Internet and related technology

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-fallen-behind-in-internet-speed-and-affordability.html?abt=0002&abg=1&_r=0

[Crafty_Dog]

The Web Is Dying; Apps Are Killing It
Tech’s Open Range Is Losing Out to Walled Gardens
By Christopher Mims
Updated Nov. 17, 2014 2:53 p.m. ET


The Web—that thin veneer of human-readable design on top of the machine babble that constitutes the Internet—is dying. And the way it’s dying has farther-reaching implications than almost anything else in technology today.

Think about your mobile phone. All those little chiclets on your screen are apps, not websites, and they work in ways that are fundamentally different from the way the Web does.

Mountains of data tell us that, in aggregate, we are spending time in apps that we once spent surfing the Web. We’re in love with apps, and they’ve taken over. On phones, 86% of our time is spent in apps, and just 14% is spent on the Web, according to mobile-analytics company Flurry.

This might seem like a trivial change. In the old days, we printed out directions from the website MapQuest that were often wrong or confusing. Today we call up Waze on our phones and are routed around traffic in real time. For those who remember the old way, this is a miracle.

Everything about apps feels like a win for users—they are faster and easier to use than what came before. But underneath all that convenience is something sinister: the end of the very openness that allowed Internet companies to grow into some of the most powerful or important companies of the 21st century.


Take that most essential of activities for e-commerce: accepting credit cards. When Amazon.com made its debut on the Web, it had to pay a few percentage points in transaction fees. But Apple takes 30% of every transaction conducted within an app sold through its app store, and “very few businesses in the world can withstand that haircut,” says Chris Dixon, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.

App stores, which are shackled to particular operating systems and devices, are walled gardens where Apple, Google , Microsoft and Amazon get to set the rules. For a while, that meant Apple banned Bitcoin, an alternative currency that many technologists believe is the most revolutionary development on the Internet since the hyperlink. Apple regularly bans apps that offend its politics, taste, or compete with its own software and services.

But the problem with apps runs much deeper than the ways they can be controlled by centralized gatekeepers. The Web was invented by academics whose goal was sharing information. Tim Berners-Lee was just trying to make it easy for scientists to publish data they were putting together during construction of CERN, the world’s biggest particle accelerator.

No one involved knew they were giving birth to the biggest creator and destroyer of wealth anyone had ever seen. So, unlike with app stores, there was no drive to control the early Web. Standards bodies arose—like the United Nations, but for programming languages. Companies that would have liked to wipe each other off the map were forced, by the very nature of the Web, to come together and agree on revisions to the common language for Web pages.

The result: Anyone could put up a Web page or launch a new service, and anyone could access it. Google was born in a garage. Facebook was born in Mark Zuckerberg ’s dorm room.

But app stores don’t work like that. The lists of most-downloaded apps now drive consumer adoption of those apps. Search on app stores is broken.
On phones, 86% of our time is spent in apps, and just 14% is spent on the Web, according to mobile-analytics company Flurry. ENLARGE
On phones, 86% of our time is spent in apps, and just 14% is spent on the Web, according to mobile-analytics company Flurry. Bloomberg News

The Web is built of links, but apps don’t have a functional equivalent. Facebook and Google are trying to fix this by creating a standard called “deep linking,” but there are fundamental technical barriers to making apps behave like websites.

The Web was intended to expose information. It was so devoted to sharing above all else that it didn’t include any way to pay for things—something some of its early architects regret to this day, since it forced the Web to survive on advertising.

The Web wasn’t perfect, but it created a commons where people could exchange information and goods. It forced companies to build technology that was explicitly designed to be compatible with competitors’ technology. Microsoft’s Web browser had to faithfully render Apple’s website. If it didn’t, consumers would use another one, such as Firefox or Google’s Chrome, which has since taken over.

Today, as apps take over, the Web’s architects are abandoning it. Google’s newest experiment in email nirvana, called Inbox, is available for both Android and Apple’s iOS, but on the Web it doesn’t work in any browser except Chrome. The process of creating new Web standards has slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, companies with app stores are devoted to making those stores better than—and entirely incompatible with—app stores built by competitors.

“In a lot of tech processes, as things decline a little bit, the way the world reacts is that it tends to accelerate that decline,” says Mr. Dixon. “If you go to any Internet startup or large company, they have large teams focused on creating very high quality native apps, and they tend to de-prioritize the mobile Web by comparison.”

Many industry watchers think this is just fine. Ben Thompson, an independent tech and mobile analyst, told me he sees the dominance of apps as the “natural state” for software.

Ruefully, I have to agree. The history of computing is companies trying to use their market power to shut out rivals, even when it’s bad for innovation and the consumer.

That doesn’t mean the Web will disappear. Facebook and Google still rely on it to furnish a stream of content that can be accessed from within their apps. But even the Web of documents and news items could go away. Facebook has announced plans to host publishers’ work within Facebook itself, leaving the Web nothing but a curiosity, a relic haunted by hobbyists.

I think the Web was a historical accident, an anomalous instance of a powerful new technology going almost directly from a publicly funded research lab to the public. It caught existing juggernauts like Microsoft flat-footed, and it led to the kind of disruption today’s most powerful tech companies would prefer to avoid.

It isn’t that today’s kings of the app world want to quash innovation, per se. It is that in the transition to a world in which services are delivered through apps, rather than the Web, we are graduating to a system that makes innovation, serendipity and experimentation that much harder for those who build things that rely on the Internet. And today, that is pretty much everyone.

—Follow Christopher Mims on Twitter @Mims; write to him at christopher.mims@wsj.com.

[Crafty_Dog]

AmericanExceptionalism.com
With Internet freedom safe for now, let’s embrace the values that make the Web work so well.
By
L. Gordon Crovitz
Feb. 1, 2015 6:08 p.m. ET
29 COMMENTS

Congress did the world’s three billion Internet users a favor by blocking President Obama’s plan to end U.S. protection of the open Internet. Now it is time to embrace the American exceptionalism that made today’s Internet possible.

In March 2014, the Obama administration said it would give up the U.S. contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, when the current term expires in September. The plan ran into a buzz saw of criticism, including from Bill Clinton, whose administration built American protection of freedom into the core workings of the Internet when it opened for commercial use in the 1990s.

American oversight protects the engineers and network operators who manage the Internet from political interference. China, Russia and Iran can block access only in their own countries. The Obama plan would have enabled them to get control over root-zone names and addresses so they could censor or remove websites in other countries.

The Commerce Department official charged with carrying out the plan to give up U.S. stewardship, Lawrence Strickling, last week gave the administration’s first reaction to the omnibus budget bill, which Mr. Obama signed into law late last year. It effectively vetoed the Obama plan by prohibiting any expenditures by the Commerce Department to end the U.S. contract overseeing Icann.

Mr. Strickling acknowledged that the law bars the administration from giving up control over the Internet as it had planned. He told last week’s annual meeting of the Congressional Internet Caucus: “The act does restrict [Commerce] from using appropriated dollars to relinquish our stewardship during fiscal year 2015 with respect to Internet domain name system functions. We take that seriously. Accordingly, we will not use appropriated funds to terminate the . . . contract with Icann prior to the contract’s current expiration date of Sept. 30, 2015.”
ENLARGE
Photo: Getty Images

What he didn’t make explicit is that under the clear terms of the Icann contract, U.S. control over the Internet must be renewed for a further two years, through September 2017—past the end of the Obama presidency. That means it will be up to the next president whether to pursue the Obama plan, which seems unlikely. Why would any candidate from either party run on a platform of giving up U.S. protection for the open Internet?

Instead of making clear that there will be no change during the Obama presidency, Mr. Strickling encouraged other governments and Icann to act as if U.S. oversight will still end soon. He asked them to keep trying to overcome the key stumbling block of keeping Icann accountable in the absence of a U.S. contract. Even before Congress made the point moot, Icann said it wouldn’t have found any alternative to continued U.S. oversight by the deadline set under the Obama plan.

The Obama administration needs to roll back expectations it set but won’t meet for changing Internet governance. Washington should instead embrace the American exceptionalism that created the Internet as a haven for free speech and permissionless innovation. People everywhere benefit from the absence of Internet censorship and international regulation of websites or apps.

If Mr. Obama believed that, he wouldn’t have proposed giving up American protection in the first place. So it is up to Congress to make the case for not fixing what ain’t broke. The new chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, South Dakota’s John Thune, last week announced hearings on Internet governance. He said that without an effective alternative to U.S. oversight, the U.S. should renew its oversight of Icann indefinitely.

As the Obama administration was trying to give up protection for the open Internet, authoritarian regimes were redoubling their efforts to assert control. China recently cut off the virtual private networks that Chinese citizens relied on to gain access to the world’s websites and evade the Great Firewall. One Chinese historian said that without access to Google Scholar, which links to scholarly research around the world, “it’s like we’re living in the Middle Ages.” The world’s autocrats prefer the top-down Middle Ages to Internet-driven democratization of information and communication.

The U.S. oversees an Internet built in its own image, with the result that people around the world increasingly expect free speech and open innovation. All presidential candidates should embrace this enormous accomplishment and pledge never to abandon the open Internet.
Popular on WSJ

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-regs-will-make-internet-slow-as-in-europe-warn-fcc-fec-commissioners/article/2560567

Also worth noting is that the FCC chairman is refusing to post the 150 pages of regulations that he is proposing (a four page summary only) for comment. When I was an attorney in Washington DC I had occasion to become familiarized with the Administrative Procedure Act. This would sure seem to me a violation; the APA was designed to meet the Constitutional questions that came with the development of bureaucracy, a fourth branch of government with both quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial qualities.

In other words, the requirement of Due Process is what is at stake here, This most recent manifestation of a certain type of lawlessness from Team Obama carries heavy consequences: It may well be that the aspiring omnipotent state is about to take yet another big step towards the reification of its dream of total control.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

[Crafty_Dog]

    Netflix Recants on Obamanet
    Proponents of net neutrality appear to be experiencing lobbyists’ remorse.
    by L. Gordon Crovitz March 8, 2015 7:49 p.m. ET WSJ

    Corporate executives choose their words carefully at investor conferences hosted by the large investment banks, and analysts listen closely to decide whether to drive share prices up or down. Presentations are preceded by required securities-law disclosures, heightening the pressure to speak only carefully considered thoughts.
    With that in mind, consider what David Wells, chief financial officer of Netflix said last week at the annual Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. He disclosed that Netflix, one of the few companies that advocated the most extreme form of Internet regulation, had lobbyist’s remorse only a week after the Federal Communications Commission voted to replace the open Internet with Obamanet.

    “Were we pleased it pushed to Title II?” Mr. Wells said to investors. “Probably not. We were hoping there might be a nonregulated solution.”

    Title II is the part of the Communications Act of 1934 that bureaucrats used to exert near-total control over the AT&T telephone monopoly. The FCC recently did President Obama’s bidding by voting to impose that micromanagement on the Internet. The FCC will decide what prices and other terms online are “just and reasonable.” The agency added a new “general conduct” catchall provision giving itself oversight of Internet content and business models.

    Netflix PR handlers claimed that Mr. Wells was just “trying to convey how our position had evolved.” But the company’s actions support Mr. Wells’s words. Last week, Netflix violated a core tenet of net neutrality when it launched its service in Australia as part of a “zero rating” offering by broadband providers, which excludes its video from data caps. Net neutrality advocates want to outlaw such deals. Netflix shrugged off this objection: “We won’t put our service or our members at a disadvantage.”

    Last year National Journal reported that Netflix was “relishing” its role as the lead lobbyist for net neutrality, “not only advocating a position that would protect its profits,” but “also earning goodwill from web activists and liberals.”

    Today Netflix is a poster child for crony capitalism. When CEO Reed Hastings lobbied for Internet regulations, all he apparently really wanted was for regulators to tilt the scales in his direction with service providers. Or as Geoffrey Manne of the International Center for Law and Economics put it in Wired: “Did we really just enact 300 pages of legally questionable, enormously costly, transformative rules just to help Netflix in a trivial commercial spat?”

    Ironically, Netflix could end up the biggest loser with a regulated Internet. The FCC did not stop at claiming power to regulate broadband providers. It will also review the interconnection agreements and network tools that allow the smooth functioning of the Internet—including delivery of Netflix videos, which take up one-third of broadband nationwide at peak times.

    Net-neutrality advocates oppose “fast lanes” on the Internet, arguing they put startups at a disadvantage. Netflix could not operate without fast lanes and even built its own content-delivery network to reduce costs and improve quality. This approach will now be subject to the “just and reasonable” test. The FCC could force Netflix to open its proprietary delivery network to competitors and pay broadband providers a “fair” price for its share of usage.

    There’s no need for the FCC to override the free-market agreements that make the Internet work so well. Fast lanes like Netflix’s saved the Internet from being overwhelmed, and there is nothing wrong with the “zero cap” approach Netflix is using in Australia. Consumers benefit from lower-priced services.

    The FCC still hasn’t made public its 300-plus pages of new regulations, but there is increasing opposition against changing the Internet as we know it. Last week John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist-turned-Internet-evangelist, participated in a conference call of Internet pioneers opposed to the FCC treating the Internet as a utility. He called the regulatory step “singular arrogance.”

    In 1996 Mr. Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” helped inspire a bipartisan consensus for the open Internet: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

    The permissionless Internet succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations, becoming an unmatched outlet for creativity and innovation. Mr. Obama has defied the bipartisan consensus that made this possible. Unless Congress or the courts intervene, the future of the Internet will look like the past, when bureaucrats and lawyers, not visionaries and entrepreneurs, were in charge.

[Crafty_Dog]

Obama’s Bungled Internet Surrender
The group the White House favors for online oversight is turning into an abusive monopolist.
By L. Gordon Crovitz
May 17, 2015 5:39 p.m. ET
WSJ

President Obama’s plan to give up protection of the open Internet is wreaking havoc even though it will probably never be carried out. In anticipation of the end of U.S. stewardship, the organization the White House wants to give more power has become an abusive monopolist, refusing to be held accountable by the Internet’s stakeholders.

The administration last year announced its intention to abandon the contract the Commerce Department has held since the beginning of the Web with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. Congress used its power of the purse to block the move, which had been set for September this year.

But the prospect of escaping U.S. oversight led Icann to deny accountability even for its core duty of keeping its monopoly over Web addresses working smoothly. The House Judiciary Committee last week held a hearing titled “Stakeholder Perspectives on Icann: The .Sucks Domain and Essential Steps to Guarantee Trust and Accountability in the Internet’s Operation.”

The .sucks domain was one of hundreds of new top-level domains Icann added beyond the original .com, .org and .gov. Icann, organized as a nonprofit, collects a fee each time it approves a new top-level domain and gets a cut of the registration charge for individual domain names. The corporation’s total take so far from the new domains is more than $300 million.

The Intellectual Property Constituency, an Icann stakeholder group, calls the .sucks domain “predatory, exploitative and coercive.” Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte says trademark holders are “being shaken down”—compelled to buy new addresses defensively to prevent their use.

Apple bought applestore.sucks. Gmail, Sam’s Club, Uber and Yahoo registered .sucks addresses, as did celebrities including Taylor Swift and Kevin Spacey. The standard price: $2,499, versus $10 for unclaimed .com addresses.

Mr. Goodlatte says the approval of .sucks “demonstrates the absurdity and futility of Icann’s own enforcement processes.” Instead of policing itself, Icann asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether the .sucks domain is abusive. Philip Corwin, a lawyer for the Internet Commerce Association, wrote on the CircleID website: “This is the equivalent of sending a message stating: ‘Dear Regulator: We have lit a fuse. Can you please tell us whether it is connected to a bomb?’ ”

Mr. Corwin told lawmakers the U.S. has been a “useful and corrective restraint on Icann” and a “first line of defense against any attempt at multilateral takeover and conversion to a government-dominated organization,” so “should exercise strong oversight in support of Icann’s stakeholders” in any transition of the contract.

The Internet ain’t broke, and Mr. Obama shouldn’t have tried to fix it. Icann and its stakeholders have spent the past year exhausting themselves on the impossible mission the White House set for them. They were tasked with finding some way to keep Icann operating with accountability but without U.S. oversight. Unsurprisingly, no one found a viable alternative.

Mr. Obama may be uncomfortable with American exceptionalism, but the Internet since its launch has reflected U.S. values of free speech and open innovation. That is why China, Russia and other authoritarian regimes lust for the power to control it.

Some stakeholders proposed a new institution to oversee Icann, while others wanted to build more accountability within Icann.

Last week Icann chief Fadi Chehade told the French news agency AFP that China and Brazil agreed with Icann’s proposals to end U.S. oversight and let Icann oversee itself: “It is now up to the community to wrap them up, put them in a nice little box with a bow and ship them to Washington.”

Even the Obama administration knows Mr. Chehade’s nonaccountability approach is a nonstarter. The .sucks saga shows that Icann won’t protect the Internet from unscrupulous business practices, never mind authoritarian regimes.

The Commerce Department recently asked several stakeholder groups how far past the original September date it would take to propose and implement alternatives to U.S. protection. The Obama administration still acts as if it can give up the contract overseeing Icann, but it can’t. Congress banned any steps by Commerce to give up the contract before the date in September, when the agreement must be renewed for two more years. This means Mr. Obama’s successor will decide.

The administration should tell Icann and the stakeholders to use the next two years to focus on creating accountability for Icann. If the White House persists in its wrongheaded idea to give up U.S. protection for the Internet, it should take the precaution of buying up ObamaInternetPlan.sucks.

[Crafty_Dog]

Ted Cruz’s Fight to Protect the Open Internet
The Texas senator blocks legislation that could lead to world-wide censorship of the Web.
By
L. Gordon Crovitz
Aug. 2, 2015 5:38 p.m. ET


Sen. Ted Cruz wants to safeguard the open Internet from authoritarian regimes. You’d think that would be an easy position to take, but it’s not. The Texas senator and presidential candidate is bucking the leadership of his Republican Party to push hard against the Obama administration plan to abandon America’s protection of the Internet from political interference.

This became an issue in March 2014, when the Commerce Department announced it would give up its Internet oversight by September 2015. Commerce exercises oversight through its contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, which keeps the engineers and network operators who manage the Internet free from political interference. China, Russia and other authoritarian regimes can censor websites only within their own countries, not globally as they have long desired.

Congress used its budget power to block Commerce from giving up the Icann contract during 2015, which should mean a two-year renewal into the next presidency. The Obama administration ignored that timetable and set the new date of July 2016 to give up control. Meanwhile, no alternative has emerged to protect the open Internet.

The House passed the Dotcom Act (“Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters”) in June, which requires the Obama administration to present such a plan to Congress. The Republican leadership supports the bill, but Mr. Cruz put a hold on it in the Senate because of a fatal flaw: U.S. protection for the Internet would automatically end 30 days after the Obama administration presents its plan unless Congress votes against it. Mr. Cruz instead wants to require congressional approval of any administration plan.

“It’s a key issue that the U.S. not give away control of the Internet to a body under the influence and possible control of foreign governments,” Mr. Cruz told me last week. “U.S. leadership is still needed, and we should defend freedom of speech and freedom on the Internet, not hand it over to other countries with different priorities.”

Mr. Cruz argues that the Dotcom Act is bad policy and unconstitutional. He cites the Constitution’s Property Clause (Article IV, Section 3), which says Congress must pass legislation before government property can be transferred. Under the contract between Commerce and Icann, “all deliverables provided under this contract become the property of the U.S. government.” The power to dispose of it, as Mr. Cruz says, belongs to Congress, “not to an assistant secretary of the Commerce Department.”

The administration claims it won’t hand the Internet over to a body controlled by governments. But in anticipation of the American abdication, many governments are quietly finalizing the details of how they take over.

At an Icann meeting in Paris last month, several governments said they would upgrade the current advisory role for governments within Icann as soon as the U.S. gives up control. They would elevate governments above Internet stakeholders—network operators, engineers and civil society groups. China, Brazil and France define this as “enhanced” power for governments.

A concerned participant shared with me internal Icann documents prepared for the meeting. A survey Icann conducted on the future of Internet governance highlights the dangers of an Obama surrender. Russia’s response to the survey insists that governments get “a more meaningful role than an advisory role . . . in all matters affecting public policy.” China wants “independent status” for governments in controlling the Internet. Even Switzerland wants more power for governments.

The Obama administration is conducting “stress tests” for what happens without U.S. protection. What’s called “Stress Test No. 18” relates to how governments could get control over Icann. Under current rules, governments can press Icann on Internet policy issues only if no country objects—“any formal objection” by just one country vetoes a power grab by governments at the expense of the multistakeholder community.

The Obama plan for Icann if the U.S. contract ends now requires only a “consensus” among governments to dictate Internet policy. That’s a far lower standard than today’s requirement of unanimity and would further sideline U.S. influence. The majority of authoritarian governments could act together to politicize Icann. Instead of censoring GayRightsInRussia.org or LiberateTibet.org only in their own countries, Russia and China could forge a “consensus” to impose a global ban.

Protecting the open Internet was a bipartisan issue for many years and should be one again. The Obama Internet giveaway invites a high-profile campaign issue for politicians who oppose it. Considering the popularity of the Internet, being for it is better politics than being against it.

[Body-by-Guinness]

Something new to keep your eyes open for:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-08/def-con-hackers-can-virtually-kill-people-expert-says/6683190

[Crafty_Dog]

BBG:

Somebody whom I respect in these things brings this to my attention:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2015/0810/How-this-hacker-can-virtually-kill-you-and-what-to-do-about-it

[Crafty_Dog]

y
Bret Swanson
Aug. 14, 2015 6:43 p.m. ET
95 COMMENTS

Imagine if Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg had been obliged to ask bureaucrats in Washington if it was OK to launch the iPhone, Gmail, or Facebook ’s forthcoming Oculus virtual-reality service. Ridiculous, right? Not anymore.

A few days before the Independence Day holiday weekend, the Federal Communications Commission announced what amounts to a system of permission slips for the Internet. The agency said its July 2 public notice would help firms understand how its comprehensive and controversial Open Internet Order—which subjects the dynamic world of broadband, mobile, content, cloud and apps to public-utility oversight—will be applied in practice.

The new public notice, outlining the “Open Internet Advisory Opinion Procedures” turns upside down the historical presumption that Internet firms are free to innovate.

In February, when the FCC voted 3-2 to adopt the 400-page Open Internet Order, critics said it was intrusive, overly broad and ambiguous. The fear was that arbitrary judgments and legal uncertainty could chill the feverish pace of digital innovation.

And a feverish pace it is. In the week before the Open Internet Order’s initial rules went into effect in June, Apple launched its new music streaming service. Amazon revealed it is building an ambitious new online videogame. Google began offering nearly unlimited free storage of photos and videos, and it advanced its planning for “app streaming” from the cloud. Oculus unveiled its new Rift virtual-reality headset, a platform that will generate massive multimedia traffic on the Internet.

The FCC said its Open Internet Order regulations are needed to prevent Internet Service Providers from “blocking” and “throttling” content. But the evidence says the previous regime of Internet freedom was a rousing success. The U.S. today rules the world in mobile innovation and generates two to three times more Internet data traffic per capita than most advanced nations.

The market value of seven American technology firms—Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Intel and Microsoft —totals $2.3 trillion, more than the entire stock markets of Germany or Australia. How long will this last if companies have to wait for FCC gatekeepers to prejudge the next wave of innovative digital products before consumers get to decide if they have value?

As the FCC begins to issue guidance and enforcement actions, it’s becoming clearer that critics who feared there would be significant legal uncertainty were right. Under its new “transparency” rule, for example, the agency on June 17 conjured out of thin air an astonishing $100 million fine against AT&T, even though the firm explained its mobile-data plans on its websites and in numerous emails and texts to customers.

The FCC’s new “Internet Conduct Standard,” meanwhile, is no standard at all. It is an undefined catchall for any future behavior the agency doesn’t like. And that’s where the advisory opinions on the legality of new products and services come in. The advisory opinions are an attempt to clarify what the Conduct Standard means. Yet the Conduct Standard is vague and open-ended, while advisory requests from firms must be specific and based on real products.

“A proposed course of conduct for which an advisory opinion is sought,” the FCC guidelines state, “must be sufficiently concrete and detailed so as to be more than merely hypothetical; it must be sufficiently defined to enable the Bureau to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the proposal. In addition, the Bureau will not respond to requests for opinions that relate to ongoing or prior conduct.”

And so, to request an advisory opinion, a firm must launch a project, making it “concrete,” not “hypothetical.” But the product or technology must also not be “ongoing.” At what point does a hypothetical product become concrete, and at what point does a concrete product become ongoing? And because the advisory opinions—and the “detailed” requests—will be public, won’t entrepreneurs and corporations worry about revealing proprietary information and strategies?

Large broadband firms may be able to navigate the new “advisory opinion” world, at least from a legal perspective. As with most regulation, however, smaller entrepreneurs will have a tougher time. Because the Internet relies on so many complementary and competitive relationships among network and content firms of all sizes, the overall effect is likely to slow experimentation.

Already, the rules are beginning to tip the scales toward some network firms but away from others. With FCC support, Netflix has signed new deals for free or near-free bandwidth from Time Warner Cable, AT&T and others. But sponsored data plans from Facebook, Pandora and Spotify—where the content firm pays the consumer’s charges—are under suspicion and the FCC has said it would scrutinize them. Groups like the New America Foundation are calling for the prohibition of broadband data limits, which are currently ubiquitous in mobile plans. If data plans with limits are banned, the casual user who checks his emails a couple of times a day will subsidize the round-the-clock videogame player.

From the beginning, Internet pioneers operated in an environment of “permissionless innovation.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler now insists that “it makes sense to have somebody watching over their shoulder and ready to jump in if necessary.” But the agency is jumping in to demand that innovators get permission before they offer new services to consumers. The result will be less innovation.

Mr. Swanson, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is president of Entropy Economics LLC, which advises investors and Internet firms.

[G M]

It is like this country has been fundamentally changed.

[Crafty_Dog]

By L. Gordon Crovitz
Sept. 27, 2015 4:36 p.m. ET
86 COMMENTS

The flaw in President Obama’s plan to give up U.S. protection of the open Internet becomes clearer with each delay in carrying it out: The Internet isn’t broken, so why fix it? The good news is congressional leaders have found a way to block the plan in the Constitution, which makes clear that the Internet isn’t Mr. Obama’s to give away.

Since the launch of the commercial Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, has operated under a contract from the U.S. Commerce Department. American oversight freed engineers and developers to run the networks without political pressure from other governments. China and Russia can censor the Internet in their own countries, but not globally because Washington would block tampering with the “root zone” of Web addresses.

The Obama administration, looking to placate other governments after the Edward Snowden disclosures in 2013 about U.S. surveillance, said it would end this American exceptionalism. Surveillance is unrelated to Internet governance, but the White House thought it would be an easy concession.

No one has found a way to keep authoritarian regimes at bay without U.S. protection. The administration originally planned to surrender U.S. control this month, but was forced to postpone to September 2016. Last week the Commerce Department admitted there is still no post-U. S. plan for the Internet. Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling posted an update online saying there are “many questions still to be answered, both about the substance of the overall plan as well its implementation” and “significant confusion and uncertainty.” He wants a plan “as simple as possible”—but a simple plan would have been crafted by now.

Instead, the process is frustrating the Internet stakeholders it was supposed to protect. “In an extraordinary, almost surreal three-hour teleconference,” an industry blog reported this month, “the working group drawing up plans to make Icann—wannabe masters of the Internet—more open and responsive to the public were treated to a level of Orwellian ‘double speak’ rarely seen outside the British civil service.”

The Icann board says it is willing to be held accountable but rejects the key accountability proposals developed over the past year. Icann doesn’t want to share power or let stakeholders replace its board if it misbehaves or comes under the influence of authoritarian regimes. “It may be prudent to delay the transition” from U.S. control, Icann acknowledges.

This column has quoted confidential Icann documents detailing steps authoritarian regimes will take if the U.S. cedes authority. The Russian representative says governments will get a role “more meaningful than just advisory,” to be accomplished in the “post-transition period”—that is, after the U.S. surrenders control and can’t block other governments.

In addition to the immediate risk of other governments seeking power, the stakeholders also want more accountability for Icann’s core function, running an efficient Internet. Icann has earned hundreds of millions in fees, collected from registrars for every .com, .org and .net address they sell. Without U.S. control, Icann would go from being a regulated monopoly to being an unregulated monopoly. That could boost its coffers at the expense of Internet companies and users.

Congress may yet save the Internet by blocking the administration’s plan. Sen. Ted Cruz last week joined Chuck Grassley and Bob Goodlatte, respectively chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary committees, in sending a letter to the Government Accountability Office arguing that the executive branch cannot act alone. The letter, which is not yet public, notes the constitutional requirement that only Congress can “dispose” of federal property.

The U.S. contract with Icann says deliverables, including the root zone of the Internet, are “the property of the U.S. government.” Icann’s monopoly over the root zone and its Web addresses is worth billions. Any disposal of the Icann contract without congressional approval—which is unlikely—should be voided by the courts.

“Mr. Obama lacks the authority to give away what isn’t his,” Mr. Cruz told me last week. He says the letter to the GAO shows “grave concern in both the Senate and House.” He and fellow Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush are campaigning against the plan, which adds an important technology topic to the race. American protection for the Internet had bipartisan support until Mr. Obama decided to give it up.

If the Obama administration wants a simple solution to the Internet-governance mess it created, it should announce that the U.S. will retain its stewardship and support more accountability from Icann to its stakeholders. The open Internet is too important to be abandoned by an administration that thought surrendering the Web would be easy.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrWHeVy003c

[ccp]

The tech oligarchs ruling the world, our politics, our government, our privacy and basically everything else:

ttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/11/today-s-tech-oligarchs-are-worse-than-the-robber-barons.html

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/11/today-s-tech-oligarchs-are-worse-than-the-robber-barons.html

[DDF]

If the Obama administration wants a simple solution to the Internet-governance mess it created, it should announce that the U.S. will retain its stewardship and support more accountability from Icann to its stakeholders. The open Internet is too important to be abandoned by an administration that thought surrendering the Web would be easy.

But he can't.... because his Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement needs him to give this up too. In fact, he needs to "insure a FREE AND OPEN" internet. His words.

https://ustr.gov/tpp/#ensuring-a-free-open-internet

They'll no doubt pass the TPP immediately after the elections, with the bill containing everything from this, to open visas and mandatory export requirements, which also allows for export of labor services.

The bill also specifically allows for sharing of technology and services, also detailing cryptography, and allowing for foreign workers to be imported to any signatory's country.

Being that the bill was kept in secrecy, politicians actually denied access to it, and when granted access, access was supervised, bill signed in February of 2016, and with everything this controls, almost no one is talking about it, but Kardashian's jewelry, insurance scam is international news.

Yeah. You can bet this will pass...even if Trump wins.

Ask yourself, what does giving away control of the internet have to do with establishing trade across the ocean? But it's in there.

They attempt to make a sales pitch for it here - https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/intellectual-property-3479efdc7adf#.paxmxv65e

In which they want to eliminate "cyber squatting:"

"Preventing Domain Name Cyber-Squatting

In an effort to reduce domain name cybersquatting, the TPP ensures that, in connection with a Party’s country-code top-level domain name registration system, appropriate remedies are available in cases of bad faith registration of domain names that are confusingly similar to registered trademarks." - taken from the preceding link.

They can't very well control that if the control does not lie within UN or WTO hands.

From what I have read thus far, in every aspect, they have absolutely sought to diminish the standard of living for Americans, send American jobs (including intellectual jobs), elsewhere, and establish law that overrides US law.

Also interesting is the last sentence of this quote from the same page:

"Enforcement in the Digital Environment

TPP is the first FTA to clarify that IPR enforcement should be available against infringement in the digital environment and not just against physical products. Some countries in the WTO have asserted that existing IP enforcement commitments do not apply online or to digital products.

The author of the page, instead of denouncing the disagreement, immediately follows with:

"TPP takes additional steps toward promoting legitimate digital trade, including the delivery of movies, music, software, and books online. In particular, the ISP copyright safe harbor section helps to provide certainty and predictability about the scope of the safe harbors, as in prior FTAs, while also reflecting the diversity of approaches in the TPP countries, and ensuring that existing effective systems, such as ones upon which rights holders, ISPs, and consumers have come to rely in the course of digital trade, can stay in place. TPP also recognizes the important role of collective management societies for copyright and related rights in collecting and distributing royalties through fair, efficient, transparent, and accountable practices, which promote a rich and accessible digital marketplace for content.

Basically... they are stating directly, that control over everything must remain in international hands. They aren't even hiding it anymore.

[ccp]

I wonder if HIPPA applies to our fearless leader:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/10/06/surgeon-generals-office-confirms-potential-security-breach/

[ccp]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iot-growing-faster-than-the-ability-to-defend-it/

[Crafty_Dog]

 

[Crafty_Dog]

https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.eqyrzypkf

[ccp]

made equivalent to + or 0:
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/03/10/scientists-store-data-on-a-single-atom-for-the-first-time/

[Crafty_Dog]

 

[DDF]

https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/292z2b/ysk_about_archivetoday_a_website_that_lets_you/

There are a number of archiving sites. Some are more trustworty than others, Google - obvousily owning an "archiving" service.

The safest way is to create an archive and save it on your computer or a secondary hard-drive, memory stick, etc.

There are two problems:

1.) Archive.today won't save audio/video files.

2.) If you save the file on your computer, you won't be able to share it online with the ease that one shares a webpage, unless you have your own website (which isn't all that difficult, depending upon the complexity of the site), with the ease that one could share an existing webpage.

Other Options for archiving -

https://archive.org/web/

http://cachedview.com/ - owned by Google



More information - https://www.labnol.org/internet/archive-web-pages/20192/

[Crafty_Dog]

DDF, please post that here as well:  http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=550.0

[ccp]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/03/02/top-income-earning-blogs/#4faa05012377

[Crafty_Dog]

In an email to me a very brainy friend (PhD in Physics, and generally a tech whiz)wrote of

" information hygiene" and the breakdown of human social structure when exposed to technology"

This struck as very penetrating.

[ccp]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/yahoos-demise-is-a-death-knell-for-digital-news-orgs/523692/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dailywire.com/news/24004/everything-you-need-know-about-why-net-neutrality-harry-khachatrian?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=112817-news&utm_campaign=modelnames

[ccp]

Frankly I don't really understand what this is all about but if murkowsky and collins join the crats to vote for this then I would naturally assume this is NOT good
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/05/16/democratic-control-senate-passes-resolution-to-restore-net-neutrality/

[G M]

Frankly I don't really understand what this is all about but if murkowsky and collins join the crats to vote for this then I would naturally assume this is NOT good
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/05/16/democratic-control-senate-passes-resolution-to-restore-net-neutrality/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/05/14/am-i-the-only-techie-against-net-neutrality/

[ccp]

GM interesting piece but it has a lot of broad proclamations and short on specifics or examples:

"I don’t like how much power the telecoms have. But the reason they’re big and powerful isn’t because there is a lack of government regulation, but because of it. Government regulations are written by large corporate interests which collude with officials in government. The image of government being full of people on a mission to protect the little guy from predatory corporate behemoths is an illusion fostered by politicians and corporate interests alike. Many, if not most, government regulations are the product of crony capitalism designed to prevent small entrepreneurs "

Is this really true?   I can't tell from this article

[DougMacG]

The first thing to know with "Net Neutrality" is that liberal governmentists lie with their words when they make up names of things to shape the dishonest debate.  Case in point, affordable housing is anything the buyer owner renter cannot afford.  Affordable Healthcare?  Same thing.  Since when did the best innovation of our lifetime need "neutralizing"?  We were net neutral BEFORE the internet.

Second, why screw up what is working great so far?  The public utilities where I live are all headed backwards. 

Third, if you were going to try to kill off innovation, what would you do?  Net neutrality is exactly how you would kill it off if you wanted to.  It puts government in charge and makes advances illegal because every hierarchical or priority based usage will always favor one use or user ahead of some other.  With innovation banned, guess what happens, innovation stops.  If spam gets the same priority as national security or higher priced, priority signals, spam wins.  There is more of it.

Fourth, it ends the US technological advantage in this industry and more.
----------------------

Frankly I don't really understand what this is all about but if murkowsky and collins join the crats to vote for this then I would naturally assume this is NOT good
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/05/16/democratic-control-senate-passes-resolution-to-restore-net-neutrality/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/05/14/am-i-the-only-techie-against-net-neutrality/

"George Gilder, economist and author of Telecosm said: "We've had 15 years of marvelous success, just stunning success on the Internet. . . Our seven top technology companies are all related to the Internet. The US has four times the investment in fixed broadband than Europe, with its government intervention, and twice the investment in wireless. Most of Internet traffic in the world flows through the US. What on earth is wrong that the FCC thinks it has to reduce it to a public utility?"
https://www.ncta.com/positions/what-people-are-saying-about-the-net-neutrality-congressional-solution

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/18/net-neutrality-obama-fcc-puts-internet-american-innovation-at-risk.html
Net neutrality: Obama's FCC puts Internet, American innovation at risk
By George Gilder  Published March 18, 2015  Fox News

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its disastrous new network neutrality rules earlier this month, officially signaling to the world that the U.S. will adopt a policy destined to stifle technological advancement and put network investment into neutral.

By heeding President Obama's call to make the Internet a government-regulated public utility, the FCC has adopted a system equipped to regulate public utilities and monopolies, not the dynamic and fast paced Internet economy.

Worst still, it is doing so under a guise to impose price regulation on the Internet and grant unfair advantages for Silicon Valley companies like Netflix and Google which account for nearly half of all U.S. Internet traffic.

At such an important time for this industry, now is not the time to stall investment -- something this ruling is bound to do. For a prosperous future of high-speed Internet services, it needs to go full speed ahead.

Put simply, this brand of rigid net neutrality would bring to a screeching halt a trillion-dollar program of network expansion and upgrades marked by the move to cloud computing.

As Peter Thiel's masterly new book "Zero-to-One" demonstrates, every real innovation creates a monopoly. The Internet is a multifarious engine of real innovations, launching new and transitory monopolies with every new phase of its tumultuous growth. An unnecessary effort to suppress every monopoly would bring all this innovation to a halt.

How the Internet functions -- from business deals with consumers to business deals with peers in the Internet ecosystem -- is no legal problem; it is a technical and financial challenge that will be met not with mandates but with profits. By disallowing companies the ability to negotiate business arrangements on their own terms -- something needed but prohibited by utility-style regulations -- the FCC has put forth network neutrality price caps and controls destined to produce a static, zero-sum Internet. Such an environment will actually result in the conditions of zero-sum scarcity and oligarchy that network neutrality seeks to remedy.

A crucial enabler for the funds being raised for the current transition has been the FCC's treatment of new technology as a new frontier that should not be burdened by legacy regulation.

Investors have acted on the assurance that regulators would refrain from imposing on the Internet the anti-investment regime of utility-style laws, with its mazes of rules and tariffs.

The core of the FCC's new rules is to regulate monopolies and it is riddled with onerous regulations like price controls, tariffs and provisions that require a company to seek permission to offer or discontinue services. Yet the Internet's existing regulation-lite "information services" classification has freed Internet traffic to flow across an un-tariffed set of dynamically advancing global webs, rather than a U.N.-regulated telecommunications carrier.

The Telecom Act of 1996 followed 60 years of suffocating regulation that led to somnolent telecom service with virtually no innovation beyond the invention in 1959 of the many-colored Princess phone. This archaic regime still requires telecommunication companies to spend half their working capital maintaining obsolete legacy copper landlines.

Unbeknownst to many, network neutrality can shift Internet progress and control to nations outside the U.S. At a moment of critical transition for all world networks, the U.S. administration is joining global critics of U.S. Internet influence: our content and search providers, our datacenter leviathans, our global net address and domain name registrars, our fiber optic worldwide webs.

As a public utility telecom, the Internet would fall under the sway of U.N.-administered treaties and agreements, as specified by the constitution of the International Telecom Union (ITU).

Subjecting the Internet to this style of utility regulation sends a strong signal to the rest of the world -- including nations like China and Russia seeking greater control of the Internet -- that more regulation of the Internet is a wise path.

But what happens in Washington does not stay in Washington. Power-hungry, anti-American governments are deeply suspicious of the clout and coverage of U.S. Internet players such as Google and Apple. Russia and China have been urging the international community for stronger regulations on the Internet pushing for things like Internet censorship among others. Does the U.S. administration really want to join them?

Taxing and regulating the Internet like it was 1934 would be the surest way to stifle investment and innovation, turn increasing bandwidth abundance into bandwidth scarcity and nullify the Internet's contribution to U.S. economic growth and world leadership. The FCC has chosen the wrong path.

George Gilder is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drbEqLIEI3M

http://www.bretswanson.com/index.php/category/internet/net-neutrality/
http://bit.ly/15KAzZA

[ccp]

Thanks Doug and GM

Gilders free market approach of course is well known.

I do have real concerns that libs like Bezos and Zuck  have in controlling our lives and their ability to swallow or stifle competition.  I agree the government might simply make it worse and they more or less wind up becoming complicit rather then open of competition.  


I remember I thought this about MSFT and Gates in the 90s yet he missed the "net" and now MSFT is second tier.  I remember even posting my concerns on the original Gilder board to be mostly shot down by Gilder and many others (Doug?)  )
but that is kids play compared to what is going on now .  

I just don't know what the answer is if anything.  We will see.

[ccp]

https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/life-after-google-blockchain-economy

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/chinese-leader-xi-jinping-lays-out-plan-to-control-the-global-internet-leaked-documents_3791944.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-05-03&mktids=dde638cfc42810e3fba4696359a6485a&est=WEzzWsyd7faBz3lUacNYq7maVFffgljovvU5S2%2BRQhg0IQbEa3Kip1mY1gN24q3RBbK8

[ccp]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tiktok-stars-made-more-money-than-many-of-americas-top-ceos-11642078170

the new Kardashians
gaming

the whole young tech generation and their lusts craving vices and entertainment interests

girlie heroes

gaming and other made up worlds are the craze

the beginning of metaverse

this can't be good , can it?

[G M]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tiktok-stars-made-more-money-than-many-of-americas-top-ceos-11642078170

the new Kardashians
gaming

the whole young tech generation and their lusts craving vices and entertainment interests

girlie heroes

gaming and other made up worlds are the craze

the beginning of metaverse

this can't be good , can it?

https://embedded.substack.com/p/the-new-tiktok-surveillance-state

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/07/25/beware-tiktok-really-is-spying-on-you-new-security-report-update-trump-pompeo-china-warning/?sh=d80490e40148

[DougMacG]

From G M Forbes link:

"relentless pressure on TikTok ramped up further this week, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again claiming user data is sent to China. “It’s not possible to have your personal information flow across a Chinese server,” he warned during a British media interview, without that data “ending up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” which he characterized as an “evil empire.” "

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/07/25/beware-tiktok-really-is-spying-on-you-new-security-report-update-trump-pompeo-china-warning/?sh=d80490e40148
---------
As recently as July 2020 we had a Sec State looking out for America's interests.

I guess China won that round.

[ccp]

https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/websites/website-creation/what-does-the-404-not-found-error-mean/

[ccp]

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/06/30/the-metaverse-in-2040/

[ccp]

tik tok bad

Tucker says alternative worse

now tik tok good   

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/03/29/restrict-act-labeled-a-tiktok-ban-includes-jail-sentences-huge-fines-for-american-citizens/

tiktok
is owned by Chinese company ByteDance
which started an app for Chinese Douyin
and later started a *separate * app for international use called Tiktok

interestingly the company was started by Chinese man named
Zhang Yiming who for a time worked at Microsoft

[ccp]

not sure
what all this talk about tiktok legislation being trojan horse

Hawley sponsored it . was he snookered by Dems

congressman on Bill O'Reilly yesterday
does not expect bill to pass - states it was intended to get compromise

maybe to get legislation to get it under US control
I don't know how that can be done, AND GUARANTEE  it won't be accessed by CCP
irregardless

he did discuss the importance of stopping the CCP from continuously gathering data on everything in the US

I cannot find the link

[ccp]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23738968/apple-vision-pro-ar-headset-features-specs-price-release-date-wwdc-2023

[DougMacG]

https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/silicon-photonics-the-key-to-unlocking-ais-full-potential/

[ccp]

threatens ALL our cybersecurity

we need to start taking action now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/01/09/whats-ahead-for-quantum-security-in-2024/?sh=40ba8a67c009

[Body-by-Guinness]

My money is on China as the bad actor here:

THE BACKDOOR TO CONTROL THE INTERNET

We almost lost the Internet last week, but open-source developers saved the day.

JONATHAN BARTLETT APRIL 1, 2024 4
 
Few people are aware, but over the last several days, a perceptive developer foiled a multi-year plot to install a remote backdoor into, well, the entire Internet.

Two years ago, a programmer known as Jia Tan (JiaT75) started helping out with a lesser-known compression library, known as xz. For those who don’t know, software today is not a monolithic entity. Every piece of software you use it built from a collection of tools, known as libraries, that make programming easier. For instance, most programmers never have to write the specifics of a sorting algorithm, because, somewhere, there is a library which performs sorting for them. This leaves programmers to focus on higher-level tasks, like actually making the software do what the users want. However, these libraries don’t come from nowhere — they require interested programmers to maintain and expand their functionalities. This is a lot of work, so when new programmers volunteer to help, it is a great relief.

However, Jia Tan’s motives were less than pure. While xz is not directly utilized in a lot of software, it is pulled in by some other libraries, which are then utilized by still other programs. In particular, the popular remote login service sshd, used by system administrators everywhere, can optionally include a tie-in to a third-party library, which then also includes the xz library. And this is the configuration used by most server operating systems on the Internet. So, as Jia Tan gained credibility with the xz maintainers, Jia also indirectly gained increasing access to other parts of the operating system.

Software often includes code to test itself. This is how software maintainers prevent themselves from creating obvious bugs when making changes. The test code usually isn’t incorporated to the final software that is shipped. Jia Tan included a backdoor in a file that was ostensibly used to test the compression techniques of xz. However, a modification of the build system causes this test case with its backdoor to get combined into the final software, which is then deployed. The backdoor works by overwriting standard encryption/decryption functions with its own version of these functions.

This software had already gotten merged with some test versions of several standard operating systems, so developers on the bleeding edge had already started to use it. It was discovered because a Microsoft software engineer, Andres Freund, was doing some performance tests. To do these tests, he was trying to minimize how much CPU time the rest of the tools on his system were using. He noticed that sshd was using an inordinate amount of processing power, so he started to dig into what was causing the performance hit. His analysis tools showed that sshd was spending a lot of its time in the xz library, and still further investigation revealed that the xz library had replaced some of the standard encryption and decryption functions.

Thankfully, this was discovered before it had major impacts. Nobody knows who Jia Tan is, and we are probably never going to find out. But this does put software developers on alert to the fact that bad actors, whether individuals or part of a state organization, are willing to play the long game to get malicious software installed on everything.

Some have used this incident to criticize open-source software, saying that this is part of the problem — i.e., if it weren’t for everyone relying on open-source software, this would not have happened. But honestly, I think the opposite is true. The only reason this was found was because of open-source software. It is because we have developers who are familiar with the code base not only of their own software, but of everything their software runs on, that we were able to find and diagnose the problem so quickly. I’ve used closed-source software on occasion, and there is zero transparency in such situations. If someone introduced malicious code into an important closed-source piece of software, nobody would know, and nobody would even have the ability to find out. If it was discovered, the company in charge would probably try to avoid disclosure about the extent of the problem. However, as it was open-source, there is a transparent record of everything that happened — every message, every commit, every artifact that was uploaded. Everything can be inspected and examined, the full extent of the damage can be determined, and the root cause can be debated in public so that everyone can be on guard.
In short, we almost lost the Internet this week, but for the careful eye of open-source software developers.

JONATHAN BARTLETT
SENIOR FELLOW, WALTER BRADLEY CENTER FOR NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Jonathan Bartlett is a senior software R&D engineer at Specialized Bicycle Components, where he focuses on solving problems that span multiple software teams. Previously he was a senior developer at ITX, where he developed applications for companies across the US. He also offers his time as the Director of The Blyth Institute, focusing on the interplay between mathematics, philosophy, engineering, and science. Jonathan is the author of several textbooks and edited volumes which have been used by universities as diverse as Princeton and DeVry.

[Crafty_Dog]

Starlink’s Musk slams delays for internet

Biden denies fast setup for satellites

BY SUSAN FERRECHIO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Biden’s slow rollout of a $42.5 billion rural internet program has increased criticism of the administration’s decision to yank federal funding from Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service, which proponents say could provide faster, cheaper internet access to areas with little or no connectivity.

Mr. Musk criticized the federal program in response to a Washington Times report detailing the yearslong process of administering the massive tranche of funds and connecting homes to the internet.

“Your tax dollars for nothing,” Mr. Musk posted on his social media site, X.

The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD, has not connected a single rural home to high-speed internet service since Mr. Biden signed the funding into law in November 2021.

At the current pace of distributing the funds, high-speed internet connections to most of the rural areas intended to benefit from BEAD won’t be completed until 2030. The Commerce Department, which is in charge of the program, said none of the projects will begin until 2025 or 2026.

Mr. Musk’s SpaceX is excluded from the BEAD federal subsidies because the money is reserved for companies deploying fiber-optic cable, which the government views as a more proven technology than satellite connections.

During the Trump administration,

SpaceX was on track to receive $885.5 million from a different federal program to provide internet to rural locations. The Democratic-led Federal Communications Commission canceled the SpaceX award in August 2022.

The money, administered under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, would have helped SpaceX use Starlink, a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit, to provide high-speed internet service to 640,000 rural locations in 35 states.

When it rescinded the funds, the FCC cited questions about Starlink’s internet speed and “the uncertain nature” of SpaceX’s Starship launches.

Some have blamed the cancellation on the Biden administration’s apparent disdain for Mr. Musk, who has been critical of the president using his perch on X, formerly Twitter.

The Biden administration has launched investigations into Mr. Musk and his business. In November 2022, Mr. Biden said Mr. Musk’s “technical relationships” with other countries are “worthy of being looked at.” When asked for details, the president told reporters, “There are a lot of ways” to investigate Mr. Musk.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Republican appointee, said the commission’s revocation of the Starlink subsidies “certainly fits the Biden administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment” of Mr. Musk.

SpaceX, meanwhile, has been successfully deploying low-orbit satellites that the company said will continue to broaden the availability and increase the speed of Starlink internet.

SpaceX launched 20 Starlink satellites from California on June 18. The company said more than 6,000 satellites are now operational in the Starlink “megaconstellation.”

Homes can be hooked up quickly with a receiver that provides internet with download speeds of 25 to 220 Mbps, or megabits per second, the company said.

BEAD limits federal subsidies to companies that will install high-speed internet with fiber-optic cable, which provides consistently faster speeds, up to 1,000 Mbps, and is considered more reliable.

Installing fiber-optic cable is far more costly, however, and takes much longer to deploy, particularly in rural areas without internet service. Cost estimates for laying fiber-optic cable range from more than $12 per foot in rural areas with soft ground to $20 per foot — which is $105,600 per mile — in rocky terrain.

Mr. Carr said Starlink was on track to install the infrastructure for high-speed internet much faster and at a lower cost by using government subsidies.

Mr. Carr said SpaceX could connect rural areas at a cost of $1,377 per location. The federal subsidies would have added ground stations and reserved the satellite capacity needed to provide service to the targeted rural areas.

BEAD awarded $82 million in January to North Carolina to connect 16,000 rural homes to the internet via fiber-optic cable, which amounts to more than $5,000 per home.

“For $42 billion they could have bought Starlink dishes for 140 million people,” influential technology blogger Scott Woods posted on X.

None of the federal funding is intended to pay for monthly service or home equipment, although Commerce Department officials are demanding that BEAD funding recipients provide low-cost options for consumers.

Starlink for homes requires the purchase of a satellite dish and Wi-Fi router kit, which costs $299 to $599, depending on location. The lowest-cost plan is $120 per month for download speeds of 20 to 100 Mbps and unlimited data. Fiber internet costs about $50 per month, with higher costs for unlimited data.

The biggest difference may be the wait. Many rural areas won’t connect to high-speed internet for years under Mr. Biden’s BEAD program, but Starlink offers same-day delivery of its installation equipment, which can be set up in a couple of hours.

Mr. Musk appealed the decision to revoke Starlink’s federal subsidies, but the FCC said the company did not prove it could provide internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps.

In a letter this year to House lawmakers who questioned the withdrawal of the funding, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel cited multiple reasons, including Starlink’s high startup and monthly costs for rural consumers.

Ms. Rosenworcel said Starlink also refused to remove urban areas, including Newark International Airport and the Chicago Loop, from its funding bid.

“Starlink continues to make its service available to consumers, and nothing in the Commission’s decision on Starlink’s application prevents consumers from choosing Starlink if it meets their needs,” Ms. Rosenworcel wrote.

SpaceX, which reports more than 1.3 million Starlink subscribers in the U.S., did not respond to a media inquiry

[ccp]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-beats-q2-expectations-but-warns-of-significant-spending-expansion-in-2025-201256137.html

remember he was the unsure kid when he started

now the confident mega successful world shaper who dresses like a NYC mobster:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-beats-q2-expectations-but-warns-of-significant-spending-expansion-in-2025-201256137.html

Following in the footsteps of Bezos.   Eventually divorce and get the young babe...........

great gossip for the headlines.

I admire all their achievements and a bit jealous.  I don't like their damn partisanship though they pretend they are not.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/net-neutrality-rule-blocked-sixth-circuit-court-of-appeals-chevron-fcc-biden-administration-5f235e50?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Biden regulatory blitz continues, but courts are beginning to do their job to stop the biggest legal overreaches. A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel last week blocked the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rule, citing the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine. Welcome to the post-Chevron world.

Democrats on the FCC this spring reclassified broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. This let the commission regulate broadband rates and impose “non-discrimination obligations.” The Biden FCC wants to impose political control over the internet.

But as the three-judge Sixth Circuit panel explains in an unsigned order, the law doesn’t let the FCC regulate broadband providers as common carriers. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama FCC’s Title II rule in 2016 under the Chevron doctrine, which required judges to refer to regulators’ interpretations of laws if they are “reasonable.”

The High Court tossed Chevron this summer, in a long-overdue ruling that restored the job of judges to assess if regulators have exceeded their statutory power. Critics, including the Court’s liberals, said lower courts would struggle to review regulations in a post-Chevron world. Not the Sixth Circuit. Two of the three reviewing panel’s judges are Democratic appointees, one of whom was elevated by President Biden. The other is Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, appointed by George W. Bush.

As the panel explains, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 “created a new category of ‘information service’” providers separate from common carriers. The panel also cites the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine, which requires Congress to clearly authorize significant administrative actions.

“An agency may issue regulations only to the extent that Congress permits it,” the panel writes. “The more an agency asks of a statute, in short, the more it must show in the statute to support its rule.” The FCC pointed to a catch-all in the 1934 law that lets it “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest” to implement Title II.

“But such general or ‘ancillary’ authority to fill gaps in Congress’s regulatory scheme does not suffice to show that Congress clearly delegated authority to resolve a major question like this one,” the panel writes. In the Chevron world, judges routinely deferred to administrative agencies when regulators sought to fill in such “gaps.”

The Justices have put lower courts and administrative agencies on notice that they cannot read between a law’s lines to implement policy without clear Congressional command. Will the White House hear the Court now?