California Governor Says 'We Need More Googles' As Company Offers Free Wi-Fi and Chromebooks To Students (cnbc.com) 120
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Google will offer 100,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots and will donate 4,000 Chromebooks to students across the state of California, governor Gavin Newsom said during a news conference Wednesday. The internet access points are supposed to help improve broadband internet in rural households across the state where internet access is either limited or very slow. Students will get access to the free Wi-Fi for a minimum of three months.There are still many parts of the state that do not have access to high-speed internet, however. "This was a substantial enhancement that came just at the right time," Newsom said. "We need more Googles," he added. The latest move comes as Newsom announced that California schools will remain closed for the remainder of the school year with many classes switching to online learning.
more googles (Score:5, Funny)
maybe even a googol of them
Obligatory McBain (Score:4, Funny)
"My brain! The Googles do nothing!" - Rainier Wolfcastle
indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think everyone except Google would want more Googles. That would finally end their monopoly and we might get some options that actually respect user privacy. Or, if the new entries are exactly like Google, rape user privacy to the point where lawmakers cannot be bribed into doing nothing anymore.
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Explain to me the business model of the alternative to Google that respects user privacy
It would be just like Google except there would be no tracking and no ads. Instead, people would just pay a subscription fee to use it.
Of course it would fail because almost no one would subscribe.
Although people say they value their privacy, they actually don't.
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I think most people understand that privacy is not binary. They are willing to give up some information in exchange for services, but not too much.
Google is also quite careful to not let on how much it knows when showing ads. Facebook feels creepy because it doesn't make any effort to hide the fact that it knows you intimately or shares that data with other people. Google just gives the impression that it's using simple stuff like things you recently searched for.
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I think everyone except Google would want more Googles. That would finally end their monopoly and we might get some options that actually respect user privacy.
Explain to me the business model of the alternative to Google that respects user privacy, because I'm not seeing it.
The Google Chrome team is actually working on such an alternative business model.
The thing to understand is that Google doesn't want to have data about users, in fact collecting data about users is actively harmful to Google's interests in several ways. It makes Google's user data database a tempting target for both government and criminal interests, and makes users dislike Google. And Google's advertising business model doesn't actually depend on having user data, it depends on being able to serve ads t
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But then how would Google differentiate? People like to put Google's targeted ads on their site because Google can target better than other advertisers (more revenue). If the browser does it then Google loses power. That might be a nice goal for another company though. It's an interesting concept.
My guess is that Google's ads team is confident that they can do a better job of picking which ad to display that the competition can, even given the same input data.
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That would finally end their monopoly and we might get some options that actually respect user privacy.
What makes you say that? The only alternative people would be willing to use for a very capable free service, is another capable free service. A service that remains free won't respect your privacy however you cut it.
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Re: indeed (Score:2)
If we got anywhere close to having more Googles the original Google would just buy them up anyway.
I wonder if the chromebooks they're donating (Score:2)
can just be re-imaged with linux instead?
And quite a few chromebooks can have larger "hard drives" installed...
If it isn't at least 4GB of memory and a larger than 1366x768 screen, don't bother.
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ARM runs Linux reasonably well. A light CPU with less "optimization" can do a great deal of useful work.
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Google creates hoops to jump through, needing to annoyingly switch to "developer mode" and alter firmware in the general case, but it can be done. Posting from a $150 Samsung Chromebook wiped and MX Linux installed. Add a 256GB Micro-SD card and you're good to go.
Install Steam, and you've got a nice "lockdown relief" toy for cheap.
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Good thing too, we have seen what operating systems that don't have hoops to jump through to alter firmware are like. Remember when viruses would brick motherboards by corrupting the BIOS?
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Eh, I've successfully installed Linux on a Chromebook with only 2 GB of RAM. GalliumOS was pretty much tailored to the environment and it worked reasonably well for anything that machine was expected to do. Windows on that machine was a complete disaster, although I did technically get it to run (I think "walk with a limp" would be more accurate).
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Wouldn't that be a regular laptop then?
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can just be re-imaged with linux instead?
ChromeOS is Linux.
Chrome OS [wikipedia.org]
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Because we cannot bankrupt fast enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Because we cannot bankrupt fast enough. (Score:1)
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I am willing to bet the OP has a "solution" to that problem.
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Make money, but not at the expense of society. Mom and Pop have to pay taxes, but Google gets a free ride?
Google pays the taxes it has to, like your Mom & Pop store does.
If Google has to pay less taxes than Danny's Deli, then that's a problem with the tax code.
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Make money, but not at the expense of society.
Then write your congressional representatives and ask them to change the tax code.
Trying to fix society by expecting corporations to voluntarily operate as charities is foolish.
Re:Because we cannot bankrupt fast enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the main issue. Corporations and the wealthy hardly pay any taxes so when a crisis occurs we have to depend on their charity because our governments don't have as many resources as they need (especially the states, which, unlike the federal government, can't just make money magically appear).
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That's fun to say. 39% of income tax is paid by (Score:3)
That's fun to say, isn't it? :)
Of course the fact is that 39% of income tax is paid by 1% of the people, the highest earners:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pd... [irs.gov]
60% of income tax os paid by the top 5% highest earners, and you'll note the more you earn, the higher the percentage of your income you pay:
https://www.ntu.org/Library/im... [ntu.org]
Re:That's fun to say. 39% of income tax is paid by (Score:4, Interesting)
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yep, and not NEARLY enough considering how much they've succeeded because of the society that supports them
Re:That's fun to say. 39% of income tax is paid by (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be more informative when we knew what fraction of the income the 1 percent make. If that's more than 39%, they still don't pay their share.
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This would be more informative when we knew what fraction of the income the 1 percent make.
In the ten seconds it took you to type this sentence, you could have Googled it.
If that's more than 39%, they still don't pay their share.
The top 1% earn about 20% of national income.
So they pay nearly twice their "fair share" of taxes.
If you still want to fight tax injustice, you can call your local Republican Party and volunteer.
Income Inequality in America [inequality.org]
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Interesting. How do you manage to get to half of the property with just 20% of the income? Lemme guess: Wise investment?
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While over time, 2x the income should only accumulate 2x the wealth, the key difference is the (expenses + taxes) part, or rather, just the expenses (since taxes are actually higher as a percentage for people with higher incomes). Wealthy people:
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Wealth is the difference between what you spend and what you earn, compounded over time.
While the median per-capita income for everyone in the world is $2,920 ($9,700 per household), many Americans tend to spend twenty times that much. If you spend 20 times as much as average, while earning 15 times as much, that means your debt grows very quickly.
If you spend only 10X as much as the average person, while earning 15 times as much, your wealth grows quickly.
Want to be wealthy? One step that
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Then live on their budget for a month. Just one month.
To live on significantly less, you will need to move to smaller/cheaper housing and switch to a smaller/cheaper car.
You can't do that for just one month.
You don't accumulate wealth by cutting small expenses. You need to cut the big expenses.
Starbucks $6/day = $180/month. 75% of income isn't (Score:2)
> To live on significantly less, you will need to move to smaller/cheaper housing and switch to a smaller/cheaper car.
Paying for more house than you can afford sure can hurt the budget. AND about 75% of your budget isn't housing. If somebody buys Starbucks every day, with tax that's close to $200/month, may more. Starbucks and one other similar thing is likely a good chunk of the 15% that's suggested to save for retirement / wealth building.
For many people, the budget is death by a thousand cuts. They
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You buy it during market crashes (Score:2)
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Look how well you know me... not. I probably make more money than most people here, but that's besides the point. The mere fact THAT I make more money than probably 90% of the people out there is already showing that there's something wrong here. Ya know, I'm doing well, and I kinda want to continue that, but with every day it looks more like at some point in the future a nontrivial portion of the people will snap, kick down my door and take what they want. And unfortunately I'm not THAT rich to simply hire
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The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France
What is reasonable for a rich person is not reasonable for a poor person. Could Jeff Bezos survive comfortably on a mere 1% of his annual income (not salary, actual worth received)? Can anyone survive on 7 cents an hour (1% of the federal minimum wage).
They earn most of their income from stocks (Score:2)
You can't squeeze blood from a stone, so yes, there are limits to how much money you can get out of the bottom 80%. But that bottom pays way, way more as a percentage of income. I will pay about $400 in vehicle license taxes
I both told you and gave you the link to the chart (Score:2)
Click the second link in the post you replied to in order to see a handy chart.
I also told you in that post "the higher your income, the greater percentage of that income you pay in taxes".
Those with below-average income, the 50% of Americans with lower incomes, pay 3.11% of income tax. So basically if your income is less than average, you pay the essentially no tax. I pay your share of tax for you. And then you complain about it.
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The richest people don't pay income tax, because they have very little taxable income. Even Warren Buffet once said he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.
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The richest people don't pay income tax, because they have very little taxable income.
Of course they pay income tax. They just pay most tax at the lower rate for capital gains.
If you think raising the capital gains tax is an obvious solution, you should consider that America is already bleeding capital and jobs, and many other countries don't tax capital gains at all.
Changing the law to "punish the rich" will likely drag everyone down.
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The goal isn't to "punish the rich." The goal is to better distribute the wealth that the economy creates. You want to create incentives for corporations to invest money (in workers, R&D, etc.) rather than horde it. Likewise, it makes sense to de-incentivize massive executive salaries which function to make corporate executives hyper-focus on the short term rather than the long term and underpay, layoff, and provide scant benefits and excessive hours for lower-level employees.
They say the power to tax i
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We are talking about corporations, who despite what you may think are not people and do not pay income tax. They pay corporation tax.
In any case the proportion of income tax paid by the top 1% is irrelevant by itself. The top 1% have an average net worth well over $10m, meaning that much of their income is not subject to income tax and even if they paid a greater amount of income tax it wouldn't affect their lifestyle in the same way it would affect someone whose net worth is $1000.
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Corporations and the wealthy hardly pay any taxes so when a crisis occurs we have to depend on their charity
Corporations never pay any taxes. At all. Ever. Oh, they may cut checks to various governments, but that money always comes ultimately from individuals, not the corporations. Corporations pass the cost on to customers, employees, or (very rarely) investors.
Taxing corporations is a very bad idea, for two primary reasons.
First, it subverts democracy, in two ways. It subverts democracy because to legislators corporations appear to be a source of free money. Voters will never penalize lawmakers for t
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Parent utterly fails to disprove the grandparent. A corporation owned by a foul-mouthed, all-day Slashdot poster, if it even exists, likely owes nothing to speak of.
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Google practices tax avoidance. Subpar laptops and wifi connections will not make up for the money they really owe. https://bit.ly/3dSLBRB [bit.ly]
Every company who pays an accountant practices tax avoidance. Tax is a business cost, reducing it to the minimum legal requirement is called "normal business practice".
If you want Google to pay tax then you're going to have to pass laws that actually apply to them rather than laws with more holes in them than a pasta strainer.
Google should do video conferencing for the dying (Score:1)
Manage your budgets, Gavin... (Score:1)
California spends over $20,000 per K-12 student, per year [california...center.org] already. With an average class size of 25.4 [ed-data.org], that's somewhere on the high side of $500,000 per classroom, per year. If you can't afford decent gear - and to provide a top-notch education with a 6 figure paycheck for a teacher - at those rates, then you REALLY, really suck.
To put that in perspective, to go to UCLA, the tuition, fees, books, and supplies are less than $15,000 [collegetui...ompare.com] per year. Yes, we spend 33% more per K-12 student than the cost for a co
Re: Manage your budgets, Gavin... (Score:2)
It has 45,000 students.
That comes to 10x the spending per student as the 15k number by my math.
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You're the one implying it doesn't
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UCLA tuition involves a very large subsidy from the state. The non-resident supplementary tuition adds $29,754 to that number, for a total of about $45k. We're spending less than half as much per K-12 student.
The other problem with your analogy is that U
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As the poster above me pointed out, that UCLA figure is extremely inaccurate (there's a reason these schools have bloated international student programs—they charge them full tuition and then they have to take extra classes that cost the full amount but don't give them any actual credits to get caught up on the language). UCLA isn't a private school so it's not the best example you could whip out.
You also failed to account for all the huge alumni donations that places like UCLA receive. I don't know a
Apple will be pissed (Score:2)
silverspoon (Score:1)
Silverspoon know-nothing Gavin Newsom sure does love sucking on that corporate dollar dong...
All it will costs is California's water (Score:2)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Something that's never been an issue for California - right?
A few moments ago (Score:1)
Everyone was crying out how these large corporations are evil and do nothing for the common people. Yet when a major disaster happens, not only are these companies the only ones helping (which government has actually done anything useful, ever, for that matter), everyone is begging 3M, Google, Microsoft, GE to jump into the breach.
For people that have been wanting to tax and regulate these companies out of existence, why arenâ(TM)t you asking for a COVID-19 tax in the Paris accords, that way you can, l
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You're right. I think government should step up and provide the necessary resources for America's schools.
Ms. Devos, your opinions?
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Donate their products.
Keep the brand looking good.
Be ready for the time after wuflu.
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I think it's problematic when the wealth is so disproportionately distributed that we have to turn to corporations rather than the government for assistance when a crisis occurs.
I personally dislike charity in general: It means that we have a system in place that allows some to have too much and others to have too little.
Also, it appears that most of the stuff Google has done so far has amounted to marketing more than actually combatting the pandemic.
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Just a quick follow up: Google has become the biggest player in providing technology for K-12 schools. Giving technology to schools to entrench them in a particular brand is not a new strategy and doing it during a crisis just allows for more media coverage and the appearance of altruism. This is an investment, not a gift.
Re: A few moments ago (Score:2)
we have a system in place that allows some to have too much and others to have too little.
This is and has always been true for any and every society outside of a few tiny communal tribes. Every system of government which has ever promised to "fix" such disparities has always ended up simply shifting around who has the "too much"
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You should be more careful when using the word "always."
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which government has actually done anything useful, ever, for that matter
I assume you are posting from the Libertarian Paradise of the Congo which has no government to get in your way.
only 4000 laptops and some wifi in california? (Score:2)
head in sand trick (Score:2)
How are they installing 100,000 wi-fi hotspots? (Score:2)
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I'm assuming that this means donating 100,000 personal hotspot devices that connect to the cell network and provide Wi-Fi, and that they would be loaned out to individual students who don't have access to any other Internet service.
Maybe we need more plumbers and electricians too (Score:4, Interesting)
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and somehow Google can produce those?
Slow Chromebooks (Score:1)
They're so slow that even running simple POS software is insanely slow, causing lines at dispensaries.
Think students are going to learn much while they're constantly waiting?
Get Google out of education.
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They're so slow that even running simple POS software is insanely slow, causing lines at dispensaries.
Even an original IBM PC running at 4.77 MHz is fast enough for POS software.
In 2020, bad performance is a software issue, not a hardware one.
I thought we hated Google? (Score:2)
Aren't they a monopolistic tech giant who should be anti-trusted out of existence?
Oh, now we need them. We'll litigate the s**t out of them in a few months.
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We "need" 4,000 Chromebooks?
This is an opportunity to leverage a crisis for financial gain. Apple and Microsoft were fighting over who got to install their machines in schools for decades. The winner gets to indoctrinate minds to their platform, which pays very large long-term dividends. I don't see a reason coronavirus changes the equation.
If they want to help, donate 4,000 ventilators. They certainly have the resources for something -actually- needed.
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Two weeks ago he Pentagon offered 2000 ventilators to FEMA and HHS but they still haven't been told where to send them. Add to that the problem that these ventilators need trained medical staff to use them and the problem becomes more acute. [Google: Pentagon ventilators]
At least the Chromebooks can be used immediately. For those kids trying to do their homework on
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How many millions would it take for Google to spin up entire factories to produce ventilators? Google has 275 -billion- in assets.
The pipeline is one issue, that doesn't alter the fact we'll be needing many, many more.
Besides, quite simply, if the goal was to optimize for the children's education, Chromebooks are horrible in terms of educational tools available, and if the students want them, development tools. If they were optimizing for the student's welfare, they'd be buying them Windows (or Linux) mac
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How many millions would it take for Google to spin up entire factories to produce ventilators?
They could, I suppose. Problem is, that takes a lot of time. I'm assuming they had a conversation which included "we could make ventilators but that would take 6-12 months to get going and by then someone else will have already done it. But we have these Chromebooks and hotspots we could deploy today."
if the goal was to optimize for the children's education, Chromebooks are horrible in terms of educational tools available, and if the students want them, development tools. If they were optimizing for the student's welfare, they'd be buying them Windows (or Linux) machines. Curiously, they aren't. Probably some other motivation in play, no?
No, at least I don't think so. Of course Google gets some benefit. So do the students. Is a Chromebook really worse than nothing at all? That's what you need to compare against. If you want a more conventional
Pelosi's Nephew would say that (Score:2)
Google is well in with the Dems, providing IT support and dedicated a whole analytics team to the lost 2016 election.
Schmidt personally involved, his daughter was the one who introduced Cambridge Analytica to Facebook to harvest user data.
Chromebooks and SpyFy. (Score:1)
Yeah... is that like Microsoft, whose "punishment" for monopolistic crimes, was to give "free licenses" of Windows and Office to schools?
Aka get kids hooked early and goving MS even more monopolostic dominance.
And you can bet your ass that that everything that goes over that "wifi" will be completely analyzed to use against those kids for profit reasons. ;)
It's routers on an ISP line by the way. It's not like they just hung up some "wifi cables" you know!
Ditto for Chrome. Total surveillance.
Apart from beina
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Yeah... is that like Microsoft, whose "punishment" for monopolistic crimes, was to give "free licenses" of Windows and Office to schools? Aka get kids hooked early and goving MS even more monopolostic dominance.
It is funny you put it that way. That was Apple's plan during the 80s and 90s. Apple literally gave computers to schools to "get kids hooked early and goving" Apple. It didn't work out that way because the computers that came to the home were primarily for parents to do work.
That is kind of hard to do (Score:4, Insightful)
No we do not (Score:2)
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We used to have one - it was called Microsoft.
And Google is worse.
Apple was big in the educational sector and gave stuff to schools below cost then, but nobody had an issue with them. Thus, we conclude that it is not the mere donation of equipment of schools that is the issue, but the matter of what is being donated.
Yes, 90s Microsoft was ruthless and problematic and wasn't at all fair to OEMs *or* Netscape. Yes, Microsoft was pretty underhanded with Novell, but it's not like Novell didn't have their own issues and failures. Microsoft was far from a sa
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WTF (Score:2)
“This was a substantial enhancement that came just at the right time,” Newsom said. “We need more Googles,” he added. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/0... [cnbc.com]
No ass-hole, what you need is for GOVERNMENT to invest in internet access. The free market model has failed when it comes to internet access. Corporations whine a
Funny... (Score:2)
...I doubt he'll remember that statement when next he proposes confiscatory tax policies to support Kalifornistan social mandates.
Look, I don't like google at all. I'd be pleased if they were taxed into oblivion.
But there's something irreconcilable with a governor who wants to essentially tax the shit out of companies crowing about the generosity of the companies that manage to evade those same policies.
How generous of them... (Score:2)
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Exactly. Also, Google is like a drug dealer. Always trying to get you hooked on their product. Often gives away free stuff for the first timers.