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Links 11/8/2015: Linux 4.2 RC 6, 4.1.5, 3.14.50, and 3.10.86



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Pixar’s Universal Screen Description software is going open source
    Pixar Animation Studios has announced that its proprietary Universal Screen Description (USD) software will be going open source by Summer 2016, providing computer animation studios with an incredibly powerful tool to manage scenes in large scale projects.


  • Pixar’s Universal Scene Description Going Open Source


  • Facebook Releases Reference App for Marketing API
  • Facebook to Open Source Reference App For Marketing API


  • Pixar Announces Universal Scene Description to be Open-Sourced
  • Pixar to open-source its Universal Scene Description software


  • How To Improve Bus Factor In Your Open Source Project
    In my experience (I was an open source community manager for several years and am deeply embedded in the community of people who do open source outreach), getting people into the funnel for your project as first-time contributors is a reasonably well-solved problem, i.e., we know what works. Showing up at OpenHatch events, making sure the bugs in the bug tracker are well-specified, setting up a "good for first-timers" task tag and/or webpage and keeping it updated, personally inviting people who have reported bugs to help you solve them, etc. If you can invest several months of one-on-one or two-on-one mentorship time, participate in Google Summer of Code and/or Outreachy internship programs. If you want to start with something that's quantitative and gamified, consider using Google Code-In as a scaffold to help you develop the rest of these practices.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Firefox 40 released, here’s what you’ll find
        It has been six weeks since the release of Firefox 39 and today Firefox 40 was pushed to the FTP servers and will roll out to users on August 11. Below is a compiled list of everything new you can expect to see in the release.


      • Mozilla Plugs Dangerous Firefox Zero-Day Hole
        Mozilla on Friday released security updates to fix a zero-day flaw in the Firefox browser. An exploit that searches for sensitive files and uploads them to a server -- possibly somewhere in Ukraine -- has surfaced in an ad on a Russian news site, Mozilla reported last week. The exploit impacts Windows and Linux users. Mac users could be hit by a modified version. The vulnerability stems from the interaction of Firefox's PDF Viewer and the mechanism that enforces JavaScript context separation -- the "same origin" policy, Mozilla said.






  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Databases



    • Debunking Open-Source Database Myths
      Still, the IT industry harbors misconceptions about how open-source software works, its performance, its benefits and its ROI. eWEEK, with input from open-source PostgreSQL database specialist EnterpriseDB, helps debunk some of the most common open-source database myths, including those about its costs and capabilities.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • What It Took Porting LibreOffice To GTK3 & Wayland
      For the past several months Caolán McNamara has been leading the charge for adding GTK3 tool-kit support to LibreOffice. With the new LibreOffice 5.0 that initial GTK3 support is in place that also brings initial Wayland support for this open-source office suite.




  • Business



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases



    • Kodi 15.1 Isengard – Release Candidate
      Once a ‘final’ version is released some new bugs and/or problems usually appear out of nowhere, and last release was no exception. Even though tens of thousands of users were already testing the 15.0 version before release, as soon as million started using it, some problems we either did not think of or which we did not notice popped up. To counter some of these new issues, we’re bringing you this maintenance release candidate called 15.1 RC1 which has some additional fixes on top of the 15.0 release.


    • Kodi 15.1 Release Candidate Is Now Available




  • Public Services/Government



    • Nantes: “Change management key to switch to free software"
      Change management is the key to successfully replacing proprietary software by free and open source alternatives, says Eric Ficheux, IT project manager working for the administration of Nantes. In 2013, France’s sixth largest city began switching to LibreOffice, replacing a proprietary suite of office productivity tools. “Any organisation considering a similar switch should brush up on change management.”


    • Of Course, LibreOffice Is Easy To Deploy And Use. It’s FLOSS. It’s An Office Suite.
      Yes. Replacing a non-Free office suite with LibreOffice makes sense. It’s FLOSS. You can run, examine, modify and distribute the software under the accompanying licence. There’s no need to budget for licensing. There’s no contract. There’s no dependency on someone out to get you. LibreOffice is a cooperative product of the world, not enslavement/lock-in/a burden indefinitely. It’s easy too. After all, LibreOffice is descended from StarOffice and OpenOffice.org designed from the beginning to be easy to use even for those familiar with M$’s product.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Projects Emphasize Open-Source Technology and Data for Agriculture
      Around the world, young people are turning to farming and the food sector as viable career options. However, the next generation of food system leaders often lacks access to the latest data and technologies that are vital to the success of farm businesses. Projects such as Open Ag Toolkit (OpenATK), a new platform for managing agricultural tasks, and FarmBot, an open-source community for small-scale precision farming, are working to democratize innovations in agriculture by improving data transfer and small-scale technologies through open-source models.


    • Amyris teams with Genome Compiler for open source testing program


    • Open Hardware



      • Watch those VOCs! Open Source Air Quality Monitor
        Capable of monitoring Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), basic particulate matter, carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity, it takes care of the basic metrics to measure the air quality of a room.






  • Programming



    • the future is here
      That's right, boys and girls, a compiler with a bigger resident size than Firefox. Three times bigger.






Leftovers



  • Science



    • We need YOU to help close the IT gender gap
      According to the U.S. Department of Labor, only 26% of people employed in computer and mathematical occupations are women. While that figure may be staggering, I don't believe the way to fix it is by simply hiring more women. A meritocracy requires that the most qualified candidates are selected for positions in every industry, regardless of gender. But we can level the IT industry's playing field by educating young women and girls about potential career possibilities.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • Why TPP Threatens To Undermine One Of The Fundamental Principles Of Science
      Last week, we wrote that among the final obstacles to completing the TPP agreement was the issue of enhanced protection for drugs. More specifically, the fight is over an important new class of medicines called "biologics," which are produced from living organisms, and tend to be more complex and expensive to devise. The Conversation has a good feature looking at this issue in more detail.

      [...]

      As that makes clear, data exclusivity is a kind of super-patent in that it can't be challenged or revoked: if a drug company has run clinical trials to establish the safety of its new drug, it has an absolute and irrevocable monopoly on the use of that data -- for five years in the case of Australia, Chile, Singapore and New Zealand. This is obviously an incredibly powerful form of monopoly, so perhaps it's no surprise that US pharmaceutical companies want TPP to require signatories to grant an even longer period -- 12 years of data exclusivity -- for biologics.

      That's useful for them, because even after drug patents have expired, and generic manufacturers can theoretically offer the same products without paying licensing fees, there remains the barrier of clinical testing. If the generic manufacturers can't point to the original clinical trials as proof that the drug is safe, they will need to carry out their own, which will take time and cost money. In practice, they are more likely to wait until the period of data exclusivity is over, effectively extending the original manufacturer's monopoly beyond that provided by patents alone.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



  • Transparency Reporting



    • Swedish plan to question Assange at Ecuador embassy in UK stalled
      Swedish prosecutors' plan to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at Ecuador's embassy in London has stalled as Ecuador has demanded Sweden give him asylum as a condition of the meeting, a Swedish official said on Friday.

      "You can't give anyone asylum at another country's embassy, that's against international law," Cecilia Riddselius at the Justice Department said. "If he wants asylum he has to come to Sweden."


    • Call to share private sector partnerships on open governance
      The Private Sector Council was established in 2013 to engage businesses and entrepreneurs in promoting open governance, economic growth, and local innovations. The Council forms a group external to the OGP and coordinates private sector participation in OGP.






  • Finance



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Privacy



    • NIC refuses to reveal identity of those who altered Jawaharlal Nehru Wikipedia page
      The National Informatics Centre, software solution provider of the government, has withheld information on who altered the Wikipedia page of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and posted scandalous information about him on the grounds it may have “security implications”.


    • Councils have lost or misused private data thousands of times, says watchdog
      Call for greater penalties as examples include child protection files left on train, worker using CCTV to watch a wedding and another digging into benefit claims


    • What Happens When a Failed Writer Becomes a Loyal Spy?
      He was fully aware of his statement’s implications.

      “I found myself wishing that my life would be constantly and completely monitored,” he continued. “It might seem odd that a self-professed libertarian would wish an Orwellian dystopia on himself, but here was my rationale: If people knew a few things about me, I might seem suspicious. But if people knew everything about me, they’d see they had nothing to fear. This is the attitude I have brought to SIGINT work since then.”

      When intelligence officials justify surveillance, they tend to use the stilted language of national security, and we typically hear only from senior officials who stick to their platitudes. It is rare for mid-level experts — the ones conducting the actual surveillance — to frankly explain what they do and why. And in this case, the candid confessions come from the NSA’s own surveillance philosopher. The columns answer a sociological curiosity: How does working at an intelligence agency turn a privacy hawk into a prophet of eavesdropping?




  • Civil Rights



    • Cops filmed behaving badly say pot shop’s camera illegally recorded raid
      Did you hear the one about the cops not wanting to use a store's surveillance tape to help solve a crime?

      Who could blame these Santa Ana cops? Video shows them smashing surveillance cameras, badmouthing a woman in a wheelchair, and perhaps even munching on marijuana-infused products after they stormed a medical marijuana shop in Southern California, which was being investigated for allegedly operating unlawfully in the city.

      Three of the unidentified cops are demanding that a judge block the police department from using the tapes against them as the department investigates the officers' conduct during the May raid. The cops at the center of the investigation say the Sky High Medical Marijuana Dispensary illegally recorded them because the officers believed they had disabled all the store's cameras and therefore had an expectation of privacy "that their conversations were no longer being recorded," according to the cops' Aug. 5 lawsuit. (PDF) The suit says the tapes were also "edited" and cannot be relied upon.


    • Zachary Hammond death: Shooting of unarmed white teenager by police officer sparks debate over 'lack of outrage' in America


      The death of an unarmed white teenager who was shot by a white police officer in South Carolina has sparked a debate as to why the incident has not generated the same outrage as the deaths of other unarmed black Americans.

      Zachary Hammond, 19, was on a date with Tori Morton, 23, when he was shot twice in the back by a police officer last month.


    • Documents Reveal the Fearmongering Local Cops Use to Score Military Gear From the Pentagon
      Mother Jones obtained more than 450 police department requests for armored tactical vehicles from the Pentagon. Did your police force request one? Browse all of them here.

      One year ago this week, hundreds of camouflaged officers in Ferguson, Missouri bore down on residents protesting the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown.


    • U. alumnus removed from director position at American Psychological Association following US government torture scandal
      A University alumnus was removed from his position as ethics director of the American Psychological Association last month after an independent review alleged that he collaborated with the Department of Defense to enable torture.


    • Germany drops treason inquiry into Netzpolitik journalists
      German prosecutors have dropped a much-criticised treason investigation into two journalists who reported on secret plans to expand online surveillance in the country.

      Prosecutors notified Netzpolitik.org in July that its founder, Markus Beckedahl, and fellow journalist Andre Meister were under investigation, triggering widespread criticism from free-speech advocates. The website specialises in coverage of online privacy and digital culture.


    • U.S. 'supermax' prison: 'Alcatraz of the Rockies' is seen as 'inhuman and degrading'
      U.S. prosecutors want Ali Charaf Damache in the worst way.

      An Irish resident originally from Algiers, Damache, 50, is accused of using online chat rooms to recruit American women into a would-be terrorist cell operating in this country and Europe.

      One man and two women, including Damache's wife, have already been convicted in U.S. courts of providing material support to terrorists. And Damache was captured by Irish authorities in 2010 in Dublin on a separate charge of making a telephone death threat and held without bail.


    • Issue of where to move Guantanamo detainees threatens closure plan
      A renewed push by the White House to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been bogged down by an internal disagreement over its most controversial provision — where to house detainees who will be brought to the United States for trial or indefinite detention, according to U.S. officials.
    • Pentagon to release Gitmo closure plan after August recess
      The Defense Department expects to present a plan to close Guantanamo Bay to lawmakers after the August recess, a spokesman said on Monday.


    • Pentagon under fire for guidelines that liken war reporters to 'belligerents'
      Defenders of press freedom have accused the Pentagon of endangering journalists with new legal guidelines that liken war correspondents to spies and say they can be treated as "unprivileged belligerents" in some circumstances.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • How You Buy Cellphones Is About to Change Forever
      This misconception owes to mobile carriers’ longstanding practice of offering discounts on phones for customers who agree to a two-year contract. For years, the deal was generally this: You go to a company like Verizon or AT&T, you sign some paperwork locking yourself into 24 months of wireless service, and Verizon or AT&T gives you a shiny new phone at a subsidized price—or even free, if you opt for less than the very best hardware.


    • Netscape changed the internet—and the world—when it went public 20 years ago
      Rosanne Siino finds it amusing when students interrupt one of her lectures at Stanford University to ask: “So, what is Netscape?”

      “Wow, how long has it been?” Siino, one of the first hires at Netscape, recalls telling a student. “Boy, you have no idea how much the world changed just before you were born.”

      It was 20 years ago today that Netscape went public, setting off what we now know as the first dot-com boom.


    • The ‘Netscape Moment,’ 20 years on
      We’re in the runup to the 20th anniversary of the “Netscape Moment” of 1995, the day when a California startup’s eye-popping market debut illuminated the World Wide Web for millions of people otherwise only vaguely familiar with its potential and promise.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Prince Warns Young Artists: Record Contracts Are 'Slavery'
        "Jay Z spent $100 million of his own money to build his own service. We have to show support for artists who are trying to own things for themselves," singer says of joining Tidal

        Two days after Prince announced that he would release his new album HitNRun exclusively to Tidal, the singer revealed the reason he is sidestepping a record label and offering the LP directly through Jay Z's streaming service. "Record contracts are just like — I'm gonna say the word – slavery," Prince said. "I would tell any young artist... don't sign."


      • MPAA Recruits Software Programmer to Combat Piracy


        In its ongoing war against online piracy, the MPAA is currently hoping to recruit a software developer. The Hollywood group is looking for savvy candidates who can help develop data gathering tools for enforcement purposes and to monitor, investigate and report on copyright infringement.


      • Pornhub Uploaders Targeted By Copyright Troll


        Several users of popular porn streaming site Pornhub have received settlement demands for thousands of dollars after uploading videos to the site without obtaining permission. How the users are being tracked down by the copyright troll involved remains somewhat of a mystery, but several theories persist.


      • Tolkien Lawyers Target “Hobbit House” With Copyright Threats


        Hollywood studio Warner Bros. and the Tolkien Estate are cracking down on a British couple building a "Hobbit house" campsite. The pair are being forced to change the project's name and remove all Hobbit references from their Kickstarter campaign. According to Tolkien's lawyers even words that rhyme with Hobbit are not permitted.








Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
 
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: Men Who Strangle Women (and Worse) Trying to Force Us to Write Public Apologies to These Men
For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
Instant Bluewashing at Confluent: Mass Layoffs Alleged at IBM
So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
"Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
Updates About Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation
After all those years (a decade) and in spite of phony scandals many people out there still respect him
LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
This is becoming a pain and a problem also in the arts and in software engineering
The EFF Has a Bug, Fixing This Bug is Likely Not Possible Anymore
"the EFF's continued existence impairs the arrival of a replacement organization, one which will actually champion digital rights."
Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
Links for the day
Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
Links for the day
For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
What does that make The Register MS to women?
British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
"Security" is not a valid excuse
Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
Little Community Element Left in CentOS
CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 16, 2026