Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/4/2015: Debian 9 Named, Linux 4.1 Reaches RC





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • What is open source? Licensing, history, and more
    Another example of open source: You wouldn’t buy a car with the hood welded shut, so why do we buy proprietary software? If you can’t see what’s going on and see what’s happening under the hood then you’re stuck with the car exactly the way it is and that might not be so great. While some people are fine with that, computer geeks shouldn’t be. We should want to get in there and tinker with it.


  • AMD FP3 Motherboard Ported To Coreboot
    Another AMD motherboard has been ported to work under Coreboot.

    Sage Electronic Engineering, a company that does a lot of Coreboot work for AMD and other firms, has ported the AMD Lamar reference board for Coreboot. AMD Lamar is a consumer reference board used for AMD Kaveri APUs of the FP3 socket.


  • Events



    • A Rousing Start for LinuxFest Northwest
      With around 2,000 registrants, this year’s LFNW seems to be the largest in its history. This not only bodes well for the widespread popularity and acceptance of FOSS in general, but it also bodes well for one of the longest-running FOSS shows here in the Pacific Northwest.




  • CMS



    • An open source, e-commerce friendly CMS
      Developers Peter Ivanov, Alex Raikov, and I came up with the idea for Microweber about five years ago, when we were all having problems building sites with the existing solutions.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC





Leftovers



  • Poll: SNP increase lead over Labour


  • Security



    • Google Provides Detailed Analysis of GitHub Attack Traffic
      It wasn’t until March 26 that the attackers actually began targeting two separate resources on GitHub, one of which housed content from GreatFire.org, a censorship monitoring organization in China. The other resource was Chinese language content from the New York Times. The attack on those resources lasted until April 7 and Provos said that the attack wouldn’t have been possible if all of the Web’s links were encrypted.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • University offering free online course to demolish climate denial
      The course coordinator is John Cook, University of Queensland Global Change Institute climate communication fellow, and founder of the climate science myth debunking website Skeptical Science. Cook’s research has primarily focused on the psychology of climate science denial.






  • Finance



    • Charles Gladden: Homeless man employed at US Senate building earns just $360 a week


      Like many of the people who work in menial jobs in the US Senate, Charles Gladden works long, hard hours for very modest pay. Unlike probably everyone else, Mr Gladden is homeless.

      The 63-year-old sweeps and mops, cleans dishes and carries laundry, for take-home pay of around $360 a week. He says he gives most to his children and grandchildren and spends most of his nights at the McPherson Square Metro Station, less than half-a-mile from the White House.




  • Privacy



    • Here’s how you can see and delete your entire Google search history
      The list does not stop at Google’s search engine function. It also includes documentation of searches within users’ email accounts and addresses that may have been typed into Google Maps. The range of personal information available has given rise to concerns over the databases’ potential vulnerability.

      Google has said the company is aware of the dangers associated with storing an extensive amount of personal information on home computers and warns users with a message before they download their entire search archive, asking users to “please read this carefully, it’s not the usual yada yada,” normally seen in warning messages.

      [...]

      But just because a user deletes his or her search history, that does not mean that it disappears completely.




  • Civil Rights



    • The Gordon and Dougie Show
      Douglas Alexander not only facilitated the use of Diego Garcia for torture and extraordinary rendition, in an act of extreme hypocrisy the evil little shit also declared a “marine conservation area” around it. In the 1960’s Britain forcibly deported the entire population of the islands to make way for the US Air Base. Faced with a continual political and legal fight for them to return, Alexander sought to make it impossible with his “marine conservation area”. There is nobody who better represents Scottish Labour’s loss of its soul than Alexander. If Mhairi beats him I shall be extremely happy.


    • 7 whistle-blowers facing more jail time than David Petraeus
      The administration of President Barack Obama once promised to be “the most transparent administration” of all time. Instead, Obama’s Department of Justice has led the most targeted campaign against whistleblowers of any president ever, charging more government employees under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined—almost all of whom sit in prison serving sentences up to 30 years.




  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

FOSSY (SFC) Platforming GAFAM, Sells Endorsement
Houston, we have a problem here
IBM's Age Discrimination Leads Workers to Contemplate Suicide While the CEO Becomes Billionaire for Lying to the Press and Faking Performance (Fraudulent Accounting)
IBM avoids issuing WARM notices
 
Paying With Cash in 2026
Cash isn't going away. Not any time soon.
Blocking Tor Is Not a Solution, It's Paranoia
Tor is not a crime
Oligarchs and Their Footsoldiers Are Most Enthusiastically Loud About the Things They're Attacking
Like "Microsoft loves Linux"
Not Allowing Misogyny and Misogynists to Run the World
We stand with (and for) equality, justice, and freedom
"SPONSORED EXPLAINER" at The Register MS is Just More SPAM "Sponsored by HPE."
This is a great example of crap 'journalism'
IBM Won't Hire (or Hardly Hire) This Year
IBM is bluffing with buzzwords while shrinking out of existence and reducing salaries
SLAPP Censorship - Part 146 Out of 200: An Industry of Plagiarism, 'Normalised'
they pursue personal enrichment by stealing from Free software developers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 10, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, August 10, 2026
5.1k Capsules Known to Lupa, Gemini Protocol Crawler
If no limits (e.g. 10k max per capsule) were imposed on crawling, there would likely be millions of pages in the database
Gemini Links 11/08/2026: Waking Up Earlier, Whining About LLMs as Destructive Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 11/08/2026: "The Enemy Is the Platform" and 'Vibe' 'Coding' Shown to be Little But Plagiarism
Links for the day
If Your Software Project Welcomes Bots, Then All You'll Have Left at the End Is Bots (Same for Sites Which Permit LLM Slop; They End up as Slopfarms and No Human Wants to Contribute Anymore)
A "slippery slop."
Clownflare Affirms Disturbing Trend of Web Monoculture (Which Extents to Clownflare Itself)
Clownflare itself is another layer of the same problem
The Open Web Is Not Coming Back
the open Web going out of control
Tell Me Something I Don't Know
Those who have a stake in the secrecy would do anything to maintain secrecy
Gemini Links 10/08/2026: Recollections and Washing Machine That Only Last a Few Years
Links for the day
Claims of Mass Layoffs at IBM (in Finance)
IBM tries hard to maintain an illusion of normality - to the point of viciously censoring critics and whistleblowers.
The Slop Bubble (Pyramid Scheme) is Becoming Bigger and Everyone Should be Terrified (Its Implosion Will Cause More Damage)
there's no plan for a turnaround
Microsoft and Apple Lose Ground to GNU/Linux in the United States
This contributes a lot to the international curve
Escaping Ads
When users do not want ads, then no ads should show up, period
For Second Year in a Row Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Loses Money (Over $3,000,000 Lost in 2 Years), Bradley M Kuhn Steps Down as Treasurer
lost almost $600,000 last year
Microsoft/GAFAM Operating at a Loss
Microsoft has financial problems
Nigel Farage crisis: Taylor Swift & Jeffrey Epstein both shunned cryptocurrency bosses
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
statCounter Now Sees GNU/Linux "Market Share Worldwide" at 9.21%, Soon 10%
If this data is more or less accurate, it's time for panic at Microsoft
Rumours of Impending Mass Layoffs in IBM's Yorktown Office, Impacting the LLM (Slop) Staff
Bubbles never last forever, hence their name
Links 10/08/2026: "Long COVID Linked to Lasting Damage in The Brain's Dopamine System", Microsoft’s Weather App Uses Over 1,000 Megabytes of RAM
Links for the day
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Does Not Support Women, It Imitates Authentic Organisations, Embraces Misogynists, Then Projects
They try to monetise for personal gain at the expense of unpaid volunteers
When You're Evil and You're Publicly Attacking Something, That Something Will Become More Popular
when an oppressor becomes openly oppressive and does anything to squash/censor critics, the outcome will typically be detrimental to the oppressor
Links 10/08/2026: "Against Oligarch" and "The Invisible Women"
Links for the day
Social Control Media Deathwatch: After Nearly a Million Posts Sent EchoFeed Shuts Down
EchoFeed is hardly unique
When the LLM Chatbots Industry (Trillions in the Red) Quits Paying the Media for FOMO
fear of missing out, or FOMO for short
Microsoft Killing Morale
branding the process “inhumane” and “demoralizing”
Google's "AI Overview" as Proprietary Censorship Engine and Gatekeeper
People do not choose to use this, Google is just shoving that in people's faces, encouraging laziness and misinformation
SLAPP Censorship - Part 145 Out of 200: They Tried Hard to Hide the Fact Their Client Had Been Sued, Twice Even
A month ago Brett Wilson LLP tried to take my wife "to the side" (in effect isolated) to make her an offer
statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 8.95% Globally
So the estimates are being "corrected" upwards, not downwards
Explaining How Someone Attempted to Cancel RMS This Year (and Failed)
The process itself involved debunking some falsehoods
Microsoft's "XBOX Ranks Last", IBM is Headed for Extinction
If Microsoft cannot dominate its own "home turf", what prospects are there elsewhere?
DebConf6 fight denied by Google artificial intelligence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 09, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 09, 2026
Gemini Links 10/08/2026: A Mild Monday, Sleepy Saturday, OUYA, and Moving to GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: US Blackouts (Energy Wasted), Slop to Evade Accountability, and Software Patents Framed as "Hey Hi"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Parakeets in Britain and Rant About 'Modern' Washing Machines
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: Social Control Media Weaponises Immigration, Europe Suffers Severe Drought, and "Internet of Stuff" Explained
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 144 Out of 200: The "Hired Guns" ("Media" at BW) Shrank Almost Three-Fold Since They Sued Us in 2024
No wonder they're so visibly outnumbered
10 Days Ago Red Hat Formally Terminated Employment of About 500 Technical Workers (the Media Didn't Mention This)
IBM has nothing left to do except fire people (in secret) whilst attacking sites that give these people a voice
Freenode Continues to Shed Off Servers and Users, Good Thing We Abandoned It
you cannot sell communities. It leads to chaos
Daniel Pocock in the Sunday Times (Today)
Expect the attacks (from Pocock's haters, motivated by envy) to intensify
Controlling One's Platform
We need to strive for or actively pursue a Web where everyone has their own platform/s and where censors ("moderators") have no direct control over these platforms
Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG), Fixing Bugs
Next month the site's SSG turns 3
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Meatballs (1979), Gopher, RSS Experiment
Links for the day
2026: The Year Richard Stallman Came Back to American Campuses
There's more on the way
IBM's "Next Step" Program
Apparently close to 1,000 people being laid off by IBM wasn't worth reporting
XBox is Rotting Away, Technical Issues for Second Time in Two Weeks
XBox is dying
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2026