Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links - Education Watch, BBC Apologizes for Selling Out, BP Oil Lingers

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  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



    • Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery

      Copy is not theft. Most of the privacy problems people have are Windows exploits and the power non free software owners help themselves to in the first place. As usual, the NYT is lost in a maze of details and misses the big picture.





  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



  • Anti-Trust



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules
      Independent revealed programmes were made by third-party in pay of governments and firms

      Techrights has written a lot about Microsoft BBC corruption. The apology is a good first step. The BBC should abandon broadcast to focus on publicly financed program production and public domain distritution to free itself from money problems. More money, not less should be provided for this.





  • Privacy

    • Austrian Law Student Faces Down Facebook
      In less than a year, Mr. Schrems's one-person operation has morphed into a Web site, Europe Versus Facebook, and a grass-roots movement that has persuaded 40,000 people to contact Facebook in Ireland, where its European headquarters are located, to demand a summary of all the personal data the U.S. company is holding on them... Mr. Schrems filed the grievance after using a provision of Irish law to obtain from Facebook a copy of all of the information the company had been keeping on him. ... Facebook was routinely collecting data [1,222 pages worth] that he had never consented to give, like his physical location, which he assumes was determined from his computer's unique address identifiers, which can be traced geographically. Facebook was also retaining data he had deleted...




  • Education Watch

    • The F-word of Ed Reform — and its unholy alliance with right-wing union-busting
      There is a word for this kind of anti-democratic collaboration between business and government, but we haven’t used it much since the 1940s: fascism.

      This article is a good run down of what's going on in the world of civil servant union busting and "education reform"



    • More Anti-Charter School Resolutions in Washington State

      It looks like a good backlash it on the way. That's good for Washington state and a good example for the rest of us.



    • 60% Teach for America , Inc. recruits and 40% credentialed teachers in Lousiana

      Louisiana would have money for their schools and other things if government had the guts to tax the multinationals that run cancer alley.



    • New Orleans: Beachhead for Corporate Takeover of Public Schools
      New Orleans is important in the national education debate, but not for the reasons we commonly hear; it is important because it is the beachhead for a national movement to remove schools from local democratic control and accountability. The privatization trade-off is that the public sacrifices control of schools for a privatized system that delivers better education for the same tax dollar. While the citizens of New Orleans certainly lost control of their schools [after Hurricane Katrina], it cannot be said that they have received a better education, if that also means an equitable education, nor can it be said that it came at the same cost. ... Hurricane Katrina was the perfect storm for the corporate education movement: No democracy, no unions, and a goal of 100% privatization of all public schools. It is no mystery why they chose New Orleans as their beachhead.


    • The Myth of “Choice” in New Orleans: How the Recovery School District, Through the Charter School Movement Has Cheated Nearly 5000 New Orleans Students Out of Access to Real “Choice”


    • An essay by a former Teach for America recruit: Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t
      I’m glad I ‘did’ TFA. Twenty years ago they filled a need. Putting a few hundred barely trained teachers into the toughest to serve schools was one of those concepts that was ‘so crazy, it might just work.’ We weren’t always doing ‘good,’ but we also weren’t doing much harm. Our five or six hundred teachers were pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. Over the next twenty years, TFA did a lot of growing, but not a lot of evolving. They replicated their institutes and increased their regions. The 2011 corps is nearly 6,000, twelve times as big as the cohorts from the early 90s. Unfortunately, the landscape in education has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Instead of facing teacher shortages, we have teacher surpluses. There are regions where experienced teachers are being laid off to make room for incoming TFA corps members because the district has signed a contract with TFA, promising to hire their new people. ... TFA has participated in building a group of ‘leaders’ who, in my opinion, are assisting in the destruction of public education.


    • Occupy the DOE in DC from March 30th to April 2nd
      The key lever is the vaunted score on high-stakes state standardized tests, used to justify a slew of controversial decisions. As a result of ten years of this kind of reform, we are experiencing schools just as segregated by race and social class as they were in the 1950s. We in the United States are also experiencing a teaching profession that is constantly undermined and under attack. The culture of punishment and competition created under No Child Left Behind and now Race to the Top has proven to be a massive failure.


    • The NAACP Resolution on Charter Schools: Segregation is Not Innovation




  • ACTA

    • ACTA bombshell: Germany refuses to sign anti-piracy treaty amid protests [Update]
      With protests against the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) set to rage across Europe on Saturday ... More recent reports suggest Germany is simply delaying its decision on signing ACTA until a later date, rather than refusing to sign the treaty outright. This is a lesser victory for ACTA opponents, but still a sign that the public outcry against the agreement is having an effect.

      Go protest till they kill it properly.









  • Recent Techrights' Posts

    An Illusion and Cult Worship of Magnitude (Ubiquity as "Victory")
    GNU has been around for over 40 years and it'll likely continue to exist for another 40 (in some form)
    Wall Street Does Not Care About Microsoft's Impending (August) Layoffs, It Believes Lies From Microsoft, Whose Debt Grows Rapidly
    If Microsoft is doing so well and swimming in money, why so many cuts (about 29,000 layoffs so far this year)?
    Riot for peace & Love: Catholic Influencers and Digital Missionaries welcome Jubilee of Youth
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
     
    Links 31/07/2025: Spotify Collapses and Spotify Now Forcing Some Users to Undergo Face-Scanning
    Links for the day
    A Lot of Supposedly "Successful" Businesses Are Just Debt-Racking Vessels Without Any Prospects of Financial Sustainability
    The probability of bankruptcy of any business is more than 0%
    theregister.com: The Voice of Microsoft US?
    It basically sold out
    Yes, You Can Love and Adore Things Whilst Also Criticising Them
    Is society being divided and groomed/primed to be resistant to constructive criticism?
    Links 31/07/2025: War in Ukraine, Security News, and Cyberattacks Against Journalists on the Rise
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 31/07/2025: Fake Money and Gemini Diaries
    Links for the day
    Google: From Pointing to Relevant Sites to Pointing to Social Control Media to Actually Parroting Social Control Media as "Facts"
    Google has become a misinformation company
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
    IRC logs for Wednesday, July 30, 2025
    How to Report Apple Layoffs Without Saying the "L" Word
    don't look for the "L" word
    Wayland Considered Harmful (to GNU/Linux Adoption)
    it's not limited to games
    My Experience With Judges Has been Positive, But We Must Still Pursue SLAPP Reform in the United Kingdom
    We believe it'll be a "feather in the cap" if we can help change laws in the UK to better protect investigative reporters
    Slopwatch Makes the Web Better
    Remember what happened to BetaNews?
    Slopwatch: Google News is Pumping in Lots of Web Traffic Into Fake Sites That Say "Linux"
    somewhere between 30% and 40% of today's "news" about "Linux", as seen by Google News, is LLM slop
    Links 30/07/2025: Climate Calamities Highlighted, Kyrgyzstan Crackdown on Expression/Freedoms
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Watson’s List of Limits, Lysenko 2000
    Links for the day
    Some People See What Others See... But Only 40 Years Later
    When people deviate from "the norm" they typically get ridiculed and dismissed as "crazy"
    Links 30/07/2025: Tea Class Action and Google Killing the Web With Slop
    Links for the day
    Last Month Our IRC Community Turned 17
    Funnily enough we never missed a single day when it comes to logging
    "The Unix Kernel"
    Linux was inspired by MINIX
    The Register Relays Microsoft Marketing, Dubs That Marketing "Research"
    Hours ago they did a "Microsoft sez" piece
    Dealing With Sociopaths, Liars, and Cranks
    A dysfunctional society such as this would never develop
    Not Owning Mobile Phones
    It's not about resistance; it's common sense
    Google 'Search' is Fast Becoming No Better Than Social Control Media Infested With Bots
    Google emerged almost 30 years ago as a company looking to organise the Web and direct people towards informative pages. That Google is dead.
    PCLinuxOS Had Functional Backups Before the House Fire, the Site Will be Restored in New Webhost
    This is the direction we want for GNU/Linux, not some IBM sales strategy
    Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Two Sides of Me and "Hooked on Cosmic Voyage"
    Links for the day
    Microsoft Will Continue Resorting to Crimes in Order to Keep GNU/Linux Usage Down
    It is a real problem and we'll revisit it later this week
    GAFAM 'Revolving Doors' at The Register and a "Bribe Price List"
    "an analyst at Microsoft"
    Microsoft Rapidly Shrinking (No, It's Not About Efficiency, It's About Unbearable Debt)
    We'll soon see how much debt grew in the past quarter
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 29, 2025
    IRC logs for Tuesday, July 29, 2025
    Corruption is the Standard Operating Procedure at the European Patent Office (EPO)
    The EPO is a dictatorship that stains Europe
    Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) at the European Patent Office (EPO) Requests an Urgent Meeting to Avoid Abolishing the Office
    This is dictatorship led by the most corrupt
    Slopwatch: Fake 'Linux' 'Articles' and Spamfarms/Slopfarms
    at least 5 fake articles in one day
    Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Wayland Unfit for Use and LLM Slop Faking One's Language Skills With Robot Communications
    Links for the day
    Before the OSI Was Bribed and Hijacked by Microsoft via GitHub and Compromised Management...
    The OSI isn't even remotely "woke"
    Nailing the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype Bubble
    So-called "hey hi" as they define it now is all about large companies or regimes remotely controlling the processes running on your machine and even your very own behaviour on your machine, which is in effect no longer your machine but some remotely controlled apparatus
    The OSI Has Been Silent for Over 3 Weeks, It Has a Severe Trust Issue After Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary GitHub
    OSI took a lot of money from Microsoft to become a Microsoft lobbyist
    "Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users" Now as a T-shirt
    That's shown along the sidebar
    Bribery is OK If You Work for Microsoft (No Punishment Expected)
    It's very troubling and a symptom of a broken society/system when particular laws or rules are applied and enforced against some people but not against others
    Links 29/07/2025: Bad Climate and "Fair Software Licensing" Blasts Microsoft
    Links for the day
    Links 29/07/2025: Data Brokers Gone Wrong/Rogue and "Copyright Thicket"
    Links for the day
    Slopwatch: Linuxconfig.org, Linuxsecurity.com, Fagioli, The Register
    Today's "Slopwatch" isn't the first article about LLM slop
    Someone Should Remind Microsoft Lunduke That Microsoft Hires Many Sexual Criminals and Pedophiles as Well
    Microsoft Lunduke on an "expedition" to find one or more perverts, then generalise to everyone in the "community"
    Cash Machines (ATMs) Make Mistakes and They're Proprietary Software
    Correcting mistakes is a colossal challenge
    We Cover Topics Other Sites Are Too Afraid to Cover (Even When They Know the Facts)
    It's not that they doubt the truth, they just realise there may be consequences for talking about it
    They Try to Tell Us the Free Software Foundation Inc is Dying, But Its Revenue Doubled Since the Dot-Com Bubble Burst
    Being in "Activism" is never easy; but it does positive things for society
    Yes, Microsoft is the Problem
    "I am no MS shill."
    It's About the Cost of Workers, Not the Fictional Skills Shortage (That Does Not Exist, the Media Spreads False and Sometimes Self-Fulfilling Narratives)
    This issue isn't limited to computing, some dub it "globalism"
    Another Failed Use Case for Chatbots (LLM): Legal Advice and Analysis
    They're just some self-discrediting toy that costs way too much to operate
    Links 29/07/2025: More Pushbacks Against Slop and More Praises of Tom Lehrer
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Purple Yarrow and Understanding Op Amps
    Links for the day
    This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
    All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
    Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
    what we said about it was correct
    Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
    "Are more job cuts coming?"
    Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
    Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
    LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
    "I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
    IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025