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Top journalists warn of threats to press freedom under President-elect Trump
Some of the country's top journalists issued stark warnings about the importance of protecting First Amendment rights on Nov 22, two weeks after Donald Trump was elected president. "This year the threats to press freedom are quite close to home. It's right here," New Yorker editor David Remnick said at the Committee to Protect Journalists dinner.
"I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home," CNN's Christiane Amanpour said. Amanpour called on the journalists in attendance to "recommit to robust fact-based reporting" and to fight "against normalization of the unacceptable." President-elect Trump's attacks against the American media were a recurring theme during the annual dinner, which focuses on threats to journalists in repressive regimes. "We will hold the new administration's feet to the fire. And they should respect that, even if they don't welcome it," CNN president Jeff Zucker said.
AT&T to change policy of charging poor customers more for super-slow Internet
AT&T has been charging some of its poorest customers top dollar for its slowest Internet service. But after criticism from a public interest group and press coverage about the disparity, the company said Sept 9 it plans to change the policy. Federal regulators require AT&T to provide discounted high-speed Internet service to families who are eligible for food stamps. But AT&T has been exploiting a loophole to refuse those discounts to some qualified families.
The reason: AT&T says its broadband service in low-income neighborhoods is too slow. The program, known as Access from AT&T, costs $5 or $10 a month, depending on the speed of AT&T's service. Those customers who can get service of 3 to 5 megabits per second only have to pay $5, while those who can get service with 5 Mbps or faster pay $10. The average broadband speed in the United States is 15 Mbps, according to Akamai. But there are many neighborhoods in which AT&T's service doesn't reach even 3 Mbps. And people who live in those neighborhoods have to pay full price -- an introductory rate of about $30 a month -- for the inferior service. AT&T agreed to the discounts in order to win FCC approval of its DirecTV purchase. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a public interest group, pushed AT&T to make the $5 a month offer available for customers whose service doesn't reach 3 Mbps. AT&T at first said it would stick to the strict terms of the FCC order. But, after a series of stories appeared in tech media, the company changed course.
India's richest man offers free 4G to one billion people
India's richest man is rolling out a $20 billion mobile network that could bring lightening-fast Internet to hundreds of millions of people.
Indian consumers are already celebrating the arrival of Mukesh Ambani's new Reliance Jio service, seizing on the billionaire's promise to deliver rock bottom prices and download speeds that will enable streaming video. The 4G network, which reaches more than 80 percent of the country, officially went live with a set of generous introductory offers. Indians will be able to use Jio for free until the end of 2016, and pay as little as 149 rupees ($2.25) a month for data after that. "Anything and everything that can go digital is going digital -- at an exponential rate," Ambani told investors last week at his company's annual general meeting. "Life is going digital."
Google vs. the cable guys: the big fight over the little set-top box in your home
On a Friday morning in January, an audience of congressional staffers and federal regulators were invited to Google's spacious DC office, conveniently located just a few blocks from Capitol Hill. The reason: to see Google and other companies demo a "prototype" for a new open interface on set-top boxes. The gathering took place two days after the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a proposal that could change how the majority of US households watch TV. Consumers would no longer be forced to rent clunky boxes from cable companies -- sometimes at a cost of more than $200 a year. Instead, the proposed rules would finally give households the option to access cable and satellite TV, as well as online streaming services like Netflix, through a single, cheaper device, potentially made by third parties like Apple, Amazon, and Google. The FCC proposal was guaranteed to enrage cable companies, long protective of their control over lucrative cable boxes. Yet, it was news of the conveniently timed product demo that made the battle lines clear to many inside the industry: Big Cable vs. Big Google.
Verizon wants to run every part of your life
Verizon no longer wants to be your mother's Ma Bell spinoff. Sure, the company is still viewed by many as a sleepy telecommunication company. But it is trying to reshape itself into a mobile technology giant with tentacles in the worlds of media as well as connected cars. The ink is barely dry on Verizon's $4.8 billion purchase of Yahoo's core operating assets. But Verizon announced another notable acquisition with the purchase of Ireland-based vehicle tracking firm Fleetmatics for $2.4 billion. The deal will bring Verizon more than 37,000 customers and 737,000 subscribers for Fleetmatics' software, which helps track vehicle location, fuel usage, speed and mileage among other things. Verizon clearly realizes mobility isn't just about people texting, Snapchatting and watching YouTube videos on their smartphones.
Mobility is also the use of technology to make it easier for people and businesses to access information in their cars or trucks. Yahoo is a mobile bet too. The acquisition of Yahoo shows that Verizon also wants to be part of the mobile advertising and content arena. The combination of Yahoo and AOL -- which Verizon scooped up for $4.4 billion in 2015 -- has the potential to gain more ground in the battle for mobile supremacy -- a war that is currently being won by Google and Facebook.
Clinton Campaign's 'Trump Yourself' tool calls you a loser, gives e-mail address to Clinton
Trump Yourself is a new site from the Hillary Clinton campaign that takes your Facebook profile photo and turns it into insult art. It's also a sneaky move by the campaign to get your e-mail address and profile information.
When you log into hillaryclinton.com/trumpyourself with your Facebook account, you can flip through the 15 hand-picked insults. Tiny Donald Trump figures appear on your photo next to quotes such as "Hater and Loser!," "Dopey," and "Major loser with zero credibility." It sounds like harmless fun -- if you don't mind being called a "Fat Pig" -- but by logging on with Facebook, you're actually handing over valuable biographical data and contact information about yourself. HillaryClinton.com gets your public profile data, which includes your name, gender, age, and location. It also has the e-mail address you used to sign up for Facebook.
China hacked the FDIC - and US officials covered it up, report says
China's spies hacked into computers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 2010 until 2013 -- and American government officials tried to cover it up, according to a Congressional report. The House of Representative's Science, Space and Technology Committee released its investigative report on July 13. It presents the FDIC's bank regulators as technologically inept -- and deceitful.
According to congressional investigators, the Chinese government hacked into 12 computers and 10 backroom servers at the FDIC, including the incredibly sensitive personal computers of the agency's top officials: the FDIC chairman, his chief of staff, and the general counsel. When congressional investigators tried to review the FDIC's cybersecurity policy, the agency hid the hack, according to the report. Investigators cited several insiders who knew about how the agency responded. For example, one of the FDIC's top lawyers told employees not to discuss the hacks via e-mail -- so the e-mails wouldn't become official government records. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg is being summoned before the Congressional committee on July 14 to explain what happened.
Amsterdam birdhouses give free Wi-Fi
Amsterdam is usually associated with tree-lined waterways, cyclists and fresh air. But the Dutch capital actually has a surprising pollution problem. The city was given a D+ ranking for air quality by an environmental study in 2015, thanks in part to its failure to implement a low emissions zone for private vehicles, as other European cities have done. Now one local designer has a plan to tackle the problem: Joris Lam has designed a series of tree houses that light up and emit free Wi-Fi when air pollution levels fall to a healthy level. Tree Wi-Fi, as it's called, aims to incentivize people to make more environmentally friendly choices. "I wanted to make something that measures air pollution locally and also makes the issue visible in an understandable, human-centric way," Lam said.
Is Twitter a tech company or a news service?
[Commentary] Twitter CEO Dick Costolo finds himself facing this question: Where do you draw the line?
Twitter was founded on the idea of democratizing information and has famously been used to organize protests against dictatorships and break news in real time.
But recently, Twitter was the main platform used by terrorist group ISIS to broadcast the gruesome beheading of journalist James Foley. And for Costolo, that was the line in the sand. He condemned the actions in a tweet and vowed to suspend any accounts spreading those images.
It's a departure for Twitter -- the company rarely comments on specific cases of accounts. But in an age where freedom of information is celebrated and social networks have exploded, there's a balancing act between disseminating information and an overarching respect for humanity.
10 innovations that made Google great
Amit Singhal, head of Google's search business, revealed his top 10 search milestones that Google has achieved:
- Autocomplete
- Translations
- Directions and traffic
- Universal search
- Mobile and new screens
- Voice search
- Actions
- The Knowledge Graph
- Info just for you
- Answers before you have to ask