Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 12/11/2011: More Sabayon Linux 7 'Flavours'





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Goodbye BIOS, hello UEFI
    When you turn on your computer, a primitive system that dates back more than 30 years, the basic input/output system (BIOS), turns your cold hardware into a functioning system that your operating system can then boot from. Alas, it's sadly out of date. PC makers have slowly been replacing BIOS with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). That's all well and good, but one UEFI feature, Secure Boot, could be used to lock PCs into being only able to boot one operating system: Windows 8.


  • iOS upgrade swells iPhone battery-suckage grief


  • Security





  • Finance

    • For Bank Of America, Debit Fees Extend To Unemployment Benefits
      usiness plan. Out of work for much of the last three years, she depends upon a $264-a-week unemployment check from the state of South Carolina. But the state has contracted with Bank of America to administer its unemployment benefits, and Busby has frequently found herself incurring bank fees to get her money.

      To withdraw her benefits, Busby, 33, uses a Bank of America prepaid debit card on which the state deposits her funds. She could visit a Bank of America ATM free of charge. But this small community in the state's rural center, her hometown, does not have a Bank of America branch. Neither do the surrounding towns where she drops off her kids at school and attends church.


    • TOM THE DANCING BUG: Whose Encampment Should Crowd-Control Police Be Breaking Up?




  • Civil Rights

    • The WikiLeaks-Fueled Erosion of Civil Liberties Has Begun
      When a federal judge ruled that Twitter must reveal the private data of three WikiLeaks associates on Thursday, privacy advocates died a little inside. The two organizations that had defended the three users, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF), immediately filed mournful blog posts that respectively raised doubts about the United States government's secretive handling of the case and highlighted grave message the ruling sends about the future of privacy on the internet. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Valentine-DeVries sums up the implications of the case best with a leading question: "Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?" We now know that the federal court's answer is, "Yes."




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Turncoat EU Parliament Gives Up on Defending Free Wireless Communications
      In discussions on the future of wireless communications policies, the EU Parliament is giving in to Member States by accepting a watered-down version1 of the Radio Spectrum Policy Programme. Last Spring, the Parliament had made very constructive proposals in favour of open spectrum policies, calling2 for citizen-controlled wireless communications. Sadly, the first major effort to harmonise spectrum policy in Europe is being held back by EU governments' conservatism and the Parliament's surrender.


    • Digital Divide Persists Even as Broadband Adoption Grows
      Broadband Internet adoption has skyrocketed over the last decade in the U.S, though adoption hasn't been entirely evenly spread across all Americans. That's the conclusion from a new Exploring the Digital Nation report from The Department of Commerce's Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

      The report is a followup to one released in 2010 that came to a similar set of conclusions about the so-called digital divide between those that have broadband Internet access and those that do not.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Proudhon: if IP is property, is it theft?
      Here is a thought provoking article on how the distribution of income gives the top one percent such a disproportionate share of output link here. It finds the source in French anarchist Proudhon's cry that "Property is theft," and asserts "The biggest "theft" by the [richest] 1 percent has been of the primary source of wealth - knowledge - for its own benefit."






Recent Techrights' Posts

What EPO Staff, the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO), and Europe Want and Need
Who should be served by patents?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 49 Out of 200: Two Americans, One Case, Recycled for Low Budget at Brett Wilson LLP and 5RB Barristers
Change one character, bill the client tens or hundreds of thousands of US dollars
 
GAFAM Decided to Stop 'Old' Formats From Working, Format-Shifting Treadmills Resemble the Certificate Cartel Keeping Everybody Forever Chasing Rotations
Lots of extra chores because those who control the browsers decided that "too much choice" is bad, so they'll break "old" sites and make multimedia that's "old" not work anymore (not playable)
Nothing But Vapourware Since XBox Leadership Ousted and Mass Layoffs Will Come Soon
We just don't know the exact date/s... yet
Gemini Links 18/04/2026: Guix and WikiReader
Links for the day
Network Maintenance Next Friday
We must be doing a terrific job so far given how much money gets spent trying to silence us
"The Work-to-rule is Having Effect" at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The media knows how to contact SUEPO, but it's clearly not doing it
Improving the Sites, Not Bloating Them
Sites need to evolve over time. Many conflate evolution with bloat (as if more complexity is desirable).
SLAPP Censorship - Part 50 Out of 200: The Time Staff of Law Firm Burgess Mee Was Showing Up in Letters Sent for a Serial Strangler From Microsoft
Family-friendly? No.
Next Week the Star of the "EPO Reality TV Show" Will Likely be Absent (Absconding the Tough Reality of Widespread Unrest)
He tarnishes the legacy of that surname and the country's image by spouting out lies and hurling abusive insults (lots of the "f word") at staff
Speculations That IBM's CEO is on His Way Out
IBM has mass layoffs, but the media is not covering this [...] IBM is a company in the loo, a firm in a state of rapid disintegration
Slopwatch Was Deprecated, It's Not Coming Back
LLMs that produce many words very fast (and waste a lot of energy in the process) cannot compete with authentic news sites
WELCOME to The Cyber|Show @ Geminispace!
Andy set things up this past week
Links 18/04/2026: Microsoft's PR Department (Waggener Edstrom) and CEO's Wife Buys NPR (BillPR, Now BallmerPR) as Independent/Public Service Media Dims Down
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/04/2026: Chronic Pain and CodingFont Game
Links for the day
Links 17/04/2026: "I Hate the Internet" and Fake Wallet in Apple App Store
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 17, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, April 17, 2026
European Patent Office (EPO) Strikes and Other Industrial Actions Are Working: Patent Application Grants Have Collapsed
Even before the strikes happened any day of the week
Pension Contribution Increases as Another Attack on Compensation for EPO Staff (Mostly Patent Examiners)
Pension contribution increases!
Almost 1,000 IBM Layoffs Not Newsworthy (Nobody Covers It), Unlike When Snap Does It and Mentions a Celebrated - or Reviled - Buzzword
not a word regarding IBM layoffs
Behind the Scenes With Richard Stallman
If you support his ideas, even if you dislike him as a person, then you'll welcome his ability to speak about those ideas
Gemini Links 17/04/2026: "Many Problems and Inequities in the Legal System", "No Place to Hide"
Links for the day
Links 17/04/2026: SRA Breaks Its Own Rules as Solicitor Attempts Suicide, IPv6 Barely Hits 50% After 20+ Years
Links for the day
ActBlue former IT boss disappearance: Decklin Foster & Debian, Harvard suicide lab, Chris Gleason is wife, whistleblower or both?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/04/2026: Getting competent in NixOS and Alhena 5.5.6 Released
Links for the day
Links 17/04/2026: "We Cannot Lose Sight of Ukraine" and "When Leaders Should Resign"
Links for the day
GizChina Appears to Have Become a Slopfarm, I.e. Fake News Site With Fake Text
Don't waste a moment reading LLM slop, as at the very least it rewards plagiarism [...] Deemed to be slop also by two human beings, not just two scanners
Massive, Cross-Site Strike at the EPO Today
There's coordination across sites for maximal pressure
Dr. Andy Farnell Says "AI" is "Only a Marketing Term" for Things That Exist for "Entertainment Purposes Only"
distortion or misuse of the term (now buzzword/s) "AI"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 16, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, April 16, 2026
Strikes at the EPO Carry on, Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) Increases Pressure Ahead of Technical and Operational Support Committee (TOSC) Meeting Next Week
the local section The Hague (or SUEPO TH) wants to rally many staff members
Gemini Links 16/04/2026: LLM Nuisance, Identity Systems (Surveillance), and Why Windows is Failing
Links for the day
'Going Offline' is Not Primitivism
Computers are good at automation, but people are not robots
The Register MS Has Published Article With "AI" 18 Times in it, "Cloud" 9 Times. It Got Paid to Do This.
What happened to journalism?
In Europe, More People Turn to Russia for Answers, Not Microsoft
The future of computing doesn't look pretty
SLAPP Censorship - Part 48 Out of 200: Brett Wilson LLP and 5RB Copy-Pasting Bogus Claims for Violent Americans (Microsoft) Who Tell Women to Kill Themselves
Microsoft's Graveley telling his partner to kill herself is probably a crime
The EFF Is Hardly Doing Anything Anymore
Our series about the EFF has been brewing for over 2 years already
Microsoft Uses Slop to Bribe (at No Cost) Nations That Otherwise Would Move to GNU/Linux and IBM is Forcing Red Hat Staff to Use Slop
Life it too short to waste "consuming" slop
Links 16/04/2026: Roblox Launching ‘Roblox Kids’ Accounts and "Deepfake Nudes Crisis in Schools"
Links for the day
Red Hat Staff: IBM Red Hat Laid Off About 400 Engineers, the Media Did Not Cover This
The media is not doing its job or doing a really shoddy job
Gemini Links 16/04/2026: Nocturnal Pulse, Unpersoned Outlaws, and Monaspace Lagrange Fontpacks
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Lecture in GDC Auditorium in Austin, Texas
corporate power could not 'cancel' the man
It's Not About the Head, It's About the Masters (and Funding)
Regardless of who the OSI claims to be its leader, its masters are Microsoft, just follow the money
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 15, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 15, 2026