New York became the first state to enact a temporary ban on new cryptocurrency mining permits at fossil fuel plants, a move aimed at addressing the environmental concerns over the energy-intensive activity. From a report: The legislation signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday was the latest setback in a bruising month for the cryptocurrency industry, which had lobbied fiercely against the bill but was unable to overcome a successful push by a coalition of left-leaning lawmakers and environmental activists. The legislation will impose a two-year moratorium on crypto-mining companies that are seeking new permits to retrofit some of the oldest and dirtiest fossil fuel plants in the state into digital mining operations. It also requires New York to study the industry's impact on the state's efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The move in New York comes months after some other states had adopted more friendly policies toward the industry, offering tax incentives in hopes of luring crypto-mining operations after China cracked down on the activity last year. But it also comes at a moment of intense turbulence, and a potential crossroads, for the cryptocurrency sector. Earlier this month, the crypto exchange known as FTX suffered a swift and public collapse that led to its declaration of bankruptcy. The fall of what had been a trusted player in the new market has led to broader questions about the future of the exchange, as well as possible criminal charges for its principal, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Longtime Slashdot reader BenFenner writes: While Chromium recently abandoned the JPEG-XL format (to much discussion on the feature request), it seems the Pale Moon browser quietly became the first to release support for the much-awaited image format. For those unfamiliar with Pale Moon, it is a Goanna-based web browser available for Windows, Linux and Android, focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Pale Moon 31.4.0 also adds support for MacOS 13 "Ventura" and addresses a number of performance- and security-related issues. A full list of the changes/fixes are available in the release notes.

Support for JPEG-XL was confirmed on GitHub.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a MIT Technology Review article, written by Zeyi Yang: It's easier to talk about what China's social credit system isn't than what it is. Ever since 2014, when China announced a six-year plan to build a system to reward actions that build trust in society and penalize the opposite, it has been one of the most misunderstood things about China in Western discourse. Now, with new documents released in mid-November, there's an opportunity to correct the record. For most people outside China, the words "social credit system" conjure up an instant image: a Black Mirror -- esque web of technologies that automatically score all Chinese citizens according to what they did right and wrong. But the reality is, that terrifying system doesn't exist, and the central government doesn't seem to have much appetite to build it, either. Instead, the system that the central government has been slowly working on is a mix of attempts to regulate the financial credit industry, enable government agencies to share data with each other, and promote state-sanctioned moral values -- however vague that last goal in particular sounds. There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights).

While local governments have been much more ambitious with their innovative regulations, causing more controversies and public pushback, the countrywide social credit system will still take a long time to materialize. And China is now closer than ever to defining what that system will look like. On November 14, several top government agencies collectively released a draft law on the Establishment of the Social Credit System, the first attempt to systematically codify past experiments on social credit and, theoretically, guide future implementation. Yet the draft law still left observers with more questions than answers. [...]

"This draft doesn't reflect a major sea change at all," says Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow of the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center who has been tracking China's social credit experiment for years. It's not a meaningful shift in strategy or objective, he says. Rather, the law stays close to local rules that Chinese cities like Shanghai have released and enforced in recent years on things like data collection and punishment methods -- just giving them a stamp of central approval. It also doesn't answer lingering questions that scholars have about the limitations of local rules. "This is largely incorporating what has been out there, to the point where it doesn't really add a whole lot of value," Daum adds. So what is China's current system actually like? Do people really have social credit scores? Is there any truth to the image of artificial-intelligence-powered social control that dominates Western imagination? The "social credit" term covers two different things, writes Yang: "traditional financial creditworthiness and 'social creditworthiness,' which draws data from a larger variety of sectors." The former is a concept Westerners are familiar with as it essentially refers to documenting individuals' or businesses' financial history and predicting their ability to pay back future loans. The latter, which is what's most controversial in the West, is the Chinese government's attempt to hold entities accountable to fight corruption, telecom scams, tax evasion, academic plagiarism, and much more.

"The government seems to believe that all these problems are loosely tied to a lack of trust, and that building trust requires a one-size-fits-all solution," writes Yang. "So just as financial credit scoring helps assess a person's creditworthiness, it thinks, some form of 'social credit' can help people assess others' trustworthiness in other respects." It gets confusing though because the "social" credit scoring often gets lumped together with financial credit scoring in policy discussions, "even though it's a much younger field with little precedent in other societies." Local governments also occasionally mix up the two, further complicating the matter.

Has the government built a system that is actively regulating these two types of credit? How will a social credit system affect Chinese people's everyday lives? So is there a centralized social credit score computed for every Chinese citizen? These are some of the questions Yang attempts to answer in the full article.

The president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, has confirmed there are multiple ongoing investigations into TikTok. From a report: The probes concern the transfer of EU citizens' data to China and targeted advertising aimed at minors. Investigators are seeking to ensure that TikTok meets General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. "The data practices of TikTok, including with respect to international data transfers, are the object of several ongoing proceedings," Ursula von der Leyden wrote in a letter shared by Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr.

"This includes an investigation by the Irish [Data Protection Commission] about TikTok's compliance with several GDPR requirements, including as regards data transfers to China and the processing of data of minors, and litigation before the Dutch courts (in particular concerning targeted advertising regarding minors and data transfers to China)." Von der Leyden was responding to concerns raised by members of the European Parliament regarding Chinese public authorities potentially gaining access to EU citizens' TikTok data, following a report by BuzzFeed News. The app's data practices have been under the EU's spotlight for a while. Earlier this year, TikTok agreed to enforce certain policies concerning ads and branded content following a complaint that accused the app of breaching EU consumer rules.

The French minister of national education and youth has said that free versions of Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workplace should not be used in schools -- a position that reflects ongoing European concerns about cloud data sovereignty, competition, and privacy rules. From a report: In August, Philippe Latombe, a member of the French National Assembly, advised Pap Ndiaye, the minister of national education, that the free version of Microsoft Office 365, while appealing, amounts to a form of illegal dumping. He asked the education minister what he intends to do, given the data sovereignty issues involved with storing personal data in an American cloud service.

Last week, the Ministry of National Education published a written reply to confirm that French public procurement contracts require "consideration" -- payment. "Free service offers are therefore, in principle, excluded from the scope of public procurement," the Ministry statement says, and minister Ndiaye has reportedly confirmed this position. This applies to other free offerings like Google Workspace for Education. Paid versions of these cloud services might be an option if they hadn't already been disallowed based on worries about data safety.

The UK's antitrust watchdog has moved to deepen its scrutiny of the Apple and Google mobile duopoly -- kicking off an in-depth investigation into elements of the pair's mobile ecosystem dominance by probing their approach toward rival mobile browsers and cloud gaming services which it's concerned could be restricting competition and harming consumers. From a report: The move follows a market study conducted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last year that led to a final report this summer which concluded there are substantial competition concerns -- with the regulator finding the tech giants have what it described as "an effective duopoly on mobile ecosystems that allows them to exercise a stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices."

At the same time, the CMA proposed to undertake what's known as a market investigation reference (MIR) with two points of focus: One looking at Apple's and Google's market power in mobile browsers; and another probing Apple's restrictions on cloud gaming through its App Store. That proposal for an MIR kicked off a standard consultation process, with the regulator seeking feedback on the scope of its proposed probe, and today it's confirmed the decision to make a market investigation -- opening what's referred to as a 'Phase 2' (in-depth) investigation which could take up to 18 months to complete. The probe will focus on the supply of mobile browsers and browser engines; and the distribution of cloud gaming services through app stores on mobile devices, the CMA said today.

Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned. From the report: The data, sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users' income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents' college scholarship amounts.

The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to power its advertising algorithms and is gathered regardless of whether the person using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook or other platforms operated by its owner Meta. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service processes about 150 million individual returns filed electronically, and some of the most widely used e-filing services employ the pixel, The Markup found.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that's today powering social networking software like Twitter alternative Mastodon, the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others. The news was revealed in a response to a Twitter user's complaint about Mastodon's complexities. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg -- whose company acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 -- suggested the user "come to Tumblr" as the site would soon "add activitypub for interconnect."

"Don't stress," he said, before clarifying that Tumblr first has to deal with the waves of new users coming in right now from Twitter, but that support for "interop and activitypub" were due to come "ASAP." In short, this announcement means Tumblr would move from being only a niche blogging platform to instead become a part of a larger, decentralized social network of sorts -- and one whose user base has grown in size in recent days as people flee Elon Musk's Twitter in search of new communities.

The ActivityPub protocol, its website explains, provides a client-to-server API for creating, updating, and deleting content as well as a federal server-to-server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content. In practice, this means that Mastodon users can interact and follow users on other instances (independently run nodes), as well as with users on other social apps (like PeerTube), which also support the implementation of ActivityPub. It makes for a web of social networks where users can find and follow each other without having to set up new accounts on each new service. This is the opposite approach to today's "walled garden" social networks, where a post on one platform can't be viewed by those on others, unless you re-upload or repost the content directly or share a link to the other site where the content can be found.

Earlier this month, the feds arrested two Russians accused of running Z-Library -- an e-book pirate site that claims to be "the world's largest library." Z-Library's remaining team members have since responded by saying they are determined to keep going, promising to take the complaints of authors seriously and asking for their forgiveness. TorrentFreak reports: After the indictment was unsealed, Z-Library's position became untenable. That led to the publishing of an official response. It confirms that part of the Z-Library team is operational but refrains from commenting on the alleged involvement of the two arrestees. "We refrain commenting on the alleged Anton and Valeria involvement in the Z-Library project and the charges against them. We are very sorry they are arrested [sic]," the announcement reads (Tor link). Z-Library does, however, realize that its site is causing trouble for authors so asks for their forgiveness. "We also regret that some authors have suffered because of Z-Library and ask for their forgiveness. We do our best to respond to all complaints about files hosted in our library if it violates authors' rights." The [response] suggests that Z-Library will do its best to respond to all takedown requests from authors but that doesn't mean the site will cease operating. On the contrary, it is still up and running on the dark web, serving millions of books to registered users.

Z-Library doesn't just respond to rightsholders. In its message, the site also addresses its users, especially those who continue to donate to the site. "We see the resonance recent events caused, we see how many people support and believe in Z-Library. Thank you for your support, it is extremely valuable to us. Thank you for each donation you make. You are the ones who making the existence of the Z-Library possible." Donations may help to keep Z-Library afloat and that is what the site appears to aspire to. Instead of waving the white flag, it is doubling down on its goal to make knowledge freely accessible to people around the world. "We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social status, nationality, citizenship, etc. This is the only purpose Z-Library is made for." This message resonates with many Z-Library users, with hundreds sending well wishes and words of support in response to the announcement [...]. The problem for Z-Library is that the U.S. Department of Justice clearly disagrees with these users, and will likely do its best to ensure that the remaining members of the Z-Library team will be also held accountable.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company's history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. That's according to a report from Business Insider, which details "the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon's larger hardware division." Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.

The BI report spoke with "a dozen current and former employees on the company's hardware team," who described "a division in crisis." Just about every plan to monetize Alexa has failed, with one former employee calling Alexa "a colossal failure of imagination," and "a wasted opportunity." This month's layoffs are the end result of years of trying to turn things around. Alexa was given a huge runway at the company, back when it was reportedly the "pet project" of former CEO Jeff Bezos. An all-hands crisis meeting took place in 2019 to try to turn the monetization problem around, but that was fruitless. By late 2019, Alexa saw a hiring freeze, and Bezos started to lose interest in the project around 2020. Of course, Amazon now has an entirely new CEO, Andy Jassy, who apparently isn't as interested in protecting Alexa. The report says that while Alexa's Echo line is among the "best-selling items on Amazon, most of the devices sold at cost." One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices."

That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable. Amazon also tried to partner with companies for Alexa skills, so a voice command could buy a Domino's pizza or call an Uber, and Amazon could get a kickback. The report says: "By 2020, the team stopped posting sales targets because of the lack of use." The team also tried to paint Alexa as a halo product with users who are more likely to spend at Amazon, even if they aren't shopping by voice, but studies of that theory found that the "financial contribution" of those users "often fell short of expectations."

In a public note to employees, Jassy said the company still has "conviction in pursuing" Alexa, but that's after making huge cuts to the Alexa team. One employee told Business Insider that currently, "There's no clear directive for devices" in the future, and that since the hardware isn't profitable, there's no clear incentive to keep iterating on popular products. That lack of direction led to the internally controversial $1,000 Astro robot, which is basically an Amazon Alexa on wheels. Business Insider's tracking now puts Alexa in third place in the US voice-assistant wars, with the Google Assistant at 81.5 million users, Apple's Siri at 77.6 million, and Alexa at 71.6 million.

Meta says it is taking additional steps to help protect the youth on its platforms. Now, anyone under the age of 16 years old can enroll in new privacy settings that are meant to limit who can see their Facebook profile. Likewise, Meta says it's also testing the removal of the messaging button on teen's Instagram profiles when viewed by an adult. From a report: In a company press release, Meta further detailed its initiative to add safeguards to its Facebook and Instagram products that will hopefully protect teenage users from "potentially suspicious adults." The major overhaul in this initiative was Meta setting new privacy defaults for teen Facebook profiles.

Any new users under 16 (or under 18 in certain countries) will automatically be enrolled in the new settings, which includes restricting who is able to view your friends list, tagged posts, pages and people you follow, as well as who is allowed to comment on your posts. Pre-existing teenage users will not be automatically enrolled in the new settings, but can opt in whenever they want. On both Instagram and Facebook, teen users will also now be able to report a user immediately after they have blocked them in both app's messaging interface. Users will first be greeted with a prompt that asks if they know the person they are messaging, and will then be able to block, restrict, or report the user depending on the platform. The dialogue box also explains what blocking and reporting will do, and guides the user to more detailed information pages. Further reading: Meta Sued in UK To Stop Personal Data Collection for Ads.

Mark Hachman, writing for PCWorld: Windows 8 stunk. It might have helped cost chief executive Steve Ballmer his job. Windows 8.1 was a bit better -- but if you love it, you have only a month or so left to enjoy it. Microsoft will kill off Windows 8.1 support on January 10, 2023. There's no out: Microsoft will not be offering an extended support package for Windows 8.1. At that point, you'll have a choice: buy a new Windows PC, or officially pay to upgrade to either Windows 10 or Windows 11. What does the end of support mean? Until January 10, Microsoft will offer security patches and other fixes for any security issues that crop up. Afterwards, you're on your own. If any exploit or malware surfaces, you'll have to depend on any antivirus software you have running -- Microsoft won't be issuing any more patches after Jan. 10, and your PC will absolutely be at risk.

Michael Larabel, reporting for Phoronix: This summer AMD announced the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer "RRA" as part of their developer software suite for helping to profile ray-tracing performance/issues on Windows and Linux with both Direct3D 12 and the Vulkan API. Initially the RRA 1.0 release was binary-only but now AMD has made good on their "GPUOpen" approach and made it open-source.

As noted back in my original article from July on the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer release: "Radeon Raytracing Analyzer is hosted on GitHub but the only content in the actual Git repository right now is documentation, so it would appear that at least initially this is a closed-source package though some documentation also says it's MIT licensed."

Last week that was cleared up with the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer source code going public. There are build instructions for compiling the RRA 1.0 sources on both Microsoft Windows and Linux while the Linux instructions are tailoring to Ubuntu use. Building the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer depends upon the Qt 5.15 toolkit.

Genesis Global Trading has been eerily silent after announcing last week that its crypto lending unit would halt services in light of FTX's collapse. From a report: Five days have passed since its lending unit ceased withdrawals and new loan originations. And the lack of communication has opened the door to speculation about the health of the overall firm, as well as its parent Digital Currency Group and sister unit Grayscale Investments. If Genesis were dealing with insolvency concerns and were to file for bankruptcy, that would imperil Digital Currency Group.

It is only speculation. There has been no reporting to suggest this outcome. Digital Currency Group, or DCG, founded by Barry Silbert in 2015, is among the largest crypto companies, sporting a valuation of $10 billion just last year. It holds investments in some 165 companies, from public companies including Coinbase Global to well-known private shops Ripple and Ledger. In other words, a hurt DCG would have industrywide repercussion

Regulators are pushing the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to examine ways of making single pilot operations the eventual norm in commercial flights. From a report: In a working paper filed with the aviation standards body, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) requested on behalf of member states that the "necessary enablers" be created "for a safe and globally harmonized introduction of commercial air transport (CAT) operations of large aeroplanes with optimised crew/single-pilot operations while ensuring an equivalent or higher level of safety compared to that achieved in current operations." There are two obvious drivers for the proposal -- cost cutting and crew shortages. Technology has over decades reduced the need for more people in the cockpit and the hope seems to be that further improvements can pare the current two down to one.

"One of the driving factors for the industry to propose taking advantage of the introduction of these new concepts of operations is a foreseen reduction in operating costs," the paper says, though it does note: "Potential additional costs related to higher-level ground support and two-way communications should also be considered. On the aircraft manufacturer side, the development and certification of new cockpit designs and associated systems may require significant investment, although these will likely produce safety benefits and savings in the medium/long term." The requirements for a full flying license are also incredibly onerous, which creates a bottleneck in the supply for qualified pilots. For most European airlines, you need 1,500 hours flight time before you get a full license. Until then, you're on provisional terms and need a fully qualified pilot operating alongside you.

"Waymo is one step closer to charging passengers for fully driverless rides in San Francisco," reports Engadget: The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted the company a Driverless Pilot permit, which allows it to pick up passengers in a test vehicle without a driver behind the wheel. It's only the second participant in the CPUC's Driverless Permit program, with Cruise being the first.

By securing the permit, Waymo now has the authority to offer driverless rides throughout San Francisco, portions of Daly City, as well as in portions of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. Its vehicles are allowed to go as fast as 65 miles per hour and can operate 24/7, but the company can't charge for the rides just yet. Waymo told Engadget that it will begin offering free rides without a driver to select members of the public in the coming weeks. To note, the company has been offering free driverless rides to the public in Phoenix since 2020.Â
In a statement the CPUC's Commissioner said that "We are seeing momentum build in this space and are working to assure the safe expansion of the driverless pilot program." The state agency says their permit "Represents a milestone for driverless passenger service, expanding the potential availability of driverless AV rides to more Californians and increasing opportunities for public engagement in the pilot."

But the agency also points out that Waymo "may not charge passengers for any rides in test AVs." (The ability to charge for driver-less rides requires a separate permit...)

He's been a contributing editor at the Linux foundation's Linux.com, a contributor to Linux Journal, and a blogger for Linux Pro magazine. Now Bruce Byfield has teamed with the lead editor for the Open Office authors volunteer group (who was also co-lead on Open Office's documentation project) to co-author a second edition of Byfield's book Designing with LibreOffice.

From the official announcement: The book is available as an .ODT or .PDF file under the Creative Commons Attribution/Sharealike License version 4.0 or later from https://designingwithlibreoffice.com. ["Under this license, you can share or copy the book, or even add to it," explains the book's site, "so long as you mention the writer's name and release your changes under the same license."]

The first edition was published in 2016, and was downloaded over thirty-five thousand times. Michael Meeks, one of the co-founders of LibreOffice, described the first edition as "an outstanding contribution to help people bring the full power of LibreOffice into their document...."

The second edition updates the original, removing outdated information and adding updated screenshots and new information about topics such as Harfbuzz font shaping codes, export to EPUB formats for ereaders, the Zotero extension for bibliographies, and Angry Reviewer, a Grammarly-like extension for editing diction.

In the future, the writers plan to release other editions as necessary to keep Designing with LibreOffice current.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader nanday for sharing the news.

CNN reports: Facebook's fact-checkers will need to stop fact-checking former President Donald Trump following the announcement that he is running for president, according to a company memo obtained by CNN.

While Trump is currently banned from Facebook, the fact-check ban applies to anything Trump says, and false statements made by Trump can be posted to the platform by others. Despite Trump's ban, "Team Trump," a page run by Trump's political group, is still active and has 2.3 million followers.... The carve-out is not exclusive to Trump and applies to all politicians, but given the rate fact-checkers find themselves dealing with claims made by the former president, a manager on Meta's "news integrity partnership" team emailed fact-checkers on Tuesday ahead of Trump's announcement. ...

The company has long had an exception to its fact-checking policy for politicians. "It is not our role to intervene when politicians speak," Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former politician, said in 2019, defending the exemption. The Meta memo sent to fact-checkers made clear that if Trump announced a 2024 presidential bid Tuesday night, he could no longer be fact-checked on the platform. The memo noted that "political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign."

It concluded that "if former President Trump makes a clear, public announcement that he is running for office, he would be considered a politician under our program policies."

Andy Stone, a Meta spokesperson, said the memo was "a reiteration of our long-standing policy" and "should not be news to anyone...."

Meta plans on considering allowing Trump back on the platform as soon as January — two years since his initial ban.

"Dear internet service providers of America: We're onto your tricks," writes Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler: Last year, I encouraged Washington Post readers to participate in a major nationwide study of ISPs by uploading a copy of their monthly bills to Fight for Fair Internet, a project of Consumer Reports and other partners. Some 22,000 Americans did, and the results released Thursday reveal the many ways internet and cable companies get away with jacking up our bills.

For you and me, the study of big and small ISPs alike offers a clearer view of their worst behaviors — and how to fight back. The most important cost-saving lesson: Calling up and threatening to quit your internet service works. It's super annoying, I know, but Verizon (for example) applied discounts to 58 percent of the bills people submitted, with an astounding monthly median discount of $40.

The study's spotlight on ISP tricks, including bogus fees, data caps and wildly inconsistent pricing, also is fresh evidence that in many parts of the United States, there just isn't a competitive market for internet service. Who would put up with it if there were? About 200 million people live in parts of the country with only one or two choices for reliable, fast internet, according to a 2021 report from the White House.
The report identified the U.S. internet providers charging the highest equipment rental fees (Wave Broadband) and the highest data-cap fees (Cox Communications), as well as the ones with the lowest and highest monthly service fees. But in addition, Consumer Reports notes that "Download speeds routinely fail to match the advertised 'up to' speeds of several ISPs. This was especially true of consumers paying for 'premium' plans purporting to offer download speeds of between 940 and 1,200 Mbps, who in fact experienced median speeds of between 360 and 373 Mbps."

The Washington Post highlights one case "Where you might pay more for less: AT&T" On volunteer bills, AT&T's median pricing across different speed plans was all over the map. People getting:

12 mbps paid $63.
45 mbps paid $80.
100 mbps paid $60.
1000 mbps paid $80.

Why should people who aren't even getting minimum broadband speeds (25 mbps) be paying more than people getting zippy service? ISPs can and will charge whatever they can get away with in your neighborhood.

"The charges on those bills may reflect older plans that we no longer sell," said AT&T spokesman Jim Kimberly. "Customers with older plans can check on our website or call in to see if a lower cost offer is available to them for faster speeds and switch service."

That's another lesson for all of us: It's always worth checking to see if there's a new deal available. Unlike the cellphone carriers, ISPs rarely proactively switch consumers into cheaper or better plans.

According to documents recently declassified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), former President Donald Trump posted a classified satellite image of a failed rocket launch in Iran on Twitter in 2019. NPR reports: Now, three years after Trump's tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public. Many details on the original image remain redacted -- a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government's most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists. "He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he says. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter." "[A]erospace experts determined the photo was taken by a classified spacecraft called USA 224, believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance aircraft," adds Gizmodo. "The spacecraft is similar to the Hubble Telescope, but instead of getting a closer look at the stars, it views the Earth's surface."