Bonum Certa Men Certa

Techrights Statement on Paths Ahead in the Era of News Drought and Widely-Waning Web

Summary: We're striving to get into a habit of publishing about a dozen blog posts per day; in order to do this we change our strategy with immediate effect

YESTERDAY we wrote about the need to pause and rethink how we do articles and how we curate Daily Links. We've since then experimented with a new approach and published about half a dozen articles with many recent references in each.

This site is turning 17 in a few months. It did change (it evolved) a lot over the years. Daily Links turned 15 this past February and IRC turned 15 about a month ago.

It is with that in mind that we:

  1. Pause our old approach of gathering news links (too low a signal-to-noise ratio in them).
  2. prioritise writing new articles, even if that means fewer batches of Daily Links
  3. Prepare videos where video presentation is more suitable and desirable than textual form


We're in the privileged position of enjoying greater personal freedom than ever before (when this site started in 2006 I was still a Ph.D candidate working on my thesis, later I worked part time and then full time). We'd like to make best use of time to promote Software Freedom and to advance justice, with greater focus on science and technology matters rather than "pure" politics.

Social control media is in disarray at the moment (several large platforms are collapsing, not exactly for the same reasons). We hope that many of the escapees will end up self-hosting and, better yet, adopting Gemini.

In recent years we've been producing over 3,000 blog posts (with analogous GemLog posts) per year and we should be able to do over 4,000 a year if we adopt the correct strategy. Priorities need to change somewhat. We have some exciting (to me us least) plans for the next 5-10 years; they're not limited to the World Wide Web, so the fate of the Web does not matter so much to us (we're resistant to the Web's demise; all our articles are in IPFS, GemText, plain text and more). We have hitherto identified where a lot of time was being (mostly) 'wasted' and we will work to correct those older habits and hopefully exceed a dozen blog posts per day once the dust settles.

The Web is getting smaller (yes, we've provided evidence over the years that it is shrinking over time), search engines rapidly deteriorate in terms of quality (the reasons for this merit a discussion some other day, in isolation), and newsrooms collapse at an alarming rate, with editors forced to resign from widely-known news sites almost every week. These trends seem irreversible for "business reasons". There's no point fighting those trends. No single person or company can change that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Does Not Support Women, It Imitates Authentic Organisations, Embraces Misogynists, Then Projects
They try to monetise for personal gain at the expense of unpaid volunteers
When You're Evil and You're Publicly Attacking Something, That Something Will Become More Popular
when an oppressor becomes openly oppressive and does anything to squash/censor critics, the outcome will typically be detrimental to the oppressor
Links 10/08/2026: "Against Oligarch" and "The Invisible Women"
Links for the day
Social Control Media Deathwatch: After Nearly a Million Posts Sent EchoFeed Shuts Down
EchoFeed is hardly unique
When the LLM Chatbots Industry (Trillions in the Red) Quits Paying the Media for FOMO
fear of missing out, or FOMO for short
Microsoft Killing Morale
branding the process “inhumane” and “demoralizing”
Google's "AI Overview" as Proprietary Censorship Engine and Gatekeeper
People do not choose to use this, Google is just shoving that in people's faces, encouraging laziness and misinformation
SLAPP Censorship - Part 145 Out of 200: They Tried Hard to Hide the Fact Their Client Had Been Sued, Twice Even
A month ago Brett Wilson LLP tried to take my wife "to the side" (in effect isolated) to make her an offer
statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 8.95% Globally
So the estimates are being "corrected" upwards, not downwards
Explaining How Someone Attempted to Cancel RMS This Year (and Failed)
The process itself involved debunking some falsehoods
Microsoft's "XBOX Ranks Last", IBM is Headed for Extinction
If Microsoft cannot dominate its own "home turf", what prospects are there elsewhere?
DebConf6 fight denied by Google artificial intelligence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 09, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 09, 2026
Gemini Links 10/08/2026: A Mild Monday, Sleepy Saturday, OUYA, and Moving to GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: US Blackouts (Energy Wasted), Slop to Evade Accountability, and Software Patents Framed as "Hey Hi"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Parakeets in Britain and Rant About 'Modern' Washing Machines
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: Social Control Media Weaponises Immigration, Europe Suffers Severe Drought, and "Internet of Stuff" Explained
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 144 Out of 200: The "Hired Guns" ("Media" at BW) Shrank Almost Three-Fold Since They Sued Us in 2024
No wonder they're so visibly outnumbered
10 Days Ago Red Hat Formally Terminated Employment of About 500 Technical Workers (the Media Didn't Mention This)
IBM has nothing left to do except fire people (in secret) whilst attacking sites that give these people a voice
Freenode Continues to Shed Off Servers and Users, Good Thing We Abandoned It
you cannot sell communities. It leads to chaos
Daniel Pocock in the Sunday Times (Today)
Expect the attacks (from Pocock's haters, motivated by envy) to intensify
Controlling One's Platform
We need to strive for or actively pursue a Web where everyone has their own platform/s and where censors ("moderators") have no direct control over these platforms
Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG), Fixing Bugs
Next month the site's SSG turns 3
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Meatballs (1979), Gopher, RSS Experiment
Links for the day
2026: The Year Richard Stallman Came Back to American Campuses
There's more on the way
IBM's "Next Step" Program
Apparently close to 1,000 people being laid off by IBM wasn't worth reporting
XBox is Rotting Away, Technical Issues for Second Time in Two Weeks
XBox is dying
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2026
Red Hat is in Need of a 'Jolla', as an IBM-Controlled Red Hat is Becoming Like the Microsoft-Infiltrated Nokia
Dying fast, partly by design
Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Gigs, Poems, SREs, and Shared Passion
Links for the day
If GNU/Linux Rising is Just "Bots" (It's Not, Many Surveys Show the Same), Why Does Microsoft Rush to Lie About System Requirements of Vista 11?
The real reason is, GNU/Linux is rising
Kompromat Tactics in GNU and Linux
Kompromat as a concept was covered here in the past in relation to Microsoft
SLAPP Censorship - Part 143 Out of 200: After Nearly 10 Attempts to Settle With Us and Over a Million Pounds Spent on Lawyers and Barristers
We are in no particular hurry
20 Years and 43 Years
GNU/Linux is not just code, it's a philosophy, licence (copyleft), and community
GNU/Linux Turns 43 Next Month, Many Distros Actively Maintained
A lot of Debian-based distros are still actively maintained (we talk about this in IRC this evening), so the stability of the Debian Project is important
Links 08/08/2026: GAFAM Colonialism "Paved Over Protected Wetlands", Slop Companies Hoard Software Patents as Debt Soars to Trillions
Links for the day
Links 08/08/2026: "Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax" and "Who's Responsible for This Mess?"
Links for the day
Retained: The Time IBM's Red Hat Tried to Hijack or Take Offline Site of Critics, Failed on All Grounds (Meritless Action Intended to Harass Critics)
Replicated from adrforum.com
IBM's 'Final Solution': Censor Sites Not Controlled by IBM, Sites Where Dissent is Expressed
IBM has no culture of free speech
More Mass Layoffs Coming IBM's Way (Ones IBM Cannot Hide, Cannot Convince Enough People to Leave or Unjustifiably PIP Them When They Say No)
The company that was like a "father of modern computing" is now stingy when it comes to travel. Not a good sign.
What Will it Take for Mainstream Media to Report Silent or Secret Layoffs at IBM?
"Silent" or "secret" sometimes because the media won't cover them
Is the Future of IBM Red Hat Temporary Staff, Contractors?
They want cheap, obedient lemmings
Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Tribute to Lloyd Center, Radio Amateurism, Homeworlds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 07, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, August 07, 2026