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Techrights and Modularity

The downtime was not scheduled; but it was long needed

Techrights in limited mode



Summary: Why the Web site was down most of yesterday and why we focus only on a particular set of key topics, which we've assessed closely for many years

LAST night we rebooted the site's hypervisor for the first time in over 500 days, i.e. since the site's epoch on this server. Software updates and upgrades were applied and it now run the latest Linux kernel. It's Alpine Linux by the way. We also set up a container for the databases (Techright has three) and distanced it from the main site, which will also be moved to a container some time soon. With automatic/unattended updates we hope to enhance security; performance is already improved as abstraction layers are changed and components separated. Downtime should be reduced. Some time later this month we may also add "https" (TLS) support -- something which was hard to do over the years because the CentOS version we use lacks some key packages, which would be risky to install forcibly.



"It helps to have some redundancy and modularity."The long downtime yesterday was not planned; but since we've long encountered reliability issues -- partly if not mostly due to lack of disk space -- the migration was well overdue. We planned to do it this past Christmas, but instead it got done on Easter (Sunday). We'll do further work later this week, so more maintenance-related downtime will be very likely (we can't tell the exact time). In case the site is down, the latest articles (with up to 3-hour time gaps) can be found here. Better to have a mirror than nothing at all, right? This mirror is under our control (privacy), but it is separated from Techrights. It helps to have some redundancy and modularity.

Interest in our work is growing; over the past month a lot of people have linked to our investigations of Bill Gates (because he's running a PR campaign, piggybacking a pandemic for self-promotional purposes although he's not a doctor, not an expert in that domain and he never even graduated from college). We also received inquiries expressing interest in doing internships with Techrights. The number of people involved with the site continues to grow. Last week the site became unavailable about 10 times, mostly around the middle of the week, due to what seemed like a deliberate sabotage effort or DDOS. We have good defenses in places and intend to improve these later this month with packet-level filtering.

"What's most important is accuracy."Many sites write about the pandemic at the moment; it's estimated that over 90% of news and 'air time' this past month was devoted to COVID; we try not to write too much about it -- not because it's not important but because it's an area already widely-explored. For instance, TechDirt did some good work -- publication on how patents that came from the EPO's favourite fraud were used against COVID tacklers in France. It's like the EPO wants to help COVID spread faster and further. There's also that COVID 'Pledge" (in effect openwashing patents), national exemptions from patents (using emergency provisions) and various other interesting developments that we file under "Monopolies" in our Daily Links. We intend to focus on areas we know best, such as internal affairs of the European Patent Office (EPO) and Software Freedom. We always focus on matters we understand very well as it helps keep our record of accuracy. What's most important is accuracy. We're not COVID experts; we don't rely on cranks with a YouTube channel to explain it to us, either. Heck, we don't trust anything the famous criminal from Microsoft says about it. If he says something that the experts told him, then why don't TV channels invite those experts to be on the air instead? (Clue: those experts don't have the budget to bribe the media, giving it money with strings attached)

As noted hours before the downtime (maybe some readers missed it), in my 'home office' I've settled things. I moved everything to another laptop as my 11-year laptop had died a week beforehand. I probably wrote well over 10,000 posts using that laptop; it wanted to rest in peace and I could no longer salvage it (too many components thoroughly damaged with no pragmatic workaround).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
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Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
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Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead