Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 17/1/2015: Lennart Poettering in Headlines, Mageia 5 Beta 2





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • 'IN DOG WE TRUST,' Says New Sheriff's Rugs
    The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Florida has gone to the dogs. Well, at least its rugs have.

    Department spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda said Wednesday that a new, $500 rug at the sheriff's administration building said "In Dog We Trust" instead of "In God We Trust."


  • Science



  • Security



    • Friday's security updates


    • OpenSSL: trust and purpose
      Those following me on various Intarweb Media may have noticed I’ve spent half the week staring at openssl source code and weeping. Here’s one of the results of that.

      OpenSSL has two somewhat different mechanisms for deciding what uses a certificate is good for: trust and purpose. This is quite subtle and not terribly well documented, so I thought I’d write it up here.




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Worried about Russia? Lithuania says 'Keep calm and read the war manual'
      Lithuania is publishing a manual to advise its citizens on how to survive a war on its soil as concerns grow that Russia's intervention in Ukraine heralds increased assertiveness in its tiny Baltic neighbors.

      "Keep a sound mind, don't panic and don't lose clear thinking," the manual explains. "Gunshots just outside your window are not the end of the world."

      The manual, which the Defence Ministry will send to libraries next week and also distribute at army events, says Lithuanians should resist foreign occupation with demonstrations and strikes, "or at least doing your job worse than usual".


    • Satellite Images Show Ruin Left by Boko Haram, Groups Say
      Thousands of buildings were burned, damaged or destroyed in northern Nigerian towns in recent days when Boko Haram militants stormed through, using scorched-earth tactics against civilians, according to a new analysis of satellite images by human rights groups.

      In a succession of attacks, fighters from Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent group that has gripped northern Nigeria and battled the government for years, have swept through a cluster of villages along the shores of Lake Chad in a “systematic campaign of arson directed against the civilian population in the area,” according to Human Rights Watch.


    • Musharraf Indicted Over Bugti Murder
      An anti-terror court on Wednesday indicted Pervez Musharraf over the 2006 killing of a separatist leader, the latest legal hurdle facing the former military ruler since his return from self-imposed exile two years ago.

      The charges by the court in Quetta are unlikely to cause any immediate problems for the 71-year-old, who has not attended a single hearing in the case since it began in 2013. He was previously indicted for treason in March last year over his imposition of emergency rule in 2007, but proceedings have stalled since then as the country’s civil authorities and judiciary appear to lack the will to take on the military.

      “The anti-terrorist court has indicted Musharraf along with former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao and former home minister [of] Balochistan province Shoaib Nosherwani in Nawab Akbar Bugti’s murder case,” said public prosecutor Taimur Shah. He added the court would resume hearings in the case on Feb. 4.

      Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed in a military operation in 2006, sparking deadly nationwide protests and inflaming a separatist insurgency in resource-rich but impoverished Balochistan.


    • Saudi Arabia Publicly Beheads Burmese Woman by Sword; Woman Shouts 'I Did Not Kill, I Did Not Kill'
      Reports that emerged on Thursday evening that a Burmese woman was publicly beheaded in Mecca by Saudi authorities for allegedly killing her step-daughter has outraged social media users.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • And Now, a Word From Our Climate Denier…
      Is this the right way or the wrong way to cover the news of the record heat? That depends. Is the purpose of an article like this to convey how open-minded the New York Times is? If so, then the piece is a success, managing to give one-third of its quotes to a proponent of a fringe theory without giving any indication that his eccentric views are virtually absent from peer-reviewed science.


    • There is less than a 1-in-27 million chance that Earth's record hot streak is natural
      Although it may not have been warm where you live, scientists announced Friday that 2014 was the Earth's hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880. The climate milestone was made possible in large part by exceptionally mild ocean temperatures and above-average temperatures on most continents.

      Remarkably, the warmth came without the assistance of an El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean. These events are naturally occurring ocean and atmospheric cycles that tend to boost global temperatures. Previous El Niños have been responsible in part for the prior warmest years, such as 1998 and 2005, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


    • Record! 2014 was Earth's warmest year
      The planet's warmest year on record was 2014, federal scientists announced Friday.

      "Humans are literally cooking their planet," said Jonathan Overpeck, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Arizona.

      The global temperature from 2014 broke the previous record warmest years of 2005 and 2010 since record-keeping began in 1880.

      Two separate data sets of global temperature — from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — confirmed the record. Another data set released last week by the Japan Meteorological Agency also found 2014 was the planet's warmest.






  • Finance



    • Apple, Google give high tech workers an extra $90 million in “no-poach” suit
      On Thursday afternoon Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel filed a settlement in a class-action lawsuit [PDF] involving former employees of the companies, agreeing to pay them $415 million. The 64,000 employees and former employees who made up the class alleged that their employers had agreed not to cold call or poach each others' employees, creating artificially low wages for the employees for years.


    • Richard Wolff on the Greek Crisis, Austerity and a Post-Capitalist Future
      In the following interview, New School professor and economist Richard Wolff provides his analysis of the causes of the economic crisis in Greece and in the eurozone, debunks claims that the Greek economy is recovering and offers his proposal for what a post-capitalist future could look like for Greece and the world.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship



    • Turkey Tells Twitter To Block Turkish Newspaper's Feed; Twitter Plans To Push Back
      The Turkish government has been battling with Twitter for quite some time. It's gone after citizens for comments on Twitter, blamed Twitter for social unrest and even tried (temporarily) banning Twitter entirely in the country. There was even a lawsuit by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, filed with the Constitutional Court, over his own government's "failure" to implement rules for removing content on Twitter.


    • Alabama Legislators Say You Must Be A Salaried Employee Of Old School Media To Get Approved For Press Credentials
      The only people who still feel they can clearly define who is and isn't a journalist are legislators. They're almost always wrong. Journalism isn't a career. It's an activity. Anyone can do it and, thanks to the internet, anyone can find a publishing platform and readers. But, according to many politicians, it ain't the press unless it involves one.


    • Wrong Responses to Charlie Hebdo
      Leaders in Europe are justifiably trying to figure out what they should be doing to prevent terrorist attacks like the recent massacre at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Regrettably, some politicians are proposing the kind of Internet censorship and surveillance that would do little to protect their citizens but do a lot to infringe on civil liberties.

      In Paris, a dozen interior ministers from European Union countries including France, Britain and Germany issued a statement earlier this week calling on Internet service providers to identify and take down online content “that aims to incite hatred and terror.” The ministers also want the European Union to start monitoring and storing information about the itineraries of air travelers. And in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron suggested the country should ban Internet services that did not give the government the ability to monitor all encrypted chats and calls.


    • French Rein In Speech Backing Acts of Terror
      The French authorities are moving aggressively to rein in speech supporting terrorism, employing a new law to mete out tough prison sentences in a crackdown that is stoking a free-speech debate after last week’s attacks in Paris.


    • Why porn is exploding in the Middle East
      More recently, the Saudi Arabian government announced that it had hacked and disabled about 9,000 Twitter accounts associated with the publication of pornography and arrested many of the handles’ owners. The move was organized by the Commission for the Promotion and Prevention of Vice, also known as Haia, the Saudi religious police.


    • Saudi Arabia, Free Raif Badawi
      Raif Badawi was flogged in public 50 times last week. He has 950 lashes and nearly a decade in prison left to serve - simply for blogging about free speech.


    • Governments Around the World are Cracking Down on the Latest Charlie Hebdo Cover
      The latest issue of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has ignited controversy in the Middle East and elsewhere due to a caricature of the prophet Muhammad depicted on its cover.

      Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the journal's central Paris headquarters last week and murdered 12 people, they said to avenge the publication's regular lampooning of Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the Prophet as blasphemous and the decision to again publish a cartoon of Muhammed has caused widespread debate.

      The cartoon itself depicts the Prophet shedding a tear while holding a sign that says "Je suis Charlie" — the slogan which has become popular around the world as a declaration of solidarity with the victims of the attack — under a headline that reads "All is forgiven." It was drawn by the weekly's cartoonist Luz, who escaped the massacre because he was late arriving for work.




  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Republican net neutrality bill allows 'reasonable' network management
      Draft net neutrality legislation released Friday by Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or selectively slowing legal Web content, but it would allow them to engage in “reasonable” network management.

      The proposal would give broadband providers wide latitude to engage in network management, with a management practice deemed reasonable “if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose.”

      The draft legislation would also prohibit the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility, and it would stop the agency from creating any new net neutrality rules.


    • Republican net neutrality bill would gut FCC’s authority over broadband
      Net neutrality legislation unveiled by Republicans today would gut the ability of the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the broadband industry.

      As expected, the bill forbids the FCC from reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service, preventing the commission from using authority it has under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This is the statute the FCC uses to regulate landline telephone providers.


    • Netflix “refused” to answer encryption allegation, FCC commissioner says
      Ajit Pai, part of the commission's Republican minority, has clashed with Netflix over its use of technology that is not compatible with "open caching software" used by Internet service providers. Netflix says that it "obscured certain URL structures to protect our members from deep packet inspection tools deployed to gather data about what they watch online," which apparently had the side effect of forcing ISPs to use different caching systems. Netflix does offer caching appliances to Internet service providers, but the bigger carriers have refused, demanding payment for connections to their networks.


    • Tucows Hopes To Kickstart U.S. Broadband Competition One Town At A Time
      Last month I noted how longtime domain registrar Tucows had decided to try and kick-start stagnant broadband competition by buying a small Virginia ISP by the name of Blue Ridge InternetWorks (BRI). Operating under the Ting brand name, the company said the goal was to bring a "shockingly human experience and fair, honest pricing" to a fixed-line residential broadband market all-too-often dominated by just one or two giant, apathetic players. Ting promised to offer 1 Gbps speeds at a sub-$100 price point, while at the same time promising to respect net neutrality.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Linux Foundation an Enemy of the Planet, Proponent of Pollution and Global Heating
"could the "polluters pay" model be extended to the computing environment and used to take on Microsoft and Microsofters?"
Not Everything Can be Automated
not a new thing
IBM is Not Done Destroying Red Hat, Wait Till October 1st 2026 (More Layoffs and Bluewashing)
It's not bluewashing 'til it's 100% done
Only a Matter of Time Before IBM Drops to $199 or a Lot Lower Than That
How long can IBM overload empty shells?
Lots of Microsoft Just Loses Money, Not Earning Money
Due to profitability challenges it's hard to believe Microsoft will ever find a buyer for XBox
 
State of the Invidious Project
Never forget how hostile Google can be towards freedom
Prioritising the Safety of Women is the Best Approach to Foster Diversity in Technical Communities
Debian was never "normative", but that does not mean Debian should have such low standards
IBM Will Report 'Results' Tonight (CET), It's Already Investigated for Securities Fraud
"Five of the biggest US tech giants are carrying $1.65 trillion in debt that does not show up on their balance sheets"
Hardware Has Gotten a Lot Worse, Not Just Far More Expensive
prices go up fast
Amid Claims of Microsoft Bing Layoffs It Seems Like Bing Cannot Even Hold on to Second Place
Yandex is sometimes bigger than Bing
Wikileaks Does Not Publish New Material Anymore, But Wikileaks Still Changes the World
Wikileaks has a legacy that will soon turn 20
Links 22/07/2026: Postal IRCs, PlayStation Kills Discs, Union Action Against Microsoft, "Judge Considers Tossing Databricks Patent Suit Under California anti-SLAPP Law"
Links for the day
Same 'Journalists' Who Published Fake News for IBM (Pump and Dump) Now Write Puff Pieces About the Stock Falling
the media is so compromised
They Called It "Social" and "Media", But It Turned Out to be Slop and Child Porn
Why do any sane people still use social control media?
Age of consent: DebConf26 registered sex offender in Argentina?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: In the Pole Position Despite a Dismal Track Record
António Campinos is an old hand when it comes to such high-level institutional intrigue
Site a Bit Slower Due to Visitors' Load
We'll try to work out better speeds
Gemini Links 22/07/2026: Emacs, Astrology Clock, Arduino, and Rogallo v1.0.0
Links for the day
After Involvement by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) LibreTech and Quibble Gain More Participants
RMS expressed gratitude for people who worked on Quibble and improved LibreJS after many years of inactivity
The Lessons From the Assange Saga
This will not end well
Apple Will Increase Surveillance of Customers, Record Verbal Communications Under the Guise of "Hey Hi"
Apple now drinks that same Kool-Aid
Dave Winer, Blogging Pioneer, Sells Out, Spews Out LLM Slop to Readers
Another one bites the dust [...] Now it's a slopfarm of sorts
GNU/Linux OS in ComorOS
Now, as in recent years or the last year, the GNU/Linux "signal" is growing significantly
Microsoft Redefines "Layoffs" to Give Smaller Tallies
It's not just calling them "buyouts" or saying people are merely "leaving" or "retiring"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 21, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 21, 2026
"LF Sex", Nothing to Do With Linux
a lot of explaining to do this week
Gemini Links 21/07/2026: Nostalgia, Shogi, and New Gemlog System
Links for the day
Guyana: GNU/Linux Rises to New High, 7%
Guyana is part of the trend
Oman: GNU/Linux Up to 7%
It was 5% last year
The Solution is Never 'Free Hosting' in Proprietary GitHub (Microsoft), the Solution is Self-Hosting
Third parties never care about your projects as much as you (yourself) care about them
From GAFAM's Perspective, Jeremy Bicha Did Nothing Wrong
All is OK as long as he does not criticise monopolists and billionaires
Bluesky Was Such an Utter Failure That After 18 Months Mozilla Goes Hug a Nazi Platform That Produces Child Porn
What compels Mozilla to come back there? The child pornography scandal? The adorable leader?
GNU/Linux at Grenada Measured at 14% This Month
GNU/Linux was stuck at 0% for a long time
In WordPress, Newer is Not Better (Maybe Better Off With No WordPress at All)
To Hell with bloat and feature churn
As Slop Bubble Implodes (Inevitable), the Dishonest, Corrupt, Compromised Media Tries to Blame "China" Again (Like it Did With "DeepSeek" in Past Years)
Here we go again. We've been there before. Same spin, this time not "DeepSeek" though.
Red Hat (IBM) Has Long 'Reassigned' (Bluewashed) Red Hat Staff to Ruin Fedora, Now It Does the Same to GNOME
What next from IBM's Krishna?
Links 21/07/2026: Google Stagnating, Slop 'Apps' Are "Flooding Apple’s App Store"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/07/2026: OPNSense Upgrade Problems, Zilog Z80 at 50, and Lessons From Terminator
Links for the day
IBM Lawsuits Over Alleged Fraud Are Piling Up
We'll keep an eye on the lawsuits
Arianna Taite on Odds of Australian (Daniel Pocock) Winning Clacton By-Election
His detractors somehow try to twist or frame him (Pocock) as an impediment to women while the exact opposite is true
This Coming Weekend Marks 4 Years Since We Dumped Content Management Systems (CMSs) in Favour of Static Site Generators (SSGs)
the first page dated July 25
Slop's Latest Casualty: The Credibility of Linus Torvalds
If you care about millionaires and billionaires, follow Torvalds (he is already in that "club")
Techrights Will Become More Productive (More Output) Over Time
Big stories about to land
Touch Grass
Happiness involves what humans have evolved to appreciate, not what humans create to sedate the mind (like skinnerboxes)
The Cyber Show on Technology Having Become a Tool of Mass Psychosis, Not Enablement or Emancipation
Technology as mass psychosis
The Rumour Said That a Second Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Would Come This Week (Ahead of Fake 'Results'), Maybe Tomorrow
Let's wait and see how "MSM" unfold
To Wikipedia, "Notability" is Just an Excuse to Hail People Who Serve Billionaires While Marginalising or Defaming the Rest
Wikipedia is an advertising space
Our Series About Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and SLAPPs Will Resume Soon
Originally, in 2025, we gave ourselves 6 years (until 2031) to cover these issues, but we've seen since extended that to 10 years (until 2036) because of the amount of material we have
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The EPO Transparency Gap
Despite the "European" tag in the organisation's name, the European Union has no jurisdiction over the European Patent Organisation
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 20, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 20, 2026
Links 20/07/2026: Lashes for Songs in Iran, Kurdish Language at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/07/2026: The Boss Baby (2017) and 2026 Old Computer Challenge Epilogue
Links for the day
Canonical Staff Acting Like They Aim to Receive Job Offers From Microsoft
There are moreover allegations that Debian will do the same, in the same way Mono boosters infected both distros in tandem or in turn.
Worsening Staff Affairs at Microsoft
Microsoft is managing to piss off many of its own workers
Czech Mate for GNU/Linux on the Way
Czechoslovakia is having none of that "peace for our time" with Microsoft
Nobody Will be Left Who Trusts IBM Anymore
The common theme is, the management must be completely replaced as soon as possible and truth needs to come out
Wall Street is a Bubble and No Company is Worth 5 Trillion Dollars
It's not hard to see which stocks will crash the hardest (or fastest)
The Corrupt Have Historically Tried to Paint Their Exposers as the Real Problem
As usual, there are efforts to shoot or muzzle the messenger
Search Engine Market Share in Italy: Microsoft Falls to Third in Many Countries Including Italy
Expect more layoffs in Bing
Links 20/07/2026: Spotify Drowning in Slop, Expiry of Software Patents in MPEG-4
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Another Step Towards Owning Personal Data and Gemtext2 Envisioned
Links for the day
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Public Missions and Private Ambitions
Despite the French government's strong formal pushback, the lobbying momentum generated by Campinos and Negrão proved unstoppable
"DOOM" and "Bloodbath": the State of Microsoft and XBox
Way to piss off fans
Karen Melchior Fought the Good Fight
stay tuned for Part 29
Links 20/07/2026: Notes on E-mail Encryption, Torvalds and His Employer Paid a Lot to Promote Slop (Pyramid Scheme)
Links for the day
What a Difference Six Years Make...
We are also beta-testing a new feature for the site; we plan to announce it some time soon
When It Comes to Slop, Richard Stallman is Opposite of Linus Torvalds
When it comes to computing, Dr. Stallman has long been a voice of reason
Daniel Pocock is in Mainstream Media This Week
Pocock's haters will absolutely hate this
In His Departure Post, Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) Explains Why Linus Torvalds is Full of "Hot Air" and Slop Bubbles
Having lived through previous bubbles as a UNIX geek, phk cannot be ignored
Whistleblowers Keep Flowing
Later today a police investigator should phone us regarding death threats we've received
We Need Less Gadgets, More Humanity
If people are being honest with themselves, many of the gadgets they claim they "cannot live without" are just excesses and distractions they could definitely leave behind
Technology and Gadgets Got Obese, Just Like Their Users
They now sell us so-called 'phones' for slop
Daniel Pocock in The Guardian This Morning
There is an opportunity here to spread a message, even if Pocock won't win a seat
"Samsung Recently Projected a 19-fold Surge in Second-Quarter Operating Profit", Now There Are Mass Layoffs
In a 9-month period Samsung's debt rose by about 80%
Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Dungeon Meshi/Undertale Crossover, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Dark Web and Beyond"
Links for the day
IBM's Control of the Media "Just Showed What Taking Accountability Does Not Look Like"
It is no secret that IBM pays the media
Microsoft Loses XBox Lawsuit, But There Are More
The collapse of studios continues
GNU/Linux Approaching International Average in Djibouti
One can envisage further gains for GNU/Linux, seeing Microsoft is in such a bad shape
Daniel Pocock "[t]he Australian Taking on Nigel Farage — from Down Under"
This can help raise awareness of some issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 19, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, July 19, 2026