinks is attempting to track your browsing around the web it blocks it and prevents it from writing or reading cookies and other identifying information about your browser. Additionally Privacy Badger works with EFF's newly drafted Do Not Track policy which aims to make user opt-out of online tracking a reality.




  • Public Services/Government



    • ‘German law mandates vendor-neutral ICT standards’
      Germany’s constitution makes the use of vendor-neutral ICT standards mandatory, according to the PhD thesis of Felix Greve, a German lawyer. The constitution demands minimum requirements for interoperability standards, Greve argues. The current lack of interoperability rules are a major barrier to the country’s uptake of free and open source software, in public administration and elsewhere.


    • Interoperability woes keep Hungary locked-in
      A multitude of interoperability problems is threatening Hungary’s central government use of free and open source office applications. Many of the government’s software solutions fail to take open document standards into account, stretching the office project’s support resources. The team is also finding it difficult to sustain support from IT management.

      [...]

      Last week, at the LibreOffice annual conference in Aarhus (Denmark), Kelemen spoke about the department’s implementation of the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools. The project started in 2013, and will end in October this year.


    • EC survey on ICT standards Digital Single Market
      The European Commission has launched a public consultation on Standards for the Digital Single Market. The EC is asking for priorities for standards in important technology areas critical to achieving the single market.


    • Madrid participation portal opens for discussion, voting to follow
      The portal is built on the Consul participation application, which is published by the City as open source software.




  • Licensing



    • Future Software Supply Chain Thoughts
      If you have thoughts on how to help make this automatable tracking of security, licensing, and copyright information available to the supply chain, ideas are most welcome. We’ll be having a Supply Chain Mini-Summit [8] in Dublin on Oct. 8th, and those interested in exploring this further are welcome to attend.




  • Openness/Sharing





Leftovers



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Syria and the Law
      The legal position is perfectly clear. Syria has a recognised government, that of President Assad, represented at the United Nations. That government is legally entitled to call on Russian military assistance. Russian military action against ISIL is therefore legal.


    • Total Bollocks From MI5
      In the last decade, now 7/7 has dropped out of this statistic, only one person has been killed in the UK by an Islamic terrorist attack. Let me repeat that. In the last decade, one person has been killed in the UK by an Islamic terrorist attack. That unfortunate death was Lee Rigby.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • VW scandal could prompt agreement on new tests
      The Volkswagen emissions testing scandal may speed up stalled EU talks on more accurate tests, as the shock waves of the scandal continue to reverberate in Europe.

      [...]

      In 1998, Swedish researcher Per Kageson already wrote about the technologies that allow cars to pass the emission test without having lower pollution levels in the real world. He told the New York Times that nothing was done to "make it much more difficult for manufacturers to beat the tests".




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Walker's Partisans Poised to Raze Nonpartisan Government Accountability Board
      Stung by the campaign finance probe into potentially illegal coordination between Governor Scott Walker and independent campaign finance groups, the Wisconsin GOP is on the warpath. Governor Walker called for “dismantling” of the Government Accountability Board (GAB), the nonpartisan, independent agency that oversees Wisconsin elections, campaign finance and ethics laws.


    • Donald Trump Is Proud of Not Breaking the Law?
      In Wednesday's GOP presidential debate, Donald Trump boasted proudly about rejecting a $5 million check--but really, he was boasting about not flagrantly breaking the law.


    • Why Is Rick Berman Attacking Chipotle?
      The PR man 60 Minutes dubbed "Dr. Evil"--Rick Berman--launched a new ad campaign this month against Chipotle.

      The profits of the fast food Mexican-style burrito company--which promotes whole foods over heavily processed factory food-type products--have surged while competitors like McDonalds and Burger King have tumbled. Chipotle has drawn a line in the sand on GMOs with its "G-M-Over It" campaign, as Americans' concerns about genetically modified foods are growing.




  • Censorship



  • Privacy



    • Facebook Goes Down for the Second Time in a Week
      For the second time in a week Facebook users received an error message when trying to access their accounts on Monday afternoon. When reached via email, a Facebook spokesperson said the outages were caused by a configuration issue. Service was restored by early evening.


    • Lenovo, Again


    • Yet another pre-installed spyware app discovered on Lenovo computers
      A factory refurbished Thinkpad shipped with Windows 7 and a scheduler app that ran once a day, collecting usage data about what you do with your computer and exfiltrating it to an analytics company.

      The fact that this was taking place was buried deep in the user "agreement" that came with the machine.

      This is the third preloaded spyware scandal to hit Lenovo this year: first it was caught installing Superfish, which grossly compromised user security by installing a man-in-the-middle certificate into the operating system; then it got caught loading immortal, self-reinstalling crapware into part of the BIOS reserved for custom drivers.


    • Exile — ExBerliner Article
      So, being an exile effectively means that you have angered the power structures of your home country to such an extent that other countries feel compelled to give you refuge, partly for legal or principled reasons, but also for political expediency. The current most famous exile in the world is, of course, Edward Snowden, stranded by chance in Russia en route to political asylum in Ecuador.


    • Karma Police
      His opinion changed drastically over the summer of ’97 after we had blown the whistle on a series of crimes committed by the UK’s spy agencies. As a result of our actions — the first reports appeared in the British media on 24 July 1997 — we had fled the country and gone on the run around Europe for a month. At the end of this surreal backpacking holiday I returned to the UK to face arrest, pack up our ransacked home, and try to comfort our traumatised families who had known nothing of our whistleblowing plans.
    • Snowden joins Twitter and follows the NSA


    • Raytheon says new U.S. civilian cyber contract worth about $1 billion
      Raytheon Co on Monday said a new five-year contract it won from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help more than 100 civilian agencies manage their computer security could be worth $1 billion, a key win for the company.

      Raytheon said DHS selected it to be the prime contractor and systems integrator for the agency's Network Security Deployment (NSD) division, and its National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS). The contract runs for five years, but some orders could be extended for up to an additional 24 months, it said.
    • How GCHQ Tracks Internet Users
      Lots more in the article. The Intercept also published 28 new top secret NSA and GCHQ documents.


    • From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities
      Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs.
    • New Jersey Supreme Court OKs Warrantless Searches Of Vehicles
      We've written before about how limited the Fourth Amendment is when applied to drivers and their vehicles. A number of court decisions -- along with continually-reinforced exceptions -- have allowed police to pull over motorists for any reason imaginable. Once they have someone pulled over, it's just a matter of obtaining consent from the driver or, failing that, coming up with a reasonable approximation of probable cause. (Drug dogs are a favorite.) After that, no warrant is needed to search the vehicle, along with the contents of any container found within it.


    • Carly Fiorina fesses to cosy HP/US intelligence agencies relationship
      PRESIDENTIAL POTENTIAL CARLY FIORINA has spoken of a time when HP made efforts to appease a data-hungry and terror-aware government with the speedy delivery of some servers.

      Fiorina, HP and the entire technology industry is under scrutiny and inspection concerning links between terrorism, terror tracking and technology. Her candid confession is a big one, and comes to us via The Register and its take on an article by an investigative reporter named Michael Isikoff.

    • Ed Snowden joins Twitter, follows only the NSA
      Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leaked documents opened a worldwide discussion about government surveillance, joined Twitter this morning. So far, he's amassed more than 400,000 followers, but he follows only one account: @NSAGov.


    • The Fundamentals of US Surveillance: What Edward Snowden Never Told Us?
      Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations rocked the world. According to his detailed reports, the US had launched massive spying programs and was scrutinizing the communications of American citizens in a manner which could only be described as extreme and intense.
    • China Pressures U.S. Companies to Buckle on Strong Encryption and Surveillance
      Before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits President Obama, he and Chinese executives have some business in Seattle: pressing U.S. tech companies, hungry for the Chinese market, to comply with the country’s new stringent and suppressive Internet policies.

      The New York Times reported last week that Chinese authorities sent a letter to some U.S. tech firms seeking a promise they would not harm China’s national security.


    • Hackers Prove Fingerprints Are Not Secure, Now What?
      The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently revealed that an estimated 5.6 million government employees were affected by the hack; and not 1.1 million as previously assumed.
    • NSA head: We need bulk collection
      The head of the National Security Agency on Thursday told Senate lawmakers that preventing his agency from collecting Americans’ information in bulk would make it harder to do its job.

      Under questioning before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Adm. Michael Rogers agreed that ending bulk collection would “significantly reduce [his] operational capabilities.”

      “Right now, bulk collection gives us the ability ... to generate insights as to what’s going on,” Rogers told the committee.


    • Wikipedia takes feds to court over spying
      The foundation behind Wikipedia is suing the U.S. government over spying that it says violates core provisions of the Constitution.

      The Wikimedia Foundation joined forces on Tuesday with a slew of human rights groups, The Nation magazine and other organizations in a lawsuit accusing the National Security Agency (NSA) and Justice Department of violating the constitutional protections for freedom of speech and privacy.
    • Data Protection: Unambiguous is Ambiguous
      The main pending issues for the European Data Protection Regulation will be discussed on 16th and 17th September during the coming trialogue meeting. The latest proposals from the Council visibly aim at limiting the guarantees provided to the users in favor of private lobbies.


    • International Surveillance: A New French Bill to Collect Data Worldwide!
      After the French Constitutional Council censored measures on international surveillance in the Surveillance Law voted last June, the government fires back with a bill that will be discussed at the end of September in the National Assembly. La Quadrature du Net strongly rejects the unacceptable clauses which would launch an “intelligence war” against our European and international partners.
    • Episode V: The Snooper’s Charter Strikes Back!
      After the huge success of a packed out hustings the Open Rights Group have two great events in one fantastic evening for our October Manchester Meetup. Please spread the word.


    • Episode V: The Snooper's Charter Strikes Back!


    • French-American Lawyers to Refer to French Surveillance Watchdog against International Surveillance
      After yesterday's announcement by the French government that the bill on International Surveillance will be discussed on a fast track procedure, the bill was adopted this morning at the Defence Committee by the French Lower Chamber in only twenty minutes and without almost any debate. An association of French-American lawyers and attorneys has just legally challenged the National Commission of Control of Security Interceptions (CNCIS, French Surveillance Watchdog) regarding the secret implementing decree of 2008. Could it be that the French government is worried about opening up its surveillance practices?
    • US surveillance makes 'Safe Harbour' data treaty with EU invalid, European court adviser says
      15-year-old 'Safe Harbour' agreement between the US and EU should not stop data transfers being suspended, legal counsel says


    • Safe Harbor Suspension by EU Court of Justice Is an Essential First Step
      The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) published on 23rd September his conclusions in the case "Maximilian Schrems against Data Protection Commissioner". The Advocate General, Yves Bot, recommends an invalidation of the Safe Harbor agreement which regulates the transfer of personal data of European citizens by online services like Facebook, to the United States. The Advocate General considers that the surveillance carried out by US intelligence services hinders fundamental rights of European citizens. La Quadrature du Net welcomes these clear and protective conclusions, and hopes that the EU Court of Justice will have the courage to follow him in challenging Safe Harbor as demanded by civil society since the first Snowden revelations. Additionally, putting Safe Harbour aside, his analysis of the NSA's practices should also apply to mass surveillance by European governments, such as France.
    • Strategic Initiative Technology: We Unveil the BND Plans to Upgrade its Surveillance Technology for 300 Million Euros
      Fiberglass tapping, real-time Internet traffic analysis, encryption cracking, computer hacking: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is massively expanding its Internet surveillance capabilities. We publish its secret 300 million Euro investment programme „Strategische Initiative Technik“. Members of Parliament and civil society criticise the agency’s new powers and demand an end of the whopping armament programme.


    • Civil rights groups condemn draft mass surveillance bill to be adopted in France
      The undersigned civil and human rights organisations call on French parliamentarians to reject the draft law on surveillance measures for international electronic communications (Proposition de loi relative aux mesures de surveillance des communications électroniques internationales). The bill fails to defend and protect the right to privacy of individuals worldwide.
    • MI5's first live interview
      Last week was the first time someone from MI5 has given a live public interview.


    • Dropping Privacy and Civil Liberties Board highlights need for judicial authorisation
      Open Rights Group has responded to the announcement in today's Terrorism Acts report that plans for a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board have been dropped.


    • Microsoft reaffirms privacy commitment, but Windows will keep collecting data
      The second category is personalization data, the things Windows—and especially Cortana—knows regarding what your handwriting looks like, what your voice sounds like, which sports teams you follow, and so on. Nothing is changing here. Microsoft says that users are in control, but our own testing suggests that the situation is murkier. Even when set to use the most private settings, there is unexpected communication between Windows 10 and Microsoft. We continue to advocate settings that are both clearer and stricter in their effect.




  • Civil Rights



    • The ex-Muslim Britons who are persecuted for being atheists
      Like other ex-Muslims, she says the importance of being true to herself outweighs the very real loneliness of being disowned and the guilt placed on her.

      "When I came out to my family my auntie told me my brothers and sisters wouldn't be able to get married because their honour would be tarnished. And it would all be my fault."

      The fear is constant too. "I used to live in Bradford for a time and I'd be very quiet about it because there are Muslims everywhere. I still have this innate fear, it's hard to explain. You just want to keep quiet about it. It's just safe to stay quiet."


    • Court Smacks Prosecutors For Refiling Identical Charges In Hopes Of Keeping Evidence From Being Suppressed
      Prosecutors hate losing -- so much so that they're willing to color outside the legal lines for a chance at a win. Plenty of prosecutorial misbehavior has been uncovered over the years, most of it tied to the withholding of exonerating evidence.


    • Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Wants to Make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Even Easier to Abuse
      This summer, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced an amendment to the flawed Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) that would make it even worse, by expanding the broken Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). EFF has proposed common sense changes to this federal anti-hacking law, many of which were included in “Aaron's law,” recently reintroduced. While CISA was delayed by strong grassroots opposition over the summer, it looks likely to move soon—bad amendments and all. That’s why we’re urging people to take action and tell the Senate to vote no on this and any other dangerous CFAA changes.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Buying Rights to Profit from Wrongs
      The media has been publically shaming Martin Shkreli, a Big Pharma (Turing Pharmaceuticals.) CEO who hyped the HIV drug price by 5455% (from $13.50 to $750 per tablet) and is reported to have hyped a cystinura drug by almost 2000%. This is a perfect example of why Piracy, or sharing should not be considered a crime and why our clear policy on the NHS handling drug research is again shown to be a viable option to prevent drug prices from harming patients.


    • Copyrights



      • Letter from AmeriKat: Remember fair use before issuing DMCA notices, warns Ninth Circuit
        In yesterday's decision United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reminded rights owners of the need to assess whether their material is being used legally (in that it is fair use) before dishing out Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices. At issue in Lenz v Universal Music is a 29 second video of the plaintiff, Stephanie Lenz's young children dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy". The 2007 clip shows primarily her toddler, hands grasped on a child's toy stroller, grooving to Prince's 1984 hit which plays loudly, but not particularly clearly, in the background. Like many a doting parent, Lenz recorded the video to show her friends and family that one of her children was learning how to walk. Lenz uploaded the clip to YouTube which managed to incur 200 hits before Universal issued a DMCA take down notice. Lenz twice appealed the takedown notice with the result that the clip was reposted on YouTube. It now has over 1.4 million views.


      • The "Happy Birthday" saga: when it may have been better not to have sued?
        Warner-Chappell Music in the song—Happy Birthday- has been rejected on the technical but legally dispositive ground that the necessary chain of title in the hoary song had not been proven. For this Kat, the really interesting question that emerges from this decision is why there seems to be such a widespread sense of satisfaction in the ultimate result. It is not simply that justice has been served; after all, a lot of copyright decisions have been resolved on the finding that the moving party failed to show good title. Moreover, the general public seldom gets excited by the nitty-gritty of copyright transfers.


      • Happy Birthday to everyone: candles blown out on infamous royalty claim


      • The final curtain in the GOLDBEAR saga
        Haribo's suit against Lindt's golden chocolate bear has provided the trade mark community with a lot to digest (see IPKat posts here, here and here). The premise is interesting: Haribo sued Lindt based on an alleged infringement of its word mark GOLDBEAR - undoubtedly very well known in Germany - by Lindt's three-dimensional golden chocolate bear.


      • Rightscorp's Copyright Trolling Phone Script Tells Innocent People They Need To Give Their Computers To Police
        We already wrote about the various filings in the Rightscorp-by-proxy lawsuit against Cox Communications. However, mixed in with all the filings are some interesting tidbits and exhibits. One that caught my eye was an exhibit revealing the "script" that Rightscorp gives its agents to use when people call in after receiving a notice. Cox Communications filed this in showing that the actual plaintiffs (BMG and Round Hill Music) "turned a blind eye" to Rightscorp's misconduct. The script is quite something, with a few ridiculous statements. The most ridiculous, however, is the following.








Recent Techrights' Posts

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