Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/8/2011: Official 20th Anniversary of Linux, Blankfein (Goldman Sachs CEO) Allegedly Might Face Prison



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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • General Electric's Jim Cramer Heads to Midwest to Cheerlead for Fracking
      Today, CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer's "Invest in America" series will take the show to a seemingly unlikely locale. The crew will head to a place many would consider the middle of nowhere -- the state of North Dakota.


    • Plain Talk: Gore deplores BS skewing climate debate
      It has been nearly two years now since Wendell Potter, the former public relations expert for two of the nation’s largest health insurers, wrote the book “Deadly Spin,” exposing the misleading advertising campaigns and dirty tricks that insurance companies have used to try to scuttle meaningful health care reform.

      In the book Potter, who is now a senior fellow at the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, revealed that the health insurance industry has been using many of the same tactics and, indeed, some of the same people who successfully fought off tobacco regulation for decades. Tobacco interests used doctors and other medical “experts” to discredit the research that found tobacco causes cancer and numerous other diseases in not just smokers, but people around them.






  • Finance

    • Cameron and Osborne did the Swiss tax deal to support tax evasion - there's no other explanation
      The UK – Swiss tax deal does not meet with my approval, as some will have noticed. The deal is outlined here. My objections are littered through the blogs preceding this one. But let’s stand back for a moment and consider why the UK have done this deal – uniquely (because it seems unlikely that the supposedly similar German one will get parliamentary approval and so will not happen).


    • Under Fire, Goldman Sachs CEO Hires Top-Notch Attorney
      Goldman Sachs’ shares nosedived nearly 5% after it confirmed that its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington, D.C., defense attorney to defend the embattled executive in connection with the Department of Justice’s inquiry into Blankfein and other firm officials.

      The Justice probe is looking into findings in a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which alleges Goldman Sachs (GS) executives misled Congress and investors about its mortgage-backed securities deals.


    • Could Blankfein Face Prison?
      The Goldman Sachs CEO didn’t get a big-time criminal-defense lawyer because he’s worried about an SEC wrist slap—there’s a real possibility of doing time, says former Goldman managing director Nomi Prins.


    • Job Creation and America's Future
      Right at the beginning the report hits us in the face with a few statistics highlighted in big text that succinctly capture the job picture in 2011: US jobs have declined by 7 million since December 2007; 20% of men are not working today, up from 7% in 1970; there has been a 23% drop in new business creation since 2007; the jobless recovery is projected to last 60 months; 10% of Americans move annually, down from 20% in 1985.


    • Revealed: Former Goldman Sachs VP Turned Issa Staffer Supervised Scheduling Of Elizabeth Warren Incident (Think Progress)
      Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, as one of his top aides. Haller, who adopted his mother's maiden name in 2008 and had escaped public scrutiny until now, coordinated an Oversight Committee letter to regulators demanding that they justify new Dodd-Frank rules impacting investment banks like his old employer, Goldman Sachs. After publication of our story, the Project on Government Oversight discovered more of Haller's Oversight Committee letters, again on issues directly related to Goldman Sachs.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks
      The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers' guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags.


    • Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills
      July 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Arizona's controversial immigration law, a year that has seen similar anti-immigrant bills emerge across the country. Thanks to the release of over 800 pieces of "model legislation" by the Center for Media and Democracy, we can now pinpoint the source of the outbreak to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill factory for legislation that benefits the bottom line of its corporate members. While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Censorship of Information Unflattering to IBM (or GAFAM)
Years ago we gave a platform to a censored Microsoft whistleblower
Silent Layoffs at Microsoft in 2026
Time will tell is there are investigative journalists out there who will quit parroting Microsoft (e.g. false layoff figures) and relying on LLMs controlled by Microsoft to spew out false "facts" for them
SLAPP Censorship - Part 91 Out of 200: Legal Aid in Support of Freedom of the Press and British Women (Attacked by Americans)
bolstered by prominent counsels
Codecs and Software Patents - Part XII - GNU's Web Site Will Soon Have Many Recent Talks by Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman (RMS)
GNU videos being transcoded or converted into AV1
The Fall of Slop (Even Microsoft Admits There's a Problem)
If Microsoft admits that slop is too expensive and is for "entertainment purposes" because it cannot be relied upon, why would anyone other than the pushers and profiteers still insist that slop bears potential?
 
It's Friday Night Again, So Microsoft is Again Shelving (Under Weekend Lull) Nightmare News for XBox Staff
It did the same thing when the chiefs of XBox got canned
Links 29/05/2026: "Spyware Economy" and Cuba's Energy Crisis
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Rap Rant and LLMs Criticised
Links for the day
Akira Urushibata on Misleading Numbers From Anthropic's Project Glasswing (False Marketing by FUD Tactics)
Posted yesterday and approved a short while ago
[Video] Richard Stallman's Rapperswil (Switzerland) Talk Online
accessible without proprietary software
Trusting Trust is an Old Issue, Predating Rust and LLM Slop by Over Half a Century
Microsoft Lunduke wants to make a case against Rust and slop (LLMs), but the issues he addresses aren't exactly new or unique
California Should Have Abandoned So-called 'Age‑Verification Laws', Not Make Exemptions (for Now)
This has nothing to do with 1) children 2) safety 3) safety of children
Links 29/05/2026: Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken, American Pope on Defederation
Links for the day
Techrights Does Not Censor Information About IBM, It Platforms and Retains Suppressed Voices From Inside IBM
They don't like it when people criticise the management [...] panic attacks mentioned
Bob (Robert) Cringely Devoted Three Years of His Life Trying to Profit From LLM Slop and Now He Sounds Off, It's Just Not Working and It Can Crash the Economy Soon
"The labs raising money at valuations with too many zeros are happy"
Techrights After About 60,000 Articles in 20 Years
Sites fail if they don't offer anything new or if they wrongly believe that adopting slop to parrot other sites will give them exposure
Organised Plunder or Robbery: GAFAM and Hardware Companies Rely on Media Bribery to Perpetuate False Narratives and to "Drive Sales" (and Drive Prices Upwards)
The price-fixing seems plausible and, if so, we need to demand action
Linux Foundation Destroys the Identity and History of Linux
Groklaw's PJ was thorn on the side of LF sponsors
The Problem of Microsoft Crimes
Opposing crime isn't "hatred"
Red Hat Will Die Inside a Dying IBM
IBM isn't where Red Hat came to thrive but where it came to die
Very Large Strike at the European Patent Office Today, "Production" Sank a Huge Deal
At this pace, we might be looking at tens of thousands fewer European Patents being granted this year
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Leadership and Religion, the Board Game (Second Edition)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 28, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 28, 2026
Links 28/05/2026: Pakistan and Afghanistan Are Still Fighting, Iranians Back Online
Links for the day
"LLMs Are Not Much More Than Plagiarism Engines"
the impact of LLMs on communities and software projects
Is Slop Profitable Yet? No.
Everything is a giant minus
Bob (Robert) Cringely Has Just Explained That After 3 Years of Hard Work It Became Apparent LLM Slop is Unfit for Purpose in Courts
Added moments ago to Daily Links
Links 28/05/2026: LibreSSL 4.3.2, "Jeff Bezos Is Afraid Of What Comes Next", Measles Making a Comeback
Links for the day
PCs That Are Made to 'Expire' and 'Secure' Boot Contributing to Planned Obsolescence
People who are responsible for this ought to be held accountable
Evil, Faceless Corporation: Google Steals Money From You If You Don't Purchase an Android Device for MFA
At this point, under the guise of "hey hi" (slop) Google is firing tens of thousands of workers
People Go Back to Basics, Abandon Microsoft's GitHub to Avoid Slop
The media didn't pay any attention to GitHub's de facto chief quitting Microsoft only a few months ago
SLAPP Censorship - Part 90 Out of 200: When Efforts to Silence His Spouse and Also the Wife of a Blogger in Another Continent Only Give More Exposure to Embarrassing Information
The Garrett trial ended in October 2025
IBM - Much Like the European Patent Office (EPO) - Gives the President (Head of Board and CEO) All the Money While Staff Drowns in High Inflation Rates
They're discussing the same sort of thing we often see mentioned in the EPO
"THE REGISTER EXPLAINER" as "Paid-for SPAM" at The Register MS With "AI" 40 Times in the Short Page
What will be left of The Register MS in a few years?
2025: EPO President Campinos Breaks the Cookie Jar, Steals Another Million Euros While His "Brother-in-Law" Does Cocaine at the Office and Staff Prepares Rolling, Indefinite Strikes
any additional month of Campinos in charge of the EPO is a liability not just to the EPO but the EU as well
Gemini Links 28/05/2026: Dumping Microsoft GitHub, Gopher Rabbit Hole
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 27, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Links 27/05/2026: TSMC Workers Next to Consider Strikes, Ceasefire Cracking
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 89 Out of 200: SRA Admits Malfunction, That's Why Transparency is Paramount
There have been more efforts than we can to count or can enumerate (probably over 100 such efforts) to gag us and to prevent us writing about what has happened
Our Free Software Activist in Connecticut (USA)
We'll soon revisit the latest round of legislation on "age" (surveillance, ID)
Links 27/05/2026: Living Without 'Smartphoones' and "Russia’s Biggest Attack on Ukraine in 18 Months"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/05/2026: The USA as an "Experiment" and Some Ubuntu Manuals
Links for the day
[Video] Full Video of Richard Stallman's Talk in Rome
It seems inevitable that the official GNU site will have it
Slop is a Passing Fad, It's About Faking Productivity (Plagiarism, Misinformation, and False Positives)
Slop is a bubble. Some people accept it later than others.
Anderon - Like Kyndryl - Could be Far Deeper in Debt Than Its Alleged Worth (Vapourware)
Time will tell, but it seems like a Federal-enabled (by the Federal Government) accounting scam, nothing more, nothing less
The Media That Keeps Covering "AI" Because the Pushers of It Pay for Spam
23 times in the page they mention "AI"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 26, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Codecs and Software Patents - Part XI - The Stance of RMS (Dr. Stallman) Reassured GNU Regarding AV1
cautioned against software patents since the early 90s if not earlier