Overview

The proposal envisions:

• Up to 51,600 satellites

• Sun-synchronous orbits at 500–1,800 km altitude

• Primary reliance on optical inter-satellite links

• Limited use of radio spectrum (Ka-band) for control and reliability functions

Fresh Speedtest data from Ookla finds that a handful of US states have more Starlink subscribers in urban areas than in rural areas.

In Boston’s vibrant Egleston Square neighborhood sits the Charles J. Beard II Media Center, home to Boston’s community radio station WBCA 102.9 FM. 

The station was created as a partnership between local nonprofit Boston Neighborhood Network Media, or BNN, and the City of Boston back in 2016. At the time, the then-Mayor of Boston Marty Walsh praised the collaboration, extending his thanks to BNN “for their partnership with the city to create another platform for civic engagement,” in a 2015 press release. 

BNN has gained independence over the years, but its partnership with the City continues to ground their mission to be a voice for the community, through their work which focuses on enhancing the unique culture of Boston neighborhoods that often go unnoticed. WBCA broadcasts daily from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., featuring a diverse mix of local news, current events, talk shows and music. Segments range from discussions on education and technology to multi-language programming and sports.

As media consolidates into fewer hands, there are more channels with fewer voices and community media becomes more essential.

Pick up your phone and you can access more media than any generation before you. News channels, streaming services, podcasts, social media, the options never end. It looks like we have more choices than ever.

C Spire announced this week that it has completed its work under Mississippi’s allocation of the federal Capital Projects Fund, saying the company provided home fiber access to more than 14,000 residences and to 18,530 undeveloped lots across multiple counties.

The Ridgeland-based technology provider said the work reached communities “from Amite to Lincoln to Lamar to Madison to Desoto and Hinds counties,” and that some of the projects targeted underserved areas of the state.

The Trump administration's National AI Framework falls short of offering Americans any real mechanisms for accountability or oversight.

The conservative legal activist thinks “radically woke culture” is the problem with America right now—not the climate-destroying oil and gas industry he lavishly supports.

Faced with a continuing erosion of its news business, including the pending loss of Lee Enterprises as a client, The Associated Press (AP) is offering buyouts to U.S. journalists and working to change its business model.

More than 120 employees have received buyout offers. But AP executives hint that layoffs could ensue depending on how many people accept these offers, AP News reports.

The legacy news organization plans to reduce global head count by less than 5%, AP News adds.

In 2025, two major news chains, Gannett (now USA Today Co.) and McClatchy, said they would stop buying news from AP, in Gannett’s case ending a relationship that had lasted more than a century. Another news chain, Lee Enterprises, is seeking an early exit from its agreement, which expires at the end of this year. 

As Trump threatens Iranian infrastructure, the US government warns that Iran has carried out its own digital attacks against US critical infrastructure.

As US President Donald Trump threatens wholesale demolition of Iran's infrastructure in the midst of an escalating war, Iran now appears to have already reciprocated with its own form of infrastructure sabotage: A hacking campaign hitting industrial control systems across the United States, including energy and water utilities, that US agencies say has had disruptive and costly effects.

In a joint advisory published Tuesday, a group of US agencies including the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that a group of hackers affiliated with the Iranian government has targeted industrial control devices used in a series of critical infrastructure targets including in the energy sector, water and wastewater utilities, and unspecified “government facilities.” According to the agencies, the hackers have targeted programmable logic controllers (PLCs)—a type of device designed to allow digital control of physical machinery—in those facilities, including those sold by industrial tech firm Rockwell Automation, with the apparent intention of sabotaging their systems.

Intel’s role in Elon Musk’s ambitious chip venture is still murky, raising questions about what the partnership actually entails—and whether it can work at all.

Using Ookla Speedtest Intelligence® data, this report identifies the states that are currently delivering the minimum standard for fixed broadband speeds as established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the highest percentage of Speedtest users. It also singles out the states that need the most improvement when it comes to delivering the minimum standard for broadband to their residents. 

Published April 8, 2026.

Data Collection Period: July — December 2025

Learn which U.S. states are meeting or exceeding the FCC’s 100/20 Mbps broadband standard, how the digital divide is shifting, and where Starlink fits in.

From drones to missiles to submarines, the $30.5 billion defense startup wants to transform how the tools of war are made. It’s not all going as planned.

Anduril’s missile motor factory near the Gulf Coast of Mississippi already seemed to be running behind schedule when, about a year ago, a young engineer scorched his hand. The employee, whose previous job had been at a company that made outdoor gear, was assembling one of Anduril’s first electrical igniters, known around the factory as a “white hot.” It was a small but crucial part in the $30.5 billion defense startup’s plan to transform the design, assembly, and sale of military technology. The “white hot” would light a test sample of Anduril’s propellant—a rubbery substance meant to power an array of different US and allied missiles.

Before the injury, the engineer’s team hadn’t conducted a job safety analysis or mandated the use of a safety shield. He wore rubber gloves not rated for fire protection. When the igniter misfired in a flash of white, the worker’s right hand suffered burns.

Local emergency services didn’t receive a call; the engineer’s boss drove him to a hospital, one person says. A photo his partner posted showed him sleeping with his hand wrapped in gauze. She solicited donations on Facebook, saying the family would lose its sole source of income while he recovered and visited Alabama for checkups.

The igniter incident is among a number of safety concerns and project challenges at Anduril’s manufacturing operations that WIRED can reveal here for the first time. This investigation is based on interviews with 37 former and current employees and contractors, including more than 20 with direct knowledge of Anduril's production lines. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing nondisclosure agreements and fear of retaliation from Anduril or current employers.

The ballooning use of artificial intelligence and cloud-based computing is fueling a rise in data centers — which store and process all the information needed to power these systems. Massachusetts residents are joining the pushback.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a major overhaul of satellite spectrum sharing rules, replacing decades-old constraints with a modern, performance-based framework designed to unlock faster, more affordable broadband from space.

This decision targets the longstanding limitations imposed on Non-Geostationary Orbit (NGSO) systems—such as low Earth orbit constellations—by rules originally developed in the 1990s to protect Geostationary Orbit (GSO) satellites. The FCC concludes that these legacy constraints now significantly restrict the capacity, speed, and efficiency of satellite broadband services, particularly in rural and underserved areas.

Explore the shifting U.S. broadband landscape in late 2025 as fiber builds, Starlink, and FWA narrow the urban-rural digital divide across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

OpenAI is throwing its support behind an Illinois state bill that would shield AI labs from liability in cases where AI models are used to cause serious societal harms, such as death or serious injury of 100 or more people or at least $1 billion in property damage.

The effort seems to mark a shift in OpenAI’s legislative strategy. Until now, OpenAI has largely played defense, opposing bills that could have made AI labs liable for their technology’s harms. Several AI policy experts tell WIRED that SB 3444—which could set a new standard for the industry—is a more extreme measure than bills OpenAI has supported in the past.

The bill would shield frontier AI developers from liability for “critical harms” caused by their frontier models as long as they did not intentionally or recklessly cause such an incident, and have published safety, security, and transparency reports on their website.

BISHOP, CA – Governor Gavin Newsom today announced a major milestone in California’s effort to close the digital divide: the state has officially turned on the nation’s largest open-access, public broadband network — and connected its first community. 

The Bishop Paiute Tribe is now the first customer of California’s Middle-Mile Broadband Network (MMBN), bringing high-speed, reliable internet to a rural and historically underserved community. Students were among the first to log on — experiencing dramatically faster speeds and new access to education, health care, and opportunity. With 35% of rural Americans lacking internet access, Governor Newsom’s Broadband for All Initiative aims to bridge that divide, serving millions of Californians across all 58 counties. 

So far NASA’s Artemis 2 has been spectacularly successful and today, the four astronauts – as well as the Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft itself – became the most remote Wi-Fi users of all time as Artemis 2 just a few minutes ago broke Apollo 13’s 55-year old record for longest distance from Earth.

If you’ve been following the live streams from aboard Moon-bound Artemis 2 over the past few days, you’ve probably discovered – like me – that the four astronauts look decidedly happy, comfy, and busy in their far-flung home. NASA says the Orion capsule is about the size of two minivans (60% larger than Apollo in terms of volume) and like any other acceptable home away from home, this Orion capsule (named ‘Integrity’ by the astronauts) comes with everyone’s favourite technology – and that’s Wi-Fi.

The company said the network, now serving parts of Leesburg, is “future-proof” and that it is staffed and powered locally in Florida.

In March, the FCC issued an order in docket WC 25-209 and 25-208 that may signal the final regulatory death knell for telephone copper networks. The docket is titled Reducing Barriers to Network Improvements and Service Changes / Accelerating Network Modernization.

The stated purpose of the order is to speed up the transition from the TDM technology used in copper telephone networks to all IP-based networks used by fiber and other newer technologies. The secondary purpose of the docket is to override state regulations that are slowing down the transition away from copper networks.

The order comes in eight parts:

Major AI labs are investigating a security incident that impacted Mercor, a leading data vendor. The incident could have exposed key data about how they train AI models.

In Lebanon, nearly 1 in 5 people has been displaced by Israeli attacks, leaving the government to manage a modern crisis without modern digital infrastructure.

The last time a government official from Lebanon sat down to think carefully about national digital infrastructure, nobody expected another war with Israel. That’s how it has always gone.

“We were not ready for this,” says Kamal Shehadi, the Lebanese minister of technology and AI, and minister of the displaced. “I have to admit that we didn’t expect something of this magnitude to happen.”

On March 2, 2026, Israeli evacuation warnings began appearing on phones across southern Lebanon. Days later, similar alerts reached residents of Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs, urging them to leave as strikes were imminent.

Within minutes, families were moving. Within days, nearly 1.3 million people—nearly 1 in 5 residents of the country—were forcibly displaced. Schools that have been turned into shelters were filled past capacity. People slept in cars along the coast road north of Beirut. And somewhere in a government office, a small team started updating a database.

That platform is currently the closest thing Lebanon has to a real-time view of its own humanitarian crisis. It tracks food packages, fuel supplies, hygiene kits, and medicine. It tells government officials which shelter in which district is running low on blankets. It is, by global standards, modest technology. By Lebanon’s standards, it might be the most functional piece of government software in the country.

While the US, Israel, and Iran negotiate, Israel has excluded Lebanon from the ongoing two-week ceasefire. Local media have reported up to 100 Israeli air strikes on Lebanon within 10 minutes on April 8, in a clear sign that forced displacement, disruption, and chaos will continue in the nation.

The AI lab's Project Glasswing will bring together Apple, Google, and more than 45 other organizations. They'll use the new Claude Mythos Preview model to test advancing AI cybersecurity capabilities.

Join American Association of Public Broadband (AAPB) Executive Director Gigi Sohn in conversation with EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn, to discuss Cindy’s book: Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.

Cindy has tangled with the feds, fought for your data security, and argued before judges to protect our access to science and knowledge on the internet. But, can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online?

Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has devoted her life to the fight for digital rights. She’s tangled with federal officials to keep our online conversations secure from the government's prying eyes, fought to ensure that you are told when your information has been turned over to the government, and argued before judges to protect our right to speak and to share science and knowledge on the internet.

In Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (MIT Press), Cindy weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders.

Cindy Cohn is joining us on the Busboys and Poets stage in conversation with EFF Board Chair Gigi Sohn.