Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/5/2014: HP Selling GNU/Linux PCs in China



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • The UK In The Dock
      International Criminal Court is to investigate war crimes committed by British armed forces in Iraq.




  • Censorship



    • The EU's Google Decision Destroys Search


    • European Court of Justice Google ruling gives the Dog a Bone


    • Google ruling 'astonishing', says Wikipedia founder Wales
      A ruling forcing Google to remove search results has been described as "astonishing" by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

      The European Courts of Justice ruled on Tuesday that an individual could demand that "irrelevant or outdated" information be deleted from results.

      Mr Wales said it was "one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that I've ever seen".

      Google has said it is looking into the implications of the decision.


    • Health And Human Services Apparently Unable To Recognize Satire; Sends Bogus Legal Threat
      Another day, another story of someone with skin way too thin not comprehending satire and dashing off an angry legal threat. In this case, it's worse than usual because the bogus legal threat is coming from the US government. Popehat has the full story of how some of the legal geniuses at the Department of Health and Human Services have sent a bogus cease-and-desist letter over a pair of obviously satirical posts on the site AddictionMyth.com. While we've long been skeptical of the medical profession's desire to label all sorts of things "addictions," that particular site takes it to extreme levels, arguing that there's nothing that's addictive, and all talk of addictions (including drug and alcohol addictions) are just a big scam "perpetrated by law enforcement, rehab groups and the entertainment industry." I think that's nuts, but they certainly have their right to say so.




  • Privacy



    • Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant
      A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide details how the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they’re delivered. These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being “some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world.”

      The document, a June 2010 internal newsletter article by the chief of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department (S3261) includes photos (above) of NSA employees opening the shipping box for a Cisco router and installing beacon firmware with a “load station” designed specifically for the task.


    • Encrypted Internet Traffic Surges in a Year, Research Shows
      Encrypted Internet traffic is surging worldwide according to data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine. After the Snowden revelations the bandwidth consumed by encrypted traffic doubled in North America, and in Europe and Latin America the share of encrypted traffic quadrupled.


    • Our privacy is interdependent
      Last week I gave a presentation at CommonsFest in the spirit of my Free Your Android post, trying to educate people on simple steps they can make to have better privacy on their mobile devices.

      A couple of days before my presentation I watched this great speech from Jillian York and Jacob Appelbaum (please go and watch this). At some point Jacob mentions that "our security is interdependent".


    • Rostock University Faculty to award Edward Snowden an honorary doctorate
      Members of the Faculty of Arts, Rostock University, Germany, have voted to award Edward Snowden an honorary doctorate degree.


    • The best way to read Glenn Greenwald's 'No Place to Hide'
      Journalist Glenn Greenwald just dropped a pile of new secret National Security Agency documents onto the Internet. But this isn’t just some haphazard WikiLeaks-style dump. These documents, leaked to Greenwald last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, are key supplemental reading material for his new book, No Place to Hide, which went on sale Tuesday.




  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Let’s all welcome the UK IP Crime Group! – Yet another “group” surrounding industry and IP?
        It has a .gov address and many of the people I talk to would advise against challenging government agencies/bodies (I believe because of an unwarranted fear of repercussions), suffice to say it doesn’t bother me at all and taking a closer look at the connections between industry and government is always worth doing, if it wasn’t then past “naughty” behaviour by others would never have been discovered.

        Is it a I scratch your back world? Who knows? But what is known is that there’s a growing trade (for want of a better word) in groups that live off “defending” others IP. Its worth noting that many of these groups don’t actually create anything at all and are funded to serve the interests of the businesses who pay them. Pay them I hasten to add in many cases on the back of huge profits.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's XBox "Bloodbath" Seems to Have Already Begun (Informally), Studios Allegedly to Face Shutdowns, Layoff Notices Handed Out, 100% Layoffs in Some Cases, 10% in Others or on Average
So is a complete closure/shutdown imminent? (Compulsion Games in this case)
SLAPP Censorship - Part 105 Out of 200: When Bad Legal Advice Results in Your Client, Dale Vince, Ordered to Pay £600k - or 801,930 United States Dollar (USD) - to the Person Frivolously Sued (Lord Bailey of Paddington)
"A judge has ruled that Dale Vince must pay punitive costs to Lord Bailey of Paddington, the Tory peer, over the 'unexplained abandonment' of his" SLAPP
IBM is Importing/Exporting Corporations' Regime of Censorship (Hiding the Wrongdoing) to Free Software Communities
Is IBM protecting criminals in the name of "manners"?
 
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Battistelli's "Baltic Crusader"
Gilles Requena, Battistelli's erstwhile "Baltic Crusader" and the loyal servant of his successor Campinos
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 13, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, June 13, 2026
Links 13/06/2026: University of Nottingham Confirms Data/System Breach, Courts Fuming at Fraudulent Lawyers Who Fling LLM Slop at Them
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/06/2026: World Cups and 做人
Links for the day
Discussing Morale at IBM and Conversations Regarding IBM Layoffs (Disguised as Other Things)
Trolling can be a form of censorship
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: All the President's Men
Gilles Requena,Patrice Pellegrino, and Sandro Mendonça
SUEPO Elections Coming Up, Union Leaders at Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) to be Determined Soon
The staff union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) is having an election soon
How Long for Can American Taxpayers Justify Bailing Out Microsoft?
How many times need the American taxpayers give Microsoft money for vapourware that's neither necessary nor delivered?
Links 13/06/2026: Microsoft’s XBox Crisis and "Apple Deepfakes"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/06/2026: Why Humans Are Mostly Right Handed and "Getting Things Done"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 12, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, June 12, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 104 Out of 200: Exactly Two Years Ago Brett Wilson LLP Humiliated or Weaponised Our Solicitor's Judaism in an Effort to Censor and Gag Us
dated 12/06/24
Half a Year Since Slopwatch Died
To Google's credit, it did manage to delist a lot of slopfarms in recent months
Links 12/06/2026: Science, Windows TCO, and More
Links for the day
"AI" 46 Times in One 'Article' Because The Register MS Got Paid to Push it
Today is just another opportunity to remind people that the slop bubble and GPU bubble are based on inauthentic fake 'journalism'
Gemini Links 12/06/2026: FTP and Gopher, Cluster Outage Postmortem After Cleaning by Wife
Links for the day
Sonny Piers Finally Spills the Beans on GNOME Cover-up, Points Finger at Robert McQueen, Misusing "Defamation" to Silence Critics of Wrongdoing
Robert McQueen, who is extremely connected to Garrett (they share digital nests)
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Transcending Partisan Rivalry in the National Interest
Up until now, Campinos has generally been regarded as a Portuguese "asset" on the international stage
Gratitude to Whistleblowers or Sources of Techrights
Whistleblowers are what makes journalism work
Techrights Was Months Ahead of "XBox" News (Mass Layoffs)
Next: end of XBox as a console
More Commentary on June 2026 IBM Layoffs and Why They Happen
It sounds a lot like what happened to the EPO
Links 12/06/2026: "NearlyFreeSpeech" No More, Openwashing by Google (DiffusionGemma)
Links for the day
Today There's a Massive EPO Strike (Like Every Friday), Workers Explain Further Cuts Despite the EPO Making More Income by Granting Illegal Patents (or Invalid Patents Illegally)
"Recent exchange with the Administration on the implications of the SAP on the Education and Childcare Allowance"
The Cyber Show: Remember That Code is Art
The article is very long, very profound, and speaks of "the next installation"
Communicating With Freedom - Part IV - Quibble Now in quibble.chat, Open for Contributions Via Codeberg
Today we continue the series about Quibble
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The Importance of Having "Pals from the Palacete"
for his reappointment bid to succeed, Campinos will need to be able to rely on the support of both the Portuguese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, and the President of the European Council, António Costa
Cyber Show on How Updates or Upgrades Break Workflows, Even in Free Software
"We did a big upgrade on the AV production pipeline"
Discussions About IBM Layoffs in June, Including by RTO and PIPs
mass layoffs are becoming increasingly difficult to conceal
Gemini Links 12/06/2026: Decks and Work Essay
Links for the day
"Rolling Strikes" Continue at the European Patent Office, the Administrative Council Needs to Take Action Against Crooked Office Management
This coming weekend we'll talk about some of the other issues and concerns expressed by the union
Only Days After Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's Azure There Are Headlines About Much-Expected XBox Layoffs
XBox as a console is basically dead or "fast-dying"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 11, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, June 11, 2026