
Translating…

Last week, free software developer Seth Vargo pulled the plug on tools he made to work with software developed by his former employer Chef, in protest of Chef’s ongoing contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency that has been implicated in crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing, family separation, and the deaths of children in its custody.
Chef CEO Barry Crist initially defended his company’s ongoing relationship with ICE (“I have made a principled decision, with the support of the Chef executive team, to work with the institutions of our government, regardless of whether or not we personally agree with their various policies… “) but later reversed himself, vowing not to renew the current contract, and pledging to donate the revenues from the contract “to charities that help vulnerable people impacted by the policy of family separation and detention.”
Other companies have taken internal and external heat for their relationships with ICE, including Microsoft, Google, Edelman PR, Amazon, Palantir, and Salesforce, but ICE’s effectively unlimited budget and willingness to hand out no-bid, cost-plus contracts make it an irresistible target for Beltway Bandits, who are making bank from their contracts.
Andy Bell has created an “open source” list of ICE contractors, presumably for the purposes of retaliation by employees, shareholders, and customers.
Though, as Nat Torkington points out, there are plenty of other companies contracting with institutions that are unmitigated forces for evil in our world: “I wonder who contracts to RJ Reynolds, or Shell, and whether we’ll see lists of those companies too.”
Six charts that illuminate the state of US immigration
Working with The Hamilton Project, the BBC has drawn six charts that serve as both a snapshot of the state of US immigration and provide historical context for migration today versus US immigration in both the recent and distant past.
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CBP employees’ new challenge coin mocks care for migrant kids
Challenge Coins have their origins in the military; they’re a little like a mission patch, commemorating some element of service or event, and they serve as a kind of badge of honor or respect — you can show a challenge coin you’ve been given to people who were associated with its issuance as a way […]
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For years, the chief of the Border Patrol was a member of the secret CBP Facebook group for racist and threatening chatter
Last week, Propublica revealed the existence of “I’m 10-15”, a secret Facebook group for current and former Customs and Border Protection employees — a group with 9,500 members, while CBP’s total workforce numbers 58,000 — where it was commons for members to share violent, racist, sexist, misogynist, rape-y memes, including some that threatened and disparaged […]
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Turn killer quotes by 50 Cent, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump and more into wall art
Who can forget the moment our president, the man in charge of a nuclear arsenal, coined the word “covfefe”? Sadly, it’s easy to forget given the frequency and amount of head-slapping sayings he’s given us – not to mention the disposable nature of his favorite mode of communication. But not anymore. There’s now a way […]
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Take your creativity anywhere with this handheld 3D printer
Want to get really hands-on with STEM education? 3D printers may be out of reach for some, but the 3Doodler is a handheld version of the same technology that’s tailor-made for curious kids. (Who are we kidding? We kind of want one for ourselves.) Even the basic 3Doodler set unlocks a world of possibilities. The […]
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Save over 90% on this streamlined Photoshop alternative
Need graphics? Before you resign yourself to a Photoshop subscription, listen up: There are other apps out there. You owe it to yourself to check out Youzign 2.0 – especially with the reviews it’s getting on tech sites like Capterra. With the app, you’ll instantly get access to a library of more than 1.7 million […]