Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 18/2/2015: Bioshock Infinite for GNU/Linux, Makulu Unity Alphas





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • FBI Pins 'Terrorist' Nametag On 'Retarded Fool' Without A 'Pot To Piss In'
      The FBI's preference for easily-investigated terrorism is well-documented. We're routinely assured that all sorts of domestic surveillance tech and agency opacity is necessary to protect us from a whole host of threats, but for the most part, the terrorists "apprehended" by the FBI seem to be people who've had the misfortune of being "befriended" by undercover agents and/or confidential informants.

      When over 90% of the funding, idea generation, transportation and motivation comes from those saving us from terrorism, we have reason to be worried. While the FBI performs its predatory handcrafting of "extremists," the real terrorists -- who don't need someone else to provide weapons, money and motivation -- are still going about the business of terrorism.




  • Transparency Reporting



    • Obama Just Officially Decided White House Emails Aren't Subject to the Freedom of Information Act
      Civil liberties advocates are adding another strike to the Obama administration's record on transparency: on Monday, the White House announced that it is officially ending the Freedom of Information Act obligations of its Office of Administration. That office provides broad administrative support to the White House—including the archiving of emails—and had been subject to FOIA for much of its nearly four-decade history.


    • Swedish Prosecutor in Julian Assange's Case Retreats; US Continues Espionage Investigation
      Michael Ratner says the real threat to Assange is the continuing espionage investigation against him and Wikileaks - March 17, 2015


    • After Swedish Prosecutors Back Down, Is WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Close to Freedom?
      Today marks the 1,000th day WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent in political asylum inside Ecuador’s London embassy. For the first time, Swedish prosecutors have opened the door to Assange’s departure with a request to question him in London. Assange has never been charged over allegations of sexual assault, but has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, fearing a Swedish arrest warrant could lead to his extradition to the United States. We speak with Assange attorney, Michael Ratner, who says an interview with the prosecutor may result in no charges, and even if Assange were convicted of these allegations, “he has done all the time he would have to do... so the whole case is essentially a bogus way of keeping him in that embassy."




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • 'Reawakened' faults could trigger big Okla. earthquakes
      They've been asleep since before the dinosaurs roamed Earth and now we're waking them up.

      Long-dormant, 300-million-year-old fault lines across Oklahoma are being "reawakened" by recent small earthquakes that have been previously linked to fracking, scientists reported in a new study out this week.






  • Finance



    • If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart
      This statistic provides a pretty compelling snapshot of the severity of our income gap: In 2014, Wall Street's bonus pool was roughly double the combined earnings of all Americans working full-time jobs at minimum wage.

      That sobering tidbit came from a new Institute for Policy Studies report by Sarah Anderson, who looked at new figures from the New York State Comptroller and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average bonus for one of New York City's 167,800 employees in the securities industry came out to $172,860—on top of an average salary of nearly $200,000. On the other side of the equation were about one million people working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25.


    • Protesters, police clash near new European bank HQ in Frankfurt
      Anti-capitalist protesters clashed with riot police near the new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt on Wednesday and set fire to barricades and cars, casting a pall over the ceremonial opening of the billion-euro skyscraper.

      Nearly 90 police were injured by stones and unidentified liquids hurled by a violent minority from within the thousands-strong protest, police said. Some protesters said they were injured when police used pepper spray.


    • Germany riot targets new ECB headquarters in Frankfurt


    • George Osborne has presided over the slowest recovery in history
      "Britain is walking tall again" claimed George Osborne today, as he argued the British economy is now growing "faster than any other major advanced economy in the world".

      However, while the pace of economic recovery has finally picked up, figures released by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) today confirmed that overall Osborne has presided over the slowest economic recovery in British history.


    • The Most Dangerous Woman in America
      Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party.

      The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year. It will pit a socialist, who refuses all corporate donations—not that she would get many—and who has fearlessly championed the rights of workingmen and workingwomen, rights that are being eviscerated by the corporate machine. The elites cannot let the Sawants of the world proliferate. Corporate power is throwing everything at its disposal—including sponsorship of a rival woman candidate of color—into this election in the city’s 3rd District.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Privacy



    • Intelligence Reform & The French Government's Disastrous Drift on Surveillance
      The information shared today by Le Figaro regarding the upcoming French Bill on Intelligence, ahead of its presentation before the Council of ministers on Thursday 19 March, only confirms earlier concerns. While this new law was announced as an important overhaul aimed at protecting fundamental rights, the securitarian instrumentalisation of the deadly events of January is bound to lead to an incredible drift in state surveillance practices. La Quadrature du Net calls on citizens and their elected representatives to oppose this bill.


    • Why can the NSA do what it does?
      Like most technical people, I'm not impressed but very worried about the erosion of our civil rights, through the NSA spying and in other ways. And I am sure I share with others the impression that if only politicians and the general public knew more about the problem, we wouldn't make such bad decisions.


    • Tutanota, An Open Source Encrypted Gmail Alternative, Heads Out Of Beta
      Germany based encrypted email startup, Tutanota, is taking its service out a beta next week — after a year of testing and almost 100,000 users signed up to send and receive secure email.




  • Civil Rights



    • JUSTICE FOR SALE – PART 5: Rebellious Action in a Corrupt Time
      The series collectively argues that corporate media and political rhetoric have made Americans acquiescent toward corruption in the US legal system. This piece examines the corporate media’s coverage of citizen’s resistance to corruption and abuse in the US legal system.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Lawmakers Say TPP Meetings Classified To Keep Americans in the Dark
      Democratic lawmaker says tightly-controlled briefings on Trans-Pacific Partnership deal are aimed at keeping US constituents ignorant about what's at stake


    • What's Going On In Obama's Trade Meeting With Democrats? That's Classified.
      As the Obama administration gives House Democrats a hard sell on a major controversial trade pact this week, it will be doing so under severe conditions: Any member of Congress who shares information with the public from a Wednesday briefing could be prosecuted for a crime.


    • House Democrats angry over Obama’s classified trade meeting
      House Democrats are criticizing President Obama's administration for holding a classified briefing on trade with top administration officials, saying it's an attempt to push a trade program in secret.


    • Copyrights



      • Parliament copyright working group too close to business say activists
        With the Digital Agenda being a key part of the Juncker commission's drive for jobs and growth and Commissioner Oettinger promising copyright reform and an end of geo-blocking, a group of business and foundations have written to Jean-Marie Cavada MEP (ALDE, FR), the chair of the European Parliament's Copyright Working Group demanding that he open up consultations to a wider range of stakeholders.

        New Europe has seen the letter.

        The French MEP is at odds with many parliamentarians and the European Commission, being supportive of the current scheme, which has come under sustained criticism from many quarters.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Intimidation, Threats, and Bullying Not Tolerated by Techrights
When it comes to our reporting, safety always comes first
 
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Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
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Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
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Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
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IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
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A World Without Rules
We're long insisted on better laws and actual enforcement of them (applicable to all, not selectively applied)
statCounter Sees Microsoft Windows Falling to New, Unprecedented Lows in Palau
Taking Android into account, Windows is now down to an all-time low of 14%
Google News Lost the Fight to LLM Slop (While Google Itself Sells Slop, Nowadays Under the Name "Gemini")
Many people say that "Google is getting worse"; that's almost an understatement
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one must never settle with trolls
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Android Rises Above 76% in Mozambique, Leaving Windows in the Dust
Windows may soon be measured as smaller than Apple's iOS
IBM, Red Hat and Microsoft Probably Also Manipulate Metrics (It Helps Con the Shareholders)
Wall Street's credibility will depend on enforcement of "checks and balances"
Slopwatch: trendhunter.com and Other Pure Junk From "Google News"
The need to vet sources is hardly new; anyone can spew out anything, anywhere. There's a need for vetting.
Gemini Links 28/03/2025: Rewatching The X-Files, Slop Concerns, and NOSTR Censorship
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Links 28/03/2025: Australia at Risk, EPO Grants Illegal Patents With Illegal Effect
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Links 27/03/2025: Obituary to a Shop, Russia Trying to Buy Time
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Links 27/03/2025: Slop, Autosuggestions, and Nostr
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Apparently Confirmed: IBM Layoffs in Canada Today, Hundreds Affected
Impacting "177 people", says one person, "in Ottawa"
When Windows Was Dominant (1990s) Browser Monopoly Meant MSIE, But Now Google Android is Dominant and the Web in a 'Webapps' Era Works With (or Is Designed for) Chrome-isms
We've been there before
Slopwatch: BetaNews, LinuxSecurity.com, and the Attack on Web Search Using Fake and Likely Plagiarised Pages
Changing a few words here and there won't change the fact that it's not properly authored
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Using Courts for 'Revenge' is Always a Losing Strategy
Trying to cause someone you dislike to spend a lot of money
IBM CFO James Kavanaugh Refers to Firing of Almost 10,000 Americans as "Workforce Rebalancing" (Shifting IBM's Centre of Balance to Low-salary Contracts/Countries)
The scale of IBM layoffs is getting too large to evade WARN Notices
[Video] Dr. Richard Stallman's Keynote Speech in Kerala Finally Uploaded
In non-free format and proprietary YouTube, but perhaps that's better than nothing
Islands Are Leaving Microsoft Behind, According to statCounter
Android has had a very strong year
EPO Management Fails to Deny That the Office is Discriminating Against Women
Europe's second-largest institution isn't just exceedingly corrupt but also immoral
In Some Countries the Market Share of Vista 11 is Going Down, Not Up
despite being released in 2021
Rumour: Mass Layoffs in IBM Canada Today
Maybe later today some people from Canada will say something firmer and maybe some media will even talk about that
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
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Gemini Links 27/03/2025: X-Files' "Kill Switch", Orlando, and ASN (Autonomous System Number) 'Hack'
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