Mozilla's Internet Health Report, Google's Fuchsia, Purism Development Docs and More
News briefs for April 12, 2018.
Mozilla recently published its annual Internet Health Report. Its three major concerns are:
- "Consolidation of power over the Internet, particularly by Facebook, Google, Tencent, and Amazon."
- "The spread of 'fake news,' which the report attributes in part to the 'broken online advertising economy' that provides financial incentive for fraud, misinformation, and abuse."
- The threat to privacy posed by the poor security of the Internet of Things.
(Source: Ars Technica's "The Internet has serious health problems, Mozilla Foundation report finds")
Idle power on some Linux systems could drop by 10% or more with the Linux 4.17 kernel, reports Phoronix. Evidently, that's not all that's in the works regarding power management features: "performance of workloads where the idle loop overhead was previously significant could now see greater gains too". See Rafael Wysocki's "More power management updates for v4.17-rc-1" pull request.
Google's "not-so-secret" operating system named Fuchsia that's been in development for almost two years has attracted much speculation, but now we finally know what it is not. It's not Linux. According to a post on xda, Google published a documentation page called "the book" that explains what Fuchsia is and isn't. Several details still need to be filled in, but documentation will be added as things develop.
Instagram will soon allow users to download their data, including photos, videos and messages, according to a TechCrunch report: "This tool could make it much easier for users to leave Instagram and go to a competing image social network. And as long as it launches before May 25th, it will help Instagram to comply with upcoming European GDPR privacy law that requires data portability."
Purism has started its developer docs effort in anticipation of development boards being shipped this summer. According to the post on the Purism website, "There will be technical step-by-step instructions that are suitable for both newbies and experienced Debian developers alike. The goal of the docs is to openly welcome you and light your path along the way with examples and links to external documentation." You can see the docs here.
Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.
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