Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 3/11/2015: Linux 4.3, OpenELEC 6.0



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Varoufakis: Why Corbyn Is Like Thatcher
    Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a "conviction politician" like Margaret Thatcher was.

    He said anti-austerity and anti-war MP Mr Corbyn is someone viewed as extreme but who could shift the political scenery like the former Conservative prime minister.

    Speaking to Sky News, Mr Varoufakis admitted he was "one of those strange left-wingers who missed" the late Tory leader.


  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Climate change could have a significant impact on our economy
      Climate change may have many economic impacts, including loss of crops, changes in water supply, increased incidence of natural disaster, and spikes in health care costs related to infectious diseases and temperature-related illnesses. However, hard evidence about the effects of climate change on economic activity has been inconsistent.

      A new paper published in Nature takes on the ambitious task of connecting micro- and macro-level estimates of climate costs. The study finds that climate change can be expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23 percent by the year 2100. This study is important because it solves a problem that has existed in prior models of climate change effects on economics: discrepancies between macro- and micro-level observations. This study presents the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled in some way to global climate. The study also sets up a new empirical paradigm for modeling economic loss in response to climate change.



    • Down From the Mountain
      Climate change deniers should come to Ghana


    • Ignoring Planetary Reality in the Name of Global Commerce
      Freed from the physical reality that places the United States in the temperate zone of a tilted planet, Schrager is free to reorganize regional schedules in the name of “economic efficiency” without regard to what this would actually do to people’s lives. She wisely declines to describe the results of her scheme, maybe realizing that the idea of putting the West Coast permanently on what is now Central Standard Time would have limited appeal had she spelled out that in mid-December, the Sun would set at 2:43 pm in Los Angeles, 2:27 pm in Portland and 2:18 pm in Seattle.


    • Fred Thompson's Legacy Includes Giving the Kochs a Free Pass
      Reverse mortgage pitchman and former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) passed away on November 1, 2015, at the age of 73, but his legacy of giving the Koch Brothers a pass on one of their first major forays into funneling money into mysterious groups to try to win elections continues unabated.






  • Finance



  • Privacy



    • Internet firms to be banned from offering unbreakable encryption under new laws
      Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be unveiled on Wednesday.

      Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

      Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested through a warrant.


    • The new Investigatory Powers Bill and the politics of 'nodding along'


    • The All Writs Act, Software Licenses, and Why Judges Should Ask More Questions
      Pending before federal magistrate judge James Orenstein is the government’s request for an order obligating Apple, Inc. to unlock an iPhone and thereby assist prosecutors in decrypting data the government has seized and is authorized to search pursuant to a warrant. In an order questioning the government’s purported legal basis for this request, the All Writs Act of 1789 (AWA), Judge Orenstein asked Apple for a brief informing the court whether the request would be technically feasible and/or burdensome. After Apple filed, the court asked it to file a brief discussing whether the government had legal grounds under the AWA to compel Apple’s assistance. Apple filed that brief and the government filed a reply brief last week in the lead-up to a hearing this morning.


    • Section 215 and “Fruitless” (?!?) Constitutional Adjudication
      Hopefully, it won’t take a lot of convincing for folks to understand just how wrong-headed this is. For starters, if the plaintiffs are correct, they are currently being subjected to unconstitutional government surveillance for which they are entitled to a remedy. The fact that this surveillance has a limited shelf-life (and/or that Congress was complicit in it) doesn’t in any way ameliorate the constitutional violation — which is exactly why the Supreme Court has, for generations, recognized an exception to mootness doctrine for constitutional violations that, owing to their short duration, are “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” Indeed, in this very same opinion, the Second Circuit first held that the ACLU’s challenge isn’t moot, only to then invokes mootness-like principles to justify not resolving the constitutional claim. It can’t be both; either the constitutional challenge is moot, or it isn’t.


    • Martin Rowson on Theresa May’s snooper’s charter




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • NDRC Seeks Comment On Draft Anti-Monopoly Guidelines Against IPR Abuse
      On October 23, the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines Regulating Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights(Draft for Comments) were made available to USITO by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for review and comment.

      The five-part draft provides guidance on how to regulate IPR-related monopoly agreements, abuse of market dominant position, monopoly involving standards-essential patents, and concentration of undertakings.


    • Copyrights



      • US judge denies copyright over 3-word phrase ‘Everyday I’m Hustlin’’
        Is there copyright in very short phrases?

        As copyright enthusiasts know, this invariably proves to be one of the thorniest issues to determine when it comes to specific cases. Just a couple of days ago it was reported that Taylor Swift has been sued for copyright infringement over inclusion of 'haters gone hate' and 'playas gone play' in her song Shake It Off.








Recent Techrights' Posts

GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
 
Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money
Links 11/08/2025: Meritless Twitter Suspensions and Disney Scraps Deepfake Dwayne Johnson
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Upgrading Debian Bookworm and Better Quality PDFs From Gemini Pages
Links for the day
Currys PCWorld Lied a Decade Ago, 10 Years Later It Still Effectively Voids Your Warranty for Installing GNU/Linux Despite It Being Increasingly Mainstream
Microsoft gatekeepers
Team GNOME Has Libeled Me for Nearly 20 Years
we are not dealing with sane people
Experience With Airlines in 'Web Sites' and in 'Apps'
In a lot of ways, Stallman Was Right about what JavaScript would turn out to be
Open Does Not Mean Free
wiser to ask if some program is freedom-respecting
The Register MS Takes Money From Companies Banned by the Biden and Trump Administrations (National Security Risk)
today's sponsor
Sabotaging GNU/Linux PCs (and Users) is Not a 'Joke'
maybe cruelty is the very objective
How We Process Screenshots of Slop to Suitably Tag Them as Slop
everything is a single command
Links 11/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Climate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 10, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 10, 2025
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Tea Caffeine Hot and Super ZZ Zero
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and Other Serial Sloppers
Maybe Microsoft wants to dub this "Web5"
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Residents Management Company, Automation, and Politics
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: AOL Ending Dial-up
Links for the day
Seductive Mirage or Allure of Complex, Proprietary Coffee Machines (or Similar White Elephants)
Software is a lot like those things
Links 10/08/2025: Webrings, “AI Sunglasses” and “AI Eyeglasses”, US Administration Intensifies Attacks on Science and Research
Links for the day
Sometimes Newer is Worse
We generally need to reject this dumb notion that "old" means bad
The Code Used to Make Techrights Fits on a Seventh of a Floppy Disk (or 100KB When Compressed)
For the sake of comparison I've just downloaded the latest version of WordPress. The ZIP file is 27.2MB in size, or ~27,200KB.
What They Tell Young Programmers
Coding in 2025
Simpler is Better When Simple is Enough
Over-complicating things to "sell" new versions is so 1990s
Links 10/08/2025: From Social Control Media to Prison, New Examples of Windows TCO
Links for the day
Sloppy Reporting About Slop, or How The Register MS Lowers Its Standards
Maybe the management isn't even aware of this
IBM's Strategy: Cull 'Expensive' Workers, Replace Them With Cheaper Ones
So far we saw not even one rebuttal or challenge to the claim of Red Hat layoffs scheduled for tomorrow
If You Attack Somebody Too Much You Legitimise and Strengthen That Somebody
at the end those attacks add up to a "martyr" status
The Man Who Helped Microsoft Kill Linux is Trying to Delay Our Lawsuits Against Him
By conservative estimates, and based on court documents submitted by them, they're prepared to spend over a million dollars on lawyers, fighting against me and my wife
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Gen Con 2025 and Framework Laptop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 09, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 09, 2025