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Submission + - Inside the Military-Police Center That Spies on Baltimore's Rioters (gawker.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Adam Weinstein on a program designed to catch terrorists attacking Baltimore that is now being used to spy on protesters: 'On Ambassador Road, just off I-695 around the corner from the FBI, nearly 100 employees sit in a high-tech suite and wait for terrorists to attack Baltimore. They’ve waited 11 years. But they still have plenty of work to do, like using the intel community’s toys to target this week’s street protests.' Great read.

Submission + - Bernie Sanders, H-1B skeptic

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Will the Vermont senator raise the visibility of the visa issue with his presidential run?

The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.

Submission + - UMG v Grooveshark settled, no money judgment against individuals

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: UMG's case against Grooveshark, which was scheduled to go to trial Monday, has been settled. Under the terms of the settlement (PDF), (a) a $50 million judgment is being entered against Grooveshark, (b) the company is shutting down operations, and (c) no money judgment at all is being entered against the individual defendants.

Submission + - Disney replaces longtime IT staff with H-1B workers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, the partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press. One of the briefing documents obtained after the meeting stated, "H-1B workers complement — instead of displace — U.S. Workers." Last October, however, Disney laid off at least 135 IT staff (though employees say it was hundreds more), many of them longtime workers. Disney then replaced them with H-1B contractors that company said could better "focus on future innovation and new capabilities." The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," one former employee said. Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, but the former staff interviewed by Computerworld said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs. Use of visa workers in a layoff is a public policy issue, particularly for Disney. Ten U.S. senators are currently seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."

Submission + - Median age at Google is 29, says age discrimination lawsuit (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The typical employee at Google is relatively young, according to a lawsuit brought by an older programmer who is alleging age discrimination. Between 2007 and 2013, Google's workforce grew from 9,500 to more than 28,000 employees, "yet as of 2013, its employees' median age was 29 years old," the lawsuit claims. That's in contrast to the median age of nearly 43 for all U.S. workers who are computer programmers, according to the lawsuit.

Submission + - Median age at Google is 29, says age discrimination lawsuit (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The typical employee at Google is relatively young, according to a lawsuit brought by an older programmer who is alleging age discrimination. Between 2007 and 2013, Google's workforce grew from 9,500 to more than 28,000 employees, "yet as of 2013, its employees' median age was 29 years old," the lawsuit claims. That's in contrast to the median age of nearly 43 for all U.S. workers who are computer programmers, according to the lawsuit.

Submission + - House bill slashes research critical to cybersecurity (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: A U.S. House bill that will set the nation's basic research agenda for the next two years increases funding for computer science, but at the expense of other research areas. The funding bill, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chair of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, hikes funding for computer science, but cuts — almost by half — social sciences funding, which includes the study of human behavior. Cybersecurity uses human behavior research because humans are often the weakest security link. Research funding social, behavioral and economic sciences will fall from $272 million to $150 million, a 45% decrease. The bill also takes a big cut out of geosciences research, which includes climate change study, from $1.3 billion to $1.2 billion, an 8% decrease. The insight into human behaviors that comes from the social science research, "is critical to understanding how best to design and implement hardware and software systems that are more secure and easier to use," wrote J. Strother Moore, the CRA chair and a professor of computer science at the University of Texas.

Submission + - Software, tractors, and property rights

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership

In a particularly spectacular display of corporate delusion, John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”

Submission + - TPP: Toward Absolutist Capitalism

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Naked Capitalism

There are many excellent arguments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two of which — local zoning over-rides, and loss of national sovereignty — I’ll briefly review as stepping stones to the main topic of the post: Absolutist Capitalism, for which I make two claims: 1) The TPP implies a form of absolute rule, a tyranny as James Madison would have understood the term, and 2) The TPP enshrines capitalization as a principle of jurisprudence. ...

... So, what Madison warned of is exactly what ISDS does: The judge is the legislator, leading to “arbitary control.” And arbritary control is absolutism, just as surely as it was in the age of the divine right of kings.[2] And for bonus points, the judges and the legislators are conflicted, open to corruption, and accountable neither to the voters nor to any system of precedent.

Submission + - Experimental UI Could Change Future of Code Editors

Submitted by Adam Kumpf
Adam Kumpf writes: A new experimental webapp, Sketchwrite, may look like any other hairbrained online service made by your 10 year old cousin, but buried within it is a little idea that could have a significant impact on the larger developer community.

Sketchwrite combines, as you probably guessed, sketches and writing. However, the way Sketchwrite keeps images and text in sync is different than what you typically find in text/image hybrid environments (like text editors which use relative anchors or explicit object boxes, and image editors which use absolute positioning for each element or layer); instead Sketchwrite anchors are implicit to what/where you draw on the page and flow with the text.

By specifying a font with tightly controlled rendering characteristics (size, line height, kerning, letter spacing, etc.), and using a fixed-width environment, text can be variable-width, seamlessly flow (i.e. line wrap), and work exactly as you'd expect in a modern word-processor. But unlike a word processor, the consistent and predictable relationship between letters and positioning means that sketches or images can be arbitrarily added to the page and remain in sync as text is edited above or below where the sketch was placed. Said differently, the vertical position of each drawing is maintained dynamically by line, while the horizontal position is kept absolute.

Most programmers have encountered complex segments of code that rely on tedious ASCII diagrams to explain how a complex process or algorithm functions. Sketchwrite's approach is a proof-of-concept for what could eventually lead to more integrated ways of adding ad-hoc images to any plain text document; particularly interesting is the possibility of embedding related visual diagrams, graphical notes, or any other media alongside code and comments.

While Sketchwrite doesn't explicitly mention programming or IDEs, it doesn't take much imagination to consider what a similar UI approach could afford code editors (and the code development process in general) with some relatively minor changes (here's a quick example of embedded sketches with javascript code in Sketchwrite).

Submission + - K-12 CS Education Provider to Largest School Districts Eyes $200M in H-1B Fees

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Endorsed by the White House and bankrolled by tech's wealthiest individuals and their corporations, 501c3 tax-exempt nonprofit Code.org has inked deals to bring K-12 computer science education to 7 of the largest US school districts. On Thursday, the group followed up on its earlier Congressional testimony, suggesting on Twitter and Tumblr that $200M in visa fees paid by its backers and others for H-1B workers be made available for CS education efforts. "With only 10% of all STEM graduates choosing to major in computer science," exclaimed Code.org in a blog post, "it’s no surprise the U.S. needs to bring in so many skilled workers from other countries!" Hey, it's also probably no surprise that many of Code.org's backers are also currently pressing for additional H-1B visas through Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC and other entities!

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