Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/2/2016: New ROSA, Ireland National Library Goes FOSS





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Tesla Fan 'Incivility' Forces Indiana To Back Off Direct Sales Ban... For Now
    We recently noted how Indiana was just the latest state to try and pass auto industry-backed bills banning Tesla's direct-to-consumer sales model. Under the latest GM-backed bill, Tesla's dealer license would have expired in 2018, forcing the company to embrace the traditional franchise dealership model -- or stop selling cars in the state entirely. Telsa had been reaching out for the last few weeks to Tesla fans in the state, quite-correctly highlighting how GM was buying protectionist law instead of competing.


  • Hardware



    • Data Backup Devices for Small Businesses
      You already know you need to back up your small business data regularly, but you may get stuck figuring out the best way to manage the process. Fortunately, you don't need to spend a scary amount of money to buy and set up a reliable data backup system.




  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • New York investigates radioactive leak in groundwater near city
      Radioactive material has leaked into the groundwater below a nuclear power plant north of New York City, prompting a state investigation on Saturday and condemnation from governor Andrew Cuomo.

      Cuomo ordered an investigation into “alarming levels of radioactivity” found at three monitoring wells at the Indian Point energy center in Buchanan, New York, about 40 miles north of Manhattan.


    • Old Nuclear Reactor Leaks Radiation
      Nuclear fission reactors are expensive to build and decommission so it’s natural to keep them running as long as possible to optimize the economic benefit. The licence for the old Indian Point reactor in New York state has been extended and while there have been occasional problems, the reactor was considered reliable. News that a leak of tritium in the ground water has been discovered is a whole new ball-game however. Tritium is a short-lived radioisotope of hydrogen so it’s possible the contamination may not leave the site in dangerous concentrations.






  • Finance



    • TTIP Negotiations: 12th Round Ends With Plan To Hurry Between Official Rounds
      By July trade negotiators from the United States and the European Union want to present a draft text that only has brackets for the “most sensitive issues” in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This was announced by Ignacio Bercero, chief negotiator for the European Union, and his US counterpart Dan Mullaney during a press conference today after this week's 12th round of TTIP negotiations in Brussels.




  • Censorship



    • Self-censorship runs amok on local television
      It should have been a regular live broadcast of a Putri Indonesia pageant show, but those who tuned in were surprised when private station Indosiar decided to completely blur the torsos of contestants who wore the body-hugging Javanese kebaya dress.

      But many considered that local television stations had gone too far when one of them blurred a scene from a popular cartoon show, simply because one of its characters wears a short skirt, and questions began to be raised about why the local channels were taking that conservative turn.


    • Video: Is Canadian self-censorship preventing open debate on racism, discrimination and other important issues?
      Conversations That Matter features former B.C. premier and free speech advocate Ujjal Dosanjh. He argues that people in power in Canada are self-censoring and in doing so are preventing open and honest discourse about issues that form the fabric of Canadian society. Dosanjh has been attacked and beaten for saying what he thinks and continues to do so because he maintains if we cower from vigorous debate then we deprive ourselves.


    • National TV Channel Denies Actor’s Censorship Allegation
      Tunisian actor, Majd Mastoura has accused Wataniya TV of censoring part of his acceptance speech following his win at the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany.

      During an emotional speech, Mastoura paid tribute to the martyrs of the Tunisian Revolution. However, during its showing upon the national channel, the actor’s closing remarks were cut from the broadcast of his award.


    • Twitter Accused Of Censoring Anti-Hillary Hashtag
      Political censorship or coincidence? Activists on Friday were in full pitchfork mode after Twitter users alleged the social media site removed #WhichHillary from its trending topics in an apparent kowtow to the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign. The collective uproar managed to inspire another Clinton-themed hashtag, #WhichHillaryCensored.


    • Hillary Vs. Hillary: Hashtag Pits Clinton Against Her Past Self
      Hillary Clinton is facing one of her biggest rivals online today: Hillary Clinton. A hashtag mocking the candidate for her flip-flops over the years rocketed to the the top of Twitter’s trending list Thursday—driven not by Republicans but supporters of her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.


    • China tightens censorship of online TV programmes
      Beijing has further tightened its muzzle on mainland China’s internet after a senior media content watchdog official demanded all online programmes be censored as strictly as those of traditional television programmes.

      The move comes days after widespread audience dissatisfaction when popular shows, made and aired by Chinese video streaming sites, were removed or suspended until they had been censored to the satisfaction of the media content regulator.


    • Puritanical Facebook Censors Parody Publication, Makes Appeal Process A Threat
      I have no idea why, but there seems to be a sudden influx of stories concerning Facebook patrolling its site and taking down content over rather puritanical standards of offense and vulgarity. The most recent examples of this have concerned a couple of pieces of artwork that the Facebook Decency Office deemed to be to risque, despite the fact that neither of the art pieces could reasonably be described as particularly pornographic. The most recent example of this kind of censorious brigade is less to do with scary, scary sex, and more to do with parody content that some might find vulgar.


    • Mark Zuckerberg Angry At His Employees For Disrespecting ‘Black Lives Matter’ Movement




  • Privacy



    • Techdirt Needs Your Help To Fight Encryption Fearmongering


    • Poll: You Vote to Outlaw Tracking by Advertisers
      Back on February 15 when we ran an article calling for a ban on advertisers’ practice of tracking users who just happen to drive by an ad, much less click on it, we ran a poll to find out what you think. Actually, we were pretty sure we already knew what you thought. You tell us everyday, either in the comments section to our articles or by blocking ads here on FOSS Force. The poll was mainly to put some numbers to what we already knew.


    • FISA Court Accused of Failing to Restrain NSA
      A Washington spy court's "secret, ex parte proceedings" do not provide the oversight required to restrain the National Security Agency's Upstream program, a privacy group argued in a court filing Thursday.
    • 'GCHQ spy who raped us is still working there because police didn't take us seriously'
      A spy accused of rape by two women is still working at the heart of €­Britain’s security services after police ignored their claims.

      The spook’s first alleged victim, who met him through a dating website, today say detectives TWICE failed to act over her accusations – even after the second woman, who worked with him at the top secret GCHQ base, had come forward.


    • Katherine Jenkins Gives Spies Singing Treat [Ed: Katherine Jenkins has helped create femmewashing puff pieces for GCHQ - by associating with celebrities they created a dozen PR pieces]
      The classical music star hailed workers at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, England as "heroes", before singing songs from her repertoire including Habanera from the opera Carmen.
    • Katherine Jenkins performs private show for GCHQ staff to thank them for keeping us safe


    • Obama Administration to Expand Sharing of NSA Data from Snooping
    • Obama To Allow FBI And CIA Access To NSA Data
      The Obama administration will soon allow the National Security Agency to share certain bulk collections of communications and satellite transmissions with other government intelligence agencies. This information includes phone calls and emails from foreigners within the U.S., as well as exchanges that involve or are about Americans collected by the NSA’s foreign intelligence programs.


    • Obama administration closing in on rules to let NSA share more freely with FBI, CIA
      The New York Times is reporting that Obama administration officials are close to agreeing on new rules that would allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to share surveillance information more freely with other federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, without scrubbing Americans’ identifying information first.

      In 2008, President George W. Bush put forth an executive order that said such a change to the rules governing sharing between agencies could occur when procedures had been put in place. When the Obama administration took over, it started "quietly developing a framework” to carry out the proposed change in 2009, according to the Times.

      For the past decade, the NSA has collected massive amounts of phone metadata, e-mail, and other information from a variety of sources—sometimes directly from the companies that make such communication possible, sometimes through overseas taps on lines that connect to data centers outside of the US. Currently when an agency wants information on a foreign citizen, it requests that data from the NSA, and the NSA theoretically scrubs it of any incidental references to American citizens who are not being targeted. This process is known as “minimization.”
    • Germany's New Citizen Monitoring Spyware May Be Creepier Than NSA's
      The new spyware Trojan virus recently approved by Germany's Interior Ministry may actually steal personal photos and notes stored on Germans' phones and laptops.

      The German government's new computer virus intended for spying in criminal cases has drawn scrutiny because of its potentially unlimited abilities.


    • Barack Obama to allow NSA to share contents of intercepted phone calls and emails
      The Obama administration is planning to allow the National Security Agency to share more of the raw information it acquires through wiretapping with other intelligence agencies.

      The rule change, which would allow intelligence agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency to access the unedited contents of phone calls and emails without having the information filtered by the NSA, was first reported by the New York Times Friday.




  • Civil Rights

    • Kos Bishop: Foreign Reporters Pay Refugees to Play Victims of Drowning
      Foreign reporters pay refugees 20 euros to act as if they have drowned, said Bishop of Kos and Nisyros Nathanael.

      The unusual testimony was made during a radio interview on Alpha 98.9 on Wednesday. Bishop Nathanael said that, “I witnessed with my own eyes foreign television reporters paying people (refugees) 20 euros to play victims of drowning.”


    • A blunt defense of interrogations, targeted killings and domestic spying


    • Former CIA Chief Warns Against Donald Trump
      In an interview with the BBC, ex-CIA boss Michael Hayden warned against the dangers of having, Republican front-runner, Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.


    • Ex-CIA, NSA chief: 2016 GOP rhetoric 'scares me'
      Former CIA and National Security Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden says the rhetoric from the GOP candidates in the presidential race is scary -- and he suspects the rest of the world is concerned, too.

      Hayden was responding Thursday to a question from CNN's Michael Holmes about the rhetoric on the campaign trail, with Holmes mentioning Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's promise of carpet bombing ISIS and GOP front-runner Donald Trump's praise for waterboarding and harsher interrogation techniques as well as a proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims.


    • Court Monitor Finds NYPD Still Performing Unconstitutional Stops
      The NYPD is more in its element when it's creating terrorism/dissent-focused task forces or shipping its officers halfway around the word to get in the way of local investigators. What it's less interested in doing is ensuring its officers live up to the Constitutional expectations of Judge Shira Scheindlin's order from nearly three years ago.


    • Estragon’s boot: the Conservatives delay the repeal of the Human Rights Act
      According to a news report today, the Conservative government has “shelved” the proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a “British Bill of Rights”.

      This is not a surprise. It was never going to be an easy task.

      In the last week or so, the proposals – as well as a daft and dappy “Sovereignty Bill” proposal – have been nothing other than tokens in a political game between the Prime Minister and other Conservative politicians about supporting and opposing Brexit. But the tokens turned out to have no value and no purchase in this game.

      Last May this blog set out the “seven hurdles” for repeal of the Human Rights Act. These hurdles included the facts that the Good Friday Agreement requires the European Convention on Human Rights to have local effect in Northern Ireland and that Scotland would have a veto on the replacement legislation.


    • Saudi Arabia sentences a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism on Twitter
      A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of social media posts.

      The report carried in Al-Watan says the 28-year-old man admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote reflected his own beliefs and that he had the right to express them. The report did not name the man.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T Sues To Keep Google Fiber Competition Out Of Louisville
      We recently noted how the city of Louisville had voted 23-0 to let Google Fiber bring ultra-fast broadband competition to the city. As part of the vote, the city revamped its utility pole-attachment rules, which previously forced competitors through a six-month bureaucratic process to connect to the poles, an estimated 40% of which are owned by AT&T. The new policy streamlines that down to one month, letting competitors like Google Fiber move hardware already attached to the poles, while holding them financially accountable for any potential damages.


    • Cruz, Rubio Celebrate One Year Anniversary Of Net Neutrality Rules -- By Trying To Kill Them
      It has already been a year since the FCC voted to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under the telecom act. And despite the countless calories spent by the telecom industry and its various mouthpieces claiming Title II and net neutrality would demolish all Internet investment and innovation as we know it, you may have noticed that things by and large did not implode. In fact, while the FCC has been snoozing on things like zero rating and usage caps, the mere threat of rules helped the Internet by putting an end to the interconnection shenanigans causing Netflix performance degradation.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • 'The Dress' A Year Later: The Meme Has Faded, But The Copyright Will Last Forever
        Have you heard? Today is the anniversary of "the dress." You know the one. It was all over the internet exactly a year ago. White and gold or blue and black. It was a phenomenon. And, yes, I know a bunch of you are snidely mocking it as you read this, but shut up. It was a fun way to kill an afternoon a year ago and it made a bunch of people happy, so don't be "that person." A year ago, we wrote a short piece about it, noting that you had fair use to thank for it, because the dress was being shared widely, and that was possible due to fair use. And the timing was great, because it was fair use week -- as it is again.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Defending Women Isn't a Crime, Everybody Can Agree on That
Their culture is unlike ours
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VI - Influx of Spaniards and Portuguese Workers (+77%) at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Led by the 'Alicante Mafia'
There is now data supporting this assertion, new and complete data in fact
Nobody is Safe at IBM (or Red Hat)
There is no job security at IBM
Bad faith: Hugo Roy knew FSFE impersonating FSF before French tribunal, colleagues deceived
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Over 1,500 EPO Workers Went on Strike Last Week
a new publication which celebrates some accomplishments of industrial actions and calls for further actions
Madame Streisand Wanted to Censor The Web, Instead She 'Created' a New Term, "Streisand Effect"
It is basically an own goal
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Failed to Detect Fraud in Law Firms... Until It Was Too Late
Earlier today we contacted some more politicians about this and received mail from them as well
Our EPO and IBM Coverage Bears Fruit
In case insiders want to get in touch with us, please ensure or at least try doing so securely
Links 03/03/2026: "Scam Altman in Damage Control" and Oil Traffic Disrupted
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/03/2026: Phones, LLMs, and Changes on the Web
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Confirms Talk in Bern Next Week
Dr. Stallman has just formally confirmed his third talk this month in Switzerland
GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Guam
there are many computers in that island
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 1 Out of 200: Claim No. KB-2024-001270 in a Nutshell
abuse of process by a law firm working for an American who was arrested for strangling women and another American whose own spouse calls a "rapist"
When EPO Team Managers (TMs) Are Harassing People Who Strictly Apply the European Patent Convention (EPC) in Patent Examination
There are two strikes planned for this month
Confirmed: Using Slop Gets You Fired
Let the story of Benj Edwards be a cautionary tale
Links 03/03/2026: "No one wants to read your AI slop" and "chatbots in the kill chain"
Links for the day
EPO and "Equivalent to More Than 100 Days of Strike"
The industrial actions continue and already have a positive effect
Streisand Effect, the Microsoft Way
Microsoft has once again proven the Streisand Effect
Keeping Track of IBM Layoffs in March 2026
IBM depends on bribery
GNU/Linux Measured at 7% in Yemen
Windows is too hostile and dangerous
Links 03/03/2026: Security Breaches, Iceland Wants EU Membership, and "Wall Street–Backed Lawmakers Want to Help Banks Gouge You"
Links for the day
Queensland Health Payroll System: IBM billion-dollar-blowout inquiry
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 02, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 02, 2026
Gemini Links 03/03/2026: GrapheneOS and Keyboard Shortcuts
Links for the day
Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive dayProductive Week Ahead
Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive day
Only One Slopfarm Seems to Have Targeted "Linux" Today
It certainly does feel like the slop hype is reaching the "late life crisis" and companies that benefited from this bubble are overdue for a day of reckoning
Microsoft Mass Layoffs: Being Sacked at 1AM in the Morning
Watch what happens to Microsoft employees who get pregnant
Links 02/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, Climate Change Woes, and "Journalist With Germany's Deutsche Welle Arrested in Turkey"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Small Phones, "I 3D Printed My Brain", and "Managing 5 Servers at Once with tmux"
Links for the day
IBM is Trying to Hide Mass Layoffs, Not Only With NDAs and 'Scripted' LinkedIn Posts
From what we can gather (screenshot above), today many people leave IBM and Red Hat
Richard Stallman is Giving a Public Talk This Week (Friday in Lucerne School of Computer Science and Information Technology)
His birthday is just around the corner.
Windows Falls to New Low in World's Largest Population (India)
Windows is now down to 7%
Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut Up and Drink Coffee
Threats come at a cost; each time you issue a threat you stigmatise yourself as a bully
Last Month Matthew Garrett Said Ridiculous Things After His Spouse Had Called Him a "Rapist", Now He's Trying to Take the Site Offline and Put My Family in Prison
The real issue of concern to him (and his alleged reputation) is the spouse and the matter is to be dealt with in America, not the UK
Machine-Generated Legal Documents, Over 2,000 Pages Sent to Us Today Alone
We now know that the papers we receive are produced using bots (algorithms)
Reporting to Our Politicians/MPs the Failure of the SRA to Stop Hired Guns Who Help Americans (Men Who Attack Women and Nowadays Also Attack British Reporters)
About a month ago my wife wrote to politicians to get the ball rolling
The Topic Many People Don't Want to Talk or Write About
"DEI" is inherently about making racial and gender patterns better reflect society's
XBox is Virtually Dead Already, What Next Will Die at Microsoft?
Now that there are mass layoffs at Microsoft datacentres it is not premature to speculate about what dies after XBox
For the First Time, statCounter Measures Internet Explorer at 0.01% "Market Share"
What Microsoft replaced it with is just a Chrome clone with extra spyware
Was a Lot of "Windows" and "Unknown" in Iran Just GNU/Linux in Disguise?
more than 1 in 10 desktop/laptop requests is estimated to be GNU/Linux
"Here in the UK, GNU/Linux rose to all-time high at Windows' expense"
Will this entail Software Freedom as well? This depends on all of us
Links 02/03/2026: Claude Code Causes a Mexican Government Cyberattack, "London Repair Week" Noted
Links for the day
2026 Microsoft Mass Layoffs in So-called 'AI' Datacentres, Why Doesn't the Mainstream Media Cover The News?
What does this tell us about the state of the media?
Don't Fall for "Top X Law Firms" in "Discipline Y", They Pay $Z to Get False Endorsement/s
It's a scheme, a scam, an elaborate fraud
More Publishers Have Turned From Slop Boosters Into Slop Sceptics and Critics
There's a "hidden cost" when one participates (for profit) in "pump and dump" schemes
TeX Live Has New Release, But Planet Debian Won't Tell You That
It 'unpersoned' the developer
LLM Slop Does Not Know People (It Knows Nothing) and Cannot Distinguish Between People. It's a Recipe for Disaster.
no way of knowing who's who
"Over 1,100 Law Firms Gone in Five Years" in the United Kingdom (UK) Alone
There are basically way too many lawyers (looking for "business", e.g. threats and lawfare) and not enough positions to fill
Microsoft FUD From Microsoft Site Helps Distract From Actual Microsoft Back Doors
Published on a Sunday
Free Software Foundation Needs to Become More Active in Europe to Avoid Impersonation by Microsoft-Sponsored Groups
So far we've hardly seen the FSF saying anything at all about the US president
Links 02/03/2026: "Not Envious of Billionaires" and Palantir SLAPPs "Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn't Want Palantir"
Links for the day
There Has Never Been a Better Time to Quit Social Control Media
Those networks are selling something. And that something is not peace because peace does not sell "attention".
Microsoft Users Drowning in Slop, If They Complain Microsoft Censors Them
Like an authoritarian regime
IBM is Killing Red Hat's Portfolio - Including Linux - to Prop Up Ponzi Scheme ("AI")
IBM is killing Red Hat
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 01, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 01, 2026
Speed of Sites Matters
Being easily accessible all the time matters to us
Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Weird Phone Calls, Small Phones, and Exploring Racket
Links for the day
Dr. Andy Farnell on "Good Tech"
in the age of "rent everything" and "own nothing"
Gemini Links 01/03/2026: Simpler Software and Announcing OFFLFIRSOCH (OFFLine-FIRst SOftware CHallenge) 2026
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part V - Jobs at the EPO for Those Connected to Cocaine Addicts (Skills Not Required)
EPO management is trying to shoot the messenger
Booz Allen Hamilton, the Former Employer of Edward Snowden (NSA Contractor), is Drowning in Debt
Can Supreme Leader Cheeto bail it out like he does slop companies?
On the Concept of "Protected Class" (or Race) at IBM
It's self-harming as in practice it imperils the company and harms the reputation/brand
The Mass Layoffs at Microsoft That Nobody in the "News Industry" Wants to Talk About (and TheLayoff.com Censored, Then It Censored the Evidence of the Censorship)
They basically cover up how they censored the news about Microsoft layoffs
Richard Stallman to Give at Least Three Talks in Switzerland, Starting This Week
No mention (yet) of the Bern talk
On Who 'Speaks for' Techrights
typically a case of misrepresenting the site
'FSFE' an Imposter in Europe, Paid by GAFAM to Represent GAFAM Interests
The Microsoft-sponsored 'FSFE', which violates the terms of use of its name, is causing confusion [...] formally-recognised institutions got tricked into thinking that the Microsoft-sponsored 'FSFE' is the FSF
Lots of Lies From the Slop Industry
The slop industry relies on fake news to give a notion or fake demand
Links 01/03/2026: American Plutocrats Buy American Media While American Constitution Shredded
Links for the day
Teaser: The Next Series About the SRA, Which Would be Just as Effective as It Is Right Now If It Had Zero Employees
the lapdog (of the "litigation industry") that is meant to be perceived as a watchdog
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part I - Introduction
The SRA is a sham. Many people know this already, but we want to document our own experiences with it.
Live Simply, Live Better
Life isn't about "collecting" possessions; it's about doing things that matter and accumulating knowledge so as to make better choices
Now That XBox is Pretty Much Dead and There Are Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
This means our predictions about Microsoft (and XBox) are "falling into place"
Gemini Links 01/03/2026: "In the Spirit of OFFLFIRSOCH" and "Delete Patreon"
Links for the day
ACM Lowers Its Standards for Age of Autocracy
IBM is more than happy to work with autocracies
The term FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) was created to describe IBM's tactics and IBM is doing it again
Rob Thomas or "RT"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 28, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 28, 2026