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Submission + - Silicon Valley Unionization Starts From The Bottom Up (itworld.com)

jfruh writes: Unionization has long been resisted in Silicon Valley, both by management and by tech workers for whom high pay is an acceptable tradeoff for long hours and job instability. But as employees beyond programmers are pulled into the tech industry's orbit, Silicon Valley may have to reckon with workers with different ideas. For instance, the drivers who shuttle Facebook employees to and from the company's campus are now represented by the Teamsters, and just won a pay increase from $18 to $24.50 an hour.

Submission + - Adware Privdog worse than Superfish

Presto Vivace writes: Comodo ships Adware Privdog worse than Superfish

tl;dr There is an adware called Privdog that gets shipped with software from Comodo. It totally breaks HTTPS security.

From Naked Capitalism's summary:

So here we have the CEO of a Certificate Authority (CA), Comodo, who is also the CEO of Privdog, whose product subverts the certificate authority system. Oh, and Comodo ships that very product with its software. These bottom feeders make Bill Gates look like St. Francis of Assisi. How deep does the rot in the software industry go, anyhow?

I am beginning to believe that Richard Stallman is right, living in freedom means using free and open software.

Submission + - IT'S NOT RACE, IT'S NOT SEX, the tech world's real discrimination problem is age (linkedin.com)

bricko writes: IT’S NOT RACE, IT’S NOT SEX, the tech world’s real discrimination problem is age.

The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age
They don’t prepare you for this in college or admit it in job interviews. The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you’re headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age and it becomes harder and harder to get a job.

What the tech industry often forgets is that with age comes wisdom. Older workers are usually better at following direction, mentoring, and leading. They tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 253

There's one problem it won't fix: the Greek debts to EU are not going to shift to the a currency just because Greece does. The debts to the rest of the EU will remain in Euros, and if the Greek "new Drachma" devalues massively compared to the Euro, the relative loan repayments in new Drachma will go up correspondingly.

Greece can't print their way out of the loans. They can print their way to cheaper exports, yes....but the can't print their way out of the loans.

Submission + - Gadgets that spy on us

Presto Vivace writes: It’s not just Samsung TVs — lots of other gadgets are spying on you

But Samsung’s televisions are far from the only seeing-and-listening devices coming into our lives. If we’re going to freak out about a Samsung TV that listens in on our living rooms, we should also be panicking about a number of other emergent gadgets that capture voice and visual data in many of the same ways. ... .... Samsung’s competitor, the LG Smart TV, has basically the same phrase about voice capture in its privacy policy: “Please be aware that if your spoken word includes personal or other sensitive information, such information will be among the Voice Information captured through your use of voice recognition features.”

It isn't just TVs, Microsoft's xBox Kinect, Amazon Echo, GM's Onstar, Chevrolet’s MyLink and PDRs, Google's Waze, and Hello's Sense all have snooping capabilities. Welcome to the world of Stasi Tech.

Comment Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes? (Score 1) 77

The different routers update on different schedules, but they generally take at least a day to do so. Redrawing the map to show an update only modifies the local area, whereas updating the routing graph can have large changes. I know work is being done to support incremental updates but I am not sure when this will be supported (and again each routing engine would do it on their own since they all work differently, they just pull down the same data from OSM). I know for OSRM they update once a day by rebuilding the entire routing graph from scratch and then dropping the old graph table and loading in the new one. Building the worldwide routing graph takes like 18 hours so they can only do it once a day currently.

-AndrewBuck

Submission + - Technology that empowers citizens

Presto Vivace writes: A System Changing Technology: Interactive Voter Choice System

The Interactive Voter Choice System (IVCS) enables voters to insert a new layer of voter-controlled online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions (BPCs) into electoral and legislative processes that can build electoral bases large enough to win elections.

Since the system will run on a single computer platform accessible by any voter via the reinventdemocracy.net website, it enables voters to autonomously create and manage their BPCs online — in most cases without having to first pass or reverse any laws, regulations or rules governing electoral and legislative processes.

A Step by Step View

Voters create personal accounts and profiles on reinventdemocracy.net and use IVCS agenda setting tools and databases to set individual legislative agendas. Voters connect with like-minded voters across the political and ideological spectrum on reinventdemocracy.net with similar agendas. Like-minded voters with similar agendas join forces to build online voting blocs, political parties and electoral coalitions (BPCs), and negotiate and vote on common agendas using the IVCS voting utility.
BPCs surmount partisan differences and legislative deadlocks by setting transpartisan legislative agendas that cross political and ideological lines. BPCs nominate transpartisan slates of candidates and build winning transpartisan electoral bases larger than the electoral base of any single political party, enabling their candidates to run for office without needing special interest campaign contributions to build a winning electoral base.
BPCs use IVCS outreach tools to recruit new members, merge BPCs to increase their electoral strength, and plan and implement get-out-the-vote campaigns to vote their candidates into office.
BPCs use their agendas to provide legislative mandates to their elected representatives and oversee their legislative actions.
BPCs pressure elected representatives to enact their agendas by signing online petitions, holding online referendums and conducting online straw recall votes using the IVCS voting utility.
BPCs evaluate and compare their agendas to their representatives' legislative track records in deciding whether to support them in the next election or run candidates to defeat them.

Submission + - What Intel's $300 million diversity pledge really means (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: Intel’s Rosalind Hudnell responsible for implementing the company’s much-publicized $300 million initiative to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020. But even with Intel’s renewed commitment to diversity, the company’s workforce will still be just about 32 percent women in five years, Hudnell estimated. Here's a rough breakdown of how the money will be spent: The funds will be applied over five years to change hiring practices, retool human resources, fund companies run by minorities and women, and promote STEM education in high schools.

Submission + - Breaking into Smart TV surveillance my be deemed a felony (washingtontimes.com)

eedwardsjr writes: Smart TV providers may try to use the DCMA to label anti-surveillance actions a felony. From the article.

Samsung’s privacy policy raised concerns with privacy activists who spotlighted the warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.” Now there are concerns that tinkering with the software by tech-savvy customers may run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.


Submission + - Southern California Edison IT workers 'beyond furious' over H-1B replacements (computerworld.com) 1

dcblogs writes: Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs. The IT organization's "transition effort" is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with "another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily," SCE said in a statement. The "transition," which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said. The H-1B program "was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill," said one SCE worker who requested anonymity. "But we're doing our job. It's not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill. "Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn't already performing," he said.

Submission + - One-in-five developers now works on IoT projects (computerworld.com)

dcblogs writes: Evans Data Corp., which provides research and intelligence for the software development industry, said that of the estimated 19 million developers worldwide, 19% are now doing IoT-related work. A year ago, the first year IoT-specific data was collected, that figure was 17%. But when developers were asked whether they plan to work in IoT development over the next year, 44% of the respondents said they are planning to do so, said Michael Rasalan, director of research at Evans.

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