From One Form of Fake 'Independence' ('Exile') to Another Phony and Shallow 'Autonomy' (Webchats)

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2021-12-20 00:21:23 UTC
Modified: 2021-12-20 00:29:40 UTC

Meme reference: Napoleon Dynamite (no, not that Corsican who was sent to exile; the one who sent his judges ('opponents') to exile)

Working 'from' Munich Over compulsory 'ViCo'

Summary: Earlier today in Daily Links we included about 5 very shallow articles (except this one; see the 17 comments in there; no matter how much the EPO's management lies and bribes the media, the "court of public opinion" has made up its mind); Working 'from' Munich over compulsory 'ViCo' is hardly regaining one's independence, it's all about optics

Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs: Links for the day
Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week: Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
"Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions: Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
"Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop: Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere": Links for the day
Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down: Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft: It's very important to remember what really happened
Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles: Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office): Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too): More to come soon (later today)
IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay: Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies: Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter: That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves): "Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.: Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA: Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again": Links for the day
GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight: GNOME is having financial problems
Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus": Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users: It's not about protecting children
Slop Plunge: we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On: Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs: They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 26, 2026: IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026
Links 26/03/2026: Tor Relay at National Taiwan Normal University, Copyright Hammers Fall: Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2026: "The War of the Worlds" and "sometimes science is just the dumbest thing": Links for the day
The World Wide Bots: The shape of the Web is so bad that bots exceed humans in some places
Links 26/03/2026: Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Closes 101 Law Firms in 2 Years, "Please Compensate the Work You Appreciate": Links for the day
Regaining Software Freedom Means Regaining Control Over Programs That Run on Our Devices: Richard Stallman will speak in Italy
Microsoft Secure Boot Removes Users' Choice: Has Greenland banned Microsoft and 'secure' boot yet?
IBM Pushes Workers Out, It Does Not Count Them as "Layoffs": The number of IBM layoffs can be as large as tens of thousands per year
Hard to Find a Job After Working for Microsoft (Back Doors Giant, Bribery Hub): It generally looks like people who chose to serve Microsoft's agenda don't end up too well
Microsoft Lost 31% Of Its Alleged "Value" in Five Months, Then It Got Downgraded: In 2026 Microsoft focuses on keeping the layoffs silent
Altering Perceived Reality to Make It Seem Like Microsoft is Thriving, Not Failing: pretend XBox did not die
SLAPP Censorship - Part 24 Out of 200: The Failed Effort by Brett Wilson LLP to Strike Out My Lawsuit and My Wife's Lawsuit Against Garrett (the Master Allowed Our Lawsuits to Proceed): This is lawfare
Official New Figures Show That Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Sees Rise in Dishonesty Among Law Firms Forcibly Shut Down ('Euthanised' Due to Misconduct): It's rather if in our little country as many as 16 law firms were found to be so dishonest that they needed to be shut down
Back to Normalcy: In our datacentre at least
IBM is "Increasing Its Temporary and Part-time Headcount" While Net Headcount Falls (Despite Buying Many Companies and Their Workforce): Headcount is a rather superficial yardstick.
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Off Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800: For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
EPO Union Decides to Continue Industrial Actions, Next Strike in Four Days: The latest strike had the highest participation rate
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 25, 2026: IRC logs for Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Microsoft's "Silent Layoffs" in Slop Clothing: "AI-powered transformation" is just a euphemism for mass layoffs
Where and How to Spot LLM Slop: Many people correctly perceive LLMs as a site's downfall, a step towards the abyss
Public Talk by Richard Stallman in Half a Day "at the Engineering and Architecture Campus of Cesena of the University of Bologna": He'll probably attract a fairly large crowd
Gemini Links 26/03/2026: Buying a House, Stargazing, OFFLFIRSOCH 2026: Links for the day
Links 25/03/2026: Nations Return to Russian Oil and Burning Wood: Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/03/2026: Resisting Authoritarianism and Why Slop Needs to Go Away: Links for the day
Fedora Maintainer-ship Using Slop (Mistakes) Would Make Fedora Less Reliable: It won't produce reliable code or stable systems one can rely upon
IBM's "Legacy Employees" (Experienced Workers, IBM Management Dubs Them 'Dinobabies'): This notion of "legacy employees" seems like something overlapping with "expensive" (well paid) staff, even if not entirely equivalent
EPO's "Current Industrial Actions Are Likely to Intensify Further.": There is another strike in 5 days
This Morning The Register MS Published Slop Promotion With the Term "AI" 15 Times In It. The Register MS Was (As Usual) Paid to Do This: This is not a serious publisher
SLAPP Censorship - Part 23 Out of 200: We Were Right All Along (for 2 Years) About Third Party Funding and Willingness to 'Break the Bank' in Pursuit of "Revenge": How much damage can a person do to oneself in pursuit of cover-up of legitimate technical concerns?
Gnome Foundation Inc is in Trouble: the agenda is set GAFAM and IBM rather than donors
Links 25/03/2026: Airports Further Militarised, "Slopification and Its Discontents", Microsoft 'Open' 'Hey Hi' Shutting Things Down: Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/03/2026: Blogging Fright and Absolutely Useless 'Apps' Made by Slop Machines: Links for the day
Rise in Energy Prices Will Significantly Accelerate the Death of So-called "AI Companies": It should be noted that fake news about Microsoft OpenAI doubling workforce (mere words, not actions) can serve as a nice distraction from the death of Sora due to divestment
It's Always a Question of Trust: There's a widespread stigma of lawyers being manipulative and chronically dishonest
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Must More Carefully Investigate or Assess the Financial State of Law Firms in the UK: We'll cover this in depth in the future
GAFAM Mozilla Removes Theora Support, Now GNU Needs to Re-encode Videos: Mozilla used to mean something to Free software advocates
An Open Admission Profits Depend on Addiction: Proprietary software tends to be like this
IBM Americas President Ayman Antoun Comes to OpenText, Weeks Ahead the Mass Layoffs Begin: Is that what IBM will be good at?
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 24, 2026: IRC logs for Tuesday, March 24, 2026

From One Form of Fake 'Independence' ('Exile') to Another Phony and Shallow 'Autonomy' (Webchats)

Recent Techrights' Posts