ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away Saturday, surrounded by her loving family. She was 95.

Her story began far from satellites and supercomputers. Born into poverty on a Virginia farm during the Jim Crow era, West grew up in a segregated South where opportunity was scarce. Through determination and extraordinary academic talent, she graduated first in her high school class and earned a scholarship to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University). She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1952 and went on to earn a master’s degree in 1955.

In 1956, West began working as a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was only the second African American woman hired at the base and one of just four African American employees at the time. What followed was a career that would quietly change the world.

The year 2025 turned out to be brutal for Verizon amidst a major restructuring. Reports indicate that Verizon layoffs in 2026 could be a grim reality as the telecommunication’s major moves ahead with robust plans to streamline operations. The impending layoffs at Verizon could affect 13,000 to 15,000 jobs, marking a significant round of job cuts.

This move mirrors a broader wave of layoffs in 2026 across tech and telecom sectors where companies are forced to rethink their overhead. But why is Verizon resorting to such drastic measures? We found out…

County Broadband in Norfolk, England, recently lost service to 442 customers over a weekend when rats chewed through fiber and caused an outage during a snowstorm. The ISP battled bad weather conditions, so it took a few days to replace almost 2,000 feet of damaged fiber cable. The ISP stayed in contact with customers by…

Here's what to know about proposals for enormous new data centers, and what Earthjustice is doing to control their pollution, climate impacts, and your energy bill.

Western Oklahoma – High speed fiber internet is now live for residents and businesses in and around Burns Flat and Granite, marking a major step forward for connectivity in western Oklahoma.

Two broadband expansion projects serving Washita and Greer counties have been completed with funding from the federal State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund and oversight from the Oklahoma Broadband Office. The projects were built by Dobson Fiber and deliver reliable fiber optic service to 366 locations across the two communities.

This dashboard tracks how BEAD Eligible Entities are progressing through major program milestones. Check back here to see how each state an

Last week, in a quiet room in Westminster, a group of leaders gathered to discuss AI. I cannot name them because we met under Chatham House rules, but I can say that the group included people who have built national systems, advised ministers at difficult moments, and lived with the real and messy constraints of digital change.

They understand the promise of AI. And they see, and experience, the structural barriers holding Britain back.

Among Americans with an opinion about cryptocurrency, 72% see it as an overhyped scam while only 28% consider it an exciting and important technology.

The nonstop cryptocurrency talk in Washington suggests an issue for which the American public must have deep interest and enthusiasm. In its 2024 platform, the Republican Party listed “Crypto” first among the emerging industries it would champion. Item three in Kamala Harris’s five-point “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” was “protect cryptocurrency investments.” President Donald Trump has promised to make the United States “the crypto capital of the world” while Senator Chuck Schumer declared, “we all believe in the future of crypto.”

But by “we all,” Schumer must have meant his audience at a “Crypto4Harris” fundraiser, because the rest of America has a different answer. In a survey of 1,000 Americans, conducted last year in partnership with YouGov, American Compass put the question directly:

By Greg Maynard Massachusetts is home to more than 250 local cable access stations. Bay Staters know them as the folks who videotape and broadcast local government meetings, high school sports and community public affairs shows. But trouble is looming. For the better part of a decade, the revenue these stations depend on has been…

For too long, businesses in our region have been accepting their connectivity limitations. If the legacy network could handle the emails, maybe a video conference or two, and a basic website, it was considered sufficient.But today, the internet isn't a utility you plug into; it's the foundation upon which your entire business strategy is built. If that foundation is cracking, your business is limited. It's time to shift away from merely managing outdated connections and start demanding infrastru

I was flying home from CES when a close friend and fellow Deadhead texted me the news of Bob Weir’s death. Coming off the high of a successful show, the message hit hard. Bob’s music is woven into every decade of my life. He was the soundtrack to the best moments and a lifeline during the hardest ones. Heading out with friends to follow the Dead was the closest I ever came to feeling like Jack Kerouac or any of the heroes of the American road.

Bob Weir joined the Grateful Dead at 15 and may have played more live shows than any musician in history. For him, music created community.  I had seen that same force at work days earlier in Las Vegas, where people from around the world came together to build, trade ideas, and push forward. “Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand” is from one of Bob’s songs and it also describes the magic that happens anywhere people of different backgrounds gather face to face with a common purpose.

The Dead were deeply embedded in Bay Area tech culture from the beginning. A remarkable number of early computer and internet pioneers were Deadheads: Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, Steve Wozniak, Howard Rheingold, and others. Some of the first digital messages traded between researchers at Stanford and MIT in the early Arpanet era were Grateful Dead setlists. The band’s ethos influenced how these founders thought about digital rights, user communities, creative exploration, and the cultural tone of early Silicon Valley.

Missouri State Rep. Louis Riggs and Benton's Drew Garner on BEAD and their push to get NTIA to 'follow the law' and release full funding to the states.

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.

We talk all about Webloc, ICE's tool for monitoring phone locations; the continuing Grok abuse wave; and how police unwittingly revealed millions of Flock surveillance targets.

Over the last two years, the UK has surged ahead globally with its National AI Strategy, rapid public-sector adoption, and an ambitious AI Opportunities Action Plan. Boardrooms are investing aggressively, experimentation is everywhere, and GenAI is no longer a futuristic concept, it’s a line item in annual budgets.

Yet despite this ambition, many UK organisations are stuck in what analysts call the “Experimentation-to-Value Gap.” They can run pilots, but they can’t scale impact. They showcase proofs of concept, but they can’t embed AI into mission-critical operations.

In other words: many leaders are buying a Formula 1 car but using it for the weekly grocery run.

In July, the Trump administration released an artificial intelligence action plan titled “Winning the AI Race,” which framed global competition over AI in stark terms: whichever country achieves dominance in the technology will reap overwhelming economic, military, and geopolitical advantages. As it did during the Cold War with the space race or the nuclear buildup, the U.S. government is now treating AI as a contest with a single finish line and a single victor.

But that premise is misleading. The United States and China, the world’s two AI superpowers, are not converging on the same path to AI leadership, nor are they competing across a single dimension. 

Nearly 5 million U.S. homes, schools, libraries, and small businesses still lack access to reliable and affordable high-speed internet.

After years of work, states and territories are closer than ever to building new networks under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. But internet for all requires more than money: the hard work is far from done.

Key markers that will shape BEAD's progress:

Ookla published a WISP Report Card in November that looks at the speed performance of eight large WISPs – Etheric Networks, GeoLinks, NextLink, Resound Networks, Rise Broadband, Starry, Unwired Broadband, and Wisper Internet. Since this article was published, Starry has been acquired by Verizon. Ookla trended speed test results for each WISP by quarter from…

Two high-speed internet expansion projects funded by the Oklahoma Broadband office and the federal government have been completed in two southwest counties in Oklahoma.

Residents and businesses in Washita and Greer counties saw recent completion after being administered by the state office and funded through the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund.

The projects, completed by Dobson Fiber, are delivering what the State Broadband Office called “reliable, fiber-optic internet service” to 366 locations in and around Burns Flat and Granite. With the availability of fiber-optic technology, residents will now have access to faster speeds, improved reliability, and enhanced connectivity to support education, healthcare, business development, and everyday needs.