Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 2/5/2014: Graphics/GPU Source Code for Linux, Drones With Linux





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Health/Nutrition



    • Why American Apples Just Got Banned in Europe
      Back in 2008, European Food Safety Authority began pressing the chemical industry to provide safety information on a substance called diphenylamine, or DPA. Widely applied to apples after harvest, DPA prevents "storage scald"—brown spots that "becomes a concern when fruit is stored for several months," according to Washington State University, reporting from the heartland of industrial-scale apple production.


    • Antibiotic-resistant superbug arose in northern Manhattan
      Human skin is a garden of microbes that is home to about 1,000 bacterial species. Most are benign, but some invade the skin and cause illness—of these, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are particularly dangerous.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression





  • Finance



    • Organized Labor, Public Banks and the Grassroots: Keys to a Worker-Owned Economy
      Before his death in February, Jackson Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Lumumba was helping his constituents chart an economic plan whose main component was worker-owned cooperatives. In her recent article about Lumumba and cooperatives, Laura Flanders cites Collective Courage author Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s point that African-American leaders from Marcus Garvey to W.E.B. DuBois were proponents of cooperatives. DuBois, Garvey and Lumumba understood that worker democracy was necessary for economic sovereignty and community solidarity.


    • Beyond Piketty’s Capital: Richard Wolff Warns us Not to Band-Aid Capitalism
      Wolff warns that we cannot band-aid capitalism. However laudable and even attainable may be suggestions from economists like Piketty or Dean Baker, to name just two, piecemeal policies designed to stop the system from funneling wealth upwards will not work for long. The elites are fully focused on preserving and expanding their fortunes, and the structure of the contemporary economy puts in the hands of a very few people in large corporate enterprises “both the incentive and the resources to roll back whatever adjustments a movement from below is able to make.”


    • IMF Confirms $17bn Loan to Ukraine with Conditions That Will Devastate the Economy
      The IMF has confirmed a conditional loan of $17bn to Ukraine in what it touts as a rescue package aimed at stabilizing Ukraine as it seeks to maintain independence from a belligerent Russia. Instead, we are witnessing the final stages of the US-EU coup of Ukraine, and by implementing the conditions of the loan, the nation will be left destitute and dependent.


    • Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Councilwoman: McDonald's Doesn't Need Time To Phase In $15 Minimum Wage
      Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, an outspoken socialist, claimed a victory Thursday after Mayor Ed Murray announced a plan to hike the city's minimum wage to $15, which Sawant was a driving force behind. But she told HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski that she isn't totally happy with the plan, which gives big corporations years to phase in the new wage.


    • Demanding 'Just and Sustainable' Economy For All, Thousands March on Congress
      In an expression of a "new populist" energy, thousands of demonstrators shut down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC on Monday as they demanded a livable wage and an end to the corporate domination of the national economy and politics.


    • The Big Tip That America’s Servers Never See
      A good many Americans now know the high-finance games that JPMorgan Chase and other big banks like to play — at our expense. And big oil giants like ExxonMobil have been outraging Americans for years.

      But plenty of other corporate giants that inflate our inequality have been flying under the radar screen. Who, for instance, has ever heard of Darden? Or Yum! Brands?

      These little-known outfits just happen to rate as two of the biggest corporate behemoths in the restaurant industry. They’ve been squeezing workers — and soaking taxpayers — as relentlessly as any enterprises in America. Yet they barely have any national profile at all.

      That may be about to change.

      Last week, on the eve of the National Restaurant Association annual meeting, two top think tanks — the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and Demos in New York— released new studies that detail how America’s food-service giants are growing the gap between the nation’s rich and everyone else.

      This week protesting restaurant workers will be taking that message to the streets. Many of these workers are currently laboring at the $2.13 hourly federal minimum wage for tipped workers, a base that hasn’t budged since 1991.


    • Any talk of economic recovery is pure fiction
      Down is up. Sick is healthy. The RMS Titanic is seaworthy. Topsy-turvy logic is a speciality of the austerity brigade, and here they come dishing up a third helping. First, in 2010-11, they pledged that making historic cuts amid a global slump would definitely, absolutely secure a strong recovery. Then things went predictably belly-up, forcing Cameron and Osborne to dump their deficit-reduction plans and the eurocrats to make more bailouts. Yet these reversals were, naturally, "sticking to the course". Now things don't look quite as awful as they did a couple of years ago – and this somehow gets chalked up as a miraculous rebound.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Science Media Centre Spins Pro-GMO Line
      Since consumer campaigning got GMOs labeled and crop restricting implemented in the United Kingdom, Cameron will likely have a hard time convincing UK consumers that all is well. However, Cameron is getting help in that quest from a little known group called the Science Media Centre (SMC), which helped release the report to great fanfare. The Guardian and The Independent published prominent coverage of the report, and it was featured by the BBC. The Independent and BBC coverage were both entirely uncritical, quoting the scientists handpicked by the SMC for its reporters' briefing. The Guardian report was less glowing, but still quoted the SMC scientists and buried the reactions of critics below the fold. None of them mentioned that the report briefing was held by the SMC.




  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • FCC's Wheeler Says That If These Lame Net Neutrality Rules Don't Work, He'll Implement The Real Rules Next Time
      Following his weak attempt to diffuse concerns about his bogus "open internet" rules, FCC boss Tom Wheeler has decided to try again, by basically repeating what he said last week with slightly stronger language about how he won't let broadband providers violate net neutrality. Of course, as many people have explained, the problem is that the new rules clearly aren't strong enough, and leave open all sorts of ways to kill off basic neutrality online. Of course, the real problem is that the original 2010 "open internet" rules (which were really crafted by the telcos in the first place) didn't really protect net neutrality in the first place, and the new rules are basically an even weaker version of those rules. But, have no fear, claims Wheeler, if these rules don't work, he promises he'll actually pull out the big gun, Title II, and reclassify broadband players as telco services rather than information services, allowing the FCC to put them under common carrier rules.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Dotcom Thanks RIAA and MPAA for Mega’s Massive Growth
        Mega.co.nz, the cloud storage company founded by Kim Dotcom, has seen the number of uploads triple in the past six months. Mega users now upload a total of half a billion files per month. According to Kim Dotcom, the MPAA and RIAA deserve some credit for the unprecedented growth.


      • Lawsuit Against First US Copyright Trolls For Extortion Ends In Victory
        A few years ago, we wrote about how a guy named Dimitry Shirokov, with help from the law firm of Booth Sweet had taken on the "fathers" of copyright trolling in the US, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, who had formed an organization called US Copyright Group, which initiated the first round of mass copyright trolling in the US (before the likes of Prenda and others entered the space). Shirokov had tried to make his lawsuit a class action against the lawyers, claiming fraud and extortion. And while the class action part was unfortunately rejected, the case has ended with a victory for Shirokov, with the judge ordering DGW to pay $39,909.95 ($3,179.52 to Shirokov and the rest in attorneys' fees to Booth Sweet).


      • Books and more are relicensed to Creative Commons
        I began working with the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2012 for program and community support in India. With the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program, we focus on open access for scholarly publications to help communities enrich Wikipedia entries for Indic languages.

        While I was negotiating with a few authors to relicense their copyrighted books to a Creative Commons license (a license that allows anyone to reuse, modify and use content), I began identifying certain areas of motivation for an author to donate their work as free content.

        We worked closely with Goa University, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, and the Institute of Odia Studies and Research.


      • Aereo Can't Be Bound by Secret Interpretations of Copyright Law
        It may seem like a wishy-washy answer, but there's an alarming point nested within it: the Solicitor General's office's position that the interpretation of the law—which the executive branch has worked into our international trade obligations—is the only way for the law to be "properly construed."

        That in turn suggests that the executive branch believes it is responsible for properly constructing the law. Of course, that position stands in conflict with Marbury v. Madison, the case that established judicial review in 1803: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

        That has serious implications for the democratic process. Here's how it seems to work: the executive branch comes up with an interpretation of U.S. copyright law and then negotiates it into international agreements. It conducts these negotiations in secret, insisting that it needs no meaningful oversight because it doesn't require a change in U.S. law.


      • Ballots 2009 for the Swedish Pirate Party's election to the European Parliament
        More or less overnight, betting companies slashed their odds of the Swedish Pirate Party’s re-election to the European Parliament. Where a re-election scenario used to give you 8x your money back in a bet with them, it now gives a mere 1.25x. It appears the betting companies know something that Swedish oldmedia haven’t picked up on yet.


      • Kim Dotcom: On the road with Hollywood's biggest enemy
        Kim Dotcom, the multi-millionaire hacker-turned-entrepreneur, was on the roof of his New Zealand mansion, handcuffed and surrounded.

        One by one, his luxury cars were rolled out of garages and taken away. Dotcom's accounts, in various different countries, were frozen.

        His website, file storage service Megaupload, was shut down.

        Filings made in a court in Virginia outlined the accusation. Dotcom, US authorities said, was the man behind a "criminal enterprise" which used Megaupload to profit from piracy on a "massive scale". He faces more than 20 years in prison.


      • Tarantino is Back, Now Claiming Gawker is an Illegal Downloader


        After landing an early victory last week against Quentin Tarantino in their leaked screenplay row, Gawker is facing a new attack. In an amended complaint, Tarantino accuses Gawker of committing not only contributory infringement, but also direct infringement, after it illegally downloaded his script from a file-hosting site.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
This Saturday It's Gonna be 3.5 Years* Since Russia Invaded Ukraine. No Microsoft Protests Against Microsoft Having Provided Russia With Services.
Companies do not have consistent policies and enforcement of "corporate values" is somewhat of an egg salad
Slopwatch: Sites Gone Rogue, Google Promoting Lies, and DDoS Attacks by Plagiarism Giants
Charlatans and frauds engage in a war against artistic industries, mislabeling plagiarism as "AI"
 
IBM "Value" Down 14.16% in a Month, Red Hat Layoffs Allegedly Discussed 12 Days Ago
"IBM is a dinosaur. Dinosaurs get extinct when the don't keep up."
We're Seeing More Countries Where Windows Isn't Even in Second Place Anymore (Third or Worse)
In a way, Microsoft can barely even hold onto second place anymore
The US Government is Now in the Business (Literally!) of Saving Microsoft and Intel
This means that President TACO/Cheeto now has grater financial incentive to also prop up Microsoft and Windows
Microsoft Workers on Canonical's Payroll
If you want something that's sort of like Ubuntu but is not controlled by Canonical, then look into Linux Mint, Debian, or LMDE
GNU/Linux Climbs to 4% in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone isn't a very rich country (to say the least), but it's better off than some of its neighbours
The SLAPPS Run Out of Oxygen Because They're Abuse of Process
At the end of the day we plan to publish over 1,000 articles explaining what happened
The Register MS Gets Paid by the Employer of the Previous Editor in Chief to Promote the "AI" Ponzi Scheme, Which Does Considerable Damage to the Web and to Online Journalists
The Register MS can 'badmouth' slop all it wants; it gets paid to inflate this bubble. It's actively participating in it.
Soon It'll be Autumn, Time to Repair Things
Where they don't charge an arm and a leg
Doing Our Best to Cover Software Patents When the Mainstream Media Does Not
Even the FSF has its limits
Gemini Links 23/08/2025: August Questions and Network Solutions
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 22, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 22, 2025
Microsoft Has Issues in Guyana
It's not just Guyana
About 25% of the "Linux" News/Results in Google News Today Are LLM Slop, Almost 20% From the Same Rogue Operators of Slopfarms
Google, which tries to market itself as an LLM giant, apparently fails to understand what's wrong with it
Harassing People on Holiday
There are "no-go areas"; but that assumes all laws firms have ethical standards
The Great, Undeniable Value of Paper Trail, Not Purely Digital Systems
Suppose you have nothing but bits on someone else's computer and "word of mouth"...
The Company Behind Ars Technica, Reddit and Wired Caught Publishing LLM Slop (It Also Admits It Now)
Condé Nast busted
Links 22/08/2025: Lagrange 1.18.8, Wired Magazine and Business Insider Caught Resorting to LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 22/08/2025: Cisco Layoffs, LA Times Says "AI Hype is Fading Fast"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/08/2025: K for Kentucky and Caddy Versus LLM Slopbots
Links for the day
The "End Software Patents" Initiative of the FSF Explains "WHY [to] ABOLISH SOFTWARE PATENTS"
We hope to cover patent-related issues more and more as the big anniversary of the FSF approaches
Freenode Sniffing
The grown-ups left the building
The Only Thing Worse Than Misinformation is Misinformation Sold to Everyone as "Intelligence"
Misplaced trust is worse than none at all
The Register MS Now Openly Admits LLM Hype Does Damage, But It's Also Being Paid to Participate in the LLM Hype (With Paid 'Articles' and 'Webcasts' for Paying Advertisers)
The Register MS gets paid to do this
End of the Smartphone Era? No.
Maybe the media should focus on producing accurate, factual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 21, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 21, 2025
Enshittification of Airports, Airlines, and Airplanes
If people are willing to tolerate standard declines and enshittification (nowadays sold as "pivot to AI" or "replaced by AI" or "AI layoffs") they will pay for it some other way
Latest Is Not Greatest: The Case of "Foldable" Tech
don't be shamed into abandoning old things just because the "fashion industry" of Apple and Samsung tells you to
Airlines and Their Tricks That Only Work in the 'Digital Age'
People sceptical of the direction technology has taken are not "Luddites"
Open Source Initiative (OSI), Which Became a Propaganda Front of Microsoft and "Hey Hi" (Hype, Misnomer), Wants You to Forget These Scandals
A lot of these issues won't be set aside until there's a resolution
The Culture of Overnight Coding
An industry-wise push-back is needed
Windows Down to New Lows in Guinea Bissau and Many Countries Around It
If Android is accounted for, Windows is down to about 10%
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: Modern Dating, Debian 13, and Apache
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Had About 10 Waves of Mass Layoffs So Far This Year (Not Two as Mainstream Media and Slopfarms Endlessly Claim)
Notice how the MSM (Mainstream Media) never mentions the debt of Microsoft. It is a conscious, deliberate decision.
Links 21/08/2025: Covid Cases on the Rise, "Social Media Trolls", Russia's Attacks Intensify
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: The Attraction of Back Alleys, Initramfs, and BSD ISPs
Links for the day
Links 21/08/2025: Stephanie Shirley Dies and "Groklaw Domain Hijacked?"
Links for the day
Search in 2025 (Age of DDoS Attacks Under the Guise of "AI" "Innovation")
One common concern when things go "live" is that any random bot out there can execute queries, pumping up RAM and CPU usage, as happened when we used MediaWiki and WordPress
Using Slop for Images Does Not Make Your Site Look Advanced or Witty, It Just Makes Your Whole Work Look Like Presumed Plagiarism
Lazy slobs and Serial Sloppers use the guise/excuse of "AI" to plagiarise and spam the Web
Financing of the "Hey Hi" (AI) Bubble by Those Who Profit From Planetary Destruction (Global Warming)
It's about personal gain, too
Richard Stallman Will Speak in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress
it's good to see that the FSF pays considerable respect to it founder, who is moreover invited to speak at events
(At Least) Second Wave of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft This Month
This is not the first time this month that Microsoft has mass layoffs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 20, 2025