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At the height of the Iraq war in 2004, veterans gave President George W. Bush a 16-percentage-point edge over his Democratic rival. Four years later, Barack Obama trailed among the former military members by 10 percentage points.

But Mr. Obama’s campaign said it thinks his three and a half years as commander in chief have turned the tables on the issue, giving him a good chance at winning the veteran vote this year.

One of Mr. Obama’s first campaign ads — released just this week — was aimed directly at war-weary service members and their families.

“It’s because of what they’ve done that we’ve been able to go after al-Qaeda and kill Bin Laden,” Mr. Obama says in the ad. “And when they come home we have a sacred trust to make sure that we are doing everything we can to heal all of their wounds, giving them the opportunities that they deserve to find a job and get the education that they need.”

The ad is part of Mr. Obama’s efforts to capitalize on a very different profile than is typical for a Democratic president.

Having come into the White House on an antiwar platform, Mr. Obama nonetheless increased American involvement in Afghanistan even as he began drawing down troops in Iraq. Now, both wars are winding down — a
relief to many military members and their families.

In addition, Mr. Obama has embraced the use of drones to assassinate terrorist leaders. And he authorized the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“President Obama is committed to ensuring that all of our men and women who’ve served in uniform can find work when they return home, receive the health care and benefits they’ve earned and have the chance to get a college education through the post-9/11 G.I. Bill,” said Clo Ewing, a campaign spokeswoman.

Working in Mr. Obama’s favor may be the changing face of the American military, which is becoming younger and more diverse. Advisers to the president note that he actually won in 2008 among veterans who were under 60 years old.

The military is also changing in its attitudes toward social issues, the Obama campaign believes. Mr. Obama’s decision to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly will be a benefit, they say.

There is little recent polling to suggest how the two candidates are faring among veterans. But advisers to Mr. Romney scoff at the idea that Mr. Obama will steal away a traditional Republican advantage come Election Day. They argue that the president’s economic policies have been especially detrimental to veterans and their families.

Don’t like that answer? Try focusing on earnings rather than sales, and you get only a marginally different result. Assuming its profit margin stays constant (instead of falling as it could very well do as it grows), assuming its P/E ratio in five years will be just as high as Google’s is today, and assuming that its stock will produce a five-year return of 11% annualized, Facebook’s stock today should be just $16.66.

How can Facebook investors wriggle out from underneath the awful picture these calculations paint? By assuming that its revenue and profitability will grow faster than the average IPO between 1996 and 2010 — and not just by a little bit, either, but a whole lot faster.

Of course, it’s always possible that Facebook will be able to pull that off.

But, as Professor Ritter pointed out to me earlier this week, “the bigger a company gets, the harder it is to maintain percentage growth.” And Facebook is already huge — larger, in fact, than all but 47 other publicly traded companies in the U.S., by market capitalization.

So my back-of-the-envelope calculations for this column could very well be too optimistic rather than too pessimistic.

Given all this, Ritter said that a market cap “of $63 billion … five years from now seems like a very reasonable scenario.”

Governor Perry’s office and anti-choice lawmakers in the state have rallied behind the claim that “There are more than 2,500 qualified providers in the WHP that operate more than 4,600 locations across the state,” downplaying the significant role Planned Parenthood plays in bringing WHP access to low-income women. What Perry’s office doesn’t mention is that most of those providers are small clinics and individual doctors that aren’t currently equipped to take on the tens of thousands of women who will have to leave Planned Parenthood should the courts rule in favor of the State of Texas.

I set out to test the WHP’s non-Planned Parenthood provider listings over the past week and found that while initial searches of TexasWomensHealth.org turn up what appear to be hundreds of available providers, many of them don’t provide any kind of contraceptive care, don’t take Medicaid Women’s Health Program clients, or are simply misleading duplicate listings.

In Austin, for example, many WHP clients visit the Downtown Austin Clinic for contraceptives and cancer screenings. What if a resident of the 78702 zip code who formerly relied on Planned Parenthood had to suddenly find a new doctor?

A search for providers within 30 miles of 78702 turned up 137 doctors and clinics–initially, a very promising number. But once the duplicates were weeded out there were just 49 individual providers, including those like the Austin Endoscopy Center. When I called to try to make a gynecological appointment there, I was understandably turned down: “This is a colon cancer center,” the operator told us. No women’s health care there.

Several times, locations listed on the Texas WHP website weren’t taking new Medicaid clients, were only taking those within a limited age range, or simply did not accept Medicaid Women’s Health Program patients. The People’s Community Clinic, which serves low-income and uninsured clients, said they were only taking adolescents or pregnant women—and pregnant women are, by definition, excluded from the WHP.

The Austin Regional Clinic, which has several locations in Austin, looked promising, but they don’t accept Medicaid WHP clients. Neither does the similarly situated Austin Diagnostic Clinic.

Ultimately, I found nine providers within a 30-mile radius of the selected zip code that accepted the WHP and were taking new patients—some could see a patient for an annual exam as soon as the following day. Provided, of course, that clients are able to travel. The Lone Star Circle Of Care, which also focuses on underserved populations, had appointments in neighboring cities.

But for a WHP enrollee who may not have a car or who can’t afford to take a day or a half-day off from work, it may be a matter of having to make the difficult decision of choosing between several hours’ worth of pay—which could mean making rent or buying baby formula—or getting her annual exam.

And if Planned Parenthood is excluded from the WHP in Texas, there’s a good chance that WHP patients wouldn’t have the good luck to find nine available providers if, as a George Washington University study predicts, existing providers simply will not be able to fill in the gaps left by Planned Parenthood. From the study:

In FY 2010, PPFA clinics accounted for approximately 49 percent of all WHP-financed care, furnishing services to 51,953 WHP clients out of 105,998 WHP clients served. Of the 1,469 providers that billed the WGP in FY 2010, 908 (62 percent) served 10 or fewer patients, while 368 (25 percent) served only one patient. The authors conclude that the WHP program lacks any reasonable access alternative.

Multiply just one caller looking for care by 51,953, and it’s easy to imagine that a morning of phone calls to doctor after doctor—again, if a woman working and managing a family had the time to dedicate to it—might turn up no available appointments, or appointments that could only be made months in advance.

It’s also important to remember that an imagined Austin-based client lives in a major metropolitan area with public transportation and multiple hospitals and women’s health centers. WHP clients in other areas of Texas, especially those in rural towns, will have even fewer options.

I asked a Texas Planned Parenthood representative what area of Texas the group thought would suffer most if it could no longer participate in the WHP. The results were dismal: based on their research, nearly 80 percent of WHP clients get their care from family planning clinics, and they turned over a list of 25 cities that have no family planning clinics other than Planned Parenthood that serve WHP clients. The top four results–Edinburg, McAllen, San Juan and Weslaco, Texas—are all located near the Texas-Mexico border, an area that has been hit especially hard by clinics closing.

And if women in South Texas can’t see their Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses for WHP care, the Texas WHP website won’t be much help either: A search for doctors within the McAllen zip code on the WHP site turned up anesthesiologists, pediatricians and a night clinic in their top results–plus one provider that did not take WHP clients.

If the State of Texas wants to exclude Planned Parenthood from the Women’s Health Program, they’re going to need to go beyond technical support for their website to invest huge sums of money increasing access to care throughout the state, replicating the system they are seeking to eliminate.

But at the high-quality end of the Internet’s curve — how do you sort and rank the very best information? What if the information returned by two sites — Google Places and Yelp, for example — is nearly identical? Those decisions are judgment calls, coded into Google’s algorithm by humans. Not neutral, not the unbiased calculations of a machine, no matter how it works in a given instance. Volokh’s paper rests on this idea (he uses the word judgment 34 times) that in exercising judgment, Google’s engineers are essentially acting as editors, curators, or, even, parade organizers — all of whom the First Amendment protects in their decisions to include or exclude content, even when they themselves are not the creators of that content.

There’s a lot of support for Volokh’s argument including two lower court decisions (2003 and 2007), and, as First Amendment and technology law expert Marvin Ammori argues, other courts — and even the Court — would likely agree. The result would be greater protection for Google and its preference for its own products — something we may not like. But the First Amendment has never been interested in curating society to our liking — quite the opposite in fact. The results of a strong First Amendment are often distasteful in varying degrees, with hateful speech at the extreme end. But the converse is much worse — would we really want the government to have a say in the content of Google’s returns? Could you imagine what it would like to do with something like this?

The law is always under revision as new technologies emerge and challenge the old categories we had created. Is Google like a publication — such as the New York Times — or a utility like the gas company that merely conveys information “neutrally”? Which set of laws should we apply? These comparisons never work perfectly, and refining their raggedy edges is the work of the courts and the participants in their adversarial process. In the case of Google, its search results do seem more like the handiwork of a newspaper editor or a parade organizer than an electrical utility. But the impact of its choices — judgment, if you will — are so much greater, so much more central to our civic life that it can be scary to give it such free reign. But that free reign is at the core of our grand experiment with free speech and a free press, an experiment you just have to hold your breath and hope for, because the alternative is much, much worse.

A German court has ruled that Motorola Mobility infringed a Microsoft patent which allows long text messages to be divided into parts and then reassembled by receiving handsets.

It marks the first patent ruling against Google since it completed its takeover of Motorola.

Microsoft can now demand a German sales ban of Motorola products, although it signalled it would prefer a licence fee.

Google said it may appeal.

Google’s chief executive had previously said that his firm bought Motorola and its patents “to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies”.

I’m not sure whether I’d dub this the perfect storm, but Facebook is currently on track to be the biggest IPO flop in recent memory, with all three CEOs taking the blame.

If the Facebook IPO has taught us anything, it’s that not all social-media companies are automatic buys. Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA ) shareholders, for instance, have learned that the hard way. With more than 90% of its revenue tied to Facebook, Zynga shares are now well below their IPO price.

Facebook, we really do need a “dislike” button for last week’s fiasco.

This week 43 Catholic institutions, including the Archdioceses of New York and Washington DC as well as Notre Dame University, sued the Obama administration over its mandate requiring employers to provide contraception in their health insurance plans.

The move not only escalated an unusual fight between church and state but also threatened to cause splits within the Catholic Church itself.

The Catholic Bishop of Stockton, California, Stephen Blaire, told America magazine that he was concerned the campaign against the mandate was becoming too political.

He said he was worried his fellow bishops were being co-opted by political conservatives.

Television networks are having a busy month trying to stamp out new TV-watching technology, including telling a court that skipping a commercial while watching a recorded show is illegal. Yesterday, Fox, NBC, and CBS all sued Dish Network over its digital video recorder with automatic commercial-skipping. The same networks, plus ABC, Univision, and PBS, are gearing up for a May 30 hearing in their cases against Aereo, a New York startup bringing local broadcast TV to the Internet. EFF and Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief supporting Aereo this week.

The suits against Dish are a response to the “Hopper” DVR and its “Auto Hop” feature, which automatically skips over commercials. According to the networks’ complaints, the Hopper automatically records eight days’ worth of prime time programming on the four major networks that subscribers can play back on request. Beginning a few hours after the broadcast, viewers can choose to watch a program sans ads.

RT @marcprecipice: So, buying the best photo app and then launching your own anyway is Yahoo's old strategy, right? ...

RT @daringfireball: ★ More on Apple’s Removal of Airfoil Speakers Touch From the App Store:

nice piece on dollar coins vs. bills changed my opinion

RT @PaulFidalgo: The Lonely Life of American Atheists

RT @panic: Cool Thing #4: @CiiDub has splits nailed. Markup. CSS. Preview. And iPhone Preview!  — Will FAQ this…  —C

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican, is likely to survive a recall election on June 5, according to recent nonpartisan polls of the state.

Mr. Walker leads his Democratic opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, by an average of six percentage points in those polls and has not trailed in any poll since February.

Some polls issued by Democratic-affiliated groups have shown a somewhat tighter race, with Mr. Barrett trailing by about three percentage points instead. Partisan-affiliated polls have a long track record of somewhat exaggerating their candidate’s standing, however, and it may be telling that even these polls do not show Mr. Barrett ahead.

In a typical November election, a 6-point lead with two weeks to go would translate into a high probability of winning — roughly on the order of 90 percent, based on the historical accuracy of polls of governors’ races.

The dynamics of a recall election may be slightly more uncertain. But with high turnout expected, which tends to make polling more reliable, Mr. Barrett would most likely need a last-minute change in momentum to have much of a chance of prevailing.

Mr. Walker’s approval rating was poor at this time last year, after he stripped collective bargaining rights from most of the state’s public workers. In May 2011, his job approval rating averaged 42 percent across different polls, versus an average disapproval rating of 55 percent.

In an average of polls conducted so far this May, however, Mr. Walker’s approval rating averages 50 percent, with 46 percent disapproving.

FiveThirtyEight: In Wisconsin, Walker Is Likely to Survive Recall (via Instapaper)

You’d think Montgomery County, Texas, would’ve learned its lesson. In 2011, when its Sheriff’s Office was preparing to become the first police agency in America to order a drone that could carry weapons, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said, “I’m tickled to death,” adding, “It’s so simple in its design and the objectives, you just wonder why anyone would choose not to have it.” That was before the day of the most famous drone test in Texas. It seemed like a perfect photo-op. They’d get out the BearCat armored vehicle they own, which looks like a small military tank, and fly a bad-ass $300,000 drone above it. The problem came when the drone operator lost control of the unmanned aircraft, which plummeted earthward, hitting the BearCat on the way down.
The accident got them ridiculed on the Internet. But they never wavered in their commitment to drones. And now, apparently still tickled to death, Chief Deputy McDaniel has been quoted telling the press that tear gas and rubber bullets might be added to the unmanned aerial vehicle. CBS News quotes him explaining that “those are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out and in certain situations it might be advantageous to have this type of system.” That’s rather vague, but there’s no getting around one thing: the situations would all involve police deliberately shooting rubber bullets or tear gas clouds at civilians from an unmanned drone.

Actually, before I get to that, let me take a moment to debunk a fairy tale that we’ve been hearing a lot from Wall Street and its reliable defenders — a tale in which the incredible damage runaway finance inflicted on the U.S. economy gets flushed down the memory hole, and financiers instead become the heroes who saved America.

Once upon a time, this fairy tale tells us, America was a land of lazy managers and slacker workers. Productivity languished, and American industry was fading away in the face of foreign competition.

Then square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline. Sure, some people didn’t like it, and, sure, they made a lot of money for themselves along the way. But the result was a great economic revival, whose benefits trickled down to everyone.

You can see why Wall Street likes this story. But none of it — except the bit about the Gekkos and the Romneys making lots of money — is true.

For the alleged productivity surge never actually happened. In fact, overall business productivity in America grew faster in the postwar generation, an era in which banks were tightly regulated and private equity barely existed, than it has since our political system decided that greed was good.

What about international competition? We now think of America as a nation doomed to perpetual trade deficits, but it was not always thus. From the 1950s through the 1970s, we generally had more or less balanced trade, exporting about as much as we imported. The big trade deficits only started in the Reagan years, that is, during the era of runaway finance.

And what about that trickle-down? It never took place. There have been significant productivity gains these past three decades, although not on the scale that Wall Street’s self-serving legend would have you believe. However, only a small part of those gains got passed on to American workers.

So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.

“no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy” (via Instapaper)

RT @chriscoyier: - Pretty cool final year university project by Stewart Kennedy. Kids these days. Gonna take over t ...

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RT @neilkelty: @codinghorror So I guess this is what happens when politicians learn technology/to code?

RT @dcurtis: [blog post] Dr. Koop and The Bubble

(A true story about failure, for perspective.)

RT @panic: Cool Thing #3: my parents and sister stopped by with this incredible cake. Dem droplets! How lucky we are.  ...

This transparency report gives Google a chance to highlight some of its good citizenship as an online service provider. Although the burden of liability is supposed to be on the organization that sends the takedown notice — it is required to claim under penalty of perjury to have a good-faith belief of copyright infringement — in practice many groups are willing to skirt those rules, sending takedown notices to silence unfavorable speech or even without human review . The 3% of takedown notices that Google chooses not to comply with is a large absolute number, and each of those are instances of legitimate speech that would have otherwise been shut down. Google deserves to be commended for that behavior.

RT @thenation: The education questions @MittRomney still doesn't want to answer:

RT @zeldman: Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of @beep's world-changing @alistapart article, Responsive Web Design.

For their part, most Apple employees seem more than satisfied with Cook. He often sits down randomly with employees in the cafeteria at lunchtime, whereas Jobs typically dined with design chief Jonathan Ive . It is a small difference that speaks volumes about how employees can expect to interact with their CEO. At Apple, Jobs was simultaneously revered, loved, and feared. Cook clearly is a demanding boss, but he’s not scary. He’s well-respected, but not worshiped. As Apple enters a complex new phase of its corporate history, perhaps it doesn’t need a god as CEO but a mere mortal who understands how to get the job done.

A week after Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) held Congressional hearings on a bill that would prevent doctors in D.C. from performing abortions after 20 weeks, protesters descended on the Arizona Congressman’s office — who represents a district 2,300 miles and two time zones away from the nation’s capital — to ask “Mayor Franks” to fix pressing local concerns like pot holes , broken street lights and traffic lights:

Protesters Mock Arizona Congressman's DC Abortion Ban, Ask 'Mayor Franks' To Fix Pot Holes | ThinkProgress hillarous

"Women deserve respect no matter their politics"

RT @jeresig: Ah sorry everyone - the promo code for the book should be: 'dotd0524au'.

A unanimous Senate Armed Services Committee took a bipartisan shot at Pakistan on Thursday for the sentencing of the physician who helped catch Osama bin Laden, approving a $631.4 billion defense policy bill that withholds aid to the wavering ally until supply lines are open, support for terrorist networks ceases and the doctor, Shakil Afridi, is released.

The committee’s defense measure for the fiscal year that begins in October largely sticks to the budget caps agreed to last summer and is $4 billion below the version approved by the House on Friday. It leaves in place a delicate compromise on detainee policy from last year that some critics believe authorizes the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects apprehended on U.S. soil.

RT @haacked: Ghirardelli.

RT @CoffeeScript: w00t! CoffeeScript is now in GitHub's Top 10 Languages!

RT @panic: Fun thing for the night: a great set of color schemes freshly updated for Coda 2!   —C

RT @mrgan: Coda 2 and Diet Coda for iPad are out. Run don't walk to your local app store, or consult the brand-new ...

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RT @steveklabnik: Seriously. Rails. People do crazy things with it:

Linus Torvalds on the Google vs Oracle verdict () (via Instapaper)

Just say "No." by Dustin Curtis (via Instapaper)

RT @flyosity: Yahoo introduces Axis, their new web browser.

IRS Should Investigate North Carolina Church Whose Pastor Urged Votes Against Obama, Says Americans United |…

Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the banks leading its flotation are being sued by disgruntled shareholders.

A writ, filed in a Manhattan court, alleges that Facebook’s revised growth figures were not disclosed to all investors.

US financial regulators have already said the Morgan Stanley may have questions to answer over the disclosure of information ahead of Friday’s float.

The bank, lead underwriter to Facebook, said it fully complied with the rules.

The lawsuit claims that defendants concealed from investors during the flotation marketing process “a severe and pronounced reduction” in revenue growth forecasts.

It is the latest problem to dog one of the most anticipated stock market listings of recent times.

The flotation was disrupted on Friday by technical glitches on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The share price has since slumped amid worries that the company was over-valued by advisers marketing the float.

On Tuesday, the leading financial regulator in Massachusetts issued a subpoena to Morgan Stanley as part of an investigation into whether its analysts selectively disclosed revised revenue forecasts for Facebook.

Now, a group of investors has issued a class-action lawsuit alleging that Facebook revenues were revised down because of a surge in the number people using mobile devices for apps and connection to websites.

Morgan Stanley has not yet commented on the latest lawsuit.

The Caucus: Powell Criticizes Romney on Foreign Policy (via Instapaper)

But he doesn’t seem that enamored with Mitt Romney either.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program Wednesday morning, Mr. Powell, a Republican who did endorse Mr. Obama in 2008, despite having worked under President George W. Bush, chided Mr. Romney for listening to conservative foreign policy advisers.

Mr. Powell noted that Mr. Romney recently said that Russia was the “No. 1 geopolitical foe” of the United States.

“Well, c’mon Mitt, think. It isn’t the case,” Mr. Powell said. “I don’t know whether Mitt really feels that.”

Asked whether he thought Mr. Romney’s advisers told him to say that, Mr. Powell said: “I don’t know. You ask him.”

Mr. Powell said Mr. Romney’s comment had been “catching a lot of heck from the regular G.O.P. foreign affairs community.”

“We’re kind of taken aback by it,” he said. “Look at the world. There is no pure competitor to the United States of America.”

Earlier in the interview, Mr. Powell described Mr. Romney’s foreign policy advisers as “quite far to the right.’

“Sometimes, they, I think, might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought,” Mr. Powell said.

RT @jennifurret: Proof women can be sexist assholes: ERV & SN dismiss me because I'm "ugly"

House Minority Leader, responding to an expected acceleration of John Boehner’s timeline on the Bush tax cuts, fired off a letter to the Speaker asking for immediate consideration of an extension of just the “low end” tax cuts – which include the Bush-era marginal rates for households making up to $1 million. This represents a shift in the dividing line for the Bush tax cuts, which has traditionally been at $250,000.

The Bush tax cuts at every level up to $1 million in annual income, in other words, are now framed as “middle-income tax cuts.” She says it right here in the letter:

Without further delay, the Majority Leadership should schedule a vote on extension of the middle-income tax cuts, as early as next week, to increase certainty for millions of American taxpayers and for the economy. We should not delay passing this legislation that will help afford all Americans the opportunity to reach their goals and realize the promise of the American Dream.

We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit.

First of all, if you make the dividing line at $1 million a year in annual income, there simply won’t be all that many revenues generated to pay down that deficit. When the dividing line was $250,000 a year, the revenue was around $800 billion over a ten-year period. I don’t have a strong grasp of what the numbers would be at $1 million, but my guess would be half that, if not more. So from a deficit reduction standpoint, this makes pretty much no sense.

Second of all, because of our marginal tax rate system, high-income earners at the $1 million
level would still benefit from all the tax cuts on the first $1 million of their income, which are substantial. In fact, you’d be giving hundreds of billions of dollars – whatever the difference is between letting the tax cuts expire at the $250,000 level and the $1 million level – entirely to well-off people.

Google did not infringe patents owned by software developer Oracle, a jury in a California court found on Wednesday.

The Silicon Valley giants had fought over whether Google used Oracle’s Java programming language in its Android mobile operating system.

Two weeks ago the same jury ruled that Google infringed Oracle’s copyright, but could not agree whether Google’s actions constituted “fair use”.

The internet search giant maintains Android was built “from scratch”.

Oracle sued Google in August 2010, saying Android infringed its intellectual property rights.

Google said it does not violate Oracle’s patents and that Oracle cannot copyright certain parts of Java, which is an “open-source”, or publicly available, software language.

Without a finding against Google on the “fair use” issue, Oracle cannot recover the up to $1bn (£637m) in damages it was seeking.

The case focused not on using the Java programming language itself, but rather the use of 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) which help developers create software on the platform.

With internet innovation moving fast, it is common for software writers to adapt APIs that mini-programs use to “talk” to one another.

The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.

RT @MuleRadio: A teaser photo of today's @thetalkshow recording with @gruber and @lonelysandwich

RT @davewiner: Ohio Republicans want to disqualify voters' ballots for the mistakes poll workers make.

RT @smashingmag: Code Poet: a great new resource for anyone building sites with WordPress - #wp

RT @panic: True, sad story: we bought a dumb Dell monitor just to fit the iPad Simulator at Retina size for a screencast.  ...

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Most states are still more than two years away from returning to prerecession employment levels, according to a new analysis.

Only four states — Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, and Louisiana — have created enough jobs since the recovery to get back to where they were prior to the recession, according to economist Steven Frable of IHS Global Insight . All four of those states have benefited from an energy boom, and Louisiana was starting at a low level of employment after taking a major hit from Hurricane Katrina.

Two more states, New York and West Virginia, are expected to return to their prerecession peak later this year, and 10 more should reach the mark next year. But the majority of states still won’t get there until after 2014. Meanwhile, returning to peak employment levels doesn’t necessarily mean jobs markets are healed. In fact, getting back to where a state started doesn’t account for the jobs needed by new entrants to the labor force over the past four years.

Eighteen states still are more than 5% below their 2007 employment levels, and the two worst-hit states — Nevada and Michigan — are still more than 10% off their peaks. Frable estimates those two states, as well as Rhode Island which has seen sluggish job growth, won’t return to prerecession peaks until sometime after 2017.

Met Police to extract mobile phone data; will be kept even if no charges ()

The Metropolitan Police has implemented a system to extract mobile phone data from suspects held in custody.

The data includes call history, texts and contacts, and the BBC has learned that it will be retained regardless of whether any charges are brought.

The technology is being used in 16 London boroughs, and could potentially be used by police across the UK.

Campaign group Privacy International described the move as a “possible breach of human rights law”.

Until now, officers had to send mobiles off for forensic examination in order to gather and store data, a process which took several weeks.

Under the new system, content will be extracted using purpose built terminals in police stations.

It will allow officers to connect a suspect’s mobile and produce a print out of data from the device, as well as saving digital records of the content.

Light Table is getting more and more interesting

When it comes to those last globs of ketchup inevitably stuck to every bottle of Heinz, most people either violently shake the container in hopes of eking out another drop or two, or perform the “secret” trick: smacking the “57” logo on the bottle’s neck. But not MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith. He and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been held up in an MIT lab for the last two months addressing this common dining problem.

The result? LiquiGlide, a “super slippery” coating made up of nontoxic materials that can be applied to all sorts of food packaging—though ketchup and mayonnaise bottles might just be the substance’s first targets. Condiments may sound like a narrow focus for a group of MIT engineers, but not when you consider the impact it could have on food waste and the packaging industry. “It’s funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What’s the big deal?’ But then you tell them the market for bottles—just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market,” Smith says. “And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.”

Comcast says it is planning to make sweeping changes to its data usage plans and will start by boosting the data cap from 250 GB/month to 300 GB/month. The change is in response to changing consumer usage behavior and shift to more cloud-oriented computing. Comcast, which is the largest broadband provider with around 20 millon customers, in the US, points to emergence of devices such as iPad and Roku as a reason behind this change.

The developers logged 3,997 distinct devices, the most popular of which was the Samsung Galaxy S II . This figure was inflated quite a bit by custom ROMs, which overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable and cause those phones to be logged as separate devices. 1,363 types were logged only once, and while some were custom ROMs bucking the numbers, a good few were just massively unpopular devices—for example, the Hungarian 10.1-inch Concorde Tab.

It’s not only the sheer count of devices that’s daunting, either—the spread is also intimidating. It’s easy to imagine a practical Android developer who doesn’t want to waste time supporting niche devices restricting the app to require high-end hardware and recent APIs, covering only the 25 or so most popular phones, and devil take the hindmost. But in OpenSignalMaps’ case, the top 25 devices don’t even encompass half of the map, and would still exclude well-known and popular (if old) models like the Samsung Nexus S. The developers would be missing out on over 50 percent of the Android market.

In total, 599 brands were logged (again, thrown by custom ROMs a bit). We spotted “YouWave” in the brand visualizer, which is an Android emulator for Windows. The post also separates out screen resolutions, with about 13 commonly used configurations and a few dozen more unpopular ones. A second graphic shows iOS with only four screen resolutions to manage.

Granted, OpenSignalMaps is only one developer. Though their sample size is big, the spread of data may look wildly different for other companies depending on their user base. Still, it paints a sobering picture of the fragmentation we occasionally hear about.

Thought Netflix and Comcast would kiss and make up after the broadband provider announced today that it would raise its bandwidth cap from 250GB to 300GB per month? Think again. Here’s the statement a Netflix spokesperson s me via email:

“Increasing the data cap is a small step in the right direction, but unfortunately Comcast continues to treat its own Internet delivered video different under the cap than other Internet delivered video. We continue to stand by the principle that ISPs should treat all providers of video services equally.”

In other words: The key issue of how Comcast treats its own Xfinity.tv on demand traffic hasn’t been resolved. Comcast said earlier today in a statement that it adheres to FCC principles that bind it to treat all IP traffic equally, but also repeated its assertion that Xfinity simply isn’t part of the Internet – something that our own Stacey Higginbotham has called dodging the net neutrality issue. Read her excellent analysis of today’s Comcast announcement here.

China can bypass Wall Street when buying United States government debt in what is the Treasury’s first direct relationship with a foreign government, according to documents viewed by Reuters.

The relationship means the People’s Bank of China can buy United States debt using a different method from any other central bank.

Other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders with Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.

China, which holds $1.17 trillion in Treasuries, still buys some through primary dealers, but since June 2011 it has been able to bypass them.

The documents viewed by Reuters show that the Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which means that it can participate without placing bids through primary dealers. The Chinese first used the access in late June 2011 to buy two-year notes. China still has to go through the market if it wants to sell.

The change was not announced publicly or in any message to primary dealers.

“Direct bidding is open to a wide range of investors, but as a matter of general policy we do not comment on individual bidders,” said Matt Anderson, a Treasury Department spokesman.

While there is no prohibition on direct bidding by foreign government entities, the Treasury’s accommodation of China is unusual.

The Treasury’s sales of debt to China have become part of a politically charged public debate about China’s role as both the largest exporter to the United States and the country’s largest creditor.

The privilege may help China obtain United States debt for a better price by limiting Wall Street’s knowledge of its orders.

Primary dealers are not allowed to charge customers money to bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions, so China is not saving money by cutting out commission fees. Instead, China is protecting information about its bidding habits.

Democrats have enjoyed trying to keep Republicans on the defensive about women’s issues, and on Tuesday, they tried to keep the debate going by reintroducing a wage gap measure that failed in the Senate in 2010.

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, with other female senators and a number of advocacy groups, planned a news conference on Wednesday urging Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation, which builds on the Equal Pay Act of 1963, is designed to help close the wage gap between women and men working equivalent jobs.

Ms. Mikulski made the preliminary announcement with a stream of Twitter posts on Tuesday, calling the measure a “down-payment” for ending the pay gap. “It’s outrageous that 49 yrs after Equal Pay Act, women still earn 77 cents to every $1 men make,” she wrote. “Wage gap is real – costing women & families thousands over their career. Women deserve #EqualPay 4 equal work.”

In 2010, when the Paycheck Fairness Act came up for a procedural vote in the Senate, no Republican supported it.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to demonstrate that wage gaps between men and women doing the same work have a business justification, and it would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who shared salary information with their co-workers. The measure would also create a competitive grant program to provide training in negotiation for girls and women.

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, is expected to file a motion on Thursday that would end debate on the bill and bring it up for a vote.

The Caucus: Democrats Push Bill to Close Wage Gap Between Sexes (via Instapaper)

NATO Formally Agrees to Transition on Afghan Security - (via Instapaper)

CHICAGO — President Obama and the leaders of America’s NATO allies on Monday agreed to end their guiding role in the decade-long war in Afghanistan next summer, saying it is time for the Afghan people to take responsibility for their own security and for the United States-led international troops to go home.

Declaring that “our forces broke the Taliban’s momentum,” Mr. Obama used the summit meeting of NATO leaders here in his adopted hometown to begin an exit from a conflict he embraced during his first campaign for president as America’s good war.

“We’re now unified behind a plan to responsibly wind down the war in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference after the meeting. He called the decision a “major step” toward the end of the war.

But Mr. Obama acknowledged that “real challenges” remained in dealing with the problems across the border in Pakistan, and that the conference had not resolved the impasse over reopening supply lines or the other tensions about the fight against insurgents operating from safe havens there.

“We think that Pakistan has to be part of the solution in Afghanistan,” he said. “Neither country is going to have the kind of security, stability and prosperity that it needs unless they can resolve some of these outstanding issues.”

Pakistan closed supply lines to Afghanistan after an American airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani solders. Mr. Obama has refused to apologize for the strike, as Pakistan has demanded in negotiations with the Americans, and he pointedly exchanged only a few words with the country’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, during the two-day summit meeting — “very brief, as we were walking into the summit,” he said. The two men also stood and spoke briefly with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, before all three joined the other leaders for a group photograph.

The plans to withdraw from Afghanistan are “irreversible,” Mr. Obama and the world leaders said in their communiqué, a deliberate word choice that underscored the political reality in America and in Europe. After 10 years of war and with the global economy reeling, the nations of the West no longer want to pay, either in treasure or in lives, the costs of their efforts in a place that for centuries has resisted foreign attempts to tame it.