Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 1/9/2015: Manjaro Linux 0.8.13, Netrunner 14.2 LTS





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • The new IT is all about the customer
    Open source code. GitHub and other cloud repositories enable developers to share and consume code for almost any purpose imaginable. This reflects today's practical, non-ideological open source culture: Why code it yourself if someone else is offering it free under the most liberal license imaginable?


  • Events/Communities



  • SaaS/Big Data



    • OpenStack Was Key To Building Servers.Com
      When XBT Holding S.A. decided to simplify how its subsidiaries provided global hosting, network solutions, and web development they turned to the open source cloud infrastructure platform OpenStack. By consolidating the offerings under a single service provider, Servers.com, customers can more easily browse, mix, compare and choose the most suitable services.


    • ZeroStack Comes Out of Stealth, Focused on Private Clouds
      There is another OpenStack-focused startup on the scene, and you have to appreciate its creative name: ZeroStack. The cloud computing company has come out of stealth mode to introduce a private cloud solution that it claims is easier to configure, consume and manage than any other technology on the market.


    • Apache Ignite, a Big Data Tool, Graduates as a Top-Level Project
      Only a few days ago, Apache, which is the steward for and incubates more than 350 Open Source projects, announced that Apache Lens, an open source Big Data and analytics tool, has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP). Now, the ASF has announced that Apache Ignite is to become a top-level project. It's an open source effort to build an in-memory data fabric that was driven by GridGain Systems and WANdisco.


    • Funding the Cloud: Top VCs Aim for the Silver Lining


    • How Apache Spark Is Transforming Big Data Processing, Development




  • Databases



    • Accelerating Scientific Analysis with the SciDB Open Source Database System
      Science is swimming in data. And, the already daunting task of managing and analyzing this information will only become more difficult as scientific instruments — especially those capable of delivering more than a petabyte (that’s a quadrillion bytes) of information per day — come online.

      Tackling these extreme data challenges will require a system that is easy enough for any scientist to use, that can effectively harness the power of ever-more-powerful supercomputers, and that is unified and extendable. This is where the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s (NERSC’s) implementation of SciDB comes in.




  • CMS



    • PiwigoPress release 2.31
      I just pushed a new release of PiwigoPress (main page, WordPress plugin dir) to the WordPress servers. This release incorporates new features for the sidebar widget, and better interoperability with some Piwigo galleries.




  • Education



    • How to teach student sys admins
      Students spend the 16-week long course learning practical skills using real tools. To support their systems, students learn about using support tickets and documentation by using RT and MediaWiki. To deploy and maintain their systems, they learn about configuration management using Puppet, system monitoring using Nagios, and backup and recovery using Bacula. But the broad concepts are more important than the specific software packages I just mentioned. The point is to learn, for example, configuration management, not to be trained to use Puppet. The software used by Clark is used because it works for him, but the software is flexible and changeable.






  • Openwashing (Fake FOSS)



  • Funding



  • BSD



    • OpenBSD Is Getting Its Own Native Hypervisor
      The OpenBSD Foundation has been funding work on a project to provide OpenBSD with its own, native hypervisor.

      The hypervisor's VMM is so far able to launch a kernel and ask for a root file-system, but beyond that, it's been laying most of the hypervisor foundation up to this point.


    • Coming Soon to OpenBSD/amd64: A Native Hypervisor
      Earlier today, Mike Larkin (mlarkin@) published a teaser for something he's been working on for a while.


    • the peculiar libretunnel situation
      The author of stunnel has (once, twice) asserted that stunnel may not be used with LibreSSL, only with OpenSSL. This is perhaps a strange thing for free software to do, and it creates the potential for some very weird consequences.

      First, some background. The OpenSSL license and the GPL are both free software licenses, but they are different flavors of freedom, meaning you can’t mix them. It would be like mixing savory and sweet. Can’t do it. Alright, so maybe technically you can do it, but you’re not supposed to. The flavor, er, freedom police will come get you. One workaround is for the GPL software to say, oh, but maybe wait, here’s an exception. (Does this make the software more or less free?) Here’s a longer explanation with sample exception.


    • FreeBSD on Beagle Bone Black (with X11)
      X11 clients on the Beagle Bone Black .. that’s X11 over the network, with the X Server elsewhere. No display as yet. The FreeBSD wiki notes that there’s no (mini) HDMI driver yet. So I built some X11 programs, xauth(1) and xmessage(1), and installed them on the Bone. Since I bought a blue case for the Bone, and it is the smallest computer in the house (discounting phones .. let’s call it the smallest hackable computer in the house) the kids decided to call it smurf. Here’s a screenshot of poudriere’s text console as it builds packages.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Schiphol Airport working on open innovation
      ...open data and an open programming interface...


    • How open film project Cosmos Laundromat made Blender better
      If you're not familiar with the string of open projects that the Blender Institute has kicked out over the years, you might not be familiar with the term "open movie." Simply put, not only is Cosmos Laundromat produced using free and open source tools like Blender, GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape, but the film itself, and all of its assets—models, textures, character rigs, animations, all of it—are available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. Want to see what a production character rig looks like? Or know how that giant color tornado was created? How about actually using a character (or just a prop) in your own project? Maybe you even want to redo the entire film to your own tastes. It's an open movie! You can!


    • Making strides in container integration, and more OpenStack news




  • Programming



    • The thin line between good and bad automation
      I don't like automation -- I love it. I whisper sweet nothings, come 'round with flowers, and buy milkshakes for automation. I've even stood outside the window with a boombox for automation. I will go out of my way to automate tasks that, while they are not terribly tedious, I don't want to have to remember exactly how to do them somewhere down the road, when months have gone by since the last time I had to relearn them.






Leftovers



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Breaking the Depleted Uranium Ceiling
      It is an astonishing fact that, despite near universal recognition now that the war in Iraq was a disaster, no major British social institution is headed by a single one of the majority of the population wo were opposed to the war.

      Every Cabinet Minister actively supported the war. Of the fifteen Tory MPs who rebelled and voted against the war, not one is a minister. Civil servants officially have no politics but privately their opinions are known. There is not one single Permanent Under Secretary of a UK government department who was known to be against the war and most were enthusiasts. Simon Fraser, PUS at the FCO, was an active Blairite enthusiast for the war. Though no Blairite, the Head of MI6 Alex Younger was also an enthusiast.


    • Missing From Reports of Yemeni Carnage: Washington’s Responsibility
      But that “huge role” often disappears when the the leading papers are discussing the carnage that results from the air attacks that the US is supporting and supplying. Thus when the Times‘ Rick Gladstone (8/22/15) reported that “Saudi-led airstrikes on a residential district in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz had killed more than 65 civilians, including 17 people from one family,” according to Doctors Without Borders, and that the death toll in the war included “hundreds of civilians killed in airstrikes,” Washington’s role in facilitating those deaths went unmentioned.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Obama can rename Mount McKinley Denali — but he can’t stop its loss of ice
      This Monday through Wednesday, President Obama will be in Alaska, visiting melting glaciers and remote towns and meeting with other Arctic leaders. On Sunday, the president made a major statement by officially renaming Mt. McKinley — the U.S.’s highest peak — Denali, its traditional native name.

      The trip’s purpose is to highlight climate change — and for Alaska in particular, the change has been dramatic.






  • Finance



    • Blythe Masters Tells Banks the Blockchain Changes Everything
      These Wall Street veterans all know who Blythe Masters is. She’s the wunderkind who made managing director at JPMorgan Chase at age 28, the financial engineer who helped develop the credit-default swap and bring to life a market that peaked at $58 trillion, in notional terms, in 2007. She’s the banker later vilified by pundits, unfairly some say, after those instruments compounded the damage wrought by the subprime mortgage crash in 2008. Now, one year after quitting JPMorgan amid another controversy, Blythe Masters is back. She isn’t pitching a newly minted derivative or trading stratagem to this room. She’s promoting something wilder: It’s called the blockchain, and it’s the digital ledger software code that powers bitcoin.


    • eBay Pledges Loyalty To PayPal — Bans Rivals
      eBay will soon be banning PayPal rivals, ProPay and Skrill, from offering payment services to sellers on its platform.


    • Police force could lose 22,000 jobs under new spending cuts
      Major reduction in funding could see number of police officers in England and Wales fall to 40-year low




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship



    • Muhammad cartoon editor gets Norway prize
      Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose, who was behind the controversial 2005 publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons, is being honoured by a Norwegian free speech group.




  • Privacy



    • Don’t let Roanoke murderer’s arrest justify a license plate reader rise
      As someone who has been reporting on license plate readers (LPR) for some time now, it actually surprised me when I heard that Roanoke, Virginia, shooter Vester Lee Flanagan had been first located through the use of the scanning device. While the devices have been in use in Virginia for years, their effectiveness and efficiency there—and nationwide—is questionable.

      According to local media accounts, when Virginia State Police Trooper Pamela Neff received the suspect’s plate number over her radio last week, she punched it into her LPR system and got an alert that the car had passed by not three minutes earlier. Within 10 minutes, Neff and other officers converged on Flanagan’s location, finding that he had shot himself, ending the manhunt.


    • Fake EFF site serving espionage malware was likely active for 3+ weeks




  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • FCC Introduces Rules Banning WiFi Router Firmware Modification
      For years we have been graced by cheap consumer electronics that are able to be upgraded through unofficial means. Your Nintendo DS is able to run unsigned code, your old XBox was a capable server for its time, your Android smartphone can be made better with CyanogenMod, and your wireless router could be expanded far beyond what it was originally designed to do thanks to the efforts of open source firmware creators. Now, this may change. In a proposed rule from the US Federal Communications Commission, devices with radios may be required to prevent modifications to firmware.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Yandex Demands Takedown of ‘Illegal’ Music Downloader


        Russian search giant Yandex has ordered U.S-based Github to take down a tool that allows downloading of MP3s from its music streaming service. Yandex, which has 60% of the local search market and has deals with Universal, Sony and Warner to offer a Spotify-like platform, says that the music downloader is illegal.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Some Slopfarms and Some Real News Sites Cover Richard Stallman’s (RMS) Talk
If his message about Software Freedom spreads, then we're all better off
Richard Stallman's Experiences With 'Cancel Brigades' Ought to Educate Linus Torvalds
Now they talk about "if Linus dies" scenarios
 
Steven Field (Red Hat) Speaks of "Recent Layoff" (RA/Wave) in Red Hat
IBM really doesn't like it when people talk about "RAs"
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part XIII - Is EPO Vice-President Steve Rowan in Cahoots With the "Alicante Mafia"?
that deserves much media attention, political intervention, and condemnation
A Week Ago We Contacted the EPO's Stephen (Steve) Rowan About Cocainegate
Tomorrow we'll write some more about Rowan
“Wikilaundering” Explained
"London PR firm rewrites Wikipedia for governments and billionaires"
IBM Reports 'Results' Tomorrow, Expect More "RAs" (Mass Layoffs)
they use words like "efficiency", "optimisation", "AI", "pivot", "modernisation" and so on
Earlier This Month Microsoft Lunduke Said in Public It Was Good That Renee Good Was Murdered, Now He Mocks or Demonises People for Saying the US is Unsafe
Don't be easily conned by demagogues
Google News and "Linux" Slop
Why won't Google be interested in tackling this issue? Instead Google has been trying to participate in this issue.
IBM Kills Red Hat in the Darkness
What IBM does to Red Hat is malicious
IBM Red Hat's Goal Is Not Real Security (It Probably Never Was)
Spies and trolls are very malicious people and sometimes they're the same thing
With Absurd Lies About Slop, Which Lacks Intelligence or Financial Potential, GAFAM and IBM Will Twist Mass Layoffs as 'Efficiency Drive' or 'AI Pivot'
More layoffs are on the way
Animal Advocacy Works
All it takes is effort and determination
EPO Strike This Week
What has happened to Europe?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 26, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, January 26, 2026
For the EPO to Survive, António Campinos and the "Alicante Mafia" Must Fall on Their Sword
There are EPO insiders who are convinced Campinos too is (or was) a cocaine addict
Gemini Links 26/01/2026: Pocket Power Pack, Batteries, and Breaks
Links for the day
"Microsoft Vista 11 Emergency Update" as Windows Fails to Boot (Again)
Microsoft is desperately trying to find some new business model as the debt soars
4 Hours Ago The Register MS Published Paid-for Spam About "AI" (Slop, Buzzwords)
"AI" mentioned 13 times in the page
IBM 'Results' Due Wednesday Evening, Expect Clues About Mass Layoffs
Don't expect IBM to say anything about "layoffs" or "RAs"
The Fall of the EPO (or the "Alicante Mafia" at EPO) Will be Due to This Reckless Lawyer Who Does Cocaine in Public While Speaking for the EPO
The longer European politicians (and media) turn a blind eye to this corruption, the worse it'll get
Why RMS is Scary to GAFAM 'Engineers' and the GAFAM Apologists (or Addicts)
especially because of his ideas and his way of life
Firefox 'Market Share' Down to All-Time Low in 2026, Adding to It User-Hostile 'Features' Only Worsens Things
What is the goal of Mozilla at this point?
Links 26/01/2026: Windows Back Doors, American Winter Storm, and Report Says Iran's "Protest Death Toll May Exceed 30,000"
Links for the day
Life Got Simpler and Therefore Also Healthier and Happier
Some people envy not wealth but happiness (which they're unable to attain, even with hoarding and accumulation)
Links 26/01/2026: Financial Stress in German Farms and Germany Wants to Take Its Gold Reserves Out of the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/01/2026: "Lack of Meaningful Things" and Getting Back to Programming
Links for the day
Strong Correlation Between the Slop Ponzi Scheme (or Bubble) and Major Disasters
BitCoin ruins the planet; so does slop
We Will Never Allow the "Alicante Mafia" to Hide "Cocainegate"
transparency typically scares malicious actors
Fewer Involuntary Interruptions This Year
This year we're doing much better
Prisons Are for Dangerous People Who Pose a Threat to the Public, Not People Who Inform the Public
At the end of the week EPO workers go on strike
Microsoft Loses Grip on Indian Ocean
Many countries, including in older allies of the US (such as Canada and the US), look for ways to get out of Microsoft dependence urgently
XBox Consoles Nearly Dead by Now, the 'XBox' (ex-Box) Brand Now Stands for Something Full of Slop, Spam, Filler, and Chaff
We're seeing the last day (maybe year) of "XBox"
The Great "AI" CON Explained by Dr. Andy Farnell
LLMs are basically advertisers of sorts
Links 26/01/2026: "Journalists Detained", in Germany "Unjustly Jailed Man Gets €1.3 Million Compensation"
Links for the day
Red Hat Quietly Going Extinct After Bluewashing in 2026
At this point it would be rather foolish to assume that IBM will let Red Hat just "do its own thing" or maintain its corporate culture, identity, projects etc.
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part XII - Kris De Neef and Roberta Romano-Götsch, Who Stepped in for the Cokehead, Have No Comment on His Cocaine Usage (and the EPO's Cover-up)
Sh-t floats to the top.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 25, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, January 25, 2026
Gemini Links 26/01/2026: Cold Perception, Software Patches in NixOS, and Sunk Cost Fallacy
Links for the day
Fake IBM Retirements (IBM Gives Older Workers Ultimatums, Deadlines, and Carrots on Sticks)
As they point out, IBM is desperate to lower costs
Linuxiac is Basically a Fake News Site, But It's Being Fed by Google News
Because Google News is run by Google, a slop pusher
Links 25/01/2026: Slop "Tribalism", Nike Apparently Cracked
Links for the day
Claims That PIPs Are Abused for Silent Mass Layoffs at IBM (Without Severance) or Forced Retirements
Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) "clearly bogus as everyone on my team who has been on one has been fired"
WebM Version of Richard Stallman's Latest Talk (Georgia Tech Talk)
The file size is smaller
After Half a Decade Vista 11 is Still a Giant Failure
Don't expect Microsoft to gain a foothold
Details on IBM Layoffs in the EU Last Week, Same Allegedly Coming to the US Shortly
"Around 50 people affected in Belgium."
Technology Trends Driven by DRM Giants, Planned Obsolescence, Not the Needs of the Buyers
The "pushers" think of customers as "users"; and they encourage passivity, Stockholm Syndrome
Links 25/01/2026: Microsoft BitLocker Backdoored for Decades Already, Microsoft-Backed ICE Still Murders Civilians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/01/2026: "Expert in a Dying Field" and Global Commands
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 24, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, January 24, 2026
After the Slop Bubble
At the end, looking back, we'll all generally understand that the net effort of slop was environmental destruction
IBM CEO Says IBM is Just Reliant on Buzzwords That Are Overhyped
IBM has nothing to show anymore and telling fairytales to shareholders is a temporary 'fix'
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part XI - No Comment From Steve Rowan, Niloofar Simon, and Christoph Ernst About Cocaine Inside EPO
What kind of patent office is this?