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Links 28/9/2015: Last News Catchup Before Resumption





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Being smart about open source: 5 practical tips for government use
    There is much written about the pros and cons of using open source software, generally with more emphasis on the pros. Open source evangelists have even convinced foreign governments (India and the United Kingdom, to name a few) to go so far as mandating the use of open source software. To make smart decisions, however, government agencies must carefully consider the project in question. Here are five tips for making sure important questions are not overlooked.


  • Github Open Sources a Tool That Will Teach Students to Code
    John Britton is Github's "education liaison", which means that he assists in bringing Github to schools and college campuses. The sweeping online service in the last few years have changed the way the way coders build software across Silicon Valley and beyond. According to Britton, it's transforming the way that teachers teach coding now. In the end, Github is all about collaborating on code together.


  • Adblock Fast: A free and open source ad blocker for iOS 9


  • Adblock Fast is a free and open source way to banish ads in iOS 9


  • Open Source and Haiti: A Story of Care


  • Dropbox open-sources Zulip, the group chat app it acquired last year
    Dropbox has released Zulip, a group chat app, under an open-source Apache license. The move, announced today, comes after Dropbox acquired Zulip in March 2014.

    The client and server code is available on GitHub. You can download the client for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android here.


  • Study Reveals Insights About Enterprise Use of Open Source
    How is open source used in the large enterprise environment? A recent study from WIPRO and Oxford Economics titled “The Open Source Era  provided insights into that question. The report revealed that 21 percent of enterprises use open source software and 25 percent have deployed it in a business unit. However, 54 percent are in the planning phase of open source adoption.


  • Latest Brocade ODL controller, apps ease use of open source in cloud
    An OVSDB interface lets the Brocade controller direct a virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN) topology, which is an overlay network on existing Layer 3 infrastructure. VXLAN technology makes it easier for network engineers to scale out a cloud-computing environment.


  • Google, Twitter Reportedly Developing Open Source Instant Article Solution


  • Facebook Open Sources React Native For Android So Devs Can Reuse Code Across Web And iOS


  • Pinterest open-sources Terrapin, a tool for serving data from Hadoop
    Pinterest today announced the availability of Terrapin, a new piece of open-source software that's designed to more efficiently push data out of the Hadoop open-source big data software and make it available for other systems to use.

    Engineers at Pinterest designed Terrapin as a replacement for the open-source HBase NoSQL database for this particular process, because HBase had proven slow and didn't perform well beyond 100GB of data. The company looked at open-source key-value store ElephantDB as a possible alternative, but that wasn't perfect, either.


  • DreamFactory: Building a better backend for your apps
    A free, open source solution for connecting mobile, IoT, or Web apps to backend server data and services


  • Could VW scandal lead to open-source software for better automobile cybersecurity?
    Could fallout from Volkswagen's cheating lead to vehicle manufacturers open-sourcing millions of lines of code for the sake of enhanced automobile cybersecurity?


  • Price – One Measure Of Lock-in
    For many, ignorance is the key lock-in. Folks born and raised as slaves may not appreciate there is any other life. Slaves may feel any competition to their slave-master is a threat to their way of life. Education is key. Students exposed to FLOSS at school will certainly know there is another way, a better way to do IT. Students I taught even knew how to install GNU/Linux and applications like LibreOffice. Today, there are many more retail shelves bearing GNU/Linux and LibreOffice than the bad old days. The stats show it. LibreOffice has over 100 million users. GNU/Linux as the classic desktop and Chrome OS are slowly but surely taking share in the world. Android/Linux is kicking butt.


  • Dropbox releases its chat app Zulip under an open-source license


  • Google Launches "Brotli" Compression Algorithm For The Web
  • Mycroft Aims to Be the First Truly Open AI That Belongs to Everyone
    Mycroft is a very successful project defined as an AI and home automation system, but its makers are hoping that it's going be a lot more than just that.


  • Mycroft AI Home Automation Needs a Mascot, Competition Organized
    The Mycroft AI home automation system has been gathering quite a following, especially after it completed a Kickstarter campaign. Now, its makers are looking to find a fitting mascot for the Mycroft.


  • Events



    • My Dance Card for "All Things Open"
      Systemv Startup vs systemd: With all the continuing brouhaha surrounding systemd, this is a must on my list. From the abstract on this talk, it appears as if this will be a positive take on systemd -- pragmatic, since it seems to be here to stay, like it or not 00 and will seek to explain not only how it works and how to configure it, but to explain why its development was deemed necessary. This one is being conducted by open source software and Linux advocate David Both, who's byline has appeared on OS/2 Magazine, Linux Magazine, Linux Journal, and OpenSource.com.


    • FUDCon Cordoba 2015


    • FUDCon LATAM 2015 - Cordoba
      FUDCon LATAM 2015 was held in CÀ³rdoba Argentina, and hosted by Valentin Basel, Matias Maceira and Laura Fontanesi, and all the local volunteers that helped make the event could happen.


    • DjangoGirls workshop in Pune
      During FUDCon, I heard that later in the year we might get a Django Girls workshop in Pune. If you never heard about Django Girls before, here is a quote from the website:


    • Dronecode workshop to be held at LinuxCon/ELCE in Dublin
      In a nod to the proliferation of Linux in drones, the Dronecode Project will host a workshop in conjunction with LinuxCon and the ELC in Dublin next month.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • How WebGL Works In Chromium
        If you've been curious how WebGL works in Chromium or other modern web browsers prior to hitting the graphics driver, here's a lengthy explanation.




    • Mozilla



      • Firefox 41 Released With Many Small Improvements


      • Mozilla Releases SeaMonkey 2.38
        It's not too often these days that we hear about SeaMonkey, Mozilla's all-in-one Internet Suite, but an update to it is available this weekend.

        SeaMonkey continues to come equippped with email, IRC, HTML editing. and web browsing functionality and is powered by the latest Gecko engine release from Firefox. It was just earlier this week that Firefox 41 was released.


      • Firefox OS post-mortem
        So, it happened. My Flame stopped working, it just doesn't react to anything (power off switch, power cable), and of course being a weird unknown China-only thing, no local repair shop would touch it. I probably could ask somebody at Mozilla for another one, but I already knew I wouldn't. Let me write couple of words why I gave up on Firefox OS (not on Firefox or Mozilla!).


      • Mozilla's Project Candle Aiming To Improve Firefox's Power Efficiency


      • Webconverger Kiosk Devs Found Out Firefox Is Leaking Info
        "Prompted by the disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10 and an inquiry whether Webconverger leaked any intranet information, we reviewed Firefox defaults. This review was accomplished with Wireshark, a tool that allows us to analyse every packet leaving and entering a Webconverger instance. Strictly speaking these Firefox defaults don't leak any private information and elements like safe browsing should give an extra layer of malware protection, but in practice the network noise generated by these services are too risky for security," reads the official announcement.


      • Rust 1.3 Further Stabilizes The API, More Efficient Substring Matcher






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Building enterprise data applications with open source components
      I first found myself having to learn Scala when I started using Spark (version 0.5). Prior to Spark, I'd peruse books on Scala but just never found an excuse to delve into it. In the early days of Spark, Scala was a necessity -- I quickly came to appreciate it and have continued to use it enthusiastically.


    • Survey shows huge popularity spike for Apache Spark
      One popular number often noted by the Spark community is that its roughly 600 contributors make it the most active project in the entire Apache Software Foundation, a major governing body for open source software, in terms of number of contributors. That's no small feat considering the number of popular enterprise database and infrastructure projects currently governed by Apache.

      And new numbers released this week as part of survey from Databricks, a software startup founded by the creators of Spark, shed some new light on just how popular the technology has become. One of the standout statistics has to do with attendance at user conferences, which are usually a good sign of interest in a technology and who's using it. In 2015, attendance at Spark Summit events grew 156% to nearly 3,000, and the number of companies represented grew 152% to more than 1,100.


    • Ossipee
      OpenStack is a big distributed system. FreeIPA is designed for security in distributed system. In order to develop and test each of them, separately or together, I need a distributed system. Virtualization has been a key technology for making this kind of work possible. OpenStack is great of managing virtualization. Added to that is the benefits found when one “Fly our own airplanes.  Thus, I am using OpenStack to develop OpenStack.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Education



    • Making the case for Free Software at Universities
      Delivering this talk represented a challenge for me. My audience are freshman, that have been in college for all of three to four weeks. Your regular presentation is not going to work. My audience have left home, making new friends, and enjoying new freedoms, making adult decisions. For most freshman, their journey is just beginning and if I were to use my own experience, constantly evolving. Where you started out might be completely different and that could be said to continue even in your adult life. We are after all works in progress. The other challenge is that perception of Free Software / Open Source is applicable only to computer science. That is of course patently untrue, considering how this concept has now spread to so many other sectors. Creating something requires a wide range of skillsets and its just not about coding.




  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Openness/Sharing





Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Health/Nutrition



    • U.S. drug company sues Canada for trying to lower cost of $700K-a-year drug
      A U.S. drug company is taking the Canadian government to court for its attempt to lower the price of what has been called the world's most expensive drug.

      Alexion Pharmaceuticals has filed a motion in Federal Court, arguing that Canada's drug price watchdog has no authority to force the company to lower its price for Soliris.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Jeremy Corbyn loses the battle on Trident after trade unionists side with Labour MPs to block the move
      Jeremy Corbyn will avoid a divisive vote on the Labour party's policy on Britain's nuclear deterrent at its conference this week after major unions said they would block the new leader's attempts to adopt an anti-Trident stance.

      Labour party delegates were expected to vote on whether to renew Trident nuclear weapons or scrap them as party policy on 30 September, but the motion failed to win the support needed from activists in a ballot selecting which topics the party will debate at its conference in Brighton.


    • Labour party torpedoes Trident debate in blow to Jeremy Corbyn
      Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was handed an embarrassing defeat yesterday afternoon, as his own party members voted against debating the renewal of the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system.

      Corbyn has long campaigned against replacing Trident, and it had widely been expected that delegates at the Labour party's annual conference in Brighton this week would vote on a motion backing the newly elected leader's views.


    • Jeremy Corbyn suffers blow as Trident vote rejected at conference






  • Finance



    • Opinion: Secret Trade Negotiations Threaten Sustainable Development Goals
      Yet as the United Nations announce goals to be achieved by 2030, a crucial but secret trade meeting is taking place to advance the Trans Pacific Partnership, which will set the economic rules for 40 percent of the world economy, and threatens to undermine the U.N. goals before they have even begun.

      The Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, are made up of 17 general goals with 169 targets, including an end to extreme poverty and hunger, providing universal access to clean water and protecting the world's oceans. The initiative is supported by 193 countries, the United Nations, the World Bank and countless non-profits, and establishes the international development agenda for the next 15 years.





  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Traveling to North Korea - 15 Myths You Shouldn't Believe
      There is probably no other place on this planet which receives so much negative press as North Korea. Given the totalitarian nature of DPRK's government and the country's isolation, one can easily understood why the country receives so little love. However, what's really worrying though is that a lot of media outlets do not even make the slightest effort to really understand the country and its people or even pay a visit to the Hermit Kingdom to see how the country looks from inside.

      As a result, there are a lot of myths circulating around the web concerning traveling to North Korea. Some of them are totally ridiculous, others make a bit more sense. When I visited North Korea in August 2015, I had the unique opportunity to challenge some of the misconceptions about tourism in DPRK. As usual, I did my best to keep the mind open and at least for the time being, forget a lot what I had heard about traveling to North Korea before.




  • Privacy



    • RFC: Using video conferencing for GPG key signing events
      I have a geographically-diverse team that uses GPG to provide integrity of their messages. Usually, a team like this would all huddle together and do a formal key-signing event. With several large bodies of water separating many of the team members, however, it's unlikely that we could even make that work.


    • Purism Librem 13 Funded, But Will Likely Fail To Provide Freedom & Privacy
      This known backdoor, the Intel Management Engine, is signed by Intel. This means that you can't run your own version without Intel's permission. Purism claims to be working on unlocking it (presumably to remove these nasty features), but customers who previously bought a librem (hundreds of librem 15 customers, myself included, and the hundreds of people that bought the librem 13) will be stuck with a locked Management Engine. If Purism is successful in unlocking the ME to run unsigned modified versions, that will only affect newer laptops shipped by the company, not older ones that were sold previously.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers
      On the coastal edge of Tunisia, a signal bounces between 11 rooftops and 12 routers, forming an invisible net that covers 70 percent of the city of Sayada. Strategically placed, the routers link together community centers--from the main street to the marketplace. Not long ago, the Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali government censored access to the Internet. The regime is gone now. And this free network gives the community unfettered access to thousands of books, secure chat and file sharing applications, street maps, and more.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
 
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day
Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
The Demise of LLMs
We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
Links for the day
Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
Links for the day
Firing Away With Nonsense
Or fighting fire with fire
Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
Links for the day
Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
Neither legal nor useful
The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
And likely in prior years, too
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
Gemini Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025