Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 23/9/2021: PostgreSQL 14 RC 1 and MidnightBSD 2.1



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • A Fix Is Pending For That Linux 5.15 Performance Regression - Phoronix

        Last week was the article on noticing various workloads performing slower on the Linux 5.15 development kernel. There is now a patch pending that in testing so far does indeed correct the performance drop on this forthcoming kernel.

        As outlined in that prior article, the Linux 5.15 performance regression was tracked down to memory accounting "memcg" changes that landed during the Linux 5.15 merge window.

      • "panel-edp" Driver On Its Way To Linux 5.16 To Make For Less Hard-Coded eDP Panel Configs - Phoronix

        The latest batch of miscellaneous Direct Rendering Manager changes are on their way to DRM-Next for Linux 5.16. Notable from this new drm-misc-next batch is the new "panel-edp" driver.

        The panel-edp driver is focused on addressing the issue of right now most Embedded DisplayPort panels rely on hard-coded Device Tree files in the Linux kernel even though much of the information can be automatically probed. Most eDP panels are "99% probable" and this panel-edp driver effort works on that to make for more eDP panels to be probed dynamically at run-time rather than hard-coded.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Microsoft's "CLOn12" Mesa Code Adds SPIR/SPIR-V Support [Ed: Microsoft is already polluting Linux with proprietary DirectX in a classic E.E.E. move]

          Microsoft's "CLOn12" effort to allow OpenCL over DirectX 12 by leveraging Mesa now has landed a major rework to its code within Mesa.

          There's been a five month old merge request to Microsoft's CLC code within Mesa to rework its compiler interface. The focus of this big patch series from Microsoft has been on being able to support SPIR and SPIR-V within CLOn12. Plus this reworked code is in better shape.

        • AMD's Older Radeon GPUs Get Ray Tracing Support on Linux

          Sometimes new technologies can work on old hardware. Who needs one of the best graphics cards when you can just use older hardware? This week enthusiasts working on Mesa, an open source implementation of OpenGL and Vulkan APIs for Linux, created a merge request for the RADV ray tracing driver for AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs, enabling it to work with previous-generation graphics cards. The question is, how well will they work?

          "This PR implements ray-tracing for older generations (Navi, Vega, Polaris, etc.)," wrote Joshua Ashton, a developer of DXVK and other Direct3D-on-Vulkan works for Valve, reports Phoronix. "It does this by emulating the AMD bvh intersection instructions in software. Right now this passes CTS the same as on RDNA 2 cards."

          In recent times software and hardware ray tracing support has been the focus of many industrial discussion as the technology has to be implemented properly to bring significant quality improvements. But that also causes massive performance hits even on modern hardware that supports hardware acceleration for ray tracing, such as AMD's Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs based on the RDNA 2 architecture.

          Ubisoft's decision not to implement ray tracing into Far Cry 6 for the latest game consoles greatly illustrates this controversy. But apparently Linux enthusiasts want to enable ray tracing support in Vulkan even on outdated architectures like the original RDNA from 2019 as well as GCN 4/5 from 2016/2017.

    • Applications

      • 3 Best Free and Open Source GUI Image Compression Tools

        Data compression is the process of storing data in a format that uses less space than the original representation would use. Compressing data can be very useful particularly in the field of communications as it enables devices to transmit or store data in fewer bits. Besides reducing transmission bandwidth, compression increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive or other storage device.

        There are 2 main types of compression. Lossy compression is a data encoding method which reduces a file by discarding certain information. When the file is uncompressed, not all of the original information will be recovered. Lossy compression is typically used to compress video, audio and images, as well as internet telephony. The fact that information is lost during compression will often be unnoticeable to most users. Lossy compression techniques are used in all DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and most multimedia available on the internet.

      • GStreamer 1.19.2 unstable development release

        The GStreamer team is pleased to announce the second development release in the unstable 1.19 release series.

        The unstable 1.19 release series adds new features on top of the current stable 1.18 series and is part of the API and ABI-stable 1.x release series of the GStreamer multimedia framework.

        The unstable 1.19 release series is for testing and development purposes in the lead-up to the stable 1.20 series which is scheduled for release in a few weeks time. Any newly-added API can still change until that point, although it is rare for that to happen.

        Full release notes will be provided in the near future, highlighting all the new features, bugfixes, performance optimizations and other important changes.

        This development release is primarily for distributors and early adaptors and anyone who still needs to update their build/packaging setup for Meson.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Basic Networking Commands in Linux



        Today I will be doing a better overview of some basic networking commands in Linux.

        I recently created a short and sweet thread on twitter with these commands, so right now, I will be going over them a bit more with more detail and information.

      • How to disable touchscreen on Ubuntu? - blackMORE Ops

        Recently I installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my Dell Inspiron 5547 laptop. I have replaced the HDD on this laptop with a SSD, swapped WLAN card with a Killer WLAN card. With Linux running, it’s very fast and responsive. However, I needed to disable the touchscreen on Ubuntu permanently.

      • How to Add Distributed Firewall (DFW) Rules in in VMware NSX-T Datacenter - buildVirtual

        Distributed firewall rules are applied at the VM (vNIC) level and control East-West traffic within the SDDC. Traffic attempting to pass through the dfw is subject to the rules that have been defined. The firewall rules are grouped into policies, which in turn belong to a category.

      • Check The Timezone in Linux - Unixcop

        In this small guide, I will explain how to check timezone in Linux using 4 Easy Methods. System time is usually defined by timezone. Please aware that entire globe divided into multiple timezones which determines its local time.

        There are a number of time management utilities available on Linux such as date and timedatectl commands to get the current timezone of system and synchronize with a remote NTP server to enable an automatic system time handling.

      • Distraction free writing in Vim with Goyo | Hund

        I can’t believe that I’ve forgotten to write about one of my most used Neovim plugin ever. The plugin I’m talking about is called Goyo.

        It adds a distraction free mode that helps me focus on my writing by centering the content and hiding all other elements.

      • How to Change Login Screen Background in Fedora Workstation

        In this guide, we will show you how you can change the login screen background image of Fedora Workstation (GNOME edition).

      • How To Configure PostgreSQL to Allow Remote Connections – TecAdmin

        An open-source, object-based relational database PostgreSQL, provides the user with the implementation of SQL and is commonly hosted on Linux. With PostgreSQL users can expand the system by defining self data types, functions, and operators.

        PostgreSQL is used by many large companies to save and store their data for various applications and it supports various programming interfaces as well as videos, texts, and images. In this article we’ll first go through the installation of PostgreSQL on ubuntu 20.04 then we’ll configure it to allow remote connection

      • How To Install Kubectl on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kubectl on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Kubectl is a command-line client for running commands against Kubernetes clusters. It is capable of deploying applications, managing the clusters, viewing their logs, etc.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Kubectl on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • Use Variables in Bash Scripts [Unusual Advanced Ways]

        You probably are aware of variables in Bash shell scripting.

        Like other programming and scripting languages, you use variables to store the data and then reference them later in future commands.

        name="Linux Handbook" echo "Hello $name!" And it will print "Hello Linux Handbook!".

        Outside of the example above, there's also a surprisingly large amount of things you can do with variables, such as filling in a default value when the variable isn't set, and assigning multiple values to a single variable.

        Let me show you these unusual and advanced usage of variables in bash scripting.

      • How to Add Password to Protect a Vim File in Linux - Unixcop

        Vim a contraction of Vi IMproved) is a free and open-source, screen-based text editor program for Unix

        Vim is a popular text editor for Linux, It’s one of its special features is support for encrypting text files using various crypto methods with a password.

        We will explain one of the simple Vim usage tricks; password protecting a file using Vim in Linux.

      • How to Install Nagios Core and NRPE on CentOS 8 - Unixcop

        Nagios is a free open source tool to monitor various network devices and servers in a network. It support both Linux and Windows OS and provides intuitive web interface to monitor network resources. When configured it can alert you via Email in case of a network device or server goes down or malfunctions. We will move towards installation and configuration of Nagios Core and NRPE (plugin).

      • How to configure bind with Debian 11 - Unixcop

        Today we will learn how to configure bind with Debian 11. World of the internet is not possible without DNS service. For Linux BIND to that DNS jobs. So what is bind or DNS? Well, its basic role is to patch a specific domain name with a specific IP address. When you are looking for a website over the internet it will resolve the domain name to IP address and vice versa. Usually, 53 is the port number for DNS services. Let’s have a look at how we can configure that service step by step.

      • How to Install Python 3.10 on Rocky Linux 8
    • Games

      • Chilly survival game The Long Dark gets Episode 4 in October | GamingOnLinux

        After the third episode of The Long Dark releasing back in October 2019, Hinterland Studio has confirmed Episode 4 will appear on October 6. Two years of waiting, hopefully it will be worth it.

        This episode has been given the title "FURY, THEN SILENCE". Here's the synopsis: "A murderous gang of convicts have captured Mackenzie. Desperate to escape one of the darkest corners of Great Bear Island, he must somehow survive his fiercest enemy yet. Can Mackenzie recover the Hardcase, continue his search for Astrid, and save the innocents caught up in this deadly confrontation?"

      • Tiles editor progress report #5

        Here comes a new progress report about the Tiles editor rework. This is most likely the last progress report before the 4.0 alpha. The previous blog post can be found here.

        Tile atlas editing

        Some improvements were made to the tile atlas editor.

        I first reorganized the tiles creation menus, which are now split into 3 modes. The first mode allows editing the atlas properties and creating/removing base tiles, the second one allows selecting and editing tiles properties, and the last one is to paint properties over the tiles.

        In this third mode, I implemented a dedicated editor for tile shapes (collision shapes, occluders, naviagation shapes). Set by default to the tile's base shapes, it then can be painted over tiles.

      • Steam Client Beta updated with PipeWire desktop capture for Remote Play | GamingOnLinux

        Valve continue upgrading and tweaking the Steam client with a fresh Beta version being released today with a couple of tweaks that are interesting for Linux users.

        Some of the issues fixed are for everyone including slow startup after suspend, Cloud Sync will now happen as soon as possible to avoid delays launching games and for Remote Play they fixed using multiple PS5 controllers from the Steam Link app.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Linux / Unix desktop Gnome 41: performance boost and better settings dialog

          The Gnome project has released version 41 of its Linux / Unix desktop. In addition to a significantly improved settings dialog, it offers an improved calendar application, “Connections” for remote connections to other computers and improvements to the Nautilus file manager. On top of that, the developers promise more oomph through various performance improvements.

          The now updated Gnome is one of the established desktop environments in the open source world. Similar to KDE, Gnome has existed for over two decades and has reinvented itself several times during this time. Today Gnome sets itself apart from most other environments: The Gnome shell as the main element of the desktop, for example, does not imitate the classic look of Windows, but arranges the desktop completely differently. The previous major version of Gnome, 40th, also brought significant visual changes compared to the previous version.

        • GNOME 41 Overview and Where to Download

          GNOME 41, the latest stable version of an easy and elegant desktop user interface, just released Wednesday 22 September 2021 six month after the previous version. This article overviews the release with step by step guide for you to download and try it out on computer. Thanks to GNOME, now software freedom is more user friendly and accessible for all computer users!

    • Distributions

      • BSD

        • MidnightBSD 2.1

          I’m happy to announce the availability of MidnightBSD 2.1 for amd64 and i386. This is an incremental release focusing on bug fixes, improvements to the package manager and a new system compiler.

      • Gentoo Family

        • Experimental binary Gentoo package hosting (amd64)

          As an experiment, I've started assembling a simple binary package hosting mechanism for Gentoo. Right now this comes with some serious limitations and should not be used for security or mission critical applications (more on this below). The main purpose of this experiment is to find out how well it works and where we need improvements in Portage's binary package handling.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • The 2021 SUSE One Partner Awards Go To… [Ed: Corporate 'awards'... to corporations]

          It gives me great pleasure to announce the winners of the 2021 SUSE One Partner Awards! The awards are to honour those partners who have gone above and beyond for our joint customers in what has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging years for many.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • IBM manager sued for €£290k after filing tribunal case ● The Register
        • Red Hat Satellite 6.9.6 has been released

          We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.9.6 is generally available as of September 22, 2021.

          Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.

        • Red Hat Shares ― DevSecOps

          All organizations are susceptible to information security threats―from cybercrime, which was predicted to cost the world US$6 trillion in 2021, to human error, which accounts for 95% of cybersecurity breaches.

          No matter the type of threat, your organization needs to protect itself by maintaining security controls across its stack. That’s where DevSecOps comes in. Security shouldn’t be an afterthought. DevSecOps means thinking about application and infrastructure security from the start, building it into every phase of the life cycle and stack―especially now that workloads are spread across environments.

          The good news: 74% of organizations that responded to our 2021 "Kubernetes adoption, security, and market trends" survey have a DevSecOps initiative in place, and 25% have an advanced initiative, integrating and automating security throughout the life cycle.

        • Should I migrate my application to the cloud? Here's how to decide

          There comes a time in the life of an application when someone asks: "Should we move this to the cloud?" Public and private clouds often breathe life into existing applications with more flexibility, simpler maintenance, and better performance. However, these lift and shift migrations come with tradeoffs.

          Should the application be migrated? If so, should you take the opportunity to make changes to the application along the way? How do you make a plan and stick to it? This post answers those questions and more.

        • Poettering: Authenticated Boot and Disk Encryption on Linux

          Here's a lengthy missive from Lennart Poettering taking Linux distributors to task for inadequately protecting systems from physical attacks.

        • AI applications optimizing actions based on data and predictions with Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data

          Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data enables building no-/low-code line of business applications using data, machine learning, and optimization from IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Ontology managers can define business-oriented data models integrating data from IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Application builders can use Palantir tools to create applications using these data models. Additionally, applications can integrate machine learning models from IBM Cloud Pak for Data to infuse predictions, as well as decision optimization result data from IBM Cloud Pak for Data to determine optimized actions based on data and predictions.

          This blog post explains how to create AI-infused apps using Palantir ontology and application building tools together with IBM Cloud Pak for Data model deployments and data and AI catalog. It also outlines the underlying integration architecture.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • GNOME 41 Released! New Remote Desktop App, Multitasking & Mobile Network Settings
          After half a year of development, the GNOME project announced version 41 of its popular Linux desktop environment.

          GNOME 41 comes with some exciting new features. The upper right corner system tray menu now includes option to make it easy to switch Power Mode between “Balanced” and “Power Saver”. It’s said that “Performance mode” is only visible on hardware that supports this feature, though I don’t understand which hardware required, may be a dedicated graphics card.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Chromium compiled for 12 hours before failing

            Ha ha, the saga continues. Not sure if I should plug away at this, or just give in and use the official binary package. This was the previous attempt:

            https://bkhome.org/news/202109/another-attempt-to-compile-chromium.html

            I learnt a lot from that, so applied some of that new knowledge and had another go. Started the compile at 10am this morning, has just now failed, at just on 10pm. There was one failure in the morning, that I caught just after it happened, and applied a hack to fix it. Here are my notes...

            [...]

            That last error means nothing to me.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PostgreSQL 14 RC 1 Released!

          The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the first release candidate of PostgreSQL 14 is now available for download. As a release candidate, PostgreSQL 14 RC 1 will be mostly identical to the initial release of PostgreSQL 14, though some more fixes may be applied prior to the general availability of PostgreSQL 14.

          The planned date for the general availability of PostgreSQL 14 is September 30, 2021. Please see the "Release Schedule" section for more details.

      • CMS

        • Build your website with Jekyll | Opensource.com

          Static website generators and JAMStack have taken off in recent years. And with good reason. There is no need for complex backends with only static HTML, CSS, and Javascript to serve. Not having backends means better security, lower operational overhead, and cheaper hosting. A win-win-win!

          [...]

          The command jekyll serve is great for local testing. But once you're done with local testing, you'll want to build the final artifact to publish. The command jekyll build --source source_dir --destination destination_dir builds your website into the _site folder. Note that this folder is cleaned up before every build, so don't place important things in there. Once you have the content, you can host it on a static hosting service of your choosing.

          You should now have a decent overall grasp of what Jekyll is capable of and what the main bits and pieces do. If you’re looking for inspiration, the official JAMStack website has some amazing examples.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GCC 12 Adds Stack Variable Auto-Initialization, Other Security Improvements Forthcoming

            Qing Zhao of Oracle presented yesterday during the LPC2021 GNU Tools Track around the work they and others have been engaged in for improving the security of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

            In some areas this GCC security work is about catching up with security features already implemented by LLVM Clang. Among the features have been for zeroing out caller-used registers on return, auto initializing of stack variables, unsigned overflow detection, and more. For instance with GCC 11 is the zero-call-used-regs compiler feature and now with Linux 5.15 that feature can be optionally used to enhance the kernel security.

        • Licensing/Legal

          • Software freedom podcast with Till Jaeger

            We talk about how Till got involved in Free Software, highlight the short and long term impacts of the first court decisions, about some of the most common misunderstandings of Free Software licensing, as well as the role of the FSFE's legal network in fostering the discussion and knowledge for Free Software legal and licensing topics. I highly appreciate Till for being able to explain complex legal topics, so non-lawyers can understand them.

  • Leftovers

    • Health/Nutrition

      • 3D Printed Sensor Detects Glyphosate

        Typically, detecting glyphosate — a herbicide — in a beverage requires a sophisticated test setup. But Washington State University has a 3D printed sensor that uses nanotubes to simplify the detection of the toxin.

        The idea is very similar to inexpensive blood glucose monitors. The test will eventually find use for human samples, but the initial testing was for detecting contamination in orange juice.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • The Linux Foundation & edX Teach Open Source to 2 Million Learners [Ed: So-called 'leaning' [1, 2]]

                The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, is proud to announce there have been two million enrollments to date across all of its online courses offered on the edX platform. These open source training courses have continually increasing rates of enrollment growth as the curriculum continues to expand, with offerings covering technologies like cloud infrastructure, blockchain, networking, and DevOps.

        • Security

          • ROT8000

            ROT8000 is the Unicode equivalent of ROT13. What’s clever about it is that normal English looks like Chinese, and not like ciphertext (to a typical Westerner, that is).

          • EnduraData Updates File Synchronization for Ransomware & Linux Containers
          • Cisco Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

            Cisco has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple Cisco products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

          • Security updates for Thursday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (ruby-kaminari and tomcat8), Mageia (389-ds-base, ansible, apache, apr, cpio, curl, firefox, ghostscript, gifsicle, gpac, libarchive, libgd, libssh, lynx, nextcloud-client, openssl, postgresql, proftpd, python3, thunderbird, tor, and vim), openSUSE (chromium, ffmpeg, grilo, hivex, linuxptp, and samba), Oracle (go-toolset:ol8, kernel, kernel-container, krb5, mysql:8.0, and nodejs:12), SUSE (ffmpeg, firefox, grilo, hivex, kernel, linuxptp, nodejs14, and samba), and Ubuntu (ca-certificates, edk2, sqlparse, and webkit2gtk).

          • CISA Releases Guidance: IPv6 Considerations for TIC 3.0

            The federal government has prioritized the transition of federal networks to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) since the release of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum 05-22 in 2005. In 2020, OMB renewed its focus on IPv6 through the publication of OMB Memorandum 21-07. That memorandum specifically entrusts CISA with enhancing the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program to fully support the implementation of IPv6 in federal IT systems.

    • Environment

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • ASMR Video Shows Tortoise Eating Veggies | Mental Floss

          It takes the tortoise in the video more than eight minutes to devour the strawberry, blueberry, broccoli floret, and piece of pumpkin laid out in front of it. The microphones poking into the top half of the frame capture every satisfied crunch and nibble. The audio will only trigger ASMR in people who are sensitive to the phenomenon. If you don't experience the "brain tingles" that characterize ASMR, you may still enjoy watching the cuteness on display below.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • China's tech crackdown - for consumers' good or greater control?

        China's moves are about control of data of tech firms, say civil society groups, who fear other governments may follow suit

        [...]

        China last month banned under-18s from playing video games during the week, with play restricted to just one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays.

        It also instructed gaming companies to prevent children playing outside these times and ensure they have real-name verification systems to limit abuse.

        Last week, the short video app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, said that all its authenticated users below the age of 14 will now access the app in "youth mode" - limiting users access for up to 40 minutes a day, between 6 am and 10 pm.

        Authorities have also sought to increase oversight of the algorithms tech companies use, saying that companies must abide by business ethics and principles of fairness, and ordering food delivery companies to provide better protection for workers.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Advocates to U.S. Congress: Fund FTC to combat data abuse

        Today, Access Now joined a coalition of civil society organizations to support the U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee’s proposal to increase the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) funding by $1 billion over ten years. The funding would be used to create a new FTC bureau that will focus on policing privacy, security, and data abuse matters.

        “Privacy and data protection issues have human rights and racial equity implications,” said Willmary Escoto, U.S. Policy Analyst at Access Now. “With such paltry funding and staffing, the FTC has been forced to ration its limited resources to focus on cases with the biggest impact, likely letting many violators off the hook. Increased funding will allow the Commission to hire more staff and take more cases that help reduce racial inequity.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Nitter and other Internet reclamation projects

        The world wide web has become an annoying, ultra-commercialized space. Many websites today are prioritizing the interests of the company behind the domain, at the expense of the user’s experience and well-being. This has been a frustrating problem for several years, but lately there’s been a heartwarming trend of users fighting back against the corporate web and stepping up to help and serve each other’s needs in spite of them, through what I’ve come to think of as Internet reclamation projects.

        I think the first of these which appeared on my radar was Invidious, which scrapes information off of a YouTube page and presents it in a more pleasant, user-first interface— something which NewPipe also does well for Android. These tools pry data out of YouTube’s hands and present it on a simple UI, designed for users first, with no ads or spyware, and with nice features YouTube would never add, like download links, audio mode, and offline viewing. It shows us what users want, but YouTube refuses to give.

        Another project which has been particularly successful recently is Nitter, which does something similar for Twitter. Twitter’s increasingly draconian restrictions on who can access what data, and their attitude towards logged-out users in particular, has been a great annoyance to anyone who does not have, and does not want, a Twitter account, but who may still encounter Twitter links around the web. Nitter has been quite helpful in de-crapifying Twitter for these folks. I have set up an automatic redirect in my browser which takes me straight to Nitter, and I never have to see the shitty, user-hostile Twitter interface again.

    • Monopolies



Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux is Replacing Microsoft Windows. But We Need to Eradicate Microsoft, It's a Hub of Crime.
I have been writing about Microsoft since the 1990s when I was in school
Microsoft Staff Harassing Women, Strangling Women, Telling Women to Kill Themselves and Worse? Not a Problem!
Two women have left Brett Wilson LLP
 
Happy Independence Day to Our American Readers
Maybe tomorrow will be a good opportunity to explain to American people - in terms of concepts, not brands - which tools respect their independence
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Linuxsecurity, and Google News Getting Even Worse (More Slopfarms Added Which Attack Linux With Bruce-Force SPAM)
Google News is part of the same problem
Links 03/07/2025: More Cuts and Cancellations at Microsoft Revealed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: Favourite Child and Launching WikiGem
Links for the day
Mystery Surrounding the PCLinuxOS Sites and PCLinuxOS Magazine
Let's hope this isn't something major
People and Companies Do Learn Some Lessons From Their Mistakes (Stubborn Ones Don't)
Brett Wilson LLP is an example of one that would rather drown in mistakes
Links 03/07/2025: 'Hey Hi' Slop Ridiculed Some More and Microsoft's Layoffs Tally for 2025 Reaches About 29,000 in Just 6 Months (Almost 5,000 Per Month)
Links for the day
The Slopfarms Are Losing the Plot (and Google is Propping Up Rogue Sites)
Google is part of the attack on the Web, on information, and on technology
New BetaNews Realises There's No Potential or Future in Slopfarms, Prior Editor Wayne Williams is Back
They realise that slop (so-called "AI") cannot replace humans
Claims That Microsoft Looks for Staff That Works More and Gets Paid Less (or Can Only Code by Grabbing Other People's Code, Under the Guise of "AI")
People can form their own opinion
Richard Stallman Was Right About Reasons Not to Use Microsoft
last updated 2017
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: No to Cloudflare and Small Web July
Links for the day
Links 02/07/2025: Deep Microsoft Cuts, Macron Speaks to Putin
Links for the day
Confirmed: Microsoft Shutdowns Today, Not Only Mass Layoffs
"The Initiative is the only studio closure planned today, although some other teams have seen cuts of varying degrees."
Microsoft Windows Nosedives in Switzerland While GNU/Linux Leaps Above 6%
sooner or later they might have to make the move anyway
Anxiety at Microsoft: Many Workers (Maybe Over 10,000) Still Don't Know They're Being Laid Off Just Before US Independence Day
"Has anyone gotten the notification yet?"
Microsoft "Declined to Say How Many People Would be Laid Off," According to Associated Press
Some other prominent publications said they reached out for comment from Microsoft and received none
The X War is Over and the "Wayland People" Lost
People will gravitate towards what works for them
20 Years Since My Thesis
It's still online
GNU/Linux is Replacing Windows in Laptops/Desktops
The world will move on while Windows and Microsoft shrink
Now Comes the Expected Webspam, Framing Microsoft Layoffs as "Hey Hi" Success Story (False Marketing That's Piggybacking the Layoffs)
falsely marketed as "intelligence"
Hungary: Microsoft Windows Sinks to 17% "Market Share"
In many nations in Europe it seems like the era of Windows is coming to an end
Microsoft Media Operatives and Bill Epsteingate-Funded Sites Said Microsoft Lays Off 9,000, But Other Sites Say More (Including 2,300 in Redmond Alone)
We might never know the real number/s (Microsoft will keep the cards close to its chest) until there are leakers or unless there are whistleblowers with hard proof
Microsoft Layoffs in Spain, Portugal Record for GNU/Linux
in Portugal we see GNU/Linux at record levels
GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High in the United States of America
Windows is trending down
Yes, Microsoft is Again Using Its Favourite Liars (Stenographers) to Seed Fake Layoff Numbers, Much Lower Than What's Really Happening
It is Jordan Novet again, just as we predicted
Will Microsoft Once Again Choose Its Favourite Liar to Spread Lies About Today's Layoffs, Quickly to be Replicated and Spread by Slopfarms?
What lies is Microsoft briefing its media moles to tell today?
"OSS Fetishism" Wins After Ferenc Zsolt Szabó Ousted (Microsoft Mole From Capgemini)
Many people said 2025 would be the "year of Linux on the desktop"
There is Nothing That LLMs Can Offer Honest People
LLMs are a passing fad; they're expensive and offer poor "value" for energy; they usually offer no value at all unless you are a cheater, spammer, and liar
What statCounter Shows Today Helps Explain Microsoft's Helplessness, Mass Layoffs
Since many US journalists are already away on holiday almost nobody will dare ask the difficult questions or give a voice to whistleblowers
Microsoft Gets the Chop in South America
The notion of digital sovereignty gained a lot of popularity
Europe Has an 'Exit'
Let's see what happens the rest of this year
El Presidente Talks, Canada Walks (Away From Windows)
GNU/Linux rising
Cities in France and Germany Move to GNU/Linux and statCounter Detects Big Differences
Will governments lead by example?
Microsoft Lost Its Foothold in Africa
How many of these are "old" Windows machines converted to GNU/Linux? Probably a lot.
Led by Europe, GNU/Linux Makes Big Gains This Month
statCounter started showing new/fresh stats
Links 02/07/2025: Massive Microsoft Layoffs About to Commence, "Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing"
Links for the day
Why the Microsoft People Who Started SLAPPs Against Techrights Could Very Well be Sent Back to Prison
White-collar crime is also a crime
The Company Run by Former (and Last Proper) Red Hat CEO, Promoting Microsoft Mono, Faces Shock as Senior Partner Jailed for 33 Sexual Offenses Including Pedophilia
"As reported by The Oxford Mail in April 2025, the offenses include rape, sexual assault, engaging in non-penetrative activity with a child, and more."
Microsoft Lost 29% of Windows Users, Based on Microsoft, Now Come Massive Layoffs
Microsoft collapse is today
Slopwatch: Google Serves to People Linux Slop and Linux FUD (Made by Bots)
"Slopwatch" finds it difficult to ignore Google's role in encouraging LLM slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 01, 2025
"Wayland People" Behave Like the Googles and Microsofts of This World
Published yesterday by Igor Ljubuncic
Gemini Links 02/07/2025: Arch Linux and Fulfillment in Gemini
Links for the day
Links 01/07/2025: "Independence Day in Taiwan", Bounties on Software Patents
Links for the day
What Happens When Your Law Firm is Preoccupied With Harassing and Trying to Extort a Humble Couple in Manchester, Even on Behalf of Violent Microsoft Staff From Another Continent
It's good to see that law firms which operate in bad faith are perishing
Lawyer X, Law Firm X and Elon Musk's X: scandals linked by Old Xaverian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 01/07/2025: Distraction-Free Writing and Hytale Mismanagement
Links for the day
Links 01/07/2025: "Beauty of Blogging" and "Etiquette of Collapse"
Links for the day
Microsoft Uses LLM Slop to Defraud (or Rob) Shareholders
Microsoft is basically defrauding its shareholders by LLM slop
The Web is a Dead End
We need to adopt alternatives
When Words Lose Their Intended Meaning
examples of words that, at least in the technical spheres, don't mean what they sound like
People Who Disagree With You on Technical Matters May or May Not Agree With You on Political Things (But Usually They Do)
What bothers me a great deal is seeing left-leaning people accusing other left-leaning people of being "nazis"
"Too Much Choice" and "Too Many Programming Languages"
What IBM and its apologists aim for was attempted in the 1930s and it failed
Microsoft Lost 400,000,000 Windows Users, According to Microsoft
more people adopt smaller computers and many people replace Windows with GNU/Linux, as they don't really need a new computer
The "Davos Effect": Tarnishing the Reputation of Places Not by Overtourism But by Oligarch Infestation
The last Venice needs is an affiliation with Venetian oligarchs
Half a Year Gone, What's to Come Next
In the second half of 2025 we expect to be done with the Microsoft SLAPPs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 30, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 30, 2025
People at the Very Top of Microsoft Know How Bad Things Really Are
There's no product that can replace the former profitability of Windows licensing and stuff that went on top of Windows
Gemini Links 01/07/2025: Mid Year and a Tour of Old Languages
Links for the day