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Links 23/8/2011: GIMP 2.7.3 Released, Ubuntu Joins VMware





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • How open source is transforming the publishing industry
    Many of you already know I am not only a writer of a technical nature, but a writer of fiction. In fact, the second in my I Zombie trilogy will hit the shelves next month. I have been working hard to produce a catalog of ebooks and paperbacks for the last three years. During that time I have discovered something that seems to be slipping through the cracks of the majority of computer-type pundits — open source is one of the major players in the new world publishing order.


  • How open source is transforming the publishing industry
    With the growth of social networking, blogging and the Web in general, personal privacy is becoming harder and harder to find.

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that privacy is no longer "a social norm." And former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once famously opined, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



  • CMS

    • Drupal Open App Standard Initiative Launched
      Two leading players have announced the Drupal Open App Standard Initiative in an effort to help create an improved user experience within the Drupal content management system and to help spur the development of the Drupal economy.

      Phase2 Technology, based in Alexandria, VA, and SubHub, based in Cardiff, United Kingdom, have been collaborating on the initiative to achieve interoperability for Drupal apps and thus make it possible for any developer to write an app that would then be deployable across multiple app market implementations.




  • Licensing

    • New GPL licence touted as saviour of Linux, Android
      The Free Software Foundation reckons its new version of the General Public Licence removes the problems bedevilling version two, but not everyone is convinced the problem even exists.

      The FSF reckons that Linux developers need to move quickly to GPLv3 if they're to avoid Android (and similar Linux-based platforms) getting tied up in legal battles, despite the fact that many are claiming such battles are no more than figments in the eyes of publicity-hungry bloggers.

      At issue is the clause in version two of the GPL which states that anyone breaching the restrictions irrevocably surrenders their rights under the licence. As just about every Android licensee has, at some point, failed to provide source code (or written notice of source code provision), then (the argument goes) they are all in breach of the GPLv2 and thus open to copyright suits from every Linux developer.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Hardware

      • Open hardware, or open source hardware?
        Bruce Perens (co-founder of the Open Source Initiative) has been opining about the difference between open source hardware and open hardware. People have compared the debate to the difference between open source software and free software, and are concerned that it might become as divisive. I’m not so sure. I think they are two different things, and they can co-exist peacefully.






  • Programming





Leftovers

  • Rare Strong Earthquake Hits Colorado
    The largest natural earthquake in Colorado in more than a century struck Monday night in the state’s southeast corner, but there had been no reports of damage or injuries.

    The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 and centered about nine miles from the city of Trinidad, hit at 11:46 p.m. local time. It was felt as far away as Greeley, about 350 miles north, and into Kansas and New Mexico, said Julie Dutton, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.


  • Earthquake rocks Washington area
    The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was 3.7 miles deep. Shaking was felt at the White House and all over the East Coast, as far south as Chapel Hill, N.C. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated. The quake was in Mineral, Va., in Louisa County.


  • Justice Prosser Back in the Spotlight
    Embattled Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser is in the spotlight once again, this time for a conflict-of-interest in a pending case involving Koch-funded Tea Party groups.


  • Science

    • Top scientists advise recent graduates to seek work abroad
      Science graduates should scale back their hopes of finding work in the UK and cast their net wider, according to two of the UK's most influential scientists.

      Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Prof Keith Campbell said decreasing levels of funding for British research meant would-be scientists should think globally when hunting for employment.

      The pair made their comments on Sunday at an Edinburgh International Book Festival debate on the future of science.




  • Security





  • Finance

    • Can the Middle Class Be Saved?
      IN OCTOBER 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was "no such animal as the U.S. consumer," and that concepts such as "average" consumer debt and "average" consumer spending were highly misleading.


    • Insurers Deliberately Confuse Policyholders and Dump the Sick
      A couple of years ago, when Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia asked me to testify about little-known health insurance industry practices at a hearing of his Senate Commerce Committee, I initially was reluctant. I knew that if I was completely honest, my life would change forever.

      What he was asking me to do was to disclose practices that have contributed to the growing number of Americans without insurance, the even faster growing number of us who are underinsured, and the phenomenal increase in insurance industry profits over the years, even as the ranks of those without coverage swelled.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying





Recent Techrights' Posts

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
 
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