Patrick Thibodeau
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Patrick Thibodeau
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Who gets to telecommute once Zika’s bite comes closer?
Florida’s announcement Tuesday that a locally transmitted Zika case turned up Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, moves reported cases of the virus a little closer to Georgia. That’s where Maria Stephens, who is pregnant, works as a senior data research analyst.Stephens was initially skeptical about Zika and paid little attention to the headlines about it.“I don't really respond to dramatization and felt that things were possibly being blown out of proportion,” said Stephens. “I'm a statistician at heart and only listen to numbers, so when my quant-minded OB-GYN shared the figures with me, this threat became a lot more real."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Who gets to telecommute once Zika’s bite comes closer?
Florida’s announcement Tuesday that a locally transmitted Zika case turned up Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, moves reported cases of the virus a little closer to Georgia. That’s where Maria Stephens, who is pregnant, works as a senior data research analyst.Stephens was initially skeptical about Zika and paid little attention to the headlines about it.“I don't really respond to dramatization and felt that things were possibly being blown out of proportion,” said Stephens. “I'm a statistician at heart and only listen to numbers, so when my quant-minded OB-GYN shared the figures with me, this threat became a lot more real."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Video: The real story behind the H-1B visa program
The vast majority of people who work in IT did everything right: They invested in their education, studied difficult subjects, kept their skills updated. They own homes, raise families and look to the future.But no job is safe, no future entirely secure -- something IT workers know more than most. Given their role, they are most often the change agents, the people who deploy technologies and bring in automation that can turn workplaces upside down. To survive, they count on being smart, self-reliant and one step ahead.Into that mix of dedication and hope comes the H-1B visa program. It allows a limited number of high-skilled foreign workers to work at U.S. companies. But over the years it has also become a way for companies to outsource jobs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Median IT wage is $10K higher for men than women
Men in IT earn a median of $82,370 a year compared to $72,035 for women, according to new data by the U.S. Census Bureau.The wage gap is perhaps is the most disquieting finding in a study of 2014 data by the Bureau, which also found that IT workers are younger than those in other occupations, more likely to have an advanced degree and more often work from home.Women comprise 25% of the IT workforce, which U.S. officials put at 4.6 million, a figure roughly in line with private estimates. In 1990, women constituted 31% of the IT workforce.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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South China Sea conflict could be IT’s Black Swan
The vast majority of the world’s electronics -- its servers, PCs, mobile phones -- are now manufactured in China. This means any inadvertent escalation over the on-going South China Sea territorial dispute could do more than raise geopolitical tensions.It could easily disrupt electronics manufacturing for the world.About 84% of the world’s electronics are made in Asia, and about 85% of those goods are made in China, said Michael Palma, an analyst at IDC. “All that product flows through the South China Sea,” said Palma.China is claiming much of the South China Sea as its own territory after building artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago -- and it's ignoring a recent international tribunal ruling against its territorial claims, further stirring regional tensions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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South China Sea conflict could be IT’s Black Swan
The vast majority of the world’s electronics -- its servers, PCs, mobile phones -- are now manufactured in China. This means any inadvertent escalation over the on-going South China Sea territorial dispute could do more than raise geopolitical tensions.It could easily disrupt electronics manufacturing for the world.About 84% of the world’s electronics are made in Asia, and about 85% of those goods are made in China, said Michael Palma, an analyst at IDC. “All that product flows through the South China Sea,” said Palma.China is claiming much of the South China Sea as its own territory after building artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago -- and it's ignoring a recent international tribunal ruling against its territorial claims, further stirring regional tensions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tech sector employment sees gain in July
In industries such as finance, retail, healthcare and others, IT employment broadly declined in July by 88,000 jobs, or 1.9%, according to tech industry trade group CompTIA.The cuts last month reduced occupational IT employment by 46,000 jobs so far this year, to about 4.43 million.That sounds alarming, right? Perhaps not -- if you widen the picture a bit.INSIDER: 15 ways to screw up a job interview In June, IT occupational employment showed a net gain of 74,000 jobs, and this month-to-month volatility is normal because of the way the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports the data, according the industry group. The government data includes part-time workers, such as someone doing Web design on the side.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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An engineer uses IoT to tackle illness
Daniel Strabley's day job is helping to protect the U.S. from weapons of mass destruction. He works on a software suit that interacts with sensors to detect chemical and radiation threats. The sensor information, as you may imagine, is complicated, and one of his tasks is to make it understandable to users.This means that anyone, from an Army private not long out of high school to a Ph.D.-holding nuclear physicist, needs an interface that is meaningful to their knowledge level.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 most powerful Internet of Things companies The work on detecting weapons of mass destruction is similar in concept to what Strabley is doing to help his wife's grandfather, who is suffering from dementia. He has written software that can help people with varying degrees of cognitive issues, and is using sensors such as Amazon's new IOT buttons, to improve communication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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HPE’s Whitman endorses Clinton; will Trump retaliate if he wins?
In 2011, Hewlett-Packard ranked seventh in federal contracting. Barack Obama, a Democrat, was president. In 2012, HP CEO Meg Whitman publicly backed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for president, and even served as a California "statewide honorary chairman" for him.Did Whitman's backing of Romney help or hurt HP? Will her particularly brutal condemnation Tuesday of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hurt the firm, should he win the election?If Whitman's support for Romney caused any corporate damage it is not apparent in its federal contracting. In 2011, HP's total federal contracting was pegged at $3.83 billion by Washington Technology in its annual ranking of federal contractors, putting it in seventh place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Politics blamed for feds’ reliance on old IT
The U.S. government is spending more than $81 billion on information technology. But only about 24% is spent overall on new systems, with the rest being used to maintain old systems.The Social Security Administration, for instance, has more than 60 million lines of Cobol, the agency’s Office of Inspector General reported last month.And the U.S. Defense Department is running some nuclear weapons support systems on an IBM Series/1 Computer, circa 1970s, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently reported.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers “Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete,” wrote the GAO in its report released in May. “Specifically, many use outdated languages and old parts.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Politics blamed for feds’ reliance on old IT
The U.S. government is spending more than $81 billion on information technology. But only about 24% is spent overall on new systems, with the rest being used to maintain old systems.The Social Security Administration, for instance, has more than 60 million lines of Cobol, the agency’s Office of Inspector General reported last month.And the U.S. Defense Department is running some nuclear weapons support systems on an IBM Series/1 Computer, circa 1970s, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently reported.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers “Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete,” wrote the GAO in its report released in May. “Specifically, many use outdated languages and old parts.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google fires back at age discrimination lawsuit
Google, in new federal court papers, is rebutting claims of age discrimination and its handling of two older job applicants who were rejected for positions. Google insisted in a court filing Friday that its policies "rigorously forbids discrimination of any kind," including age discrimination. It is fighting an age discrimination lawsuit filed last year by two plaintiffs who were rejected for jobs. Both are over the age of 40. One plaintiff, Cheryl Fillekes, a programmer, filed a motion in June to make this age discrimination lawsuit a "collective action" case for software engineers, site reliability engineers or systems engineers over the age of 40 who applied for a job at Google, but were rejected. That could broaden the case to include thousands of people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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CSC announces layoffs in advance of HPE merger
Computer Sciences Corp. is laying off workers as it shifts some work overseas, according to a federal application for employment benefits.A federal Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) benefit application, filed on July 14, claims "CSC merging with HP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) caused services to be shifted to India. This included teleworkers in the US."It says 500 workers are affected. The types of jobs are not described.In May, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise announced it would spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with CSC. This combined entity will have about $26 billion in revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Democrats give thumbs up to Silicon Valley
It wasn't what Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday night on the stage of the Democratic National Convention that was important to Silicon Valley. His speech was mostly generalities and attacks on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. It was Bloomberg's presence that was the message.Bloomberg is a strong and well-known champion for reducing barriers to highly skilled immigrants and for raising visa caps. He co-chairs the high-skilled immigration advocacy group, Partnership for a New American Economy with Disney CEO Bob Igner and other prominent business leaders. Disney laid off about 250 IT employees last year after hiring H-1B-using IT contractors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Issa bill would kill a big H-1B loophole
In 1998, Congress raised the H-1B cap and then set some controversial H-1B visa rules. It prohibited the largest users of H-1B visa -- firms employing 15% or more visa workers -- from displacing U.S. workers. They also are required to make a "good faith" effort to recruit a U.S. worker for a position. Congress then inserted a massive loophole. U.S. workers can be displaced by H-1B-dependent employers -- such as IT outsourcing firms -- provided the visa holder has a master's degree or the company pays visa workers at least $60,000. This salary level has not changed in 18 years. Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Rep. Pascrell’s H-1B bill is a message to Democrats
Early this month, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) introduced an H-1B reform bill that, he said, has little chance of being enacted this year. But that wasn't the point of the bill."I introduced my legislation, in fact, when I saw [that H-1B] wasn't going to be in the [Democratic] platform," Pascrell said during a telephone press conference Monday about his legislation.The Democrats, both presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the party itself, have not called for H-1B reforms. It's not mentioned in Clinton's or in the party's draft platforms. That's in contrast to Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump, who has detailed visa reforms in his platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The H-1B positions of Clinton and Trump
With the political conventions set for the next two weeks, now is the time to offer a summary of where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand on tech's top issue, immigration. Silicon Valley fears Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. A letter released Thursday and signed by about 150 technologists, inventors and entrepreneurs, said Trump would be a disaster for innovation. Much of their criticism was directed at his proposed immigration policies. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is far more aligned with Silicon Valley on immigration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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What Silicon Valley doesn’t say in its Trump attack
Donald Trump will be "a disaster for innovation," according to some of Silicon Valley's technology leaders. But the innovation disaster they're warning of is already ongoing in America.U.S. support for research is declining, and just last month China surpassed the U.S. in number of supercomputers on the Top500 list. Both countries are now in a race to build exascale systems (1,000 petaflops), a competition the U.S. is almost certain to lose based on published roadmaps.The U.S. has set 2023 as its goal for exascale; China is aiming for 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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GE and Microsoft team on IoT platform
GE's industrial Internet of Things platform, Predix, is going to be available on the Microsoft Azure cloud, but not immediately. It will be globally commercial available in the second quarter of 2017.GE believes that Predix needs to be a complete product, from the edge (the sensor on the shop floor) to the cloud, or Azure in this instance. The upshot: It will be easier to integrate tools such as Microsoft's Cortana, the intelligent personal assistant, with Predix.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Review: Acer Chromebook 14 for Work aims at corporate IT
The Acer Chromebook 14 for Work is part of a new generation of Chromebooks. This isn't a low-end laptop aimed at budget shoppers, nor is it Google's Chromebook Pixel, which originally sold for $1,299 and was designed for people who work in the cloud and want hardware as good as anything Apple produces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)