Two university students discovered a security flaw in over a million internet-connected laundry machines operated by CSC ServiceWorks, allowing users to avoid payment and add unlimited funds to their accounts. The students, Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko from UC Santa Cruz, reported the vulnerability to the company, a major laundry service provider, in January but claim it remains unpatched. TechCrunch adds: Sherbrooke said he was sitting on the floor of his basement laundry room in the early hours one January morning with his laptop in hand, and "suddenly having an 'oh s-' moment." From his laptop, Sherbrooke ran a script of code with instructions telling the machine in front of him to start a cycle despite having $0 in his laundry account. The machine immediately woke up with a loud beep and flashed "PUSH START" on its display, indicating the machine was ready to wash a free load of laundry.

In another case, the students added an ostensible balance of several million dollars into one of their laundry accounts, which reflected in their CSC Go mobile app as though it were an entirely normal amount of money for a student to spend on laundry.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook and Instagram are under formal investigation in the European Union over child protection concerns, the Commission announced Thursday. The proceedings follow a raft of requests for information to parent entity Meta since the bloc's online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), started applying last August. The development could be significant as the formal proceedings unlock additional investigatory powers for EU enforcers, such as the ability to conduct office inspections or apply interim measures. Penalties for any confirmed breaches of the DSA could reach up to 6% of Meta's global annual turnover.

Meta's two social networks are designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) under the DSA. This means the company faces an extra set of rules -- overseen by the EU directly -- requiring it to assess and mitigate systemic risks on Facebook and Instagram, including in areas like minors' mental health. In a briefing with journalists, senior Commission officials said they suspect Meta of failing to properly assess and mitigate risks affecting children. They particularly highlighted concerns about addictive design on its social networks, and what they referred to as a "rabbit hole effect," where a minor watching one video may be pushed to view more similar content as a result of the platforms' algorithmic content recommendation engines.

Commission officials gave examples of depression content, or content that promotes an unhealthy body image, as types of content that could have negative impacts on minors' mental health. They are also concerned that the age assurance methods Meta uses may be too easy for kids to circumvent. "One of the underlying questions of all of these grievances is how can we be sure who accesses the service and how effective are the age gates -- particularly for avoiding that underage users access the service," said a senior Commission official briefing press today on background. "This is part of our investigation now to check the effectiveness of the measures that Meta has put in place in this regard as well." In all, the EU suspects Meta of infringing DSA Articles 28, 34, and 35. The Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation of the two platforms' approach to child protection.

Michael Kan reports via PCMag: AT&T has struck a deal to bring satellite internet connectivity to phones through AST SpaceMobile, a potential rival to SpaceX's Starlink. AT&T says the commercial agreement will last until 2030. The goal is "to provide a space-based broadband network to everyday cell phones," a spokesperson tells PCMag, meaning customers can receive a cellular signal in remote areas where traditional cell towers are few and far between. All they'll need to do is ensure their phone has a clear view of the sky.

AT&T has been working with Texas-based AST SpaceMobile since 2018 on the technology, which involves using satellites in space as orbiting cell towers. In January, AT&T was one of several companies (including Google) to invest $110 million in AST. In addition, the carrier created a commercial starring actor Ben Stiller to showcase AST's technology. In today's announcement, AT&T notes that "previously, the companies were working together under a Memorandum of Understanding," which is usually nonbinding. Hence, the new commercial deal suggests AT&T is confident AST can deliver fast and reliable satellite internet service to consumer smartphones -- even though it hasn't launched a production satellite.

AST has only launched one prototype satellite; in tests last year, it delivered download rates at 14Mbps and powered a 5G voice call. Following a supply chain-related delay, the company is now preparing to launch its first batch of "BlueBird" production satellites later this year, possibly in Q3. In Wednesday's announcement, AT&T adds: "This summer, AST SpaceMobile plans to deliver its first commercial satellites to Cape Canaveral for launch into low Earth orbit. These initial five satellites will help enable commercial service that was previously demonstrated with several key milestones." Still, AST needs to launch 45 to 60 BlueBird satellites before it can offer continuous coverage in the U.S., although in an earnings call, the company said it'll still be able to offer "non-continuous coverage" across 5,600 cells in the country.

Reddit reported its first results since going public in late March. Yahoo Finance reports: Daily active users increased 37% year over year to 82.7 million. Weekly active unique users rose 40% from the prior year. Total revenue improved 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling the growth rate from the prior quarter, due to strength in advertising. The company delivered adjusted operating profits of $10 million, versus a $50.2 million loss a year ago. [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman declined to say when the company would be profitable on a net income basis, noting it's a focus for the management team. Other areas of focus include rolling out a new user interface this year, introducing shopping capabilities, and searching for another artificial intelligence content licensing deal like the one with Google.
Bloomberg notes that already Reddit "has signed licensing agreements worth $203 million in total, with terms ranging from two to three years. The company generated about $20 million from AI content deals last quarter, and expects to bring in more than $60 million by the end of the year."

And elsewhere Bloomberg writes that Reddit "plans to expand its revenue streams outside of advertising into what Huffman calls the 'user economy' — users making money from others on the platform... " In the coming months Reddit plans to launch new versions of awards, which are digital gifts users can give to each other, along with other products... Reddit also plans to continue striking data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, expanding into international markets and evaluating potential acquisition targets in areas such as search, he said.
Meanwhile, ZDNet notes that this week a Reddit announcement "introduced a new public content policy that lays out a framework for how partners and third parties can access user-posted content on its site." The post explains that more and more companies are using unsavory means to access user data in bulk, including Reddit posts. Once a company gets this data, there's no limit to what it can do with it. Reddit will continue to block "bad actors" that use unauthorized methods to get data, the company says, but it's taking additional steps to keep users safe from the site's partners.... Reddit still supports using its data for research: It's creating a new subreddit — r/reddit4researchers — to support these initiatives, and partnering with OpenMined to help improve research. Private data is, however, going to stay private.

If a company wants to use Reddit data for commercial purposes, including advertising or training AI, it will have to pay. Reddit made this clear by saying, "If you're interested in using Reddit data to power, augment, or enhance your product or service for any commercial purposes, we require a contract." To be clear, Reddit is still selling users' data — it's just making sure that unscrupulous actors have a tougher time accessing that data for free and researchers have an easier time finding what they need.
And finally, there's some court action, according to the Register. Reddit "was sued by an unhappy advertiser who claims that internet giga-forum sold ads but provided no way to verify that real people were responsible for clicking on them." The complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a U.S. federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform that relies on AI. It says the biz booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022... That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that LevelField's ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the like. But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract...

LevelFields argues that Reddit is in a particularly good position to track click fraud because it's serving ads on its own site, as opposed to third-party properties where it may have less visibility into network traffic... Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses."
"The plaintiffs aspire to have their claim certified as a class action," the article adds — along with an interesting statistic.

"According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion."

What happened when OpenAI ran out of English-language training data in 2021?

They just created a speech recognition tool that could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, reports The New York Times, as part of an investigation arguing that tech companies "including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law" in their search for AI training data. [Alternate URL here.] Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube's rules, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, prohibits use of its videos for applications that are "independent" of the video platform. Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than 1 million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. The team included Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, who personally helped collect the videos, two of the people said. The texts were then fed into a system called GPT-4...

At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by the Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said.

Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its AI models, five people with knowledge of the company's practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators. Last year, Google also broadened its terms of service. One motivation for the change, according to members of the company's privacy team and an internal message viewed by the Times, was to allow Google to be able to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other online material for more of its AI products...

Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn't stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its AI models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said.
The article adds that some tech companies are now even developing "synthetic" information to train AI.

"This is not organic data created by humans, but text, images and code that AI models produce — in other words, the systems learn from what they themselves generate."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes. While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text (PDF) has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote.

Both the draft and final rules ban paid prioritization, or fast lanes that application providers have to pay Internet service providers for. But some net neutrality proponents raised concerns about the draft text because it would have let ISPs speed up certain types of applications as long as the application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. The advocates wanted the FCC to clarify its no-throttling rule to explicitly prohibit ISPs from speeding up applications instead of only forbidding the slowing of applications down. Without such a provision, they argued that ISPs could charge consumers more for plans that speed up specific types of content. [...]

"We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final order said. The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service." The updated language in the final order "clearly prohibits ISPs from limiting fast lanes to apps or categories of apps they select," leaving no question as to whether the practice is prohibited, said Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick.

Under the original plan, "there was no way to predict which kinds of fast lanes the FCC might ultimately find to violate the no-throttling rule," she wrote. "This would have given ISPs cover to flood the market with various fast-lane offerings, arguing that their version does not violate the no-throttling rule and daring the FCC to enforce its rule. The final order prevents this from happening."

Microsoft has deployed a generative AI model entirely divorced from the internet, saying US intelligence agencies can now safely harness the powerful technology to analyze top-secret information. From a report: It's the first time a major large language model has operated fully separated from the internet, a senior executive at the US company said. Most AI models including OpenAI's ChatGPT rely on cloud services to learn and infer patterns from data, but Microsoft wanted to deliver a truly secure system to the US intelligence community.

Spy agencies around the world want generative AI to help them understand and analyze the growing amounts of classified information generated daily, but must balance turning to large language models with the risk that data could leak into the open -- or get deliberately hacked. Microsoft has deployed the GPT4-based model and key elements that support it onto a cloud with an "air-gapped" environment that is isolated from the internet, said William Chappell, Microsoft's chief technology officer for strategic missions and technology.

Researchers have discovered a new attack that can force VPN applications to route traffic outside the encrypted tunnel, thereby exposing the user's traffic to potential snooping or manipulation. This vulnerability, named TunnelVision, is found in almost all VPNs on non-Linux and non-Android systems. It's believe that the vulnerability "may have been possible since 2002 and may already have been discovered and used in the wild since then," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The effect of TunnelVision is "the victim's traffic is now decloaked and being routed through the attacker directly," a video demonstration explained. "The attacker can read, drop or modify the leaked traffic and the victim maintains their connection to both the VPN and the Internet." The attack works by manipulating the DHCP server that allocates IP addresses to devices trying to connect to the local network. A setting known as option 121 allows the DHCP server to override default routing rules that send VPN traffic through a local IP address that initiates the encrypted tunnel. By using option 121 to route VPN traffic through the DHCP server, the attack diverts the data to the DHCP server itself. [...]

The attack can most effectively be carried out by a person who has administrative control over the network the target is connecting to. In that scenario, the attacker configures the DHCP server to use option 121. It's also possible for people who can connect to the network as an unprivileged user to perform the attack by setting up their own rogue DHCP server. The attack allows some or all traffic to be routed through the unencrypted tunnel. In either case, the VPN application will report that all data is being sent through the protected connection. Any traffic that's diverted away from this tunnel will not be encrypted by the VPN and the Internet IP address viewable by the remote user will belong to the network the VPN user is connected to, rather than one designated by the VPN app.

Interestingly, Android is the only operating system that fully immunizes VPN apps from the attack because it doesn't implement option 121. For all other OSes, there are no complete fixes. When apps run on Linux there's a setting that minimizes the effects, but even then TunnelVision can be used to exploit a side channel that can be used to de-anonymize destination traffic and perform targeted denial-of-service attacks. Network firewalls can also be configured to deny inbound and outbound traffic to and from the physical interface. This remedy is problematic for two reasons: (1) a VPN user connecting to an untrusted network has no ability to control the firewall and (2) it opens the same side channel present with the Linux mitigation. The most effective fixes are to run the VPN inside of a virtual machine whose network adapter isn't in bridged mode or to connect the VPN to the Internet through the Wi-Fi network of a cellular device. You can learn more about the research here.

CircleID reports that Multinational internet service provider Cogent recently announced that it was offering $206 million in secured notes (a corporate bond backed by assets). "The unusual part is what it's using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses." All internet service providers (ISPs) give IP addresses to their users, but Cogent was among the first to lease those addresses independently of internet access. (Internet access customers normally require a unique address as part of their service.) Sources are hard to find, but prevailing wisdom is that they have over 10M addresses leased for about $0.30 per month, or $36M per year in revenue.

The notes are expected to be repaid in five years.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader penciling_in for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission chair today made a final plea to Congress, asking for money to continue a broadband-affordability program that gave out its last round of $30 discounts to people with low incomes in April. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has lowered monthly Internet bills for people who qualify for benefits, but Congress allowed funding to run out. People may receive up to $14 in May if their ISP opted into offering a partial discount during the program's final month. After that there will be no financial help for the 23 million households enrolled in the program.

"Additional funding from Congress is the only near-term solution for keeping the ACP going," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a letter to members of Congress today. "If additional funding is not promptly appropriated, the one in six households nationwide that rely on this program will face rising bills and increasing disconnection. In fact, according to our survey of ACP beneficiaries, 77 percent of participating households report that losing this benefit would disrupt their service by making them change their plan or lead to them dropping Internet service entirely." The ACP started with $14.2 billion allocated by Congress in late 2021. The $30 monthly ACP benefit replaced the previous $50 monthly subsidy from the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program.

An anonymous reader shares that IPv6rs has debuted a new one-click self hosting system: Everyone seemed like they were talking about self hosting, but we didn't understand why it wasn't more prolific. Thus, we conducted a survey to hear reasons. It turned out the two most common reasons were:

1. Lack of an external IP address 2. Too difficult to setup and maintain

Our service already solves the first issue. We set out with a self-hostathon to figure out what the blockers were in setting up and running a self-hosted server. ... writes IPv6rs on their blog. We needed to make things easier, so we created Cloud Seeder, a one click installer that instantly launches a fully encapsulated server appliance that is externally reachable.

At the time of launching, the current version of Cloud Seeder supports 20+ different appliances - from Mastodon which federates with Meta's Threads to Nextcloud which provides an enterprise-level, self-hosted alternative to the big-name collaboration suites.

It also automatically handles updates/maintenance.

We hope this will bring a new era to self hosting and, in turn, will bring the decentralized internet forest back. Is the self hosting era making its return?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned a prior district court decision, lifting the injunction that blocked New York's law mandating that ISPs offer $15 broadband plans to low-income families. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced. For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.

"First, the ABA is not field-preempted by the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), because the Act does not establish a framework of rate regulation that is sufficiently comprehensive to imply that Congress intended to exclude the states from entering the field," a panel of appeals court judges stated in a 2-1 opinion. Trade groups claimed the state law is preempted by former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's repeal of net neutrality rules. Pai's repeal placed ISPs under the more forgiving Title I regulatory framework instead of the common-carrier framework in Title II of the Communications Act.

2nd Circuit judges did not find this argument convincing: "Second, the ABA is not conflict-preempted by the Federal Communications Commission's 2018 order classifying broadband as an information service. That order stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet, and a federal agency cannot exclude states from regulating in an area where the agency itself lacks regulatory authority. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and VACATE the permanent injunction."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to restore regulations that expand government oversight of broadband providersand aim to protect consumer access to the internet, a move that will reignite a long-running battle over the open internet. Known as net neutrality, the regulations were first put in place nearly a decade ago under the Obama administration and are aimed at preventing internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or degrading the delivery of services from competitors like Netflix and YouTube. The rules were repealed under President Donald J. Trump, and have proved to be a contentious partisan issue over the years while pitting tech giants against broadband providers.

In a 3-to-2 vote along party lines, the five-member commission appointed by President Biden revived the rules that declare broadband a utility-like service regulated like phones and water. The rules also give the F.C.C. the ability to demand broadband providers report and respond to outages, as well as expand the agency's oversight of the providers' security issues. Broadband providers are expected to sue to try to overturn the reinstated rules.

The core purpose of the regulations is to prevent internet service providers from controlling the quality of consumers' experience when they visit websites and use services online. When the rules were established, Google, Netflix and other online services warned that broadband providers had the incentive to slow down or block access to their services. Consumer and free speech groups supported this view. There have been few examples of blocking or slowing of sites, which proponents of net neutrality say is largely because of fear that the companies would invite scrutiny if they did so. And opponents say the rules could lead to more and unnecessary government oversight of the industry.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote to restore net neutrality on Thursday in the latest volley of a yearslong game of political ping-pong. From a report: The commission is expected to reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) -- e.g., broadband companies like AT&T and Comcast -- as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. That classification would open ISPs up to greater oversight by the FCC. The vote is widely expected to go in favor of reinstating net neutrality since FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, controls the agency's agenda. Rosenworcel moved forward with the measure after a fifth commissioner was sworn in, restoring a Democratic majority on the panel. Net neutrality proponents say that oversight can help ensure fair access to an open internet by upholding principles like no blocking or throttling of internet traffic. Opponents, including industry players, fear it could halt innovation and subject ISPs to onerous price regulations. Update FCC Votes To Restore Net Neutrality.

The co-founder of Silicon Valley-based software testing startup HeadSpin was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and a $1 million fine, reports SFGate — for defrauding investors. Lachwani pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and a count of securities fraud in April 2023, after federal prosecutors accused him of, for years, lying to investors about HeadSpin's finances to raise more money. HeadSpin, founded in 2015, grew to a $1.1 billion valuation by 2020 with over $115 million in funding from investors including Google Ventures and Iconiq Capital... He had personally altered invoices, lied to the company accountant and sent slide decks with fraudulent information to investors, [according to the government's 2021 criminal complaint]...

Breyer, per the New York Times, rejected Lachwani's lawyer's argument that because HeadSpin investors didn't end up losing money, he should receive a light sentence. The judge, who often oversees tech industry cases, reportedly said: "If you win, there are no serious consequences — that simply can't be the law." Still, the sentencing was far lighter than it could have been. The government's prosecuting attorneys had asked for a five-year prison term.
The New York Times reported in December that HeadSpin's financial statements had "often arrived months late, if at all, investors said in legal declarations," while the company's financial department "consisted of one external accountant who worked mostly from home using QuickBooks." And the comnpany also had no human resources department or organizational chart... After Manish Lachwani founded the Silicon Valley software start-up HeadSpin in 2015, he inflated the company's revenue numbers by nearly fourfold and falsely claimed that firms including Apple and American Express were customers. He showed a profit where there were losses. He used HeadSpin's cash to make risky trades on tech stocks. And he created fake invoices to cover it all up.

What was especially breathtaking was how easily Mr. Lachwani, now 48, pulled all that off... [HeadSpin] had no chief financial officer, had no human resources department and was never audited. Mr. Lachwani used that lack of oversight to paint a rosier picture of HeadSpin's growth. Even though its main investors knew the start-up's financials were not accurate, according to Mr. Lachwani's lawyers, they chose to invest anyway, eventually propelling HeadSpin to a $1.1 billion valuation in 2020. When the investors pushed Mr. Lachwani to add a chief financial officer and share more details about the company's finances, he simply brushed them off. These details emerged this month in filings in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after Mr. Lachwani had pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud in April...

The absence of controls at HeadSpin is part of an increasingly noticeable pattern at Silicon Valley start-ups that have run into trouble. Over the past decade, investors in tech start-ups were so eager to back hot companies that many often overlooked reckless behavior and gave up key controls like board seats, all in the service of fast growth and disruption. Then when founders took the ethos of "fake it till you make it" too far, their investors were often unaware or helpless...

Now, amid a start-up shakeout, more frauds have started coming to light. The founder of the college aid company Frank has been charged, the internet connectivity start-up Cloudbrink has been sued, and the social media app IRL has been investigated and sued. Last month, Mike Rothenberg, a Silicon Valley investor, was found guilty on 21 counts of fraud and money laundering. On Monday, Trevor Milton, founder of the electric vehicle company Nikola, was sentenced to four years in prison for lying about Nikola's technological capabilities.
The Times points out that similarly, FTX only had a three-person board "with barely any influence over the company, tracked its finances on QuickBooks and used a small, little-known accounting firm." And that Theranos had no financial audits for six years.

Late Friday night the U.S. Senate "reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key. U.S. surveillance authority," reports Axios, "shortly after it expired in the early hours Saturday morning." The president then signed the bill into law. The reauthorization came despite bipartisan concerns about Section 702, which allows the government to collect communications from non-U.S. citizens overseas without a warrant. The legislation passed the Senate 60 to 34, with 17 Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 16 Republicans voting "nay." It extends the controversial Section 702 for two more years.
The bill had already passed last week in the U.S. House of Representatives, explains CNN: Under FISA's Section 702, the government hoovers up massive amounts of internet and cell phone data on foreign targets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans' information is incidentally collected during that process and then accessed each year without a warrant — down from millions of such queries the US government ran in past years. Critics refer to these queries as "backdoor" searches...

According to one assessment, it forms the basis of most of the intelligence the president views each morning and it has helped the U.S. keep tabs on Russia's intentions in Ukraine, identify foreign efforts to access US infrastructure, uncover foreign terror networks and thwart terror attacks in the U.S.
An interesting detail from The Verge: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced an amendment that would have struck language in the House bill that expanded the definition of "electronic communications service provider." Under the House's new provision, anyone "who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications." The expansion, Wyden has claimed, would force "ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying." The Wyden-Hawley amendment failed 34-58, meaning that the next iteration of the FISA surveillance program will be more expansive than before.
Saturday morning the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning TikTok if its Chinese owner doesn't sell the app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Some net neutrality proponents are worried that soon-to-be-approved Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposed rules for Internet service providers would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. The rules mirror the ones imposed by the FCC during the Obama era and repealed during Trump's presidency. But some advocates are criticizing a decision to let Internet service providers speed up certain types of applications as long as application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick, who has consistently argued for stricter net neutrality rules, wrote in a blog post on Thursday that "harmful 5G fast lanes are coming."

"T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are all testing ways to create these 5G fast lanes for apps such as video conferencing, games, and video where the ISP chooses and controls what gets boosted," van Schewick wrote. "They use a technical feature in 5G called network slicing, where part of their radio spectrum gets used as a special lane for the chosen app or apps, separated from the usual Internet traffic. The FCC's draft order opens the door to these fast lanes, so long as the app provider isn't charged for them." In an FCC filing yesterday, AT&T said that carriers will use network slicing "to better meet the needs of particular business applications and consumer preferences than they could over a best-efforts network that generally treats all traffic the same."

Van Schewick warns that carriers could charge consumers more for plans that speed up specific types of content. For example, a mobile operator could offer a basic plan alongside more expensive tiers that boost certain online games or a tier that boosts services like YouTube and TikTok. Ericsson, a telecommunications vendor that sells equipment to carriers including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, has pushed for exactly this type of service. In a report on how network slicing can be used commercially, Ericsson said that "many gamers are willing to pay for enhanced gaming experiences" and would "pay up to $10.99 more for a guaranteed gaming experience on top of their 5G monthly subscription."

AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon are quietly trying to weaken a $42.5 billion federal program to improve internet access across the nation, aiming to block strict new rules that would require them to lower their poorest customers' monthly bills in exchange for a share of the federal aid. From a report: In state after state, the telecom firms have blasted the proposed price cuts as illegal -- forcing regulators in California, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and elsewhere to rethink, scale back or abandon their plans to condition the federal funds on financial relief for consumers. The lobbying campaign threatens to undermine the largest burst of money to upgrade the country's internet service in U.S. history. Enacted by President Biden as part of a sprawling 2021 infrastructure law, the funds are intended to deliver speedy and affordable broadband to the final unserved pockets of America by 2030 -- a goal that the White House likens to the federal campaign nearly a century ago to electrify the nation's heartland.

America's FCC votes on net neutrality April 25th. And the director of Stanford Law School's "Center for Internet and Society" (also a law professor) says mostly there's "much to celebrate" in the draft rules released earlier this month. Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that have been degrading video quality for mobile users will have to stop. The FCC kept in place state neutrality protections like California's net neutrality law, allowing for layers of enforcement. The FCC also made it harder for ISPs to evade net neutrality at the point where data enters their networks.
However, the draft rules also have "a huge problem." The proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane — where they'll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are all testing ways to create these 5G fast lanes for apps such as video conferencing, games, and video where the ISP chooses and controls what gets boosted. They use a technical feature in 5G called network slicing, where part of their radio spectrum gets used as a special lane for the chosen app or apps, separated from the usual internet traffic. The FCC's draft order opens the door to these fast lanes, so long as the app provider isn't charged for them.
They warn of things like cellphone plans "Optimized for YouTube and TikTok... Or we could see add-ons like Enhanced Video Conferencing for $10 a month, or one-time 24-hour passes to have Prioritized Online Gaming." This isn't imagination. The ISPs write about this in their blogs and press releases. They talk about these efforts and dreams openly at conferences, and their equipment vendors plainly lay out how ISPs can chop up internet service into all manner of fast lanes.

These kinds of ISP-controlled fast lanes violate core net neutrality principles and would limit user choice, distort competition, hamper startups, and help cement platform dominance. Even small differences in load times affect how long people stay on a site, how much they pay, and whether they'll come back. Those differences also affect how high up sites show in search results. Thus, letting ISPs choose which apps get to be in a fast lane lets them, not users, pick winners and losers online... [T]he biggest apps will end up in all the fast lanes, while most others would be left out. The ones left out would likely include messaging apps like Signal, local news sites, decentralized Fediverse apps like Mastodon and PeerTube, niche video sites like Dropout, indie music sites like Bandcamp, and the millions of other sites and apps in the long tail.
One subheading emphasizes that "This is not controversial," noting that "Even proposed Republican net neutrality bills prohibited ISPs from speeding up and slowing down apps and kinds of apps..." Yet "While draft order acknowledges that some speeding up of apps could violate the no-throttling rule, it added some unclear, nebulous language suggesting that the FCC would review any fast lanes case-by-case, without explaining how it would do that... Companies that do file complaints will waste years litigating the meaning of "unreasonably discriminatory," all the while going up against giant telecoms that stockpile lawyers and lobbyists."

"Net neutrality means that we, the people who use the internet, get to decide what we do online, without interference from ISPs. ISPs do not get to interfere with our choices by blocking, speeding up or slowing down apps or kinds of apps..."

They urge the FCC to edit their draft order before April 24 to clarify "that the no-throttling rule also prohibits ISPs from creating fast lanes for select apps or kinds of apps."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Recent headlines have made clear: If AI is doing an impressively good job at a human task, there's a good chance that the task is actually being done by a human. When George Carlin's estate sued the creators of a podcast who said they used AI to create a standup routine in the late comedian's style, the podcasters claimed that the script had actually been generated by a human named Chad. (The two sides recently settled the suit.) A company making AI-powered voice interfaces for fast-food drive-thrus can only complete 30% of jobs without the help of a human reviewing its work. Amazon is dropping its automated "Just Walk Out" checkout systems from new stores -- a system that relied on far more human verification than it was hoping for.

We've seen this before -- though it may already be lost to Silicon Valley's pathologically short memory. Back in 2015, AI chatbots were the hot thing. Tech giants and startups alike pitched them as always-available, always-chipper, always-reliable assistants. One startup, x.ai, advertised an AI assistant who could read your emails and schedule your meetings. Another, GoButler, offered to book your flights or order your fries through a delivery app. Facebook also tested a do-anything concierge service called M, which could answer seemingly any question, do almost any task, and draw you pictures on demand. But for all of those services, the "AI assistant" was often just a person. Back in 2016, I wrote a story about this and interviewed workers whose job it was to be the human hiding behind the bot, making sure the bot never made a mistake or spoke nonsense.