Thursday, June 2, 2016

Thursday: Family Stoned

Yes, it's all that, a family affair today. Looking forward to the return of calm tomorrow once my family resumes its seasonal migration.

So...what's up with YOU, emptywheel family? Anything exciting going?

If not, you should take a look at these:

Clean food
General Mills recalls flour for possible E. Coli contamination (GM) -- Do check your pantry. I've got a bag of the stuff, damn it. Fortunately no one here has been sick, probably a precautionary measure, but if anyone is immune compromised in your household, don't take the chance. Check that link.

Indian government set to ban some flour additives (Rediff) -- Speaking of flour, much of what we use in the U.S. contains dough conditioners like potassium bromate and potassium iodate. These will likely be banned in India. Why isn't the U.S. banning them? And why can't we replace the bromate -- labeled a class 2B carcinogen -- with ascorbic acid (a.k.a. vitamin C)?

Clean air
Owners of older vehicles may expect financial incentives to replace their cars with newer ones (Rediff) -- India looks to reduce air pollution by ditching older cars which generate more pollutants. Only problem with this program: no mention of VW Group's emissions controls defeating vehicles.

Ditto for Paris: get your pre-1997 cars off the streets during the week (Newsweek) -- Air pollution in Paris has rivaled that of Beijing; removing older cars from weekday traffic is a means to support an Ultra Low Emissions Zone. Yet again, no mention of the VW Group's Dieselgate cars.

Toyota unhappy about limits on passenger diesel sales in India (Rediff) -- Expect a lot of complaining like this from the makers of from the makers of passenger diesel vehicles as countries attempt to reduce toxic particulate, CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But there's no clean diesel technology, no matter how much carmakers have sunk into what technology they do have. They'll have to eat the sunk costs and work toward cleaner cars. Hello, Toyota, what's wrong with sell more Priuses?

Clean up
(Yeah, I couldn't think of another category that fits here.)

Nice overview post-Google win over Oracle in re: Android (The Guardian) -- The chilling effect on development relying on software always intended to be open source would have been catastrophic. Oracle needs to focus on its traditional software business instead of chasing after this; their lunch is slowly being eaten by cloud-based SaaS.

The Deployment Age (Reaction Wheel) -- Fascinating long read analyzing the maturity of the Information and Communications Technology Revolution. But what's next after ICT? In the past, the next revolution was emerging as the last wave reached Deployment. What are we watching for?

Tomorrow I'll look at May's breaches and a few discovered this week. Have a good one!

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