IRC: #techbytes @ Techrights IRC Network: Thursday, January 05, 2023

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>>> There is already some good coverage of people being coerced, e.g. the

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>>> email to Renata and the demotion email that Dr Preining published.

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>> A demotion in the context of unpaid work is a weird concept.

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> Yes, but that in itself is not coercion

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> Demoting somebody secretly and threatening to tell other people about it

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> is coercion. If the intention of the coercion is for the victim to work

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> without pay then it is modern slavery.

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>>> The analysis of the way the FSFE fellowship worked, with fake membership

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>>> cards, etc, is a strong example of deception because the members were

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>>> not recorded on the FSFE e.V. membership roll.

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>>>

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>>> Do you have any tag or category for your articles to help identify

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>>> coercion, in particular, doing work under coercion?

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>> Not coercion in particular, but:http://techrights.org/category/deception/

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-techrights.org | Deception | Techrights

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> There is a lot of deception in tech. What I'm specifically trying to

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> focus on is deception that is intended to make people work for free.

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> Example: lets say the FSFE posts a job vacancy and asks 100 people to do

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> coding tasks but they don't have any intention to employ any of these

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> people, they are just posting these job vacancies to get people to fix

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> bugs for them. If a whistleblower in the organization reveals the

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> vacancy was a hoax then there could be a prosecution.

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> I already have an example of this from an organization in another

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> country. They tried to get me to add a new feature to a well known

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> program. A normal employer would do this task in the probationary

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> period but this particular employer tried to get me to do it as a test,

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> despite the fact they can see all my code online anyway.

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>>> Do you have any tag or category for your articles to help identify

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>>> deception, in particular, doing work under a deceptive relationship?

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>>>

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>>> Each of these topics, coercion and deception, can be relevant in a

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>>> modern slavery prosecution.

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>>>

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>>> - coercion or deception to contribute code

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>>>

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>>> - coercion or deception to change a license to be more permissive

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>>>

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>>> - coercion or deception to do sysadmin work

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>>>

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>>> - coercion or deception to do conference organization

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>>>

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>>> - coercion or deception to do IT support, helping users

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>>>

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>>> Some of the evidence is about coercion to say or not say something.

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>>> This may not be modern slavery. Oversimplifying it, censorship doesn't

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>>> always relate to doing unpaid work. But if it intersects with the work

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>>> somebody is doing then there could be an issue.

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>> Some times this month or next month I will show how my employer tried to

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>> use my job as pretext to offer support to their family friend:

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>> http://techrights.org/wiki/Sirius_Open_Source

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-techrights.org | Sirius Open Source - Techrights

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>>> Both the Daniel Baumann and Norbert Preining emails are encouraging them

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>>> to continue doing Debian work under a framework of coercion. This is

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>>> distinct from emails to Renata telling her what to say.

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>> The above mentions the role of guilt and humiliation to coerce workers.

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>> One more examples of that will be published tonight. Instructions under

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>> threat.

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> There is that question of how Dr Preining and I both realized we were

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> subject to secret shaming experiments and started communicating about it.

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> It was me who noticed they were coercing Dr Preining and reached out to him.

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> This is the thing they hate about me more than anything else. As

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> fellowship representative, I defended Michael Kappes. It was my role to

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> defend him, even if he had been guilty I still would have felt obliged

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> to speak up as the representative. That is when FSFE really turned ugly.

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>>> From time to time I've seen comments from companies who felt pressured

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>>> to use an open source license. For example, I feel that the tone of

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>>> this article was shaming xTuple into changing their license, without

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>>> giving any economic reason why xTuple would benefit from changing it:

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>>>

>>> https://web.archive.org/web/20080122022821/http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9749950-16.html

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-web.archive.org | OpenMFG transforms into xTuple, but misses the open-source train | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs

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>>>

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>> I remember the xTuple debacle very well.

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>>> Agreed, they had been a bit naive when they started using the term open

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>>> source. But rather than mocking them, I think that the blog could have

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>>> simply left the reader with the choice, e.g. "xTuple needs to either

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>>> adopt an OSI approved license or avoid using the term open source"

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>> OSI is corrupt, deeply corrupt, it became a front group for Microsoft

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>> and proprietary GitHub.

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> Agreed, but the general understanding of what is an open source license

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> hasn't diverged too much right now. Maybe it will in future. But what

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> I'm looking for specifically is to index cases where any project has

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> been bullied, even if they simply bullied somebody to go from GPL to BSD.

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> Regards,

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> Thanks Roy, I forgot about that one. First time I've seen it.

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> all best,

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Excellent talk. Covers lots of what we've been speaking about, and beyond...

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The Q&A also has some good bits, even is the "Q" is inaudible.

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Jan 05 04:26

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<h5><a href="https://sysdfree.wordpress.com/2023/01/04/365/">2023: Linux rusting away into non-FOSS territory – Build rnote and you will see</a></h5>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-sysdfree.wordpress.com | 2023: Linux rusting away into non-FOSS territory – Build rnote and you will see | systemd-free linux community

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<p>Linux 6.2-rc2 kernel is out as the last commit in kernel.org at the start of the 2023 year. RUST is here, the initial code-base is included in the kernel. At least Arch seems to be disabling it for now, at the beta level at least, we shall see.</p>

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<p>Rust is not just a language, as people commonly think, it is much more. It is a building environment, system, and a mode change of the philosophy of building packages from source. Rust incorporates its own git system in pulling code in from 2nd and 3rd parties. So if you have never gotten into the real FOSS practice of auditing code before you build, try and audit this stuff. If building in C you thought

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was a practice similar to building sand castles, by comparison, this is like building sand castles with quick-sand ON QUICK SAND.</p>

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Jan 05 11:54

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<h5><a href="https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/dissecting-guix-part-1-derivations/">Dissecting Guix, Part 1: Derivations</a></h5>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-guix.gnu.org | Dissecting Guix, Part 1: Derivations — 2023 — Blog — GNU Guix

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<p>To a new user, Guix's functional architecture can seem quite alien, and possibly offputting. With a combination of extensive #guix-querying, determined manual-reading, and plenty of source-perusing, they may eventually figure out how everything fits together by themselves, but this can be frustrating and often takes a fairly long time.</p>

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<p>However, once you peel back the layers, the "Nix way" is actually rather elegant, if perhaps not as simple as the mutable, imperative style implemented by the likes of dpkg and pacman. This series of blog posts will cover basic Guix concepts, taking a "ground-up" approach by dealing with lower-level concepts first, and hopefully make those months of information-gathering unnecessary.</p>

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</blockquote>

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<h5><a href="https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6656">Non-Destructive Silicon Imaging (and Winner of Name that Ware December 2022)</a></h5>

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-www.bunniestudios.com | Non-Destructive Silicon Imaging (and Winner of Name that Ware December 2022) « bunnie's blog

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<p>The ware for December 2022 is an AMD Radeon RX540 chip, part number 216-0905018. Congrats to SAM for guessing the ware; email me for your prize. The image is from Fritzchen Fritz’s Flickr feed; I recommend checking out his photos (or you can follow him on twitter). Even if you aren’t into photos of chips, he elevates it to an art. Even more amazingly, all of his work is public domain; hats off to him

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for contributing these photos to the commons with such a generous license, because it is not easy to prepare the material and take images of this quality. If any of my readers happens to know him and are willing to make an introduction, I’d appreciate that. I only discovered his work by chance while doing some background research.</p>

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<h5><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/01/decarbonizing-cryptocurrencies-through-taxation.html">Decarbonizing Cryptocurrencies through Taxation</a></h5>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-Decarbonizing Cryptocurrencies through Taxation - Schneier on Security

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<p>Maintaining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies causes about 0.3 percent of global CO2 emissions. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than the emissions of Switzerland, Croatia, and Norway combined. As many cryptocurrencies crash and the FTX bankruptcy moves into the litigation stage, regulators are likely to scrutinize the cryptocurrency world more than ever before. This presents a

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perfect opportunity to curb their environmental damage.</p>

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Jan 05 12:36

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<h5><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/01/breaking-rsa-with-a-quantum-computer.html">Breaking RSA with a Quantum Computer</a></h5>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-Breaking RSA with a Quantum Computer - Schneier on Security

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<p>The Chinese group didn’t have that large a quantum computer to work with. They were able to factor 48-bit numbers using a 10-qbit quantum computer. And while there are always potential problems when scaling something like this up by a factor of 50, there are no obvious barriers.</p>

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<p>Honestly, most of the paper is over my head—both the lattice-reduction math and the quantum physics. And there’s the nagging question of why the Chinese government didn’t classify this research. But…wow…maybe…and yikes! Or not.</p>

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Jan 05 12:42

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Jan 05 12:42

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>> The Q&A also has some good bits, even is the "Q" is inaudible.

Jan 05 13:25

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> They were a potentially tough crowd. It was an "AI" conference and

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> every single one an MSc or postdoc researcher who finished a

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> project. Many of the projects were of dubious utility and morality -

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> typical academic fare of "let's do buzzword project because we can!"

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> So I hoped for some probing questions. What I got were really

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> stock internet memes. So I was a bit disappointed they didn't feel

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> able to challenge even on home ground. Or perhaps they thought my

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> critique was irrelevant/beneath response.

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> These days detailed Q and A works well as interview/podcast where

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> there's more time and the pace can be regained by edits later.

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> Tfanks for posting it anyway.

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> best,

https://www.fosslife.org/network-problems-slow-remote-workforce-productivity

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Jan 05 16:07

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-www.fosslife.org | Network Problems Slow Remote Workforce Productivity

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Many organizations are still struggling to deliver seamless digital experiences for remote workers, reports Nathan Eddy.

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Eddy cites an Exoprise Systems report, which says that “90 percent of knowledge workers face consistent technical and remote network problems, which are hampering remote workforce productivity.”

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Issues include “slow network response time and unpredictable application performance, exemplified by dropped Zoom calls, slow page loading, application crashes, and unresponsive endpoint devices,” Eddy says.