Intel forms a self-driving car technology group

Intel is no stranger to working on self-driving car technology, but it’s now proving that it’s committed for the long haul. As part of a broader organizational shuffle, the chip designer is forming an Autonomous Driving Group dedicated to these hands-off vehicles. The company’s former Internet of Things lead Doug Davis will lead the new division alongside Kathy Winter, who comes from Delphi — conveniently, one of Intel’s self-driving partners.

Former ARM executive Tom Lanstzch will take Davis’ previous spot as IoT lead.

It’s too soon to say whether or not this is more than a formality, but it’s not a shocking strategy. Intel is determined to stay relevant beyond the PC, and that means giving extra attention to categories like autonomy, IoT and wearables. The company can’t afford to cede ground in the automotive world, either. NVIDIA is quickly making a name for itself in driverless tech, and a slow response could lead to Intel becoming a bit player in a particularly hot market.

Source: Intel Newsroom

Holidays bring us a rare discount on Sonos speakers

Sonos is now offering $30 off all of its current products, making the amazing speakers and soundbars a bit more affordable. Whether you are looking to build up your existing system, or start a new one for the first time, you won’t want to miss out on this deal. From the smaller Play:1 all the way to the Soundbar and Sub, you can save on each and every item that the company sells.

The savings are valid through the end of the year, or while supplies last. Don’t take the chance though, and make sure that you get your order in sooner than later. Which speaker will you be picking up? Let us know!

See at Sonos

Google Play doing even more to remove fake reviews and ratings

Fighting dishonest app reviews is a never-ending battle.

Google is constantly taking steps to combat a flood of fake reviews and ratings in the Play Store, and today reminded us of everything it’s doing to fix the problem. Building on its previously announced initiative of fighting fraudulent app installs, Google is also now even more confident it can identify and remove fake reviews for apps automatically without the help of developers.

From the Android Developers Blog:

In continuing our efforts to combat spammy behavior, we’ve also improved the ways we identify and remove fake reviews and ratings. With this enhanced capability we are now able to identify and remove more fake reviews and ratings with greater accuracy.

Speaking directly to the developer community who are hurt the most by piles of negative reviews, Google says in “the vast majority of cases” no action will be required by developers — it will handle things all on its own, removing these false reviews and ratings in bulk.

Developers shouldn’t rely on shady practices to boost ratings, either.

The announcement comes with an additional warning for developers, though: if you use a third-party marketing agency, you should make sure it isn’t using many of the same spam-like or dishonest reviews to try and influence your rating postitively either. Google will continue to fight things on this side as well, as the overall goal is to have the rating for apps be an honest representation of the app, not just make every app rating high.

The hope is that by removing dishonest reviews (on both ends of the spectrum) both consumers and developers can be more confident when viewing an overall rating in the Play Store. If confidence is lost, app installs (and revenue for developers) go down.

This $6 Aukey wall charger lets you charge 3 devices at once

Let’s just get this out of the way: you can never have too many chargers for your gadgets. If you’re looking to add another USB wall charger to your collection, now you can grab this solid 3-port charger from Aukey for just $6. All you have to do is use coupon code HN8L8AYI at checkout to score this savings.

Along with giving you one place to juice up three devices at once, this charger also packs a Quick Charge 2.0 port for your gadgets that support it. And if style is your concern, you can choose from either black or white versions. At $6, it’s hard to resist splurging a bit of leftover Black Friday cash on this deal. Just remember to use coupon code HN8L8AYI to snag this discount!

See at Amazon

The US tech industry will suffer if Trump tightens immigration laws

As Nov. 8th came to a close, and it became clear that America had elected Donald Trump as its next president, a familiar feeling crept over me. It was a deep sense of anxiety that arises every year or so as I begin preparing the documents I need to renew my work visa. I never know for sure if I’ll still be in the country next year, but I’ve never felt quite so unsure about whether I would be able to continue working here.

His real agenda on immigration is still unclear, but Trump has already said he’d make radical changes to classes of visa that the tech industry sorely needs. He recently nominated Alabama senator and known immigration opponent Jeff Sessions for attorney general. Trump also claimed at one of his campaign rallies in Florida that my countrymen (Singaporeans) are one of the people stealing American jobs, even though we are a tiny country with a really expensive workforce.

I’m not alone in my anxiety. Plenty of people in tech are worried the industry will suffer under Trump’s immigration policies. I spoke with some immigration experts to see if any of this alarm was warranted, and how much the tech industry would be affected by Trump’s presidency.

To be clear, this is mostly speculation based on what Trump and his campaign have publicly said. We have only seen his 10-point proposal that focuses heavily on keeping out and deporting immigrants with criminal records and those who are here illegally. The president-elect also recently released his 100-day plan that says he will call upon the Department of Labor to investigate visa programs, but not much is clear beyond that.

Besides his talk of building a wall along America’s southern border, Trump has flip-flopped on H-1B visas for temporary, highly skilled workers. This visa class requires candidates to be employed in a specialized industry, which typically means the science, tech, engineering and medical fields. Trump said during the debates that he would soften his position, recognizing the importance of keeping talent in the US, but later changed his stance, releasing a statement on his campaign website that indicated his intent to “end forever” the use of H-1B for cheaper labor.

The H-1B visa is contentious not only because Trump can’t seem to make up his mind, but because American employers, particularly tech companies, rely heavily on it when hiring. This visa category also came under fire last year when it was discovered that Disney was replacing American employees with H-1B workers, and making them train their replacements before leaving. But it’s not clear how widespread this problem is. Meanwhile, demand for this visa continues to grow, making it one of the most widely discussed immigration categories. Each year, the number of applicants far exceeds the visas available, and it’s impossible to tell which files will get picked for consideration.

Sixty-five percent of H-1B petitions approved in 2014 were for workers in computer-related occupations, according to the latest available US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) report to Congress. Each candidate must have a recognized bachelor’s degree, though more than half of the applicants in 2014 had additional qualifications as well. I filed an H-1B petition earlier this year and was one of the unlucky thousands who did not get picked for consideration, and so I’ll have to try again next year. (Meanwhile, I continue to work legally on a different visa.)

As it stands, the H-1B application process is already a real pain and a huge source of anxiety for anyone hoping to be employed in the US. And a lot of us are more than qualified for the jobs we are applying for. But as the threat of immigrant-unfriendly policies loom, many of us now fear that our future in the US is in jeopardy.

None of the lawyers I interviewed felt that the H-1B is at risk of being abolished altogether, which, to be fair, was never a real concern. My former immigration attorney, Michael Wildes, said he has no idea what Trump is going to do, but that he is “prayerful that [Trump] will use his business talent to make this useful for America.” Wildes believes that a lot of American employers really do need the H-1B, and that it is not at risk of being killed; it is just oversubscribed.

Wildes has good reason to be conservative here. He was recently hired by Melania Trump to review her immigration records after allegations arose that she worked illegally in the US in 1995. His company also represents Trump Models and files H-1B3 petitions for the foreign individuals in that organization to work in the US during events such as Fashion Week. That alone could be reason for Trump to keep the category open, said Greg Siskind, a shareholder with immigration law firm Siskind Susser PC and author of several books on immigration law.

“Trump has used the H-1B visa and other visas many times over the years for his own businesses, so it would surprise me if he doesn’t see the value in maintaining it,” said Siskind.

In fact, Siskind says the category is somewhat protected by global law. “It is protected to an extent by the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which is a global treaty,” he said. “It requires us to provide at least 65,000 H-1B visas a year, and if we ever attempted to scrap the category and close the border, we would likely find ourselves in international trade court.”

Still, changes to H-1B are likely. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, says that Trump’s call for the DOL to investigate visa programs is a “very clear sign to the community that uses H-1B that AG Jeff Sessions is coming after them.” He believes that there is significant reason to worry that the Labor and Justice departments will attempt to move forward on these investigations, “whether or not they’re deserved.”

Some experts feel that these changes might make it harder to qualify for the H-1B. Ari Ambrose, who is counsel to Daniel Aharoni & Partners LLP, expects that the Trump administration “will tighten the rules, and perhaps require that employers search for US workers before offering a position to an H-1B employee.”

This method is already used in the so-called PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) step of the employment-based green card process, where employers have to prove that they have tried to hire an American worker for the same job and could not find an equivalent candidate, before giving a foreign worker a green card.

Siskind also expects to see changes that would make laying off a visa-based worker easier. “I would expect to see support for tougher anti-layoff provisions,” he said, “as well as a ranking system to allocate H-1Bs based on such things as how much a worker will be paid, how highly educated the worker is [and] whether they obtained a degree in the US.”

If these changes are carried out, the process of hiring such a worker would become even more complicated than it already is. There is a small ray of hope that Trump’s administration will face some difficulty within his party, though, and that might help soften the blow of potential changes to the H-1B program. However, their intentions may not necessarily be noble. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, believes that the business wing of the Republican party and business lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce will push back on proposed changes.

“A high priority for them is the ability to hire workers on these temporary visas — where the workers are often indentured because they can’t easily switch employers, and they are often underpaid compared to similarly situated American workers because laws and regulations allow it, and/or because of a lack of enforcement,” Costa said.

That disturbing detail, along with the Disney case, suggests that there are good reasons to investigate the H-1B program and whether it’s being abused. Costa believes the Trump administration could reinterpret the H-1B statute in a way that makes it more difficult for companies to do so. Siskind agrees, and said organizations using the same foreign-based staffing system as in that Disney case will face the most pressure.

Other visa classes appear to be even more vulnerable. According to Wildes, the visa that’s most likely at risk is the TN NAFTA professionals classification for Canadian and Mexican workers. Trump has in the past called NAFTA the “worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere,” and is looking to make big changes to the treaty.

Most of his proposed alterations appear to be around imposing taxes, manipulating currency and country of origin labeling, so it’s not clear yet just how much this visa class will be affected. If it does get abolished, though, the impact will be borne mostly by industries and geographical regions (i.e., the South) that depend on Mexican and Canadian workers. These people are scattered across various industries, and thus, you’re probably not going to see someone like Mark Zuckerberg take a stand against changes to this classification, because the tech industry isn’t as reliant on this visa as it is on the H-1B.

Another group of people likely to be affected are the 750,000 or so who were recently allowed to work legally under the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA, or Dream Act) program and are possibly in danger of seeing their status revoked. Indeed, Trump has promised to “immediately terminate” DACA, a move that would not only jeopardize the livelihoods of these immigrants but put them at risk of deportation, Ambrose said.

According to a recently published report by the Center for American Progress, ending the DACA program would “would wipe away at least $433.4 billion from the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, cumulatively over a decade.” Noorani believes the impact of a DACA reversal on the tech community, in particular, would be dramatic.

“My sense is that there are probably more companies than we realize that have DACA recipients working for them,” Noorani said. “A lot of these people have programming, design skills that companies are thrilled to have within their four walls.”

Noorani also reminded me of the more personal impact on Americans should there be a loss of immigrants in the workforce. “Everybody working in these offices is going to face the reality of their colleagues suddenly being out of work. What’s the impact on that team?” He added, “People like each other. It’s not just about the impact on the bottom line or what the CEO’s perspective is. This is about real people that we all work with all of a sudden being gone.”

Whether you or your colleague have one of the visas mentioned in this article, the future is uncertain. Ambrose brought up a particularly depressing point about the future of all immigration in the US. “All of the agencies that handle immigration matters, whether it be USCIS, CBP, Department of State, etc., will soon be headed by people who are, to put it mildly, hostile to immigrants. It’s safe to assume that all visa categories are at risk,” he said.

Siskind agrees. He said he believes that if Trump pursues a “time out” on issuing temporary and permanent visas, as has been suggested by Sessions and the immigration transition team’s Kris Kobach, many in Trump’s party, as well as most Democrats, would readily go along. “That would be truly disastrous for the economy and would put many industries in a tailspin,” Siskind said. “Tech is an obvious one, but everything in this country — from construction to agriculture to our universities to hospitality to health care — depends on immigrant labor.”

Ambrose believes the impact of these policies would go far beyond business. “It’s hard to imagine people will choose to live, work, study or visit a country that denigrates immigrants,” he said.

Lyft joins Uber in offering upfront fares

The cutthroat competition between Lyft and Uber sometimes has an upshot: rider-friendly features tend to spread quickly from one service to the other. And that’s certainly true today. Lyft is matching Uber’s upfront fares by introducing its own in-app fare previews for all passengers, not just Lyft Line as before. Once you plug in your starting point and destination, you’ll know just how much it will cost to get there, including taxes, tolls and Prime Time (aka surge pricing). Things are only up in the air if you either don’t pick a destination or change your mind mid-route.

Just don’t expect to see these disclosures right away. The upfront pricing is only available in “select cities” at the moment, and it’ll take months for the feature to spread to other areas. Even so, there may soon be a time when you’ll always know the hit to your bank account before you hail a car.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Lyft Blog