octave crashes with seg fault under kernel 4.4.0-81-generic It does not crash under kernel 4.4.0-79.100~14.04.1

scilab also crashes with segmentation fault under the same kernel.

I'm running ubuntu 14.04 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux on a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

octave:
octave:
  Installed: 3.8.1-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.8.1-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.8.1-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
I expected octave to come up with a prompt

what happened:

octave
GNU Octave, version 3.8.1
Copyright (C) 2014 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. For details, type 'warranty'.

Octave was configured for "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu".

Additional information about Octave is available at http://www.octave.org.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/get-involved.html

Read http://www.octave.org/bugs.html to learn how to submit bug reports.
For information about changes from previous versions, type 'news'.

warning: function /usr/share/octave/packages/strings-1.1.0/strjoin.m shadows a core library function
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: octave 3.8.1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-81.104~14.04.1-generic 4.4.67
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-81-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.24
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Jun 21 14:25:31 2017
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-06-02 (750 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20150218.1)
SourcePackage: octave
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)