Uncategorized

Logic of self-driving car policy escapes RAND corporation

16 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Control sample.

The RAND corporation published a study about self driving cars that comes to a mathematically obvious conclusion, while completely missing the public policy point. The study starts with the fact that one person dies in a U.S. traffic accident for every 100 million miles driven. Then it dives into a really complex statistical analysis…

Given that fatalities and injuries are rare events, we will show that fully autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries.

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Backdoor to encrypted data required in proposed bill

15 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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California’s senior U.S. senator wants software, hardware and telecoms companies, and pretty much everyone else in the high tech universe to keep a master key to their encrypted products and services. And turn the key anytime a court tells them to do so. The draft of a bill by senators Diane Feinstein (D – California) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) says…

A covered entity that receives a court order from a government for information or data shall— (A) provide such information or data to such government in an intelligible format; or (B) provide such technical assistance as is necessary to obtain such information or data in an intelligible format or to achieve the purpose of the court order.

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Google Fiber tries cheaper service tier in Kansas City

12 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Google Fiber is pulling its 5 Mbps data plan off the market in Kansas City. It’s often mischaracterised as free, but it wasn’t quite that. The deal was that people living in a soon-to-be blessed fiberhood could pay a $300 installation fee and get 5 Mbps service for seven years. Speculation is that Google Fiber is trying to pump up revenue by steering low end subs to a $50 a month, 100 Mbps plan with free installation.… More

Community WiFi project fades away in LA

10 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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On the shelf.

A community-based WiFi access initiative that I wrote about three years ago has hit some rough waters, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. Manchester Community Technologies embarked on a project to get local businesses in economically depressed areas to share Internet connections and power a WiFi network managed by Manchester. Initially, they were serving 1,500 people a month, and running on a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission.… More

Who will secure the securers?

9 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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The FBI is offering the best argument for not giving government agencies back door access to encrypted systems: those same government agencies can’t keep their own stuff locked down. According to a story on Motherboard, the FBI has put out a warning about another massive security breach…

The feds warned that “a group of malicious cyber actors,” whom security experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as APT6, “have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government and commercial networks” since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert obtained by Motherboard.

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Online consumer cancellation law threatens broadband monopolies

7 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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That’s not the AT&T logo about to explode, is it?

Sometimes the simplest laws bring the biggest changes. That might be the case for a proposal from California assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles) to make it as easy to cancel broadband or video service as it is to sign up for it. Assembly bill 2867 adds one sentence to California consumer protection law…

If a cable or Internet service provider enables an individual to subscribe to its services through an Internet Web site, it shall also enable all of its customers to cancel their subscriptions through the Internet Web site.

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California says adios to Verizon, bienvenido to Frontier

3 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Work in progress.

As of Friday, two million Californians have a new telephone company. Frontier Communications wrapped up the paperwork and took title to Verizon’s wireline telephone systems in California, Florida and Texas…

The acquired businesses include approximately 3.3 million voice connections, 2.1 million broadband connections, and 1.2 million FiOS video subscribers, as well as the related incumbent local exchange carrier businesses. New customers will begin receiving monthly bills starting in mid-April.

“This is a transformative acquisition for Frontier that delivers first-rate assets and important new opportunities given our dramatically expanded scale,” said Daniel J.

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Something about broadband is a laughing matter

2 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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The good stuff is no joke.

It was hard to tell which post on the Google Fiber blog yesterday was the April Fool’s joke, and which was the sober look at the world ahead. On the one hand, a Google engineer, Pál Takácsi, reflected on the need to boost broadband speeds by a billion times…

While gigabit speeds are fast, we have come across an application where 1,000 Mbps is actually quite slow. Terribly slow.

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Stormy FCC okays lifeline subsidies for broadband

1 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Politics.

The Federal Communications Commission approved a lifeline subsidy for broadband service yesterday with high drama and a party line vote. As is common practice at the FCC, no one knows what the program actually is, except commissioners and staff. And maybe not even them.

According to press reports, yesterday’s meeting was delayed for three hours while democrat Mignon Clyburn tried to negotiate a bipartisan agreement with the two republican commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly.… More

Cable subs shave before they cut

30 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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The pay TV subscriber count in the U.S. dropped below the 100 million mark in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Nielsen. That’s the number of households that buy traditional television programming packages from either cable, telephone or satellite companies.

The declining fortunes of traditional linear television are directly linked to the viewing – and buying – habits of young adults, age 18 to 34. These cord cutters are more likely to have broadband connections with enough oomph to handle video streams and pay for subscription video on demand (SVOD) services like Netflix.… More