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

The Cyber Show on How Data is Misused and Broadcast is Abused to Crush Resistance to Harmful Technology
We recently published a number of articles about how Computer Science is coming under attack
Assessing the "Worth" of a Life
Don't let blunt plutocrats decide whether Venezuelans deserve sympathy or not
More Weight of IBM's Stock is Ascribed to Lies and Things That Do Not Exist
Turning stones into gold?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 118 Out of 200: Exposing Crimes is Not a Crime, It is a Public Service
We will soon enter the sixth year of lawfare
 
Microsoft Falls to Lowest Value Since 2023
Microsoft can come back down to somewhere below $100
This Could be the Start of Microsoft's Biggest Wave of Layoffs in 50+ Years
This is what it looked like for Intel a few years ago
The Register MS is Promoting a Pyramid Scheme for Money, But It Is Over 6 Million Pounds in Debt
How much lower can the reputation of this publisher sink?
Gemini Links 25/06/2026: Unix-like People and NeoGeo
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Members of the Delegations in the EPO's Administrative Council Told That Amid Unrest Campinos Must Go; a Year of EPO Strikes Means It's Time to Change Leadership
Which strategy is needed for the European Patent Organisation?
Increasing Participation Rates in Staff Representatives' Elections at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The industrial actions seem to have brought colleagues closer together
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Have Already Begun (Could Not Wait 'Til July)
Microsoft's biggest layoffs round in 50+ years?
Planning 20-Year Techrights Event
Interested people can contact us in IRC
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Links 25/06/2026: "Why We Need Seed Legislation" and XBox Chaos Predicted by Insiders
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IRC logs for Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Don the Con Meets the Conman From IBM, Shares of IBM Continue Sliding Some More
The "Quantum" hype did not last long [...] PIPs are the new layoffs
Retaliatory Whistleblowing Expected at Microsoft During or After the Mass Layoffs
Retaliatory behaviour by Microsoft will backfire
Gemini Links 24/06/2026: Heatwave, Steam Next Fest, and Year of Buying Guitar Pedals
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Links 24/06/2026: China Tops "TOP500", Impact of Microsoft’s Massive Layoffs Extends Further, Internet Society's Community Snapshot
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While Thousands at IBM Lose Their Jobs ("Silent Layoffs") IBM's CEO Goes Begging the Dictator for Bailouts, Based on Deliberate Lies About "Quantum"
Many who claim to be retiring are only in their 40s and 50s. They're too proud to publicly admit what IBM did to them.
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: London Calling...
EPO Vice-President in charge of the "Patent Granting Process" is likely to have been a pay-off for the support which the UK gave to Campinos in 2017
Faking Productivity With Slop and Wasting Money on Faking 'Productivity': A Microsoft Story
If the quality of everything at Microsoft goes down
IBM Sends Workers 'Packing', Sometimes With the "Low Performer" Label That Imperils Their Future
To many people out there, IBM correlates with deceit
Links 24/06/2026: Four-Day Workweeks, GM Cut 1,000 Workers at Its EV Plant, 21,000+ Oracle Layoffs
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A Step in the Right Direction (EU) in the Fight Against LLM Slop From GAFAM (US)
We've already mentioned this in Daily Links, but let's discuss this a little further
SLAPP Censorship - Part 117 Out of 200: Libel Tourism or Defamation Forum-Shopping in the United Kingdom Condemned by the European Union (EU)
Last week we reminded readers that the EU had criticised UK defamation law
Demonstration Next Week at the European Patent Office (EPO), Administrative Council Seen as Complicit
Corruption in Europe hurts all of us
IBM is Now Hinged on False Accounting and False Promises
This is the legacy of the current CEO
"PARTNER CONTENT" or 'Content Farms' That Promote Slop and Misinformation (The Register MS)
The Register MS represents a big part of the problem we all face
Wikipedia - Like Some Free Software Projects Infiltrated and Bribed - Bans Its Own Founder
Over the years we've named (not shamed) some projects and organisations that got corrupted by money and ended up banning their own founders
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Right now we see lots of headlines about energy shortages and drained-up reserves
Lessons From Almost 30 Years of Site-Building Activities
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Do Not Outsource (the Seductive Mirage)
Abandoning so-called 'conventional wisdom'
Media Complicit in IBM Fraud Meant to Prop Up the Share Price Based on Lies, Fabrications
Even IBM insiders are fuming at this
The “Aktion T4” at the European Patent Office (EPO) Saves Money for the President's Own Purse
Call for parents of children with special needs
In Some Countries, Windows Has Lost Its Monopoly
Windows fell to an all-time low globally this month
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 23, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Gemini Links 24/06/2026: Motivation, PostScript Printer, and Why Hyperscalers and the Smolnet are Compatible
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The Media's "Satya Says" Syndrome Distracts From Grim Reality
how insiders see Microsoft slop
Oracle's Collapse Has Nothing to do With Slop, It's About Its Debt Exploding by Almost 50% in Just 12 Months
How are people meant to trust the media?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 116 Out of 200: 5 Years of Multiparty Lawfare Against Techrights, Funded by Americans and Also by Third Parties (Including Microsoft Salaries)
The public and our government will be informed in full
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Powerade
Links 23/06/2026: Microsoft Studio Closures and Journalism Subjected to Further Cuts
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Links 23/06/2026: Apple Price Hikes and Technical Debt in Slop
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from what we can gather IBM's CEO is trying to get the US government to participate in the scam
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its national discourse seems to be run by an American company called Facebook
State of the GNU/Linux Desktop (and Laptop)
The time to advocate GNU/Linux is now
The 'XBox Narrative' Distracts From Destructive Cuts Across the Whole of Microsoft
Microsoft is preparing to lay off a likely record-breaking number of people [...] this isn't just an XBox problem
SLAPP Censorship - Part 115 Out of 200: Spending the Next Decade Writing About SLAPPs and Trying to Fix the System
It's the same industry that got paid by corrupt EPO officials to try to cover up the corruption
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if they dump slop, what will they tell shareholders?
The Cyber Show on Starmer and Software Freedom
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