74793501
submission
theodp writes:
Those of you slugging your way through EdX's (free) Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analytics MOOC course might want to take a break from your R and SQL coding to check out Grantland's Before Beane, in which Ben Lindbergh tells the story of AVM Systems, the little-known company that jump-started sabermetrics and made Moneyball possible. Ken Mauriello, whose love-for-the-analytics-of-the-game led him to ditch a trading career to co-found AVM in the mid-90's, said of the early days, "Back in the day we weren’t doing presentations [to skeptical MLB teams] with laptops. We were carrying around two enormous boxes with an enormous monitor and an enormous tower. It was like Planes, Trains & Automobiles traveling around with that stuff. Watching a great big Gateway box with your monitor come tumbling out upside down, and you pick it up and it’s rattling. ... So we’re in the hotel, saying, ‘Please lord, let this thing work.’"
74768589
submission
theodp writes:
Microsoft is applauding the Senate's passage of the Every Child Achieves Act, a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, saying the move will improve access to K-12 STEM learning nationwide. The legislation elevates Computer Science to a "core academic subject", opening the door to a number of funding opportunities. The major overhaul of the U.S. K-12 education system, adds Microsoft on the Issues, also "advances some of the goals outlined in Microsoft’s National Talent Strategy," its "two-pronged" plan to increase K-12 CS education and tech immigration. Perhaps Microsoft is tackling the latter goal in under-the-radar White House visits with the leaders of Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC, like this one, attended by Microsoft's William "It's Our Way Or the Canadian Highway" Kamela and FWD.us President Joe "Save Us From Just-Sort-of-OK US Workers" Green.
74751793
submission
theodp writes:
In their 1992 book Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry — and Made Himself the Richest Man in America, Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews described how Bill Gates and then-girlfriend Ann Winblad conducted a long-distance romance in the mid-eighties: "In a paroxysm of high-tech romanticism, the two would even have 'virtual dates': They would go to the same movie simultaneously in different cities, and discuss it on their car phones on their way to and from the theater." That was then. This is now. "Showgoers is a Chrome browser extension [public beta] to synchronize your Netflix player with someone else so that you can co-watch the same movie on different computers with no hassle. When using Showgoers, clicking play/pause or seeking to a specific spot in the movie will now send out a ping that causes your friend's browser to do the same thing. With your Netflix players automatically synced, you can focus on just sharing the experience together without hassle."
74720393
submission
theodp writes:
A major overhaul of the U.S. K-12 education system by the Senate that would make computer science a "core" academic subject, boasts Microsoft on the Issues, "advances some of the goals outlined in Microsoft’s National Talent Strategy," a two-pronged plan to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Microsoft gives a special shout-out to Sen. Al Franken, to whom Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith prescribed H-1B visas as the cure for U.S. kids' STEM ills in his 2013 Congressional testimony. Smith, who proposed creating a national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis to "galvanize action" in 2012 as he introduced Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, is also on the Board of tech billionaire-backed Code.org, the learn-to-code nonprofit founded in 2013 by Smith's next-door neighbor that has inked deals with the 7 largest U.S. school districts and taught President Obama to code at the White House last December under Microsoft's watchful eye. Presumably, the tech immigration goals of Microsoft's National Talent Strategy are being addressed on the down-low in cozy White House meetings with the leaders of Mark Zuckerberg's H-1B visa seeking FWD.us PAC, which — like Code.org — was formed in 2013 and counts Smith, Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates among its backers.
74687011
submission
theodp writes:
Asked by the NY Times if Silicon Valley is saving the world or just making money, Melinda Gates replied, "I can say without a doubt — because I’ve seen it — that some of them [SV companies] are innovating in ways that make life better for billions of people." As an example, BillG's better half suggests that a handful of Facebook engineers have solved one of education's biggest problems with their 20% time project at billionaire-backed Summit Public Schools, a small charter school operator. Gates writes, "One of the biggest problems in American education is that teachers have to teach 30 students with different learning styles at the same time. Developers at Facebook, however, have built an online system that gives teachers the information and tools they need to design individualized lessons. The result is that teachers can spend their time doing what they’re best at: inspiring kids." Some people — like the late Roger Ebert — might not be quite as impressed as Melinda to see Silicon Valley trying to reinvent the 1960's personalized-learning-wheel in 2015!
74628909
submission
theodp writes:
GeekWire reports on a group of students from Nepal who will be competing for the $50K top prize in Microsoft's Imagine Cup student tech contest with a first-person shooter in which players track down and kill poachers. "Until and unless the player kills all the poachers," reads the description for Defend Your Territory, "he/she cannot progress to next level. To make the game more interesting, there will be lots of weapons and vehicles unlock." So, is this the inspiration Google needs to take their anti-poaching drone program to the next level?
74591055
submission
theodp writes:
With Is Advertising Morally Justifiable?, philosopher Thomas Wells is out to change the way you think about Google and its ilk. Wells begins: "Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted. Two problems result from this. The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention. First, advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties. Second, you may have noticed that the world's fisheries are not in great shape. They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource. Expensively trained human attention is the fuel of twenty-first century capitalism. We are allowing a single industry to slash and burn vast amounts of this productive resource in search of a quick buck." Hey, you don't get a $470B market cap by passing on chances to monetize infants in hospital beds with contextual ads for mattresses!
74548405
submission
theodp writes:
"It is not surprising that the U.S. women have been dominant in the sport [of soccer] in recent years. The explanation for that success lies in the talent pipeline," writes General Manager of Citizenship & Public Affairs Lori Forte Harnick on The Official Microsoft Blog. "Said another way, many girls in the U.S. have the opportunity to learn how to play soccer and, as a result, they benefit from the teamwork, skill development and fun involved. That’s the kind of opportunity I would like to see develop for the technology sector, which presents a different, yet perhaps even more significant, set of opportunities for girls and young women. Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent." Going with the soccer analogy, one thing FIFA realized that Microsoft didn't is that if you want girls to play your sport, you don't take away their ball!
74523575
submission
theodp writes:
If it had a talent pipeline like the United States women's national soccer team enjoys, suggests The Official Microsoft Blog in Changing the Face of Coding, it might be able to hire a tech workforce that's more than 16.6% female. "It is not surprising that the U.S. women have been dominant in the sport [of soccer] in recent years. The explanation for that success lies in the talent pipeline," writes General Manager of Citizenship & Public Affairs Lori Forte Harnick. "Said another way, many girls in the U.S. have the opportunity to learn how to play soccer and, as a result, they benefit from the teamwork, skill development and fun involved. That’s the kind of opportunity I would like to see develop for the technology sector, which presents a different, yet perhaps even more significant, set of opportunities for girls and young women. Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent."
74473601
submission
theodp writes:
Over at the Google Research Blog, Director of Education and University Relation Maggie Johnson gives the diversity-challenged search giant an attaperson for its computer science outreach efforts, but throws teachers under the bus in her list of "reasons why the pipeline for technical talent is so small and why the diversity pipeline is even smaller." Johnson writes: "Many teachers are oblivious to or support the [CS] gender stereotypes by assigning problems and projects that are oriented more toward boys, or are not of interest to girls. This lack of relevant curriculum is important. Many women who have pursued technology as a career cite relevant courses as critical to their decision." Johnson also points to an earlier Google white paper that blames parents' lack of support and encouragement for keeping many girls from considering computing as a career. In the comments, retired Stanford prof Jeffrey Ullman and others challenge the low CS/CE Bachelor's degree production figures that Google offers as evidence of a looming CS worker shortage. "There seems to be a bit of misinformation here," Ullman explains. "The 16K BS/CS figure [cited by Google] appears to be taken from the most recent (2013-4) Taulbee study. But that looks at only the PhD-granting institutions." Hey, good enough for government work!
74434087
submission
theodp writes:
"We’re investing $10 million in organizations that are upgrading the world," Microsoft announced on in its new Upgrade Your World website, which was created in conjunction with the Windows 10 launch. "We’ve identified nine global nonprofits, and we’d like your help choosing the 10th." The missions of the selected nonprofits include fighting global poverty, preventing children living with HIV from needlessly dying, increasing access to quality education for children in the developing world, conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends, and ensuring that all kindergartners learn 'computer science.' To paraphrase Sesame Street, can you guess which cause is not like the others? If you guessed Code.org, which wants CS made a "core" K-12 subject in U.S. schools, you're right! Coincidentally, Code.org's biggest donors include Microsoft ($3M+), Ballmer Family Giving ($3M+), and Bill Gates ($1M+). And Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, who once reported to Satya Nadella, is coincidentally a sometimes jogging partner of Steve Ballmer, as well as the next-door neighbor of Microsoft General Counsel and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, whose FWD.us bio notes is responsible for Microsoft's philanthropic work. Code.org emerged on the scene shortly after Smith suggested that action on Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas could be galvanized by 'producing a crisis'.
