MojoKid writes: Though Ryzen 4000 Series laptop processors aren't available just yet, some of AMD's partners are going to begin taking pre-orders for notebooks soon. As such, AMD is lifting the veil on additional details and the architectural enhancements that make Ryzen 4000 Series AMD's strongest mobile processor line-up to date. AMD Ryzen 4000 series CPUs are based on the Zen 2 architecture, similar to the current Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors. AMD is touting an approximate 25% IPC increase versus Zen 1-based mobile parts, but there are additional benefits that boost performance and efficiency throughout the chips as well. These are monolithic SoCs, with up to 8-cores / 16-threads, that are manufactured on TSMC's 7nm node. AMD is claiming 20% lower SoC power, 2X the perf-per-watt, 5X faster state switching, and an approximate 3.4X improvement in relative power efficiency, in comparison to its mobile platform from 2015. AMD is claiming superior single-thread CPU performance versus current-generation Intel mobile processors and significantly better multi-threaded and graphics performance versus Intel, thanks to the increased core / thread counts and integrated Vega-based GPU of its Ryzen 4000 series. Battery life performance is claimed be strong as well, due to architectural enhancements for power optimization throughout the Ryzen 4000 design. AMD Ryzen 4000 Series laptops should be shipping in market sometime in the next month or so.

Apple's A14 processor that's expected to debut this fall in Apple's iPhone 12 models is rumored to have a frequency reaching 3.1GHz. "This would be 400MHz higher than Apple's current A13 Bionic chip with a frequency of 2.7GHz," reports MacRumors. From the report: At such a frequency, the chip's Geekbench 5 running points have surged. The report mentions that the A14's single-core performance shows a score of 1658 (up 25% from the A13), and a multi-core score of 4612 points (up 33% from the A13). The extra processing power will be helpful in running simultaneous workflows, navigating through apps, and more. Apple chipmaker TSMC is expected to ramp up production of Apple's 5nm-based A14 chipsets in as early as April of this year. Also, according to 9to5Mac, Apple is reportedly planning to launch a new 5.5-inch entry-level iPhone with a solid state home button, Touch ID, and support for Apple Pay's Express Transit feature.

The 5.5-inch iPhone is expected to be priced $100 more than the 4.7-inch model that will start at $399, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. It's slated to launch at the end of March, but it's possible the launch will be delayed due to the coronavirus.

Tesla has begun deliveries for its Model Y crossover SUV, the company announced on Twitter Monday, matching analyst expectations on timing. CNBC reports: Tesla's announcement comes as many companies are being forced to revise their product timelines, and shift their manufacturing plans as the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down normal business operations around the world. The accomplishment marks a win for Tesla, which has previously fallen short of self-imposed, start of delivery deadlines. Users have posted images and comments to Tesla Motors Club, a major online forum for Tesla owners, indicating that they have received their Model Y vehicles, or scheduled deliveries soon, even amidst the pandemic.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told shareholders on the company's third-quarter earnings call that Tesla was "ahead of schedule on Model Y preparations in Fremont, and we've moved the launch timeline from fall 2020 to summer 2020. There may be some room for improvement there, but we're confident about summer 2020." The seven-seat version of the Model Y is not expected to be available until 2021, according to Tesla's website. The lower-cost "standard range" version of the Model Y, is not expected to be in production until early 2021, the site also notes.

Windows 10 is now running on over 1 billion monthly active devices, just six months after passing the 900 million device milestone. From a report: Microsoft has been consistently adding 100 million active Windows 10 devices every six months over the past two years. Windows 10 also passed 50% desktop market share in August. The milestone is notable because Microsoft originally aimed to hit 1 billion devices running Windows 10 "in two to three years." A year in, the company backpedaled on that goal after it became clear that Windows 10 Mobile was a failure. (Android has over 2.5 billion monthly active devices.) Windows 10 was released four years and eight months ago in July 2015. It thus took the company more than double its ambitious estimate and 20 months longer than its conservative estimate to pass 1 billion Windows 10 devices.

Amazon cracked down on coronavirus price gouging. Now, while the rest of the world searches, some sellers are holding stockpiles of sanitizer and masks. From a report: On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States was announced, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves. Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from "little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods," his brother said. "The major metro areas were cleaned out." Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, "it was crazy money." To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.

The next day, Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they'd lose their accounts. EBay soon followed with even stricter measures, prohibiting any U.S. sales of masks or sanitizer. Now, while millions of people across the country search in vain for hand sanitizer to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of the stuff with little idea where to sell them. "It's been a huge amount of whiplash," he said. "From being in a situation where what I've got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to 'What the heck am I going to do with all of this?'" A day after the story ran, the Tennessee man donated all of the supplies on Sunday.

ZDNet reports that there'll be some changes in Microsoft's second version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL2: Microsoft has decided to remove the Linux kernel from the Windows OS image with WSL2. Instead, the company will deliver it to users' machines using Windows Update. Users will be able to manually check for new kernel updates by clicking the "Check for Updates" button or by waiting for Windows to do this automatically. "Our end goal is for this change to be seamless, where your Linux kernel is kept up to date without you needing to think about it. By default this will be handled entirely by Windows, just like regular updates on your machine," said Microsoft Program Manager Craig Loewen in a blog post today outlining the coming change...

When Microsoft first introduced WSL in Windows 10 in 2016 WSL was more of an Linux interface at that point designed in partnership with Canonical. But Microsoft has been busy rearchitecting WSL with WSL 2 so that it actually will provide a Microsoft-written Linux kernel running in a lightweight virtual machine that's based on the subset of Hyper V. Users can put basically any Linux distribution of their choice on that kernel.
Engadget reports that the new version "should load and run faster, with reduced memory consumption to free up your RAM for other tasks." And they also speculate about Microsoft's motivations.

"Now that Microsoft is less dependent on Windows sales and more on services like Azure, it benefits when it treats Linux like a first-class citizen."

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: For years, smart speakers from Amazon, Google and Apple have traded data back and forth with other devices in the home. This is how their voice assistants turn on the smart lights. But in early 2019, something changed: Amazon and Google began requiring continuous status-change updates from devices -- requiring, for instance, partnered smart bulbs to send data to Amazon or Google any time they are turned on or off... Before automatic status updates, if you asked your voice assistant to turn on the lights, Alexa or Google Assistant had to ping the smart bulbs to check whether they were already on, receive the status, then send the appropriate command. With status updates in place, the first two steps of that process were excised...

It was a seemingly small change and one that received modest media coverage, but some smart home developers are increasingly uncomfortable with the change... After probing further, it appears that not only do status updates make users and their data more vulnerable to attack, but it also gives these tech giants access to more home occupancy data than ever before. Despite the discomfort of numerous partners, Google and Amazon have shown no willingness to alter course... "[Status update] data gives platforms [like Google and Amazon] a privileged position that no one manufacturer enjoys," said Brad Russell, the Research Director of smart home devices at research firm Parks Associates Inc. While Amazon says it doesn't sell the data it gathers to third parties or use it for targeted advertising, that data is still of tremendous value to the company. In much the same way it can tell how many times per year Alexa users ask for the time, then create a product based on that data, Amazon can now tell where you spend your time in your house, when you're awake and when you're sleeping and countless other life patterns you're only vaguely aware of yourself.

Google, too, profits from this data, though it seems more reluctant to admit it.

"Two months after a ban on private cars took effect on a major San Francisco street, bike and e-scooter ridership is soaring, and bus trips are getting quicker," reports CityLab: [T]he average number of dockless scooter trips provided by one company, Spin, shot up by 30 percent after the car ban went into effect, according to an analysis by Populus, a mobility data startup that works with the company. "Street design changes, big and small, can have a huge impact on what mode of transportation a person chooses and even what routes they decide to take," Kay Cheng, director of infrastructure initiatives at Spin, said in a statement. Some of that shift is likely attributable to seasonal effects, said Regina Clewlow, the CEO and co-founder of Populus; other cities saw a scooter ridership increase of just 10% between January and February...

After just one day of the new vehicle access rules — a preamble to the $603.7 million overhaul, slated to begin in 2021 — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reported that bike ridership has jumped by 20%. By the end of February, that increase was up to 25%.

Bus speeds were also running 6% faster on average, according to the SFMTA, with some Muni lines reducing travel time by as much as 12%.

Critics of the project warned that the car ban would boost vehicle congestion on surrounding streets, but Inrix, a global traffic analytics company, found only a minor uptick. "Overall, the cumulative time savings experienced by the more than 75,000 daily public transit users on Market Street greatly exceed the marginal increase in travel times experienced by car users in the closure's vicinity," wrote Trevor Reed, an analyst at Inrix, in a blog post.

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: Why were two apparently unexploded bombs sticking out of a lava tube on Hawaii's Mauna Loa? That's what Kawika Singson, a photographer, wondered in February when he was hiking on Mauna Loa, the colossal shield volcano that rises 55,700 feet from its base below the sea to its summit. Singson had stumbled upon relics of one of volcanology's more quixotic disaster response plans. These devices, described in more detail recently in the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's Volcano Watch blog, were two of 40 dropped by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1935 in an attempt to stop lava from plowing into Hilo, the most populous town on the island of Hawaii.

While Hilo was spared as the lava flow naturally lost its forward momentum, it wasn't the last time that humanity tried to fight volcanic fire with fire of its own. History is filled with schemes to stop molten kinetic rock, and the ineffective 1935 bombing and others show that lava flows are very rarely "a force we humans can reckon with," said Janine Krippner, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program...

That December, a pond of lava breached its levees and advanced on Hilo at a rate of a mile per day. Fearing it would reach the town and its watershed, Thomas Jaggar, the founder and first director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, called on the Army Air Corps. On Dec. 27, 10 Keystone B-3 and B-4 biplane bombers struck the lava flow, targeting its tubes and channels. Half these bombs were packed with 355 pounds of TNT. The other half were not explosive, and instead designed to emit smoke so the pilots could see where the bona fide bombs landed. Singson found one of those inert devices last month.

On Jan. 2, 1936, the lava flows ceased. Jaggar was convinced the bombing worked, but other experts thought it was a coincidence. Pilots did spot several imploded lava tubes, but their collapses were insufficient to block the flow of lava.

A similar operation was attempted in 1942, again to not much effect.
The conclusion reached by the Times' reporter? "Dense, superheated lava does whatever it wants."

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new technology being developed by McLaren Technology Centre for its "Elva," a multi-million dollar, 804-horsepower two-seat roadster.

It doesn't have a windshield... In place of a windscreen, Elva will debut a technology called Active Air Management System (AAMS). When engaged, it generates two air flows streaming over the cockpit: One glances off the low, curvaceous wind deflector rising out of the front bodywork, with an energy proportional to vehicle speed. The other airflow is scooped up in a low-mounted grille intake and turned 135 degrees. Now ducted up and slightly forward, this high pressure flow intercepts the deflected airflow, bending the combined flows over the cockpit. Meanwhile, streaming air clinging to the hood wants to be drawn down, below face level, following the Elva's curving scuttle and dash.

And so the Elva's historically unique, eye-of-the-hurricane gestalt: Driver and passenger motoring at highway speeds, talking at normal volume, as warm or as cool as desired and, looking out, seeing nothing... but scenery. No helmet limiting their peripheral vision as if looking through a well-padded porthole, stifling breath and sense of smell. And no heavy, roof-supporting "A" pillars either, which clumsily bracket existence in almost all modern cars. The Elva is the motoring equivalent of a horizonless pool.

Under the right conditions the Elva's system can billow precipitation out of the way, over the car, so the occupants stay dry. Heading up the mountain to Gstaad? With the AAMS active, falling snow will swirl past but never settle... What about bugs? I asked. Will they be deflected too? "It depends on the mass of the bug," said Andrew Kay, Elva project chief engineer, being completely serious. What about stones thrown up by trucks? Overtalk...inaudible... In any event, McLaren expects all occupants will be wearing helmets on piste and will only engage the AAMS bareheaded at moderate speeds...

At 60 mph, the wind was so still I could have lit a cigarette.

Volkswagen's chief strategist Michael Jost predicts their vehicle-to-grid electric car batteries could open up a new business opportunity: selling their electricity back to the power grid during peak demand. Reuters reports: "By 2025 we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt hours worth of storage," Jost told journalists in Berlin. "That's more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world. We can guarantee that energy will be used and stored and this will be a new area of business."

The German carmaker is not alone in looking into this field. German utility E.ON has been working with Japanese carmaker Nissan to develop so-called vehicle-to-grid services.

Ars Technica's senior tech reporter took a long long at Google's reimplementation of Java in Android -- and the lawsuit filed against it by Oracle in 2010. And he discovers "a possible downside" to Oracle's stance on API copyrights. If anyone should understand the importance of such copying, it's Oracle. After all, Oracle got its start in the 1970s selling a database product based on the then-new structured query language (SQL). SQL was invented by IBM. And Oracle doesn't seem to have gotten a license to use it...

Oracle's copying of SQL seems pretty similar to Google's copying of Java. But an Oracle spokeswoman disagrees. "It's an incorrect premise, comparing apples with broccoli, and being completely divorced from the facts of the case," she wrote in a Tuesday email.

America's Supreme Court will soon decide whether Google infringed on a copyright that Oracle says it holds on the APIs of Java. But this week Oracle's executive vice president also wrote a blog post arguing that Google "sought the support of outside groups to bolster its position" by using friend-of-the-court briefs to "create the impression that this case is of great import and controversy, and a ruling in Oracle's favor will impede innovation."

"Upon closer inspection, what these briefs reveal is a significantly different picture, one where Google is the outlier, with very little meaningful support outside the purview of its financial fingerprints." As we discussed in a previous post, this case is not about innovation, it is about theft. Google copied verbatim more than 11,000 lines of software code, and now attempts post hoc to change the rules in order to excuse its conduct... As those of us that have watched Google over the past few decades know, Google's view boils down to the self-absorbed position that the work it is doing is of such consequence that the rules shouldn't apply to them. The problem for Google is that very few outside of its self-generated atmosphere agree.

Let's be clear, it is not commonplace or foundational in the software industry to steal other developer's software code. Rather, what is commonplace is a confluence of interests where code is licensed to facilitate its widespread deployment, with the owner choosing the terms... Java embraced choice, with three different licensing alternatives, including a freely deployed open source license, and a commercial license designed to maintain interoperability. And it turns out that nobody except Google found it necessary to steal despite Java's enormous popularity. It is not in dispute in this matter that Google destroyed Java interoperability so it is unbelievable that many of its amici take the position that Google needs to prevail in order to protect interoperability...

Out of 26 briefs, we found:

- 7 briefs representing 13 entities that received "substantial contributions" from Google;

- 8 briefs filed by entities or individuals that have financial ties to Google through grants, dues, cy pres settlement proceeds or employment of individual amici;

- 2 briefs filed by companies with a clear commercial interest in Google prevailing;

- 1 brief filed by several former U.S. government employees all of whom worked for a small government agency run by a former Google executive, despite the U.S. government itself filing a brief in favor of Oracle;

- 4 separate briefs representing a total of 7 individuals;

- A few other briefs where Google financial ties are likely;

- 1 brief submitted by a serial copyright infringer repeatedly sanctioned by the Courts;

What masqueraded as a mass show of support for Google, may not be much more than an exercise in transactional interests.
The groups Oracle is criticizing include the American Library Association, EFF, and the Python Software Foundation, as well as a brief by 83 computer scientists which included Doug Lea, a former memeber of the executive committee of the Java Community Process. Oracle's blog post also makes the argument that besides Microsoft and IBM, "not a single brief from the other 98 of the Top 100 tech companies was filed."

There was a response on Twitter from Joshua Bloch, who worked on the Java platform at Sun before leaving in 2004 to become Google's chief Java architect for the next 8 years. He called Oracle's blog post "nonsense." For example, Doug Lea -- who is in no small measure responsible for Java's success -- accepted one small grant from Google fourteen years ago, and promptly doled it out to deserving undergrads who were testing java.util.concurrent. Have you no shame, Oracle?

We are not Google shills. We are scientists and engineers. Some of us laid the theoretical groundwork for the profession, some designed the computers you grew up on, and some wrote the software you use every day.

We depend on the right to reimplement each others' APIs, and we are truly afraid that your irresponsible lawsuit may deprive us of that right, which we've enjoyed throughout our long careers.

An anonymous reader quotes the nonprofit environmental magazine Grist: On Sunday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a new set of guidelines for citizens hoping to help contain the burgeoning outbreak. They included working from home, if possible, avoiding subways during rush hour (a breeding ground for respiratory viruses), and walking or biking to work if possible to avoid crowding on public transportation... Now, less than a week later, it's clear that inexperience and physical impediments weren't enough to keep New Yorkers from adopting a more hygienic, climate-friendly, people-powered form of transportation. The city's Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it's seen a 50 percent increase in bike traffic on bridges connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens compared to last March. New York City's bike share program, Citi Bike, has also seen an enormous upswing in demand. Citi Bike announced on Thursday that rides are up 67 percent compared to a year ago...

[T]he coronavirus pandemic has also caused a 15 percent drop in rush-hour traffic this week compared to the same time last year. That means less pollution for cyclists to choke on and fewer chances of dangerous collisions.

An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat: Sweden's Data Protection Authority (DPA) has slapped Google with a 75 million kronor ($8 million) fine for "failure to comply" with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) after the internet giant reportedly failed to adequately remove search result links under right-to-be-forgotten requests. In a notable twist, the DPA also demanded that Google refrain from informing website operators their URLs will be de-indexed... Rather than asking website operators to remove a web page, Google — and other search engines — are required to hide the page from European search results.

Since the ruling took effect, Google has received millions of de-indexing requests, though it reports that fewer than 45% have been fulfilled... The crux of the Swedish DPA's complaint is that Google did not "properly remove" two search result listings after it was instructed to do so back in 2017. "In one of the cases, Google has done a too narrow interpretation of what web addresses needed to be removed from the search result listing," the DPA wrote in its statement. "In the second case, Google has failed to remove the search result listing without undue delay." But inadequate and tardy removals are only part of the issue, according to Sweden's DPA, which also argues that Google should keep website operators in the dark about removal requests...

If Google's latest fine is upheld — the company has three weeks to appeal — it would rank among the seven largest GDPR penalties of all time. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that it does indeed intend to file an appeal. "We disagree with this decision on principle and plan to appeal," the spokesperson said.

ArchieBunker quotes a report from Road & Track: You can always count on Koenigsegg to do things differently. Take the Swedish brand's newest car, the Gemera, a 1700-hp four-seat hybrid grand tourer that can crest 250 mph. In a world filled with more ultra-high-dollar supercars than ever, the Gemera stands out. And perhaps the most interesting thing about the car is its engine. Koenigsegg calls the engine the Tiny Friendly Giant, or TFG for short, and it's an apt name. The TFG is a 2.0-liter twin-turbo three-cylinder that makes 600 horsepower. At 300 horsepower per liter, the TFG's specific output is far higher than anything ever seen in a road car. Koenigsegg says this is 'light-years ahead of any other production three-cylinder today,' and he's not wrong: The next most powerful triple is the 268-hp engine in the Toyota GR Yaris.

What's even more unusual is that the TFG doesn't have a camshaft. Instead, the engine uses technology from Koenigsegg's sister company, Freevalve, with pneumatic actuators opening and closing each valve independently. I called company founder Christian von Koenigsegg to learn exactly how this unconventional engine works. The Tiny Friendly Giant was designed specifically for the Gemera. Koenigsegg wanted something compact and lightweight, with big horsepower. Koenigsegg also decided to reverse the setup found in the hybrid Regera, where internal combustion provides the bulk of the total power output. In the Gemera, the majority of the power comes from electric motors, with the Gemera contributing some driving force as well as charging the hybrid drivetrain's batteries. Given this criteria, Koenigsegg arrived at a 2.0-liter, three-cylinder configuration.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will now allow passengers to bring on board hand sanitizer containers up to 12 ounces in size, which is much larger than the standard 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) previously allowed. The Verge reports: There are some caveats, though. The updated policy only applies to hand sanitizer. And larger containers will be subject to additional screening by TSA agents, which will likely lead to increased wait times. So ask yourself before heading out to the airport: how much sanitizer do you really need? Airports are said to be stocking up on disinfectants and other cleaning equipment. Passengers are likely to see hand sanitizer stations everywhere at airports reflecting this new reality, so no worries for those who don't feel like lugging a huge bottle of the stuff on the plane with them.

A team of scientists led by Yi Cui, a materials scientist at Stanford, have created a new "fireproof" solid-state electrolyte for use in lithium-ion batteries. IEEE Spectrum reports: They used a flame-retardant material called decabromodiphenyl ethane, or DBDPE for short. To make their new solid-state electrolyte, the team first created a thin film by combining DBDPE with polyimide, a mechanical enforcer. Using polyimide has many advantages, says Wan. Apart from being "mechanically really strong," it boasts a high melting point (making it less likely that a short circuit will occur), a solutions-based manufacturing process (that's compatible with how batteries are made today), and it's inexpensive (3M even has film tapes made from it). The hitch, however, is that polyimide can't conduct ions. To get around this snag, Wan and his colleagues added two different polymers, polyethylene oxide (PEO) and lithium bistrifluoromethanesulfonylimide (LiTFSI), to the mix. "It's innovative -- they've smartly used co-polymers, which is a new way to solve the flammable polymer electrolyte battery problem," says Chunsheng Wang, a researcher who studies new battery technologies at the University of Maryland. The paper has been published in the journal Nano Letters.

Global downloads of business apps including Tencent Conference, WeChat Work, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack have risen nearly five fold since the start of the year, data showed, as the coronavirus outbreak changes how corporations work. From a report: While such apps attracted 1.4 million new users across the App Store and Google Play in the first week of January, that figure jumped to a record 6.7 million in the first week of March, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower. The outbreak, which reached global pandemic status this week, has forced companies to rely heavily on business conferencing tools as workers stop commuting to offices. These services range from video conferencing apps such as Zoom and Google Hangouts Meet to cutting edge tools inspired by "Star Wars" to make remote work more manageable. Some of these newer services such as Rumii and Spatial, which let users attend meetings in digital rooms where they can see and interact with digitized, 3D versions of their coworkers. Zoom Video's daily active user base grew by 67% since early January, data from Apptopia showed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The coronavirus threat and official policies of "social distancing" are leading millions to stay home, doing meetings via video chat and probably watching Netflix and YouTube the rest of the time. That means a big uptick in bytes going through the tubes, both simultaneously and cumulatively. ISPs, leery of repeating Verizon's memorable gaffe of cutting off service during an emergency, are proposing a variety of user-friendly changes to their policies. Comcast is boosting the bandwidth of its low-income Internet Essentials customers to levels that actually qualify as broadband under FCC rules. AT&T is suspending data caps for all its customers until further notice. Verizon has added $500 million to its 5G rollout plans. Wait, how does that help? Unclear, but the company "stands ready" for increases in traffic. Elsewhere in the world ISPs are taking similar actions, either voluntarily or at the request of the state. In India, for instance, ACT Fibernet has bumped everyone up to 300 Mbps for no cost.

There are two simple truths at play here. The first is that any company that sends its subscriber a $150 overage fee because they had to work from home for a month and ran over their data cap is going to be radioactive. The optics on that are so bad that my guess is most companies are quietly setting forgiveness policies in place to prevent it from happening -- though of course it probably will anyway. The second is that these caps are completely unnecessary, existing only as a way to squeeze more money from subscribers. Data caps just don't matter any more. As I pointed out during the whole zero-rating debacle, the very fact that the limits can be lifted at will or certain high-traffic categories (such as a broadband company's own streaming TV channels) can be exempted fundamentally beggars the concept of these caps.

Think about it: If the internet provider can even temporarily lift the data caps, then there is definitively enough capacity for the network to be used without those caps. If there's enough capacity, then why did the caps exist in the first place? Answer: Because they make money.