An anonymous reader writes: Cory Doctorow has an article in Wired explaining why crafting laws to restrict software is going to hurt us in the long run. The reason? Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains. If we don't control the software, then at some point, we won't control parts of our homes and our selves. Doctorow writes, "Any law or regulation that undermines computers' utility or security also ripples through all the systems that have been colonized by the general-purpose computer. And therein lies the potential for untold trouble and mischief. Code always has flaws, and those flaws are easy for bad guys to find. But if your computer has deliberately been designed with a blind spot, the bad guys will use it to evade detection by you and your antivirus software. That's why a 3-D printer with anti-gun-printing code isn't a 3-D printer that won't print guns—the bad guys will quickly find a way around that. It's a 3-D printer that is vulnerable to hacking by malware creeps who can use your printer's 'security' against you: from bricking your printer to screwing up your prints to introducing subtle structural flaws to simply hijacking the operating system and using it to stage attacks on your whole network."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last Summer Simple Search was launched, giving you the ability to search a single feed at a time. Obviously not ideal, but it was far less effort than the big enchilada: full text search across every site you subscribe to. It took a few months to come back to attack the full problem, but that means I could also take the time to do it right.

Full text search works just like the old simple search did. Open a folder or site and search at the top of the screen. Results come back instantly as you type. And this will automatically search in story titles, full text content, authors, and tags.

Because you’re searching for a story, hidden stories are also shown in the results, albeit with a red unread mark (as shown above). Also, in order to handle the demands of full text search, the first time you perform a search the system will index all of your feeds, which can take a couple minutes. It’s a one time process and you will see a progress bar that will update automatically when finished.

Since this was one of the most requested features since day one, I’m now looking to decide on the next big feature. There’s a few big ones to hit: an organizer that surfaces inactive feeds that no longer get read, a discovery platform that helps you find users, stories, and feeds related to what you like and what you may not even know you like yet, and porting many of these web-only features to Android and iOS.

snydeq writes "With eight qualified candidates for every 10 openings, today's talented developers have their pick of perks, career paths, and more, InfoWorld reports in its inside look at some of the startups and development firms fueling the hottest market for coding talent the tech industry has ever seen. 'Every candidate we look at these days has an offer from at least one of the following companies: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Square, Pinterest, or Palantir,' says Box's Sam Schillace. 'If you want to play at a high level and recruit the best engineers, every single piece matters. You need to have a good story, compensate fairly, engage directly, and have a good culture they want to come work with. You need to make some kind of human connection. You have to do all of it, and you have to do all of it pretty well. Because everyone else is doing it pretty well.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

somegeekynick writes "Feedly users, a lot of whom migrated from the now-defunct Google Reader, are now finding out that they will not be able to login to the service without a Google+ Profile. In a blog post from Edwin Khodabakchian, which was posted almost at the same time the change rolled out, the reason for the change is stated as following Google's own move from using OAuth to Google+ for authentication. What has riled up a lot of users, as can be read in the comments, is that this change has come without warning and a lot of feeds are now being 'held hostage' by Feedly, especially for users who are reluctant to create Google+ Profiles."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Dissent, Moshe Z. Marvit writes Interview with an Adjunct Organizer: “People Are Tired of the Hypocrisy”:

The debate over working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko on September 1. Vojtko, who had a long career as an adjunct professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died penniless after being fired from the university in the last year of her life. Her story served as a reminder of what has become a massive underclass of underpaid contingent labor in academia. Dan Kovalik, senior associate general counsel of the United Steelworkers, wrote an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that brought news of Votjko’s death to a wider audience. Kovalik has been working with Duquesne adjunct faculty for several years, helping them organize a union and fight for better working conditions. At the time of Votjko’s death, he was assisting her in a legal fight to keep her job and her independence. I spoke with Kovalik in his office in the United Steelworkers building in Pittsburgh. Moshe Marvit: Can you describe the working conditions of adjunct faculty? Dan Kovalik: As I’ve come to learn, and I didn’t realize it until about a year and a half ago when adjuncts approached us to organize, the conditions are just abysmal. The folks that came to me at that time were making $3,000 for a three-credit course. So say you teach a load of two courses a semester, and you have two semesters a year, then that’s $12,000 right there. No benefits. Maybe you get a summer course in there, so maybe you make $15,000 per year. That’s barely enough to live on, especially if you have a family. I know a guy who teaches seven courses per semester to make ends meet at three different universities. They call it a “milk run.” It had always been my perception that going into the academy would be a great life. You would get a good salary; you would get benefits; you would get the benefit where your kids could go to school for free there or at a reduced rate. Adjuncts don’t get that. I’ve come to learn that 75 percent of all faculty around the country are adjuncts. It’s this kind of dirty secret of the academy. Meanwhile there are just a few at the top who are doing well. It looks a lot more like the corporate world than like nonprofit education. MM: And has it been like this for a while, or has it become worse over the last several decades? DK: The phenomenon of adjuncts has been around for a while—since the 1970s. But two things are new: the overreliance on adjuncts and the CEO-like pay for the president of the university along with a handful of administrators. So you have the president making anywhere from $700,000 at Duquesne University to over a million, plus benefits and other nice goodies, at bigger universities. And then you have a handful of administrators—provosts, some vice presidents, and deans—making a couple of hundred thousand or a quarter of a million dollars. Again, at the bigger universities even more. And then you have the 25 percent full faculty that make a decent salary and receive benefits. And I don’t begrudge them that. What they make is nothing compared to the administrators. And you have this huge peasantry of adjuncts that are making poverty wages without benefits. MM: Some adjuncts have chosen to organize. How successful have these efforts been in getting a union in place, getting a contract in place, and improving working conditions? DK: It seems to me that most are not unionized, but there have been some successes. Georgetown recently recognized an adjunct union and is in the process of negotiating a contract. The University of San Francisco, which is Catholic, negotiated a contract. On several other campuses—I’m having trouble remembering all of them—adjuncts have gotten contracts and sometimes been able to double their salaries and get benefits. It definitely improves things when they get unions, but it’s kind of a slow and steady process. We had an adjunct conference in April, and there was a guy from SEIU who talked about how they were organizing regionally in Washington, D.C., and they’ve been very successful with that. Again, I think it’s a place that’s ripe for organizing, but there are a lot of unorganized adjuncts. [...] MM: What do you think the solution is here? Your description sounds like the current system is unsustainable. With highly-paid administrators and the two extremes—tenured faculty, who have decent pay and strong job security, and a growing class of adjunct faculty, who make little and have no job security—do you think the whole system needs to be reformed? DK: They have to start getting away from this two-tiered model. They have to find a way to bridge the gap between this poverty-stricken group and those that are doing well. That can’t be allowed to happen. What that compromise solution is going to be, I’m not certain. But I think they can’t have a system where they come to rely on this cheap workforce because it’s not only unfair to the adjuncts, it’s unfair to the parents who must wonder where the heck their money is going. They’re also destroying the academy. Because as this happens, more and more students are going to ask, “why would I get a PhD? You want me to have a PhD to teach your students, yet why would I do that? Because it seems to me if I get a PhD, I’m going to end up making poverty wages. I can do that now without a PhD. I’ll go to Starbucks and do it.” They’re destroying their own system, and they’re going to wake up and realize that students and parents have decided that there’s no use for the university anymore.

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Senate Republicans unveil 'new jobs plan' identical to all previous GOP 'jobs plans':

With as much fanfare as could be mustered, which as it turns out is not all that much, Senate Republicans (in this instance, John McCain, Rand Paul and Rob Portman) have released their newest "jobs plan", this one called the "Real American Jobs Act", which is not to be confused with the American Jobs Act, because this one has the word "Real". The carefully crafted document is identical to every other Republican "jobs plan" proposed in the last few years: [The plan] amounts to a conservative’s dream agenda: targeting labor and environmental regulations, enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, encouraging energy production and expanding free trade, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO. So, their "jobs plan" is to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, gut regulations, drill for more oil and do a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is literally the exact same crap in every other Republican "plan" in existence. The difference is that this time, they're adding the word "Real."

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Tweet of the Day:

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Every Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio."

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High Impact Posts. The Week's High Impact Posts. Top Comments. Overnight News Digest.

Mass Surveillance Destroys Innovation, Trust, the U.S. Internet Market, and a Prime Ingredient Needed For Prosperity

Edward Snowden said this week:

The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy.

He’s right. Anonymity and privacy increase innovation.

Anyone who has ever played a musical instrument knows that you need time to experiment and try new things in the privacy of your home – or your band’s garage – in order to improve. If every practice was at Carnegie Hall in front of a big crowd, you would be too self-conscious to experiment and try something new.

Same with every other field. Think field … think of an artist painting in the middle of a major museum. Or museum, or a beginning programmer (think of a young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs) whose code is being livecast all over the Internet. Or a brilliant inventor (such as a leaner Elon Musk) whose first rough sketch is being dissected in real time.

As 4Chan’s founder noted:

[Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg’s totally wrong on anonymity being total cowardice. Anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, raw way,” Poole said, adding that the internet allows people to “reinvent themselves” as if they were moving home or starting a new job.

“The cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself,” he said.

Moreover, trust is key for a prosperous economy. It’s hard to trust when your government, your internet service provider and your favorite websites are all spying on you.

In addition, the destruction of privacy by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and the entire U.S. economy (Facebook lost 11 millions users as of April mainly due to privacy concerns … and that was before the Snowden revelations)

And as we noted last December:

Personal freedom and liberty – and freedom from the arbitrary exercise of government power – are strongly correlated with a healthy economy, but America is descending into tyranny.

Authoritarian actions by the government interfere with the free market, and thus harm prosperity.

U.S. News and World Report notes:

The Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is out, and the news is not good for the United States. Ranked among the five freest countries in the world from 1975 through 2002, the United States has since dropped to 18th place.

The Cato institute notes:

The United States has plummeted to 18th place in the ranked list, trailing such countries as Estonia, Taiwan, and Qatar.

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Actually, the decline began under President George W. Bush. For 20 years the U.S. had consistently ranked as one of the world’s three freest economies, along with Hong Kong and Singapore. By the end of the Bush presidency, we were barely in the top ten.

And, as with so many disastrous legacies of the Bush era, Barack Obama took a bad thing and made it worse.

But the American government has shredded the constitution, by … spying on all Americans, and otherwise attacking our freedoms.

Indeed, rights won in 1215 – in the Magna Carta – are being repealed.

Economic historian Niall Ferguson notes, draconian national security laws are one of the main things undermining the rule of law:

We must pose the familiar question about how far our civil liberties have been eroded by the national security state – a process that in fact dates back almost a hundred years to the outbreak of the First World War and the passage of the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act. Recent debates about the protracted detention of terrorist suspects are in no way new. Somehow it’s always a choice between habeas corpus and hundreds of corpses.

Of course, many of this decades’ national security measures have not been taken to keep us safe in the “post-9/11 world” … indeed, many of them [including spying on Americans] started before 9/11.

And America has been in a continuous declared state of national emergency since 9/11, and we are in a literally never-ending state of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.

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So lawlessness infringement of our liberty is destroying our prosperity.

Put another way, lack of privacy kills the ability to creatively criticize bad government policy … and to demand enforcement of the rule of law.

Free speech and checks and balances on the power of government officials are two Why is this important? Because free speech is one of the main elements of justice in any society. And … and a strong rule of law is – in turn – in turn the main determinant of GDP growth.

Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge points out (edited slightly for readability):

Though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks), anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the United States. Used by the likes of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (aka publius) to write the Federalist Papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume.

Particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the United States, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech.

Like the Economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker – as it should be. We believe not only that you should be comfortable with anonymous speech in such an environment, but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t.