SoylentNews

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

InfoWorld reports

MariaDB Corp. has announced that release 2.0 of its MaxScale database proxy software is henceforth no longer open source. The organization has made it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it's out of date.

MaxScale is at the pinnacle of MariaDB Corp.'s monetization strategy--it's the key to deploying MariaDB databases at scale. The thinking seems to be that making it mandatory to pay for a license will extract top dollar from deep-pocketed corporations that might otherwise try to use it free of charge. This seems odd for a company built on MariaDB, which was originally created to liberate MySQL from the clutches of Oracle.

The license in question, the Business Source License, was devised by MySQL creator Michael "Monty" Widenius in 2013. It allows use for evaluation and sets a date when the source code will be placed under the GPL, but it's explicitly proprietary in pursuit of commercial ends.

Monty blogs

Here is a statement from a large software company when I asked them to support MariaDB development with financial support:

As you may remember, we're a fairly traditional and conservative company. A donation from us would require feature work in exchange for the donation. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a feature that I would want developed that we would be willing to pay for this year.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

It's been a while since we ran a story about some facet of people's home computer systems and I got to wondering what kind of monitor setup other Soylentils have at home. (If you have multiple systems, feel free to enumerate each setup.)

For example, I run Win 7 Pro on a Dell laptop which has a Mobile Intel Core 2 P8700 Duo processor and which sports NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M graphics. Instead of using the built-in laptop display, I have a several-year-old Gateway monitor with 1920x1200 resolution @ 59Hz and 32-bit color. I do not do any gaming, so I don't need the latest graphic card/monitor.

Some time down the road, though, I'd like to get a new computer and am thinking about a multi-monitor setup. I'd like at least 1920x1200 across 3 screens, though I'd not mind it if I could afford 3 x 4K screens. I'd like it to be compatible with some flavor of Linux or *BSD, preferably without systemd. Does anyone here have experience with that kind of setup? What OS do you use? What graphics card? What monitors and resolutions do you run?

I know there are some gamers on the site, as well. Here's a chance to brag a bit about your rig!

And, of course, please share any horror stories and/or triumphs, too!

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Encryption tools that keep your digital communications hidden from prying eyes are becoming more widespread, and Canadian police say they need a law that compels people to hand over their passwords so cops can access those communications.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), a lobbying organization with membership from across the country, passed a resolution at its annual conference on Tuesday mandating that the group advocate for a law that would force people to provide their computer passwords to police with a judge's consent, CTV reported.

"To say this is deeply problematic is to understate the matter," said Micheal Vonn, policy director for the BC Civil Liberties Association. "We have all kinds of laws that do not compel people to incriminate themselves or even speak."

A law that compels people to give police access to their devices, which may contain messages, photos, and data that have nothing to do with any active criminal investigation, doesn't fit within Canada's current legal landscape and would be "tricky constitutionally," Vonn added.

"I'd question whether this proposal is constitutional," said Tamir Israel, a lawyer for the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa.

"It's rare to force people to help police investigate themselves, and for good reason," Israel continued. "It shifts the focus of criminal condemnation away from actual criminal activity and onto compliance. So if an individual legitimately objects to handing over their password, that alone makes them criminal."

[...] "This has been a standard component of what the chiefs of police do—they argue for laws that would make policing easier," Vonn said.

"But is it a good idea from a civil liberties perspective? No."

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n1 writes:

[...] It is clear that a significant minority of British drivers put their time and their 'needs' above the safety of other road users and pedestrians. In a few decades, the driverless car will be perfected and the driven car must be made obsolete, preferably by law.

Until then the Government and the insurance industry should take radical steps to help residents of rural and urban communities reclaim their neighbourhoods from the lorries, the lunatics - and those Great British Motorists who like toddlers think they can do what they like, and explode with rage and indignation when questioned about it.

1. Black boxes compulsory in every vehicle, with improved technology that detects speed limit breaking and careless or aggressive driving.

2. Insurance companies encouraged to hike premiums immediately and punitively as bad driving is revealed.

3. Insurance companies obliged to hand over to DVLA and / or police all data that reveals traffic offences and dangerous driving.

4. Legal framework to allow prosecution and driving bans relating to offences revealed by black boxes.

5. Legal changes to encourage use of dashcam / helmet-cam / CCTV evidence to prosecute motorists.

6. Comprehensive review of 30mph speed limits, with local consultations on which should be lowered to 20mph.

7. Limit revs to 3,000rpm on all vehicles - as condition of passing MOT - to cut noise and dangerous acceleration.

8. Funding for technology that will limit all vehicles automatically to the local speed limit (and in the case of national speed limits, a safe speed for the road conditions); and will prevent heavy goods vehicles from using inappropriate rural and urban roads.

Source: This is Money

Original Submission

Archfeld suggested a story which became:

[Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that takes advantage of otherwise idle computing resources on volunteer's computers to simulate how proteins fold and thus guide progress to finding a cure to diseases such as: Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers. --martyb]

Back in February of this year, one of our site's members Sir Finkus introduced our community to Folding@Home with this story:

I've taken the liberty of setting up an official folding@home team for SoylentNews. In case you aren't familiar with folding@home, it's a distributed computing project that simulates protein folding in an attempt to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's.

There is more information on the project here , which explains it much better than I could.

Clients are available for Linux, OSX, and even Windows (if you swing that way), so come join our botnet!

That Other Site's team is ranked at 1817, so we've got some catching up to do.

On a personal note, my Dad carries the gene markers for Huntington's disease, and will eventually succumb to it. Research like this is very helpful for understanding, and hopefully developing treatments for it.

tl;dr Our Soylent News team ID is 230319

We are pleased to announce that our SoylentNews Folding@Home team is now approaching the top 500 spot! Our team size has plateaued, but new members are welcome at any time. To put this milestone in perspective, since the time when the team started in mid-Februrary of this year, we have overtaken 229,814 teams!

We even have a channel, #folding, on IRC.

Official Stats:
http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/teamstats/team230319.html
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=230319

Better Stats at:
Team Summary
Teams Overall Rank
Overtake Projections - Teams Ranked 501-600
Overtake Projections - Teams Ranked 499-500

Related Coverage:
Soylent News has a Top 1000 Folding@Home Team!
Huntington's Disease: University of Toronto Researcher is First to Share Lab Notes in Real Time

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) web site has the following story:

We Shouldn’t Wait Another Fifteen Years for a Conversation About Government Hacking

With high-profile hacks in the headlines and government officials trying to reopen a long-settled debate about encryption, information security has become a mainstream issue. But we feel that one element of digital security hasn't received enough critical attention: the role of government in acquiring and exploiting vulnerabilities and hacking for law enforcement and intelligence purposes. That's why EFF recently published some thoughts on a positive agenda for reforming how the government, obtains, creates, and uses vulnerabilities in our systems for a variety of purposes, from overseas espionage and cyberwarfare to domestic law enforcement investigations. [Emphasis added.]

Some influential commentators like Dave Aitel at Lawfare have questioned whether we at EFF should be advocating for these changes, because pursuing any controls on how the government uses exploits would be "getting ahead of the technology." But anyone who follows our work should know we don't call for new laws lightly.

To be clear: We are emphatically not calling for regulation of security research or exploit sales. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how any such regulation would pass constitutional scrutiny. We are calling for a conversation around how the government uses that technology. We're fans of transparency; we think technology policy should be subject to broad public debate, heavily informed by the views of technical experts. The agenda in the previous post outlined calls for exactly that.

There's reason to doubt anyone who claims that it's too soon to get this process started.

Consider the status quo: The FBI and other agencies have been hacking suspects for at least 15 years without real, public, and enforceable limits. Courts have applied an incredible variety of ad hoc rules around law enforcement's exploitation of vulnerabilities, with some going so far as to claim that no process at all is required. Similarly, the government's (semi-)formal policy for acquisition and retention of vulnerabilities—the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP)—was apparently motivated in part by public scrutiny of Stuxnet (widely thought to have been developed at least in part by the U.S. government) and the long history of exploiting vulnerabilities in its mission to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. Of course, the VEP sat dormant and unused for years until after the Heartbleed disclosure. Even today, the public has seen the policy in redacted form only thanks to FOIA litigation by EFF.

Any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under the Creative Commons Attribution License, unless otherwise noted. All material that is not original to EFF may require permission from the copyright holder to redistribute.

The article is both well-written and thought-provoking, although it is too large to publish in full on our site. It discusses many of the problems that we have heard before - but has them all in one place and shows their inter-dependencies - and throws a few new ideas (for me at least) into the pot.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

I really dig music that has a vibes player--going back to Hamp and Red and coming forward to Joe Locke and Warren Wolf. My all-time favorite musician is Milt Jackson. A close second is Bobby Hutcherson.

SFGate (sister-site of the San Francisco Chronicle) reports

Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, one of jazz's greatest improvisers and a deep, sweet-souled musician who played with enormous feeling, fire, and grace, died Monday Aug. 15 at his home in Montara on the San Mateo County coast. He was 75 and had battled emphysema for many years.

Over his prolific 55-year career, Mr. Hutcherson, a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, performed and recorded with many of the greatest jazz artists of his time, including tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, pianists Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Cedar Walton[1], and drummer Billy Higgins[1].

Mr. Hutcherson produced a singularly beautiful sound on the vibraphone, a resonating metal-and-wood percussion instrument used mostly for novelty effect until jazz musicians like Lionel Hampton made it swing in the 1930s. The lyrical bebopper Milt Jackson made it sing with a richness, warmth, and grit that inspired a kid from Pasadena to take up the vibraphone and expand its expressive range.

[...] He unleashed joyously unbounded solos shaped on the fly with long ribbons of melody, bluesy ostinatos, and the declamatory single tones he hammered out with a slicing body English that made them shimmer and swell.

He could also play ballads sublimely, the way he does with "I Loves You Porgy" on his 1994 duet recording with Tyner, "Manhattan Moods", by sounding the melody with little or no embellishment.

[...] "Bobby can play one note and generate 10 times more energy than someone who would play 50 notes in that space", Stefon Harris, one of many vibraphonists inspired by Mr. Hutcherson and the one who followed him in the SFJazz Collective, said in 2012.

"He took this pile of metal and wood and really turned it into a vehicle to express his individuality. He transcended the instrument."

[1] Members, with Bobby, of the supergroup The Timeless All-Stars.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

In a rather well-timed yet coincidental counterpoint to Why we're Losing the Internet to the Culture of Hate, Milo Yiannopoulos over at Breitbart brings us this:

A warped currency today governs popular culture. Instead of creativity, talent and boldness, those who succeed are often those who can best demonstrate outrage, grievance and victimhood.

Even conservatives are buying into it. Witness, in the days since Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon was announced as Donald Trump's campaign manager, how establishment stooges have bought into the worst smear-tactics of the left. As with the left, nothing is evaluated on its quality, or whether it's factually accurate, thought-provoking or even amusing: only whether it can be deemed sexist, racist or homophobic.

Campuses are where the illness takes its most severe form. Students running for safe spaces at the slightest hint of a challenge to their coddled worldview. Faculties and administrations desperately trying to sabotage visits from conservative speakers (often me!) to avoid the inevitable complaints from tearful lefty students.

In this maelstrom of grievance, there is one group boldly swimming against the tide: trolls.

Trolling has become a byword for everything the left disagrees with, particularly if it's boisterous, mischievous and provocative. Even straightforward political disagreement, not intended to provoke, is sometimes described as "trolling" by leftists who can't tell the difference between someone who doesn't believe as they do and an "abuser" or "harasser."

Yeah, you knew I wouldn't let that kinda SJW nonsense slide without comment.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

I've previously mentioned federal whistleblower Peter Van Buren here and his expose on working for minimum wage at a store he called "Bullseye" while his lawsuit wound its way through the court system.
He has now blogged about a part of government which, apparently, hasn't had any new ideas since 1856.

I just wrapped up a couple of days of jury duty.

Note "jury duty", which is very different than serving on a jury. I didn't do that. Being on an actual jury involves making a careful judgment on someone's life. I did jury duty, which involves waiting and sitting and waiting, while watching your last hopeful images of democracy fade away.

[...] It was about 10:30 before a guy who said he'd been doing this exact same job for 34 years began speaking to us as if we were slow children or fairly smart puppies. The bulk of his explanation was about how most of us would get our $40 a day jury payment, and the many exceptions to that. It was then lunch.

[After lunch, we waited for the rest of the day but] were unneeded. We were dismissed until re-summoned tomorrow morning.

[...] The next morning, [...] I got called to jury selection, along with about 20 [others who had been waiting in the same semi-air-conditioned room]. We were brought to an unventilated hallway to wait for 30 minutes before entering an actual courtroom. [...] We did an olde timey swearing in, and then were invited to visit the judge and explain any "issues" we might have that would prevent us from serving on a jury.

It was pathetic. Nearly everyone bitched, whined, begged, and complained that they could not do it.

[...] I got bounced out of the jury selection in the next phase. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney asked us questions about our jobs, our thoughts on law enforcement (especially if we trusted police to testify honestly), and the like. I answered every question completely candidly and was thrown back to wait three more hours until "jury duty" was over. The only way I could have served would have been to lie.

[...] This system is a mess. [...] The 19th century notion that everyone simply must find a way to put their life on hold does not work. [...] Telling single parents to just figure out child care, Wall Street brokers to just not care about millions of dollars, students to just miss class, and people who work freelance or hourly to just suck it up and lose their already limited income is not 2016.

If assigned to an actual jury, you stay with the trial until it is done. [...] If you pull a murder case or one of the many medical malpractice suits, it could be a month+. [...] For $40 a day [...]--minus the minimum five dollars [that] commuting to court and back costs, means you are getting about half the minimum wage in New York, and even that takes six to eight weeks to be sent to you. [...] If you are already living on the margins, you cannot afford to serve on a jury.

[...] A lot of folks whose English was poor or who sounded as if they did not get much of an education had no excuse the judge would accept [to be dismissed].

[...] My limited window into all of this suggests juries might just be made up of people who can't get out of it. Hard to say how bitter that makes them feel listening to an actual case.

Original Submission

bitshifter writes:

From MotorAuthority.com:

Ride-sharing giant Uber sees a future where it not only has a fleet of self-driving cars offering rides to the public, but also self-driving trucks transporting goods on the highway.

Uber on Thursday announced the acquisition of Otto, an American startup with around 90 staff working on developing self-driving trucks. The announcement was made on the same day Uber announced a deal with Volvo to source additional test cars for its growing fleet of self-driving cars.

Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski has been put in charge of all autonomous driving efforts at the combined firms and will report to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Early last decade Levandowski developed the Ghostrider, a self-driving motorcycle that now sits in the Smithsonian. He was also on Google's self-driving car team.

Otto was only founded in January but much of its staff comes from more established firms including Apple, Google, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and Cruise Automation. Otto's goal isn't to start selling self-driving trucks but rather to develop technology that can be licensed to truck manufacturers or turned into kits that can be retrofitted to existing trucks to make them autonomous.

Also at theverge.com

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) has announced new procedures to prevent the listing of false or fake information in election filings:

The new procedure comes in response to an increase this election cycle in the filing of registration and statement of candidacy forms (FEC Forms 1 and 2) that provide patently false candidate or treasurer names, questionable contact or bank information, or material that does not relate to campaign finance, such as drawings, essays and personal court records.

The Commission has authorized staff to send verification letters to filers listing fictional characters, obscene language, sexual references, celebrities (where there is no indication that the named celebrity submitted the filing), animals, or similarly implausible entries as the name or contact information of the candidate or committee. These letters will:

• notify the filer of the potential penalties for false filings with a federal agency;
• note the seemingly false information (candidate name, contact information, etc.) that was filed on the relevant Statement of Organization (FEC Form 1) or Statement of Candidacy (FEC Form 2);
• direct the filer to file a letter either confirming or withdrawing the filing, or to file an amended Form 1 or 2, within 30 days of the date of the verification letter;
• indicate that withdrawing the filing or failing to respond to the verification letter will lead to the Form 1 or 2 being removed from the searchable candidate/committee filings database on the Commission's website; and
• note that removal of the filing from the Commission's searchable database does not waive the Commission's authority to pursue or refer action for false filing under 52 U.S.C. Section 30109(a) or otherwise report such filings under 52 U.S. C. Section 30107(a)(9).

Coverage at USA Today, Politico, ABC, RT, The Hill, and Reason. More about Deez Nuts. #JusticeForHarambe.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

With more private spaceship traffic expected at the International Space Station in the coming years, two US astronauts are set to embark on a spacewalk Friday to install a special parking spot for them.

Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins will step outside the orbiting laboratory to attach an international docking adaptor launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship last month.

[...] Built by Boeing, the circular adaptor measures around 42 inches (one meter) tall and about 63 inches (1.6 meters) wide.

The adaptors will work with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon, two spaceships under construction that are planned to ferry astronauts to the space station.

The docking adaptor is more sophisticated than past equipment because it will allow automatic parking instead of the current grapple and berthing process managed by astronauts.

It also has fittings that will enable the space station to share power and data with the spacecraft.

Original Submission

quietus writes:

The other day I was having a consult at the psychogeriatric ward of a local hospital. While we were discussing a CT scan of my father's brain, the psychiatrist mentioned that his ward was really aimed at reshaping disruptive behaviour -- like painting the bathroom with excrement -- of patients with dementia (pdf).

Thinking the conversation over, this sounds a bit like social engineering -- which makes me wonder: have other Soylentils been in a position where they've taken care of an elderly parent, and what psychological principles did you apply to moderate/shape behaviour?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Al Jazeera

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

3,000yo brain surgery patient likely treated with cannabis, magic mushroom 'painkillers' - study

A Russian researcher has published a new study on a 3,000-year-old medical procedure in which the patient was likely anaesthetized with natural hallucinogens and rhythmic music before the surgeon chiselled into their skull. The study of a Bronze Age man's skull has shed some light into how ancient people of the Krasnoyarsk region in northern Russia treated intracranial diseases.

Published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, the study suggests that mind-bending natural stimulants such as magic mushrooms, cannabis and even the beat of a drum were used to dull the pain caused by primitive surgical instruments. Discovered at the Anzhevsky burial ground last year, the human skull is around 3,000 years old. It features a curious hole to the left parietal lobe, which scientists believe was the result of moderately successful ancient brain surgery, or trepanation.

Dr Sergey Slepchenko, of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, told The Siberian Times the patient survived the initial procedure but likely died later from complications during the recovery period. "The surgeon probably stood face-to-face to the patient on the left side. Or the surgeon may have fixed the head with his left arm or between his knees [and] operated with his right hand," Slepchenko said.

[...] "One of the most dangerous complications of trepanation is bleeding which develops immediately after the skin incision," Dr Slepchenko said. "To minimize bleeding and reduce pain, the operation had to be carried out as fast possible by presumably highly-skilled surgeon. It is not clear how they stopped the bleeding."

I loved the title of the article. I didn't realize there were very many 3,000 year old patients, let alone candidates for brain surgery.

Ante Mortem Cranial Trepanation in the Late Bronze Age in Western Siberia (DOI: 10.1002/oa.2543)

Original Submission