Bonum Certa Men Certa

Life Will Never Be the Same Again

City stock photo



Summary: It seems probable that month after month things will deteriorate further (hunger, conflicts, partisanship) and even though Free software remains the most accessible technology for impoverished and frugal people we may have to face greater perils than 'software wars'

THE PANDEMIC was "long time coming" and probably inevitable; history shows that it happens in cycles -- like economic collapses -- and high-density populations are harmed the most (or proportionally). It might be nature's way of 'balancing' itself; it has not been "long in the making" (nobody made it; no need to), it's just "long time coming..."



Please kindly ignore people who claim Bill Gates started it; Gates does not control China and assuming it started somewhere in China, it's no different than many old plagues (some started in the US, some in Europe, several in China too). It's not a "Fake alarm" or "False flag" or whatever, either; Russia and nations that are EU/US-hostile take this very seriously too, based on their own experts. They don't even need WHO to lecture them about the severity and evidence to which they're direct eyewitnesses (like high death rates among patients in overcrowded hospitals) is enough to alarm them.

"Please kindly ignore people who claim Bill Gates started it..."I won't comment on COVID-19 as it's way outside my area of expertise (and unlike Bill Gates I'm not pretending to be an expert, either). I wrote about why it's unlikely to be a biological weapon (no nation benefits from it, not even China which relies on endless consumption, upon which manufacturing is dependent).

I am rather pissed off (to be brutally honest) seeing some people who link to Techrights claiming that it 'proves' Bill Gates is a paedophile (we never made such a claim and anyone who somehow infers/concludes that has a severe case of dishonesty or lacks reading comprehension skills). There's extensive evidence, however, including admission from Gates himself, that he closely associated -- for years -- with people whom he knew were large-scale, serial, practicing paedophiles. These details do matter as otherwise our adversaries can seek to discredit factual reporting, based on deliberate distortions of what we wrote and very carefully published.

People are stuck home, watching stupid YouTube channels (to pass time), losing their sanity without even realising it...

For me, personally, almost nothing has changed because my wife and I have worked from home for well over a decade and I still do my nighttime job from the same old workstations. The main difference, to us at least, is that we no longer travel to places and we cannot go to the gym. Instead we work out from home.

"Financially speaking, for a lot of people these are unbelievably scary times."That said, everybody I speak to has experienced very profound changes. Some lost their job, some work at very limited capacity or temporarily lost their job, not even knowing if that job will ever resume at all.

Financially speaking, for a lot of people these are unbelievably scary times. They never saw that coming. Some already worry they'd get kicked out of the place they call "home" (mortgage or rent payments) if they formally lost their job; finding a new job is almost impossible at this moment as face-to-face interviews are rare and difficult, not to mention public and private transport restrictions (still in place in London for instance).

I recently heard some gossip about GNU/Linux news sites and various Free software companies; it seems like they're mostly OK and judging by some recent reports, Free software is actually surging in popularity right now.

Life Will Never Be the Same Again... if you work for a proprietary software vendor. Uber has just announced (privately) thousands of layoffs, talking to its newly-canned employees about it over the Internet (and not even in person). All that 'digital-only' vision isn't meant to last after the outbreak. People still need to do manual tasks; this is particularly true for warehouse workers of Amazon and couriers that actually ship the stuff. High-profile Amazon staff quits in protest, Amazon employees blow the whistle en masses, and Jeff Bezos is coming under greater fire each day (there's a new scandal today).

"Expect some crazy times ahead, maybe even a war (we hope not)."In some particular aspects, this may be the demise of internationalism (especially as far as shipping and travel are concerned). As we said earlier this week, there's no "back to normal"; society will never go back to the same old normal. Now is the time to introspect, to adapt, to learn new things. Tell that to the Saudis and Gulf states whose economy was almost solely dependent on fossil fuels (and whose gamble on the airline 'industry' was a misguided one -- a deeply-linked contingency tied to oil). Few people have paid attention to news about the US Army withdrawing from some Saudis territories along with Patriot [sic] missiles and the latest big scandal is an FBI 'leak' of a Saudi official connection to the 9/11 attacks -- details long suppressed by both the Obama and Trump administrations.

Expect some crazy times ahead, maybe even a war (we hope not). The real unemployment rates are now officially worse than during the Great Depression, but the corporate media intentionally distracts from that (more on that in our latest Daily Links). There's growing debate about the next pandemic phases and the likely food crises which those phases entail. And no, Mr. Gates, Monsanto (now Bayer) won't save us with their 'foods' (patented seeds and cancer-causing pesticides) any more than Bayer's predecessors 'saved' people during the last major war (using chemicals and lethal gases).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day