08.09.19

August as Clickbait Month and Microsoft Googlebombing

Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 2:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It’s the usual August ‘shitshow’

August

Summary: Companies are expectedly (as scheduled) understaffed and there are those looking to take advantage of the calm, in effect provoking and misleading to divert traffic to unwanted and irrelevant things

August is a notoriously “slow news” or “low traffic” month because few companies actually announce anything. People are on extended leave. Some companies throw bad news under the bus (e.g. Slack getting cracked and breaking the law), whereas bloggers resort to provocation rather than facts (e.g. BetaNews calling GNU/Linux users bad names as recently as yesterday and Phoronix promoting an old stigma about desktop GNU/Linux).

The state of journalism, not just when it comes to GNU/Linux, is depressing. About half a dozen people who did a decent job at it got laid off by the Linux Foundation about 4 months ago. Somehow Jim Zemlin can find a million bucks to pay himself in annual salaries, but he cannot pay small salaries to a handful of low-paid technical writers. He also received a million bucks from Microsoft at a time his wife worked for a Gold Microsoft Partner, but that’s another matter. The media is all rigged and media owners seem eager to bury media that’s not favourable to them. It’s a dirty, dirty business.

Welcome to August! Microsoft Tim was badmouthing LibreOffice (just a week before a major release) while many others badmouthed VLC and KDE based on lies or exaggerations. They also googlebomb "Linux" quite a lot to push WSL (Windows Vista 10, promoted using a misnomer, “Linux”). With Linux.com and Linux Journal officially defunct, it’s even easier for Microsoft boosters to googlebomb “Ubuntu, “Linux” and so on (altering the narrative in Microsoft’s favour and offering proprietary software).

Techrights will try to cover GNU/Linux matters more than in prior years. Our capacity is very limited, so guest posts would be appreciated. █

The Zemlins Are Closer to Apple and Microsoft Than to Linux

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 1:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

They also hate GNU and shoot down — on behalf of infringers who pay them — those who try to enforce Linux copyrights

Closer look at cattle

Summary: Lack of loyalty to GNU/Linux means that the Linux Foundation is run and managed by people who would gleefully sell out for cash

Back in March 2013 Ted Samson of IDG (InfoWorld, bought by China and most staff laid off) wrote about Microsoft’s Miguel de Icaza (he’s officially back at Microsoft now) and his rejection of GNU/Linux. The Linux Foundation was asked to comment as if this longtime Microsoft mole was its responsibility. “Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation,” it said, “took de Icaza’s criticism in stride. “We agree with Miguel that Apple makes great products,” he said in a statement to InfoWorld.”

What kind of a statement is that?

“Need we even mention that Jim Zemlin’s wife worked for a close Microsoft partner for years (Gold Microsoft Partner)?”So a thing called “Linux Foundation” — managed by an Apple fan and user (with hypePad and “Mac”-branded PC) — says “Apple makes great products”; what sort of figurehead is that for Linux? The thing is, this person never really cared about GNU/Linux. When asked by Ken Starks about desktop GNU/Linux about a decade ago his answer was revealing. Nothing has changed except his growing affinity for Microsoft, especially after they started paying him. Globe-trotting on the “Linux” brand, without even using Linux…

Jim Zemlin’s wife wrote publicly in LinkedIn: “Outside of business, I love skiing, running, experiencing a few new countries per year with my husband…”

Need we even mention that Jim Zemlin’s wife worked for a close Microsoft partner for years (Gold Microsoft Partner)? We’re not ‘supposed’ to know this. Based on the type of role, it’s a 6-figure salary, maybe around $200,000/annum (it helps to have connections). The husband pays himself about $800,000/annum, so for a family of three that’s an household income of a million bucks, without even using GNU/Linux or creating anything (riding coattails instead). Not quite like the “basement dweller” stigma they’re willing to spread while firing all writers and editors at Linux.com. Then there’s the question we raised this morning about Linux Journal.

“At some stage we must simply accept that Zemlin works for Linux Foundation but not for Linux.”One reader told us this morning: “The Linux Journal is the kind of publication the Linux Foundation should have been backing, if it had been a trade organization for the promotion of Linux instead of a trade organization representing corporate interests inside Linux.”

It doesn’t seem like today’s Linux Foundation serves or cares about Linux. It’s like it’s infiltrated and compromised.

Microsoft moles inside FOSS are nothing new. Moreover, they should be expected. Microsoft has used this strategy for decades against rivals. See Richard Belluzzo and others like de Icaza and Elop. 8 years ago we named some more examples. At some stage we must simply accept that Zemlin works for Linux Foundation but not for Linux. █

Links 9/8/2019: Sway 1.2 RC, digiKam 6.2.0

Posted in News Roundup at 12:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

  • Leftovers

    • Science

    • Security (Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability)

      • HTTP Desync Attacks: Request Smuggling Reborn

        Building on research that has been overlooked for years, I’ve introduced new techniques to desynchronize servers and demonstrated novel ways to exploit the results using numerous real websites as case studies. Through this I’ve shown that request smuggling is a major threat to the web, that HTTP request parsing is a security-critical function, and that tolerating ambiguous messages is dangerous. I’ve also released a methodology and an open source toolkit to help people audit for request smuggling, prove the impact, and earn bounties with minimal risk.

      • Security bod uncovers ‘severe’ zero-day flaw in Steam’s Windows client [iophk: not a zero-day, June 15th was 55 days ago, so this is a 55-day flaw]

        According to Kravets, he first reported the flaw to Valve Software, Steam developer, on 15 June via HackerOne, providing a “text description and a proof-of-concept as an executable file”.

        The next day, Kravets got a message that the vulnerability reported by him was rejected as out-of-scope due to the reason that “attacks that require the ability to drop files in arbitrary locations on the user’s filesystem”.

      • Consumer Reports Finds Numerous Home Routers Lack Even Basic Security Protections

        For years now many hardware vendors have failed utterly to implement even basic security protections on most consumer-grade routers. D-Link, for example, just settled with the FTC after being sued for shipping routers with numerous vulnerabilities and default username/password combinations, despite advertising its products as “easy to secure” and replete with “advanced network security.” Asus was similarly dinged by the FTC for shipping gear with numerous flaws and easily-guessed default username and password combinations.

        As such, it’s not too surprising to see a new Consumer Reports study that found that a large number of mainstream residential routers lack even rudimentary security protections. 11 of the 26 major router brands examined by the organization came with flimsy password protection. 20 of the routers let users only change the password, but not the username of web-based router management clients. 20 of the routers also failed to protect users from repeated failed password login attempts, now commonplace on most apps, phones, and other services.

      • CNCF Completes Kubernetes Cybersecurity Audit

        The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) this week announced the results of its recent audit performed as part of its ongoing commitment to continuously improve Kubernetes security.

        CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk says as part of the effort, the CNCF later this year also plans to kick off a bounty program through which it will provide incentives to researchers who identify bugs and other cybersecurity flaws.

        Aniszczyk says all highly severe cybersecurity issues identified by the Security Audit Working Group funded by the CNCF have been addressed by the committee that oversees Kubernetes development. The auditors narrowed their focus on eight core Kubernetes components: Kube-apiserver, etcd, Kube-scheduler, Kube-controller-manager, cloud-controller-manager, Kubelet, Kube-proxy and container runtime.

      • Why Aren’t IoT Devices More Secure than They Currently Are [Ed: Pro-'IoT' site asking such a question when our politicians publicly mandate back doors in everything?]

        The growing popularity of IoT devices does not change the fact that they are also making news for the wrong reasons. From database leaks to the hacking of IoT cameras, to Amazon employees snooping on your Alexa conversations, it appears that many IoT device companies are struggling to build trust. Accordingly, we discuss in this article the top challenges that are impeding the security of smart devices.

      • How Buffer Overflow Attacks Work

        A computer program may be vulnerable to buffer overflow if it handles incoming data incorrectly. Anybody who can provide suitably crafted user input data can cause such a program to crash. Even worse, a vulnerable program may execute arbitrary code provided by an intruder and do something that the author did not intend it to do. Buffer overflow vulnerabilities are caused by programmer mistakes, which are easy to understand but not so easy to avoid or protect against.

      • AT&T Employees Took Bribes To Plant Malware On Company’s Network

        The DOJ this week announced that AT&T employees have been paid more than $1 million in bribes to unlock millions of smartphones, and to install malware and unauthorized hardware on the company’s network. According to the full DOJ complaint (pdf), Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old man from Pakistan and a (presumed dead) co-conspirator, Ghulam Jiwani, paid off AT&T employees at the company’s Mobility Customer Care call center in Bothell, Washington. In return, from April 2012 until September 2017, the two men unlocked iPhones so they could be used on another carrier’s network.

      • Andy Simpkins: gov.uk paperwork [Ed: The situation described here by Debian's Andy Simpkins isn't even as bad as it gets; it's not unusual anymore. Far too much British government stuff has been outsourced to surveillance firms in another continent.]

        Well thats the first page anyway. Correctly addressed to the “Current Occupier”. So why am I posting about this?

        Phishing emails land in our inbox all the time (hopfully only a few because our spam filters eat the rest). These are unsolisitord emails trying to trick us into doing somthing, usually they look like somthing official and warn us about somthing that we should take action about, for example an email that looks like it has come from your bank warning about suspicious activity in your account, they then ask you to follow a link to the ‘banks website’ where you can login and confirm if the activity is genuine – obviously taking you through a ‘man in the middle’ website that harvests your account credentials.

        The govoment is justifiably concerned about this (as to are banks and other businesses that are impersonated in this way) and so run media campaigns to educate the public in the dangers of such scams and what to look out for.

      • Security updates for Friday

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (postgresql-11, postgresql-9.4, and postgresql-9.6), Fedora (exiv2), openSUSE (python-Django and vlc), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (qemu-kvm-rhev), SUSE (evince, nodejs10, python, and squid), and Ubuntu (postgresql-10, postgresql-11, postgresql-9.5).

      • Fixes for recent KDE desktop vulnerability [Ed: Anti-Linux tabloids badmouthed KDE by overhyping it]

        As you may have been made aware on some news articles, blogs, and social media posts, a vulnerability to the KDE Plasma desktop was recently disclosed publicly. This occurred without KDE developers/security team or distributions being informed of the discovered vulnerability, or being given any advance notice of the disclosure.

        [...]

        The fixed packages are now in that PPA, so all is required is to update your system by your normal preferred method.

      • Whatsapp, Slack, Skype and apps based on popular Electron framework vulnerable to backdoor attacks

        This week at B-Sides LV, security researcher Pavel Tsakalidis presented his work on security defects in the Electron framework, a cross-platform development framework that combines Javascript with Node.js: apps built with Electron include Skype, Slack, Whatsapp, Visual Studio Code and others.

        Tsakalidis showed how the lack of basic encryption for Electron code leaves users vulnerable to hackers who inject back-door code into their sessions, which exposes their communications, filesystem, and cameras and mics to third parties.

        These changes are harder to make in Macos or GNU/Linux systems (where admin access is required), but Windows systems are wide open.

        To make things worse, Electron’s team had previously rejected a user request for encryption to protect its files, and when Tsakalidis presented his work to them, they ignored him.

      • Windows Quietly Patches Bug That Could Reverse Meltdown, Spectre Fixes For Intel CPUs
      • Warning over new SWAPGS CPU security flaw that targets Intel’s ‘speculative execution’ feature

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Chinese troops must stay off the streets of Hong Kong

        What began as a movement against an extradition bill, which would have let criminal suspects in Hong Kong be handed over for trial by party-controlled courts in mainland China, has evolved into the biggest challenge from dissenters since Tiananmen. Activists are renewing demands for greater democracy in the territory. Some even want Hong Kong’s independence from China. Still more striking is the sheer size and persistence of the mass of ordinary people. A general strike called for August 5th disrupted the city’s airport and mass-transit network. Tens of thousands of civil servants defied their bosses to stage a peaceful public protest saying that they serve the people, not the current leadership. A very large number of mainstream Hong Kongers are signalling that they have no confidence in their rulers.

    • Environment

      • We’re Eating This Planet to Death

        The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a dire report Thursday arguing that humanity can’t truly fight climate change without addressing the land problem—habitat degradation, deforestation, and soils beat to hell by agriculture. We now use nearly three-quarters of the world’s ice-free surface and waste a quarter of the food we produce, all while the global food system contributes up to 37 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions.

        In short, we have to fundamentally rethink how we grow crops and raise livestock. There’s no panacea, and every potential fix is fraught with maddening complications. But if we can’t figure out how to feed our species in a more sustainable way, climate change will continue to accelerate, making it all the more difficult to grow enough food. Food systems will collapse, and people will die.

      • Ocean Heatwaves That Instantly Kill Coral Are Getting Worse, Scientists Warn

        A study published Thursday in Current Biology warns that extreme marine heatwaves present “a distinct biological phenomenon from bleaching events,” according to the study’s authors, led by William Leggat, a coral reef expert at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

        “Our study provides compelling evidence for the urgent need for society to execute global and local efforts to mitigate climate change for the protection of coral reef ecosystems,” the team said in the paper.

      • Tourists trampling World Heritage site in Denmark

        The UNESCO World Heritage site is hampered by visitors stomping around its vulnerable dunes, leaving dedicated paths and ignoring driving regulations, as well as letting their dogs barrel into sensitive habitats for migrating birds.

      • European Union helped to cool 2003 heatwave

        Of all the political plaudits or economic brickbats hurled at the European Union, this might be the least expected: simply because it existed, it somehow ameliorated or damped down the worst of the 2003 heatwave.

        This moment of extreme summer heat is believed to have caused an estimated 40,000 excess deaths and cost the European economy more than €13 billion in economic losses and infrastructure damage.

        And yet it could have been worse. Had what is now a 28-nation political and economic behemoth not been formed in 1993, the way the member nations used their land would not have changed, and the heatwave might have been more intense, more severe and more destructive still.

      • The Shocking Number of Environmentalists Murdered Each Year

        One year ago, on July 31, 2018, just after leaving home in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Deputy Mayor Kateryna Gandziuk felt a splash of liquid across her head and face. An assailant had thrown a full liter of sulfuric acid on her, leaving her near death with burns across half her body. In the months leading up to the attack, she had accused several local politicians of illegal logging in the nearby Oleshky forest. She spent several painful months in the hospital, finally dying of her wounds on Nov. 4. After protests and international pressure, several suspects were arrested, but Gandziuk’s family and supporters allege a cover-up to protect the organizers of the assault that rises to the highest levels of the Ukrainian political elite.

        Kateryna Gandziuk’s brutal attack is just one of 164 murders of environmentalists and land and water defenders that occurred in 2018, cataloged in a new report titled “Enemies of the State? How governments and business silence land and environmental defenders.” Published by Global Witness, an international nonprofit organization that works to protect human rights and the environment by confronting corruption, the report notes that “the real figure is likely to be much higher, because cases are often not recorded and very rarely investigated.”

        The report is global in scale. Among the most dangerous places for land defenders in 2018 were the Philippines, Guatemala and Brazil. The pace of violence in Brazil has only accelerated since the right-wing, climate change-denying extremist Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency last January.

      • Energy

        • UN Climate Change Report Further Confirms Meat Production Has ‘Disproportionate Impact’ On Emissions

          A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of the United Nations, further confirms how meat consumption and production is fueling climate disruption.

          “Meat—sometimes specified as ruminant meat (mainly beef)—was consistently identified as the single food with the greatest impact on the environment, most often in terms of GHG [greenhouse] emissions and/or land use per unit commodity,” the report states.

          The IPCC’s report covered climate change and land, including the following issues: desertification, land degradation, land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluctuations in ecosystems.

          It was commissioned in April 2016, and the “author team” that produced the report consisted of 107 experts from 52 countries.

          As the report indicates, “The emissions intensities of red meat mean that its production has a disproportionate impact on total emissions. For example, in the U.S. four percent of food sold (by weight) is beef, which accounts for 36 percent of food-related emissions.”

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • BAN-boozled: How Corruption and Collusion Fuel the Illegal Rosewood Trade in Ghana

          Our new report BAN-BOOZLED: How Corruption and Collusion Fuel Illegal Rosewood Trade in Ghana reveals how despite a comprehensive ban in place since March 2019, the dry forests and rural communities of Ghana are still the victims of rosewood plundering. EIA estimates that since 2012, over 540,000 tons of rosewood – the equivalent of 23,478 twenty-foot containers or approximately 6 million trees – were illegally harvested and imported into China from Ghana while bans on harvest and trade have been in place. EIA’s investigation documents a massive institutionalized timber trafficking scheme, enabled by high-level corruption and collusion.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Some election systems left online and at risk of hacking despite denials from officials

        These aren’t the first concerns over ES&S’s security practices: in 2018, the company disclosed that it installed remote-access software on some voting machines from 2000 to 2006. Neither report found evidence suggesting that systems or voting tallies were manipulated. Still, the undisclosed vulnerabilities raise new questions about the security of the US voting system.

      • Exclusive: Critical U.S. Election Systems Have Been Left Exposed Online Despite Official Denials

        The top voting machine company in the country insists that its election systems are never connected to the internet. But researchers found 35 of the systems have been connected to the internet for months and possibly years, including in some swing states.

      • When Bernie Sanders Did the Joe Rogan Show

        This week, Sanders repeated the strategy by appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience: a hugely popular but decidedly non-left-leaning podcast that features an eclectic buffet of guests ranging from fairly innocuous weirdos to overt reactionaries. In less than twenty-four hours, the episode has already garnered well over two and a half million views and, judging by its reception thus far, Sanders and his arguments proved a hit — even to those accustomed to getting their political bearings from the likes of Sam Harris and other dubious sources.

      • The Unanswerable Case

        Scots are now very significantly poorer than the Irish, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes, the Icelanders or any of their obvious comparators. Every one of those nations is in the top 10 of the UN Human Development Index. The UK is not, and Scotland is below the mean for the UK. It is not because Scots are stupid or feckless, it not because of climate and it is certainly not a lack of natural resources. It is because of the draining away of human and physical resource by London over centuries.

        Against that fundamental fact, the cloud of stupid obfuscation around the minutiae of transition is a mere distraction, and a deliberate one at that. Countries which are far poorer than Scotland successfully run on their own currencies – scores of them. Why would people believe Scotland is unique among nations in being incapable of having a currency? Yet such pathetic shibboleths are pounded out by the media, and particularly the BBC, on a daily basis to make a significant number of Scots believe that what is possible for every nation that has tried it, is uniquely impossible to them.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Killing Free Speech in France, Germany and on the Internet

        The new agreement could signal the de-facto end of free speech on Facebook for French citizens. Self-censorship in Europe is already widespread: a recent survey in Germany showed that two thirds of Germans are “very careful” about what topics they discuss in public — Islam and migrants being the most taboo. Knowing that a mere Facebook post could end you up in front of a judge in court is very likely to put a decisive damper on anyone’s desire to speak freely.

      • White House Once Again Circulating A Draft Executive Order On Social Media Bias

        Since the White House is convinced social media companies are kicking conservatives off left and (mostly) right, it has decided to do something about it. What this “something” is remains about as vague as the accusations.

        Once you remove a handful of grifters and Nazi fans from the list, you’re left with not that much to get upset about. But the few who fervently believe this is happening make a lot of noise and have the ears of powerful people, so stuff — vague stuff — is being set in motion while the First Amendment is set aside.

        A leaked copy of what was supposedly a draft executive order on social media bias appeared late last year. If the leak was legitimate, the White House’s proposal would not have been Constitutional. It would have used the pretense of bias to allow the federal government to directly regulate speech on social media platforms.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • HTTPS Interception “Breaks” Slider Music Search Engine

        A resilient music search engine that’s been operating for around nine years has given a very unusual reason for its system breaking down. According to the operator of Slider.kz, recent legal changes in Kazakhstan, where the site is hosted, means the government there now intercepts HTTPS traffic.

      • Facebook wants to be relevant in news again, and it’s willing to pay millions to bring back publishers

        According to the report, Facebook plans to include these articles as part of dedicated news section its launching sometime this fall. Publishers would sign deals lasting as long as three years in some cases, and they would get control over how articles appear on Facebook and whether readers would receive only snippets, like a headline and some text, before being sent to the publisher’s website. The proposed terms stand in contrast to Apple’s approach to Apple News Plus, its new, magazine-focused subscription service with a dubious revenue share and reportedly poor payout metrics that has had many in the media industry warning against Silicon Valley’s pledge to rescue the news business.

      • Facebook exploring deals with media outlets for news section: report

        People familiar with the matter told the Journal that Facebook is offering as much as $3 million a year to publishers to use their news articles, headlines and smaller snippets of stories.

      • Appeals court rules Facebook must face class-action lawsuit over facial recognition

        Facebook has to face a class-action lawsuit over whether it violated user privacy with its facial recognition tools, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

        The three-judge panel agreed that Facebook can be sued under an Illinois law that requires businesses to obtain consent before using people’s biometric information, including their fingerprints or face scans.

      • Facebook could pay billions after losing facial recognition privacy appeal

        In 2015, Facebook was sued under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires companies to make a public policy before collecting and storing biometric data, including faces scans, and to lay out how the data will be stored. Facebook has used the technology in its Tag Suggestions feature, which determines whether a photo includes a user’s friends.

        The plaintiffs brought suit, arguing that Facebook had failed to meet the requirements of the law. When a lower court certified the suit as a class action, Facebook appealed, arguing that the plaintiffs had failed to show concrete injury, and that the lower court overstepped its power by certifying the class.

      • Furore over TM30 forms

        Long-term foreign residents are also required to report their whereabouts if they spend more than 24 hours at places other than their registered addresses.

        Landlords and tenants who fail to comply face fines of between 800 to 2,000 baht, although the sum seems to differ across different immigration offices.

      • Monsanto ran a psy-ops war-room to discredit journalists and spy on Neil Young

        The memos reveal that the company spied on Canadian folk legend Neil Young and contemplated how they could neutralize his environmental activism, including an aborted plan to sue him. They also targeted the US nonprofit US Right to Know, with weekly reports for execs on the organization’s activities.

      • Privacy Perspectives | TechSNAP 409

        We examine why it’s so difficult to protect your privacy online and discuss browser fingerprinting, when to use a VPN, and the limits of private browsing.

        Plus Apple’s blaring bluetooth beacons and Facebook’s worrying plans for WhatsApp.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Detroit man who lived his life in the US dies after deportation to Iraq

        Aldaoud had never been to Iraq and did not speak Arabic. He was deported in June as part of a crackdown on Iraqi immigrants with criminal convictions.

      • ‘Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration’: A Detroit man died in Iraq after being deported in Trump’s immigration-enforcement efforts

        Edward Bajoka, an immigration attorney who was close to Aldaoud’s family, said in a Facebook post that Aldaoud had diabetes and most likely died because he could not get needed insulin. Bajoka said Aldaoud had never been to Iraq and didn’t speak Arabic.

      • Beware Islamists Bearing Gifts

        As a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization, CAIR seems to have picked up a few tips from its Egyptian parent. While the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, however, works simply to buy political favor within the American democratic system, groups such as CAIR must work more intricately and more carefully to acquire and exploit political power. Consequently, CAIR’s activities are more complicated.

        For federal workers, CAIR is at once the benefactor and the protester — sometimes offering solidarity in the name of “justice” and “civil rights”; at other times crying injustice and persecution. In all cases, CAIR is working to legitimize its ideology by presenting itself falsely both as a voice for American Muslims and as a champion of the American worker. Government and the public at large should remember that all of these actions ultimately serve one theocratic agenda.

      • Aceh, love affairs contrary to sharia: 14 young men flogged in seven days

        Officials provided details only of the case of the only non-Muslim defendant, a Buddhist identified with the initials R.O. (photo). The police caught him inside a hotel room, with a woman who was not his wife. Usually, non-Muslims can choose whether to be punished or not under Islamic law, known in the region as Quanun. Therefore R.O. chose 27 lashes to avoid a lengthy judicial proceeding and imprisonment.

        The next day, Mayor Usman warned hotels and businesses: “We have warned hotels not to even think about breaking the rules by renting rooms to unmarried couples. Otherwise, we will revoke their licenses,” he told reporters.

      • Remembering the First and Forgotten Armenian Genocide of 1019

        Ironically, most people, including most Armenians, are unaware that the first genocide of Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks did not occur in the twentieth century; it began in 1019—exactly one-thousand years ago this year—when Turks first began to pour into and transform a then much larger Armenia into what it is today, the eastern portion of modern day Turkey.

      • ‘Museums Like the Whitney Are Accountable to the Communities They Claim to Serve’ – CounterSpin interview with Amin Husain on Whitney Museum protest

        Janine Jackson: Warren Kanders resigned from his position as vice chair of the board of the Whitney Museum July 25, saying he didn’t want to “play a role, however inadvertent, in [the museum’s] demise.”

        The advertent role that Kanders played was to fund his philanthropy with profits from Safariland, a company that makes tear gas canisters used against protesters around the world, and Sierra Bullets, that sells ammunition used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza; activists, artists and other humans objected.

        Kanders’ resignation doesn’t mean the end of the work of groups like Decolonize This Place, who organized around Kanders, as well as a planned event at New York’s Museum of Natural History involving fascist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

        As long as cultural institutions are important sites of public conversation, but the public doesn’t have much to say on who gets to lead that conversation or the stories they tell, activists will be asking us to talk about what that means, and what it would mean to change it. That’s what we talked about a few months ago with Decolonize This Place core organizer Amin Husain.

      • Ruha Benjamin on Race After Technology

        Listeners may have heard about the electronic soap dispensers whose light sensors can’t detect black skin, Google and Flickr‘s automatic image-labeling that—oops— tagged photos of black people with “ape” and “gorilla.” An Asian-American blogger wrote about her Nikon digital camera that kept asking, “Did someone blink?” And you can, I’m afraid, imagine what turns up in search engine results for “3 black teenagers” vs. “3 white teenagers.” Some examples of discriminatory design are obvious—which doesn’t mean the reasons behind them are easy to fix. And then there are other questions around technology and bias—in policing, in housing, in banking—that require deeper questioning. That questioning is the heart of a new book, called Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. CounterSpin spoke with author Ruha Benjamin; she’s associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton University and author, also, of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Elizabeth Warren Unveils a Plan to Expand Broadband Access

        Even where broadband is available, many people can’t afford it. According to a Pew Research Center report, 19 percent of people who don’t use the [Internet] cited the cost of [Internet] service or the expense of owning a computer as the reason they aren’t online.

    • Monopolies

      • Uber reports largest-ever loss at $5.2 billion

        But even when stripping out the stock awards, the company was down about $1.3 billion, more than twice the reported losses from the same period last year.

        Revenue rose just 14 percent compared with the same quarter last year, the slowest pace on record.

      • Uber lost over $5 billion in one quarter, but don’t worry, it gets worse

        Lyft, which reported its earnings Wednesday, fared better but still posted a loss of $644 million during the quarter. The numbers for both companies look a lot better when adjusted for things like amortization of intangible assets and stock-based compensation for employees post-IPO. Excluding those expenses, Uber lost $1.3 billion and Lyft lost $197 million.

      • Copyrights

        • Indian High Court Orders ISPs to Block 1,129 Sites to Protect One Movie From Piracy

          The High Court of Madras has handed down an injunction ordering dozens of ISPs to block 1,129 sites to protect a single movie that goes on worldwide release today. ‘Nerkonda Paarvai’ is marketed as a legal drama, which is perhaps fitting considering that the order handed down describes the respondents – the ISPs – as being involved in recording, camcording, and distributing content displayed in theaters.

        • Oops: Japan Anti-Piracy Proposals Probably Violate Its Constitution

          For over a year now, we’ve been discussing a worrying trend in Japan, where the government is looking to severely ramp up its anti-piracy efforts. The worry lies in the implications of these various proposed programs, including the censorship of internet sites supposedly used for piracy, the criminalization of pirating content, and how all of this is going to impact the public. One of the largest barriers to doing any of these expansions to copyright law is the Japanese constitution and legislation, which are fairly restrictive on matters of both censorship and the invasion of privacy. How the government thought it was going to route around those provisions is anyone’s guess.

          But it seems there is confidence that it can do so, as every new proposal coming out looks to in some way violate Japan’s constitution. The latest involves putting a system in place that would delivery popup warnings to anyone visiting a site that is deemed to be a “pirate site.”

Techrights Blog Archive and Word Analysis

Posted in Site News at 2:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Old library

Summary: Summing up almost 13 years of Techrights and making archival simpler just in case something bad happens some time in the future

IN LIGHT of Linux Journal's shutdown, which was sudden and announced in the middle of the summer holidays (may have been strategic timing), we’ve already published a list of Techrights blog URLs and our full Wiki as XML files (or compressed archive of them all). That’s not because we expect anything bad to happen; it’s just better to be prepared in advance rather than when it’s too late. I’ve poured my entire adult life into this site and the analysis/research it takes to write/run it. It’s good to have backups, including elsewhere. Mirroring does no harm, it improves overall resilience when things are decentralised. During the archiving process figosdev wrote some code that we have not published until today. It’s used to generate a keyword index with merges for similar ones. So for example, for the latter it comes up with (number of occurrences on the left):


14191 chrome 9611:chrome. 233:chromebook 1754:chromebook. 121:chromebooks 1513:chromebooks. 156:chromebox 74:chromecast 396:chromeos 333:
14195 e.u. 109:eu 13203:eu-us 107:eu-wide 144:eu. 632:
14271 process 11848:process. 2423:
14278 china 13069:china-based 95:china. 1114:
14371 receive 3588:received 7239:received. 141:receives 1405:receiving 1998:
14411 firefox 14411:
14556 download 9003:download. 1015:downloadable 220:downloaded 1417:downloader 101:downloaders 97:downloading 1100:downloads 1454:downloads. 149:
14739 gates 14158:gates-backed 114:gates-funded 141:gates. 326:
14850 digital 14577:digital. 86:digitally 187:
14894 employed 938:employee 2773:employee. 154:employees 6620:employees. 704:employer 989:employer. 168:employers 644:employing 284:employment 1158:employment. 93:employs 369:
15026 package 6369:package. 512:packaged 533:packagers 85:packages 5762:packages. 767:packaging 998:
15170 menace 148:menacing 100:menos 418:mental 1124:mentality 273:mentally 216:mention 4183:mention. 103:mentioned 6743:mentioned. 155:mentioning 720:mentions 987:
15196 games 14158:games. 1038:
15231 event 7653:event. 954:events 6020:events. 604:
15350 corporate 8067:corporates 77:corporation 2759:corporation. 240:corporations 3790:corporations. 417:
15419 battistelli 14513:battistelli. 906:
15560 browser 9915:browser. 1333:browsers 4024:browsers. 288:
15709 privacy 13613:privacy-focused 124:privacy. 992:privacy/surveillance 980:
15749 press 14852:press. 897:
15759 require 3825:required 4340:required. 380:requirement 1182:requirement. 139:requirements 2226:requirements. 480:requires 3187:
15932 intel 15517:intel-based 101:intel. 232:intel/amd 82:
16050 police 15513:police. 537:
16695 mobile 16432:mobile. 263:
16877 troll 4535:troll. 434:trolles 205:trolling 1127:trolling. 111:trolls 9276:trolls. 1189:
16880 enterprise 13684:enterprise-class 132:enterprise-grade 221:enterprise-ready 131:enterprise. 424:enterprises 2072:enterprises. 216:
16985 hardware 15321:hardware. 1664:
17492 policies 4017:policies. 638:policy 11524:policy. 1313:
17832 reported 9524:reported. 848:reportedly 3159:reporter 1927:reporter. 94:reporters 2141:reporters. 139:
17865 user 16688:user. 826:userbase 82:username 174:usernames 95:
18106 federal 18106:
18157 money 16399:money. 1758:
18170 result 6842:result. 452:resulted 1431:resulting 1346:results 7119:results. 980:
18209 management 17099:management. 1110:
18362 research 11250:research. 727:researched 153:researcher 1346:researchers 4435:researchers. 196:researching 255:
18746 review 12483:review. 723:reviewed 1304:reviewer 149:reviewers 230:reviewing 721:reviews 2931:reviews. 205:
18993 censor 1588:censored 952:censored. 74:censoring 859:censors 823:censorship 12500:censorship. 701:censorship/free 972:censorship/privacy/civil 404:censorship/web 120:
19233 debconf 276:debian 17855:debian-based 626:debian. 476:
19233 name 10460:name. 764:named 4402:names 3607:
19371 facebook 18648:facebook. 723:
19681 question 9688:question. 879:questioned 808:questioning 729:questions 6938:questions. 639:
19804 order 14028:order. 692:ordered 2399:ordering 431:orders 2047:orders. 207:
19861 organisation 3331:organisation. 393:organisational 97:organisations 1789:organisations. 194:organization 7031:organization. 717:organizational 290:organizations 5484:organizations. 535:
20396 national 20321:national-security 75:
20636 member 7943:member. 320:members 11588:members. 785:
21621 copyright 16583:copyright. 470:copyrighted 710:copyrights 3676:copyrights. 182:
21704 official 11777:official. 211:officials 9084:officials. 632:
21809 rights 18893:rights. 1936:rights/policing 980:
21944 cloud 20228:cloud-based 661:cloud. 1055:
21978 nsa 21533:nsa. 445:
22096 industrial 2497:industries 1720:industries. 357:industry 15436:industry. 2086:
22146 kde 21049:kde. 488:kde3 72:kde4 537:
22170 fedora 21663:fedora. 507:
22411 standard 8863:standard. 889:standardisation 232:standardised 77:standardization 422:standardize 182:standardized 329:standardizing 80:standards 9113:standards-based 123:standards. 1265:standards/consortia 836:
22416 market 16524:market. 2932:markets 2361:markets. 599:
22428 protect 6965:protected 2043:protected. 142:protecting 2235:protection 8152:protection. 633:protections 1715:protections. 307:protective 236:
22526 political 13646:politician 758:politicians 3860:politicians. 247:politico 350:politics 3118:politics. 547:
22664 product 8764:product. 1060:products 10698:products. 2142:
22994 publish 2200:published 13513:published. 392:publisher 1348:publisher. 70:publishers 1654:publishers. 127:publishes 825:publishing 2757:publishing. 108:
23532 next 23174:next. 358:
23594 permalink 23594:
23726 foundation 22066:foundation. 1660:
23765 opensource 268:open-source 22369:open-source. 110:open-sourced 387:open-sources 402:open-sourcing 229:
24419 gnome 23574:gnome-based 84:gnome-shell 123:gnome. 497:gnome3 141:
24981 video 18925:video. 596:video> 271:videolan 113:videos 4794:videos. 282:
25022 icons 24892:icons. 130:
25227 plan 8738:plan. 578:planned 3084:planned. 168:planning 3385:planning. 77:plans 8758:plans. 439:
25671 attack 10039:attack. 819:attacked 1573:attacker 739:attackers 1018:attacking 1986:attacks 8438:attacks. 1059:
26054 network 14441:network. 1261:networked 234:networking 4706:networking. 186:networks 4378:networks. 848:
26394 countries 9065:countries. 1438:country 13370:country. 2521:
26827 information 24642:information. 2185:
27074 phone 16072:phone. 891:phones 9315:phones. 796:
28926 http 28821:http/2 105:
29542 posted 28779:posted. 94:poster 429:posters 240:
29681 server-side 196:server 19956:server. 1406:servers 6949:servers. 1174:
29914 office 27490:office. 2424:
30007 platform 19050:platform. 3365:platformer 484:platforms 5649:platforms. 1459:
30132 development 26183:development. 2005:developments 1744:developments. 200:
30137 code 25179:code. 3191:coder 167:coders 349:coding 1168:coding. 83:
30291 media 28467:media. 1824:
30445 feature 9058:feature. 481:features 18736:features. 2170:
30791 kernel 27263:kernel. 2250:kernel-based 284:kernels 870:kernels. 124:
31184 communities 3334:communities. 737:community 23348:community-based 105:community-driven 193:community. 3467:
31828 u.s 201:u.s. 28527:u.s.-backed 113:u.s.-based 132:u.s.-led 93:us-backed 91:us-based 401:us-led 135:usa 1960:usa. 175:
32042 used 31372:used. 670:
32990 program 13901:program. 2001:programmed 179:programmer 803:programmers 1432:programmers. 143:programmes 381:programming 5917:programming. 237:programming/development 818:programs 6212:programs. 966:
33607 reader 4579:reader. 278:readers 28308:readers. 347:readership 95:
34045 internet 30644:internet. 2458:internet/net 943:
34523 america 11784:america. 1032:american 14414:american. 80:americans 6414:americans. 589:americas 210:
34826 page 6591:page. 1001:pages 3250:pages. 23984:
34864 technological 1251:technologically 152:technologies 7327:technologies. 1290:technology 22387:technology. 2457:
35836 presidency 1256:presidency. 275:president 27787:president. 1084:presidential 4834:presidents 600:
37154 distribution 12395:distribution. 1967:distributions 12171:distributions. 1095:distro 5812:distro. 652:distros 2743:distros. 319:
37446 epo 35039:epo. 2075:epo.org 332:
37687 public 35751:public. 1936:
37723 social 37600:social-media 123:
37846 gnu 6426:gnu. 93:gnu/hurd 81:gnu/kfreebsd 85:gnu/linux 29520:gnu/linux-based 91:gnu/linux. 1550:
38367 novell 36653:novell. 1714:
39579 developer 13599:developer. 373:developers 23843:developers. 1764:
40375 case 27904:case. 2515:caselaw 108:cases 8853:cases. 995:
41238 version 33068:version. 1440:versioned 146:versioning 164:versions 5822:versions. 598:
41601 users 37295:users. 4306:
42802 europe 16585:europe. 1902:european 22948:europeans 444:euros 923:
42826 court 34888:court. 1976:courts 5330:courts. 632:
43149 photon 97:photos 2662:photos. 191:photoshop 483:php 2278:php-fpm 105:php5 164:phpmyadmin 164:phrase 911:phrases 272:physical 2586:physically 388:physician 130:physicians 160:physicist 95:physics 466:physx 70:pi 7518:pi. 361:piana 111:pic 72:pichai 173:pick 1939:picked 1183:picket 100:picking 722:picks 900:pico 71:pico-itx 156:pics 99:picture 2355:picture. 321:pictured 311:pictures 1450:pictures. 80:pidgin 230:pie 1637:pie. 72:piece 5026:piece. 171:pieces 2059:pieces. 132:pierre 180:pierre-yves 94:pieter 113:pig 220:pigs 193:pike 97:pile 578:piled 78:piles 129:pilger 118:piling 112:pill 149:pillar 135:pillars 217:pilot 988:pilots 320:pim 201:pimping 70:pin 272:pinch 120:pine 176:pine64 118:
43445 reporting 4831:reporting. 240:report 26127:report. 1583:reports 9493:reports. 1171:
43555 update 20736:update. 1135:updated 8817:updated. 210:updatedx2 85:updater 93:updates 10442:updates. 999:updating 1038:
43583 desktop 36980:desktop. 2291:desktop/gtk 1351:desktops 2468:desktops. 493:
49940 win32 90:windows 46655:windows-based 204:windows-only 192:windows. 2799:
50033 project 32819:project. 3734:projects 11447:projects. 2033:
51865 government 43803:government. 2416:governmental 467:governments 4822:governments. 357:
54220 web 52026:web-based 864:web-browser 150:web. 1180:
54986 goog 218:google 53003:google+ 410:google. 1355:
55737 secure 7203:secure. 417:security 46115:security-focused 77:security. 1925:
60088 support 49775:support! 74:support. 3530:supported 6428:supported. 281:
64412 android 60980:android-based 684:android-powered 403:android-x86 196:android. 1650:android/linux 499:
66673 patenting 1475:patenting. 120:patents 58590:patents. 6408:patents] 80:
68988 people 65485:people. 3115:peoples 388:
71735 ubucon 83:ubuntu 68622:ubuntu! 86:ubuntu-based 643:ubuntu-powered 183:ubuntu. 1791:ubuntu/linux 327:
82416 patent 79808:patent. 1178:patented 1245:patented. 185:
111622 release 54907:release! 153:release. 5083:released 36637:released! 844:released. 1621:releases 11390:releases. 987:
117419 who 86708:why 30100:why. 611:
123764 open 123225:open. 539:
128149 software 111593:software-as-a-service 94:software-based 127:software-defined 636:software-like 535:software-related 106:software. 8488:software/open 6570:
165377 msft 784:microsoft 157420:microsoft-connected 384:microsoft-friendly 239:microsoft-funded 276:microsoft-influenced 73:microsoft-novell 147:microsoft-sponsored 129:microsoft-taxed 102:microsoft. 5451:microsoft/novell 227:microsoft] 145:
199787 linux 189841:linux! 329:linux- 121:linux. 8892:linux-related 104:linux/android 266:linux/unix 150:linux] 84:

The underlying code, trc.fig (in Fig):

#### license: creative commons cc0 1.0 (public domain) 
#### http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ 
# load log.txt (db of entries) and search from trc.txt (output from coll.fig)

python
    reload(sys)
    sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8')
    fig

nl 10 chr
now "" arr
nowlen arr

function getlink p
    eachr p ltrim
    pg split eachr nl mid 1 1
    pr split pg "ignorethis " join pr "" return pr
    fig

function rplace p c t
    now split p c join now t return now
    fig

function ctext t
    quot 34 chr
    nl 10 chr
    tab 9 chr
    now t lcase rplace now quot nl swap now t
    now t rplace now " " nl swap now t
    now t rplace now "&" nl swap now t
    now t rplace now ";" nl swap now t

    now t rplace now ")" nl swap now t
    now t rplace now "(" nl swap now t
    now t rplace now "," nl swap now t
    now t rplace now "'" nl swap now t
    now t rplace now ":" nl swap now t
    now t rplace now "?" nl swap now t
python
    t = t.replace(unichr(8220), chr(10))
    t = t.replace(unichr(8221), chr(10))
    fig
    now t rplace now tab nl swap now t return t
    fig

function nohtml p
    buf ""
    intag 0 
    forin each p
        ifequal each "<"
            intag 1
            fig
        ifequal intag 0
            now buf plus each swap now buf
            fig
        ifequal each ">" 
            intag 0
            fig
        next
    now return buf
    fig

function lookfor findthese db dbcopy origfind
    nl 10 chr
    dblen db len
    buf 1
    for eachlen 1 dblen 1
        each arrget db eachlen
        copyeach arrget dbcopy eachlen

        forin eachofthese findthese
            iftrue eachofthese
                #now eachofthese plus "-" print
                now each split now nl
                found 0
                found instr now eachofthese
                iftrue found

                    iftrue buf
                        now origfind print # print current list of searchwords
                        buf 0
                        fig

                    now "*[[" prints
                    now copyeach split now "\n" mid 6 2 
                    eurl getlink copyeach prints "|" prints
                    etitle now mid 2 1 ltrim rtrim
                    edate now mid 1 1 ltrim rtrim plus " " plus etitle plus "]]" print
                    iftrue 0
                        now eachofthese print # print found keyword
                        fig
                    break
                    fig

                fig
            next

        next
    fig



db "" arr
dbcopy "" arr
dblen 0
python 
    db = open("log.txt").read().split("If you liked this post, consider")
    dbcopy = db[:]
    dblen = len(db)
    fig

now "processing entries... " prints
prevcount 0
for eachdb dblen 1 -1
    dbcount eachdb divby dblen times 1000 int divby 10 minus 100 times -1

    ifmore dbcount prevcount
        now dbcount str plus "% " prints
        prevcount dbcount
        fig 
    p arrget db eachdb 
    now nohtml p ctext now
    db arrset eachdb now

    p arrget dbcopy eachdb 
    now nohtml p
    dbcopy arrset eachdb now

    next
now "" print

pg arropen "trc.txt" 
nowlen pg len

for eachloop nowlen 1 -1
    each pg mid eachloop 1   
    eaches split each " " 
    eacheslen eaches len minus 1
    now "" print
    reaches eaches right eacheslen join reaches " " split reaches ":" 
python
    reaches.remove('')
    fig

    iftrue reaches
        findthese arr mid 1 0 
        forin eachreaches reaches
            onereach split eachreaches " " mid 1 1 
            findthese plus onereach 
            next
        iftrue findthese
            now lookfor findthese db dbcopy each
            fig
        fig

   next

And coll.fig 


#### license: creative commons cc0 1.0 (public domain) 
#### http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ 
# combine trranks into trc.txt (with > trc.txt)
fl arropen "trranks"
buf "" arr mid 1 0
buftext ""
bufsum 0
forin each fl
    lentr each rtrim len
    iftrue lentr
        buf plus each
    else
        iftrue buf
            forin beach buf
                now buftext plus beach plus ":" swap now buftext
                teg split beach " " mid 1 1
                rank split beach " " mid 2 1 val
                now bufsum plus rank swap now bufsum
                next
            now bufsum prints " " prints
            now buftext print 
            buf "" arr mid 1 0
            buftext ""
            bufsum 0
            fig
    fig
    next

There’s more code we’ve yet to share. Just needs more tidying up. We want everything to be open data, Free/libre software, Open Access etc. It takes time. █

We Need to Prevent Linux Journal From Going Dark (Offline) or Encourage Archiving It as a Contingency

Posted in GNU/Linux at 12:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Linux Journal CoverSummary: There is a real (and ever-growing) danger that a massive trove of GNU/Linux and Free software history will vanish unless urgent action is taken right now

AS we noted yesterday, Linux Journal won’t be publishing anymore. But that’s perhaps not the worst part. It cannot be stressed strongly enough just how important Linux Journal archives are. Linux Journal is not only about Linux but the Web and lots more. It’s composed mostly by geeks who believe in Software Freedom. It was, for two and a half decades, their platform, either as writers or readers (whether subscribers or not).

We encourage the site’s authors to reach out; please get in touch with us. We can work together to ensure that the site doesn’t go offline and, if it does, we’ll have a mirror elsewhere. It’s a copyright assignment issue, probably to be arranged with PIA. We've done that before (successfully). We’re still archiving Patent Troll Tracker’s blog posts (the blog was taken down after the father of patent trolling had filed SLAPPy lawsuits) and we worked hard — behind the scenes at times — to ensure other Linux sites don’t end up dead/offline.

We’ve already seen anything from eulogies to trolling from Fagioli (we don’t want to feed his latest trolling; as we noted a short while ago, the media crisis is not limited to GNU/Linux and GNU/Linux users generally earn and spend more money, contradicting his insulting clickbait).

“We encourage the site’s authors to reach out; please get in touch with us.”We’re not being alarmist about this; the “devil is in the details” and the announcement of end of publication was accompanied with subtle allusion to total shutdown (of the site). We saw this before. Lack of commitment (verbal or written) to keeping the site online often leads to shutdown, inevitably. It’s a matter of time.

Linux Journal is invaluable, it’s irreplaceable. We’ve cited it thousands of times over the years, so it provides evidentiary basis for some of our posts. That site is very important. Important enough that even the NSA took special note of it (and its readers). It might not be so-called ‘mainstream media’, but the scale of the site is astounding. Linux Journal is huge. At the moment I have a list of 12,500 URLs (Linux Journal articles) on a file. Back in the days we managed to save Linux Devices (after the new owner decided to take the site offline, shortly after it had bought it). We didn’t think Linux Journal would approach a similar fate. Should PIA take it offline, we may find a way to archive the whole of the site, but copyright is the barrier. Surely, as one can imagine, all Linux Journal writers (past and present) dread the idea of all articles they ever published there vanishing overnight. We need to fight to prevent this. This can only work if original authors help and insist on copyright reassignment (or change of clauses). In the sick world of greed and “everything is a business” the concepts of curation, preservation, history etc. are worthless. If there’s no profit in it, let it rot… (that’s why many libraries are shut down and books are pulped).

“Linux Journal is dead, but we need to pressure PIA to keep the Web site that it bought accessible indefinitely (online and in the hands of dedicated people, maybe the authors; hand it over to someone who can host it).”Remember that Linux Journal goes a long, loooong way back… almost the dawn of “Linux” itself (not GNU). It would be a total and absolute travesty if Linux Journal went offline; history would be deleted and then the thugs from Microsoft can rewrite it their own way… as Microsoft did to Netscape and many other victims of its abuses, crimes, corruption, and infiltration.

Linux Journal is dead, but we need to pressure PIA to keep the Web site that it bought accessible indefinitely (online and in the hands of dedicated people, maybe the authors; hand it over to someone who can host it). Microsoft would love for Linux Journal to just go away and offline, preferably for good. It can then monopolise the narratives, with lies…

People may struggle to find articles about what Microsoft did to Linux, instead stumbling upon nonsense like Jim Zemlin's "Open Source loves Microsoft."

Maybe the Linux Foundation (revenue of about $100,000,000 a year) can offer some funds to salvage Linux Journal? Don’t bet on it. They already killed their own site, Linux.com. Yes, Mr. Zemlin gives himself almost a million bucks a year (in salary that’s likely tax-exempt), but he won’t give a dime to writers and editors at Linux.com, so he certainly won’t help Linux Journal. He will, however, help Microsoft instead; because “Open Source loves Microsoft”…

“People may struggle to find articles about what Microsoft did to Linux, instead stumbling upon nonsense like Jim Zemlin’s “Open Source loves Microsoft.””We’ve been discussing this over in our IRC channels. In the past 24 hours we tried to figure out what to do next because we need to pressure PIA to keep the site online, albeit it needs to be done politely and diplomatically. If they hand it over to someone who can host it reliably, who would that be? We need to campaign for this. A new owner that is not benevolent can exploit copyrights to forcibly keep the site offline for good. Takedown notices can be issued against copies and mirrors.

One Techrights reader already wrote a script to download the whole site, complete with all the URLs. But he has not run the script. It’s just a ‘doomsday’ contingency. “I hope it can be done before the site goes offline forever,” one person wrote in IRC, but it hasn’t been done. Time is limited, hence the urgency. “I can imagine their writers already scrape their older articles there, for personal copies,” I said, and “there may not be much time left [as] it’s incurring extra bandwidth cost [at] host level so they might pull the plug…”

“One Techrights reader already wrote a script to download the whole site, complete with all the URLs.”In other words, “getting many people to download would accelerate the demise,” I said, “as it would be bots/scripts staging a DDOS and they’d want nothing to do with such a nuisance…”

I want to stress that we didn’t run any spiders or bots. We just prepared the process, shall it become necessary (e.g. if PIA authorises this). It’s crystal clear that for copyright reasons we cannot put it online anyway; what we did 6 years ago with QuinStreet was, we encouraged it to allow authors to make copies; they signed a sort waiver later on, whereupon the founder of Linux Devices (now in http://linuxdevices.org/, adjunct to LinuxGizmos) was able to mirror all the articles from the old site (weeks after it had been shut down by QuinStreet). █

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