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Links 19/8/2015: LinuxCon Everywhere



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • News Corp.'s Amplify education experiment: What went wrong?
    That write-down comes nearly five years after it purchased Wireless Generation for $360 million in 2010 and renamed it Amplify. At the time, News Corp. was going to bet about $500 million on Amplify to dominate the market. Amplify was led by Joel Klein, the former head of the New York City Department of Education.


  • Avoiding Amazon? The 5 best alternatives to the online bookseller giants


  • You probably don't want to work for Amazon
    'Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.'


  • The Missing ‘Leadership Principle’ at Amazon


  • Amazon’s 24/7 Hell Is the Future of Work
    Working at Amazon may be hell, but so is working everywhere else. Or at least it will be soon. The blockbuster New York Times report documenting Amazon’s “bruising” white collar culture is a fine piece of labor reporting, yet its revelations shouldn’t be too surprising. Amazon is revealed to be a more efficient and more unpleasant formulation of the standard modern workplace; one shaped by globalization, digitalization, and increasingly limitless expectations placed on the plugged-in worker.


  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



    • Security updates for Monday


    • Security advisories for Tuesday


    • DDoS attacks on the rise as Akamai warns that 'mega attacks' are coming
      THIS IS THE DAWN of the mega denial-of-service (DoS) attack, according to security firm Akamai and its second quarter threat report.

      We wait every three months for the Akamai State of the Internet report, and we are never disappointed. Its content is pretty good too, and allows for a summary of the past quarter and a reminder about things like Shellshock and web perennials like Flash, WordPress themes and application attacks.



    • Ransomware goes open source
      Turkish security bod Utku Sen has published what seems to be the first open source ransomware that anyone can download and spread. The 'Hidden Tear' ransomware, available at GitHub, is a working version of the malware the world has come to hate. It uses AES encryption to lock down files and could display a scare warning or ransom message to get users to pay.




  • Transparency Reporting



    • Julian Assange and the Value of WikiLeaks: Subverting Illusions
      Above and beyond Assange’s personal freedom, what’s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality. From the Vietnam War era to today — from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets — the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage. No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.






  • Finance



    • Richard D. Wolff | Déjà Vu: Germany Tightens Its Economic Power Over Europe
      Germany's leaders herded their European counterparts into imposing harsh austerity on Greece. It was the price, they insisted, that Greece had to pay to receive bailout credits from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Europeans required those bailout credits to be used mostly to pay back loans the Greek government had gotten earlier from private banks (chiefly German, French and Greek). Those credits could not be used to get Greece out of the 2008 crash that afflicted all of Europe.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Scott Walker's False Promise of Racial Unity
      When asked about race relations on the first anniversary of Michael Brown's killing at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, Walker replied:

      “I think in general if anyone focuses on racial discord we’re going to get more," he said. "If we focus on unity we’re going to get more of that."

      In other words, acknowledging systemic problems like the documented wave of police killings of unarmed black men, or the racial wealth gap, or disparities in sentencing and incarceration, creates "discord." During the GOP debate, he similarly dodged a question about the Black Lives Matter movement, which even Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly called "the biggest civil rights issue of our time."


    • 70 Awful Displays Of Sexism On Fox News
      On the 95th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, Media Matters looks back at Fox News' many displays of sexism, ranging from hosts suggesting young women should not exercise civic duties like participating in jury duty because they "don't get it," to Erick Erickson's claim that "the male typically is the dominant role."


    • Who Is Intimidating Who?
      The cheerful cheddarheads who showed up at the Iowa State Fair "Soapbox" to razz Scott Walker got a rude reception. The Soapbox is a Des Moines Register tradition and peaceful protesters have long been a part of this exercise in free speech. But after Walker was punked by two young people with a fake $900 million Koch check weeks ago, Team Walker seems a bit tense. At the Soapbox, Walker supporters ripped a sign out of one protester’s hand which read “WARNING Don’t let him do to America what he did to Wisconsin.” Another protester told CNN ”I got pushed into a disabled woman. I fell on her wheelchair. She started screaming at me."


    • Donald Trump Praises Bill O'Reilly For His Focus On Immigrant "Crime Wave"




  • Censorship



    • MPAA Ducks Censorship Battle With Google, Twitter and Facebook


      The MPAA has dropped its request for a preliminary injunction that would require search engines, ISPs and hosting companies to stop linking or offering services to MovieTube. The decision comes a few days after prominent tech firms including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Yahoo branded the request as a broad censorship attempt.


    • U.S. Government Grabbed Dotcom’s Millions “As a Last Resort”


      The U.S. Government has informed the Court of Appeals that the civil forfeiture case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom was launched as a last resort. The authorities feared that Dotcom and his colleagues would regain possession of the millions in seized assets and argue that they are properly labeled as "fugitives."




  • Privacy



    • Warrantless airport laptop search dooms Iran arms sales prosecution
      Federal prosecutors asked a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday to dismiss the government's prosecution of a South Korean businessman accused of illegally selling technology used in aircraft and missiles to Iran.

      The move comes three months after a judge ruled that the government unlawfully seized and searched the suspect's computer at Los Angeles International Airport as Jae Shik Kim was to catch a flight home in 2012. The government decided not to appeal and said it was "unable to continue prosecuting this matter."




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Desperate Rightscorp Burns Through More Piracy Millions


        Piracy monetization company Rightscorp has published its results for Q2 2015 and it's yet another three months of misery for the company. At the same time as paying out just $117K to its copyright holder clients, Rightscorp managed to run up $1.95m in expenses, leaving the company with operating losses in excess of $1.72m.


      • Universal Music and Kim Dotcom Prepared a Deal to Tax Google


        A recording of Kim Dotcom and several Universal Music executives captured two days before the Megaupload raids has revealed the label planning to do a deal with the entrepreneur. Amid discussion of 'taxing' Google by diverting its ad revenue to the label, the execs offered to downgrade Dotcom from "evil" to "neutral" in return for dropping legal action over the "Mega Song".


      • Hollywood Keeps Breaking Box Office Records... While Still Insisting That The Internet Is Killing Movies
        Hollywood is still 100% focused on trying to blame the internet for any of its woes, mostly with bogus attacks on internet companies it doesn't like. And yet... it seems to keep on setting box office records. The latest is that Universal Pictures has broken a new record in bringing in $2 billion in box office revenue faster than any other studio in history, pushed over the top by the successful opening weekend of "Straight Outta Compton" (a movie that seems to have some big fans in Silicon Valley).










Recent Techrights' Posts

Oracle's Debt Grew by Over 50 Billion Dollars in 6 Months
Larry Ellison spent a lot of money buying a lot of the corporate media
What Linus (Torvalds, the Linux Dude) Meant by "Show Me the Code"
"Show Me the Code" is a common cultural reference
XBox Will Not Last Much Longer, XBox Chief Admits Problems
Microsoft's latest "results"
What May 1 Means to Us (and to Many Others)
To me, May 1 means something
Microsoft Lunduke is 'Pulling a Garrett' by Turning Technical and Legal Debate Over Rust Into a 'Trans Debate'
Don't fall for the demagogue
Microsoft "Buyout" Offer is Less Than One Year's Salary
So our assumption about this was correct
In New Letter Sent to Chair and Heads of Delegation of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation the Staff Union Explains How to End European Patent Office Strikes
If Campinos continues to behave as he does right now, the Council can show him the door
Microsoft Debt Rose Almost $50 Billion Since We Moved to Debian
GAFAM has a new name for debt
 
Links 01/05/2026: Microsoft 'Headcount' Decreasing, Apple Quietly Killing Vision Pro
Links for the day
In Praise of Debian
30 hours ago we began an upgrade
Yes, GNU/Linux Can Run on Playstation 5, But Don't Buy It, Learn From Sony's Past of Rootkit and PS3 Betrayal
Millions of Playstation 3 owners will never forget what Sony did to them
Dealing With Demagogue in Free Software
Don't spread their ideology and never participate in any of their projects
Links 01/05/2026: Regulatory Trouble for Apple, Now Even Mozilla Pushes Back Against Google
Links for the day
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part X - European Patent Office Managers Have Crossed Red Lines, According to Themselves
The girlfriend of the President of the European Patent Office (EPO) is trying to muzzle EPO critics
Techrights is Still Growing, Attacking Techrights Does Not Weaken the Community
Bullying us for 2+ years does not result in fear, it results in us feeling more emboldened and motivated
SLAPP Censorship - Part 63 Out of 200: Graveley as a Stripped-Down Version of Garrett in the Particulars of Claim (5RB Barrister Could Do This in One Minute)
Lazily and sloppily, it looks like the barrister took Garrett's claims and tweaked them a little (shortened) for Graveley
Lots of People Leave IBM, Today IBM Has About 1,000 Workers Fewer Than Yesterday
Confluent "last day" for 800+ people
Been a Very Busy Week
Next week, as we have no upgrades to prepare for, we should be able to publish at the usual pace of 20+ pages per day
Links 01/05/2026: Poems and Continuous Privacy Policy
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 30, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, April 30, 2026
Google News Sloppy Again
Today was disappointing
European Patent Office Management Mocked for Trying to 'Bribe' Staff With a Little Food
The Office is having a crisis; a little breakfast treat won't solve it
SLAPP Censorship - Part 62 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley Issue Astounding Copy-Paste Masterpiece Asserting Publicly-Accessible Embarrassing Facts Must Remain Hidden
Are Garrett and Graveley twins separated at birth but joined by GNOME and Microsoft?
Links 30/04/2026: Barrage of Lawsuits Against Slop, Microsoft's Stock Crashes
Links for the day
Microsoft Says Mass Layoffs Are Coming and Puts a Price on Them
Microsoft will shrink
The Corporate Media Intentionally Overlooks How Google's Debt Trebles in Just Over a Year
We'll soon see how much more money Microsoft has borrowed
(Trigger Warning) Jeremy Bicha & Debian-Edu, TecKids, Ubuntu incest scandal at DebConf25
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Upgrade Successful
we had a downtime of only 1-2 minutes overall (for two reboots)
Links 30/04/2026: Slop Industry Cannot Keep Up With Bills, "The World Is Getting Too Hot to Feed Itself"
Links for the day
Then Come the DDoS Attacks
Is someone trying to 'kill' Techrights?
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part X - Deliberately Violate European Patent Convention (EPC), Tolerate Cocaine Use in Management, Hide That From Staff and Stakeholders
The "Alicante Mafia" (as staff calls it) is a disgrace to Europe
The Register MS Running Spam Pieces for Huawei, a Banned Company
Money does not excuse bad behaviour
Apparently Last Day for Nearly 1,000 Confluent Workers IBM Laid Off Last Month
IBM is a dying company pretending to be strong because of its age
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 29, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Gemini Links 30/04/2026: Outdoor Time, Old Computers, and Joining Geminispace
Links for the day
In Past 6 Months IBM Lost About 100 Billion Dollars in 'Value' While Debt Ballooned to 70 Billion Dollars
Welcome to a universe of fake finances and phony accounting based on fictional assets with made-up 'worth'
Dr. Andy Farnell on Weaponising Morality Against Technofascism and Slop
It's longer than a "tweet", so social control media addicts are likely mentally unfit to read it
Six Months
Techrights will be around (and active) for a very long time to come
If We Move Everything to Devuan...
IRC, Git, Apache and so on
Why We Publish "The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt"
We intend to report the facts, fearlessly, until real and lasting solutions are reached
SLAPP Censorship - Part 61 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley Must Understand That Reporting Women's Issues in the United States of America (“the US”) is Not Impermissible
when you cover Microsoft corruption and have real effect
Weeks After Mass Layoffs of Red Hat Engineers We Learn of European "Buyouts" and Layoffs at IBM
At Microsoft, they tell us there are merely "buyouts", but they don't tell us what happens if you say "no!"
OS Upgrade Tentatively Scheduled for Tomorrow
We have some contingencies in case the upgrade goes wrong
Campinos is a Lame Duck President This Year at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The strikes are not ending. If anything, they intensify further.
Links 29/04/2026: LLM Chatbot Usage Goes Down Sharply (as Do Stocks Associated With Them), Microsoft's Circular Financing Accounting Fraud at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/04/2026: Returning to an Exodus and Farewell APU
Links for the day
Slop Has a Long Way to Go Before It Gets Basic Facts Right
Please do not rely on slop for anything
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part IX - European Patents That Are Illegal (But Serve Non-European Monopolists in Exchange for 'Quick Cash')
People who shamelessly violate the European Patent Convention (EPC) have the audacity to lecture workers on "ethics"
Canonical is Selling You, Ubuntu is a Data-Collecting Platform
Canonical is looking for money in the wrong places
Links 29/04/2026: "Snowden Affair 13 Years Later" and "Landmark Data Center Pause"
Links for the day
Seems Like Only Techrights Covered IBM Laying Off About 33% of Confluent Staff
How can such a large round of layoffs evade today's media?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 28, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Gemini Links 29/04/2026: Bad Diet, New Middle Ages, and Temperature Model
Links for the day