GNU News (December-January)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
Summary: GNU, FSF, and Free software news from the past month or so
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Richard Stallman today met Mr Rahul Gandhi, Vice President of the Indian National Congress and shared his views on digital surveillance system, unique identification project, free software in education and governance in a meeting that went on for one hour. Mr Joseph Mathew, Secretary of SPACE also participated in the meeting. Mr Gandhi showed keen interest in Stallman's views on various issues relating to information technology.
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To commemorate the occasion of GNU completing 30 years and SPACE 10 years, the free software community in Thiruvananthapuram is also organising an exhibition on free software and free knowledge on Education Freedom Day, which falls on January 18 at the Museum. The exhibition will focus on free software and free hardware for education and privacy protection. Various free software projects like Fedora, WoMoz, and HackerSpace will be part of the exhibition.
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GnuCash is more than a simple checkbook register, although it can be used for that purpose. Its real power is in the features supporting small business use and managing multiple accounts. Its basic features are intuitive, but if you don't have a bookkeeping background, be prepared to spend some time with the user guide in order to fully appreciate its advanced capabilities.
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But the researchers, including Adi Shamir, a co-inventor of the widely-used RSA encryption algorithm, have shown how within one hour it was possible to extract a 4096-bit RSA private key used to decrypt email from a laptop running the OpenPGP-based mail encryption tool, GNU Privacy Guard.
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After earlier this month delivering LLVM Clang 3.3/3.4 benchmarks for the new compiler infrastructure out of Apple, today are results that directly compare the new LLVM Clang 3.4 performance against the stable GCC 4.8.2 compiler and GCC 4.9.0 development compiler under various C/C++ benchmarks.
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An Intel engineer has published a patch-set providing a new GCC compiler architecture target for Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs.
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Novena Project aims to create an entirely open source laptop, from the iron down to the bits, and a prototype already exists
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to Gluglug X60 laptops. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. This is the first laptop to receive RYF certification from the FSF.
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FOSS is the last place to suspect “back doors” or traps.
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Computer scientists have devised an attack that reliably extracts secret cryptographic keys by capturing the high-pitched sounds coming from a computer while it displays an encrypted message.
The technique, outlined in a research paper published Wednesday, has already been shown to successfully recover a 4096-bit RSA key used to decrypt e-mails by GNU Privacy Guard, a popular open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Publication of the new attack was coordinated with the release of a GnuPG update rated as "important" that contains countermeasures for preventing the attack. But the scientists warned that a variety of other applications are also susceptible to the same acoustic cryptanalysis attack. In many cases, the sound leaking the keys can be captured by a standard smartphone positioned close to a targeted computer as it decrypts an e-mail known to the attackers.
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The Free Software Foundation today has come out for "the first time we've ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is." The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer's freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?
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GNU Binutils was updated this morning and some of the major changes for these binary tools updates include supporting several new processors.
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To read more about all of these and see the honorable mentions not listed here, make sure to head back to the full hive five feature.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 194 Out of 200: The Court Needs to Also Look Into Microsoft-Controlled Restricted Boot Advanced by An American (Garrett) to Promote Monopoly and Back Doors Everywhere
- Kill switch sold as 'security' is like euthanasia sold as a cure
- Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 7 - Infested With or Plagued by Bot-Generated Slop, Committed by Microsofters
- Slop is a security threat; even the person committing slop to Linux might not be aware that there's a back/bug door in the code
- Edward Snowden Lost His Voice, Then His Leaks Lost Exposure (Access Denied)
- When states want to deny people access to some information they have many tools at hand
- Things Will Only Get Better (as We Go Backwards)
- It only gets better. If you go back in time.
- UK High Court Shows SRA is Totally Useless in Curbing SLAPPs, This Has Impact on Our Reporting on the SRA Next Week
- We'll carry on our coverage and soon finish the current series that so we can get on with more time-sensitive ones
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 22, 2026
- Gemini Links 23/09/2026: Ljubljana, Poetry, and FORTRAN
- Links for the day
- The EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) Shows Job Insecurity at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- Who would want to join a company with such low job security?
- There Are Thousands More Microsoft Layoffs (Including Silent Layoffs), Not Hundreds
- Microsoft does have layoffs and today is no exception (except Microsoft talks about it)
- Gemini Links 22/09/2026: Disability Studies, Slop Boosters, and TkInter
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2026: Flock is Collapsing Amid Mass Backlash and Internet Society Collaborates With the 'Epstein Class' (Trafficking of Women)
- Links for the day
- Raspberry Pi Has Microsoft Secrets Inside, Now DRM
- now we deal with SBCs that have DRM in them, put there for commercial reasons
- 2 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Page That Says "AI" 42 Times Because It Was Paid to Do So
- Still inflating the bubble for money
- Gemini Links 22/09/2026: Scout Night, Cybernetic Capitalism, and Thoughts on Companies Forcing People to Adopt Plagiarism Engines
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2026: "An Arsenal of Surveillance" and Slop Bots Suggest Starting Wars
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 193 Out of 200: Breaks GNU and Linux, Tries to Silence Critics, Loses All Money, Looks for Microsoft Allies and Sponsors
- The latest emotional knee-jerk reactions serve to confirm what we have long said
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, September 21, 2026
- Links 21/09/2026: "Lies of the Hey Hi (AI) Industry" and Solar Power Is Getting Cheap
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/09/2026: Equinox and Beginner's Guide to Gemini
- Links for the day
- Links 21/09/2026: "Back On My Bicycle" and American Regime's War on Media Escalates Further
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 192 Out of 200: The Hired Guns of Garrett and Graveley Sent Us USB Sticks (One to Me, One to My Wife) Showing Lozza Talking to Garrett About Censoring/Deplatforming Techrights the Same Time Graveley Was Copy-Pasting Garrett's Lawsuit
- Next year we plan to bring this matter to the Court of Appeal
- Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 6 - Seeing Who Contaminates Linux With Slop (And Also Admits It)
- Today we begin looking at some culprits
- 2026: The Year Galleries Realised the Need to Flag or Cull Slop Images
- Society needs to shun slopfarms, people who use LLM slop (for anything at all), companies that use bots (which they dub "agents"), and so-called 'coders' who volley garbage into project and software hubs
- Software Freedom Day Celebrated in 5 or 6 Continent
- Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2026 was big this year
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 191 Out of 200: Garrett, Graveley and Lozza
- They talk to and coordinate with one another
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, September 20, 2026
- Gemini Links 21/09/2026: Digital Hoarder, GTD, Minimalism vs Digital Minimalism, Rejection of LLMs
- Links for the day