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
- Chatbots Are Not Data-Driven, They're Human-Censored and Rely on Wage Slaves (and Sometimes Unpaid Volunteers)
- This is the Microsoft wage slavery
- Gemini Links 12/01/2025: No Country For Old Men, Burned Homes, and "Planet P is Clean"
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Brittany Day and Brian Fagioli Are Still at It, Googlebombing "Linux" With LLM Slop (Taking Away Traffic From the Articles They're Plagiarising)
- Some more sites that used to cover GNU/Linux have turned into slopfarms
- [Meme] Being High on Drugs Isn't Happiness (Likewise, Being a "Star" in Social Control Media is Temporary)
- Many entities - or people - will regret telling everybody "follow me on Twitter"
-
- Microsoft Front Group Starts the Year by Championing Underage (or Child) Labour
- the fake 'FSF'
- TPM Boosters Inside Debian (TPM Isn't About Security, It is About Control Over Users and Their Machines)
- We're not rushing to any conclusions
- Aaron Swartz Died 12 Years Ago After a Vicious Government Campaign to Stop Him
- The Aaron Swartz story is a reminder of the importance of having verifiable/verified information out there for the general public to see
- Links 13/01/2025: GitLab Enshittification and Minimalism and Efficiency with Gemini Protocol
- Links for the day
- Links 13/01/2025: Hardware, Health, and Conflicts
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Appears to Have Fallen to Only 15% in Maldives
- This is a problem for Microsoft
- Rumours of IBM Canada Layoffs
- We'll keep a vigilant eye on this
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, January 12, 2025
- Bots Covering Debian Releases
- It would be quite safe to guess that chatbots were at least partly leveraged for that text
- Links 12/01/2025: Microsoft Admits It's Laying Off Staff Only Where Staff is "Expensive" (Race to the Bottom)
- Links for the day
- [Meme] They Say That RMS Says the "F" Word (Freedom) Too Much...
- About 32.7k US dollars are now left for the FSF to raise (in 6 days)
- Links 12/01/2025: More Sanctions Against Russia, SCOTUS Signals Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban Will Stay
- Links for the day
- [Meme] A Jihad Against Servers the User Controls
- We need to strive for and work towards greater control by users over "their" servers
- Microsoft Azure-Only Bugs in "Linux" Can "Compromise the System."
- From ubuntu.com and linux.org a few days ago
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 11, 2025
- Gemini Links 12/01/2025: DHL Express Does Not Deliver, Oddmuse Update
- Links for the day
- Links 11/01/2025: Social Control Media Facing Sanctions, Carter Respected at Funeral
- Links for the day
- If TikTok (China) Has the Rights of American Persons, Then ByteDance Can be Sentenced to Death
- TikTok - like Julian Assange - does not enjoy any protections of the First Amendment and since it's not a person it would lack these protections as an American company, too
- After a Year of Layoffs in Microsoft Nigeria (and Microsoft in Africa at Large) Windows Falls to New Lows and Bing Falls to 0.46% "Market Share"
- Of course Microsoft gave bribes in Nigeria to suppress GNU/Linux adoption
- An Important Lesson About Patents and Patent Maximalism (They Drive People and Companies Away)
- This previously happened in Texas, where companies perceived their presence (in any form) to be a liability as patent trolls could drag them to friendly courts and win "damages"
- When It Comes to Fentanylware (TikTok), a Digital Weapon of a Hostile Entity, Common Dreams is Jumping the Shark Again (Years After It Ran Out of Steam or Money)
- Or maybe it likes the agenda promoted (curated) by Fentanylware (TikTok) and its parent company, Bytedance or Chinese Community Party (CPP)
- BetaNews is Now Officially a Spamfarm With Phantom Authors and Fake Text (SPAM and Linkspam Made With LLM Slop)
- That's it, the site is virtually dead now (maybe that was the plan all along)
- Hazem Abbas of medevel is Ruining His Site With LLM Slop
- Some of his articles are original, but now everything is suspect
- [Meme] Real and Fake (or "several influential "open source" organizations [which] have come to be dominated by large companies")
- The Free Software Foundation has not sold out
- Free Software Foundation: Anchoring the FSF in its values
- Original by Free Software Foundation
- GNU/Linux Surges to All-Time Highs in Greenland, Windows Sinks to All-Time Lows
- a lot of GNU/Linux gets detected there lately
- Microsoft's "Donald Trump First" Doctrine
- national deficits growing
- Microsoft in Trouble as Azure Breaks and Only Days After Promising Investment in "Datacentres" Construction of Actual Datacentres Paused (Expect More Azure Layoffs Very Soon)
- No wonder many people who got trapped inside Azure quit Azure, which keeps bleeding (losses and layoffs)
- Gemini Links 11/01/2025: Wildfire, Militia and the Mole, IRC vs Social Control Media
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 10, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, January 10, 2025