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.

Indiana County is watching as Pennsylvania offers another round of broadband, equity, access and deployment funds.

STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

Despite the fact that generative AI has been a destructive force against their businesses, their industry, and the truth more broadly, media executives still see AI as a business opportunity and a shiny object that they can tell investors and their staffs that they are very bullish on. Everything else they have tried hasn’t worked, and pretending that they are forward thinking or have any clue what they are doing will perhaps allow a specific type of media executive to squeeze out a few more months of salary. But pivoting to AI is not a business strategy.

Rocket Community Fund and Detroit Housing Commission Launch Pilot Program to Bring Free, High-Speed Internet to 450 Families in Detroit Public Housing MeritNetwork, via founding member Wayne State University, is providing the fiber network infrastructure and DigitalC will be the internet service provider for the project. Rocket Community Fund committed $850,000 to the project; Microsoft also provided […]

Comcast has invested millions into an expansion in Bossier City, Louisiana, according to published reports.

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.

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.  

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."

Lots of monopoly and finance related news this week, as usual. Seems like Fed independence will end, giant railroad mergers are on deck, the rare earth magnet crisis abated, Trump caved to China on advanced semiconductor exports, and billionaires like Mark Cuban continue to attack NYC mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani.

Before getting to the full round-up, I want to take a step back and examine Trump antitrust enforcement so far. I’m doing so because of the news last week that a D.C. district court judge reinstated Democrat Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as a Federal Trade Commissioner, after she and her colleague Alvaro Bedoya were illegally fired by Trump in March. Her case is likely to go to the Supreme Court, to test the Constitutional theory of whether the President can fire anyone in an independent agency.

Since her firing, the FTC has been a fully Republican agency, which meant no dissents and almost no public debate. 

U.S. | Charter has called the damage from recent fiber cuts “nothing short of domestic terrorism.”

Increasing rural internet connectivity continues to be a priority for the state and Gov. Greg Gianforte on Wednesday attended a ribbon cutting event on a new provider’s entrance into Montana.