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When Howard Lutnick moved to Washington, earlier this year, to become the Secretary of Commerce, he painted one wall in his new living room gold. It was the only significant modification he made to the house, a château-style mansion purchased for twenty-five million dollars from the Fox News anchor Bret Baier. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Lutnick was in the living room, flipping through a commemorative coffee-table book designed by his family which pairs photographs of him with some of his favorite sayings. “It’s between me and the mirror,” one read. He turned the page: “You are either in or you are out.” Lutnick’s dog, a Havanese-poodle mix named Cali—three of his four children went to college in California—kept nosing her way through a gate to come sit with us. Lutnick was about to fly to London for a round of trade negotiations with China, whose restrictions on the sale of rare-earth metals were threatening to render parts of the American economy nonfunctional. Several suitcases were packed and waiting in the entryway, next to a gold Pop-art sculpture by Robert Indiana that spelled the word “LOVE.” Later, Lutnick led me from room to room to point out a few more works from his personal collection: Rothko, Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, de Kooning.
Congress Needs to Examine the Actions and Failure of the FCC to Protect the Public. READ THE FULL REPORT:
INTRODUCTION RE: The FCC conducted an Open Meeting June, 27, 2025 that was dedicated, in large part, to the strip mining of consumer protection rules and regulations governing cable services, including removing those pesky, burdensome rate regulations, regulations on the equipment, and even an elimination of the forms and accounting to determine rates. And this is tied to Chairman Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete”. Watching the video of Chairman Carr, the new Republican Commissioner, Olivia Trusty, and a collection of staff with titles like “Media Bureau Attorney Advisor”- at the end of the segment on Cable Deregulation — This should be called Nightmare on “L” Street. WHAT ARE THE PRIMARY ISSUES?
The US system to track vulnerabilities is struggling to keep up with its backlog. Experts are scrambling to assemble alternatives.
A subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, which is run by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is letting clients essentially bet that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be struck down in court.
PHOENIX, AZ (July 22, 2025) – Today, local internet and government partners announced a milestone to expand broadband access and connectivity in Arizona.
eX² Technology, a Vivacity company and a single source solution for those seeking to build, scale or future proof their communications infrastructure, in partnership with the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA), successfully executed the first dark fiber Indefeasible Right of Use agreement along ADOT’s I-17 right of way. As part of the Arizona Statewide Middle-Mile Program, the significant dark fiber Indefeasible Right of Use transaction marks a meaningful step forward in leveraging public infrastructure to deliver long-term, high-capacity connectivity across the State of Arizona.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that will determine if ISPs are required to terminate broadband service for customers who are accused of copyright violations. The suit is a result of a longstanding dispute between Cox Communications and music labels, including Sony Music Entertainment. The Supreme Court case stems from a series…
Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.
"The removal of Ms. Slaughter was blatantly unlawful," U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C. wrote in a ruling issued late Thursday. The Justice Department is appealing.
The Federal Communications Commission is ditching Biden-era standards for measuring progress toward the goal of universal broadband deployment. The changes will make it easier for the FCC to give the broadband industry a passing grade in an annual progress report. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's proposal would give the industry a thumbs-up even if it falls short of 100 percent deployment, eliminate a long-term goal of gigabit broadband speeds, and abandon a new effort to track the affordability of broadband. Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed "on a reasonable and timely basis" to all Americans. If the answer is no, the US law says the FCC must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." Generally, Democratic-led commissions have found that the industry isn't doing enough to make broadband universally available, while Republican-led commissions have found the opposite. Democratic-led commissions have also periodically increased the speeds used to determine whether advanced telecommunications capabilities are widely available, while Republican-led commissioners have kept the speed standards the same.
The Federal Trade Commission’s decline is a symptom of a public policy designed primarily to protect asset prices.
There won’t be a whole lot of economic data coming out this week, aside from some numbers on home sales, new and existing. But there will be quarterly earnings reports from big companies: Coca-Cola; GM; Lockheed Martin; Alaska, American and Southwest Airlines; and two tech heavies — Google's parent Alphabet, and Tesla. These companies will be reporting their profits, losses, and sales figures for the second quarter of this year and laying out what their C-suites are anticipating and worrying about. All of which can give plenty of insights into where this economy's headed. Today brought word from Verizon — which did pretty well — and Stellantis, which didn't. The automaker, which reports in Europe, lost $2.7 billion in the first half of the year — much of that thanks to tariffs — and warned of more pain. About 15% of S&P 500 companies have reported quarterly earnings so far. “Overall, the early read from a corporate fundamentals perspective is quite strong,” said Mike Dickson at Horizon Investments.
There was a recent article in LightReading that asked a great question – BEAD bet big on CBRS and 6 GHz bands, so why is Congress gutting them? Answering that question needs some context. NTIA leaned into supporting fixed wireless throughout the BEAD process. During the original BEAD map challenge process, NTIA made it clear…
Democrats and Republicans alike have concerns about AI and want to see the rapidly developing technology regulated to protect the public.
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America is about to choose between broadband that’s good enough today, or infrastructure that can underpin the future of the U.S. economy. With the final rules out for the reformed Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, states have 90 days to rerun their broadband selection processes. One of the biggest changes is that fiber is no longer defined as the preferred technology. In its place is a “technology-neutral” approach that, at first sight, favors the cheapest bids, opening the door to alternative technologies, with low-earth orbit satellite (LEO) slated to be a big winner. Far from representing a prudent fiscal shift, we’ve argued that fiber’s resilience and long-term value make it a better investment for most communities. And when we look beyond residential access to consider broadband’s role in powering industry, innovation, and economic competitiveness, the limits of LEO become clearer still. Foundational for Economic Development Any business considering where to open a branch, build a factory, or expand operations looks for high-speed broadband. Ask any economic development leader to name their top priorities, and fiber connectivity will almost certainly be near the top.
Continuing to Connect Wisconsin: Strategies for Statewide Broadband Access As the nationwide broadband expansion accelerates under the federal BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program, Wisconsin is emerging as a model of efficiency and commitment—facing unique geographic challenges, underserved locations, and a tight budget with strategic precision. In a recent…
U.S. | Assuming deployments go according to plan, New Street projects operators to reach a combined 139 million total passings by the end of the decade.
New tools from OpenAI and Perplexity can browse the web for you. If the idea takes off, these generative AI agents could turn the internet into a ghost town where only bots roam.
The ‘Benefit of the Bargain’ round is underway in 48 states and territories
Infostealer data can include passwords, email and billing addresses, and the embarrassing websites you use. Farnsworth Intelligence is selling to divorce lawyers and other industries.
A California resident can proceed with a privacy claims against Motorola over allegations that it failed to honor his request to reject tracking cookies.
Axel Springer, owner of Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Welt, is going all in on artificial intelligence (AI). “Nobody in the company has to explain in the company why she or he is using AI to do something — whether to prepare a presentation or analyze a document,” said CEO Mathias Döpfner during an hour-long all-employee meeting last week, Status reports. “You only have to explain if you didn’t use AI. That’s really something you have to explain because that shouldn’t happen.” Döpfner also lauded the development of AI.
It’s been more than a year since I gave up on Google Search (I switched to Kagi.com and never looked back). I don’t miss it. It had gotten terrible. It’s gotten worse since, thanks to AI (of course): https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi Google’s a very bad company, of course. I mean, the company has lost three federal antitrust trials in the past 18 months. But that’s not why I quit Google Search: I stopped searching with Google because Google Search suuuucked. In the spring of 2024, it was clear that Google had lost the spam wars. Its search results were full of spammy garbage content whose creators’ SEO was a million times better than their content. Every kind of Google Search result was bad, and results that contained the names of products were the worst, an endless cesspit of affiliate link-strewn puffery and scam sites.
Frustration is brewing around the government office whose job is to track the most exquisite, cutting-edge American technology as it moves around the world. Though a wonky agency known mostly to trade and tech insiders, the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department operates at the cutting edge of the $600 billion global semiconductor industry. It polices American export controls by approving or rejecting export licenses and pursuing enforcement actions. You might think the BIS would have sophisticated tools to deploy — but in fact, America’s global tech cop is hobbled by software that in some cases hasn’t been updated in two decades.
Four leading broadband deployment scholars release new analysis today that may help state broadband offices evaluate “the capacities and saturation limits of the Starlink satellite infrastructure.” The overarching goal is to help states determine where – and if – Starlink can meet federal requirements for broadband, which is defined as delivering minimum connection speeds of at least 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 20 Mbps upload.
Good journalism is making sure that history is actively captured and appropriately described and assessed, and it's accurate to describe things as they currently are as alarming. And I am alarmed. Alarm is not a state of weakness, or belligerence, or myopia. My concern does not dull my vision, even though it's convenient to frame it as somehow alarmist, like I have some hidden agenda or bias toward doom. I profoundly dislike the financial waste, the environmental destruction, and, fundamentally, I dislike the attempt to gaslight people into swearing fealty to a sickly and frail psuedo-industry where everybody but NVIDIA and consultancies lose money. I also dislike the fact that I, and others like me, are held to a remarkably different standard to those who paint themselves as "optimists," which typically means "people that agree with what the market wishes were true." Critics are continually badgered, prodded, poked, mocked, and jeered at for not automatically aligning with the idea that generative AI will be this massive industry, constantly having to prove themselves, as if somehow there's something malevolent or craven about criticism, that critics "do this for clicks" or "to be a contrarian."
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Scoop.it!
