New submitter sdinfoserv writes: Ajit Pai, the most hated person in tech since Darl McBride, backed out of a speaking engagement at CES 2018. Apparently he lacks the spine to justify himself before the group of individuals his decisions affect most. Consumer Technology Association head Gary Shapiro announced: "Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is unable to attend CES 2018. We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience."

Last night, the city council in Fort Collins, Colorado, voted to move ahead with a municipal fiber broadband network providing gigabit speeds, two months after the cable industry failed to stop the project. Ars Technica reports: Last night's city council vote came after residents of Fort Collins approved a ballot question that authorized the city to build a broadband network. The ballot question, passed in November, didn't guarantee that the network would be built because city council approval was still required, but that hurdle is now cleared. Residents approved the ballot question despite an anti-municipal broadband lobbying campaign backed by groups funded by Comcast and CenturyLink. The Fort Collins City Council voted 7-0 to approve the broadband-related measures, a city government spokesperson confirmed to Ars today.

While the Federal Communications Commission has voted to eliminate the nation's net neutrality rules, the municipal broadband network will be neutral and without data caps. "The network will deliver a 'net-neutral' competitive unfettered data offering that does not impose caps or usage limits on one use of data over another (i.e., does not limit streaming or charge rates based on type of use)," a new planning document says. "All application providers (data, voice, video, cloud services) are equally able to provide their services, and consumers' access to advanced data opens up the marketplace." The city will also be developing policies to protect consumers' privacy. The city intends to provide gigabit service for $70 a month or less and a cheaper Internet tier.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hot Hardware: The tech blogosphere lit up yesterday afternoon after reports of a critical bug in modern Intel processors has the potential to seriously impact systems running Windows, Linux and macOS. The alleged bug is so severe that it cannot be corrected with a microcode update, and instead, OS manufacturers are being forced to address the issue with software updates, which in some instances requires a redesign of the kernel software. Some early performance benchmarks have even suggested that patches to fix the bug could result in a performance hit of as much as 30 percent. Since reports on the issues of exploded over the past 24 hours, Intel is looking to cut through the noise and tell its side of the story. The details of the exploit and software/firmware updates to address the matter at hand were scheduled to go live next week. However, Intel says that it is speaking out early to combat "inaccurate media reports."

Intel acknowledges that the exploit has "the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed." The company further goes on state that "these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data." The company goes on to state that the "average computer user" will be negligibly affected by any software fixes, and that any negative performance outcomes "will be mitigated over time." In a classic case of trying to point fingers at everyone else, Intel says that "many different vendors' processors" are vulnerable to these exploits. You can read the full statement here.

Last month, a notification that YouTube would no longer be available through Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices starting Jan. 1 popped up, threatening to leave a huge hole in Amazon's streaming lineup. But just last week, Amazon added the ability to surf the web and get to YouTube via a browser. But does it work? GeekWire thinks so: The result is a simple path to YouTube, circumventing Google's move to pull it from Fire TV. Web browsing probably wasn't a direct response to Amazon's issues with Google, which owns YouTube, but it provides a convenient alternative to keep the service accessible for Fire TV users. The first step is downloading one or both of the web browsers. Opening Firefox leads to this home screen with easy access tiles to both Google and YouTube. On Silk, the home screen defaults to Bing search. But as I poked around, I noticed that YouTube for TV showed up in my bookmarks even though this was the first time I opened the browser. A YouTube interface optimized for TV, the same one you would see on other streaming devices, pops up on both browsers. To sign in, YouTube prompted me to activate YouTube for TV through a phone or computer. Once that process was complete, YouTube showed the same personalized recommendations as my phone and computer.