New FCC ruling would eliminate net neutrality regulations for ISPs

Why it matters to you

If you’re an advocate of net neutrality rules, then you won’t be happy about a possible upcoming FCC rule change.

Net neutrality is one of the more contentious issues in technology today. The idea that all data should be treated the same regardless of user, content, platform or other factors has its proponents and detractors throughout the political spectrum. Given some recent developments, it is not going to become any less controversial anytime soon.

With the Donald Trump presidency came a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, and he has been hinting at changing how the FCC regulates the industry in ways that will impact net neutrality regulations. Now, Pai has made his plans more official, Ars Technica reports.

First up, as Pai announced to the other FCC commissioners in a speech on Wednesday, will be an effort to “reverse the mistakes of Title II and return to the light-touch regulatory framework that served our nation so well during the Clinton administration, Bush administration, and the first six years of the Obama administration.” Pai referred here to Title II of the Communications Act, which in 2015 brought fixed and mobile internet service providers (ISPs) under the classification of common carriers.

Title II, therefore, extended the FCC’s full regulatory authority to ISPs, authority that it then used to impose net neutrality rules. The FCC’s previous attempts to do so were denied by a court decision that essentially said the FCC’s rules applied to common carriers but not to broadband providers.

The FCC will vote on May 18 to enact a Policy of Proposed Rulemaking that will further submit the proposed rule changes for a vote later in 2017. If Title II is reversed, as some net neutrality opponents would like to see Pai accomplish immediately through a “declaratory ruling,” then the FCCs ability to impose net neutrality rules on ISPs will be revoked.

Title II’s revocation will have other effects beyond net neutrality. For example, the ability for ISP customers and competitors to file complaints will no longer be in effect, and disputes between network operators and content providers over payments to ISPs could take longer to resolve.

Unsurprisingly, the proposed rule changes are unpopular among net neutrality proponents and Democrats, who have started planning how they will oppose the elimination of Title II and the subsequent rollback of net neutrality rules as applied to ISPs. Such opposition will come in a number of forms, such as letters from startups, investors and others to Chairman Pai and activism by the Internet Association made up of companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

In any event, if the new FCC has its way, then net neutrality will no longer be in effect for the data that is carried by ISPs. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a complicated question involving many factors, but its controversial nature will likely remain intact for the foreseeable future.

Ultra-thin electronic labels could warn you when your milk goes bad

Why it matters to you

Printed transistors could be used to develop tech like paper-thin displays, or smart labels that text you when your food goes bad.

A team of scientists at Trinity College Dublin has created the world’s first printed transistors composed exclusively of 2D nanomaterials. They are pretty excited about it and with good reason.

“You could imagine the possibility of one day having printed circuitry on food packaging, so that rather than having a barcode, you have a circuit that can communicate information to the user,” Professor Jonathan Coleman, a materials scientist who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “That could mean a carton of milk that sends you a text message when your milk is about to go off.”

Another possible usage, Coleman said, is the concept of paper-thin displays, which could be embedded into newspapers or magazines, or slung up on the wall like a moving poster.

He is quick to point out that these are future concepts, rather than anything the lab has developed just yet, but it is a future the team’s work is helping create. While researchers have explored printed electronics for decades, and it’s a relatively mature field, what this new work does is to improve on it by adding “wonder material” graphene to the mix — resulting in two-dimensional circuits only a few billionths of a meter thick.

Graphene has a number of desirable qualities, such as a strength and conductivity, but it’s also cheap — which is exactly what these applications would call for. After all, nobody is going to pay $15 for a pint of milk just because it can text you.

The team’s work is published this month in the journal Science. The technique of producing 2D nanomaterials has been licensed to Samsung and chemical company Thomas Swan. It was funded as part of the billion euro Graphene Flagship initiative, referring to a European Union program designed to explore innovative use-cases for graphene.

“What we created in this project wasn’t state of the art by transistor standards, but using these materials printed transistors do have the potential to get to that point,” Coleman continued. “At the end of the day, that’s what’s so exciting about his work — it’s not what we’ve done today, it’s what it gives people the potential to do tomorrow.”

Everything you need to know about Waymo’s self-driving car project

Although many of us believed we would have our own personal flying cars by the year 2017, that certainly hasn’t turned out to be the case. However, in the next couple of years, autonomous cars will become a regular part of our day-to-day experience. Instead of taking the wheels ourselves, fleets of self-driving cars will soon shuffle us around while we tend to more pressing issues, such as texting, napping, catching up on emails, or flipping through Tinder. What a time to be alive.

One of the most promising players in this market is the newly revamped Waymo. There has been a wave of Waymo announcements over the past few months as the company inches closer to releasing its first commercially available autonomous vehicle. Here’s everything you need to know.

What is Waymo?

For most of the past decade, Google has poured a war chest of cash into its self-driving technology. The company notoriously pioneered robotic car laws nationwide, and built a massive fleet of driverless pods that eventually roamed around Silicon Valley. Nonetheless, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, eventually decided to overhaul the entire program. In 2016, Alphabet announced that Waymo would spearhead this autonomous driving project from that point forward. Rather than building the vehicles itself, Waymo would collaborate with auto manufacturers.

This was a big first and a major pivot for the project as a whole. With the announcement, Waymo signaled a shift from further developing its pod vehicles. Investments in autonomous vehicle technologies have boomed in recent years. Major automakers like Ford and General Motors recently topped a Navigant Research study ranking the top 18 companies and their ability to develop self-driving cars. For perspective’s sake, Waymo was ranked seventh on the same list (the highest-ranked non-automaker). We elaborate more on this ravenous autonomous driving competition here.

Streamlining production

In January, at the North American Auto Show’s Automobili-D conference, Waymo CEO John Krafcik announced that Waymo built the entire sensor suite used by its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid test vehicles. This was a huge step for the company for multiple reasons. First and foremost, this meant Waymo was no longer at the behest of multiple, third-party suppliers to create a single vehicle.

Moving the production process in-house has enabled more efficient integration of the various components (sensor hardware, sensor fusion software, image recognition). For example, when the company first started testing its self-driving cars, the cost of a single high-end lidar system was $75,000; that number has since dropped by 90 percent.

Who is Waymo working with?

Chrysler

Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid

Again, with the Waymo transition and the demise of the Google pod cars, the company made one thing very clear: It had no intention of attempting to manufacture entire cars. In 2016, Waymo partnered with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to better commercialize its self-driving vehicle technologies. The initial deal called for the conversion of 100 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans into prototype autonomous vehicles.

To allow for the incorporation of the self-driving hardware, the minivans’ electrical systems, powertrains, and chassis were slightly modified. These prototypes have already been tested on location at Fiat Chrysler facilities in Chelsea, Michigan, Yucca, Arizona, and also at the Waymo facility in California.

Honda could be next

Acura RLX Sport Hybrid

While the company has already partnered with Fiat Chrysler, Honda may be the next collaboration for Waymo. In December 2016, Honda announced that it was “entering into formal discussions” with Waymo to integrate the company’s autonomous tech with its cars. If this collaboration comes to fruition, we imagine it would be rather similar to the Fiat Chrysler partnership, with Honda providing a series of vehicles to be modified with the Waymo hardware.

Honda has recently been dabbling with its own self-driving car tests, so a joint venture with Waymo would be a logical next step. The company has been testing prototype autonomous vehicles based on the RLX Sport Hybrid at the GoMentum Station in San Francisco. Honda hopes to manufacture vehicles with advanced autonomous capabilities around 2020.

Public offerings

In Arizona, Waymo is already offering the general public rides in their fleet of converted Pacifica Hybrids. Waymo also announced the delivery of 500 more prototype self-driving vehicles, many of which are headed to The Copper State. As part of this trial program, Waymo will grant certain Phoenix residents round-the-clock access to its autonomous offerings, per a report by Medium.

What are Waymo’s ambitions with this project? The company hopes to use feedback from these trial riders to better understand how these vehicles hold-up in real-world scenarios, outside of the cozy confines of its test facilities. But why Arizona of all places? Chiefly because the state is one of a few areas in the country where it is legal to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. For this reason, both Uber and the General Motors self-driving vehicle subsidiary, Cruise Automation, also test their self-driving cars in Scottsdale.

Competition

As noted previously, Waymo is certainly not the only player in the burgeoning autonomous vehicle market. Ford has announced plans to launch its own self-driving vehicles for ride-sharing services by 2021. The Renault-Nissan Alliance, Daimler, and Volkswagen Group, among others, are also working to implement these technologies into commercial vehicles in the coming years.

Uber has recently deployed a a fleet of self-driving cars in San Francisco, and General Motors recently divulged plans to test a series of self-driving cars in Michigan. It is important to note that Waymo recently filed a lawsuit against Uber, claiming that a former Waymo employee stole more than 14,000 files from the company. These files were then used to create a new autonomous driving startup called Otto. This company was later acquired by Uber for $680 million.

Uber has since denied Waymo’s charges, dubbing them nothing more than “a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor.” You can read more about measures Waymo is taking to protect its secrets from Uber here.

Your unlimited plan is probably ripping you off: How much data Americans actually use

The numbers are in and you probably don’t need an expensive unlimited data plan.

Unlimited data plans are back. Here’s some insight into why that happened as well as a look at how much data we really use every month.

We’ve recently seen all four major U.S. carriers introduce or revamp their unlimited LTE data plans. Multiple times. For some of us, this is great news: The folks who use upwards of 10GB of data on a line they pay for themselves found plenty of creative ways to hold on to older unlimited data plans, and sometimes that could be a hassle. Now they are available with a click of the mouse.

Unlimited plans coming back to AT&T and Verizon are a direct result of tough competition in the industry.

This wasn’t unexpected, really. Companies like T-Mobile and StraightTalk made people notice the cost vs. value proposition of a cell phone data plan. AT&T and Verizon enjoyed a consumer mindset that they offered something superior when for many, alternatives could be just as good. When people started to take notice of that, it was time for a small shake-up.

People who will utilize an unlimited data plan and get their money’s worth are outliers. Everyone can have a month where they are traveling or otherwise away from Wi-Fi and use a good chunk of data, but when you look at the numbers telling how much data is used per person on average, you see that most people would be better served with a cheaper plan that offers a capped data allotment.

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The numbers back this up. According to NPD Connected Intelligence, one of the groups that your carrier and the people who made your phone use for insight into growth and planning, in 2015 the average amount of data used per person per month was about 3.5GB. During the same time period, customers on T-Mobile used an average of 5GB per month and Sprint customers used about 4GB per month; and both carriers offered unlimited data plans to any post-paid customer.

Why this is important

These are average numbers. That means that some people will be wildly outside the average on both ends: You might use 100GB of data per month but someone who uses 0.1GB per month offsets your input towards the average. An average can’t predict the highest amounts of data being used (or the lowest) but it is a great way to determine how much data the average person uses each month. There’s a lot of ways this data can be used and of course multiple ways it can be interpreted. For example, the average data a customer with access to an unlimited data plan uses isn’t dramatically different from the amount someone without access to unlimited data is using.

People talking about new unlimited data plans means that they are doing what they were meant to do: Hype.

This means that the average person, regardless of network, doesn’t need to pay for an expensive unlimited data plan. Unlimited plans are hypefests that get everyone talking about something as mundane and boring as a cellular provider. The hope is that you’ll decide you need to sign up for one even though you don’t need one. Sure, you might use a little more each month knowing that you have an unlimited plan, but generally, people who weren’t using a large amount of data before aren’t going to be using a lot of data after they switch. Old habits and all that.

None of this matters to the phone company. It has one goal: to make money. That’s how business work. Every decision, every promotion, every marketing campaign and everything else is a way to try and make more money. A company won’t be around for long if they aren’t trying to bank a profit. And sometimes, how that profit can be shown on a quarterly earnings report matters as much as the amount that goes into the bank.

The ARPU

ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit or User) is the total revenue coming in from the service divided by the number of subscribers. It’s also a pretty big deal in shareholder’s reports and earning’s calls.

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ARPU is a number that translates into the amount of money a single line of service brings in over a set time. There can be a monthly ARPU or quarterly or yearly. This number includes all the money you pay to your carrier minus tax and regulatory fees. That means things like extras you may be paying for (international calling or live TV for mobile devices) are included as well as your normal contract or monthly price. The ARPU is an easy way for a company to track its income and growth over time, and each customer who pays for an expensive unlimited data plan brings this average up in a way that’s statistically significant.

There is more than one way to count money.

Your carrier wants you to be excited about, and ultimately sign up for, an unlimited data plan because of how it affects the bottom line as well as how much.

Another way your phone company looks at their finances is with an eye towards profit instead of just income. The profit from a customer can be more important than the overall income generated from one. A company can be healthy and profitable even with a low customer count, or vice versa. We see this in action when companies give earnings results.

Income and profit are always two different numbers.

Consider a hypothetical that’s not too far removed from actuality. T-Mobile keeps pulling more and more customers away from Verizon. But Verizon is making more money and has a higher value. That means Verizon is making more profit per customer than T-Mobile.

Calculating profit is pretty simple. The service an account uses is tallied then compared to the amount of income that account generates each month. If you sign up for an unlimited data plan and still only use 3-5GB of data per month, you help improve profit margins. All accounts are profitable, but some will be more profitable than others.

Don’t hate the players

We’re not trying to say your carrier is bad or unethical here. This is just how business works when it comes to a service provider.

Your phone company is supposed to make money if everyone is doing their job.

They need to offer you something that you feel is worth the monthly cost. If that means an unlimited data plan sounds like a good idea to you, one is available for you. With the U.S. telco market becoming more and more competitive it was a given that all companies would offer a fixed service that included unlimited data for a fixed cost. Users who needed such a plan would sign on and help improve that income per customer metric and users who didn’t need an unlimited plan but signed up for other reasons helped improve the profit per user metric. This is how smart business works and the people in charge at your carrier are smart business persons.

The one thing to take away here is asking yourself how much data you need every month. No one answer fits everyone, but there is an answer that fits you. Compare how much you need to how much you’re paying for, and then check out what’s available. A final metric that’s harder to measure is how happy a customer is because happy customers are loyal customers. Make sure you’re using a service that works best for you and makes you be that happy customer.

Check out Modern Dad on the latest All About Android podcast!

Phil joins the gang at All About Android for their latest episode!

Our very own Phil Nickinson, AKA Modern Dad, was the featured guest on the latest episode of All About Android. Hosted by Jason Howell and Ron Richards, this week’s episodes covers topics include Google’s upcoming ad blocker, multi-user support for Google Home, a hands-on with the larger Samsung Galaxy S8+ and revised Gear VR. You can watch the show right up there check out the stream on TWiT.

While we have your attention, make sure you’re subscribed to Modern Dad on Youtube, and be sure to turn on notifications so you’ll be among the first to know when a new Modern Dad video goes live.

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In other housekeeping news, you only have a few more days to enter to win a Huawei P10 phone from the Modern Dad website. It’s the white model with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM and it’s FREE.

All you gotta do is head on over to the contests pages on ModernDad.com and use the widget to enter. There are four ways to enter and you can enter multiple times so get on it! The contest closes April 28.

Enter to win a Huawei P10 from Modern Dad!

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Moto X Pure Edition, one of our favorite phones of 2015, is getting Nougat

The Moto X Pure Edition was big and curvy and didn’t have a great camera, but we loved it anyway. And now it’s getting an update to Nougat.

Android 7.0 is rolling out to one of our favorite devices of 2015, the Moto X Pure Edition, also known as the Moto X Style in some parts of the world.

Motorola’s parent company Lenovo promised the update way back in October of last year, but has been prioritizing its 2016 lineup that includes the Moto Z, Moto Z Force, Moto Z Play, and Moto G4.

The Moto X Pure Edition was sold directly through Motorola back in 2015, as well as at various carriers in the U.S., but it’s unclear whether the Nougat update is aimed specifically at the unlocked model. Motorola says that the update “improves your mobile experience with new multitasking features, more efficient notification controls and improved data saver and battery features.”

Of course, the rollout will begin slowly, so if you’re still running the Pure Edition it may take a few days to a few weeks to reach you.

At the time, the Moto X Pure Edition was one of our favorite devices, and only got better after being updated to Marshmallow. Now that it’s at Nougat, likely the last of its major updates, we’re hoping the phone holds up to performance scrutiny — we may have to dust it off to see!

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Call of Duty: WW2 will launch on 3 November and it has Nazi zombies

The next Call of Duty game officially has a launch date.

Call of Duty: WW2 will launch on 3 November, developer Sledgehammer announced during a live stream. It will be available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. The studio also released a new trailer for the game, which confirms the series is going back to its World War II roots. The game will take place mostly in Europe between the years 1944 and 1945. Sledgehammer said it even worked with a WWII historian on the game.

• When is the Call of Duty: WW2 reveal and where can you watch it?
• Call of Duty Infinite Warfare review: Infinitely better than ever
• Best upcoming PS4 games to look forward to in 2017

However, at least one aspect of the game is total fiction: Call of Duty: WWII will feature zombies. Not just any zombies — Nazi zombies. Oh yes. Other gameplay specifics are still being kept a secret, though Activision did mention a War Mode will let players take part in historic World War II battles. There will of course be different objectives for each team depending on whether you’re part of the Allies or the Axis.

• It’s official: The next Call of Duty will be set in World War II

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Also, players will now have Divisions that include infantry and armored options, rather than character classes, and between matches, they’ll be able to hang out at the headquarters. WWII’s multiplayer will be unveiled at E3 2017 in June. A private multiplayer beta will also be available for players who preorder the game. The beta will launch first on PS4. As for the Nazi Zombies mode, it was only teased on Twitter.

But in a blog post, Activision said it’s a co-operative mode that “delivers a unique storyline that’s an all-new take on Nazi Zombies.”

FIRST LOOK: #CODWII Nazi Zombies Confirmed! pic.twitter.com/hnyDKxChlo

— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) April 26, 2017

Google turns ‘Hamilton’ hype into a VR history lesson

We’re all a bit more versed in American history these days, thanks in great part to playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his award-winning hip-hop-infused musical, Hamilton. The Hamilton Education Program will bring 5,000 disadvantaged students from Title I schools in New York and the Bay Area to see the musical today as the culmination of a six-week curriculum to learn more about the era of our founding fathers. To support the project, the Gilder Lehrman Institute (one partner of the program) is launching six new virtual reality tours on Google Expeditions.

Google’s Expeditions empowers students to take a virtual field trip using nothing more than a smartphone and VR rig like Google Cardboard, which is available to schools at no cost. Destinations include The Great Barrier Reef, Antarctica and the International Space Station. It’s a breathtaking way to visit important historical and natural sites without having to actually travel there.

The new historical Expeditions will let students explore locations like Alexander Hamilton’s home in Uptown Manhattan, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and the spot where Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton held their infamous duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. The Gilder Lehrman institute is also using the Google Arts and Culture site to pull together ten digital exhibits and dozens of rare archives and artifacts from Hamilton’s time, including early printings of the US Constitution. This is in addition to the massive archive of presidential history already in place.

Eventually, around 20,000 students will get to see Hamilton this year, each paying only a “Hamilton” — a $10 bill — for the experience.

Source: Google

Police will scan every fan’s face at the Champions League final

If you’re headed to the UEFA Champions League final in Cardiff on June 3rd, you might just be part of a massive experiment in security — and a privacy uproar. South Wales Police are conducting a face recognition trial that could scan every one of the 170,000 visitors expected to show up in the city for the match, whether or not they’re heading to the stadium. Cameras around both the stadium and Cardiff’s main train station will compare faces against a police database of 500,000 people of interest. If there’s a match, police will get a heads-up that could help them stop a terrorist or frequent hooligan.

The UK’s surveillance camera commissioner, Tony Porter, tells Motherboard that the South Wales Police will have to honor the country’s usage guidelines. In theory, that means officers are only harvesting as much information as they really need, and will be transparent with the data they collect. However, there has already been evidence of police forces (both in the UK and abroad) preserving face recognition data for innocent people. While South Wales will likely show restraint, there is a worry that it will be tempted to keep more face info than absolutely necessary.

At the same time, there’s also a concern that the technology just isn’t ready. Face recognition ideally relies on clearly visible head shots. How do you capture those shots when thousands of people are swarming through a stadium or train station? While some previous uses at festivals were deemed successful, a recent test at a carnival by London’s Metropolitan Police didn’t identify a single person of interest despite 454 arrests. That doesn’t necessarily mean face recognition is a waste, but police may not want to dream about catching terrorists before they’ve set foot on the stadium grounds. That’s what the test is for, though — it could determine whether or not large-scale face recognition is worth the effort.

Via: The Verge

Source: Gov.uk, Motherboard

A Fitbit Flex 2 reportedly exploded on woman’s arm

Dina Mitchell was reading a book on Tuesday in her Wisconsin home when the Fitbit Flex 2 on her wrist exploded, causing second-degree burns, she told ABC News. Mitchell reportedly tore the device off of her arm as it was still on fire, and doctors had to remove melted plastic and rubber from the wound. She said she had worn the Flex 2 for about two weeks before the explosion.

There haven’t been any other reports of malfunctioning Flex 2s in the wild, a Fitbit spokesperson tells Engadget. The company’s full statement reads as follows:

“We are extremely concerned about Ms. Mitchell’s report regarding her Flex 2 and take it very seriously, as the health and safety of our customers is our top priority. Fitbit products are designed and produced in accordance with strict standards and undergo extensive internal and external testing to ensure the safety of our users.

We have spoken with Ms. Mitchell and are actively investigating this issue. We are not aware of any other complaints of this nature and see no reason for people to stop wearing their Flex 2. We will share additional information as we are able.”

Reports of exploding devices have skyrocketed over the past few years, as smartphones and wearables become more compact and powerful (as do their lithium-ion batteries). In 2016, Samsung notoriously recalled every Galaxy Note 7 smartphone it sold worldwide after numerous reports of devices overheating and exploding. In the wearable world, last year the Basis Peak was recalled after burning its owners.

Fitbit is investigating the report of a Flex 2 explosion, but for now it seems like an isolated incident. Still, Flex 2 owners may want to take some advice from Mitchell and log a few extra minutes of exercise today. Just in case.

“I was literally just sitting and reading when my Fitbit exploded,” Mitchell told ABC News. “It was either defective or really mad I was sitting still so long. …Either way, It burned the heck out of my arm.”

Via: Ars Technica

Source: ABC News