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Google

Google Settles Age Descrimination Lawsuit (forbes.com) 120

Long-time Slashdot reader sfcat quotes Forbes: Almost a decade ago, courts sounded a clear warning bell that Google's culture was tainted by illegal and pervasive age discrimination. Inexplicably, Google didn't listen.

And so the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Google has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging Google engaged in a systemic practice of discriminating on the basis of age in hiring. Some 227 plaintiffs will collect an average of $35,000 each.

Google actually agreed to settle the case in December but the final settlement agreement was presented to a federal judge on Friday. The lawsuit was filed by Cheryl Fillekes, a software engineer who was interviewed by Google four times from 2007 to 2014, starting when she was 47, but was never hired.

The lawsuit alleged Google hired younger workers based on "cultural fit."

In the settlement Google also agrees to train its managers about age bias and create an "age diversity in recruiting" committee. Forbes points out that the median age for all Google employees in 2017 was 30, "a decade younger than the median age of U.S. workers."

"On its web page, Google says its mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' But for some reason Google has failed as a company to organize and use the information that age discrimination is illegal."
Transportation

Alaska Airlines Trials Virtual Reality On Some Flights (pcmag.com) 94

Alaska Airlines is trailing virtual reality onboard 10 flights between Boston and Seattle and Boston and San Diego. The headsets are provided by French in-flight entertainment company SkyLights and will only be offered to first-class passengers. PCMag.com reports: The trial kicked off on Sunday, Sept. 23 and runs through Thursday, Sept. 27. Forget trying to pay attention to that small seatback monitor as jet engines and crying babies blare in the background. "Wearing the headset is comparable to having a personal movie screen in front of you," the airline said. "When paired with noise-cancelling headphones, it's easy to feel like you're at the movie theater instead of flying." Passengers participating in the trial can choose from a selection of 2D and 3D movies. [...] There's also several "360-degree immersive experiences that let guests explore different worlds by just slowly moving their head around," Alaska Airlines said.

Comment No ASLR in Linux devices? (Score 1) 121

The Ars article about BlueBorne cites someone from Armis claiming that "the majority of Linux devices on the market today don't use address space layout randomization," explaining that ASLR would mitigate the impact of the defect. Is that true about most Linux devices and ASLR? What kind of devices are they talking about? (It notes that Android is not in that category. I would think Android made up the majority of Linux devices, but I guess not.)

Comment Re:What's wrong with Gmail? (Score 1) 121

I didn't read TFA, let alone finish reading TFS... After all, and I'm assuming the service is hosted in the US, the White House has access to any keys which are transmitted to and from Silent Circle's systems.

From TFA: "Silent Circle stresses that their product offers secure communications within the networks and only uses Canadian servers that are outside of U.S. government control."

Comment Re:wow (Score 1) 193

I would not be all that surprised if it would cost more to maintain and extend Accumulo than it would to build the security features into HBase or Cassandra and allow those communities to shepherd the project. It's inherently difficult to measure -- which community (Accumulo's or somebody else's) is more active or productive, or has more potential to be so, and how do you value that monetarily? I guess you weigh it against the cost of support hours that would be needed otherwise. I think the OMB directive at its core is the right move, and even has the potential to push government dollars or tech support into OSS projects (versus USG building stuff in-house that may or may not get released and may or may not die a swift death).

Comment Ask Bloggingheads.tv how they do it (Score 1) 96

Bloggingheads posts hour-long video conversations between two people and have been doing it for a few years now. I know they're now trying to use Skype when possible, but that requires high-speed on both ends, so they still use the old system a good portion of the time. My understanding is that there's some sort of hardware setup that gets shipped by post to the interviewee, and each side talks over the phone and looks at a camera. The people talking can't actually see each other, which is one downside, but the quality is generally good. http://bloggingheads.tv/

Comment Re:huh? (Score 4, Interesting) 236

True, TFA doesn't touch at all on why Microsoft -- just why not Google. I guess Microsoft doesn't have a new social media pony it's pushing on everyone at the company. In the battle of who's more of a technology company, Microsoft or Google, the winner is...the one that doesn't make its money from ads?

Comment Re:So much for WebOS (Score 2) 64

I agree -- paid techs help make open source projects successful, particularly large ones, like an OS. But the real problem here is not the lack of paid developers, but the lack of real stakeholders. Even if HP kept on a lot more staff, the project would die simply because nobody has a vested interest in seeing it live. The justification right now seems to be that it's cool, not that somebody has a product that depends on it.
Security

Man Arrested For Taking Photo of Open ATM 1232

net_shaman writes in with word of a Seattle man who was arrested for taking a photo of an ATM being serviced. "Today I was shopping at the downtown Seattle REI. I was about to buy a Thule hitch mount bike rack. They were out of the piece that locks the bike rack into the hitch. So I was in the customer service line to special order one. It was a long line and while I was waiting, I saw two of guys (employees of Loomis, as I later learned) refilling the ATM. I walked over and took a picture with my iPhone of them and more interestingly of the open ATM. I took the picture because I'm fascinated by the insides of things that we don't normally get to see. ... That was when Officer GE Abed (#6270) spun me around and put handcuffs on me."

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