05.30.23
Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF, FUD at 1:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
After seeing some of the recipients of the Free Software Foundation Awards we’re not too shocked though
The Alphabet/Gulag-funded person, who loves to SLAPP/silence critics, will open these celebrations? What next? An award?
First speaker? Really??? Should he be speaking there at all?
Summary: It’s good that the FSF prepares an event to celebrate GNU’s 40th anniversary, but readers told us that the speakers list is unsavoury, especially the first one (a key participant in the relentless campaign of defamation against the person who started both GNU and the FSF; the "FSFE" isn't even permitted to use that name)
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05.29.23
Posted in Deception, FUD, Protocol at 2:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 60c27626a994551b2361b079b19fa27d
Gemini FUD Based on Ignorance
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: The man behind Curl, Daniel Stenberg, criticises Gemini; but it’s not clear if he even bothered trying it (except very briefly) or just read some inaccurate, one-sided blurbs about it
THE DETAILED RESPONSE (in Daily Links already) to yesterday’s post from Daniel Stenberg merited a long video, aside from a rant in IRC. Stenberg and I used to argue about all sorts of things and right now he’s badmouthing Gemini while shilling GitHub, which isn’t just proprietary but also controlled by Microsoft. Stenberg tends to gravitate towards money, just like the World Wide Web Consortium.
“My thoughts in the video can be summed up as, Stenberg promotes misconceptions and misinformation about Gemini.”Stenberg’s background isn’t what many people assume (he openly admitted this days ago), but he’s very influential because his program is used on billions of computers, not just on this planet but also in Mars.
Stenberg isn’t a rude person. He can sometimes be both amicable and receptive to feedback. I hope he’ll spend more time actually using Gemini before leaping to unfair judgments. My thoughts in the video can be summed up as, Stenberg promotes misconceptions and misinformation about Gemini. Maybe it’s not intentional or maybe the veiled rationale is the lack of Gemini support in Curl (there are already Free/libre tools that way are ahead of Curl and support Gemini — I’ve even compiled some of them). █
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05.05.23
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FSF, FUD at 2:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
After almost a year stallmansupport.org is back to being regularly updated!
Summary: A new syndication (XML/RSS) feed has been added to this page at stallmansupport.org — a site that RMS himself keeps endorsing in his public talks; we need to highlight some things that, whenever quoted, “trigger” the cancel mob once more (because they strike a nerve)
THE old “open letter” (2+ years old! Time flies!) against RMS may seem unimportant, but the “cancel mob” is still at it, as we shall show in the coming few days, maybe as early as this weekend. We’ll write about Amendment 130 and note that “opponents have now dusted off the term “freeware” after a very long hiatus to try to increase confusion about freedom and specifically about software freedom,” as an associate notes. We’ve just mentioned that in passing, showing yesterday’s words from a Microsoft front group (OSI today is not what it used to be).
We’ve meanwhile noticed that software freedom-hostile sick-minded online bullies very strongly dislike the site. They get enraged when the site is mentioned or quoted. Hence, we’ll reproduce the new bits here.
The latest one is a blog post by Sylvia Paull. She wrote:
It’s been more than two years since MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman was forced to resign from his positions at MIT and the FSF.
In March of 2021, he was reinstated to the board of the FSF in recognition of the role he has played in founding and campaigning globally — with great success — for the concept of copyleft, or the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify what would otherwise be proprietary software.
Stallman has opened our minds about the role of software, which permeates every aspect of our lives. He is not only a software developer, but he is also a philosopher of technology.
In hundreds if not thousands of talks he has presented in universities, national legislatures, computer companies, and high-tech conferences since he first announced the plan for the GNU operating system in 1983, he has warned about the dangers and limitations of proprietary software, while encouraging the adoption of free software.
I have heard Richard speak several times. In fact, I invited him to speak at one of my Berkeley Cybersalons, which featured conversations about the impact of technology on our lives. It’s been more than 50 years since I graduated from Reed College, and listening to Richard reminded me of the lectures at Reed that influenced my life. Those lectures to a 16-year-old freshman made me realize that ideas — like free software — have the power to shape the future.
And that’s why Stallman needs to be heard by young computer scientists and future startup founders in an endowed university chair for the philosophy of technology. It’s time for some tech millionaires to step up and acknowledge Stallman’s positive influence in the world and help him continue to free our minds.
As associate reminded us that “RMS was falsely accused regarding MIT's involvement with Bill Gates and Epstein.” Maybe the accusations of pedophilia were intentionally misdirected?
The following letter by Javier González was added to stallmansupport.org earlier this week as well (apparently yesterday). To quote:
When I read about the MIT incident I immediately thought, “witch hunt.” There are billions of people who stand to win from the work of the FSF and Richard Stallman’s principled adherence to free software. At the same time, there are thousands of powerful people, including billionaires, who stand to lose from the advancement of free software.
It is clear that there is an effort by the software billionaires to weaken the free software movement. (By the way, something similar happened to the newspaper The Guardian after it revealed the Snowden information. There was a change in management that was “milder” and put less emphasis on the environment.)
In any case, I support free software wholeheartedly, and Stallman has been very principled about doing software 100% free. The witch hunt is a reason for me to double the support to the FSF under rms. Onward!
The following seems to really enrage Gulagboy, who isn’t even trans and was in fact transphobic himself. It’s reproduced in this page (more from the Internet Archive):
The war on free software continues, this time with an attempt to “cancel” the founder of the free software movement and to coup the board of FSF.
And as a transgender person, it disgusts me much that some people try to use us as a weapon against free software, by falsely accusing one of our biggest allies of transphobia, when in fact there is none.
No, Stallman hasn’t “spent years on a campaign against using people’s correct pronouns,” there literally wasn’t such campaign. In fact, the cited GNU Kind Communication Guidelines literally advocate respecting people’s gender identity, and trying to twist them into something opposite is disingenuous and done with bad faith.
It’s worth noting that the Linux Foundation‘s Corbet detested this comment and said: “This is exactly the kind of comment I asked you not to post. We have been over this ground. Stop here, now.”
Yes, how dare trans people defend the falsely-accused RMS? How dare they? They do. Quit using trans people as “political props”. Gulagboy keeps doing that; he’s not trans and by his own admission he was in fact transphobic when he was an adult doing his Ph.D. █
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04.30.23
Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 5e7230df4eaec597f813b9681a04fdb5
Microsoft Anonymising Its Propagandists
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Generating GNU/Linux-hostile chaff seems like a “side perk” of Microsoft doing a month-long or months-long campaign for a rather worthless and highly inaccurate chatbot (chaffbot), falsely marketing that chatbot as conversational “HEY HI” (AI) or tool for composing E-mail, code, commits and so on
THE video above deals with a certain resurgence of anti-”Linux” FUD. Some of that seems to be computer- (or Microsoft-) generated, but not all of it, as we noted earlier on. Microsoft basically creates weapons of misinformation.
We’ve long deemed this a potential topic, as this severe problem is only growing and it’s not going away. We only needed to gather more material to serve as evidence of the trend and this past week we found sufficient material. At least some of that is computer-generated spew. That’s not a new problem, but it can grow in intensity over time. “Because it is bot-generated,” an associate noted, “that message will turn up elsewhere.”
“We’ve long deemed this a potential topic, as this severe problem is only growing and it’s not going away.”“Speaking of [it],” the associate added, “I notice (and you have seen before) that Ars [Technica] has relabled all of [Peter] Bright’s articles as “Staff Writer” or somesuch” (for those who don’t know, Bright is a serial child rapist who was promoted, then acted as editor and moderator in that site for years).
So Reddit’s owner (Condé Nast) thinks that the issue right now is the name (pedophile and child abuser), not the lies relayed by Microsoft through him. What does this tell us about the media and about him?
“So Reddit’s owner (Condé Nast) thinks that the issue right now is the name (pedophile and child abuser), not the lies relayed by Microsoft through him. What does this tell us about the media and about him?”Citing this piece from SecurityWeek (“RTM Locker Ransomware Variant Targeting ESXi Servers”), one associate noted that this is “not a “linux” variant” and the topic should be revisited in light of plenty such FUD lately (we found about a dozen this past week alone and included those with quick rebuttals in Daily Links; the video above shows this subset of the lot; Gemini equivalent here).
“CISA panels are notoriously stacked (loaded with full-time Microsoft staff).”Seeing the direction all this is going (media emitting disinformation), and moreover noting that public input is being collected by the Microsoft-infiltrated CISA, the associate said that “FOSS participation needed” (Linux Foundation is a front group of proprietary software vendors, so that won’t count; OSI also fronts for Microsoft). “Industry vendors have until June 26 to comment on the provisional document,” the report says, so we suppose they limit themselves to input from corporations, not experts or ordinary members of the public*. CISA panels are notoriously stacked (loaded with full-time Microsoft staff). The objective is ‘privileged’ back doors rather than true security. █
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* For those willing to help out, the following pages are highly relevant:
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Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum f624e363cee0b4e25f6eed3a91816be2
Microsoft Misinformation Spew
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Today we publish two videos about Microsoft’s misinformation/disinformation capabilities; by making an LLM ‘freely’ available, with built in biases (controlled by Microsoft), anti-GNU/Linux lies and venomous statements can proliferate without any attribution
THE past few days were spent catching up with news links and implementing new curation tools (s/n ratio is awful in today’s Web). Daily Links have gone on here for over 15 years (next month our IRC community turns 15 too) and they’re very important for us.
“Sounds like Microsoft spreads misinformation using its so-called ‘news’ sites, right? Do we want to use or rely on a chatbot from such a dishonest company?”One reader asked for more details about the demise of Microsoft-branded peripherals, but so far all press coverage we’ve found about it was Microsoft puff pieces, misdirection, and face-saving, damage-limiting spin. This is discussed in passing above. Certainly Microsoft isn’t doing well. The “Microsoft Store” franchise died in 2020 and ever since then we’ve already repeatedly heard of Azure layoffs (every year; the press suppressed this information), which means that clown computing isn’t working out for Microsoft. All that spare (unused) servers capacity is instead being wasted of “HEY HI” (AI) gimmicks and vapourware. Trying to get people to actually use the darn thing required a very expensive and relentless “marketing” campaign, borrowing just about every trademark of Microsoft, conjoined with buzzwords (“Hey Hi!”) and paid stenographers.
AWS is also having issues (and layoffs), but Amazon shares were up 10% at the same time an MSN (yes, Microsoft) headline said “Amazon disappoints”… (double-standards/hypocrisy all over this)
MSN itself had many layoffs, as did Bing (which is the main trademark Microsoft uses to shill the chatbot).
Sounds like Microsoft spreads misinformation using its so-called ‘news’ sites, right? Do we want to use or rely on a chatbot from such a dishonest company? That too is discussed above.
“Not only is the company dishonest,” an associate noted, it “the chaffbot is nearly always stubbornly wrong. “It would be very important to link to (and describe briefly) how wrong it usually is,” this associate added. We’ll provide some examples later.
“Information oligopolies and consolidation are hallmark of imperialism in the digital realm.”Lest we forgot Google’s grip on the Web and Gulag Noise (Google News) having a near monopoly. Phoronix, GamingOnLinux, and 9to5Linux (Michael, Liam, and Marius; literally just 3 people) dominate the so-called “search” results in Gulag Noise for terms like “Ubuntu” and “Linux”. Why aren’t more GNU/Linux news sites included? Because they’re “advertiser-unfriendly” (i.e. not sucking up to corporate power)? The source diversity in that Gulag disservice is truly awful and they are not striving to fix that. Nor will “Bard”…
Information oligopolies and consolidation are hallmark of imperialism in the digital realm.
The video above speaks about Webspam or SPAM sites — a topic we’ve revisited lately in light of a disturbing resurgence. Sites that are ‘written’ or ‘composed’ by SPAMBOTS (or generated by chaffbots/chatbots/automated translation apparently) keep spreading lies and FUD about GNU/Linux… possibly generated by Microsoft bots. They’re trained on GNU/Linux-hostile (and censored) datasets, including sites sponsored by Microsoft, then curated in Kenya by sweatshop-grade staff. It’s about institutionalising bias. Then, the FUD comes out in bulk. No need for Microsoft to pay for shills, they need only register domains and run an anti-Linux word spew. We’ll discuss this some more with some practical examples later today in another video. █
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04.17.23
Posted in Finance, Fraud, FUD at 7:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Having just contacted NOW: Pensions (and several times more this past week), while moreover working on 3 leads at the same time, they finally (belatedly) gave a real assurance
Today we’ll share a bunch of photographic evidence regarding crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’, a firm that claims to be Britain’s “most respected” firm in this domain/area (‘Open Source’). Of course it’s a lie. Not just the part about “respected”…
“They kept lying to cover up prior lies, in effect lying to me like half a dozen times already.”Half a day ago I sent the following E-mail message to NOW: Pensions. About an hour ago I finally received a letter addressed to my wife and I. After nearly 3 months!!! Months of endless remainders after repeated lies.
Here is the E-mail I sent last night:
A few days ago Standard Life sent a whole bunch of us a formal letter concluding that Sirius had engaged in pension fraud and stole money from us for many years. This is a criminal matter. This is now formalised.
My wife and I are coming to collect our funds from NOW: Pensions this week. Please specify the time that best suits you. We live not far from your office.
Suffice to say, repeated lying by your staff — including by managers — will be duly noted. We trust neither you nor Sirius.
The sad thing is that pension providers have helped the perpetrators of crimes, covering up for them instead of working to protect the victims, who are the people’s whose money is actually making its way into the accounts of reckless gamblers at the pension firms. Who do you work for? Are you working for employers who commit crimes instead of employees (whose money you are taking)?
Silence on this matter won’t help you. Au contraire. Please respond today.
They kept lying to cover up prior lies, in effect lying to me like half a dozen times already. It’s circular and when challenged on the lies, more lies follow. Those people are handling (gambling with) people’s money. Trillions of dollars are managed by those sorts of firms.
As victims, we can progress along some lines. Standard Life, which we’ll tackle separately later, tried victim-blaming (we have this on record). That’s akin to saying to a rape victim that it is his/her fault, e.g. “why didn’t you sense s/he’d rape you after the date?”
Many technical people suspected something was amiss and when phoning Standard Life we were only obstructed, so in effect Standard Life allowed the fraud to carry on. Standard Life cannot simply pretend to have not benefited from this.
“Standard Life cannot simply pretend to have not benefited from this.”Forgive my tone (rants) or at least understand the cynicism after being secretly robbed for years by my employers whom I foolishly trusted, as did my colleagues (they were robbed too). The main criminal, the ringleader so to speak, now hides in some ‘basement’ (by the looks of it, a tiny apartment) somewhere not far from the Gates Foundation. Well, all the doors are closing in on him and gradually, over time, those who facilitated and collaborated, are paying the high price.
Below is the letter that literally came through the door less than an hour ago (at the time of writing). █
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01.29.23
Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 06304c0f6049081e578bb696a000a942
Making Linux Sound Culpable for Hardware Issue
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Nowadays “the news” is polluted with a lot of GNU/Linux-hostile nonsense; like with patents, the signal-to-noise ratio is appalling and here we deal with a poor ‘report’ about “Linux servers” failing to work
THE OTHER day in IRC we discussed this article that mentions “Linux” many times when in fact mentioning a hardware incident. “Are Microsofters trying to generate bad press for Linux?” we asked. “This is a hardware problem, not at all related to GNU/Linux. Maybe some Microsofters are trying to undermine the teaching of GNU/Linux there?”
The video above discusses what’s in the article and why it’s a tad suspicious. It is reminiscent of some FUD campaigns we saw before. “Third-year Rohan Gupta reported that, in addition to the CS website, he was also unable to access his classes’ Linux servers,” it says. Well, hardware dies sometimes. My laptop died some days ago (Friday), but within 2-3 hours I replaced the physical drive and began installing the latest Debian. This can take time.
The media still loves to stigmatise GNU/Linux as not secure, not reliable etc. But for much of the time they would be better off focusing on Microsoft’s reliability and insecurity issues, including last week’s massive Clown Computing outage at Microsoft. The media barely covered it. █
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01.26.23
Posted in Bill Gates, Free/Libre Software, FSF, FUD at 12:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 3fa713aa016effddd846715afa98523f
Sirius Abandoned Everything
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Staff with technical skills won’t stick around in companies that reject technical arguments and moreover move to proprietary software in a company that brands itself “Open Source”
DESPITE losing my best friend this week I am trying to keep active and to keep this series going. My friend helped inspire my activism and many other things. The video above explains some of the things that happened at work, based on practical examples (demonstrating that ISO certification changed nothing for the better). More people need to find the courage to confront their bosses and demand justice. Don’t just “play it safe”, try to actually fix things, from within if possible (taking this public is the very last resort).
The video above contains some of the backdrop to the collapse of Sirius ‘Open Source’. It comments on this post. The Gates Foundation was never mentioned in writing at Sirius, only once and strictly verbally in 2019. An NDA signed by Sirius Open Source (yes, that’s an actual sellout considering what the CEO used to believe in*) changed things for the worse and resulted in the CEO being ‘in exile’. We’re talking about a fervent Microsoft critic, who moved the company to Washington for the “first US client” (yes, Gates) and weeks after it all happened not only myself but also my wife got falsely accused. We were acquitted only after months of humiliation. Nobody ever apologised for this.
“More recently after I told a friend that Bill Gates, not Microsoft, was paying Sirius Open Source Inc. (with the actual timing being interesting; coincidence being improbable) a manager intentionally twisted/distorted what I said.”Back then, as well as in 2017, I wanted to publish “Microsofters Contact My Employer to Get Both My Wife and I Sacked” (yes, it happened prior to 2019 as well). It’s truly quite maddening what Microsoft and its goons would do to silence me; they even pick on loved ones. This became a potential future topic way back in 2016.
More recently after I told a friend that Bill Gates, not Microsoft, was paying Sirius Open Source Inc. (with the actual timing being interesting; coincidence being improbable) a manager intentionally twisted/distorted what I said. What I said was factual, what they said I had said was not. Gates never needed British company to handle something thousands or American firms can easily handle (let alone ask this company to establish itself in another country, which is possibly what happened though the NDA hides it). █
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* Here’s one old talk that covered “FUD (‘Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt’) as the nonsense that it is [...]”
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