Bonum Certa Men Certa
← Badische Zeitung Labels European Patent Office (EPO) a Police State for Use of Very Intrusive Mass Surveillance Software (Updated) | Microsoft's 'Not Windows is Not Allowed' Policy at Nokia →

Links 13/6/2015: IPFire 2.17 is Out, OpenMandriva Plans





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Top 5 Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft Exchange
    Choosing an open source messaging server can save you money and admin time without losing out on features. Take a look at what our favorite alternatives to Microsoft Exchange have to offer.


  • Enterprises Flocking to Open Source Software
    Open source software is not a trend; it is here to stay. Debating the value of open source software (OSS) on technical considerations is a moving target. Determining the costs of implementing and using open source makes for a more stable argument. The initial software may be free, but learning, implementing, improving, connecting to, and operating it is not free. When you acquire OSS you will have more responsibilities than if you acquired closed product software from a vendor.


  • We Is Us — OPNFV & ETSI Accelerate NFV Adoption
    One question increasingly raised throughout the SDN/NFV community is, “Why are there so many groups associated with NFV/SDN?” While the answer is subject to debate, no one should be surprised that NFV and SDN are far too pervasive for any single organization and/or industry body to control.


  • How OPNFV and ETSI NFV are Advancing NFV Adoption
    ETSI was the birthplace of the NFV concept in 2012, and OPNFV was launched just two years later with many of the same members to help bring NFV from specs to reality using open source methodologies. Marc Cohn, who is an active participant in many open communities including OPNFV, OpenDaylight and the Open Networking Foundation, recently published an article for SDxCentral about how OPNFV and ETSI continue to work in tandem to accelerate NFV adoption.


  • LinkedIn Open Sources "Pinot" for Powerful Data Analytics
    When it comes to new open source tools that can make a difference, it's wise to look to some of the tech companies that regularly open source their own in-house platforms and tools. Just witness Netflix, which has open sourced troves of useful cloud utilities. Facebook and Google have release a lot of useful tools as well.


  • Los Angeles County voting to shift from inkblots to open source
    Los Angeles County is home to a burgeoning technology industry. It boasts a roster of high-profile companies including Hulu, Snapchat, and Tinder. As of 2013, it offered more high-tech jobs than other major markets in the country, including Silicon Valley and New York City. Come election time, however, its residents cast their votes by marking inkblots on ballots that resemble Scantron forms.


  • Events



    • CFP Jam & LinuxFest Northwest Goes Hollywood
      Linux and FOSS make cameo appearances throughout the TV and film world, and lately we’ve been treated to the GNOME vs. KDE tête-à-tête in the USA Network’s pilot of a show called “Mr. Robot.” This scene piqued my interest enough to watch the pilot, which was a mix of downright scary and mildly interesting portrayals of tech types at various levels in the overt and covert tech-company hierarchy, wrapped in painfully mediocre dialog (why can’t Aaron Sorkin just write everything? Is that too much to ask?). SPOILER ALERT: The subtext of a psychologically wrecked, socially castrated hacker protagonist — the one using GNOME — is grating enough, but this stereotype is far and away eclipsed by the world domination seemingly at the fingertips of the suit using KDE, which he displayed at the end of the pilot. And we though it was Redmond seeking to take over the world when it’s really…KDE?


    • In Search of SELF in the Queen City
      Right away I ran across Brian Proffitt, whom many of you will remember from his days covering Linux and FOSS for news sites or from the time he spent at Linux Today. These days he’s all but given up journalism for real work, at Red Hat. However, the presentation he’s giving on Sunday here at SELF has a writerly ring to the title: “It’s Metaphors All the Way Down.”

      I also had a chance to talk with Deb Nicholson with the Open Invention Network, who’ll be giving a talk on Saturday about software patent litigation. Funny thing, patents were hardly mentioned in our conversation. Mainly we talked about tech corporations under the headings: the good, the bad and the pure evil. If anyone sees Clint Eastwood, tell him I have a movie idea…




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



    • Mozilla



      • My Frustration with Mozilla
        I recently decided to stop using Firefox as my main Browser. I’m not alone there. While browser statistics are notoriously difficult to track and hotly debated, all sources seem to point toward a downward trend for Firefox. At LQ, they actually aren’t doing too badly. In 2010 Firefox had a roughly 57% market share and so far this year they’re at 37%. LQ is a highly technical site, however, and the broader numbers don’t look quite so good. Over a similar period, for example, Wikipedia has Firefox dropping from over 30% to just over 15%. At the current rate NetMarketShare is tracking, Firefox will be in the single digits some time this year. You get the idea. So what’s going on , and what does that mean for Mozilla? And why did I choose now to make a switch personally?


      • Get bug squashing, Mozilla increases bounty payments: Linux Wrap
        Mozilla have decided to shake up the way they make payments with regard to bug squashing, in the statement they said “The bounty for valid potentially exploitable critical and high security rated client security vulnerabilities will be between $3000 and $7500 (USD) cash reward. The bounty program encourages the earliest possible reporting of these potentially exploitable bugs. A bounty may be paid for some moderate rated client security bugs at the discretion of the Bug Bounty Committee. If a bounty is paid for a moderate rated security issue, the amount will be between $500 and $2000 (US), depending on the severity of impact for the issue as determined by Bug Bounty Committee.”






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Building a platform
      From the very beginning ownCloud has had bigger ambitions then just being a file sync and share tool. This is apparent from the name ownCloud. Today, we have more than our documents and photos online. Our social networks and shared thoughts, our appointments and shopping lists, audio and video conversations all happen and are stored somehwere ‘in the cloud’, all connected. You can comment on a song you like for others to see or share an appointment with co workers. ownCloud means to give you a chance to bring all that back under your control!




  • Databases



    • Oracle's rising open source problem
      While a number of factors are at play in Oracle's stumbles, one of the most persistent is the rise of open-source databases, both relational and non-relational (NoSQL), as a recent Bloomberg article posits. As Powa Technologies CEO says, "They scale and operate extremely well, and they don't cost anything."




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • BSD



    • Securing OpenBSD From Us To You
      I'm going to talk today about signify, a tool I wrote for the OpenBSD project that cryptographically signs and verifies. This allows us to ensure that the releases we ship arrive on your computer in their original, intended form, without tampering.


    • Smallwall 1.8.2 Released To Let Monowall Live On
      This past February, Monowall announced the end of development as one of the most popular FreeBSD-based network/firewall focused distributions. For those still searching for a new replacement, Smallwall 1.8.2 has been released as the successor to Monowall 1.8.1.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Swift 2.0 is open source, ApacheCon: Big Data, and more open source news


    • 3DPrinterOS Goes Open Source for Their Cloud Client
      If you’re that kind of development monster, you can now find the source code for the cloud client here on GitHub.

      This cloud client already sports support for the majority of desktop 3D printers, and through the GNU Affero General Public License, it’s being shared.


    • Create a 'soft' 3D printer with the open source Circular Knitic
      While the uses for additive manufacturing at home seem to be increasing on a seemingly daily basis, there are still some items in the home that haven’t been able to be created due to the lack of suitable technologies. Among others is the ability to fabricate soft objects using digital fabrication tools.


    • Bristol creatives create an open source, portable, WiFi-enabled Kinect


    • Ouya's potential acquisition, Steam's Summer Sale, and more open gaming news


    • Open Data



      • The Citadel reveals open data findings
        The United Nations has proactively researched and promoted open government data across the globe for close to five years now. The Open Data Institute maintains that open data can help "unlock supply, generate demand, and create and disseminate knowledge to address local and global issues." McKinsey & Company report that "seven sectors alone could generate more than $3 trillion a year in additional value as a result of open data."

        There is no doubt that open data is an important public policy area—one that is here to stay. Yet, for all the grand promises, scratch beneath the surface and one finds a remarkable paucity of hard empirical facts about what is and isn't happening on the ground—in the real world of cities where most of us increasingly live and work.


      • "Dutch government hampers re-use of Chamber of Commerce data"
        The Dutch government has prepared a new Trade Register Law that will effectively forbid free re-use of the register data of its Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel, KvK). In response to an internet consultation, Stefan de Konink, open data proponent and founder of the OpenGeo Foundation, wrote an open letter to the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Security and Justice, asking the Dutch government to reconsider its new policy.






  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo to step down


    Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is to step down after coming under pressure following lacklustre results.

    Mr Costolo will remain on the social network’s board after the move on July 1, the company said on Thursday night.

    Twitter’s shares jumped 7.8pc in after-hours trading following the announcement, after closing flat at $35.84 during the day.

    Mr Costolo will be replaced in the interim by co-founder Jack Dorsey, chairman of Twitter and chief executive of Square, the mobile payments company he founded in 2009. He will also continue in both those roles.


  • Twitter’s Strategy Remains Unclear Even After CEO Resigns
    Investors applauded Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's resignation. But did they jump the gun?


  • Health/Nutrition



    • Monsanto and the Subjugation of India
      After a study of GMOs over a four-year plus period, India’s multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture recommended a ban on GM food crops stating they had no role in a country of small farmers. The Supreme Court appointed a technical expert committee (TEC), which recommended an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devised a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. As yet, no such mechanism exists, but open field trials are being given the go ahead. GMO crops approved for field trials include rice, maize, chickpea, sugarcane, and brinjal.




  • Security

    • OpenSSL Patches Logjam Flaw to Foil NSA Snoopers
    • OpenSSL releases seven patches for seven vulns


    • Who's afraid of DNS? Nominet's new 'turing' tool visualises hidden security threats
      UK domain registry Nominet has shown off a striking new visualisation tool called ‘turing’ that large organisations can use to peer into their DNS traffic to trace latency issues and spot previously invisible botnets and malware.


    • “Don’t Hack Me! That’s a Bad Idea,” Says Eugene Kaspersky to APT Groups


    • Russian Software Security Lab Hacked, Indirectly Links Attack To NSA
    • Israel, NSA May Have Hacked Antivirus Firm Kaspersky Lab
      Moscow-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, famous for uncovering state-sponsored cyberattacks, today dropped its biggest bombshell yet: Its own computer networks were hit by state-sponsored hackers, probably working for Israeli intelligence or the U.S. National Security Agency. The same malware also attacked hotels that hosted ongoing top-level negotiations to curb Iran's nuclear program.


    • The Massive Hack on US Personnel Agency is Worse Than Everyone Thought
      Last week, the human resources arm of the US government, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) admitted that it had been victim of a massive data breach, where hackers stole personal data belonging to as many as 4 million government workers.


    • Feds Who Didn't Even Discover The OPM Hack Themselves, Still Say We Should Give Them Cybersecurity Powers
      We already described how the recent hack into the US federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) appears to be much more serious than was initially reported. The hack, likely by Chinese state hackers, appear to have obtained basically detailed personal info on all current and many former federal government employees.


    • China-linked hackers get data on CIA, NSA personnel with security-clearance: report
      China-linked hackers appear to have gained access to sensitive background information submitted by US intelligence and military personnel for security clearances that could potentially expose them to blackmail, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

      In a report citing several US officials, the news agency said that data on nearly all of the millions of US security-clearance holders, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and military special operations personnel, were potentially exposed in the attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).


    • Second OPM Hack Revealed: Even Worse Than The First
      And yet... this is the same federal government telling us that it wants more access to everyone else's data to "protect" us from "cybersecurity threats" -- and that encryption is bad? Yikes.


    • Dossiers on US spies, military snatched in 'SECOND govt data leak'


      A second data breach at the US Office of Personnel Management has compromised even more sensitive information about government employees than the first breach that was revealed earlier this week, sources claim. It's possible at least 14 million Americans have chapter and verse on their lives leaked, we're told.

      The Associated Press reports that hackers with close ties to China are believed to have obtained extensive background information on intelligence-linked government staffers – from CIA agents and NSA spies to military special ops – who have applied for security clearances.

      Among the records believed to have leaked from a compromised database are copies of Standard Form 86 [PDF], a questionnaire that is given to anyone who applies for a national security position, and is typically verified via interviews and background checks.
    • Officials: Second hack exposed military and intel data
    • Senate Quickly Says 'No Way' To Mitch McConnell's Cynical Ploy To Add Bogus Cybersecurity Bill To NDAA
      Earlier this week, we noted that Senator Mitch McConnell, hot off of his huge flop in trying to preserve the NSA's surveillance powers, had promised to insert the dangerous "cybersecurity" bill CISA directly into the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). As we discussed, while many have long suspected that CISA (and CISPA before it) were surveillance bills draped in "cybersecurity" clothing, the recent Snowden revelations that the NSA is using Section 702 "upstream" collection for "cybersecurity" issues revealed how CISA would massively expand the NSA's ability to warrantlessly wiretap Americans' communications.
    • Friday's security updates
    • Protocols of the Hackers of Zion?
      When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Google chairman Eric Schmidt on Tuesday afternoon, he boasted about Israel’s “robust hi-tech and cyber industries.” According to The Jerusalem Post, “Netanyahu also noted that ‘Israel was making great efforts to diversify the markets with which it is trading in the technological field.'”

      Just how diversified and developed Israeli hi-tech innovation has become was revealed the very next morning, when the Russian cyber-security firm Kaspersky Labs, which claims more than 400 million users internationally, announced that sophisticated spyware with the hallmarks of Israeli origin (although no country was explicitly identified) had targeted three European hotels that had been venues for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

      Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, one of the first news sources to break the story, reported that Kaspersky itself had been hacked by malware whose code was remarkably similar to that of a virus attributed to Israel. Code-named “Duqu” because it used the letters DQ in the names of the files it created, the malware had first been detected in 2011. On Thursday, Symantec, another cyber-security firm, announced it too had discovered Duqu 2 on its global network, striking undisclosed telecommunication sites in Europe, North Africa, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. It said that Duqu 2 is much more difficult to detect that its predecessor because it lives exclusively in the memory of the computers it infects, rather than writing files to a drive or disk.
    • US wronging of China for cyber breaches harm mutual trust
      Out of ulterior motives, some US media and politicians have developed a habit of scapegoating China for any alleged cyber attack on the United States. Such groundless accusations would surely harm mutual trust between the two big powers of today’s world.




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • WaPo Thinks if You Knew What You Wanted, You’d Want Lindsey Graham
      In a column headlined “The most interesting presidential candidate you’re not paying any attention to,” Cillizza bemoans the fact that “Graham is an asterisk—or close to it—in polling in every early state (except for his home state of South Carolina) and nationally.” Graham, he writes, is “generally regarded as a cause candidate, with that cause being to represent the most hawkish views on foreign policy and national security against attacks by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.”


    • Germans conflicted about the Bush brand
      Jeb Bush, kicking off a six-day European tour, will pay tribute on Tuesday to America’s alliance with Western Europe, calling it “as relevant as the day it was founded” and arguing that our long-time allies want a more engaged United States.

      Only here in Germany, that is not exactly so.

      Germans are conflicted about the Bush brand. While Jeb’s father is still lionized for helping to unify the country after the Cold War, his brother remains tremendously unpopular due to the Iraq War, viewed by most here as a singly American disaster.

      But more than that, Germany is increasingly indifferent to the United States as a whole; uncertain whether these two world powers have much in common any more or even still really need one another.


    • Report: CIA Director Secretly Briefed Israeli Intelligence Officials on Iran Nuclear Deal


      Relations between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been increasingly chilly, with Netanyahu appearing in March before Congress in Washington D.C. to denounce U.S. negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Making tiny earthquakes to understand fracking-driven quakes
      In some places, notably Ohio and Oklahoma, the injection of used fracking fluid in deep disposal wells appears to have produced a significant uptick in earthquake activity. The earthquakes are mostly much too small to be felt at the surface, but a magnitude 5.6 quake in Oklahoma was large enough to cause some damage in 2011.

      This has made lots of news because of its scale, but it’s not our first experience with injection-triggered earthquakes. It’s a concern for geothermal power designs that inject water to depths where it can turn to turbine-driving steam, for example. And in the future, it could be a concern for efforts to store carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs.


    • California drought: Largest water cuts in state's history ordered by state regulators


      California state regulators have ordered farmers and others to reduce their water consumption, with the largest cuts in the state’s history.

      The State Water Resources Control Board ordered over 100 water rights holders to stop all pumping from three major waterways in one of the country’s prime farm regions.

      Economists and agriculture experts say that the cuts are expected to have little immediate impact on food prices, with the growing of some crops to shift to regions with more water in the short-term.






  • Finance



    • Why Does Obama Want This Trade Deal So Badly?
      The political battle over the enormous, twelve-nation trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership keeps getting stranger. President Obama has made the completion of the deal the number-one legislative priority of his second term. Indeed, Republican opponents of the T.P.P., in an effort to rally the red-state troops, have begun calling it Obamatrade. And yet most of the plan’s opponents are not Republicans; they’re Democrats.

      Obama’s chief allies in his vote-by-vote fight in the House of Representatives to win “fast-track authority” to negotiate this and other trade deals are Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan—not his usual foxhole companions. The vote may come as soon as Friday. The House Republican leaders tell their dubious members that they are supporting Obama only in order to “constrain” him. Meanwhile, Obama is lobbying members of the Black Congressional Caucus, whose support he can normally count on, tirelessly and, for the most part, fruitlessly. “The president’s done everything except let me fly Air Force One,” Representative Cedric Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, told the Christian Science Monitor this week. Nonetheless, Richmond said, “I’m leaning no.”


    • What Big Pharma wants from the big trade deal
      On Wednesday, a few pages from the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement were published by Wikileaks and reported on by the New York Times. They seemed to indicate changes that go against the wishes of the pharmaceutical industry, eliminating language that sought to guarantee drug companies “competitive market-derived prices” when they sell overseas.

      But the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying lawmakers on the TPP since the beginning, and shaping far more than this one section of the agreement, according to Lee Drutman, senior fellow at the New America foundation and author of "The Business of America Is Lobbying."


    • Revealed: The true scale of Tony Blair's global business empire
      The scale of Tony Blair’s globe-trotting is exposed for the first time in secret documents that suggest the taxpayer is paying up to €£16,000 a week to help the former prime minister build his business empire.

      Documents seen by The Telegraph contain details of Mr Blair’s travels around the world, accompanied by a squad of police bodyguards, flying on private jets and staying in five-star hotels.

      The files suggest Mr Blair has used identical trips to carry out both private business meetings and talks in his capacity as Quartet Representative to the Middle East – leaving him open to accusations of a potential conflict of interest.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • The Murdochs' Generational Culture Of Corruption
      In announcing that his sons James and Lachlan will be largely taking control of his sprawling media company, press baron Rupert Murdoch did what observers always knew he wanted to do: pass on to his children the worldwide conglomerate that he's built over the last five decades. In the United Sates, of course, that means handing over to his sons one of most important and influential voices in right-wing media and far-right politics, Fox News.




  • Censorship



  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



    • Israel exonerates itself over Gaza beach killings of four children last year
      Israeli investigation says missile attack that killed boys aged between nine and 11 was ‘tragic accident’ in findings contradictory to journalists’ reports from scene


    • The Killing of Children


      This denial of the truth and claim of victimhood extends to the accusation of anti-Semitism trumpeted at every critic, including this one, despite the fact that I have the highest respect for the immense cultural and scientific achievements of the Jewish people. Israel is a different question entirely.

      It is this absolute divorce of propaganda from reality that makes Tony Blair an ideal figurehead. Blair has now become head of a Council of Europe (loosely) linked body which claims to exist to promote tolerance, but in fact exists entirely to promote extreme Islamophobia and to shut down criticism of Israel. And it is a further sign of the estrangement from reality of the influential Israelis behind Blair’s appointment that they believe Tony Blair will influence public opinion positively in their favour. A remarkable example of confirmation bias.


    • Criminally Yours: Safety, But At What Cost?
      For years, just being a young African-American or Hispanic male in New York meant getting stopped randomly. Most of the people stopped not only had committed no crime to justify the stop, but, once frisked, had no contraband, weapons, drugs, etc. A few fish may have been caught in this over-inclusive net, but (to extend the metaphor), of the ones thrown back, how many were affected by the intrusion? My guess — all of them.

      Getting stopped by police for no reason hurts. Not only your time, but your sense of security. Bad feelings well up, suspiciousness of cops, a sense of insecurity when you walk down the street, a feeling that anything can happen at any time by the people posted there to protect you.


    • Trouble Not Over for Florida Parents of 11-Year-Old Taken in CPS Dispute
      Yesterday I ran an interview with the Florida mom whose children were removed from their home for a month after a neighbor reported the family to Child Protective Services because their 11-year-old son was left outside by himself for 90 minutes.


    • Court: Iowa Residents Have Right to Be Drunk on Front Porch
      The right to be drunk on the front porch of a private home was endorsed Friday by the Iowa Supreme Court, which said a woman can't be convicted of public intoxication while standing on her front steps.

      Patience Paye, 29, of Waterloo based the appeal of her 2013 case on the contention that her front steps are not a public place so she can't be charged with public intoxication.


    • Fast Track
      I am delighted that a judge yesterday ruled that the Fast Track asylum appeals system is illegal. It is the most appalling abuse, specifically designed to limit the capacity of individuals in life threatening circumstances to properly develop and present their legal case and put it before a judge. The system of putting law-abiding people, often families, into detention harsher than our harshest maximum security prisons, allowed just one hour a day out of a tiny cell for exercise, is a minor inconvenience compared to the fundamental denial of proper right to justice. The recent unjust deportation of Majid Ali was just the latest of a series of fast track cases I have encountered. Nadira has finished the script of a short film about a tragic couple, based on substantial research of true stories of fast track detention, and is developing the production.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Court Denies Requests to Keep New Net Neutrality Rules From Taking Effect on Friday
      In the months since the Federal Communications Commission voted to regulate the Internet like a public utility, opponents of the new rules have clamored to keep them from taking effect this Friday.

      On Thursday, those opponents were disappointed as a federal judge denied their requests to stay the rules while litigation proceeds against them. The court did grant an expedited hearing of the case, meaning it could be argued as soon as the fall or early winter.


    • Sneak attack! Congress' plan to kill Net neutrality
      The FCC's Net neutrality rules are slated to go into effect today, but the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday launched a sneak attack that could strip the agency of its ability to actually enforce the regulations that protect an open Internet.

      The rules approved by the FCC in February and published to the Federal Register in April reclassify broadband as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act and prohibit ISPs from throttling content or implementing paid prioritization schemes that would create Internet fast lanes.


    • Facebook will favor posts in News Feed based on time friends spend looking at them
      Facebook is about to get a much better idea of what you do and don't like in your News Feed — even if you don't click the like button. The company is about to start measuring how long you look posts, photos, and comments in your feed. The thinking is, if you linger on a status update and read a couple of comments, you probably are interested in that content. And if you're interested in that update, your friends would probably like to see it as well.






← Badische Zeitung Labels European Patent Office (EPO) a Police State for Use of Very Intrusive Mass Surveillance Software (Updated) | Microsoft's 'Not Windows is Not Allowed' Policy at Nokia →

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 14/12/2025: "Chile to ban smartphones in classroom" and "Portugal updates cybercrime law to exempt security researchers"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/12/2025: "GUI TUI CLI" and EmacsConf 2025 Video
Links for the day
Links 14/12/2025: Tensions in Asia, US Making Deals With Belarus
Links for the day
A Utopian and Very Dumb Vision of Technology, Based on Accounting Fraud
the "industry" has become insane and a lot of "the media" is going along with it
Links 14/12/2025: "The Slop of Things to Come", Goldman Sachs Nervous About Slop Bubble
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 13, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, December 13, 2025
Google News is Google Noise
Google News is really hopeless, even on weekends
IBM: We Pay You to be Obedient or Deny You What You're Entitled to If You Don't Act Obediently
Good luck starting legal battles with a company that has almost as many lawyers (including aggressive patent lawyers) as it has geeks
Links 13/12/2025: Jimmy Lai and Media Freedom on Trial, "OpenAI Researcher Quits, Saying Company Hiding the Truth"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/12/2025: Extensive Catchup With Gopherholes
Links for the day
Deliberate Lies or Glaring Distortions
Calling Torvalds anything "Soviet" or "Russian" would overlook the fact he comes from Finland and has Swedish roots
Canonical and Ubuntu: Working for Microsoft, Promoting Proprietary Surveillance (Dis)Services
Canonical started with a rich and overambitious Debian Developer. He wanted to become richer.
Russian "Hybrid Attacks" Are Typically Microsoft TCO and/or Windows TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Information-related warfare relies a lot on computer systems
EPO People Power - Part XI - The Media in Europe is Ill and Complicit in Ills
We must all recognise that there's a problem here
Running With Technology
At least they always run Linux (all of them, since 2015)
Dealing With "Tech Cults"
If you think you identified a "Tech Cult", walk away
It Seems Like IBM is Firing 'Everybody' (Anywhere, Any Age, No Matter What Team)
Healthy companies would sack IBM's management (sacked by Board, bylaws etc.) but IBM is a sick company
Latest Stallman Talk (Event in Argentina) Published
Less than a day ago they released his talk
GAFAM is a Financial Problem and Sovereignty Risk, a Policy-Level (National Level) Boycott is Needed
Europe has plenty of skilled computer engineers
LLM Slop Becoming Rarer
Today we've found no LLM slop in our RSS feeds regarding "Linux"
2026 Could Very Well be Last Year of XBox, Microsoft Dropped the Ball
It would be shocking is XBox can stage any kind of comeback
Links 13/12/2025: Social Control Media Bans and "Could Finland be Hiding a Blue Zone?"
Links for the day
Expecting Mass Layoffs, More Microsoft Workers Join Unions
they see tough times ahead
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 12, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, December 12, 2025
Links 12/12/2025: GAFAM Now Trying to Settle With Remaining News Sites It Plagiarised, "NATO's Rutte Says Alliance Is 'Russia's Next Target'"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/12/2025: Bad Joke, Western Union Blues, and More
Links for the day
Life Began at 40
This is what I wanted to do all along
To Linus Torvalds, the Microsoft Linux Foundation is Increasingly a Liability and Risk to the Brand
If Torvalds is no longer in control or "in charge", then somebody else is
EPO People Power - Part X - Together, We Can Fix the EPO
every call for action matters
IBM Layoffs in Europe as Well
IBM is a collapsing, dying old brand
EPO People Power - Part IX - Insiders Say the EPO's Chief Propagandist Effectively Ousted (on Fake 'Sick Leave') Because of Reporting by Techrights
So the EPO is in effect rewarding a cocaine addict
Litigation Transparency Until 2030 or 2031
The ultimate goal is to 1) improve the British legal system and 2) raise awareness of how this system works
Links 12/12/2025: Thunderbird Adds Proprietary Plug, "Catch-22 of Canadian Digital Sovereignty" Explained by Michael Geist (About GAFAM/US)
Links for the day
Developing Some New Software for the Sites
Sites that are static are in more control over their future and present direction
Julian Assange on Fake Activists in Silicon Valley
Julian Assange on Fake Activists in Silicon Valley
"In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice."
― Julian Assange
EPO People Power - Part VIII - The Chipmunk on Cocaine, Now Deleting Videos
video has been removed
What If the Economy Isn't "Down" But Mostly Diverted? (While "AI" Fills a Gap for Capital That No Longer Exists in Tech)
"AI" is an "Arms Race", because they need to be bailed out by taxpayers' money
Techrights Site Search Was a Success After All
A few hiccups dealt with, ironed out
Valve's SteamOS, Microsoft Canonical's Ubuntu, and Other Platforms That Only Leverage Free Software (But Won't Protect It)
Ubuntu "took off" not because it was very good or very easy. Ubuntu "took off" because of ShipIt, i.e. because of a multi-millionaire subsidising its mass distribution (at a personal cost).
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Paid Respect to Its Founder This Year, Now It Wants You to Join
We're glad to see the FSF paying respect to its founder in its Web site
2026 Guaranteed to Give Us Compromised Media Funded by "AI" Boosters to Promote "AI" and Sometimes be Composed by "AI" (Chatbots)
follow the money of the Ponzi scheme
Under IBM, Things Culminate at "AI-Equipped Customer Experience Transformation" at Red Hat
Whatever that even means
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Now at the Wheel in Cybershow
Cybershow (Cyber|Show) has very good blog posts and episodes
Microsoft Trims More Jobs
The worst layoff year in 20 years, by the numbers
EPO People Power - Part VII - The Corporate Media and the Reference Sites (e.g. Wikipedia) Are Already Compromised and Complicit
Looking back at the whole thing, it's clear to me that Europe does not really have free press
EPO People Power - Part VI - Criticism Not Permitted, Media Subjected to Contempt by Cocaine Addicts Who Manage the Press for the EPO
Why won't any large publisher in Europe cover this? What does that say about the state of journalism in Europe?
"Smart" or "Intelligent" Agents and "Vibe Coding" Deletes Everything You Have
A high price to pay, no?
New Paper Shows That EPO "Growth" is Dictated From Above, Not Earned (More Monopolies Granted by Breaking Rules, Laws, Conventions)
"Targets for 2026 are currently being handed down to individuals."
EPO People Power - Part V - The European Media is Practically Dead When It Comes to Covering European Patent Office (EPO) Corruption
That sort of sums up where European media/press stands
Datacentre and Server Maintenance Next Week
The last time we rebooted into the latest stable kernel was 96 days ago
Afraid of Words, Not Afraid of Actions
Those corporations want us to bicker over words, not their actions
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 11, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, December 11, 2025
IBM Workers Still Blast IBM Management for Firing Loads of Workers While Overpaying to Buy Useless Companies
IBM's CEO is killing the cow
LLM Slop About Linux Still Seems Scarce
LLMs aren't dead, but metrics published online say that their usage is fast declining
Links 12/12/2025: Oracle Shares Collapse After Slop Bubble Inflated (Circular Funding/Financing One's Own 'Clients'), "Trials by Jury" in UK Considered
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/12/2025: 'Kinetic Energy' and Browsing Geminispace With a GUI, TUI, or CLI Client
Links for the day