feed on feeds - 2018/12/15 - items 15 to 30

Refugees from South Sudan's civil war want to return home, but say that they have seen peace deals fall apart before.

Officials say the strike against a Taliban commander was part of a series of operations targeting the group's leaders.

Okay I'm going to reveal a little about the new feature. You can get a glimpse of the output by watching #scriptingnews on Twitter. And an upfront caveat, I don't know the final configuration of this feature. I'm just trying ideas out right now. You may see features here that are never released.

Thursday a bug report complained that the source code for OpenJDK, the free and open-source implementation of Java, "has too many swear words." An anonymous reader writes: "There are many instances of swear words inside OpenJDK jdk/jdk source, scattered all over the place," reads the bug report. "As OpenJDK is used in a professional context, it seems inappropriate to leave these 12 instances in there, so here's a changeset to remove them." IBM software developer (and OpenJDK team member and contributor) Adam Farley responded that "after discussion with the community, three determinations were reached": "Damn" and "Crap" are not swear words. Three of the four f-bombs are located in jszip.js, which should be corrected upstream (will follow up). The f-bomb in BitArray.java, as well as the rude typo in SoftChannel.java, *are* swear words and should be removed to resolve this work item. He promised a new webrev would be uploaded to reflect these determinations, and the bug has been marked as "resolved."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Outbreaks of violence in southern Ethiopia between the Oromos and other ethnic groups have escalated since April.

A new feature is in the works for Scripting News readers. I'm already using it, smoothing off rough edges, thinking about how I want to present it. As far as I know it's a feature that has not been part of a blog yet.

Podcasts do keep getting better.

The EU is showing no sign of moving from its current position, offering only clarification on the Brexit deal, not renegotiation.

In Brixton, a pro-EU stronghold in south London, voters speak of dismay as the UK stumbles towards exiting the EU.

Climate talks are in an extra day as negotiators try to agree the next steps for the Paris agreement.

At least 56 Palestinians have been injured in the protests against the demolition.

Abdulla Yameen questioned for first time over allegations of illegal financial transactions ahead of presidential vote.

shanen writes about Vitaminwater's latest "publicity stunt," where they will pay $100,000 to one select contestant who can live without their smartphone for a year: All you have to do is come up with the most amusing entry [about how you will spend 365 days without the device] and have sufficient willpower to give up your smartphone for a year. They obviously have to pick a power user to make it interesting, but that's not the reason I'm disqualified. I would just read more books, which is boring from their perspective. So maybe you want to share your idea here? If it's really good, you don't have to worry about someone stealing it. After all, you'd have the evidence that it was your idea first, but you might be able to refine your entry while amusing the mob. The company will reportedly give you a 1996 cellphone to use in times of emergencies. Also, they will reward you with $10,000 if you are able to get through 6 months. According to Tech Times, contestants can use computers or desktops, "but not smartphones or tablets, even those owned by other people, or anything which the candidate can scroll or swipe on." Always-listening smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, are permitted. To make sure the candidate doesn't cheat, Vitaminwater will subject them to a lie-detector test at the end of the year.