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Links 10/5/2015: Linux Mint 17.2 and Android M Plans





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Illegitimate Government: News Blackout on London Protest
    Legitimacy is a different question to legality. The government is undoubtedly legal under the current rotten system, but its legitimacy is a different question entirely. Legitimacy lies on the popular consent of the governed. With an extreme government supported by only 23% of the population, actively planning to inflict actual harm on many more than 23% of the population, there are legitimate philosophical questions to be asked about the right of the government to rule. With so many, particularly but not exclusively young people, now reading sources like this one and not being enthralled by the mainstream media, today’s protest is but a start.


  • Labour Urgently Needs Gallery Vernissages
    State propaganda and corporate media are wasting no time in promoting their candidate for leader of the pretend opposition: Chuka Umunna. He ticks absolutely all the right boxes. Private school educated, son of a High Court judge (which did not hold back his career to become a multi-millionaire lawyer) and entirely London based. Umunna has only ever moved out of the M25 on an aeroplane.


  • Science



    • Data science, the future of digitisation


      Large corporations such as Amazon, Ebay, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are as much data science companies as they are leaders of specific domains.

      Global data science market is projected to be worth $320 billion by year 2020, says Graham Williams, data scientist at data processor company Togaware as well as the Australia Taxation Office.


    • Immense potential for data science domains
      The open source tools for data science domains such as data mining, analytics and big sata, previously used mostly by IT Industry, are increasingly becoming important for governments around the world, said Graham Williams, data scientist at Togaware and Australia Taxation Office. He was speaking at the three-day Workshop on "Data Mining and Analytics with R", organized by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) at Technopark.




  • Transparency Reporting



    • Legislators Introduce Bill Calling For Nationwide Ban On Non-Disparagement Clauses
      Non-disparagement clauses are one of the stupidest things any company can enact. In most cases, it's almost impossible to enforce them, no matter how artfully crafted. Most aren't. Most non-disparagement clauses found lying around the internet have been lazily copied and pasted from pre-existing bad ideas instituted by other companies.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Climate change a “hoax,” says key business advisor to Aussie prime minister
      The climate-change-as-new-world-order-conspiracy trope is going strong south of the equator, with the chairman of Australia’s Business Advisory Council claiming that climate science is filled with “dud predictions.” Maurice Newman, who previously served as chancellor of Macquarie University and headed up the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, expressed his views in an opinion piece (subscriber only) published Friday in The Australian.






  • Finance



    • MEPs unimpressed with Commission’s ISDS proposal
      Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström tried to convince MEPs that there are ways to keep the Investment-State Dispute Settlement in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership deal (TTIP). But unimpressed lawmakers failed to greet it as a full-fledged reform.




  • Censorship



    • BBC Wants Google to Remove Top Gear’s IMDb Page


      BBC Worldwide has sent tens of thousands of takedown requests to Google this week, but not all reported links are as bad as they claim. In fact, the company is targeting the IMDb pages of several of its own shows, including Top Gear and The Game, as well as one of Dailymotion's homepages.




  • Privacy



    • Code Red Media Launch in Perugia
      Simon and I have known each other for years, way back to 2002, when he gave one of the earliest Winston Awards to David Shayler, in recognition of his work towards trying to expose surveillance and protect privacy. That award ceremony, hosted by comedian and activist Mark Thomas, was one of the few bright points in that year for David and me — which included my nearly dying of meningitis in Paris and David’s voluntary return to the UK to “face the music”; face the inevitable arrest, trial and conviction for a breach of the Official Secrets Act that followed on from his disclosures about spy criminality.


    • Anything to Say? unveiled in Berlin
      Last week artist Davide Dormino unveiled his sculpture celebrating whistleblowers in Alexanderplatz, Berlin.


    • Prison Messaging Service No Longer Claims It 'Owns' All Of Your Communications
      We recently wrote about some dangerous terms of service from a big prison messaging service, JPay, in which the company claimed to flat out own any content that anyone sent through its service. While the company itself did not appear to be doing stupid things to enforce this, this clause did allow prison guards to put one prisoner in solitary confinement after his sister posted a video he had sent via JPay to social media. The prison claimed it was doing so to protect JPay's intellectual property.


    • I Give Up on Google: Free is Too Expensive
      The most recent example being retiring Classic Maps. That’s a problem, because the current Maps mysteriously doesn’t show most of my saved (“starred”) places. Google has known about this since at least 2013. There are posts all over their forums about it going back to when what is now “regular” Google Maps was beta. Google employees even knew about it and did nothing. For someone that made heavy use of it, this was quite annoying.


    • How To Keep NSA Computers From Turning Your Phone Conversations Into Searchable Text
      As soon as my article about how NSA computers can now turn phone conversations into searchable text came out on Tuesday, people started asking me: What should I do if I don’t want them doing that to mine?

      The solution, as it is to so many other outrageously invasive U.S. government tactics exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is, of course, Congressional legislation.

      I kid, I kid.

      No, the real solution is end-to-end encryption, preferably of the unbreakable kind.

      And as luck would have it, you can have exactly that on your mobile phone, for the price of zero dollars and zero cents.z




  • Civil Rights



    • Re:publica — The War on Concepts
      In my view this, to date, includes the four wars — on drugs, terror, the internet, and whistleblowers. No doubt the number will continue to rise.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Mega Consults Legal Team Over New Piracy Report


        A new Hollywood commission report investigating the revenue sources of more than 600 supposedly infringing sites has controversially included file-hosting site Mega. The listing marks the second time in a matter of months that the cloud-storage service has been accused of online piracy via an industry-connected report. Yet again, the report's authors are refusing to comment.


      • Trial of Torrent Site Admin and Hosting Provider Concludes


        An intriguing case dating back more than 3.5 years ended this week when two men went on criminal trial in Sweden. One was the former sysop of a 26,000 member private BitTorrent tracker. The other provided the site with web hosting and allegedly refused to take the site down when copyright holders asked.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Lunduke Keeps Distracting From the Real Problems With Rust
Microsoft Lunduke is stigmatising critics
Stack Ranking Against IBM/Red Hat Staff and a Signal of Mass Layoffs (RAs) Justified by Red Hat and IBM as Poor Performance/Misconduct/Other
Working in an atmosphere like this sounds like a nightmare
Microsoft's "valuation depends on infrastructure that does not exist."
Indeed
The Typical Trajectory: Datamation Began Experimenting With LLM Slop for Fake Articles. Then Datamation Died. (Last Month)
It's always ending up this way
Avoiding the Spooks (Nobody Watches the Watchers, They're Practically Unaccountable)
If more people adopt encryption, it'll be easier for us to deal with whistleblowers
Protecting Whistleblowers Requires Technical Knowledge/Skills
even the highest media judges aren't aware of how to protect sources
Report/Benchmark Says 'Vibe Coding' Results in Security Holes
There are risks they don't like talking about
Record Traffic in Geminispace or Over Gemini Protocol
it's never too late to join
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part III - Europe's Second-Largest Organisation on Strike, Protests, Other Industrial Actions to Come Impacting Over 95% of the Workforce
The EPO's management is highly evasive, weak, and vulnerable
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
They frame layoffs as a "success story"
 
Links 17/01/2026: Internet Blackout Normalised, Russian Attacks Civilians by Causing Massive Blackouts
Links for the day
Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm, Calling Them Out Isn't Fixing That
What a shame. A once-decent site about "Linux" bites the dust.
Luzern Lion Monument, Albanian Female Whistleblowers: Swiss jurists were cowards
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Splinternet is Already Here, Owing to the Militarisation of Technology (Slop, Social Control Media, Back Doors, and More)
you know what's gonna happen next...
Gemini Links 17/01/2026: Slow computing and Environment Leak
Links for the day
Links 17/01/2026: US Censorship and Violence Crisis, Growing Anger Levels Against Slop Sold as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Accounts or Devices (e.g. Phones) That Get 'Burnt' Have Many Pitfalls
Embassies and consulates habitually fail at this
At Least 5 Women Quit Brett Wilson LLP in Recent Months. It's the Firm That Attacked My Wife and I on Behalf of Americans (One of Them Strangled Women).
It seems like good news that the women escape this workplace
Slop About Slop and Slop About "Linux"
In short, avoid slopfarms
EPO Abuses Covered in Spanish
Knowing what we know (and heard/saw), the sinister silence of the media is perceived by some to be complicity of the lower order.
Richard Stallman Encourages "ICE Out For Good" Protests, His Opponents Do Not (Passive and Uncaring About Human Rights)
He has done a lot philosophically, politically, and so on
Claim That IBM Marked 15% of its Workforce for Potential Layoffs
No wonder we keep hearing from Red Hat people who say they hate IBM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026
Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
Links for the day
IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
Links for the day
Writing About Corruption
Fraud is everywhere
The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
International Buzzwords Machines
Naming Culprits in Switzerland
Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
Who's next in the pipeline?
IBM Was Never the Good Guy
its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
IBM does not care what's legal
Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
The Web is seriously ill
Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
This isn't innovation but repression
Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
Links for the day
More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
The end of the library is part of the cuts
Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
Microsoft is in pain
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
A pleasant surprise
Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
Links for the day
Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
Links for the day
Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
Is he back off the wagon?
GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
Will Campinos survive 2026?
The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
Slop is a Liability
Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
IBM is a fairly nasty company
Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
Links for the day