Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 17/4/2014: Android RDP, New Ubuntu, RHEL 7 Milestone



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Witnesses Report a 'Loud Noise' Before Ferry Sinks Off South Korean Coast
    It’s not clear what caused the multi-story vessel to list and sink, but witnesses reported an impact and loud noise just before the ship began to roll over in the water.


  • Health/Nutrition



    • UN Report Says Small-Scale Organic Farming Only Way to Feed the World
      Transformative changes are needed in our food, agriculture and trade systems in order to increase diversity on farms, reduce our use of fertilizer and other inputs, support small-scale farmers and create strong local food systems. That’s the conclusion of a remarkable new publication from the U.N. Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Donetsk leaflet: Jews must register or face deportation
      Fear replaced communal atmosphere in Donetsk's Jewish community as armed men handed out a leaflet Passover eve calling on Jews register their religion and property with the interim pro-Russian government or face deportation and loss of citizenship.


    • "We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis
      As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. The killings came just after the unraveling of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings from pro-Russian separatists. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss" and refused to rule out sending forces into Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land," Rasmussen said. We are joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. "We are not at the beginning of a new Cold War, we are well into it," Cohen says, "which alerts us to the fact 'hot war' is imaginable now. It’s unlikely, but it’s conceivable — and if it’s conceivable, something has to be done about it."


    • Putin reveals NATO chief secretly recorded their talk, leaked it to media
      Vladimir Putin says that current NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen secretly recorded and leaked a private conversation with him, when he was the head of the Danish government.




  • Transparency Reporting



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



    • Thousands of China workers on strike
      Labour disputes pop up regularly in China, but one strike in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan is attracting attention because of its size.


    • The Neoliberal Theory of Society: The Ideological Foundations of Neo-liberalism
      Neoliberalism presents itself as a doctrine based on the inexorable truths of modern economics. However, despite its scientific trappings, modern economics is not a scientific discipline but the rigorous elaboration of a very specific social theory, which has become so deeply embedded in western thought as to have established itself as no more than common sense, despite the fact that its fundamental assumptions are patently absurd. The foundations of modern economics, and of the ideology of neoliberalism, go back to Adam Smith and his great work, The Wealth of Nations. Over the past two centuries Smith’s arguments have been formalised and developed with greater analytical rigour, but the fundamental assumptions underpinning neoliberalism remain those proposed by Adam Smith.



    • Markets Are the Problem (Not the Solution)
      As might be expected, underlying this monument to excess is an army of laborers from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. These desperate souls arrive heavily indebted to recruiters and those who pay their passage, only to be brutally exploited by sponsoring employers, who confiscate their passports. It is a system of semi-slave labor; workers are not free to leave, even if they have not been paid.


    • Nearly one million people relying on food handouts in UK
      One of Britain’s largest food charities says that more than 900,000 people visited its food banks last year. The Wednesday report comes as 600 religious leaders urge the government to take action against the country's growing hunger problem.

      The new information shows the shocking number of people reliant on food handouts in the UK, largely because of harsh new benefits sanctions.

      According to The Trussell Trust, Britain's largest food bank charity, 913,138 people received emergency food aid from the organization in 2013-2014, compared to just 346,992 in 2012-2013 – marking an increase of 163 percent.






  • Censorship



    • Did You Retweet The USAir Pornographic Tweet? You May Have Violated New Jersey's Revenge Porn Law
      We've pointed out for a while how the various attempts at creating revenge porn bills will have serious unintended consequences and raise serious First Amendment issues. This is not to minimize the problems of revenge porn (or to absolve the sick and depraved individuals who put together, submit to or regularly visit such sites). However, it's to point out that pretty much any way you try to legislate such actions as criminal likely will create other problems. For example, I'm sure many of you heard the story recently about US Airways... um... unfortunate pornographic tweet. It was the story of the internet a few days ago, in which a United Air social media employee did a very unfortunate cut and paste error, tweeting out a very graphic image that involved a naked woman and a plane where it... doesn't quite belong (for slightly lighter fare, I highly recommend reading some of the of the funny replies to that tweet). For what it's worth, US Air has said that it was an honest mistake and it's not even firing the person responsible.


    • US Airways Tweeted An Extreme Pornographic Image And Left It Up For A Long Time
      The photo shows a completely nude woman on her back with a plane inserted into her vagina.




  • Privacy



    • Galaxy S5 fingerprint scanner hacked with glue mould
      The fingerprint sensor on Samsung's Galaxy S5 handset has been hacked less than a week after the device went on sale.

      Berlin-based Security Research Labs fooled the equipment using a mould it had previously created to spoof the sensor on Apple's iPhone 5S.




  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

Many Anniversaries
Many anniversaries in quick succession
 
Collapse of MElon Companies a Taste of What's to Come for Slop Bubble and GAFAM (Trillions in Debt, Justified as Slop "Investments")
One good example of this was SpaceX
The 'Hyperinflation' in Hardware Dooms Video Hosting (Very Large Files)
a terabyte of video files would be expensive
Rumours of Silent Layoffs in Microsoft This Month (August 2026), PIPs and Global Voluntary Separation Agreement (GVSA), aka "Buyouts"
Will any investigative journalism follow or just shallow puff pieces and LLM trash from slopfarms?
Links 04/08/2026: "Framework for Musician Burnout" and Alexa+ "is a Buggy Embarrassment"
Links for the day
Signs That XBox as a Console is Coming to an End, Windows Gaming Will be Called "XBox"
"XBox" is the next "Surface"
Microsoft's Share in Search Falls Sharply in Europe
The layoffs at Microsoft's Bing will carry on
Romania: GNU/Linux Reaches 4% (Less Than EU Average)
We expect this same upward trend to carry on
Microsoft Sites or Sites Sponsored by Microsoft Angry That GNU/Linux is Gaining
The Microsofters cannot easily dismiss reports of GNU/Linux growth as "bots" or just allege that statCounter alone is wrong
Ableism in the Free Software Movement Typically Comes From GAFAM Operatives and Proprietary Software Apologists
And their hired guns
Afghanistan: GNU/Linux Steadily Rises to 9%
Windows is steadily declining
IBM Innovation: It Has Invented New Methods of Silent Layoffs or Secret RAs
How IBM disguises mass layoffs now
LLM Slop Won't Replace People and Jobs (in the Long Run)
At the end of the day, people who know their job offer more useful information, whereas LLMs waste people's time (typically an 'externality' to the entity deploying chatbots)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 03, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, August 03, 2026
Over 3,500 Known Gemini Capsules Accessible and Active According to Lupa
It finally happened this morning
Gemini Links 04/08/2026: Library Cards, Dead Ends in Software Development, and DOS on USB Key
Links for the day
IBM Has Embraced and Rewarded Liars
The IBM culture vanished
statCounter Estimates GNU/Linux at 5.32% in Kuwait, Years Ago It Was Near 0%
Kuwait rose to fame in the 1990s because of a war
Swatting People Who Write About Corruption, Misogyny, Criminal Misuse of Funds
we've given ourselves a decade to cover all those stories
GNU/Linux Rises Above 6% in Colombia
In Colombia, which is a large south American country, GNU/Linux has risen steadily in recent years
SLAPP Censorship - Part 138 Out of 200: Garrett Has Basically "Lost" and It is "Embarrassing" to Them
they just wound up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds
Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Great Exodus, xkcd as Text, and Dead Ends
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Has Surged to 6.3% in Madagascar
Madagascar's adoption of Free software is a subject we covered a lot in past years
Microsoft's Slop Bet is Killing the XBox Even Faster
LLMs destroy almost anything they touch
The Cyber Show on "Weaponised Antisocial Technology"
by Andy
Alexandre Oliva on Slippery Slop (LLMs)
By Alexandre Oliva
RMS Won the Argument and Now GNU Wins Over Computer Users
He can look back at nearly 43 years of GNU and say, "I was right..."
statCounter Corrects GNU/Linux Estimates, Now Measured at 9% Worldwide
Windows has sunk like a rock
GNU/Linux-Centric Blogs Belatedly Pick Up News About GNU/Linux Gains: 4-8% Depending on the Surveyor
more people will get curious and give it a go
Links 03/08/2026: Strike By Flight Attendants (WestJet) and Greedflation
Links for the day
Links 03/08/2026: EU Curtailed Slop, Frank Zappa Recalled
Links for the day
Daniel Pocock on Sky News This Morning
No harm done
Morten Linderud Has Helped Microsoft Put Locks (and Kill Switches) on the PCs of Arch Linux Users
"the first rule of "secure boot" is to disable "secure boot"
In Poor Peru, GNU/Linux Surges From 1% to 5% in a Few Years
Windows is dying
All Social Control Media is a Weapon (Against Its Users, Serving the Real Owners)
That social control networks are weaponised isn't a new concept
Fanning the Flames of Journalism
This week we have several surprises coming
Forcing the Slop Bubble to Implode Fully to Save the Economy From an Even Greater Collapse and Societal Harm
Let's blow up the bubble. The sooner, the better
GNU/Linux at 8% in Croatia
somewhat of a GNU/Linux adoption hotbed
It's Easy to Predict Microsoft Layoffs for October 2026 Because of the Financial 'Results' That Month (More Faking, More Secret Debt and Buzzwords to Perfume This Debt as "Investment")
From what we've read, Microsoft is silently laying off people this month based on LITE, which leads to PIPs
Not Hard to Guess Who Will Pay for IBM's Collapse (Due to False Statements Made to Shareholders), Red Hat May Disappear
IBM's leadership is never being punished for its failures
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 02, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 02, 2026
Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Collectibles, Cities of the Red Night, and Lali Lambda
Links for the day
IBM's August 2026 Promotions (Annual Ritual) Can Turn Into a "Bloodbath" (RAs, Layoffs)
IBM Common Stock is set to open in the red (minus) on Monday
Microsoft Culture Explained by People Who Work at Microsoft
"Be ready for politicking and working over time and weekends."
Codes of Conduct Attract Hoarders and Sociopaths, They Are Intolerant Towards Good People
Codes of Conduct (CoCs) are also promoted using violence
XBox is in Trouble, Sunday News Shows How Serious a Problem It Now Faces
it seems impossible to resuscitate at this point
statCounter Observes GNU/Linux at 10% in Libya
this month statCounter finally sees GNU/Linux approaching "double-figures" there
Thailand: GNU/Linux Approaching 15%, Windows in a Freefall
It makes perfect sense for Thailand to adopt GNU/Linux for technical reasons, not just political reasons
GNU/Linux in Bulgaria Back Up
part of a trend in Europe
Cuba Sees Leap in GNU/Linux Usage, as Reported by statCounter
For the ordinary Cuban it makes sense to reduce a dependence on GAFAM
Gemini Links 02/08/2026: Drift, Crawlers in Gopher Space, Purpose, and Python
Links for the day
Links 02/08/2026: Some Large Slop Investors "Crumbling", Russia Intensifies Bombing of Kiev
Links for the day
IBMers Discuss Who Killed IBM (It Impacts Red Hat)
Fedora is fast becoming like another CentOS
GNU/Linux Rises to 6% in Mexico
Did the soccer (football) matches have some impact or just the "unknowns" being deciphered (or omitted) by statCounter?
GNU/Linux Leaps to 8% in Asia
In Asia, is it a bit higher because of GAFAM distrust? Maybe some other factor/s?
Clownflare Web Usage Survey: About 10% in North America Use GNU/Linux, Worldwide 6.7%
surveyors that showed GNU/Linux growth
SLAPP Censorship - Part 137 Out of 200: Discovering That Spending a Million British Pounds (1,348,250.01 United States Dollars) on Lawyers Cannot Take Down One's Critics
just outright bullying and criminality
Steam Survey, analytics.usa.gov, and statCounter All Point to GNU/Linux Gains (Again)
This must be very annoying to Microsoft
GNU/Linux Exceeds 6% in Spain
In recent years the "market share" steadily grew from 3% to over 6%
Brazil: GNU/Linux Record High, 5%
On average, GNU/Linux has evidence of growth in many countries this summer
Amid 2026 Bing Layoffs Microsoft Share in Search Collapses
How much longer before Microsoft throws in the towel or rebrands again?
United Kingdom: GNU/Linux up to 7%, ChromeOS Another 5% (Total 12%)
further significant gains for GNU/Linux this month
Links 02/08/2026: Cheeto "Blurted Out Vile Plot to Censor ABC"; New York Times Fights 'Intimidation'
Links for the day
Why Techrights Will Still be Active a Decade From Now
Techrights will carry on for many years to come
We Are Witnessing the End of IBM
IBM cannot find growth by moving downwards, by lowering standards
The Slop Presumption Rule
Tainting oneself can take one day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 01, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 01, 2026
Gemini Links 02/08/2026: Older Books, Esperanto Music History, and Slop Making Things Worse
Links for the day