I took Professor Farber's class 30 years ago at Penn. Every time I click Send on an email, I remember Farber's warning about email being essentially like a postcard that anyone on the Internet could read if they wanted to. Good advice then and now.

Seems like a rebrand of the Obama-era United States Digital Service.

I didn't read the article. Don't need to. :)

These sorts of metrics are simply made up and given a seductively simple label. Someone or some organization arbitrarily decides what is a "quality job", "8th grade reading level", "healthy body mass index (BMI)", etc.

Don't worry about it too much. Life isn't that bad, but there is money to be made convincing you otherwise.

How long until they crack this new thing? 6 months? 1 year?

I bring a laptop, 27" monitor, and a Jackery. No outlets required. I do sit outside though. https://stu.photos/000312.jpg

Ten years ago, if you claimed plastic recycling was an oil industry hoax, you would have been called a nut. A recycling and climate change denier. Now, totally mainstream consensus opinion.

Employees will probably still need manager approval for time off. I could see this turning into "No Time Off". Am I being too cynical?

Western companies outsourced to China and created a beast with political influence. Now, Western companies will repeat the same in Vietnam?

Don't tell me they banned Point Break too? That's just wrong, man!

Here is a radical idea for Apple to help Black communities. Re-patriot some of your factories from China to poor Black communities in the USA. Hire people in those communities to build your products. This $60 million "investment" is just a quick pay off, not structural change.

This should not be a surprise. Nor should it be a surprise that the U.S. National Security Agency compromised networking equipment being shipped to foreign countries. All governments want to hack and surveil. Maybe, I should move to an off-grid cabin in the woods. :)

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden

Allow / Deny has been used in firewall rules for a long time. It is more descriptive than whitelist/blacklist. This is a good change. Otherwise, this seems like politically correct nonsense.

If the non-parents are producing more, they should be paid more.

If they wanted to demonstrate a racial divide they would need to test whites and blacks in other English speaking countries like England, South Africa, and Australia, not just the USA. I suspect the researchers and journalists were just excited to write a sensationalist headline.

If we just throw more money at the problem we can fix it. Giving an iPad 2 to every student is just that kind of a "solution". Until our culture and our parenting change, we will continue to produce kids who aren't interested in school and learning.

Successful immigrants show us what is really important. I can think of 2 Chinese women who I know very well. They came to New York City at age 7 and age 12. Parents were dirt poor, didn't speak English, could only afford the rent in the worst part of town or a housing project. Never had a computer or a fancy graphing calculator. Parents worked upwards of 100 hours a week to put food on the table. But what these parents did was fairly simple, they actually looked at their children's homework every night and made them correct their mistakes. And if the essay had sloppy penmanship, it was torn up and they had to re-write it. The parents kept track of when tests were and made sure their kids studied for them. They were involved, they cared, and their kids both made it into the Ivy League and eventually graduate school.

I know this is a bit of rambling post, but I hope you get my point. No magic gadget is going to fix the problems our culture faces. No bag of money is either.