Världens största FN-styrka har hoppat av, men Kongo-Kinshasas armé genomför ändå en stor offensiv i östra Kongo. Attacken riktas mot dem som låg bakom folkmordet i Rwanda 1994, en grupp extremister som i 20 år hållit till östra Kongos skogar.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has put up a post about explaining what they wanted to accomplish when they started working on Project Spartan, the new web browser that will ship with Windows 10. They say some things you wouldn't expect to hear from Microsoft: "We needed a plan to make it easy for Web developers to build compatible sites regardless of which browser they develop first for. We needed a plan which ensured that our customers have a good experience regardless of whether they browse the head or tail of the Web. We needed a plan which gave enterprise customers a highly backward compatible browser regardless of how quickly we pushed forward with modern HTML5 features." They also explain how they decided against using WebKit so they wouldn't contribute to "a monoculture on the Web."

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Efter honungsbin och råttor satsar armén på tyngre rekryteringar. I Sydafrika utbildas elefanter att upptäcka tjuvskyttar och minor genom att känna igen deras doft.

An anonymous reader writes: This article has a look inside the #NoEstimates movement, which wants to rid the software world of time estimates for projects. Programmers argue that estimates are wrong too often and a waste of time. Other stakeholders believe they need those estimates to plan and to keep programmers accountable. Is there a middle ground? Quoting: "Software project estimates are too often wrong, and the more time we throw at making them, the more we steal from the real work of building software. Also: Managers have a habit of treating developers' back-of-the-envelope estimates as contractual deadlines, then freaking out when they're missed. And wait, there's more: Developers, terrified by that prospect, put more and more energy into obsessive trips down estimation rabbit-holes. Estimation becomes a form of "yak-shaving" — a ritual enacted to put off actual work."

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sarahnaomi writes: Facebook this week released a major report on global internet access, as part of the company's Internet.org campaign, which aims to bring cheap internet to new markets in partnership with seven mobile companies. Facebook says 1.39 billion people used its product in December 2014, and it's natural for the company to try to corral the other four-fifths of the planet. But aside from ideals and growth markets, the report highlights a tension inherent to the question of access: When Facebook sets sail to disconnected markets, what version of the internet will it bring? In its report, Facebook advocates for closing the digital divide as quickly as we can, which is a good thing. But when Facebook argues that, "as use of the internet continues to expand, it will exert a powerful effect on the global economy, particularly in the developing world," it's arguing that any increase in access is inherently good, which isn't necessarily the case.

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Were software engineer a profession like doctor or lawyer, we’d have a strong and binding set of ethics.

I note that the ACM publishes a code of ethics. Here’s the first one:

1. PUBLIC - Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.

Nowhere in the short list, or in the elaboration below, are the words “spy” or “monitor.” You could argue that you don’t need to call out those, because acting “consistently with the public interest” is enough.

But I think we’re at the point — between the NSA, draconian workplace monitoring systems, social network data collection, and malware — that calling out spying and monitoring specifically as unethical is warranted.

After all, you can argue that spying is necessary for national security, which is clearly in the public interest. And you can argue that workplace monitoring is either neutral (employers are within their rights to know what employees are doing with what resources) or a public good (more productivity is good for the economy).

But these are wrong.

Defining the lines gets interesting, though. Lots of apps collect crash logs and transmit them to the developers. Presumably there is some place where the user agreed to this collection. But is this monitoring? No. But defining things so that we can tell the difference, and so that the definition can handle scenarios not yet invented, could be tricky.

(Consent isn’t always enough. You may have to consent to workplace monitoring as a condition of employment. This isn’t, in many cases, a fair situation — not when you need a job to pay the bills.)

Another case: is it wrong to write code to spy on people who are actively planning to kill other people? Eeeesh. I would think not. But then how does the engineer assure that this is the only way that code would be used?

Assuming we could define things — a big assumption — then the value to society would be this: engineers would have the support of society when they refuse to do something that’s wrong. Right now they just lose their jobs.

But imagine if they could say, “No. I won’t. That violates the software engineering code of ethics,” and it would have the same weight as a doctor or lawyer refusing to act unethically.

And imagine if there were consequences when they didn’t refuse.