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03.28.16

Links 28/3/2016: BQ Aquaris M10, VoCore

Posted in News Roundup at 4:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Top 11 project management tools for 2016

    For the last three years, I have rounded up the most popular open source project management tools for Opensource.com readers. As there continues to be major reader interest in this area, I decided to take a look back at the tools we covered in 2014 and 2015, and give you updates on all of these projects. I looked to see which projects had new releases, notable new and improved features, and more.

    Let’s take a look at each of these projects and try to answer some of the questions readers have had in the comments of last year’s edition, including which are still in active development, provide hosting options, offer a mobile solution, and more.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Gzip 1.7 Released With Synchronous & Rsyncable Options

      New to Gzip is a –synchronous option for forcing fsync usage when outputting data for greater reliability, but obviously at the cost of slower performance. Gzip 1.7 also has a –rsyncable option when compressing to make the output more amendable for efficient rsync use by minimizing the changes within the gzip file.

    • gzip-1.7 released

      This is to announce gzip-1.7, a stable release. There have been 60 commits by 4 people in the nearly three years since 1.6.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open Source in the enterprise: Perspectives for CIOs

      The proliferation of OSS technologies, libraries, and frameworks in recent years has greatly contributed to the advancement of software development, increased developer productivity, and to the flexibility and customisation of the tools landscape to support different use cases and developers’ preferences.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • 8 challenges for improving the Indian-language Wikipedias

        After more than 10 years in existence, the Indian-language Wikipedias still are not known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in history as a result of thousands of volunteer editors. Whereas native-language Wikipedias are becoming game changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed.

      • Universities seek open-source solution to ‘absurd’ textbook prices

        Rajiv Jhangiani grew accustomed to the emails he would receive from his students at the start of each semester:

        “Is a previous edition OK?”

        “Do I really need the textbook?”

        The psychology instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University saw an increasing number of students attempting to go without the $150-$250 textbooks he was assigning for his courses, so he decided to stop assigning them.

        “I think it’s absurd, really,” Jhangiani said. “Every two-to-three years we get new editions which are basically cosmetic in terms of the changes that they have, and students are forced to spend a lot of money.”

    • Open Hardware

      • The Onion Omega Carputer Can be Controlled via WiFi

        The Onion Omega, a curiously named ultra-tiny linux-based WiFi board, is a useful little device for everything Internet of Things related. [Daniel] decided to use it to connect his car to the internet.

        Most new cars these days have remote start built in, and slowly, manufacturers are catching up to modern technology and including apps to control various features of their vehicles. But for old cars, there’s not much you can do aside from after-market remote start kits and the likes.

      • Open source OBD-II Adapter

        Automotive diagnostics have come a long way since the “idiot lights” of the 1980s. The current version of the on-board diagnostics (ODB) protocol provides real time data as well as fault diagnostics, thanks to the numerous sensors connected to the data network in the modern vehicle. While the hardware interface is fairly standardized now, manufacturers use one of several different standards to encode the data. [Alex Sidorenko] has built an open source OBD-II Adapter which provides a serial interface using the ELM327 command set and supports all OBD-II standards.

  • Programming

    • Software spat raises open source questions

      If your company uses Node.js, you may have suffered a shock this past week. A critical software package in the open source code base that many Node.js applications rely on suddenly disappeared. The problem was quickly rectified, but it caused problems for many users – and belies a fundamental problem with open source software.

      The problem arose when Azer Koçulu, the developer of the Kik software module, was approached by lawyers working for a company of the same name. They wanted him to unpublish his module because the name infringed on theirs, they said. Koçulu refused, so they approached a company called NPM Inc.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Ever wondered what the worst TV show in the world would be? Apple just commissioned it

    Remember when soccer’s governing body FIFA spent $30m making a film about itself starring Tim Roth and Gérard Depardieu?

    Well, the tech world’s most egomaniacal company is going to bring its version to the small screen.

    That’s right, Apple has decided to join Netflix and Amazon and get in on the content commissioning game by ordering a television show about… app developers.

  • Science

    • Many Companies Still Don’t Know How to Compete in the Digital Age

      The Internet of Things is a good example of this change. Every industry, no matter how traditional — agriculture, automotive, aviation, energy — is being upended by the addition of sensors, internet connectivity, and software. Success in this environment will depend on more than just creating better digital-enabled products; it will depend on building ecosystem-level strategies that encompass the many moving pieces that come together to create the new value proposition.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Fukushima’s Former Residents Return Home To Ghost Town In Emotional Photos
    • U.S. Seeks Records of 80,000 Novartis `Sham’ Events for Doctors

      The U.S. is asking Novartis AG to provide records of about 80,000 “sham” events in which the government says doctors were wined and dined so they would prescribe the company’s cardiovascular drugs to their patients.

      The Swiss drugmaker and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney are engaged in a whistle-blower lawsuit that alleges Novartis provided illegal kickbacks to health-care providers through bogus educational programs at high-end restaurants and sports bars where the drugs were barely discussed.

      In a filing Friday, the U.S. said it needs Novartis to provide information to support its allegation that the company defrauded federal health-care programs of hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade by inducing doctors to prescribe its medications through sham speaker events.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Shooting Up: How War and Drugs Go Together

      OF ALL THE CULTURAL NARRATIVES to emerge in the aftermath of American wars, few have proven as pervasive as the Soldier’s Disease. Popular lore holds that the Soldier’s Disease affected hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans, Yankee and Confederate. A term so specific and vague all at once, the Soldier’s Disease sounds like something meant to conjure up millenniums-worth of human destruction and violence.

      Yet it was never that visceral, or all that physical. The Soldier’s Disease was code for addiction to morphine or other opiates. Given the industrial nature of the Civil War, and the state of medical treatment at the time, the source of the addiction developed from amputations caused by shrapnel wounds. Morphine and the like numbed the horrifying pain that came with the amputations and recovery process. That dependence became addiction, and returned home with the veterans after the war, unleashing a great scourge upon the land.

      So goes the narrative, at least. There’s just one problem, though: the Soldier’s Disease is more myth than historical record. Modern studies reveal that sure, many a Civil War vet had their opiate issues, but so did a lot of Americans in that era, not the least because of a booming (and often unchecked) pharmaceutical industry. Further, the first chronicled use of “Soldier’s Disease” didn’t appear until 1915, a good 50 years after Appomattox. Why? There was a growing antidrug political movement occurring across the nation, and it needed some talking points.

    • We All Are Islamic State

      The tit-for-tat game of killing will not end until exhaustion, until the culture of death breaks us emotionally and physically. We use our drones, warplanes, missiles and artillery to rip apart walls and ceilings, blow out windows and kill or wound those inside. Our enemies pack peroxide-based explosives in suitcases or suicide vests and walk into airport terminals, concert halls, cafes or subways and blow us up, often along with themselves. If they had our technology of death they would do it more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder, but morally they are the same as us. T.E. Lawrence called this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”

    • We need both compassion and confrontation to defeat Donald Trump

      Our empathy for white working-class people who are taken with Trump shouldn’t keep us from intervening in the gathering storm of white supremacy that his rise represents, if for no other reason than because we know that the number of people who are repulsed and angry about what he represents—but have remained inactive—is far greater than the total filling the seats of his hate-filled celebrations of patriarchal masculinity. However imperfect our protests have been—and they should incorporate more dramatic and bold experiments along the lines of the Phoenix blockade—they are offering an alternative to the story of white silence, and are galvanizing many to act.

    • Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence

      For days now, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnesses and from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. Networks dispatched their TV stars to Brussels, where they remain. NPR profiled the lives of several of the airport victims. CNN showed a moving interview of a wounded, bandage-wrapped Mormon American teenager speaking from his Belgium hospital bed.

    • Criminal Bankers Control US Government Push War-Paul Craig Roberts

      Former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, contends it is no accident why bankers do not get jail time for constantly committing fraud by stealing documents and committing fraudulent, criminal insider trading and market manipulations. Dr. Roberts explains, “Look at Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. They claim they stole documents, and we are determined to destroy them. One of them is hiding out in Russia, and one of them is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This again shows the immunity of the banks. They are not held accountable because they are in control. Who controls the Fed? Who controls the Treasury? Where do all the Treasury Secretaries come from? They come from the big New York banks. Look at the financial regulatory agencies that are supposed to be regulating the banks. They are filled with executives from the banks. The banks control the government. There isn’t a government, there’s the banks. . . . We have the entire economic policy in the United States concentrating on saving five banks. We had 10 million people who lost their homes, and nothing was done for them, but five banks are saved.”

    • The Pentagon’s Budget Time Bomb

      With plans for military spending on a new Cold War — as well as on old fears about terrorism — spinning out of control, the next U.S. president will face a budgetary time bomb, explains Chuck Spinney.

    • Hillary the Hypocrite

      Who should play Hillary on Broadway?

      “Maybe Lily Tomlin,” Nader says. “She’s good at playing characters that speak with forked tongues.”

      “Hillary the Hawk is the darling of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address,” Nader said. “And she gets quite a bit of money from those companies. Hillary the Wall Street Promoter gets money from Wall Street. And yet she comes out on that stage and says exactly the opposite and gets away with it.”

    • Lessons of Brussels

      The population of Brussels is nearly 25 percent immigrants from Muslim countries, primarily Morocco and Algeria. And as it turns out the two brothers who were the core of the ISIS cell were habitués of the now notorious Molenbeek neighborhood, which consists primarily of the descendants of immigrants who settled there decades ago. Poor, and beset by petty crime, it is a pool in which terrorist recruiters fish with much success. The Syrian civil war has become a cause that attracts young toughs with no prospects, who are looking for some sense of meaning – and a way to express their alienation from the larger society in which they live. Molenbeek was also the base for those who planned and carried out the Paris attacks – it is, in effect, a general headquarters for ISIS to carry out its European operations. Salah Abdeslam, the chief planner of the Paris attacks, fled there and found sanctuary for four months before being caught.

    • How to Become Terror-Torn Europe—And How Not to

      Our integrated American Muslim communities are helping to keep us safe.

    • “Families Were Blown Up” — Scenes From a Saudi-Led Bombing in Yemen

      Around midday on March 15, fighter jets from a Saudi-led coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. The latest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes — perhaps the deadliest attack yet in a war that has killed more than 6,000 civilians. Local residents and health officials say the carnage was so great in Mastaba that most of the bodies could hardly be identified, and several were beyond recognition.

    • The Case of Bowe Bergdahl: Military Justice in a Highly Charged Political Season

      In a season when the political becomes theater, and when military actions remain as prominent and prolific as they were when the sergeant enlisted in the military for the second time, the old refrain that military justice is to justice, as military music is to music, ought to give anyone pause hoping that in Sergeant Bergdahl’s case cooler heads will prevail and the accepted wisdom of enough punishment being enough becomes widely shared. Nearly 15 years of war in Afghanistan, and with a nation on permanent war footing, the chance of Sergeant Bergdahl’s case being considered outside of the turbulent winds of the presidential primary season and the general election are highly unlikely. In this highly charged political atmosphere, the chance of justice prevailing is remote. Determining the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan at the time of Bergdahl’s absence from his unit are impossible to assess since this war is only covered by major media outlets when an event of major proportions takes place.

      The details of how Bowe Bergdahl might be punished are worth comparing to the actual punishments resulting from the assault on My Lai in Vietnam in March 1968 and its aftermath. About 500 unarmed men, women, and children were killed in that massacre by US forces. The only officer to face a military trial for the atrocities of My Lai, Lieutenant William Calley, could have faced the death penalty for the 109 Vietnamese he had been charged with murdering. Ultimately, he was convicted of killing 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. That sentence was reduced to 20 years and then further reduced to 10 years. Calley’s final time spent under house arrest amounted to three and a half years, at which time he was released by a federal court. Bergdahl has never been charged with killing a single individual or responsibility for the death of troops involved in the search for him as the result of his leaving his post. No one was killed during the search for the sergeant.

    • The Risk of Overreacting to Terror

      There is exploitation by politicians of the spike in public concern about terrorism, this time with presidential candidates calling for patrols of American neighborhoods identified by religion, when those same candidates are not calling for carpet bombing a foreign country.

    • How Donald Trump and Ted Cruz Help Terrorists Achieve Their Aims

      Recoiling from the terrorist carnage in Brussels, Americans may be attracted to the “tough” posturing of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The casino mogul wants to bring back torture, while the Texas senator hopes to bomb indiscriminately until the desert glows. Trump would bar any Muslim from entering the United States, while Cruz would dispatch special police patrols into Muslim neighborhoods. Both eagerly demonize Muslims worldwide and stigmatize Muslims in America.

    • Fighting for recognition: Soviet-Afghan War veterans in Tajikistan

      More than a quarter of a century after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the afgantsy are still struggling to carve out a place for themselves in post-Soviet Tajikistan.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Japan’s Bogus Excuse For Killing Hundreds Of Pregnant Whales

      Japan’s fleet known for capturing whales for research returned to shore this week and confirmed it killed more than 300 minke whales, including pregnant specimens, triggering international condemnation.

      Every year, Japan undertakes what it has labeled as a scientific hunt for whales in the Southern Ocean. However, in 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled Japan should stop. Instead, Japan ignored the ruling last year and announced it would continue whaling while reducing the number of whales it would kill by two-thirds to 333.

    • Largest Wildfire In State History Ravages Kansas

      On Saturday, four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the Kansas National Guard were deployed to contain the prairie blazes that have burned at least 620 square miles in southern Kansas and Oklahoma, where it originated, the Associated Press reported. Smoke was reportedly detected as far away as St. Louis, Missouri — hundreds of miles to the northeast — as at least four homes and livestock were affected, according to Kansas officials. No serious human injuries or fatalities have been reported.

    • Nuclear Power Plants: Pre-Deployed WMDs

      That’s what nuclear power plants are. And that’s another very big reason—demonstrated again in recent days with the disclosure that two of the Brussels terrorists were planning attacks on Belgian nuclear plants—why they must be eliminated.

    • A big deal for our ocean

      Today governments from all over the world will meet at the United Nations in New York to develop a new treaty to save our oceans. We will be there to ensure clear rules for the creation of sanctuaries that will give our oceans the protection they desperately need.

  • Finance

    • UN Development Program’s Pledge Toward Ending Poverty and Hunger

      Since its inception, many members of the European confederation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are allocating more money to addressing the social costs of refugee and asylum seekers. For example, the Netherlands has increased its budget 145%, Italy has raised theirs by 107%, Cyprus increased its by 65%, and Portugal has gone up 38%.

    • American Crime Family Advances On The White House

      And serve the deep state the Clintons certaintly do as is indicated by the $153 million in “speaking fees”—read bribes and payoffs—that CNN and Fox News report the Clintons have been paid by Wall Street, the mega-banks, and corporate America. This sum does not include campaign donations or donations to the Clintons’ foundation. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/

    • VIDEO: Public Education is a Right! Voices of CUNY Students, Faculty and Staff From Die-in Protest

      Students, faculty and staff staged a die-in Thursday in New York City to demand the state fully fund the City University of New York. Later that same day, Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed to some of their demands. Cuomo had threatened to push nearly $500 million in state costs onto the city. Watch a video of some of the voices from the demonstration, at which two city council members were also arrested.

    • Who’s afraid of the evidence about what works in the NHS?

      Politicians have imposed evidence-free re-organisations on us health workers for years. Now they tell us that it’s too late to change the mess they’ve got us into.

    • California Reaches Deal to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour

      Numerous statewide polls have suggested voters would approve a minimum wage proposal—perhaps even a more sweeping version—if given the chance.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Obama Visits Havana: Cuba Libre for Real?

      National isolation is the desire of every dictator: If his subjects never see what a freer society looks like or have the opportunity to avail themselves of its goods and services, they have no standard against which to measure his rule and find it wanting.

    • GOP Lawmakers Tout Religious Liberty, Duck Questions About Discriminating Against Muslims

      IN THE RUN-UP to oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week to challenge the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers’ health care plans cover birth control, Republican lawmakers held a series of events to highlight the importance of religious liberty. Conservatives claim that the law, which requires insurance companies to cover contraception, violates the religious rights of Catholic nuns.

      That commitment to religious freedom, however, does not appear to extend to Muslim Americans.

      On Tuesday, in reaction to the terror attacks in Belgium, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called for law enforcement to preemptively “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” Later that day, The Intercept attended a press conference organized by House Republicans to champion religious liberty ahead of the Supreme Court contraception case.

    • Trump’s Incomprehensible ‘Cyber’ Policy: ‘Make Cyber Great Again’

      It seems pretty clear that Trump has no clue what is being discussed and just falls back into his usual talking points about how America just isn’t that good any more, and then uses the tiny bit of information he does have (China and Russia have been in the news around hackings) and argues that they’re better than us. But, “we’re obsolete”? Huh? As noted above (not by him, of course), the most powerful computer-based attacks do seem to be coming from the US itself, not Russia or China.

      Also, what does “inconceivable that, inconceivable the power of cyber” even mean? All I can think of is the scene from The Princess Bride.

    • Bank of America, Microsoft Denounce North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law, but Fund Politicians Who Passed It

      Microsoft has joined a corporate campaign calling on politicians “to abandon or defeat” anti-LBGT legislation, and its president, Brad Smith, specifically criticized the North Carolina law on Twitter. And like the political action committees of Bank of America and Lowe’s, Microsoft’s PAC — run by its managing director for government affairs, Edward Ingle — has given to the same anti-LBGT politicians, though somewhat less generously. Since 2008, the Microsoft PAC has given $2,000 to McCrory, $3,000 to Berger, $2,000 to Moore, and $4,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.

    • The Culture That Created Donald Trump Was Liberal, Not Conservative

      WHO CREATED Donald Trump?

      Now that Donald Trump, the candidate, has become both widely popular and deeply loathsome, we’re seeing a cataract of editorials and commentary aimed at explaining how it happened and who’s to blame. The predictable suspects are trotted out: the Republican Party, which had been too opportunistic and fearful to stand up to its own candidate, Fox News, which inflamed the jingoes, and white working-class voters, unhinged by class envy and racial resentment.

    • CIA Photographed Detainees Naked and Bound Before Extraditing Them for Torture

      The CIA took photographs of detainees naked, bound, and blindfolded—some with visible bruises—before extraditing them to other countries to be tortured, an investigation by the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman revealed on Monday.

      “The naked imagery of CIA captives raises new questions about the seeming willingness of the U.S. to use what one medical and human rights expert called ‘sexual humiliation’ in its post-9/11 captivity of terrorism suspects,” Ackerman wrote. “Some human rights campaigners described the act of naked photography on unwilling detainees as a potential war crime.”

      Ackerman also reported that “a former U.S. official who had seen some of the photographs described them as ‘very gruesome.’” The photos in question remain classified.

      The detainees were photographed before being extradited to nations known to use more brutal forms of torture than that used in the U.S., Ackerman said, as part of the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program.

      The writer V. Noah Gimbel characterized that program in 2011 as “the outsourcing of interrogations to countries where torture could be employed without the legal barriers that exist within the U.S. military and civilian justice systems.”

    • US Intel Vets Warn Against Torture

      Experienced intelligence professionals reaffirm that torture – while popular with “tough” politicians – doesn’t work in getting accurate and actionable information, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast Fails To Connect SmartCar’s Silicon Valley Office For 10 Months, Wants $60,000 Anyway

      Comcast for years has offered what most find to be utterly abysmal customer service and support, resulting in story after story of nightmare experiences for consumers and businesses alike. This is, by and large, thanks to limited competition in most of Comcast’s footprint, and despite Silicon Valley being arguably the tech epicenter of the country, the region apparently isn’t immune to Comcast’s particular… charms or the nation’s obvious lack of broadband competition.

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