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FCC approves $50 monthly internet subsidies for low-income households during pandemic:
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved final rules for a new broadband subsidy program that could help struggling families pay for internet service during the pandemic.
The agency's $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit Program provides eligible low-income households with up to a $50 per month credit on their internet bills through their provider until the end of the pandemic. In tribal areas, eligible households may receive up to $75 per month. The program also provides eligible households up to $100 off of one computer or tablet.
The congressionally created program is aimed at closing the digital divide, which has become painfully apparent over the past year as millions of Americans have been forced to work and learn remotely. Some have also raised concerns that the digital divide could affect access to the vaccine as signups typically happen online.
[...] Last year, Congress passed a coronavirus relief package that contained provisions for the FCC's new program. And the FCC has established a fresh task force this year to improve the data it collects on broadband availability, which could ultimately help the agency better target its efforts to close the gap.
[...] "This is a program that will help those at risk of digital disconnection," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "It will help those sitting in cars in parking lots just to catch a Wi-Fi signal to go online for work. It will help those lingering outside the library with a laptop just to get a wireless signal for remote learning. It will help those who worry about choosing between paying a broadband bill and paying rent or buying groceries."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @02:33PM (4 children)
Rates to massively increase after the pandemic. Also, families without internet today aren’t going to be able to come up with them money for a new device even with $100 off. Expect to see predatory programs from vendors selling cheap pcs at premium prices on payday-loan interest rates.
Blue Hippo 2.0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:03PM
I feel a sudden itch to resell $25 refurb laptops and tablets to poor people.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:25PM (2 children)
Rates have already increased. ISPs have been using the pandemic to extort more money from people. They already did that to me, late last year they had quietly hiked my price up just a little and then outright canceled the plan I was on, saying I had to switch to a higher plan or be without service. You can't just go down to a public library any more.
But, sure, why not increase the prices even more, and suck in some nice government money. ISP CEOs will be able to buy a few extra yachts all while still paying their health insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @05:46PM (1 child)
So stop using so much bandwidth. I refuse to use video chat - call, text, or email me. Telemedicine? Call me.
Video streaming? Seriously? I still have 100s of movies I haven’t watched, and not feeling the urge to watch them. I’ve got better things to do.
Online games? Give me a break!
OTA TV works, and if there’s nothing on, so what? There’s always something better to do anyway. And even if something good is on, so what? I no longer FOMO if I miss it. Pretty much everything is an imposition.
Software updates on my laptop? Why - I use my phone for the net. Like most people.
Social media? Seriously? Waste of bandwidth.
Email, texts, a few web sites to blow off some steam, that’s only a gig or two a month. And no, I haven’t used wifi in a year. Don’t need to.
“But I need it for work!” You don’t need video chat for work. Just say no. Show some spine.?Or tell them to provide a separate device and connection. If you’re working from home you’re already saving the a fair amount of money.
I
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:45PM
Also... delete your fucking signatures, people. Tens of bytes of bullshit repeated again and again.... we get it, you're a stuck up prick.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @02:49PM (22 children)
Anybody know anything about starting a tribe?
How?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @02:54PM (6 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:06PM (1 child)
First they gave more subsidies to tribes. and no one stopped them.
Then they gave more subsidies to BIPOCs, and no one stopped them.
Then they gave more subsidies to transvestites, and no one stopped them.
Then they tried to give subsidies to me, and there was no one to stop them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @01:29PM
So instead of trickle down economics it's trickle up economics?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:51PM (3 children)
Hey, you palefaces signed the treaty agreeing to consider us differently from yourselves. 'Twas your own racism got you into this mess.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:19PM (2 children)
There is no difference between native and non-native that should form the basis of unequal treatment. Natives should never have been confined to reservations, and the current reservation system encourages discrimination and poverty. It must go.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:53PM (1 child)
From a quick look at the Neanderthal page in wikipedia... [wikipedia.org]
...so no, unlikely the neanderthals were here in North America until the Republican party was formed.
--
Oh, ...and the treaties were about "nations" - not races.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @09:42PM
>> A 2017 study claimed the presence of Homo at the 130,000 year old Californian Cerutti Mastodon site in North America, but this is largely considered implausible.
A Homo in California? Yeah, that's implausible... not.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:16PM (8 children)
Easy peasy. Just take a time machine back more than 500 years, and be there to greet the European invaders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:21PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 06 2021, @05:13PM (6 children)
??
You might explain what you mean there. If you mean that the first nations warred against each other, well, yeah. There was a lot of that. I'm not aware of any major die-off immediately preceding the arrival of Columbus. Immediately AFTER Columbus' arrival, the Americas were overwhelmed with multiple pandemics, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:01PM (3 children)
Go back a few thousand years. Humans and protohumans have been in both Americas for 30,000 years. What we call “natives” were far from the first arrivals.
New discoveries are literally rewriting history. We’re all out of Africa. Eliminated the competition there too. Nobody arose spontaneously anywhere else in the world, not even the @native people.” They came from Africa too ultimately. And succeeding waves often eliminated previous inhabitants, same as they eliminated Neanderthals in Europe. We’re rewriting the last 300,000 years of Homo sapiens history, and the last 35,000 years of colonization of the Americas. There are literally no “natives “ anywhere in the world today. So treat everyone as brothers and sisters, and treat them equally. Because we all are member of an invasive species with a long history of being absolutely awful to each other.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:31PM (2 children)
OK, yeah, it seems to be more people are accepting that humans arrived in the Americas in waves, starting long before the Clovis. As for "eliminating" the competition? I suspect that the competition was absorbed, as often as not. We have people today with Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in their makeup. With both, it was a combination of elimination and absorption. If/when we find the evidence of the very first man or man like person on the American continents, we will probably also figure out that our ancestors interbred with them. I'll make no claims to that interbreeding being entirely consensual. I expect that the men were probably killed off and/or enslaved, and the women taken as slaves, including wives, concubines, and sex slaves.
I'm not going digging today, but there is already evidence of separate groups of people in South America arriving, prospering, then being displaced to other parts of the continent. A lot of their descendants are still there today.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:08PM (1 child)
Perhaps there've been more recent discoveries, but as I recall genetic evidence suggests that none of the early-wave American peoples have any living descendants - none of their distinctive genetic markers have been found in any modern individual.
What's still not clear is whether the newcomers wiped out the previous waves, or the previous waves had already died out before they arrived. However, the fact that there was apparently no intermixing suggests they had already died out - even the most bloodthirsty invaders tend to at least keep some of the prettiest women.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 07 2021, @03:51PM
Some food for thought.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/did-pacific-islanders-reach-south-america-before-columb-465444995 [gizmodo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:09PM (1 child)
No idea what he's referencing, but the Indians weren't the first people. There were the Clovis People [humanoriginproject.com] before 'Native Americans' (wiki version [wikipedia.org]) and people well before them. What exactly caused the extinction of the various groups is unknown.
I don't understand the self flagellation over the past. Two groups fought, one group lost. Like has happened since the time of the first two groups ever met and had a dispute, and will happen until the day humanity vanishes from existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:51PM
Now with nukes!
(Score: 4, Touché) by srobert on Saturday March 06 2021, @05:33PM (4 children)
Seeing how quickly the subsequent comments devolved into race bickering makes me think we're already too tribal.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:11PM (2 children)
Racist customer: I want a white car.
Salesdroid: what kind of car?
Racist customer: a white one.
Salesdroid: but what kind of white one?
Racist customer; there’s only one kind of white car. It’s white. Don’t give me any of your politically correct bs about how black cars are the same as white cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @12:07AM
Now if only you could educate the racists about reality. Let me know if you have any luck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @10:04AM
Black cars heat up much faster and to a higher temperature if parked in the sunlight on a hot day. Not caring what type of car as long as it is white could be quite rational.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:53PM
> Seeing how quickly the subsequent comments devolved into race bickering makes me think we're already too tribal.
I blame the Jews.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 06 2021, @09:46PM
Just buy a curly brown wig and a pair of those joke glasses with the integrated Mr. Potato Head nose and say you're Jewish. You will then get free money and be allowed to be a racist self-supremacist legally shielded from any criticism.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Saturday March 06 2021, @03:28PM (8 children)
No, they couldn't find it in their hearts to provide charity without making the lower classes beg for it. This, like the concept of food stamps, is frankly disgusting.
Here is what Jesus had to say on the matter: "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." (Matthew 6:2)
Then there is also the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30), which narrates the story of a complete stranger taking care of a traveller beaten up by robbers. The stranger then; without making a fuss about it; pays the innkeeper and says "if he needs anything else, make sure he gets it and I'll pay the extra when I come through next time".
(I'm not suggesting any plan to pay for or subsidise Internet for people that need it shouldn't be publicly discussed, my issue is solely that it shames people because they have to constantly announce the world at large that they are financially stretched. To top if all off, they probably have to prove it too, and most likely in a typically Kafkaesque manner that would tax even a well-educated and perfectly literate individual approaching the problem with a full belly, from a comfortable chair in a warm house... with a perfectly functioning computer and Internet connection.)
You would have thought that a country so rich and ostensibly Christian as the United States could take care of its venerable people without making them stand in the market-place and announce that they are poor - over and over again. If anything, the government should ask the Internet providers who get the requests to also collect the names of the employers of those that are forced to beg, and then publish a list of those employers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:30PM
You would have expected much worse than this from a country built upon 400 years of slavery.
Even the bible condones slavery. Remember the New Testament injunction to be happy as slaves if you can’t get your freedom. The roots of Disney’s racist “Song of the South “ can be traced to this “Christian” sentiment.
Throughout history the same story repeats itself - war, slavery, genocide, cannibalism, and religion perpetuating and pardoning it all.
As for this credit provided to the provider, the provider is going to do a credit check anyway and know they are poor.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday March 06 2021, @08:23PM (1 child)
You're not wrong. On a more practical point: yet another program, yet another bureaucracy. It would be far more efficient to just hand people cash, but that doesn't build petty bureaucratic empires.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:58PM
Yes, petty minds must be empowered to grade others - just as they themselves are graded by superiors. None of whom can even use "whom" correctly in a sentence.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @10:58PM (1 child)
khallow will be along any moment now to explain that if the poor needed the internet (or food, or housing) the Invisible Hand of the Market would see to it, or replace the poor people with rich ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @03:00PM
The invisible hand also likes to do vaginal ultrasounds on women seeking an abortion. What a wide array of interests He has!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VacuumTube on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:06PM (2 children)
"You would have thought that a country so rich and ostensibly Christian as the United States . . . "
You make some good points, but more and more I see the U.S. government barely trying to hide the fact that the U.S. now practices predatory capitalism. Accordingly, any assistance provided to the needy is first evaluated to ensure a reasonable return on investment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday March 07 2021, @02:18PM (1 child)
"Now"?
Perhaps you need a refresher on the Robber-Barons of yore?
Capitalism is perhaps not *inherently* predatory - but it always seems to become so when sufficiently unrestrained. Sometimes it gets beaten back for a while by regulation or public sentiment, but it always seems to return to its predatory ways as soon as the resistance grows complacent.
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:27PM
It may be true that capitalism always has a predatory element, but it hasn't always been as unrestrained, unregulated, as it is now. For example, there used to be laws against the kind of interest rates charged by payday lenders. Charge every penny you can get for life saving medicine, and let 'em die if they can't pay. Things haven't always been like they are now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:01PM (1 child)
It would have been better to address the parasitic rent-seeking behavior of the private ISPs.
Several options.
a) All ISPs use public right-of-ways for their cables or public airwaves for wireless. Make them pay for this use based upon what they charge the customer. 10% profit over expenses or less, nominal or no charge. >10% profit, then equivalent % tax on _revenue_.
b) Better to get capitalist rent-seeking parasites out of anyplace where there are natural monopolies. Give zero funds to these parasites, and provide funds for municipal networks. There are a lot of these government run networks around the country (where Republicans have not outlawed them), and they *always* provide better service at lower prices.
c) Break the monopolies. Require that other carriers be allowed over the incumbent ISPs wires, and that the fee to these other ISPs for carrying the traffic only be sufficient to cover maintenance of the physical infrastructure and a _small_ profit. Or, require that any ISP to be allowed to expand in any area must expand 10-50X that footprint into a competitor's area, first. Best to split the physical infrastructure from the ISP roles, so all incumbents would be broken up into, at least, two companies. And, no special deals between the new physical infrastructure carrier and the ISP bit of their old parent.
Or, any combination of the above, or any other thing you can think of to lessen the control of these parasites over those who have little or no choice to use them, if they want Internet access.
But, giving public money to these parasitic rent-seeking bastards is 100% the wrong thing to do.
E. Musk is a wanker, but Starlink will, at least, create some competition in rural areas. But, $100/mo is way too much to have much of an effect on the incumbents.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:09PM
I expect a lower price tier for Starlink at some point. The dish might remain the same price though, and it's already supposedly sold nearly $2k under cost.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:50PM (4 children)
I paid over $75,000 in taxes in 2019 before the pandemic. My business took a *huge* hit with clients being forcibly shutdown by government.
My income dropped by ~70%. I ended up getting a second job to support myself so I wouldn't have to fire my employees.
How much did the government give back to my business? Dick. How much did I personally get back? A one-time ~$1,200 check from Uncle Trump and a one-time $2,500 "debit card" that had no local "in-network" ATMs. While the card was limited to $600 daily withdrawals, the local ATMs were limited to $500. And the fees were $250 per withdrawal. Ended up paying a bunch of fees, and there's still something like $18 on the card that I can't withdrawal because the ATMs minimum limit is $20.
Near thee end of 2020 business picked up a bit, and I'm usually able to pull around $2k/mo out of my business--but that's not enough to feed my family, pay the power bill, and pay my $950/mo mortgage.
...and whaddya know, Uncle Joe is now sending out his own check...just not to me because I don't have a year-round tan, I'm a small business owner, and I make too much.
I'm sick of funding a bunch of deadbeat losers who refuse to work for a living and allow government to tell them they can't work. Fuck government.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @07:13PM
me me me
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2021, @10:15PM
Oh please, go fuck yourself. It's your own fault if you can't apply for a fucking loan to carry your business going,
https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources [sba.gov]
It's hard to decide if you are an idiot or trolling. Really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @12:15AM
What is your business? How much do you pay your employees? You were making good money, are you saying you didn't save enough to weather a storm? Sounds like poor planning and likely irresponsible spending to me.
Maybe stop swapping your leased truck every year for the new model? Try not eating ribeyes? That is an expensive meal, you can get the same nutrition for pennies on the dollar with rice and beans. Would make that $2k/month stretch out a lot further, and by the way $2k/month after taxes is more than many American families get. Are you some kind of midwest elitist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @01:18AM
Automated complaint generator... You spammer! Get the fuck out of here with that shit!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday March 06 2021, @06:59PM
Really, this is just a subsidy to the Internet supply companies: have the government subsidize Internet availability instead of forcing the ISP's to lower their prices thus affecting their profit which they use to lobby the government to lower their taxes...thus making the poor and middle-class pay for the subsidy!
Give the rich more profit by making the government gain more debt.
The headline should be "FCC Approves $50 Monthly Internet Profits for ISP's paid for, mostly, by Low-Income and Middle-class Households During Pandemic". Mostly.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2021, @06:08PM
I had packet loss of about 10% the other day. I used chat support with my carrier (oops! "information service") to resolve it. My throughput went from 100kbs, to about 1Mbs. Which is still more than an an order of magnitude less than the carrier advertises. Shortly after I got a call asking me to "upgrade".
The carrier is using lack of capacity to upsell for services, when they are not performing on their existing contract. It is a clear case of racketeering, and it is a crime. This is why NN is important, and why mandated monopoly at the state level needs to be utterly crushed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @08:13PM
extorting working people to give it to morons, many of which shouldn't even be in the country. If you pay the income tax you deserve it.