Today in Techrights

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 19, 2026

Updated This Past Day

1. 'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run)

   Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow

2. GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina

   Let's see where it is at year's end

3. Making Layout Changes

   Feedback can be sent to us

4. Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'

   They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"

5. Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability

   Links for the day

6. Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?

   Not even joking; make a guess

7. Restoring Professional Pride in the Tech Sector

   Rejecting slop isn't being a Luddite

8. Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble"

   Edward Zitron Says It like it is

   New

9. Links 18/01/2026: The "Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter" and Turkey to Block Kids' Access to Social Control Media

   Links for the day

10. Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Against English as Language of the Net, "Symposium of Destruction"

    Links for the day

11. You Would Expect This Kind of Misleading Narrative Shortly Before Microsoft (or GAFAM) Mass Layoffs

    misleading PR

12. FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel, GNOME & Sonny Piers modern slavery experiment

    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock

13. Pump-and-Dump With IBM Shares, Courtesy of People Who Stand to Gain From the 'Pump'

    "3 Reasons to Buy IBM Stock Right Now"

14. IBM: Spying on Staff Like Never Before and Implementing Silent Layoffs This Month, Say Insiders

    what we heard from whistleblowers seems to corroborate

15. IBM is Not a Free Software Company (It Never Was)

    Red Hat's main product, RHEL, is full of secret sauce and has 'secret recipes' (it is basically proprietary)

16. IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing

    Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability

17. Links 18/01/2026: Indonesia Against Comedy, Media-Hostile (Censors Comedians) Convicted Felon in White House Defecting to Opponents of NATO

    Links for the day

18. Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop

    Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?

19. GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands

    it seems to have started around the "end of 10"

20. Making and Keeping the Sites Accessible

    Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")

21. The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IV - How Europe's Largest Patent Office Recruited Drug Addicts, Antisemites, and People Who Absolutely Cannot Do the Job (But Know the 'Right' People)

    To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit

22. Benefiting by Adding Presence in Geminispace

    As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives

23. Google News Recently Started Syndicating Another Slopfarm, Linuxiac

    Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind

24. Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA)

    We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them

25. IBM Sued Over PIPs

    PIPs are "performance improvement plans"

26. Sites With "Linux" in Their Name That Are in Effect Slopfarms and Issue Fake Articles

    We try to name some of the prolific culprits

27. Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Raising Notifications From Terminal and Environmental Sanity

    Links for the day

28. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 17, 2026

    IRC logs for Saturday, January 17, 2026

29. Over at Tux Machines...

    GNU/Linux news for the past day

    ---

    The corresponding text-only bulletin for Sunday contains all the text.

    Top-read articles (excluding bot/crawler visits):

    Span from 2026-01-12 to 2026-01-18

    3217	/about.shtml
    2292	/n/2026/01/14/Canonical_Make_Ubuntu_Bloated_Debian_With_Snaps_Then_Sell_the_D.shtml
    2060	/n/2026/01/13/Not_Journalism_Almost_80_of_the_Articles_We_Saw_About_Torvalds_.shtml
    1877	/index.shtml
    1279	/n/2026/01/10/Monday_January_12_Red_Hat_Layoffs_Allegedly_Planned.shtml
    1149	/n/2026/01/13/Bluewashing_Continues_Red_Hat_Onboarding_Interns_in_Low_Paid_Re.shtml
    1127	/irc.shtml
    1063	/n/2026/01/14/The_Last_Dilberts_or_Some_of_the_Last_Salvaged_Comic_Strips_Whi.shtml
    896	/browse/latest.shtml
    896	/n/2026/01/12/2026_Has_Begun_Well_for_GNU_Linux_Users_and_for_Us.shtml
    871	/n/2024/12/08/When_Python_is_Basically_Run_by_a_Microsoft_Friendly_Mole_Who_O.shtml
    864	/n/2026/01/15/Proton_Mail_compromise_Hannah_Natanson_Washington_Post_police_r.shtml
    812	/n/2026/01/13/So_When_Will_British_Politicians_Police_Government_Departments_.shtml
    808	/n/2025/03/24/Days_Ago_yewtu_be_Found_a_Workaround_That_Made_Invidious_Work_A.shtml
    784	/n/2026/01/14/AI_Slop_Demand_Isn_t_Growing_It_s_Fake_It_s_a_Pyramid_Scheme.shtml
    763	/n/2025/05/24/Free_Software_as_a_Culture_of_Resistance.shtml
    762	/n/2026/01/16/At_Microsoft_Firing_People_is_a_Cheat_Code_to_Pump_the_Stock_Sh.shtml
    730	/n/2026/01/12/EPO_People_Power_Part_XXXII_Little_Hope_That_European_Press_Wil.shtml
    703	/n/2026/01/16/The_Alicante_Mafia_Part_I_An_Introduction_to_the_Mafia_Governin.shtml
    677	/n/2026/01/12/Over_at_Tux_Machines.shtml
    670	/n/2026/01/11/After_the_LLM_Slop_Frenzy.shtml
    670	/n/2026/01/15/Linuxiac_May_Have_Reverted_Back_to_LLM_Slop.shtml
    636	/n/2026/01/12/Links_12_01_2026_Brussels_Plotting_Exit_From_GAFAM_US_Carole_Ca.shtml
    634	/n/2026/01/12/Gemini_Links_12_01_2026_Insomniacs_After_School_and_Boycotting_.shtml
    619	/n/2026/01/12/Bracing_for_Microsoft_Layoffs_Tired_of_Microsoft_Lies_Microsoft.shtml
    619	/n/2026/01/14/EPO_People_Power_Part_XXXIV_Bad_Optics_for_the_European_Union_f.shtml
    614	/n/2024/10/03/Invidious_Seems_to_be_Nearing_End_of_Life_After_Repeated_Crackd.shtml
    614	/n/2026/01/14/Over_at_Tux_Machines.shtml
    613	/n/2026/01/13/Ending_the_Status_Quo_at_the_European_Patent_Office_EPO_This_Ye.shtml
    610	/n/2026/01/16/Recent_Layoffs_at_Red_Hat_2026_the_Year_of_Ultimate_Bluewashing.shtml
    609	/n/2026/01/16/Stack_ed_Rankings_and_Ongoing_Layoffs_at_Red_Hat_and_IBM_Failur.shtml
    603	/n/2026/01/14/XBox_s_Major_Nelson_Loses_His_Job_Again_This_Time_in_a_Microsof.shtml
    602	/n/2026/01/16/Team_Campinos_Talks_About_SAP_Days_Before_EPO_Industrial_Action.shtml
    598	/n/2026/01/15/Links_15_01_2026_Internet_Blackouts_Jackboots_Society_in_US.shtml
    588	/n/2026/01/15/Coming_Soon_Impact_With_EPO_Cocainegate.shtml
    587	/n/2026/01/15/Red_Hat_IBM_is_Driving_Away_Remaining_Fedora_Users.shtml
    587	/n/2026/01/14/Reminder_That_Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_RHEL_Is_Not_Free_And_It_.shtml
    585	/n/2026/01/16/J_H_M_Ray_Dassen_Debian_Red_Hat_GNOME_unexplained_deaths.shtml
    575	/n/2026/01/12/Oligarchs_and_States_Always_Attempted_to_Obstruct_Efforts_to_Ex.shtml
    573	/n/2026/01/16/Naming_Culprits_in_Switzerland.shtml
    571	/n/2026/01/14/Difficult_Times_at_IBM_and_Microsoft_Ahead_of_Mass_Layoffs_Prob.shtml
    571	/n/2026/01/15/The_Creator_of_Git_Probably_Doesn_t_Know_How_to_Install_and_Dep.shtml
    569	/n/2026/01/12/Links_11_01_2026_Data_Breaches_and_Recent_Early_2026_Political_.shtml
    567	/n/2026/01/16/IBM_s_Scientific_Sounding_Tech_Porn_Won_t_Help_IBM_Survive_or_B.shtml
    567	/n/2026/01/11/IRC_Proceedings_Saturday_January_10_2026.shtml
    562	/n/2026/01/15/GAFAM_is_a_National_and_International_Threat_to_Everybody.shtml
    561	/n/2026/01/12/GNU_Linux_Exceeding_5_in_Guadeloupe_According_to_statCounter.shtml
    560	/n/2026/01/14/Hours_Ago_The_Register_MS_Published_Microsoft_Windows_SPAM_Spon.shtml
    559	/n/2026/01/15/EPO_People_Power_Part_XXXVI_In_Conclusion_and_Taking_Things_Up_.shtml
    556	/n/2026/01/14/What_Will_Happen_to_GAFAM_After_the_US_Defaults_Rather_Than_Bai.shtml
    554	/n/2026/01/15/Don_t_Cry_for_Gaslighting_Media_in_a_Country_Which_Loathes_the_.shtml
    553	/n/2026/01/13/Over_at_Tux_Machines.shtml
    551	/n/2026/01/16/Gemini_Links_16_01_2026_Porting_My_Main_Website_Over_to_Gemini_.shtml
    551	/n/2026/01/12/Brett_Wilson_LLP_Dropping_the_LLP_Is_This_Rebranding.shtml
    551	/n/2026/01/13/Dr_Andy_Farnell_on_Marketing_Bad_Things_Like_Slop_Using_FOMO_Fe.shtml
    548	/n/2024/09/15/Very_Few_Invidious_Instances_Still_Work_for_Video_Playback.shtml
    548	/n/2026/01/12/IRC_Proceedings_Sunday_January_11_2026.shtml
    548	/n/2026/01/13/IBM_Red_Hat_Does_Not_Compete_With_Microsoft_It_s_a_Microsoft_Re.shtml
    547	/n/2026/01/12/Can_IBM_Still_Control_the_Narrative.shtml