GNU News (December-January)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-21 10:28:00 UTC
Summary: GNU, FSF, and Free software news from the past month or so
-
Richard Stallman today met Mr Rahul Gandhi, Vice President of the Indian National Congress and shared his views on digital surveillance system, unique identification project, free software in education and governance in a meeting that went on for one hour. Mr Joseph Mathew, Secretary of SPACE also participated in the meeting. Mr Gandhi showed keen interest in Stallman's views on various issues relating to information technology.
-
To commemorate the occasion of GNU completing 30 years and SPACE 10 years, the free software community in Thiruvananthapuram is also organising an exhibition on free software and free knowledge on Education Freedom Day, which falls on January 18 at the Museum. The exhibition will focus on free software and free hardware for education and privacy protection. Various free software projects like Fedora, WoMoz, and HackerSpace will be part of the exhibition.
-
GnuCash is more than a simple checkbook register, although it can be used for that purpose. Its real power is in the features supporting small business use and managing multiple accounts. Its basic features are intuitive, but if you don't have a bookkeeping background, be prepared to spend some time with the user guide in order to fully appreciate its advanced capabilities.
-
But the researchers, including Adi Shamir, a co-inventor of the widely-used RSA encryption algorithm, have shown how within one hour it was possible to extract a 4096-bit RSA private key used to decrypt email from a laptop running the OpenPGP-based mail encryption tool, GNU Privacy Guard.
-
After earlier this month delivering LLVM Clang 3.3/3.4 benchmarks for the new compiler infrastructure out of Apple, today are results that directly compare the new LLVM Clang 3.4 performance against the stable GCC 4.8.2 compiler and GCC 4.9.0 development compiler under various C/C++ benchmarks.
-
An Intel engineer has published a patch-set providing a new GCC compiler architecture target for Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs.
-
Novena Project aims to create an entirely open source laptop, from the iron down to the bits, and a prototype already exists
-
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to Gluglug X60 laptops. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. This is the first laptop to receive RYF certification from the FSF.
-
FOSS is the last place to suspect “back doors” or traps.
-
Computer scientists have devised an attack that reliably extracts secret cryptographic keys by capturing the high-pitched sounds coming from a computer while it displays an encrypted message.
The technique, outlined in a research paper published Wednesday, has already been shown to successfully recover a 4096-bit RSA key used to decrypt e-mails by GNU Privacy Guard, a popular open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Publication of the new attack was coordinated with the release of a GnuPG update rated as "important" that contains countermeasures for preventing the attack. But the scientists warned that a variety of other applications are also susceptible to the same acoustic cryptanalysis attack. In many cases, the sound leaking the keys can be captured by a standard smartphone positioned close to a targeted computer as it decrypts an e-mail known to the attackers.
-
The Free Software Foundation today has come out for "the first time we've ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is." The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer's freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?
-
GNU Binutils was updated this morning and some of the major changes for these binary tools updates include supporting several new processors.
-
To read more about all of these and see the honorable mentions not listed here, make sure to head back to the full hive five feature.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IX - EPO Budget Funnelled Into Cocaine and Moreover Rewards Cocaine-Addicted Management for Getting Busted by Police
- Any day that passes without European media and European politicians doing anything about it merely discredits the media and the EU (or national governments)
-
- How Microsoft Will Tell Shareholders That the Business is Failing in a Few Days
- It'll resort to "AI" storytelling (lying about slop having potential for some unspecified future year)
- Flying to See Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
- It's probably not too late to reserve a seat for today's talk
- The Fall of Freenode Didn't Kill IRC and the Web's Issues (Not Limited to LLM Slop) Didn't Kill Everything
- As long as there are enough people willing to keep the simple (or "old") stuff it'll refuse to die
- GAFAM Layoffs by Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) Hide the Real Scale of Their Financial Troubles
- the "official" numbers of layoffs will never tell the true story
- 'Domesticated' Animals Not More Valuable Than Free-range Wildlife, Proprietary ('Commercial') Software Isn't Better Than Free Software
- the proprietary software giants (companies like SAP or Microsoft) have a lot of lobbyists
- Richard Stallman Won't Talk About "AI", He'll Talk About Chatbots and LLMs Lacking Any Intelligence
- This really irritates people who dislike the message; so they attack the person
- Slopfarms Still Fed by Google, Boosting Fake 'Articles' That Pretend to Cover "Linux"
- At this point about 80-90% of the search results appear not to be slopfarms
- Gemini Links 23/01/2026: The Danish Approach to Deepfakes and Random vi Things
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 22, 2026
- Five Years Ago, After We Broke the Story About Richard Stallman Rejoining the FSF's Board, All Hell Broke Loose (for Me and My Family)
- They generally seem to target anyone who thinks Richard Stallman (RMS) should be in charge or thinks alike about computing
- Links 22/01/2026: Slop Fantasy About Patents, Retirement in China Now Reached at Age Seventy
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/01/2026: Why Europe Does Not Need GAFAMs, XScreenSaver Tinkering, FlatCube
- Links for the day
- Salvadorans' Usage of GNU/Linux Measured at Record Levels
- All-time high
- Links 22/01/2026: Ubisoft Layoffs Disguised as "RTO", US "Congress Wants To Hand Your Parenting To GAFAM", Americans' Image Tarnished Among Canadians (Now Planning to "Repel US Invasion")
- Links for the day
- 10 Easy Steps to Follow for Digital Sovereignty in Nations That Distrust GAFAM et al
- When "enough is enough"
- No, the Problem at IBM/Red Hat Isn't Diversity
- Microsoft Lunduke also openly shows his admiration for Pedo Cheeto
- Do Not Link to Linuxiac Anymore, Linuxiac Became a Slopfarm
- now Linuxiac is slop
- Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Slop Companies Like Anthropic and Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' Basically Plunder and Rob People
- This article was published last night at around 10
- Richard Stallman (RMS) at Georgia Tech Tomorrow
- After the talk we'll write a lot about "cancel culture" and online mobs fostered and emboldened in social control media
- Software Patents by Any Other Name
- There is no such thing as "AI" patents
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, January 21, 2026
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part VIII - Salary Cuts to Staff, 100,000 Euros to Managers Busted Using Cocaine (for Doing Absolutely Nothing, Just Pretending to be "Sick")
- Today we look at slides from the union
- Gemini Links 22/01/2026: Forest Monk, Aurora Observation, and Arduino Officially Launches the More Powerful Arduino UNO Q 4GB Single-Board Computer
- Links for the day
- Next Week is Close Enough for Wall Street Storytelling About 'Efficiency' by Layoffs for "AI"
- This coming week GAFAM and others will tell some creative tales about how "AI" something something...
- Google News Still a Feeder of Slop About "Linux", Which Became Rarer in 2026
- Our main concern these days is what happened to Linuxiac. Bobby Borisov became a chatbots addict.
- Links 21/01/2026: "Snap Settles Lawsuit on Social Media Addiction" and Attempts in the US to Revive Software Patents
- Links for the day
- Links 21/01/2026: Microsoft 'Open' 'Hey Hi' in More Trouble, US Has "Brown Shirts" Problem
- Links for the day
- Yesterday Afternoon The Register MS Published Paid Microsoft SPAM Disguised as an Article About "AI PCs"
- The Register MS cannot help itself, can it? [...] Follow the money.
- Microsoft's XBox is in Effect Dead Already, Now It's a Streaming and Advertising Platform
- Expect many layoffs soon
- Richard Stallman's Talk at Georgia Tech is Just 2 Days Away
- We're still curious to see how malicious people (or trolls) in social control media will try to slant his talk as "bad"
- EPO's Web Site Misused for Propaganda About Illegal Kangaroo Courts to Distract From EPO Scandals and Judicial Crisis in Europe
- UPC is illegal and unconstitutional
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part VII - The Industrial Actions Began Yesterday, Here's Why
- The "Alicante Mafia" might not last much longer
- Gemini Links 21/01/2026: Edible Circuits and "Sayonara HTTP"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, January 20, 2026
- IBM Hides Its Own Destruction (and Red Hat's)
- It's like scenes out of '1984', which is what a now-famous advertisement from Apple compared IBM to