The rubbers from Argentine sex products retailer Tulipan are a creative reminder that consent is crucial to sex.
Source: CNET
The broadband divide in the U.S. is real, but if you want to know how real, don’t ask the FCC. Its yearly broadband deployment report, already under fire for serious data problems, has now been further questioned by Microsoft, which says its own data contradicts coverage data provided by internet providers. Despite $22 billion in government spending, the company says, “adoption has barely budged.”
In a blog post, Microsoft explained that it was concerned with apparent inaccuracies in reports purporting to document broadband availability throughout the country. Leveraging what seems to be its Windows telemetry data, it came to vastly different conclusions than the FCC. (I’ve asked about the source of the data.)
For instance, the FCC report suggests that broadband, as it is currently defined, is not currently available to around 25 million people. Sounds reasonable. But Microsoft’s data says that some 163 million people “do not use the internet at broadband speeds.”
Those aren’t the same thing, obviously, but you’d think if a person had broadband available they would use it at least now and then, right?
To look further into the problem, Microsoft checked out a few locales:
In our home state of Washington, the FCC data indicates that 100 percent of Ferry County residents have access to broadband. When we spoke to local officials, they indicated that very few residents in this rural county had access and those that did were using broadband in business. Our data bears this out, showing that only 2 percent of Ferry County is using broadband.
So the entire county has broadband, but next to no one uses it? Seems odd. The pattern repeats elsewhere as well, rural and urban, with similar deltas between reported broadband availability and observed broadband activity.
“These significant discrepancies across nearly all counties in all 50 states indicates there is a problem with the accuracy of the access data reported by the FCC,” concludes Microsoft’s chief data analytics officer, John Kahan.
Part of the issue is that internet providers essentially just report their own coverage via a form, and the FCC reports it more or less as fact. That’s a problem not just when a mistake on a form adds tens of millions of subscribers that don’t actually exist, but when large ISPs overstate their coverage so they don’t have to pay to fill in the gaps.
Microsoft’s suggestions, which it plans to make directly to the Senate Commerce Committee in testimony on Wednesday, would make it far more difficult to fib on the Form 477, which as written seems to provide enormous leeway for a company to imply coverage that isn’t actually there.
The problems described here are not new or obscure, and even FCC commissioners have taken issue with the way this data is collected. Hopefully given the continued and growing outcry concerning this misleading report we will soon know better who in our country has, or needs, help getting online. That the FCC wants to help I don’t doubt, but in order to do so they need better data.
Source: TechCrunch
The new electric SUV is yet another with a dispiriting EPA range rating.
Source: Wired
The Cue 3 is a nearly 7-foot-tall basketball shooting robot, and it’s graduated from free throws to 3-pointers.
Source: CNET
Some 360,000 crossovers are affected globally.
Source: CNET
Fans attending tonight’s NCAA Men’s National Championship basketball game between the University of Virginia and Texas Tech will have numerous ways to get back to their homes and hotels when one team or the other has won, but Lime -branded electric scooters will not be among them.
Six months after Lime rolled out its motorized vehicles in Lubbock — the city in Northwest Texas that Texas Tech calls home — Lime has pulled them from city streets for today and tonight, because overzealous fans who gathered near the school after its win over Michigan State on Saturday night reportedly began tearing down street signs, throwing glass bottles in the air, tipping over at least one car and, yes, setting scooters on fire.
It was an embarrassment for the school, which proudly calls Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes an alum (he was at Saturday’s game). It was an embarrassment for the broader city, too, with Lubbock police quickly issuing a statement that read: “After the Texas Tech Men’s Basketball team defeated Michigan State in a NCAA Championship Final Four game, hundreds of fans gathered on Broadway, near University. The crowd engaged in extremely dangerous, and disappointing, behavior including vandalizing property. We are proud, and excited, for Texas Tech, but behavior like this will not be tolerated. We want Red Raider fans to support the team and celebrate lawfully and responsibly. We are on the national stage so make Lubbock proud.”
Still, Lime clearly didn’t want to take any chances with its scooters, which reportedly cost anywhere from $100 to $500 at retail. Neither does it want someone getting killed on one before or after the big game later. Said Lime in a statement sent to TechCrunch a bit ago, “While we too are excited and proud of Texas Tech’s victory and tournament run, we also share the city of Lubbock’s concerns for public safety. In anticipation of tonight’s big game, we have pulled our fleet from the streets before it commences, and will re-deploy scooters after activities subside early Tuesday morning.”
Lime didn’t answer questions today, including how many scooters are currently in Lubbock on a daily basis, whether the company consulted first with city officials and if this is the first decision of its kind. Rival Bird has also not responded to related questions. But Thom Rickert, a Dallas-based risk specialist focused on both traditional and emerging trends that impact public entities — from scooters to drones to automated vehicles — says he is not aware of any scooter company previously yanking its fleet out of crowd-control concerns and that it may well become the norm.
It should, in his view. For one thing, Rickert, like others of us, has seen scooters abused in settings involving large numbers of people and alcohol. He points to Dallas’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade, which attracted more than 100,000 people this year. “I saw some pretty bad behavior” as it relates to scooters, Rickert recounts with a stifled laugh.
Rickert, who works for the specialty insurance company Argo Group, further notes that there’s plenty of data that’s available to Lime and anyone else who wants a better understanding of incident patterns, including when and where and under what conditions vandalism tends to take place. It’s the same kind of data that informs a lot of things to which Americans are accustomed, including parks that close at sundown, and pools rendered inaccessible after Labor Day. “Communities make certain decisions about facilities and equipment based on risk assessment to lessen the impact of certain behaviors,” he says.
It’s conceivable, in fact, that armed with such information, scooter companies may ultimately have no choice but to sweep their products off city streets in advance of certain happenings, that with knowledge comes greater liability. Only time will tell, but don’t be surprised. It would be a pretty natural evolution for the companies. Most already have their wares collected at sundown owing to similar safety, liability and expense-related concerns — because, in short, people sometimes act dumb.
Source: TechCrunch
Catch up on the most important news today in 2 minutes or less.
Source: Wired
I know it’s been tough. All the waiting. The sleepless nights. But fear not, the Titanium version of RED’s wholly ridiculous Hydrogen One is finally here. And yes, it costs as much as you remember.
The $1,595 phone is essentially the same as its $1,295 counterpart, save for the different material casing. That means the same ole Snapdragon 835 processor that it was announced with way back in 2017.
It’s a lot to pay for limited-edition novelty, especially when the whole “holographic” display ended up being a moderately interesting disappointment. We said as much in our review, and certainly weren’t alone in our thinking. Aside from an interesting phone design that can double as a blunt weapon in a pinch, there’s not really a lot to say about the thing.
There is some good news for the true believers who ordered one early, however. In addition to the aluminum version the company shipped to supporters, a free titanium model is supposedly on the way as well, according to The Verge.
If you’re not that lucky, you can purchase one now through RED’s site, for some reason.
You do you, friend.
Source: TechCrunch
El escándalo de las gemelas chinas editadas con CRISPR demostró que cualquiera con los recursos necesarios puede llevar a cabo un proyecto como este. Y eso es justo lo que intenta esta empresa formada por un científico y un programador a los que no les asustan las regulaciones
Source: MIT
Si la energía renovable es cada vez más barata y más consumida, ¿por qué 2018 cerró con más emisiones de efecto invernadero que el año anterior? Uno de los motivos es el propio cambio climático cada vez más cambiante y la otra, la reducción de la producción de energía nuclear
Source: MIT