67331095
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
As researchers uncover one serious flaw after another in widely used software, it’s increasingly clear there are lots of vulnerabilities, everywhere. While there are efforts underway to identify and fix these issues before criminals exploit them, the bigger challenge is stopping developers from using buggy code. There is no such thing as perfect software, but developers can reduce the number of bugs by following secure coding practices. There are also tools which can analyze individual libraries—both open-source and commercial—included in software projects to ensure they aren’t buggy. Many organizations have no idea if the software they are using contains vulnerable components because the application hasn’t been thoroughly tested. But aside from As researchers uncover one serious flaw after another in widely used software, it’s increasingly clear there are lots of vulnerabilities, everywhere. While there are efforts underway to identify and fix these issues before criminals exploit them, the bigger challenge is stopping developers from using buggy code. But aside from efforts such as The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative, which maintains open-source apps, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of coordinated effort out there to clean up old code and analyze libraries and apps for bugs. Is there anything that can be done about this?
67100605
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
As a Python developer, sooner or later you’ll want to write an application with a graphical user interface. Fortunately, there are a lot of options on the tools front: The Python wiki on GUI programming lists over 30 cross-platform frameworks, as well as Pyjamas, a tool for cross-browser Web development based on a port of the Google Web Toolkit. How to choose between all these options for Python GUIs? Developer David Bolton started by narrowing it down to those that included all three platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and, where possible, Python 3. After that filtering, he found four toolkits (Gtk, Qt, Tk, and wxWidgets) and five frameworks (Kivy, PyQt, gui2Py, libavg and wxPython). He provides an extensive breakdown on why he prefers these.
67009907
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
If you took your cubicle, four wheels, SkyNet's AI, and brought them all together in unholy matrimony, their offspring might look something like the self-driving future car created by design consultants IDEO. That's not to say that every car on the road in 2030 will look like a mobile office, but technology could take driving to a place where a car's convenience and onboard software (not to mention smaller size) matter more than, say, speed or handling, especially as urban areas become denser and people potentially look at "driving time" as a time to get things done or relax as the car handles the majority of driving tasks. Then again, if old science-fiction movies have proven anything, it’s that visions of automobile design thirty or fifty years down the road (pun intended) tend to be far, far different than the eventual reality. (Blade Runner, for example, posited that the skies above Los Angeles would swarm with flying cars by 2019.) So it's anyone's guess what you'll be driving a couple decades from now.
66882607
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
President Obama’s plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration policies could not only save up to five million people from deportation, it will also affect the U.S. tech industry. Obama will rely on an executive action for immigration reform, rather than working with Congress. “I will make it easier and faster for high-skilled immigrants, graduates and entrepreneurs to stay and contribute to our economy,” Obama added in his Nov. 20 speech. On paper, his plan will streamline the ability of foreign entrepreneurs and STEM workers to obtain visas, although specifics went unannounced; spouses of certain visa holders, including at least a portion of those with an H-1B, will have the ability to obtain work permits. Obama’s plan will also expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which grants work permits and some legal protections to unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. Under the new guidelines, unauthorized immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens, and who have lived in the country for at least five years, will also be protected. Those immigrants will need to pass criminal background checks and pay taxes. While Obama has taken steps to fix what he views as a broken system, he’s also shifted the debate on immigration to a whole new level. Expect tech firms across the nation to ponder the merits and drawbacks of his plan for quite some time to come.
66838777
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Whatever your plans for Thanksgiving, Google can offer some advice: try to avoid driving anywhere the day before. Analysts from the search-engine giant’s Google Maps division crunched traffic data from 21 U.S. cities over the past two years and found that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is by far the worst traffic day that week, with some notable exceptions. (In Honolulu, Providence, and San Francisco, the worst traffic is always on Saturday; in Boston, it’s Tuesday.) Unfortunately, Wednesday is often the only available travel day for many Americans—but Google thinks they can beat the worst of the traffic if they leave before 2 P.M. or after 7 P.M. on that day. Traffic on Thanksgiving itself is also light, according to the data. When it comes to driving back home, Sunday beats Saturday from a traffic perspective. According to Google Maps’ aggregated trends, Americans also seek out “ham shop,” “pie shop,” and “liquor store” on the day before Thanksgiving, as they rush to secure last-minute items.
66788947
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
As an emerging company in a hotly contested space, Uber already had a reputation for playing hardball with competitors, even before reports leaked of one of its executives threatening to dig into the private lives of journalists. Faced with a vicious competitive landscape, Uber executives probably feel they have little choice but to plunge into multi-front battle. As the saying goes, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and when you’re a startup that thinks it's besieged from all sides by entities that seem determined to shut you down, sometimes your executives feel the need to take any measure in order to keep things going, even if those measures are ethically questionable. As more than one analyst has pointed out, Uber isn’t the first company in America to triumph through a combination of grit and ethically questionable tactics; but it’s also not the first to implode thanks to the latter. Is a moral compass (or at least the appearance of one) a hinderance or a help for startups?
66736851
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
A senior executive at Uber reportedly told a Buzzfeed reporter that the company "should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company." As detailed by the executive, Uber would spend a million dollars on the effort, which would involve "four top opposition researchers and four journalists," and dig into personal lives and families. Uber has pushed back against the report, insisting that it's never done opposition research, but the idea of any company engaging in such practices seems more like something Nixon would have dreamed up at his worst than a strategy by a "disruptive" startup.
66694519
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Over at Dice, there’s a discussion of the technologies that could actually alter how you work (and what you work on) over the next few years, including 3D printing, embedded systems, and evolving Web APIs. Granted, predicting the future with any accuracy is a nigh-impossible feat, and a lot of nascent technologies come with an accompanying amount of hype. But given how these listed technologies have actually been around in one form or another for years, and don’t seem to be fading away, it seems likely that they’ll prove an increasing factor in how we live and work over the next decade and beyond. For those who have no interest in mastering aspects of the so-called “Internet of Things,” or other tech on this list, never fear: if the past two decades have taught us anything, it’s that lots of old hardware and software never truly goes away, either (hi, mainframes!).
66530485
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
With the debut of Android 5.0 (also known as Lollipop, in keeping with Google’s habit of naming each major OS upgrade after a dessert), it’s worth taking a moment to break down how the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system matches up against Apple’s iOS 8. After years of battle, the two are remarkably similar. So while nobody would ever confuse Android and iOS, both Google and Apple seem determined to go “flatter” (and more brightly colored) than ever. Whether or not you agree with their choices, they’re the cutting edge of mobile UX design. The perpetual tit-for-tat over features has reached a climax of sorts with Lollipop and iOS 8: both offer their own version of an NFC-powered e-wallet (Apple Pay vs. Google Wallet), a health app (Apple’s Health app vs. Google Fit), car-dashboard control (Android Auto vs. CarPlay), and home automation. That's not to say that the operating systems are mirror images of one another, but in terms of aesthetics and functionality, they'll be at near-parity for most users, albeit not those users who enjoy customizing Android and hate Apple's 'walled garden.'
66486887
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
'Cloud' is in the running for the most-hyped term of the decade. Hype aside, tech firms' desire to build Web-based platforms has created a burgeoning need for IT pros skilled in everything from Linux to security and Hadoop. A recent analysis of searches by hiring managers in the Dice resume database found that employers want pros adept in Linux, Java/J2EE, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), Python, virtualization, and other skills. Many entries on this list hint at cloud-builders’ preferences for platforms and tools. Puppet, for example, is an open-source IT automation tool, created by Puppet Labs, that’s used by a growing number of universities and companies to manage system configurations. OpenStack is an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) platform similarly relied upon by a number of firms. And efficient data storage and analysis wouldn’t be possible without Hadoop or all the tools that fall under the umbrella of 'Big Data.' Architects, engineers, developers, administrators, and analysts were the top positions sought by hiring managers in the context of 'cloud.' That’s unsurprising, in light of all the companies (big and small) devoting enormous resources to building out, managing, and tweaking their respective platforms. In tech-centric cities such as Seattle, the need for professionals skilled in cloud fundamentals has contributed to increased hiring.
66441577
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
While pundits and analysts debate about diversity in Silicon Valley, one thing is very clear: Black Americans make up a very small percentage of tech workers. At Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, that number is a bit less than 2 percent of their respective U.S. workforces; at Apple, it’s closer to 7 percent. Many executives and pundits have argued that the educational pipeline remains one of the chief impediments to hiring a more diverse workforce, and that as long as universities aren’t recruiting a broader mix of students for STEM degrees, the corporate landscape will suffer accordingly. But black IT entrepreneurs and professionals tell Dice that the problem goes much deeper than simply widening the pipeline; they argue that racial bias, along with lingering impressions of what a 'techie' should look like, loom much larger than any pipeline issue. What do you think?
66234967
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
In the early 1980s, Atari made what seemed like a slam-dunk bet: a game based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, one of the most beloved (and highest-grossing) films of all time. The company was so sure it had a hit in the making, in fact, that it manufactured millions of E.T. game cartridges, which flooded store shelves just in time for holiday shopping in December 1982. The game sold well at the outset, but it didn’t sell well enough: By early 1983, Atari still had 3.5 million unsold cartridges on its hands. Embarrassed by the failure, Atari dumped those cartridges into a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 2003, Canadian entertainment company Fuel Industries received permission from Alamogordo’s town counsel to excavate the landfill for the long-lost cartridges. Now some of those cartridges have surfaced on eBay, selling for $50 and up; if you ever wanted to own a little slice of video-game history, now’s your chance.
66150069
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Remember when executives at Apple, Google, and other firms “fixed” the market for highly skilled tech workers by agreeing not to steal each other’s employees? That little incident made a lot of people think about the true modus operandi of corporate and third-party tech recruiters. Dice sat down with some of those recruiters, who talked about everything from "no poaching" tactics to the "blacklist" that exists for candidates who make boneheaded mistakes in interviews. The bottom line? Recruiters seem to pass the blame for some of the industry's most egregious errors on "junior recruiters and agencies," while insisting that their goal in life is to get you a job. How does that align with your experience?
65946809
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
Apple design chief Jony Ive has spent the past several weeks talking up how the Apple Watch is an evolution on many of the principles that guided the evolution of timepieces over the past several hundred years. But the need to recharge the device on a nightly basis, now confirmed by Apple CEO Tim Cook, is a throwback to ye olden days, when a lady or gentleman needed to keep winding her or his pocket-watch in order to keep it running. Watch batteries were supposed to bring “winding” to a decisive end, except for that subset of people who insist on carrying around a mechanical timepiece. But with Apple Watch’s requirement that the user constantly monitor its energy, what’s old is new again. Will millions of people really want to charge and fuss with their watch at least once a day?
65863569
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes:
What’s the minimum that some companies are trying to pay workers in Silicon Valley? If you guessed “the required minimum wage for the state of California,” you’d be wrong: Electronics for Imaging Inc. paid eight Indian technicians $1.21 per hour, for as many as 122 working hours per week, with no overtime. The company claimed that the low salary was “unintentional,” and that it originally paid the IT workers what they earned as their regular salary in Bangalore. The Associated Press quoted Michael Eastwood, a Department of Labor assistant district director, as saying that the situation was 'worse than anything that I ever saw in any of those Los Angeles sweatshops.' Electronics for Imaging will need to pay more than $43,000 in penalties and back wages, which shouldn’t be much of a problem, considering the company expects to pull in just under $800 million in revenue for its fiscal year 2014.
