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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • How to deal with leaving an open source project
    A few months later, I made an even more difficult decision. The decision was to leave an open source project that I'd helped to start and had been active in running for the past 14 years. I'd been working on the project longer than my last five jobs combined. When I announced that I was leaving the project a lot of people were surprised, mostly because up until that point no one in a leadership position had left the project and no one knew what that meant for the project, especially me. Unlike the previous jobs I'd quit, there was no exit strategy in place and I didn't have a plan for what I would do next.


  • Dell EMC takes on streaming storage with open-source solution, Pravega


    Kaitchuck joined theCUBE at the Flink Forward conference last week in San Francisco to talk about Pravega, a new open-source stream storage system that Dell EMC designed and built from the ground up for modern-day stream processors like Apache Flink, an open-source stream processing framework.


  • Equinix CTO: Open Source Critical for Interconnection
    Open Networking Summit – Equinix sees open source as a critical aspect of its ability to be the place where networks and data centers converge, connect and share data, and that view is fueling its efforts to be an early tester of what the Open Compute Project and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) are developing.

    Equinix CTO Ihab Tarazi tells Light Reading in an interview here earlier this month that the next-generation architecture toward which telecom networks are evolving will require massive scaling of the Equinix interconnection model that will depend on open source approaches to manage the disaggregation of hardware and software that virtualization is enabling.


  • Is Mastodon the new social media star, or imploding black hole?
    Mastodon has exploded onto the social scene in the last week and is gaining users at a phenomenal rate. But is the new network an open source geek's dream or Twitter's ultimate nightmare?


  • S4i Systems Embraces Open Source Project
    Open source development on IBM i bodes well for the platform and all those who look to the future as well as recognizing the value of the past. RPG development isn’t threatened by open source options. It’s stimulated by open source. The modernization of RPG, C, or COBOL investments gets a boost from open source. There are people writing applications on IBM i that would not be within shouting distance of the platform if open source language options were not available.


  • Events



    • Volunteering at the 2017 SFBay ACT-W conference
      I had the privilege of volunteering for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) table at the ACT-W conference at Galvanize, San Francisco this last Saturday with Erich Clauer and Zachariah Sherzad. It was an event focused on giving women the best information on advancing in technical careers. Keynotes and talks sounded excellent on paper, but I missed out on them, as I was in the career fair part of the event for the day. There were many volunteering tables set up in the career area. OSI was one of them. Pyladies, Chicktech, Docusign, among others were there to support technical women. I answered questions about OSI and open source. There was a mix of experience levels, but most were just starting their technical careers.


    • How to organize an OpenStack Operators Meetup
      When we started organizing this operators mid-cycle meetup we had no idea what it meant to gather so many people — especially operators. This last cycle, the two last standing competitors to host the Operators Meetup were Milan and Tokyo. Tokyo had already hosted the Summit last year so it was finally our opportunity to bring part of the global OpenStack community to Italy.


    • 5 OpenStack user sessions you can’t miss at the Boston Summit
      OpenStack Summits are a whirl of energy—from session rooms with standing room only, all-day trainings to onboard new Stackers and an expo hall with over 100 companies explaining new products and performing live demos.


    • Free Webinar: Why and How To Publish Your Work and Opinions
      As part of its goal to cultivate more diverse thoughts and opinions in open source, the April Women in Open Source webinar will discuss why publishing your own research, technical work and industry commentary is a smart move for your career and incredibly beneficial to the industry at large.


    • SPACK: A Package Manager for Supercomputers, Linux, and MacOS
      In this video from Switzerland HPC Conference, Massimiliano Culpo from EPFL presents: SPACK – A Package Manager for Supercomputers, Linux and MacOS.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Palemoon Looking forward in 2017
        This is a general announcement to lay down our rough plans for 2017, since there will be some big changes coming in the Mozilla landscape.






  • SaaS/Back End



  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Open Access/Content



      • Using SlideWiki for OpenCourseWare
        Open source is about much more than free (as in beer and speech) software and hardware designs. It’s being harnessed to do things like bring free or affordable health care to undeveloped nations, and as the underpinning for free education.




    • Open Hardware/Modding



      • Z80 Fuzix Is Like Old Fashioned Unix
        Of course, 1980 Unix was a lot different from modern-day Linux, but it is still closer to a modern system than CP/M. Fuzix also adds several modern features like 30 character file names and up-to-date APIs. The kernel isn’t just for the Z80, by the way. It can target a variety of older processors including the 6502, the 6809, the 8086, and others. As you might expect, the system can fit in a pretty small system.






  • Programming/Development



    • Why don't you just rewrite it in X?
      Recently there has been movement to convert tooling used by various software projects in the Gnome stack from a mishmash of shell, Awk and Perl into Python 3. The main reasoning for this is that having only one "scripting" dependency to a modern, well maintained project makes it simple to compile applications using Gnome technologies on platforms such as Windows. Moving between projects also becomes easier.






Leftovers



  • Go back in time with the Internet Archive’s collection of Macintosh programs from the 1980s

    Earlier today, the site released a new software library: emulated programs from Macintosh computers dating from 1984 through 1989. The collection is a wonderful dose of nostalgia for anyone who grew up using these computers at home, work, or school. The best part is that you can emulate the programs right in your browser.



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



    • Using Microsegmentation to Prevent Security Breaches
      No one likes to admit it but most of what has passed for IT security in the enterprise has historically been rudimentary at best. Most organizations physically segmented their networks behind a series of firewalls deployed at the edge of the network. The trouble is that once malware gets past the firewall it could move laterally almost anywhere in the data center.

      With the rise of network virtualization, a new approach to microsegmenting networks is now possible. The new approach involves using microsegmenting to prevent malware from laterally generating East-West traffic across the data center. Instead of a physical instance of a firewall, there is now a virtual instance of a firewall that is simpler to provision and update.



    • Latest Exploit Dump By Shadow Brokers Contains Easy-To-Use Windows Exploits, Most Already Patched By Microsoft [Ed: Sad to see TechDirt repeating Microsoft's lies in the same way many ‘journalists’ repeated Apple lies after Vault 7 revelations. Some of the holes remain unpatched, and some versions (still under support) will always remain unpatched.]


      Not that those with the latest and greatest should rest easy. The NSA hasn't stopped producing and purchasing exploits. The SB stash was a few years old. Current Microsoft software remains under attack from state intelligence agencies and criminals. But this dump of tools shows just how powerful the NSA's toolkit is -- one made even more dangerous by its apparent ease of use. It makes exploit delivery possible for anyone, not just those with a very specific skillset.


    • Leaked NSA exploits plant a bull's-eye on Windows Server
      Friday’s release of suspected NSA spying tools is bad news for companies running Windows Server. The cyberweapons, which are now publicly available, can easily hack older versions of the OS.

      The Shadow Brokers, a mysterious hacking group, leaked the files online, setting off worries that cybercriminals will incorporate them in their own hacks.


    • The YARA tool for Linux security - part 001.


    • Twistlock 2.0 Improves Container Security and Compliance
      Container security vendor Twistlock is updating its namesake platform with a 2.0 release that aims to help improve container visibility and security.

      Twistlock first debuted its container security platform in November 2015, providing runtime security options for container deployments. The platform has evolved since then with a steady stream of updates. The new Twistlock 2.0 update, includes several enhanced container security capabilities as well as a new backend code infrastructure.



    • Cyber crime: British Chambers of Commerce urges firms to ramp up defences after spate of hacks [iophk: "banning Windows finally?"]

      “Firms that don’t adopt the appropriate protections leave themselves open to tough penalties,” he said.



    • HTTPS Certificate Issuance Becomes More Secure Thanks to New CAA Standard
      Last week, the CA/Browser Forum voted to implement CAA mandatory checks before the issuance of new SSL/TLS certificates, as a measure to prevent the misissuance of HTTPS certificates.

      According to CA/Browser Forum ballot 187, 100% of all browser makers and 94% of all certificate authorities voted to implement CAA mandatory checks starting September 8, 2017.




  • Defence/Aggression

    • Facebook responds to reported shooting on its live platform


    • Iraqis Making Freelance Bomb Disposal Into A Lucrative New Business
      When someone gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right?

      And so it goes in Freedom Land of Iraq, where for many, now out from under the heels of Islamic State, the Iraqi people have only to clear out all the bombs, IEDs, and unexploded ordnance left everywhere they want to live by all sides in this ongoing clusterf*ck of foreign policy adventurism.

      Despite the gazillions of dollars in U.S. aid, Iraq claims not to have the personnel to defuse all the explosives left behind once freedom reigns in places like Fallujah.


    • Trump’s Abrupt Regime-Change Pivot Raises Concerns About a “Mad Max Syria” Should Assad Fall
      President Trump’s cruise-missile strike against Syria was celebrated by establishment politicians and media, their glee at striking a blow against Bashar al-Assad swamping any rational discussion of what happens next.

      Assad is undoubtedly the most despicable war criminal in power today. His forces have ruthlessly starved and bombed hundreds of thousands of his own people, and tortured and executed thousands more.

      But the enthusiasm to take military action against a hated leader is highly reminiscent of the run-up to U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya. And the U.S. is even less prepared to cope with the potentially disastrous consequences in Syria.


    • The Problem is Washington, Not North Korea
      Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain on the Communist country. Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation, prevented its government from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions, and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.


    • President MOABA (Mother of All Bullshit Artists)


      To call the ever-shifting decisions and actions from Donald Trump and his team of Billionaire Big Shots a dark comedy is a natural defensive response. I do it all the time. But it may be time to recognize it has become inadequate to address our condition as citizen/victims of a looming train wreck. Donald Trump is not funny anymore.

      As a New Yorker review of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show painfully suggests, the satire/journalism of a Colbert and a Jon Stewart, while sanity-saving, come up short in the face of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Bill Maher works better, because he has much more edge. It’s also true that superlatives like preposterous begin to fall short.

      As we watch classic authoritarianism seep into what’s glibly touted as a constitutional republic, how does journalism respond? In a “post-truth” intellectual environment where a presidential adviser can with a straight face propose “alternative facts,” how does one report anything? When absolutely everything is in question, how can answers be anything but opinions? What does journalism do when the ground underneath it is destabilized and all the truth-seeking oxygen is sucked out of the air by a Mother Of All Bombs set off in the middle of the country’s most revered faith in a free press?


    • Through the ‘War on Terror’ Looking Glass
      The U.S. government’s 15-year-long “global war on terror” has spread death and chaos across entire regions – while also imposing propaganda narratives on Americans – with no end in sight, says Nicolas J S Davies.


    • UK attorney general in bid to block case against Tony Blair over Iraq war

      It seeks their conviction for the crime of “aggression” and is based on the damning findings of last year’s Chilcot report into the British decision to join the invasion of Iraq, under the false pretext that the Saddam Hussein regime had weapons of mass destruction.





  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



    • CIA Director calls WikiLeaks an “enemy,” says Assange has “no First Amendment freedoms”
      Pompeo is the head of an organization whose record in criminality, illegality and murder is unsurpassed.


    • Pompeo, Power and Wikileaks
      The Central Intelligence Agency’s current director, Mike Pompeo, has a view of history much like that of any bureaucrat as understood by the great sociologist Max Weber. The essential, fundamental purpose of bureaucracy is a rationale to manufacture and keep secrets. Transparency and accountability are its enemies. Those who challenge that particular order are, by definition, defilers and dangerous contrarians.

      On Thursday, April 13, Pompeo was entertained by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an opportunity of sorts to sound off on a range of points.[1] Pompeo’s theme is unmistakeable, opening up with a discussion about Philip Agee’s “advocacy” as a founding member of CounterSpy, which called in 1973 for the outing of CIA undercover operatives.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Natural gas is leaking from city pipes, but spotting leaks is getting easier.

      The researchers admit in their paper that their measurements were conservative and their results aren’t a full census of all the leaks in a particular area. But the largest leaks are identified, and the researchers estimated that repairing the largest 20 percent of leaks could cut methane emissions from natural gas pipelines in half.







  • Finance

    • Uber lost $2.8 billion last year

      But that rapid growth came at a cost. Uber says it lost $2.8 billion in 2016, excluding the China business it sold midway through the year. Uber's CEO had previously said it was losing $1 billion a year in China, prior to selling its China business to rival Didi Chuxing in August.



    • The De-Professionalization of the Academy

      Rather, what follows is a jeremiad decrying the direction that academia has taken in order to underscore the threats posed to academic integrity and institutional legitimacy.



    • Saudi Arabia raises $9 billion in first global Islamic bond issue
      Saudi Arabia raised $9 billion in its first global Islamic bond issue, the government announced today, a move analysts say could ease pressure on foreign reserves.

      The sale of Islamic bonds, known as sukuks, comes after the kingdom in October turned to the conventional global debt market for the first time, raising $17.5 billion in a bond issue. Saudi Arabia has also sold domestic bonds and drawn on its accumulated reserves, all in an effort to reform the economy and address budget deficits caused by a collapse in oil revenues since 2014.


    • Happy Tax Day! Here’s How Corporations Plan to Screw You Over.
      Few things transform us into frustrated baboons like navigating Turbotax each year. It’s incredible any computers physically survive April.

      First there’s the maddening fact, when all is said and done, that the U.S. has something approaching a flat tax system. It’s true that, as right-wing think tanks constantly bleat, the top 1 percent pay a much higher rate than everyone else in federal income tax. But most people pay higher rates than the rich do in payroll and state and local taxes. Add everything together, and everyone from the middle class on up is paying about the same percentage in taxes overall.

      Then there’s the grim reality that a big chunk of our money goes to buy things like 21,000-pound bombs, which we drop on, say, Afghanistan, a country with an economy one-one thousandth the size of ours.


    • Trump’s Five Worst Tax Secrets, Revealed
      Thousands of demonstrators marched on Saturday to demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns. But, barring an unexpected surprise – a W2 form issued by Vladimir Putin, or a 1099 from mafia boss Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno – we already know Trump’s ugliest tax secrets. We will reveal those secrets…




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • Voting machines stolen ahead of Georgia special election: report

      The equipment was stolen last Saturday evening from a Cobb County precinct manager’s vehicle, Channel 2 Action News said Monday. He did not immediately report the theft.

    • Warren: McConnell won't say hello to me


    • Turkey's President Erdogan claims victory in vote to give him sweeping new powers - but opposition cries foul [iophk: "big problem for Europe and NATO"]
    • It’s time for Theresa May to ditch grammar school plans
      It is one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster that education secretary Justine Greening is not the biggest supporter of the policy that is now the social mobility “flagship” of Theresa May’s government – expanding the number of grammar schools.

      Greening must be aware of the clear UK and international evidence that selective education both fails to raise overall standards, and undermines the prospects of poor children. Education Policy Institute researchers last year analysed the government’s own schools data and drew two key conclusions. First, that almost no children on free school meals get into grammar schools – a risible 4,000 out of more than eight million pupils in the whole of England. Second, that although there is a small benefit for pupils who are admitted to selective schools, this is offset by the worse results for other pupils in areas with a significant number of grammar places.


    • Turkish democracy has just died; Europe could not have saved it
      Well farewell then Turkey. Or at least, farewell the Turkey of Kemal Ataturk. It’s a shame. Ataturk-ism nearly made its own centenary.

      But the nation that he founded, which believed broadly in progressive notions such as a separation of mosque and state, has just been formally snuffed out. President Erdogan’s success in the referendum to award himself Caliph-like powers for life finally sees the end of Turkey’s secular and democratic experiment. Perhaps the poll which gave him victory was rigged. Perhaps it wasn’t. In the same way that perhaps the ‘coup’ last summer was real. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Either way, it’s all worked out very well for the man who once famously said that democracy, for him, was like a bus: he would ride it until it got him to his desired destination, at which point he would get off. On Sunday Erdogan got off the bus, coaxing or hauling his country off with him.


    • Trump Administration Kills Open.Gov, Will Not Release White House Visitor Logs
      It will never be said that the Trump presidency began with a presumption of openness. His pre-election refusal to release his tax returns set a bit of precedent in that regard. The immediate post-election muffling of government agency social media accounts made the administration's opacity goals… um… clearer.

      So, in an unsurprising move, the Trump administration will be doing the opposite of the Obama administration. The American public will no longer have the privilege of keeping tabs on White House visitors.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Shadow Brokers leak links NSA to alleged US-Israeli Stuxnet malware that targeted Iran
      Malicious computer malware that caused substantial damage to Iran’s nuclear program may be the work of the NSA, researchers burrowing into the latest leak from hacking group Shadow Brokers have discovered within the computer data.

      A tool found in Friday’s leak matched one used by the notorious Stuxnet malware.

      First detected in 2010, Stuxnet is believed to be the joint work of the US and Israel; a claim that Edward Snowden backed up in a 2013 interview but which has never been acknowledged by either government.
    • Data protection agency investigates gov't sending personal data of Hungarian citizens to Russia
      „More and more foreign funded organizations operate in Hungary with the aim of covertly interfering in our the domestic affairs. These organizations could jeopardize our independence. What do you think Hungary should do?”


    • Tuesday's papers: Intelligence proposal, coming job boom, frozen statue

      The HS headline warns that Supo could soon open private letters and conduct workplace searches as part of intelligence gathering, a phase preceding criminal investigation. The new powers could only be used in connection with severe threats to national security.

      Public discussion has so far centred on whether either of Finland's main intelligence authorities could spy on citizens' internet traffic if it extends beyond Finland's cyber-borders. Neither Supo nor the Defense Forces may currently gather intelligence on personal traffic in this way.

    • Bad Take: Rep. Sensenbrenner's Response Over Internet Privacy Concerns: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet'


      The idea that people "have a choice" in using the internet today is laughably out of touch. Indeed, so many things that people rely on today pretty much require the internet. Jobs, transportation, housing and more frequently require the internet. And, to put an even stronger "WTF" on Sensenbrenner's misguided statement: a big part of the problem here is the very lack of choice. The vast majority of Americans have no real choice when it comes to getting true broadband access -- as the very questioner stated, and which Sensenbrenner totally ignored. Thanks to bad policies, we have a non-competitive market, where if you want broadband, you basically have to go with one company, and then it gets access to a ton of data about you.

      If Sensenbrenner truly meant what he said here, he'd have been against rolling back the rules. As small ISP boss Dane Jasper recently noted on our podcast, without these privacy rules, it actually gives the giant providers that much more power over the smaller upstarts, and makes it harder for the small providers to compete.

      Also, Sensenbrenner is simply flat out wrong with his argument about "if the internet was regulated like a utility at the beginning" because it WAS regulated like a utility at the beginning and it resulted in tons of competition and innovation. Indeed, for most of the internet's early rise it was treated as a utility in terms of things like open access and line sharing. And privacy rules. It's only more recently that that went away.


    • Surveillance and our Insecure Infrastructure

      Less discussed is how many of these same surveillance techniques are used by other -- smaller and poorer -- more totalitarian countries to spy on political opponents, dissidents, human rights defenders; the press in Toronto has documented some of the many abuses, by countries like Ethiopia , the UAE, Iran, Syria, Kazakhstan , Sudan, Ecuador, Malaysia, and China.

      That these countries can use network surveillance technologies to violate human rights is a shame on the world, and there's a lot of blame to go around.



    • Inabox weighs in on industry dissatisfaction with data retention laws

      Australia’s new data retention laws have been labelled as rubbish, and even anti-competitive, by wholesale telecommunications and IT services group Inabox.





  • Civil Rights/Policing



    • "Spit on the Cross or Die"


    • Children taken to meet Islamic preacher who had ‘promoted and encouraged religious violence’

      A primary school took children on a trip to meet an Islamic preacher, just months after the High Court ruled the imam an ‘extremist’ who had ‘promoted and encouraged religious violence’.



    • Finland has a nascent ‘jihadist underworld’

      Radical {sic} Islamic networks have an increasingly strong presence in Finland, Jyri Rantala, the head of communications at the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), estimated in an interview with Talouselämä on Thursday.

      “We could even say that a ‘jihadist underworld’ is emerging in Finland. These networks have ties to all key terrorist organisations,” he said.



    • Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin Metro Area One of Top 20 Places in U.S. Where Women and Girls at Risk for Female Genital Mutilation


    • After triple talaq, woman attacked with acid by husband, in-laws


    • Over one hundred cars damaged after double garage fire in Malmö


    • With laptops banned onboard aircraft, your data is no longer yours if you fly

      New US regulations ban laptops on board some aircraft, requiring laptops to be in checked luggage. One of the first things you learn in information security is that if an adversary has had physical access to your computer, then it is not your computer anymore. This effectively means that the US three-letter agencies are taking themselves the right to compromise any computer from any traveler on these flights.



    • A Personal Look Inside Modern Islam
      In describing this and many other conversations, Aspden’s reporting makes another very important point: that the Islamic revival of the last four decades has been anything but a simple story of fundamentalism vs. modernism. Instead she shows that Islamism in Egypt has taken many different forms, some fanatically reactionary and intolerant and some trying to find ways to reconcile strong religious belief with life in a modern, diverse world.


    • Trump's immigration policy splits children from their mothers
      Children have the right to freedom and dignity, and should not be separated from their parents against their will unless it is in child’s best interest. These rights, as reflected in the 1959 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which the US is not a signatory, are basic for all children, including immigrant and refugee children. Today, these rights are under threat by the Trump administration and it is our moral obligation to fight for these basic rights on behalf of mothers and children coming to the United States seeking safety.

      On March 6, 2017, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly, confirmed that the Department was considering a policy that would separate children from their parents at the Mexico-US border. Under this plan, mothers would be held in custody while children would initially be placed in the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This policy, first considered and announced but not implemented by the Obama administration, served as a pathway for the Trump administration to intensify its agenda to dehumanise immigrants and refugees.


    • Alabama Sheriff In Court For Starving Inmates, Paying Critic's Grandson To Install Keylogger On Her Computer
      A number of statutes and practices have created perverse incentives for law enforcement, but none are nearly so blatant as this Alabama state law governing the feeding of inmates. The law, passed over 100 years ago, says law enforcement personnel -- mainly sheriffs -- can keep whatever's left over from state and federal inmate food stipends. This doesn't mean the leftover money is routed to a general fund or used to defray law enforcement/jail-related expenses. No, this means the money flows from taxpayers, (mostly) bypasses prisoners, and ends up in sheriffs' personal checking accounts. (via Radley Balko)

      This legalized skimming has resulted in the obvious: underfed inmates and sheriffs with overfed bank accounts. The law first received national attention in 2008, when Morgan County sheriff Greg Bartlett found himself in federal court, defending himself against a lawsuit brought by his prisoners. Inmates were dropping weight and going hungry while Bartlett increased his personal income by $212,000 over three years, taking home a great deal of the $1.75 per prisoner per day state funds. (Federal prisoners housed in state jails are allowed $3 per day, which can also be rerouted to sheriffs' checking accounts.)

      [...]

      There appears to be corruption all over the place in Morgan County, Alabama. But it all starts with a bad law state lawmakers are in no hurry to take off the books. Despite multiple federal lawsuits stemming from sheriffs' starve-and-skim tactics, the incredibly perverse incentive remains intact. There are probably plenty of taxpayers who don't like the idea of their money being used to food and house convicted criminals, but I doubt any of those taxpayers are happier knowing they're padding sheriffs' bank accounts and investing in shady businesses.




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Secret Sorority Handshakes, Questionable Lawsuits, Free Speech, The Right To Be Forgotten And Section 230
      Instead, I'd like to go back one more year to May of 2015, when we wrote about a bizarre case in which the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority was officially suing a "Jane Doe" former member, who had apparently posted the sorority's super secret handshake to the Penny Arcade forums.


    • Copyrights



      • Nintendo Ended Up Creating A Competitor After DMCAing Fan-Game It Decided It Didn't Want To Make Itself
        In the wake of the success of Nintendo's Mario Maker game, Nintendo fans almost immediately began clamoring for similar versions of other classic Nintendo properties. The obvious choice for the next franchise to get the treatment was the Zelda series, of course. The desire for a Zelda Maker title reached enough of a pitch that Game Informer asked Nintendo reps in 2015 about whether the company would be producing such a game.

        [...]

        Sink has set up a Patreon page where people can support his efforts. Runiya comes packaged with Legend Maker, which pretty much everyone knows is actually Zelda Maker slightly modified. In other words, what started off as a single fan and hobbyist looking to prove to fans and Nintendo alike that a Zelda Maker game could indeed be made has now morphed into a competitor for Nintendo. Legend Maker isn't going to run afoul of the intellectual property of Nintendo any longer, yet it still exists, and Sink is now collecting money for his efforts. Meanwhile, if Nintendo does want to try giving Zelda Maker a go, someone basically already was first to market with that kind of product. The company didn't listen to its fans, so another fan did. And the bullying didn't really stop the project, it just made sure that the project -- that, again, Nintendo didn't want to do itself -- no longer gets the brand recognition of having Zelda attached to it.


      • An interview with Michael Geist: copyright reform in Canada and beyond
        Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He is an authority on intellectual property, telecommunications, and privacy policy, and is a frequent writer and commentator on issues such as international trade negotiations and Canadian copyright reform. Geist will join the CC community at the Creative Commons Global Summit later this month.








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The Munich FUD Tactics (Microsoft Modus Operandi): Microsoft-Connected Sites Claim Denmark Failed With Free Software, But That's Not What Actually Happened
With Microsoft, it almost always boils down to politics
Links 31/10/2026: John Romero Comeback After Being Shafted by Microsoft, Google Faces Criminal Probe Over Deforestation in Finland
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: Rambling on Self-hosting and Ad Video Screens Don’t Make Money
Links for the day
Can't Trust Big Banks, Let's Try 'Bros' Instead?
But let's blame "North Korea"
IRC's Growing Popularity in 2026
No company controls or profits from IRC, it is in the Commons
"AI" as Surrogate for Debt and Distraction From Computing (Bots Described as "Agents" and/or Any Form of "Intelligence" is More Like a Religion)
We're letting people without even college degrees game the "market" (Wall Street) by lying to it
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXV - Election Integrity at a Time of Back Doors and Very Severe Bugs in UEFI
How dare British media comment on insurrection following a US election?
"The Judge Accepted That Mrs Schestowitz Had Been the Subject of a Vicious Campaign of Online Harassment"
That's consistent with how they men treat women
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: Hallowe'en and "Thinking About People"
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2026: The Hinge on Apple's Constantly Breaking New Foldable iPhone Was "Built With Slop", Slop Causes Cash Squeeze GAFAM
Links for the day
Amazon's Debt Skyrockets by Almost 100 Billion Dollars in 9 Months
On top of that there is additional (secret, kept stealth by accounting tricks) debt
Google Illegally Destroyed a Quarter Million Trees Without a Permit for a Hypothetical Project That Might be Cancelled, Debt Has Soared by 30 Billion Dollars in 3 Months ($10 Billions Borrowed Per Month)
Google is bleeding from slop
Slavery at Microsoft
illegal if true
Many People "Left" Red Hat This Month, Including Yesterday
We already saw this with SUSE
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: "Where I Draw the Line With" Slop Plagiarism and "Nobody Cares That You're Leaving Proton" (Over Slop)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 30, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, October 30, 2026
Links 30/10/2026: "Over 41,000 DHS Employee Records Leaked Online" and Concerns Over Radicalism in France
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXIV - It's an Inherently American Issue and American Elections Are at Risk From Restricted ('Secure') Boot and LLM Chatbots (Disinformation at Scale)
We'll focus a lot on US elections in the coming days
Birss Replaces Vos in UK's High Court, LLM Slop Plagiarism a Contentious Issue
Only days ago we mentioned Sir Geoffrey Vos in relation to lobbying for LLM slop
"Early Retirement" (Silent Layoffs) for Everybody Except the Executives
Some will stick around even past 70
Despite the Mass Layoffs Microsoft's Debt Soared by 5.1 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months
This is why Microsoft asks 60,000 workers to leave
Gemini Links 30/10/2026: Solar MiniBBS, Kubernetes With FreeBSD, "Sysadmin Day"
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs Far Worse Than the Media Tells (Microsoft Spin Laundered as "Reporting")
Some people are made to "retire" and sign an NDA to make it seem like a happy ending and mostly consensual retreat
Links 30/10/2026: Google Crashes on Slop Disappointment and GAFAM's "Data Center Blitz Is Burning Through Cash and Scaring Wall St."
Links for the day
Fake 'Articles' in The Register MS Concerning "AI"
We don't suppose The Register MS will be around for much longer after this bubble pops
What Linus Torvalds Told Me Two Decades Ago
It seems like he was eager to distinguish himself from the "elders" of FSF [...] For anything "revolutionary" to happen in the sciences one must accept the risk of living in poverty like Tesla (the person, not the right-wing fanatics) and Torvalds isn't too old to "cause a stir"
GNU/Linux as a Free Software Platform is More GNU (and GPL) Than Linux
GNU predates Linux by nearly a decades and it was born to tackle injustices
Who Or What Are Security Professionals/Experts?
Companies like GAFAM are willing to tolerate cheaters because those companies themselves are cheats
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXIII - What Garrett Did Puts Elections at Risk (Also in His Own Country, Where a Dictator Trusts Only Machines That 'Support' Him)
UEFI 'security' is only as trustworthy as its ferocious boosters
Gemini Links 30/10/2026: RIP Patrick Stewart and Amp Integration
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 29, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, October 29, 2026