Links 21/03/2026: David Botstein Dies, Slop as Censorship Apparatus
Coders Don't Just Reject 'Vibe Coding' Because They're "Luddites", They Just Know the True Cost of Slop

When Nobody Else Covers the News

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 21, 2026

It's 2PM here and since midnight we've served 3,005,877 Web requests in Techrights alone. The need for curation of quality news or non-slop news is a growing need as well.

It's quite telling that many people from IBM, Confluent in particular this past week, read this site. There's an obvious "media blackout" regarding the mass layoffs; it seems like we're the only site writing about it. █

Image source: Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrating correct postures for housework

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VIII - Mobbing and Silencing of Dissenting Staff: that's the very cornerstone of functional democracies with real opposition parties
Reader Shares Recent Memes on Slop and 'Coding' by LLMs: "just some funny memes I thought were relevant to current coverage."
Invitation to General Assembly After 1,200 EPO Workers Participated in the Demonstration 3 Days Ago: "the strike of 19 March was also very well followed."
SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade: Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented
Symptom of Publishers Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop. Symptom of Software Companies Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop ('Vibe').: It'll always fail. It's hype. It's a bubble.
Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware: Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight
Techrights Was Always a Community Site: The harder we're attacked, the more people participate in the site
Maintenance Reminder: We'll carry on publishing
Behind the PR Smokescreen and Microsoft-Sponsored Chaff, Microsoft Layoffs in "AI" Alleged This Month: In an age when ~1,000 simultaneous layoffs aren't enough to receive any media coverage, what can we expect remaining publishers to tell us about Microsoft layoffs in 2026?
Bluewashing at Confluent: Some Workers to Leave Within 3 Months (IBM Mass Layoffs): Is the "era of AI" an era when none of the media will mention over 800 layoffs? [...] There's a lesson here about the state of the contemporary media, not just IBM and bluewashing
Microsoft OpenAI, Drowning in Debt and Forced to Make Significant Cuts (as Reports Reveal This Month), Does Hiring Disguised as "Takeovers" to Fake Value or Alleged Potential: Remember what happened to Skype last year
Slop Does Not Replace Art, It Contaminates Everything With Reckless Nonsense: many Computer Scientists do not want programs to get contaminated by slop
Coders Don't Just Reject 'Vibe Coding' Because They're "Luddites", They Just Know the True Cost of Slop: if some programmer says slop sucks, don't rush to assume selfishness or defence of one's occupation
When Nobody Else Covers the News: There's an obvious "media blackout" regarding the mass layoffs
Links 21/03/2026: David Botstein Dies, Slop as Censorship Apparatus: Links for the day
Links 21/03/2026: Metastablecoin Fragmentation and Crescent Moon: Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/03/2026: Historic Ada Docs; The Lurking LLM on the SmolNet: Links for the day
HSBC the Latest Failed Bank Using Slop as Excuse for Its Financial Failure: "HSBC is planning on cutting as many as 20,000 jobs in the near future as the company allies with AI revolution."
A/Prof Susan G Kleinmann, Enkelena Haxhija & Debian-private risk to MIT: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 20, 2026: IRC logs for Friday, March 20, 2026
Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com): The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative
Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism: Links for the day
The EPO's Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Explains to the Administrative Council (AC) How Bad Things Have Become at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Biggest Patent Office, and Corruption/Cocaine Hub (Jobs Sold to Friends): We'll say a bit more tomorrow
IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders): For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet: Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic: 5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants): hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night: Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement: Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison: "Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies: Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles): Windows fell by a lot
"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply": Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800: For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron): Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers.": continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini": Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026: IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network: For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs": They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs: many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs: Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop": If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer": Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants": Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.: gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical: As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News': Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today: Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News): Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop: This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed: Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already): In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated: For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026: IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds": Links for the day