A dork edition - Superheroes and D & D - What I am reading 12/30/2014

TechCrunch - On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs -

Even worse, his focus on “exceptional” programmers belies the real issue at the heart of immigration reform: it isn’t about the top performing 1% of workers, which of course every country and policymaker in the world wants to attract. It is the broader effect that immigration has on wages for the other 99% that causes such controversy around these policies.

...

Writing in an older working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Eric Weinstein, currently a managing director at Thiel Capital and a long-time researcher on the market for elite labor, showed that labor “shortages” in high-tech fields described during the immigration reform efforts in the early 1990s were largely a fiction, and that the reality was anything but.
Any shortage that might exist would have tremendous benefits for workers, but was “… an economic crisis as seen from the point of view of the large government, university and industry employers.” It was the active policy of the government to encourage immigration, because one of the primary benefits was lower wages for industry, and thus, greater competitiveness for the United States.

There ya go the government is fixing things for us again, although I think everyone knew this already.  The broader point of the article is that the focus on immigration reform as the tech companies envision it is misplaced (in my opinion a disaster waiting to happen), and should be reevaluated.

Dark Reading - 4 Infosec Resolutions For The New Year -

Sploid - Superfan edited all the Marvel superhero movies into chronological order -

A dedicated comic book superhero super fan just did God's work: he stitched together all the Marvel Phase 1 and Phase 2 movies into chronological order. Which means you could theoretically watch the entire story unfold in one consistent timeline that makes sense.

God's work sir (or ma'am)! God's work!

Medium - Quagmire! The Making of a 1980's D&D Module -

Merle produced the requisite briefs for Dungeons & Dragons modules, including two for the Expert game, which he delivered on July 23. One would eventually become a module—but only after two years in a process quagmire, affectionately divided below into nine levels of development hell.

Interesting to see that the process is very similar to the product development process I have seen at a number of tech companies, plus just plain interesting to follow the thought process on developing the adventures.