In a win for net neturality, ISPs agreed to end their legal challenge to a 2018 Californa law that bars providers from throttling service. Telecom groups and California Attorney General Rob Bonta today jointly agreed to dismiss the case, reportedReuters.
It’s fair that say that luck hasn’t exactly been on the telecom industry’s side. Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider its ruling that California’s law be upheld. And last year, the US DOJ dropped its own lawsuit over the net neutrality law, which the agency had filed during the Trump administration.
“Following multiple defeats in court, internet service providers have finally abandoned an effort to block enforcement of CA's net neutrality law. This is a win for California and for a free and fair internet,” wrote Bonta in a tweet.
After Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai overturned the agency's net neutrality rules in 2017, California’s legislature decided to enact its own law. The state’s net neutrality law, which went into effect in August 2018, expanded on previous federal rules by banning the use of “zero-rating” by ISPs in an anti-competitive manner. Zero-rating occurs when an ISP exempts any of its affiliated services from eating away at a customer’s data caps. For example, AT&T Wireless once exempted HBO Max from the data caps of its internet customers. The company dropped this practice last year, and blamed the impact of California’s law. Digital rights groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that zero-rating is hostile to consumers, especially those from low-income households.
Federal net neutrality rules that were blocked under the Trump administration have yet to be restored by the FCC under President Joe Biden. That’s because the five-member panel is currently short one member, which they’ll need in order to vote on net neutrality. The agency is awaiting the Senate confirmation of Gigi Sohn. But thanks to intense lobbying from telecom groups and a number of Republicans (and moderate Democrats) in Congress, Sohn’s confirmation is stalled at present.
Back in March, we covered Fitbit’s recall of its overheating Ionic smartwatch for which the wearable brand was offering full $ 299 refunds and discounts if buying a replacement. Today brings the news of a new lawsuit that alleges that more than one Fitbit tracker or smartwatch is heating up and causing injuries, with fingers being […]
Come comment on this article: The lawsuit against Fitbit claims that most of its wearables represent a burn risk
A new lawsuit against Google accuses the company of fostering a "racially biased corporate culture" that offers Black employees lower pay and fewer opportunities to advance than their white counterparts, reports Reuters. Filed on Friday with a federal court in San Jose, California, the complaint alleges the company subjected former diversity recruiter April Curley and other current and former Black employees to a hostile work environment.
In 2014, Google hired Curley to design a program to connect the company with Black colleges. Shortly afterward, she claims she was subjected to denigrating comments from her managers, who allegedly stereotyped her as an "angry" black woman while passing her over for promotions.
"While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees," Curley's lawyer told Reuters. The complaint notes Black people make up only 4.4 percent of employees at Google and approximately 3 percent of its leadership.
We've reached out to Google for comment.
Curley is not the first person to accuse Google of fostering a work environment hostile to Black employees and other people of color. In the aftermath of Timnit Gebru's controversial exit from the company, Alex Hanna, a former employee with the tech giant's Ethical AI research group, said she decided to leave Google after becoming tired of its structural deficiencies. "In a word, tech has a whiteness problem," Hanna wrote on Medium at the time. "Google is not just a tech organization. Google is a white tech organization."
Is the Galaxy S22 Ultra a worthy upgrade to the still excellent Galaxy S21 Ultra? We’ve put the camera and S Pen to the test to find out.
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Samsung’s One UI 4 software is available now, and we compared it against Android 12 on the Pixel 6 Pro to see if it can compete with Google’s latest OS.
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Facebook is under intense regulatory pressure, and it appears to be bracing itself for the worst. The Wall Street Journal says it has obtained a document outlining Facebook’s defense if the government orders a breakup that would unload Instagram and…
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Qualcomm lost 3% of global smartphone chip market share in Q2 2020 in a difficult market, which fell by 26%, according to the latest market share data. The report, by Counterpoint Research, explained that the main reason for the decline in smartphone chips is because of sharply reduced smartphone sales, due to the global pandemic. […]
Come comment on this article: Qualcomm lost 3% of global smartphone chip market share in Q2 2020, against a backdrop of falling sales
Last year, Genius made headlines when it used a "watermark" made up of alternating styles of apostrophes that spelled out "red handed" in Morse code to highlight what it said was Google scraping its annotated lyrics. While the move was clever, it has…
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If big tech thought that its antitrust reckoning would end with yesterday’s hearings, it’ll have its optimism sorely dented by what’s likely to follow. A number of smaller players are lobbing grenades over the fence in the hope of forcing regulators…
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Last month The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald faced criminal charges for breaking cybersecurity laws in Brazil. Now a judge has dismissed the hacking charges, linked to six people who allegedly stole information from the phones of public officials and j…
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Tesla has a rough history with leakers, and it's apparently eager to remind employees of that fact. CNBC said it had obtained an email from Tesla's security team (yes, the irony is thick) warning staff against leaking sensitive information. The messa…
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LG has announced that they’ll be throwing their hat in the ring against Qualcomm with South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission, who is currently in the midst of a lawsuit against the chip maker for unfair practices. The lawsuit has been going on for some time now over Qualcomm’s alleged patent abuse. The lawsuit was brought […]
Come comment on this article: LG is the latest to join the South Korean FTC lawsuit against Qualcomm
Now that Democrats are poised to control of the House of Representatives, they're planning investigations into the Trump administration's actions against technology companies. Inbound House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff told Axios in a…
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Ticketmaster will soon have another way to fight bogus ticket sales: by hopping on one of the biggest tech bandwagons of 2018. It's acquiring Upgraded, a company that melds blockchain's distributed trust with encrypted barcodes to minimize the fraud…
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A Minecraft modder has added some fresh gameplay issues for players to deal with in the form of climate change. Nick Porillo's GlobalWarming mod alters the atmosphere based on certain actions like smelting ores. Temperatures will rise as carbon emiss…
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Lionfish are threats to not only fragile coral reef ecosystems, but the divers who keep them in check. They not only take advantage of unsuspecting fish populations, but carry poisonous spines that make them challenging to catch. Student researcher…
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Governments around the world are taking various steps to prevent foreign elements from meddling with their elections. For some of them, it's to prevent foreign interference yet again — the US, for instance, might use paper ballot backups that will a…
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Disney's attempt to prevent Redbox from buying its discs for rental and resale may have blown up in the House of Mouse's face. The Hollywood Reporter describes how District Court Judge Dean Pregerson sided with Redbox to shoot down a Disney-mandated…
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LeEco is going out with a bang, not a whimper. After trying and failing to acquire Vizio, the company started tumbling downhill in the financial department pretty quickly. We’ve seen desperate financing attempts, layoffs, and all kinds of other moves that paint a pretty clear picture that LeEco is in deep trouble. To make matters […]
Come comment on this article: Vizio is filing a huge $ 100 million lawsuit against a flailing LeEco
A few years ago a huge legal battle between Samsung and Apple dominated headlines as the two giants worked to move to the top of the smartphone market. Since then, things have taken a turn for the better and the companies mostly limit their competitive nature to the market. Over the past few months though, […]
Come comment on this article: Qualcomm seeks U.S. iPhone ban in latest move against Apple
The Federal Trade Commission kicked off 2017 by targeting Qualcomm over allegedly anti-competitive behavior, and unsurprisingly, companies the chipmaker competes with agree. Intel and Samsung filed briefs supporting the FTC lawsuit, claiming that Qua…
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Cog Systems, a mobile software security firm, has designed a custom system for the HTC One A9 phone that protects against malicious apps and viruses. It’ll ship to select retailers in the coming months.
The post Cog Systems’ custom, super-secure HTC One A9 phone protects against malware appeared first on Digital Trends.
The opposition to the Trump administration's immigration ban has spread far and wide. Video game developers are joining the chorus against what some see as an unconstitutional policy put forth with no thought or consideration of the outcome. For a nu…
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We take a look and listen to Mpow’s nearly indestructible speaker to find out if the Armor Plus’ sound quality stacks up to its resilience.
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Target's legal woes continue to mount over its now-infamous data breach in 2013, which exposed the credit card numbers and personal information for as many as 70 million shoppers. A District Court judge in Minnesota ruled on Wednesday that Target w…
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In this session of Failed Marketing 101, AT&T upsets the theater community with a recent tweet that insinuated you should use your phone to watch football during a theater performance. As you can imagine, that tweet didn’t go over very well.
The post Theater community rages against AT&T for ill-conceived tweet appeared first on Digital Trends.
Ever wondered how it would be to return the tennis serve of a champion? If you’re headed to the U.S. Open later this month, you may have the chance to find out — without having to set foot on the court itself, or risk embarrassing yourself in front of the crowd when you don’t even […]
The post You could play against Maria Sharapova at the U.S. Open, thanks to this amazing VR experience appeared first on Digital Trends.