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Submission + - FWD.us Wants More H-1B Visas, But 50% Go To Offshore Firms

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On the day the U.S. began accepting H-1B visa applications for FY2015, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC stepped up its lobbying efforts for more tech visas even as ComputerWorld reported that the major share of H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms that use visa holders to displace U.S. workers. "The two largest H-1B users," notes ComputerWorld, "are Indian-based, Infosys, with 6,298 visas, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 6,258." ComputerWorld adds that food and agricultural company Cargill is outsourcing IT jobs to TCS, including 300 in Minnesota, the home of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a friend-of-Zuck and sponsor of the I-Squared Act of 2013, which would allow H-1B visa caps to rise to 300,000 annually.

Submission + - GLONASS (Russian GPS) offline (amerisurv.com)

Submitted by BevanFindlay
BevanFindlay writes: News is that the Russian-operated GLONASS satellites are inoperative, apparently due to having an "illegal ephemeris" (monitor site: http://glonass-iac.ru/en/GLONA...). While this won't affect most of us much (as the US DoD-operated GPS is still fine), it does beg the question of what caused the problem — is it related to the recent issues Russia has been having with its neighbours, did someone hack the GLONASS satellites, or is it just a bug? News via a surveyor friend (email quoting the Australian GPSNet) is that the satellites have to wait until they pass back over the base stations in the northern hemisphere to be reset, possibly taking as long as 12 hours.

Article here: http://www.amerisurv.com/conte...

Submission + - Social Media Becomes the New Front in Mexico's Drug War (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The drug cartels operating in Mexico have often been compared to large corporations, with their own codified leadership hierarchy, recruitment methods, and accounting methods. But part of any big corporation's playbook is a marketing/PR arm, and the cartels have long operated a version of those, too — threatening journalists and killing civilians who speak up. Like any corporation these days, the drug cartels have recognized the power of social media, and they're using it more and more to propagate their messages of intimidation and violence. Quoting: 'Six days after Beltran Leyva’s death, gunmen murdered family members of the only Mexican marine killed in the apartment complex siege — including the marine’s mother. That same day, a fire was set at a nearby school where a banner was flown, warning that more killings would follow if the federal government made any further attempts to interfere in cartel actions. Photos of the school were then tweeted and shared in status updates — a reply to images of Beltran Leyva’s corpse being shared on social media.'

Submission + - Some Mozilla Employees Demand New CEO Step Down

Submitted by _xeno_
_xeno_ writes: Mozilla recently named a new CEO, Brendan Eich, and as commentators in that article noted, there could be some backlash over his private contributions to political campaigns. Well, it turns out that they were correct, and despite a statement from Brendan Eich pledging to continue Mozilla's inclusiveness, some Mozilla employees are calling for him to step down. Should private beliefs be enough to prevent someone from heading a project they helped found?

Submission + - UK Bans Sending Books to Prisoners

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Alan Travis and Mark Tran report in The Guardian that new rules introduced by the justice secretary in the UK ban anyone sending in books to prisoners as part of a new earned incentives and privileges scheme which allows better behaved prisoners getting better access to funds to buy their own books. But members of Britain's literary establishment have combined to condemn Justice Secretary Chris Grayling's ban on sending books to prisoners. "While we understand that prisons must be able to apply incentives to reward good behavior by prisoners, we do not believe that education and reading should be part of that policy," says a letter signed by more than 80 leading authors. "Books represent a lifeline behind bars, a way of nourishing the mind and filling the many hours that prisoners spend locked in their cells. In an environment with no internet access and only limited library facilities, books become all the more important." Prime Minister David Cameron's official spokesman says the prime minister backs the ban on receiving books and entirely supports Grayling, whose department imposed the ban to preserve a rigid system of rewards and punishments for prisoners and said there was no need for prisoners to be sent books as prisoners could borrow from prison libraries and keep some reading material in their cells. However a former prisoner told the Guardian that although libraries existed, access could be severely restricted, particularly in closed prisons. "I've been in places where prisoners only get 20 minutes a week to visit the library and change books."

Submission + - Verizon Knows your Wi-Fi SSID and Key (wlanbook.com) 4

Submitted by FuzzyFox
FuzzyFox writes: While browsing my Verizon FIOS account settings on their web site, I happened to notice my Wi-Fi SSID was prominently displayed. Below that, I noticed a link that would also display the WPA2 password for my private network.

I was really surprised by this, because I did not tell Verizon this information, or ask them to store it on my behalf. It appears they have lifted the information remotely from the ActionTec router that they supplied me with.

It bothers me that they are storing this information about me, because it could conceivably be (1) stolen by hackers, (2) subpoena'd by the government, (3) silently borrowed by the NSA, or other uses that haven't yet come to mind.

Do other ISP's also silently store their customers' password information without the knowledge of the customer? Should we be outraged about this? I would rather that my private information not be stored without my consent, at the very least.

Submission + - "Cloud Week" continues: Google slashes cloud service prices (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Google has revamped its portfolio of enterprise cloud services, by cutting prices, adding new features, and touting a refreshed enthusiasm for the cloud market. "We have been very seriously committed to the cloud as a business and product family," one executive said, noting that Google now runs over 4.75 million active applications on its services. Cloud Storage is now priced at $0.026 cents per GB per month, and $0.020 cents per GB per month for an option with reduced availability, regardless of the amount of data stored. Formerly, the company had a number of pricing tiers for storage, based on the amount of data being stored. Prices previously ranged from $0.085 per GB per month to $0.054 per GB per month. Google's news follows Cisco's pledge to put $1B into cloud services, http://www.networkworld.com/co... while Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday is expected to make a big cloud announcement. http://www.networkworld.com/ne...

Submission + - Amazon's Outsourced Customer Service Making Fraud Easy (jeffreifman.com)

Submitted by reifman
reifman writes: Amazon's outsourced, semi-automated customer service makes it easy for unscrupulous buyers to prey on its marketplace sellers. Buyers just need to 1) request a return and then 2) file a claim alleging that the item was different than described. While Amazon says it retains emails between buyer and sellers 'to help arbitrate disputes and preserve trust and safety', it ignores the content of most email exchanges as it sends automated emails to sellers instructing them to issue refunds and threatening to withdraw the funds from their account. File this under 'our investigation team does not work according to case numbers.'

Submission + - Microsoft to re-brand Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure effective April 3rd 1

Submitted by DroidJason1
DroidJason1 writes: Microsoft recently changed the name of its SkyDrive cloud storage solution to OneDrive, and now it looks like the rebranding at Microsoft will continue with Windows Azure. The company apparently plans to change the name to Microsoft Azure, in an effort to lend more of a cross-platform feel to the service. Azure has become more cross-platform compatible, so this is likely a good move for the company, and this time it has not been forced to do the renaming, unlike OneDrive.

Submission + - Google Glass signs deal with Ray Ban owner (muktware.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Google has signed a deal with The Luxottica Group, the world’s largest eyewear company which owns 80% of the eyewear market. Luxottica owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue-Eyewear, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Alain Mikli and Arnette. This deal shows how serious Google is about Google Glass contrary to the skepticism raised by high-profiled users like Robert Scoble who spelled doom for the device implying that Google itself is not sure about the future of the device.

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