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Links 20/1/2022: Linuxfx 11.1 WxDesktop 11.0.3 and FreeIPMI 1.6.9 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • How to Seamlessly Switch to Linux from Windows

      Windows costs money. Linux is free. Every year, thousands of people consider switching to Linux, but few make the change permanent. It isn't simply because of apps, games, and a different file system.

      It's because they weren't properly prepared for switching operating systems. Moving to Linux isn't difficult, but it requires preparation. Get it wrong, and you'll be reinstalling – and putting up with – Windows all over again. But get it right, and you'll never look back.

      Here's everything you need to know about switching from Windows to Linux without ever worrying about going back.

    • How I made an Acer Aspire laptop useful again – Manila Bulletin

      A few days ago, I decided to tinker with an old Acer Aspire laptop in an attempt to make it useful again. It was running a previous version of Xubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution, but nobody wantsed to use it because it was too damn slow. I could just imagine how it fares with Windows on it. I remember the time before I got my hands on those Linux installation diskettes, when I get frustrated with the way Windows crashes my desktop PC, and it was not a pleasant experience. This Acer Aspire, whilst it does not crash, it is too damn slow. Heck, my Raspberry Pi 4 is even faster! (Maybe because it is running Intel chips! Haha)

      Anyway, I decided to get an internal SSD drive to replace this uber-slow HDD. A 480GB Kingston SSD to replace a 500GB HDD is not much of a trade-off considering that it is not intended to be the main workstation (we have Macs for those). All it took was opening the bottom cover and replacing the HDD (I found out that there is still an empty memory slot, so that is the next upgrade, I guess).

      Next step was to decide which Linux distribution to install. I have read good reviews of Pop!_OS, Elementary OS and Zorin OS, and, of course, Ubuntu is still on my short list. Heck, I even thought of using the PC desktop version of Raspberry Pi OS! So I did download the installers for these distributions, with the exception of Elementary OS, which was taking too long to download, even on my 300Mbps connection!

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Why Linux is Superior OS for College Students - Linux notes from DarkDuck

        The dilemma among college students about which is the superior OS among Linux, Windows or Mac is inevitable. On one hand, it's about ease of usage, on the other - cost and security. We have used all of them to provide you with a detailed solution as to why Linux is as superior of an OS for college students.

      • How North Dakota Is More Like Windows than UNIX

        If your official name is YATES, you can't (and presumably needn't) file a petition to change it to Yates. "Petitioners have offered no authority or reasoned argument that there is any legal significance to the capitalization of their names."

    • Server

      • The Original Author of NGINX Has Chosen to Step Back from the Company

        Igor Sysoev, the author of the most popular web server in the world, left the company to work on personal projects and spend more time with family and friends.

      • Mirantis brings secure registries to Kubernetes distros | ZDNet

        Mirantis Secure Registry, formerly Docker Trusted Registry, provides an enterprise-grade container registry solution. You can use this as a foundation to build a secure software supply chain. It does this by providing you with access to a container image registry that has enhanced levels of security beyond that of public registries. This, in turn, gives you more control over this critical part of their software supply chain.

        The comprehensive, built-in security enables users to verify and trust the automated operations and integration with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to speed up application testing and delivery.

        You can use MSR alongside your other apps in any standard Kubernetes 1.20 and above distribution, via standard Helm techniques. While the new MSR is no longer integrated with Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE) as it was earlier, it still runs as well as ever on MKE as it does with any other supported Kubernetes distribution.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 939

        Joel aint got no time for outlook! He is too busy working jenkins.

      • Going Linux #417 €· A Tribute To Tom

        We remember former co-host, Tom with a re-broadcast of Tom at his best in episode 180, Listener Feedback and an interview with Jonathan Nadeau.

      • FLOSS Weekly 664: Tailscale - Avery Pennarun, VPN

        Avery Pennarun of Tailscale and much more, blows the minds of Doc Searls and Aaron Newcomb on a can't-miss show that explains how the best development is all "chickens and eggs." Pennarun explains thatfree software and open source is the gifting nature of the former, and how startups succeed and fail at crossing chasms. All while touching on so much more that we now have a Part 2 of the discussion planned.

    • Kernel Space

      • VSTATUS, with or without SIGINFO [LWN.net]

        The Unix signal interface is complex and hard to work with; some developers have argued that its design is "unfixable". So when Walt Drummond proposed increasing the number of signals that Linux systems could manage, eyebrows could be observed at increased altitude across the Internet. The proposed increase seems unlikely to happen, but the underlying goal — to support a decades-old feature from other operating systems — may yet become a reality.

        The kernel is able to support up to 64 different signal types, which seems like a fair number, but all 64 are taken, on some architectures at least. That makes it impossible to add new signal types to Linux. Drummond sought to address that problem by raising the limit to 1024, which would surely be enough for all time. Raising the limit requires making some subtle changes to the user-space API (putting a larger signal mask into the information passed to realtime signal handlers, for example) that have the possibility of breaking applications, which means that extra scrutiny would be required. But that, it seems, is what would be needed to be able to add more signals.

      • Fixing a corner case in asymmetric CPU packing [LWN.net]

        Linux supports processor architectures where CPUs in the same system might have different processing capacities; for example, the Arm big.LITTLE systems combine fast, power-hungry CPUs with slower, more efficient ones. Linux has also run for years on simultaneous multithreading (SMT) architectures, where one CPU executes multiple independent execution threads and is seen as if it were multiple cores. There are architectures that mix both approaches. A recent discussion on a patch set submitted by Ricardo Neri shows that, on these systems, the scheduler might distribute tasks in an inefficient way.

      • Some 5.16 kernel development statistics

        The 5.16 kernel was released on January 9, as expected. This development cycle incorporated 14,190 changesets from 1,988 developers; it was thus quite a bit busier than its predecessor, and fairly typical for recent kernel releases in general. A new release means that the time has come to have a look at where those changes came from.

        The 1,998 developers contributing to 5.16 was the second-highest number ever, with only 5.13 (with 2,062 developers) being higher. This time around, 296 developers contributed their first change to the kernel, which is at the high end of the typical range.

      • F2FS With Linux 5.17 Makes Some Performance Improvements - Phoronix

        F2FS as the Flash-Friendly File-System may not see too much use out of desktop Linux distributions at least as it concerns any easy/semi-endorsed root install option, but this file-system does continue maturing and seeing much use by enthusiasts and especially among the plethora of Android devices now supporting this flash-optimized file-system. With Linux 5.17, F2FS has some performance improvements and other fixes.

        F2FS lead developer and maintainer Jaegeuk Kim sent in the Flash-Friendly File-System updates on Tuesday. This cycle there is work for addressing performance issues in the checkpoint and direct I/O code. There is also improvements to the page cache management code used as part of the file-system compression support.

    • Applications

      • 10 Fun Linux Command-Line Programs You Should Try When Bored

        The Linux terminal is a powerful utility. You can use it to control the whole system, crafting and typing commands as you go about doing your everyday tasks. But it can quickly become overwhelming to keep staring at a command line and carry on with your work.

        Lucky for you, the terminal is also a source of fun. You can play around with commands, listen to music, and even play games. Although expecting a great deal of entertainment from a window full of commands would be carrying it too far, you can find utilities to bind some time when bored.

        Here are some fun and entertaining commands every Linux user should try at least once.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • CPU Isolation – A practical example – by SUSE Labs (part 5)
      • How to install Mantis bug tracker on Debian 11?

        Hello friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Mantis Bug Tracker on Debian 11.

      • How to try KDE Plasma 5.24 Beta on Fedora Kinoite

        On a classic Fedora system or on other disctributions you can try it with the repos listed on the KDE Wiki. Here is how to safely try it on Fedora Kinoite, using the packages for Fedora 35 made by Marc Deop, a member of the Fedora KDE SIG.

        The latest version of KDE Plasma is usually available in Fedora Rawhide (unfortunately not available right now) however rebasing the entire system to a development version involves a lot of uncertainty. Thus it is much safer to change only the KDE Plasma packages and frameworks while keeping a stable system as a base.

        As always, make sure to backup your data before trying out beta software that could result in the loss of your personal cat picture collection.

      • How to install Proton Bus Simulator on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Proton Bus Simulator on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How to Install and Configure Memcached on Ubuntu 20.04

        In this guide we will learn how to install and configure Memcached in Ubuntu 20.04.

        Memcached is an open source, distributed memory object caching system. The system caches data and objects in memory to minimize the frequency with which an external database or API must be accessed. This alleviates database load and speeds up dynamic Web applications. It offers a mature, scalable, open-source solution for delivering sub-millisecond response times making it useful as a cache or session store. Memcached is a popular choice for powering real-time applications in Web, Mobile Apps, Gaming, Ad-Tech, and E-Commerce.

      • How to Install Papirus Icon Theme on Ubuntu - OMG! Ubuntu!

        Changing the icon theme on Ubuntu is an easy way to give your desktop a new look and feel. In this post we show you how to install Papirus icons on Ubuntu from a PPA.

        Why use the Papirus icon set? Because it’s good — in fact, it’s one of the best icon themes for Ubuntu not to mention other Linux distros like Linux Mint, Zorin OS, and Manjaro. Thousands of users use this set, and several Linux distributions ship it as their default.

      • Joerg Jaspert: Funny CPU usage

        So at work we do have a munin server running, and one of the graphs we do for every system is a network statistics one with a resolution of 1 second. That’s a simple enough script to have, and it is working nicely - on 98% of our machines. You just don’t notice the data gatherer at all, so that we also have some other graphs done with a 1 second resolution. For some, this really helps.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • Linuxfx 11.1 WxDesktop 11.0.3

          It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of Linuxfx version 11.1.1103. This update releases several new features for the operating system. The system kernel has been updated to version 5.13, bringing better support for more modern hardware. System tools gained new translations: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, American and Portuguese is now supported for WxDesktop. Android support has been improved, now in addition to supporting opengl, we also release support for Vulkan (experimental). Finally, all system packages have been updated, including WxDesktop, Onlyoffice and many others. The image has been scaled down to fit on a DVD. Users of older versions will receive this update over the internet. New users can download the new image from our portal.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • SUSE Liberty Linux Announced For Mixed Linux Environments

          SUSE today formally announced SUSE Liberty Linux as its support offering for mixed Linux environments within enterprises.

          SUSE Liberty Linux is their effort to simplify IT management and acknowledging that many organizations rely upon multiple enterprise Linux distributions depending upon the workload, hardware, and other factors.

        • The Success of ‘Open-hearted’ Partnerships in the Cloud | SUSE Communities

          The future is open — and it’s better together. At SUSE, we pride ourselves on our partnerships, and sometimes what we can achieve together surpasses even our greatest hopes. That’s what our award-winning, cloud-based, high-performance computing (HPC) partnership with UberCloud, Dassault Systèmes, and Google Cloud achieved, by enabling 3DT Holdings researchers to create an affordable, real-time heart surgery simulator for physicians to use when it matters most. This is an ongoing relationship with the Living Heart Project that we think is just the beginning of what this ground-breaking research can achieve — and the lives it can save.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Relocating Fedora's RPM database [LWN.net]

          The deadlines for various kinds of Fedora 36 change proposals have mostly passed at this point, which led to something of a flurry of postings to the distribution's devel mailing list over the last month. One of those, for a seemingly fairly innocuous relocation of the RPM database from /var to /usr, came in right at the buzzer for system-wide changes on December 29. There were, of course, other things going on around that time, holidays, vacations, and so forth, so the discussion was relatively muted until recently. Proponents have a number of reasons why they would like to see the move, but there is resistance, as well, that is due, at least in part, to the longstanding "tradition" of the location for the database.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • New Linux Kernel Vulnerability Patched in All Supported Ubuntu Systems, Update Now

          Discovered by William Liu and Jamie Hill-Daniel, the new security flaw (CVE-2022-0185) is an integer underflow vulnerability found in Linux kernel’s file system context functionality, which could allow an attacker to crash the system or run programs as an administrator.

          The security vulnerability affects all supported Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) systems running Linux kernel 5.13, Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) systems running Linux kernel 5.11, as well as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) systems running Linux kernel 5.4 LTS.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • How to build a career in open source in 2022

        The “Free” in FOSS has always been seen as “free of cost”, in turn being interpreted as of low quality and reliability. However, governments are realising that this is not the case, and are beginning to appreciate the “freedom” that comes with FOSS, in terms of source code availability, ease of modification, etc., she added.

        Open source has made huge inroads in networking (54%), database (53%), and security (52%). The open source services market comprises consulting services, implementation, support, maintenance and management services, and training services.

        The consulting service accounts for the largest share as many players are devising strategies to create awareness about Linux and other open-source operating systems for the developers, ResearchAndMarkets.com said.

        “The government has rolled out policies on open source software, aimed at quick open source adoption, lower cost of ownership of software projects, and long term, strategic control of e-governance solutions within India. The Ministry of Communication and IT rolled out Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India, Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications, and Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs),” Jaya said.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • MongoDB vs. DynamoDB: What you need to know

          NoSQL databases have become more popular because of the need for more flexible backend solutions. These databases run applications that require a more flexible data structure than traditional structured databases can provide. Robust feature-rich NoSQL database platforms famous for NoSQL databases include MongoDB and DynamoDB.

          This article guide will compare these two databases to help you choose the right one for your project.

      • FSF

        • New year, new LibrePlanet: Register now to join us on March 19 and 20

          Over a thousand people participated online in the conference last year. Free software enthusiasts from around the world joined us in our live sessions. You can watch videos from the March 2021 conference -- using only free software of course -- on our MediaGoblin instance or on PeerTube. Also, you can now pre-order this year's full-color LibrePlanet T-shirt in the FSF shop. If you order yours before the March 1, 2022, cutoff date, you will be able to wear it to the event.

        • LibrePlanet 2022: Living Liberation

          LibrePlanet is the annual conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation. LibrePlanet provides an opportunity for community activists, domain experts, and people seeking solutions for themselves to come together in order to discuss current issues in technology and ethics.

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU FreeIPMI - News: FreeIPMI 1.6.9 Released [Savannah]

            https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freeipmi/freeipmi-1.6.9.tar.gz o Support --with-systemconfigdir build option. o Fix build issue on musl where putmsg/getmsg are not available. o Fix build issue when inb/outb are not available on some systems. o Fix static build issues with gcrypt. o Add conserver documentation in faq. o Minor documentation updates.

      • Programming/Development

        • 12 Free University Courses That Will Teach You How To Code

          University education can get expensive. Or perhaps you’re contemplating switching careers but don’t want to spend 3 years back in school. You don’t need a degree to get into programming.

        • Python

          • An outdated Python for openSUSE Leap [LWN.net]

            Enterprise distributions are famous for maintaining the same versions of software throughout their, normally five-year-plus, support windows. But many of the projects those distributions are based on have far shorter support periods; part of what the enterprise distributions sell is patching over those mismatches. But openSUSE Leap is not exactly an enterprise distribution, so some users are chafing under the restrictions that come from Leap being based on SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLE). In particular, shipping Python 3.6, which reached its end of life at the end of 2021, is seen as problematic for the upcoming Leap 15.4 release.

            [...]

            OpenSUSE and SLE have generally been aligned over the years. In 2020, Leap and SLE grew even closer together. The build system and repositories between the two were shared starting with Leap 15.2, which corresponded to the second "service pack" (SP) of SLE (i.e. SLE 15-SP2). In 2021, with Leap 15.3 and SLE 15-SP3, the two distributions effectively merged, such that all of the base packages were shared between the two. To a first approximation, Leap is an openSUSE-branded version of SLE, much like what CentOS used to be for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

          • Make Your Python CLI Tools Pop With Rich | Hackaday

            It seems as though more and more of the simple command-line tools and small scripts that used to be bash or small c programs are slowly turning into python programs. Of course, we will just have to wait and see if this ultimately turns out to be a good idea. But in the meantime, next time you’re revamping or writing a new tool, why not spice it up with Rich?

    • Standards/Consortia

      • WiFi 7 (802.11be) will support up to 40 Gbps links, real-time applications - CNX Software

        I still don’t own a WiFi 6 router, but MediaTek has already started to demonstrate WiFi 7 (802.11be) to customers with solutions based on upcoming Filogic 802.11be processors which deliver “super-fast speeds and low latency transmission” and provide a “true wireline/Ethernet replacement for super high-bandwidth applications”.

        The company goes on to explain that Wi-Fi 7 relies on the same 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz frequencies as WiFi 6/6E, but can still provide 2.4x faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6, even with the same number of antennas, since WiFi 7 can utilize 320Mhz channels and support 4K QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology.

  • Leftovers

    • Drill Does Well In Double Duty As Well Drilling Drill | Hackaday

      There are a large number of methods commercially used to bore a hole into the ground for the sake of extracting drinking water, and the all require big loud equipment. But what if you just want a small well? Do you really have to call in the big guns? [The Working Group on Development Techniques] is a student association at the University of Twente in the Netherlands who shows in the video below the break that some simple homemade fixtures and a powerful hand drill are quite enough to do the job!

    • Hardware

      • Extreme Thermal Mods For 3D Printing Exotic Materials | Hackaday

        For general everyday use, there’s nothing wrong with the standard selection of plastics that most 3D printer filaments are available in. PLA, ABS, PETG — they’ve all got their place, and they’re all pretty easy to work with. But if you need to work with more exotic materials, you might need to go to extremes and modify an off-the-shelf printer for high-temperature work.

        For the team led by [Andreas Hagerup Birkelid] at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the standard menu of printer chow wasn’t up to the jobs they had in mind. They wanted to print using polyether ether ketone, or PEEK, a high-performance thermoplastic with useful mechanical and thermal properties, in addition to chemical resistance. Trouble is, the melting point of PEEK is a whopping 343€°C (649€°F), making it necessary to turn up the heat — a lot. A standard Creality CR-10 printer was upgraded to withstand not only the 500€°C max temperature of the new hot end and 200€° printed bed, but also to survive operating in what amounts to an oven — a balmy 135€° in a chamber made from IKEA cabinets. That entailed replacing plastic parts with metal ones, upgrading belts, pulleys, and wires, and moving all the electronics outside the enclosure. Even the steppers got special treatment, with water cooling to keep their magnets from reaching the Curie point.

      • Trying Out The Revopoint POP 3D Portable Scanner - The DIY Life

        Today I’m going to be unboxing and trying out the POP 3D portable scanner, which Revopoint have sent to me to share with you. This is a handheld 3D scanner that Revopoint say can scan with an accuracy of within 0.3mm using dual infrared sensors and an RGB camera. The addition of the RGB camera means that you can capture RGB colour information for each data point and render full-colour 3D models.

      • Monowheel Mayhem: When Good Gyroscopic Precession Goes Bad | Hackaday

        Since the dawn of the age of the automobile, motorheads have been obsessed with using as few wheels as possible. Not satisfied with the prospect of being incompletely maimed by a motorcycle, the monocycle was born. Gracing the covers of Popular magazines and other periodicals, these futuristic wheels of doom have transfixed hackers of all kinds. [James Bruton] is one such hacker, and in the video below the break you can see his second iteration of a 3d printed monowheel.

        [James]’ wonderful monowheel is beautifully engineered. Bearing surfaces, gears, idlers, motors, and yes, twin gyroscopes are all contained within the circumference of the tire. The gyroscopes are actuated by a rather large servo, and are tied together by a gear that keeps their positions in sync. Their job is to keep the monowheel balanced at all times.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

    • Finance

      • How Klaus Schwab Built a Billionaire Circus at Davos | Vanity Fair

        Klaus Schwab, the ringmaster of festivities at the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been known to tell underlings that he anticipates one day receiving a Nobel Peace Prize.

        In a surprise to no one else, Oslo has yet to ring.

        Schwab’s greatest accomplishment is decidedly entrepreneurial. He has developed the Forum from an earnest meeting of policy wonks into a glittering assembly of the world’s richest people. He has achieved this by ingratiating himself with those who wield power, and especially the billionaire class—a tribe known as Davos Man. Schwab has constructed a refuge for the outlandishly wealthy, an exclusive zone where they are free to pursue deals and sundry shenanigans while enjoying the cover of participating in a virtuous undertaking. Their mere presence in Davos at the Forum signals their empathy and sensitivity.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Finding Better Alternatives – Purism

        Rethinking Everything

        The past two years have been really disruptive to society as a whole. This disruption has caused people to take a fresh look at past choices. We are all making big changes. We are re-evaluating our values. We rethinking just about everything. What is truly important? Where and how do we live and work? How do we spend our time? We all have had to find multiple options that could work better for us in our context.

        Looking more broadly, these times have urged humanity to look beyond conventional options. Scientists looked at alternatives to the traditional vaccine to mass-produce, thanks to innovative bio-technology. Business leaders have had to look beyond mass-layoffs to renegotiate fixed wages and work. Humankind discovered the power of pandemic pods, micro-offices and tele-health. Finding alternatives has been the common thread.

        Providing Alternatives to Big Tech and Traditional Capitalism

        At Purism, we are continuing to grown and build a sustainable future. We are grateful to win the support of millions. Purism started as a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC) in 2014. “When I started Purism, I wanted to avoid toxic investment; I didn’t want to focus entirely on shareholder value.” says Founder, Todd Weaver.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Manager’s Amendment Shows AICOA Not Ready for Prime Time - Disruptive Competition Project

        Ahead of tomorrow’s scheduled markup of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) (S. 2992), a controversial bill to refashion U.S. digital markets in a more European mold, the bill’s sponsors have offered a proposed “manager’s amendment”. The proposed amendment acknowledges the key weaknesses in the bill, but does not meaningfully address them.

        The scattershot nature of the manager’s amendment underscores that the bill is not ready for prime time. The amendment leaves the bill even more overreaching in its breadth and scope than the underlying text. Rather than reform S. 2992, the manager’s amendment introduces ambiguity, imprecision, and potentially pulls other U.S. companies in scope.

        Broadly speaking, the most serious criticism of the bill has pertained to economic and national security, privacy and user security, forced interoperability with business users and other competitors, and the bill’s limitation on covered platforms to enforce their terms of service and moderate content. All of these concerns will ultimately hurt consumers.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Roasting the Consumer Electronics Show’s ‘Worst’ Products – The New Stack

        The event’s host was activist/blogger/science fiction author Cory Doctorow, who promised the presentation would highlight “the hidden or maybe not-so-hidden and completely foreseeable failure modes of these gadgets — and what they say about the state of the industry today.”

        [...]

        Byrne points out that Deere’s tractor was also the winner of an online poll for “worst in show.” And then Doctorow quipped dryly that “Last year John Deere took top honors in our Worst in Show. It’s good to see them back again with another strong showing in the Dystopia-Watch category here.”

        But he added on a more hopeful note, “It’s nice to see that the broad public is getting the message, that allowing one giant, union-busting profit-taking, rapacious, ag-tech company to corner the market on how we get our food — and then just turning them loose to do whatever they want with the machines that are necessary — is probably not the path we need to a better future.”

        Deere’s tractor led Doctorow to reiterate what he sees as another important principle for autonomous technology: that the person using a device should always be able to override a machine’s pre-programmed instructions. “There’s so much paternalism that says, ‘Well, what if you make a foolish decision with your autonomous car?'”



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Invitation to General Assembly After 1,200 EPO Workers Participated in the Demonstration 3 Days Ago
"the strike of 19 March was also very well followed."
A/Prof Susan G Kleinmann, Enkelena Haxhija & Debian-private risk to MIT
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 20, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 20, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade
Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented
Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com)
The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative
Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism
Links for the day
The EPO's Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Explains to the Administrative Council (AC) How Bad Things Have Become at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Biggest Patent Office, and Corruption/Cocaine Hub (Jobs Sold to Friends)
We'll say a bit more tomorrow
IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders)
For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female
Symptom of Publishers Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop. Symptom of Software Companies Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop ('Vibe').
It'll always fail. It's hype. It's a bubble.
Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware
Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over 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
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026