Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links - Education Watch, BBC Apologizes for Selling Out, BP Oil Lingers

Reader's Picks



  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



    • Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery

      Copy is not theft. Most of the privacy problems people have are Windows exploits and the power non free software owners help themselves to in the first place. As usual, the NYT is lost in a maze of details and misses the big picture.





  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



  • Anti-Trust



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules
      Independent revealed programmes were made by third-party in pay of governments and firms

      Techrights has written a lot about Microsoft BBC corruption. The apology is a good first step. The BBC should abandon broadcast to focus on publicly financed program production and public domain distritution to free itself from money problems. More money, not less should be provided for this.





  • Privacy

    • Austrian Law Student Faces Down Facebook
      In less than a year, Mr. Schrems's one-person operation has morphed into a Web site, Europe Versus Facebook, and a grass-roots movement that has persuaded 40,000 people to contact Facebook in Ireland, where its European headquarters are located, to demand a summary of all the personal data the U.S. company is holding on them... Mr. Schrems filed the grievance after using a provision of Irish law to obtain from Facebook a copy of all of the information the company had been keeping on him. ... Facebook was routinely collecting data [1,222 pages worth] that he had never consented to give, like his physical location, which he assumes was determined from his computer's unique address identifiers, which can be traced geographically. Facebook was also retaining data he had deleted...




  • Education Watch

    • The F-word of Ed Reform — and its unholy alliance with right-wing union-busting
      There is a word for this kind of anti-democratic collaboration between business and government, but we haven’t used it much since the 1940s: fascism.

      This article is a good run down of what's going on in the world of civil servant union busting and "education reform"



    • More Anti-Charter School Resolutions in Washington State

      It looks like a good backlash it on the way. That's good for Washington state and a good example for the rest of us.



    • 60% Teach for America , Inc. recruits and 40% credentialed teachers in Lousiana

      Louisiana would have money for their schools and other things if government had the guts to tax the multinationals that run cancer alley.



    • New Orleans: Beachhead for Corporate Takeover of Public Schools
      New Orleans is important in the national education debate, but not for the reasons we commonly hear; it is important because it is the beachhead for a national movement to remove schools from local democratic control and accountability. The privatization trade-off is that the public sacrifices control of schools for a privatized system that delivers better education for the same tax dollar. While the citizens of New Orleans certainly lost control of their schools [after Hurricane Katrina], it cannot be said that they have received a better education, if that also means an equitable education, nor can it be said that it came at the same cost. ... Hurricane Katrina was the perfect storm for the corporate education movement: No democracy, no unions, and a goal of 100% privatization of all public schools. It is no mystery why they chose New Orleans as their beachhead.


    • The Myth of “Choice” in New Orleans: How the Recovery School District, Through the Charter School Movement Has Cheated Nearly 5000 New Orleans Students Out of Access to Real “Choice”


    • An essay by a former Teach for America recruit: Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t
      I’m glad I ‘did’ TFA. Twenty years ago they filled a need. Putting a few hundred barely trained teachers into the toughest to serve schools was one of those concepts that was ‘so crazy, it might just work.’ We weren’t always doing ‘good,’ but we also weren’t doing much harm. Our five or six hundred teachers were pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. Over the next twenty years, TFA did a lot of growing, but not a lot of evolving. They replicated their institutes and increased their regions. The 2011 corps is nearly 6,000, twelve times as big as the cohorts from the early 90s. Unfortunately, the landscape in education has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Instead of facing teacher shortages, we have teacher surpluses. There are regions where experienced teachers are being laid off to make room for incoming TFA corps members because the district has signed a contract with TFA, promising to hire their new people. ... TFA has participated in building a group of ‘leaders’ who, in my opinion, are assisting in the destruction of public education.


    • Occupy the DOE in DC from March 30th to April 2nd
      The key lever is the vaunted score on high-stakes state standardized tests, used to justify a slew of controversial decisions. As a result of ten years of this kind of reform, we are experiencing schools just as segregated by race and social class as they were in the 1950s. We in the United States are also experiencing a teaching profession that is constantly undermined and under attack. The culture of punishment and competition created under No Child Left Behind and now Race to the Top has proven to be a massive failure.


    • The NAACP Resolution on Charter Schools: Segregation is Not Innovation




  • ACTA

    • ACTA bombshell: Germany refuses to sign anti-piracy treaty amid protests [Update]
      With protests against the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) set to rage across Europe on Saturday ... More recent reports suggest Germany is simply delaying its decision on signing ACTA until a later date, rather than refusing to sign the treaty outright. This is a lesser victory for ACTA opponents, but still a sign that the public outcry against the agreement is having an effect.

      Go protest till they kill it properly.









  • Recent Techrights' Posts

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    Another new low and low blow
    What is "MATA"?
    Think of it as GAFAM or "Meta"
    WebProNews is a Slopfarm
    Please avoid linking to WebProNews
    Another "Told You So!": XBox Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Many Recent Reports Were Chaff and Spin), Many Other Divisions Affected
    With mass layoffs at Microsoft the world would be much better
     
    Links 25/06/2025: Elon Musk’s Lawyers Caught Lying, WhatsApp Faces More Bans
    Links for the day
    Brian Fagioli Created Another Slopfarm Targeting "Linux" After BetaNews Became a Slopfarm of Phantom Accounts and Pseudonyms
    Mr. Fagioli even had slop about a dead Torvalds (hypothetical) as clickbait
    Wayland is Perfect, Nobody Can Escape Its Perfection! (Or Not)
    Do not form on opinion on Wayland based on politics
    Moral Duty for "Linux Sites" to Speak Out Against LLM Slop
    My wife has long complained about "Linux bloggers" keeping quiet and thus passive about a growing problem: slop
    In Recent Hours Google News Promoted at Least 3 Slopfarms That Relayed Linux Foundation Propaganda Made by Bots or LLM "Bullshit Generators" (as Dr. Stallman Dubbed Them)
    Google is circling down the drain and Google News too is hopeless
    Linux Journal is a Slopfarm, It's Experimenting With LLM 'Authors'
    Is Slashdot next?
    Microsoft LinkedIn is Dying and Many More Layoffs Are on the Way
    LinkedIn is just a failed acquisition of Microsoft. It causes losses and debt.
    Gemini Links 25/06/2025: Combinatorial Music and Self Hosting
    Links for the day
    Richard Stallman Coming Back to Europe This Autumn to Give More Talks
    His last talk in Europe attracted about 400-450 people
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 24, 2025
    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 24, 2025
    Social Control Media, Technology & Catholicism: Synod on Synodality review and feedback
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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    The world needs to know what happened
    The New BetaNews: 7 New 'Articles', All of Them LLM Slop
    BetaNews is basically defunct. Nobody writes there anymore.
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    Iranians don't quite trust Microsoft
    Gemini Links 24/06/2025: ftpd on FreeBSD and Online Small Web Magazine
    Links for the day
    Google News Does Great Harm by Promoting Slopfarms as Legitimate News Sites
    Slopfarms are sites which are 100% LLM slop
    Links 24/06/2025: Trouble at "Open" "AI" and ‘Siarhei is Free’
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 24/06/2025: Stimulants and Subscription Costs for DRM
    Links for the day
    When the Microsoft Aggressors Rely on Several Law Firms ('Attack Dogs', 'Guns for Hire'), Not Just One, Lawyering Up Against Techrights (Acting on Behalf of Americans Against UK Publishers)
    From serving customers at some restaurant he has moved on to bullying people with demand letters
    Links 24/06/2025: OpenAI [sic] May Soon Die (Too Much Debt) and Social Control Media Accused of Being Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda Amplifier
    Links for the day
    Nirbheek Chauhan in Planet GNOME Explains Why Wayland Pushers Are Losing
    "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
    Polygamy, from Catholic Synod on Synodality to Social Control Media & Debian CyberPolygamy
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Only a Third of or 1 in 3 Web-Connected Devices is a Desktop or Laptop, According to statCounter
    we can expect Android to widen its lead
    The Days Are Getting Shorter, the First Half of 2025 is Almost Over
    We're gratified to see significant increase in traffic and also positive feedback on the work we do
    Turning GNU/Linux Into a Political Football
    X (not the site) is Free software
    X Server Still Works for Many People
    A lot of people will grow suspicious of Wayland boosters/pushers if they persist and insist on using these tactics
    Exactly a Week Ago "BetaNews Staff" Said "Betanews Is Growing Alongside You". Since Then Every Article (All by "Camila Nogueira") Has Been LLM Slop.
    BetaNews is basically a slopfarm
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 23, 2025
    IRC logs for Monday, June 23, 2025
    The "Tarzan Effect" in Compilers and Software
    What happens when you forcibly make things 'work', either by hacks or by disregarding warnings (like those that compilers tend to issue)?
    Gemini Links 23/06/2025: Mass Tourism, Hair Love, and Google Gemini as a Googlebomb
    Links for the day
    Law Firm Burgess Mee Does Not Fully Deny Participating in Abusive Litigation for Serial Strangler From Microsoft
    I am not unfamiliar with these tactics
    The Modus Operandi of Wayland Pushers: Make It Political
    do what I say or you're a nazi...
    Links 23/06/2025: RFE/RL Contributor Vladyslav Yesypenko Released, Recording Industry Cutbacks
    Links for the day
    Brett Wilson LLP Solicitors (M): Over 99.9% of Our E-mail is Self-Marketing, We Send You 3.5MB E-mails for Less Than 1KB of Text
    Why would tech people entrust legal matters to such people?
    Peter Moon's (Computerworld) Interview With Richard Stallman
    Stallman: If you want freedom don't follow Linus Torvalds
    At What Point Does Outsourcing Constitute Malpractice?
    Brett Wilson LLP's new staff page is misleading
    United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sailing to GNU/Linux, According to statCounter
    countries in that region will quickly learn the price of neglecting digital sovereignty
    From Do Your Own Research to Do Your Own Search
    The Web is full of garbage; search engines amplify this garbage
    More People Moving to Geminispace?
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    Permutation in LLMs Does, Inevitably, Change Meanings and Therefore LLMs Cannot Properly Rephrase or Summarise Texts
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    Links 23/06/2025: Many Security Breaches, Population Declines
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 23/06/2025: "America at the Crossroads" and OpenWRT Surgery
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 22, 2025
    IRC logs for Sunday, June 22, 2025
    Pure Dove
    Different means different, and sometimes those who "deviate" from "the norm" have a point
    Censorship is a Sign of Weakness Which Invites More Censorship Attempts
    revolutionaries don't succumb to pressure from bullies
    Why It's Unlikely That LLM Slop Will Dominate the Web in the Long Run
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    GNU/Linux in Argentina Now Measured Near 5%
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    BetaNews is Fake News, Composed by LLM Slop
    nothing in BetaNews is written by humans anymore