Is four megabits per second broadband? Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) argue it isn’t, and that the USDA should provide grants to rural areas that can’t access at least 10mbps. The recently defined threshold is 4Mpbs.
What was “high-speed” Internet at the turn of the century is painfully slow in 2016, but government definitions aren’t uniformly keeping up with the market. The result: What is and isn’t considered “broadband” varies largely between different government agencies.
Or sometimes, the definition can vary inside the same agency, as Ars Technica is reporting. The Rural Utilities Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), has not one but two programs for subsidizing broadband investments, which as of this month both consider different speeds to be “broadband”.
As a result, if a community currently has access to speeds of 6Mbps, entities there can apply for loans to build out better infrastructure, but are ineligible for grants. That’s not okay, argue King and Capito.
“Federal policymakers must ensure that taxpayer-supported infrastructure is sufficiently robust to handle demand,” the two senators wrote in a joint letter. “It is not only a matter of fairness that rural Americans can fully utilize broadband-enabled resources, but also a matter of ensuring that taxpayers are receiving the full economic development return on their investments.”
No bills need to be passed for this change to be made: the USDA has congressional authority to increase the speed right now (if not necessarily the budget). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently defined “broadband” as 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, and even 10Mbps is far from that threshold.
The U.S. has some of the lowest broadband speeds in the industrialized world, and rural areas are a part of that. In many areas, satellite or even dial-up internet are still the best options, which leaves many rural Americans without access to large swaths of the modern economy.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.