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





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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

Articles About "Linux" That Are Actually Promotions of Microsoft Windows
The solution is to leave Windows, not get something "like Linux" or "similar to Linux"
Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Staff Representation Surprised at "Recent Changes in the Staffing of OHS Occupational Health Services (OHS)"
Once upon a time the Office offered to-notch services to all staff
IBM Exits Continue This Week
Some people talk about it anonymously, naming their role/position/unit, number of years (or band) etc.
Adrian & Diana von Bidder-Senn, Debian: detailed history of a death
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Rust Keeps Breaking Ubuntu in All Sorts of Extraordinary Ways (and All Distros Based on Ubuntu Will Break Also)
The FSF's stance on this is unclear
With Net Income of One Billion Dollars Tesla Claims It Can Pay a Fake Founder (Who Paid for This Lie) 1,000 Billions
What does this tell us about Wall Street?
The 'Politics' of Operating Systems (or Exclusion for Inclusion's Sake)
This whole 'wrongthink' policing is getting out of hand
 
The Issue With Firefox is Not Its Brand
Mozilla seems to be the biggest enemy of Firefox at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Gemini Links 11/11/2025: Kentucky, Bluesky, and Slop
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) is Still Hiding From Scandals
"No answers from VP1 to our letters to two Directors"
Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Donald Trump is Out of Time and Has Jurisdiction Issues in the UK
The court system or the courts of a nations are meant to serve the nation and its media, not media lawyers or litigation profiteers
Slopwatch: Many Fake Articles About "Linux" on Monday and Today
A lot of the Web is pure garbage. A lot of 'articles' are 100% fake.
Richard Stallman to be First Speaker at Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress 5 Days From Now, FSF Looking to Raise $400,000 by Year's End
the 40+ years-old FSF, which Dr. Stallman created to help promote Software Freedom and support GNU, is starting a new fund-raising campaign
Links 11/11/2025: Misinformation/Disinformation in Twitter/X and BBC in Trouble
Links for the day
Links 11/11/2025: Slop Ruins Music, Facebook "to Discontinue Like and Comment Buttons on Third-Party Websites"
Links for the day
The Voice of Microsoft
Marketing disguised as a science
"MIT Technology Review Insights" is the Selling of Ponzi Schemes for Sponsors (MIT Lacks Integrity)
Just like IBM, they're chaining buzzwords now
Boot-locking Laptops and Desktops After Falsely Marketing That As 'Security' and Not Obligatory
If anyone can confirm this to us
GNU/Linux Cannot Buy Fake Journalism and It Won't Bribe Large Publishers
Free software developers don't purchase "sponsored" placements and that will never change
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Save You Lots of Money and Problems
We've basically reduced the environmental/carbon footprint of the site by a factor of ~100 (2 orders of magnitude)
IBM Does Not Care About Families, Communities, and Even Its Own Workers
Red Hat isn't a family and to believe that it is would be the makeup of cults
Too Much of Today's Web is Fake, Not Just Fake News
We'll continue to advocate for adoption of Gemini Protocol
Simulating a Downtime Tomorrow Night
It is expected that network redundancy will make this maintenance invisible to us, but IRC hangups or general slowness are still a possibility
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, November 10, 2025
Links 11/11/2025: Conflicts and Politics From National Broadcasters
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/11/2025: Poetry and Electronics Studies
Links for the day
Apple's Debt Grew by About 16 Billion Dollars This Past Year, "Disappointing iPhone Sales" Reported
People who buy Apple's goods based on some false notion that Apple is "cool" or ethical or "underdog" (late 90s) aren't just living in the past; they're fools
Turning Down Proprietary Software is About Making Society Better
We should not be tempted to shame people for merely trying to keep programmers honest and human rights-respecting
Debian GNU/Linux Became the Most Popular (Most Distros Are Based on It) Owing to Richard Stallman
New presentation
The Internet is Becoming Dead or a Zombie
The Internet is becoming like a giant botfarm
A Day for Poppies
This site will run as usual today. We continue our fight for Software Freedom.
"Modern" Doesn't Mean Better, It Typically Just Means Newer
RMS demonised as someone who rejects "modern society" ("rejecting modern society") by a site that uses slop extensively
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part IV: European Patent Office to Come Under Media and Political Scrutiny
We'll persist until we get some answers
Gemini Links 10/11/2025: Homelabs and KeePassRX Manual Now Available
Links for the day
63-Page Response to the EPO's Effort to Decrease the Salaries of Workers While EPO Management Snorts Cocaine for 20,000 Euros a Month
"Read more in these written comments we sent to the members of the GCC"
Response to Another New Hit Piece About Richard Stallman (RMS)
We see similar smears floating about and tackling them can help not only RMS but anyone who thinks similarly about computers
Shrinking and Cheapening the Workforce: the Future of Red Hat and IBM
Does Red Hat cheapen the workforce?
Links 10/11/2025: BBC Turmoil and Iranian Drought Crisis
Links for the day
The Register MS Still Occasionally Uses Slop
some articles don't use real images
Links 10/11/2025: "Scam Altman Gets Served Subpoena" and "China will Rule Renewable Energy"
Links for the day
ubuntupit.com Has Paused the LLM Slop (for Now)
No slopfarm ever offered any real value
More Media Coverage From Austria Regarding Cocaine Use by EPO Management
The ultimate goal is full accountability
Ponzi Economics and the Media's Role in Defending Ponzi Economics
We occasionally notice weak or almost-non-existent coverage regarding the economy
Links 10/11/2025: Very High Windows TCO and XBox Continues to Languish
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, November 09, 2025