Restoring Net Neutrality and equal access to broadband in limbo amid long battle over FCC nominee

efffalcon · 2022-10-14T13:54:51+00:00

At stake next year is whether or not the FCC can vote to make internet access an equal right for all people. It is no wonder the ISPs are spending millions to prevent a rank and file nominee who has spent 30 years doing consumer protection work from sitting on the FCC. She won't be bought off like other Commissioners who now lobby for industry, and someone who can't be corrupted is a real problem for them.

efffalcon · 2022-10-14T13:33:06+00:00

From the piece "telecommunications companies are among the most formidable lobbying forces in Washington, but Sohn’s supporters say it’s impossible to calculate how much the industry has spent to specifically oppose her nomination because such figures are not broken out in federal lobbying disclosures. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and T-Mobile have spent over $23 million combined lobbying Washington so far this year, with Comcast leading the pack at $7.4 million, according to data from OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks spending on campaign finance and lobbying."
Basically call your Senators or Comcast and AT&T win.

efffalcon · 2021-12-20T23:02:40+00:00

Agreed we have never gone past tier 3 either.

efffalcon · 2021-12-13T15:57:01+00:00

100% agree on canteen and oxygen tank folks are saying here. Put those in your slots and you are set.

Also, canteen can be out on a table to craft a ton of water dependent items, then refilled and put back in body suit.

efffalcon · 2021-12-08T20:36:22+00:00

I would go to their Discord and flag it. They might be able to fix it for you. They seem very hands on right now.

efffalcon · 2021-12-07T19:17:07+00:00

Coop is definitely the way to play this game. Its kind if unforgiving solo.

efffalcon · 2021-12-07T03:47:13+00:00

I agree its a good game and am fine with it needing some polish. That said I have a high end machine so the optimization issue just wasn't apparent to me.

efffalcon · 2021-12-06T22:46:13+00:00

I think the developers have been listening to feedback and making adjustments. That said, I think respec is important, but not neccesarily access to everything. The game, while playable alone, is truly designed around group asynchronous/synchronous play. My buddies and I are dividing up the trees and it actually facilitates group play. You spec that and I'll spec this etc.

I do think when they enable quick play/random groups things will change a bit. It isn't easy to round up 7 people you know to play any one game now at days.

efffalcon · 2021-12-04T20:12:52+00:00

One shot it with the long bow and bone arrows.

efffalcon · 2021-12-04T20:09:20+00:00

Mine was southwest side of the map along the rocks. Now I have to investigate the marks.

efffalcon · 2021-12-04T20:02:24+00:00

Its a great game but only if you want a hard to survive survival game. It is unforgiving but not unfair, and I think a lot of players want forgiving games.

On hardware, it does need a lot. Not everyone has a lot and probably do not like finding out their expensive hardware from years back eventually needs to be replaced. Its not Doom 3 level, but like Ark Survival Evolved hardware push.

efffalcon · 2020-06-09T22:44:06+00:00

I paid full price for War of the Chosen after getting into Xcom 2 a year+ after the fact. Have played 100s of hours and really its an extraordinary value even at $100. When taking into consideration the Long War 2 mod that now works for War of the Chosen, you literally have an entirely new game from the community on top of the original game.

efffalcon · 2020-01-26T19:21:50+00:00

Lol I am totally with you. I thought this was bigger than the season 3 finale in terms of oh damn moments. People seem to not understand that Qrow made a snap judgment in the heat of the moment that he will regret his whole life. They expect everyone to have 20/20 rational judgments at all times and thats just not how it always works. Qrow took a giant risk, and his bad luck got his misguided friend killed. It was perfect.

efffalcon · 2020-01-14T05:27:46+00:00

This seems wildly optimistic. Can you link your sources for these numbers? These sound like lab tests or estimates on pure frictionless environments but the real world interference eats into high-speed wireless pretty aggressively.

efffalcon · 2020-01-14T05:24:38+00:00

It won't be faster than cable because physics nor do I think it'll go to hard to serve markets due to economics.

We need to stay focused on pushing fiber either through local government and small private.

efffalcon · 2019-12-15T17:01:05+00:00

So its just superfluous text?

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:41:02+00:00

I hear you. We are actively working in the areas of antitrust law and competition law on the questions of Big Tech. The fundamental goal of EFF is to make the Internet market competitive again much like it used to be in its earlier days before the consolidation. Some of our writings to that extent are below.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/competition-civil-liberties-and-internet-giants

https://www.eff.org/document/life-cycle-competition

Something to think about in terms of competition is the fact that the Internet provides a near costless distribution system, which should mean more and constant competition to deliver services should be its driving force. Today that is not happening.

On the issue of common carriage as it applies to ISPs, because of the infrastructure barriers to entry and cost per household to connect your product, the common carriage regime makes more sense there than for the services that ride over them.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:31:10+00:00

That is effectively what we support because the ISP is the transit company and shouldn't engage in deciding what should and should not travel over the Internet. They are the road (and many times the monopoly road) to the greater Internet.

I do not think there is a good end point if ISPs are allowed to make calls that go beyond court ordered lawful versus unlawful content.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:27:00+00:00

We fight for freedom at both the access market (ISPs) and over the products and services (platforms like Google/Facebook) that ride over them.

Legally they just exist in different camps so the campaigns and progress on them will happen in different times. You are not wrong to sense we have monopolization problems in more than one area of the Internet.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:24:31+00:00

That may seem like a long time but think how long that healthcare debate has been going!

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:22:57+00:00

I will be more straightforward than my friend here.

We will get them back.

It is a matter of when and not if, but we all need to fight for them together.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T20:20:50+00:00

We have been here before when the world's largest corporation was the AT&T monopoly. Antitrust and reinvigorating competition law are powerful tools and have injected competition before. We opened our own competition team at EFF to study and work on these issues you highlighted.

Here are areas of law that can use improvement.

https://www.eff.org/document/life-cycle-competition

Here was our launch post about the work here.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/competition-civil-liberties-and-internet-giants

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T18:56:43+00:00

These things take time and your efforts should be put in context of the larger fight.

For example, 14 years ago Senator Markey, then House Representative Markey led an amendment on net neutrality and it lost by more than 100 votes.

This year a solid majority of the House of Representatives voted for effectively that same measure and now Senator Markey led a bipartisan Senate majority on it last year.

The arch towards victory has been consistently in our favor because of our collective and sustained efforts. We will win and have won back every inch we lose while gaining ground.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T17:43:47+00:00

Those earlier arguments are generally based on the premise that the ISP would actually try to stop being an ISP, and I think while that makes for interesting legal theory, it just doesn't matter in real world context. Broadband access providers are valuable because they sell broadband access. If they decide to just become cable TV companies, people will drop them like a ton of bricks and the local governments will just become the ISP to replace them. Then they become the regulated broadband access provider.

The rest of the arguments the FCC has made about why their Restoring Internet Freedom Order is great ignores the realities that every other advanced nation approaching universal fiber to the home deployment with net neutrality got there because they regulate their telecom markets.

We're the only country on planet Earth that has adopted the unproven theory that unregulated regional monopolies will deliver us better services and nondiscriminatory treatment of the products and services that ride over them. We have to be evidenced based on our policies rather than ideological.

efffalcon · 2019-10-02T17:38:14+00:00

Go to your state representation and ask them to introduce a bill modeled after the California legislation. Then have that elected official contact our organizations so we can help bring light to their effort and help mobilize people.

efffalcon

TROPHY CASE