Taking Stock of an Exceptionally Strong Year
THIS year was a terrible year for most people. We're lucky - and grateful - that we're not among them.
As noted just now, in Tux Machines given the relevance, GNU/Linux had a relatively good year. So did we.
Our Web sites were finally upgraded (along with non-site stuff, such as Git, Gemini and so on). As I left my job in December of last year I was able to write a lot more articles and back in July I even broke an all-time record for blog posts per month. In recent days we relaxed and readjusted in preparation - even anticipation - for the new year. Lots of house work, home improvements, and finally last night we watched a good movie. No rush. Time is invaluable and so is health.
Today it is "officially" not a holiday anymore, so we shall be back to the normal rhythm over the coming few days. It'll take time and it will be gradual. News is still slow anyway. Not much "new information" is floating these days.
Many Thanks
We would like to deeply and humbly thank those who helped us cover the server bill until next December. Without you, things would be different.
We also wish to thank the many thousands, perhaps even millions (maybe that's an exaggeration), who make Free software and are in effect making this site "tick". My wife and I use Free software almost exclusively and our server is running Free software too.
Software Freedom isn't about box-ticking; it's about exercising control and it is about collective solidarity in the digital realm. As we routinely remind people, just successfully migrating people to "Linux" (with proprietary junk on top of it) is sort of like "Android"... teaching people to adopt Freedom-respecting software such as Mumble or Jami is taking society a step further and enhancing privacy - i.e. personal dignity - along the way.
The Split
Techrights is not a "Linux site". Tux Machines has in fact inherited the role of posting Linux links, as we envisioned in 2022 when we started developing our static site generator. Techrights is more or less what its name suggests. Whether we speak about patent monopolies or privacy, one common solution is Free software and the goal is a better society - a more just society.
Unsung Heroes
We must thank our readers and sources for this wonderful year. We have people working hard behind the scenes; my wife is among them. As noted here before, I see no reason why we can't carry on for another decade or even two decades. My health is OK and I'm more motivated than ever. Over the Christmas period many people read the site (even more than usual) and we even got some unexpected exposure in YouTube - something we don't typically get from self-styled so-called "influencers".
This coming summer Tux Machines turns 20 and last night we began discussing how to do a small party for the event (milestone), even if that's still 5.5 months away. Very few sites last this long as active sites (Tux Machines is active every day; we keep it going even while on holiday abroad). Tux Machines is the fruit of labour of many people.
New Challenges
In 2024 Techrights won't be so focused on patents, partly because media coverage regarding this topic died down and thus it's difficult to know what's going on, except perhaps when a company like Apple faces product bans (blame software patents and the ITC).
If you follow this site for GNU/Linux news, you should definitely also follow Tux Machines. There's an RSS feed for it and it is updated, on average, more than once per hour.
It's too early to say "happy new year" because we expect to publish nearly 50 more pages this year. Since moving everything to this static site generator we've created over 1,000 pages (in about 3 months) and over the Christmas period we wrote some computer programs that will make us more efficient, i.e. capable of producing more material, faster.
In spite of a year (or more) of vandalism in our IRC network, the old timers - the real community - are still there and we have on-topic discussions. That's the sort of thing the vandals wanted to prevent.
Will 2024 be the year "Hey Hi" (AI) becomes the next "Web3", "metaverse", or whatever? It's worth noting that the overhyped company "Open" "Hey Hi" is running out of places to borrow money from. It's deep in debt, still losing money very fast, and looking for new investors (to shoulder losses). It's also under investigation for its relationship with Microsoft. This won't end well either way. The media may continue to pretend that LLMs are both revolutionary and useful, spurring misguided adoptions followed by remorse and turnarounds. Lots of money can be thrown into bubbles (PR/marketing budget), but if there's no real substance there, sooner or later the bubble will pop. There's no "Hey Hi" revolution or "era of Hey Hi". Machine Learning isn't new at all (I wrote papers about it more than 20 years ago), it's just a bunch of "pump and dump" fraud, asking investors to sink capital into a nothingburger. Don't get carried away by any media apparatus sponsored by the frauds, who latch onto hype and buzzwords (we post many examples of this in IRC every day).
Looking Ahead
Economic analyses put forth the expectation that 2024 will bring no recovery. The planet will continue to warm up, the poor will get poorer, social control media will fail to contain/herd the masses, and Beijing (through Bytedance) will continue to disseminate harmful skinnerboxes to the next generation, i.e. children, sedated by delusions about the world around them. We expect to be covering issues such as these a lot more than we did in the past. It's a growing type of threat and government officials are wooed by lobbyists and bribed 'influencers', so they refuse to see and properly understand what's going on. YouTube is waning fast (new reports say that TikTok rapidly overtakes it) and it's nowadays hard to get Invidious instances to work with most videos (MinceR says this instance is more robust than most). We predict that Google will look for new excuses to remove (permanently purge) more and more "old" material (that it finds itself unable to "monetise"), in turn vindicating us because we kept speaking against outsourcers (the "clown" boosters).
On the Net, nothing is free. Someone must pay the bills.
Activism
Some of the issues we covered here in the past do not immediately appeal to people who are struggling for their daily survival. For instance, patent reform is a distant ambition to people who worry about their next meal - putting food on the table. Lecturing such people on software freedom is like preaching veganism in Rwanda. We need to recognise that this permanent sense of urgency if not emergency makes activism harder. To most people it's a luxury and when making ends meet becomes harder people resort to instincts, emotion. Some lash our in social control media, as if that's going to change anything...
Remember who controls all the major social control media. They control the public discourse.
Facebook has been waning for years and Twitter (now X) is irrelevant to more and more people, organisations, and governments. Those who flock to TikTok have clearly learned nothing from prior experiences. Social control media is, at best, a waste of time. We'll never do that. █