Today in Techrights

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 21, 2026

Updated This Past Day

1. 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

2. 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.

3. Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware

   Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight

4. "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

5. Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"

   Links for the day

   New

6. Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com)

   The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative

7. Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism

   Links for the day

8. 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

9. IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders)

   For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female

10. Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet

    Links for the day

11. SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic

    5RB may need some "house-cleaning"

12. Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed

    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock

13. 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

14. Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night

    Starting 9PM

15. None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran

    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock

16. Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement

    Links for the day

17. 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."

18. Inaction Helps Your Enemies

    Without freedom, there's nothing else left

19. Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)

    Windows fell by a lot

20. 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

21. The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)

    Is IBM another Enron?

22. "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

23. Over at Tux Machines...

    GNU/Linux news for the past day

24. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026

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

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

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    1330	/n/2026/03/14/IRC_Proceedings_Friday_March_13_2026.shtml
    1167	/n/2026/03/17/Hector_Oron_Martinez_Debian_shadow_candidate_pressure_on_Sruthi.shtml
    1054	/n/2026/03/16/2026_Microsoft_Layoff_Rumours.shtml
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    898	/n/2026/03/14/Reporting_New_and_Suppressed_Information_is_What_Journalism_is_.shtml
    896	/n/2026/03/17/British_Justice_Minister_Sarah_Sackman_Blasts_Solicitors_Regula.shtml
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    798	/n/2026/03/18/New_Post_Has_Just_Explained_How_IBM_Gets_Robbed_by_the_People_W.shtml
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    743	/n/2026/03/14/The_Limits_of_Speech_and_the_Rationale_of_Limitations.shtml
    740	/n/2026/03/16/Debian_is_Dying_for_Some_of_the_Same_Reasons_IBM_s_Fedora_is_Ra.shtml
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    685	/n/2026/03/14/The_Good_IBM_Managers_Have_Flown_Away_All_That_s_Left_is_the_Bo.shtml
    685	/n/2026/03/15/A_Happy_Birthday_to_Richard_Stallman.shtml
    677	/n/2026/03/14/Change_of_Address_at_the_Hired_Guns_Address_Removed.shtml
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    644	/n/2026/03/18/A_Step_Close_to_Shutting_Down_the_European_Patent_Office_EPO.shtml
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