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Links 26/6/2010: HP and Linux, GNOME Shell 2.31.4 is Out



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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Tech Exchange talks to Tectonic
    The latest episode of OTE podcast features an interview with Tectonic in which we talk about open source software in Africa.


  • Open Source Geographic Tracking?




  • Events







  • Web Browsers

    • Android Becomes Flash Mobile's First BFF


    • Uncertain future for Flash
      And it's not just YouTube that uses Flash, almost all video sites do, as well as online games sites and entertainment sites. An older survey of websites by browser maker Opera found that in most countries around 30% of websites were built in or contained Flash elements. And in some countries that was as high as 40% or 50%. So it's safe to say that as much as 30% of the web relies in some or other way on Flash.


    • Mozilla: We're not 'on board' with Google's plugin spice
      Mozilla says it has "no official position" on NPAPI Pepper, the revamped browser plug-in API developed by Google for use with Native Client, a plug-in that runs native code inside its Chrome browser.






  • SaaS

    • Red Hat says everybody gets a cloud
      At its Boston developer summit Red Hat is pushing the theme that every company can have its own cloud with the first in a line of Cloud Foundation tools.








  • Programming

    • Take more note when Eclipse code drops on schedule
      Five years into my tenure on this beat and I still read, in comments, snark about open source programmers being amateurs, coding in their parents’ basements, in their pajamas.

      This was always a false image. Not that I have anything against a good parent’s basement, or a nice comfortable pair of jammies. And when open source was being born, at the bottom of the dot-bomb, there was high unemployment in the code-o-sphere.

      But the coders and the coding were always professional. There have always been a lot of people in open source who knew how to make the coding train run on time.








  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • Security/Aggression

    • Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as 'domestic extremist'
      For John Catt, protest has never been about chaining himself to a railing or blocking a road in an act of civil disobedience. The 85-year-old peace campaigner's far milder form of dissent typically involves turning up at a demonstration with his daughter, Linda, taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene.


    • Senator Moves To Form Federal "Cyber-Emergency" Agency
      The President would gain the power to unilaterally declare a national cyber-emergency and order operators of "critical infrastructure" to immediately implement "response plans" as provided for by the act. Those who fail to do so would be subject to fines, while those who comply would be protected from civil liability for any damages they might cause in doing so — government speak for "you can break people's stuff and they're just out of luck."


    • FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives








  • Environment

    • Ushahidi tracks the Gulf Oil Spill: Open Source Crowdsourcing at Work
      Together, crowdsourcing and open source are a potent combination especially during possible emergencies. In this case, the Ushahidi based Oil Crisis Map has helped share data across communities and has openly presented the magnitude of the oil spill. Also, it has enabled people on the ground to actively participate in solving this crisis using current and accurate information.

      Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony") itself emerged from another emergency - monitoring a disputed Kenyan election in 2007 with a mash-up of eyewitness reports onto a Google map. Today Ushahidi has developers from Kenya (where it started), Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the US. Ushahidi was also used in Project Vote Report India for India's 2009 general elections to track election irregularities.








  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Reporters Without Borders unveils first-ever “Anti-Censorship Shelter”
      Reporters Without Borders today launched the world’s first “Anti-Censorship Shelter” in Paris for use by foreign journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are refugees or just passing through as a place where they can learn how to circumvent Internet censorship, protect their electronic communications and maintain their anonymity online.








  • Copyrights

    • Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP
      Yesterday, we reported that ASCAP said that organizations like Creative Commons were undermining their copyrights. Today, we’ve received an official response from Creative Commons with regards to the letter writing campaign.

      In the same article, we discussed how Creative Commons was, contrary to what ASCAP said, not about undermining anyone elses copyrighted material, but rather, giving artists an option that was not the Public Domain (no rights reserved) nor Copyright (all rights reserved).

      Eric Steuer, a Creative Commons spokesperson, thanked ZeroPaid for the earlier posting as being well-thought out and was happy to respond to ASCAPs letter










Clip of the Day



CLUG Talk 25 August 2009 - Experiences as a Novice Linux User (2009)

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Recent Techrights' Posts

Reddit as a Hive of Trolls, Social Control Media Curated (Many Voices Censored and Banned) by Marketing Firm of GAFAM
Typical Reddit
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part III - Women Failing Women to Help Violent Americans From Microsoft
Summed up, SRA will gladly prioritise the "legal industry" over women strangled, raped etc
The World Gets Smaller, as Does Its Real Economy ('Human Resources') and So-called 'Natural Resources' (What Humans Call the Planet)
Don't talk about "AI"
Converting FOSDEM Talk on Software Patents in Europe Into Formats That Work for "FOS" and Don't Have Software Patent Traps
transcoded version of the video
Biggest "AI Companies" (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft) Borrowed (Additional Debt) About $100,000,000,000 in a Year
Who will be held accountable for all this?
In 2009 Microsoft Was Valued at ~150 Billion Dollars, Now They Tell Us Microsoft Lost ~1,000 Billion Dollars in Value. Does That Make Sense?
Or Microsoft lost 700 billion dollars in "value" in less than two weeks
 
Crowdfunding vs Bitcoins: donations are better investment than digital tulip mania
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 07/02/2026: Misinformation by Slop, Overrated Slop Causes Stock Market Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/02/2026: Diode Function Generators and Panic Over Buzzwords and Slop
Links for the day
A Can of WORMS - Part III - Envying the Influence and Accomplishments of RMS, Socially Deleterious Attacks on Popular Movements
the actions are deliberate and coordinated, not some 'organic' or grassroots behaviour
Crisis teams assembled as financial regulators anticipate Bitcoin implosion
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 07/02/2026: More White House Racism, "Europe Accuses TikTok of Addictive Design"
Links for the day
Silent Mass Layoffs: It's Not the Revolution, It's the Loophole and the Hack ("Low Performers" or "Underperformers")
Layoffs by another approach
Mark Shuttleworth (MS) Pays Salaries to Microsoft (MS) Employees
Canonical selling Microsoft
Links 07/02/2026: Windows TCO Rising, Lousy Patents Invalided
Links for the day
Microsoft Leadership: Stop Taxing Us, Tax Only Poor People
Does Microsoft create jobs?
In Case You've Missed It (ICYMI), Google's Debt More Than Doubled in a Year
Wait till it "monetises" billions of GMail users with slop
PIPs and Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Still Going on, It's "Forever Layoffs" (to Skirt the WARN Act)
American workers out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 06, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 06, 2026
Stressful Times for Team Campinos ("Alicante Mafia") at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
Keep pushing
Growing Discrimination in the European Patent Office (EPO)
it's a race to the bottom, basically
Google News Drowning in (or Actively Promoting) Slopfarms Again
LLM slop is a nuisance
Microsoft Stock Crashed When Alleged Vista 11 Numbers Disclosed
And last summer Microsoft indicated that it had lost 400 million Windows users
Gemini Links 07/02/2026: "Choosing a License for Literary Work" and "Social Media Is Not Social Networking (Anymore)"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Git and Email Patches; MNT Pocket Reform
Links for the day
Geminispace Net Growth in 2026 About a Capsule a Day
A pace like this means net gain of ~300 per year, i.e. about the same as last year
It's Not About Speed, It's About the Message (or Its Depth)
Better to write news than to just link to news if there's commentary that the news may merit
Benjamin Henrion Warned About the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Court (UPC) in FOSDEM 2026
Listen to Benjamin Henrion
Economies Crashing Not Because of Slop Improving 'Efficiency' (That's a False Excuse) and 'Expensive' (Read: Qualified) Workers Discarded in Race to the Bottom
Actual cocaine addicts are pushing out moral people
IBM's CEO Speaks of Layoffs, Resorts to Mythical (False) Excuses
This has nothing to do with slop
Links 06/02/2026: Voter Intimidation and Press Shutdowns in US, Web Traffic Warped by LLM Sludge
Links for the day
Does Linux Torvalds Regret Having Dinners With Bill 'Russian Girls' Gates?
See, the rules that govern the Linux Foundation and its big sponsors aren't the same rules that apply to all of us
IBM: Cheapening Code, Cheapening Staff, Cheapening Everything
IBM's management runs IBM like it's a local branch of McDonald's. IBM is a junk company with morbid innards.
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in One of the World's Largest Nations
Democratic Republic Of The Congo
Linux Foundation Operative Says We and Our Software All "Owe an Enormous Debt of Gratitude" to a Software Patents Reinforcer
The only true solution is to entirely get rid of all software patents
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part IV - EPO Can Get Away With Murders, Suicide Clusters, and Systematic and Prolonged Bullying by 'Team Campinos' ("Alicante Mafia" as Insiders Call It)
Nobody in the Council or the EU/EC/EP gives a damn as long as laws are broken to fabricate 'growth'
Jeff Bezos Isn't Just Killing the Washington Post, He's Killing Thousands of News Sites/Newsrooms (in Dozens of Languages) That Rely on It for Many Decades Already
Not just slopfarms; even the Ukraine-based reporters are culled by Bezos, who's looking to please the dictators of the world
Central Staff Committee Confronted António Campinos for Giving His Cocaine-Addicted Friend Over 100,000 Euros to Do Nothing, Just Pretend to be Ill, While Cutting the Salaries of Everybody Else
"On the agenda: Amicale framework & Financial assistance for courses"
How to Win Lawsuits in 5 Simple Steps
Keep issuing threats every week and send 60 kilograms of legal papers to the target
More Than 99% of "AI" Companies Aren't AI, They're Pure BS
We need to discard those stupid debates about "AI" and reject media that gets paid to participate in such overt narrative control (manipulation like The Register MS)
AI Used to Save Lives, Now "AI" is a Grifting Scheme That Burns the Planet and Will Crash the Economy
What the media calls "AI" (it gets paid to call it that) is the same stuff that could instead be dubbed "algorithms"
Living in Freedom When 'False Flag Operations' Like EFF Get Captured by Billionaires to Take Freedom Away
There are many ways to think of Software Freedom
Amutable is a Microsoft Siege Against Freedom in GNU/Linux, Just Like the People Who Brought You 'Secure Boot' Controlled by Microsoft
Do whatever is possible to avoid Amutable and its "products"
Growing Focus on Publication
Over the past ~10 days we always served more than a million Web hits per day
"Going to be a large number of Microsoft layoffs announced soon"
Everybody knows a giant wave of layoffs is coming Microsoft's way
End of the 'GPU Bubble' and NVIDIA Finally Admits It Won't Bail Out Microsoft OpenAI Anymore
circular financing (financial/accounting fraud)
Corrupt Media Won't Hold Accountable Rich People for Role in Pedophilia
Journalistic misconduct or malpractice is a real thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 05, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, February 05, 2026
EPO Management ("Alicante Mafia") Not Properly Sharing Information on Scale of Strikes by EPO Staff
disproportionate (double) deductions in salaries against people who participate in strikes, which are protected by law
Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Slop/Microslop, Home Assistant, and Valid Ex Commands
Links for the day
Blackmail evidence: Debian social engineering exposed in ClueCon 2024 talk on politics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bitcoin crash: opportunity or the end game?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Changes at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
SRA is basically a waste of money
Claims That IBM Will Lay Off 20% (or 15%) of Its Workforce This Year Unless It Finds a Way to Push Them All Out by Threats, Shame, Guilt
Where are the articles about IBM layoffs?
IBM Isn't a Serious Company Anymore, It's a Ponzi Scheme Operated by a Clique and It Misuses Companies It Acquires to Prop Up or Legitimise the Scheme
IBM seems like it's nothing but a "Scheme"
Google News Drowning in Slop About "Linux" (Slopfarms Galore)
Google should know better than to link to any of these slopfarms, but today's Google is itself a pusher of slop