Steven Levy

A Q&A with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“These are my people!” Mark Zuckerberg has been in Nigeria for barely an hour and is already rhapsodic. His remark does not reflect his biological heritage — obviously — but rather a connection based on the behavioral DNA that engineers share. Facebook’s CEO has come to Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, to seek out software developers and startup founders; after making a beeline to the Co-Creation (Cc) HUB, a six-story building on Herbert Macaulay Road that incubates startups, hosts investor gatherings, and organizes a kid’s coding camp, he has found the kind of people for whom he was looking. His people.

It isn’t the Free Basics program or the Messenger platform or whether or not a Facebook satellite rains Internet on Africa from outer space that matters to the engineers and entrepreneurs that Zuckerberg visited. It’s the fact that he came. In Silicon Valley, founders learn to think big; to take risks; to use grit and coding skills and a sense of the marketplace so they can chase the unicorn’s horn. They want to do that here in Nigeria, too. But first, they need validation. Mark Zuckerberg said he believed in them. But he could have said anything. From the moment he strolled into Yaba unannounced, his trip was a success.

[Commentary] . Yes, as Peter Moskowitz demonstrates, the Wireless Emergency Alert system is prone to hacking. But what if the hacking were done, perfectly legally, by the one person who has license to do whatever he or she wants with it? Here’s the three use cases for the system:
Alerts issued by the President of the United States.
Alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life, issued in two different categories: extreme threats and severe threats
AMBER Alerts.

Does anything stand out for you — like number one, where the President of the United States gets to determine what gets to interrupt us with a loud noise at any hour and use our mobile devices to get a message before our eyes? Is there any presidential candidate you can think of who likes to stay up late and beam inappropriate messages to millions of people? Who, when he when he’s piqued, has no sense of proportion? Who, when he wants wants attention, will go to extremes to get it? I am not kidding — if Donald Trump is president and someone clues him in to the fact that he has the power to use this system, it’s a real possibility (if not a certainty) that the next time he wants to engage in slut-shaming, poll-boasting or climate-denying, he’ll make our phones shriek and blast out his message, as if a natural disaster is upon us and we must take shelter. And except for the natural part, that would be right.

A Q&A with Sarah Solow, Hillary Clinton's domestic policy advisor.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t kidding around when she released her technology policy initiative in June. It was a gloriously wonky Gladstone bag of positions on issues batted around at think tanks, on digital democracy panels, and in Susan Crawford’s Backchannel columns—almost a K-Tel Records version of tech policy’s greatest hits. It was all there. Yes to high-speed access, international Internet governance, immigration reform, orphan works, online privacy, gig economy benefits, diversified workforce, STEM education, cybersecurity, network neutrality, and the United States Digital Service. No to Balkanization of the Internet, the digital divide, and venue shopping in patent litigation. Leading the team drawing the document was Sara Solow, the candidate’s domestic policy advisor. She agreed to provide us with some context on Hillary Clinton’s tech policy — and also wound up venting about the opponent’s apparent lack of a policy. Asked how they produced the tech policy, Salow said, "Last June or July (2015), we pulled together a working group with a whole bunch of outside experts and outside advisors, and a range of stakeholders, to start helping us collect policy proposals and thoughts about technology, innovation, and intellectual property. We had regular monthly meetings or phone calls, and I personally developed relationships with 30 outside experts, at least. It was a very collaborative, comprehensive process."

When Google announced Project Loon on June 15, 2013, a lot of people were skeptical. But Google reports that since then, it has been able to extend balloon flight times and add mobile connectivity to the service.

As a result, Google’s expectations are flying even higher than the 60,000-foot strata where its balloons live. “This is the poster child for Google X,” says Astro Teller, who heads the division. “The balloons are delivering 10x more bandwidth, 10x steer-ability, and are staying up 10x as long. That’s the kind of progress that can only happen a few more times until we’re in a problematically good place.”

Since the first public test flights in New Zealand, Google’s balloons have clocked over a million and half kilometers.

Google made a different kind of advance with Loon when it added the capability to send data using the LTE spectrum -- making it possible for people to connect directly to the Internet with their mobile phones. (Loon’s original Wi-Fi connection required a base station and a special antenna.) Using LTE also helped Google boost the capacity of its connections. Recent Loon payloads are providing as much as 22 MB/sec to a ground antenna and 5 MB/sec to a handset.