Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Future of Techrights

Future
Just bear with us...



Summary: Futures are difficult to predict, but our general vision for the years ahead revolves around more community involvement and less (none or decreased) reliance on third parties, especially monopolistic corporations, mostly because they oppress the population via the network and via electronic devices

The title isn't clickbait (I could think of much more click-worthy titles), it's just a descriptive explanation, a concise one, of the subject to be tackled here.



Lately we've been having internal (albeit public, fully transparent, to be found in IRC logs) discussion about the future. We're been observing the gradually-deteriorating state of the World Wide Web (just "Web" for short) and collapse of the media (as in journalism) -- a subject we tackled hours ago. On Monday we had a complete breakdown of storage (meltdown of the whole OS) in the self-hosted (from home) Gemini capsule, IPFS and other essential services, but we recovered fully within less than a day owing to a good backup regime and Git (all the bits and pieces are there, version-controlled too), leaving us with both a hardware upgrade (twice as much storage) and an OS upgrade (Bullseye). We'll improve our disaster recovery and contingencies strategy as a result of Monday's incident, probably using a few "hot spares" and quasi-redundancy.

"To quell or calm down concerned readers (Mogz is among them), we are not leaving the Web!"Looking ahead at our crystal ball, we envision a move away from WordPress some time over the horizon. The trajectory of the project isn't bad for some users, but we're not among those users. I myself played a big role in the project in its earlier days (around 2004-2008), I'm among the first dozen users in WordPress.com (I was a beta tester), and I care for WordPress deeply. In fact, I maintain nearly a dozen WordPress sites. I'm not a big fan of more recent versions of WordPress, but that's a matter of personal preferences if not an eccentric opinion. The direction the Web has taken puts us off more and more over time; we want to seek alternatives, even if they're just optional. To quell or calm down concerned readers (Mogz is among them), we are not leaving the Web! We're not leaving! It'll be fully supported probably for decades to come (if we last decades more... or even a whole decade longer; decades is a huge amount of time in the context of technology).

"Last year we moved to Gemini, we took our IRC network 'in-house', and during the pandemic's first year we also added bulletins, then IPFS and a bunch of other things."In terms of our focus, we're trying to produce only accurate and properly fact-checked material, both in short and long form (even memes are checked carefully for accuracy). We strive for quality, not quantity, and we try to produce original material of interest to the general population. We focus on issues we know well enough and we meticulously check blog posts for typos, too (unlike IRC; IRC is super-informal and we don't do social control media, not in our capacity as a site anyway).

Last year we moved to Gemini, we took our IRC network 'in-house', and during the pandemic's first year we also added bulletins, then IPFS and a bunch of other things. The site is no longer limited to just a Web site. It's a lot bigger than that. The code we have in Git is a testament to that (we took that repository public only months ago).

"Software freedom remains our foremost priority."We still have a lot to say and to show regarding GitHub/Microsoft, the EPO, and the FSF, which will soon announce its new chief (not Board). We heard speculations that it'll be Greg Farough, but it's just hearsay and we have no way to prove it. Richard Stallman suggested that a decision had been made already.

Software freedom remains our foremost priority. The fight against software patents is closely connected to that priority and we study angles that others barely touch, e.g. the devolution of cars. One of the best way to help us is to join us in IRC; not some "like" in social control media or even money. Our operating costs are as minimal as can be, but the scarcity is human effort. We want to get more people involved because the more of us work together, the greater the output (and impact) will be.

So, in short, the future of Techrights will hopefully revolve around expansion in terms of the number of people involved.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025
Layoffs and Shutdowns at IBM, Not Just Microsoft
Same as Microsoft
The FSF's (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) 2025 Summer Fundraiser Already Past Halfway Line
This is where GNU/Linux actually started
With Workers Back From a Holiday Weekend, Microsoft Layoffs Carry on, More Waves to Come
Now it's Monday and people are bad to work, even some journalists
Mozilla Had No Good Reason to Outsource Firefox Development to Microsoft
What does Mozilla plan to do when GitHub shuts down?
Mozilla Firefox Did Not Die, It Got Killed
To me it'll always look like Mozilla got killed by its sponsors, especially Google, which had a conflict of interest as a sponsor
You Need Not Wave a Rainbow Flag This Month to Basically Oppose Arseholes Looking to Disrupt and Divide the Community
Don't fall for it
Dan Neidle, Whom Brett Wilson LLP SLAPPed (on Behalf of Corrupt Rich Tax Evaders), Still Fighting the Good Fight
Neidle fights for the poor people
What Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
Similar aims, different methods
Wayland Should Start by Dumping Its Very Ugly Logo
Wayland wins the "ugliest logo" award every year
Stop Focusing on Hair Colours, Focus on Corporate Agenda
If someone commits a crime, it does not matter if his or her hair was mostly white or there was no hair or a wig or whatever
Links 07/07/2025: Science, Conflicts, and a Fictional K-pop Group
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: Being a Luddite and Announcement of Gotify
Links for the day
Links 07/07/2025: XBox Effectively 'Dead', DMCA Subpoena Versus Registrar
Links for the day
The 'Corporate Neckbeard' is Not the "Good Guy"
Works for IBM
The Nasty Smear (and Stereotype) of "Neckbeard" or "Greybeard" is Ageism
This is the sort of stuff they might try to volley at critics of Wayland
Why Many of Us Use X Server and Will Continue to Use It For Many Years to Come
Don't make this about politics
Microsoft's Nat Friedman Became Unemployed the Same Time the SLAPPs Against Techrights Started Coming From His Friends (Weeks After We Had Exposed Scandals About Him and the Serial Strangler, His Best Friend, Who Got Arrested a Few Days Later)
Nat Friedman is not "Investor, entrepreneur"
Brett Wilson LLP Uses Threats to Demand Changes to Pages or Removal of Pages Without Even Revealing Which Staff Member Does That (Sometimes People From Another Firm!)
This has been in the public for years
Dan Neidle Said "It Really Then Became a Job of Tormenting" Lawyers Like Brett Wilson LLP (Who Threatened Him for Exposing Crimes, Just Like They Threatened My Wife a Few Months Later)
he and his wife decided to take on the evil people and their evil lawyers
Large Language Models (LLMs) Externalise Their Cost to the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"The forty-sixth Free Software Bulletin is now available online!"
Weeding Out Extremism in Our Community
To me it seems like Microsoft Lunduke is rapidly becoming like a "hate preacher" who operates online, breeding an extremist ideology or trying to soften its image
Censorship Versus Fact-Checking and Quality Control
It's not censorship but a matter of quality control
Reinforcing the Allegations Some More, Bryan Lunduke Digs His Own Grave
In his latest episodes he merely repeats his own lies, which I debunked using evidence right from his own mouth
Global Warming and Free Software as a Force of Mitigation
we'll need to think about Software Freedom, not just brands like "Linux"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 06, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 06, 2025
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and TUI Rant
Links for the day