Facebook is desperate to ensure that the Internet never takes hold in developing nations -- they want a walled garden that they get to own and operate.
They've been experimenting with "zero rating," where they bribe mobile phone carriers in poor countries not to charge for the services that Facebook anoints. This has been extensively tried and evaluated, and it does virtually nothing to get poor people online -- rather, it's used by the wealthy to offset their mobile bills on their commutes, between wifi (that is, real Internet access).
There was a popular uprising in India in response to this, analogous to the USA's SOPA fight, in which Indian net activists rejected zero-rating in favor of better telcoms regulation, more competition, and an end to corrupt practices in mobile services.
India's telcoms regulator eventually took notice, banning Facebook's zero-rating partners from favoring its services. In response, Facebook's taken out huge, full-page ads rubbishing Net Neutrality, full of FUD worthy of 1990s-era Microsoft.
(Thanks, Jeff!)
The International Olympic Committee -- long a swirling cesspool of corruption, censorship, and reputation-laundering for repressive regimes -- has attained a new low, issuing guidance to athletes competing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that no political protests will be tolerated, specifically banning kneeling or raising fists.
Maryland's Larry Hogan -- a Republican who governs a blue state -- is the most popular governor in America, with a 73% approval among state Democrats. He is also a flagrant crook.
After Antiplagiat, a private plagiarism detection company, accused Russia's scientific and scholarly journals of being rife with plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplication and other misconduct, the Russian Academy of Sciences chartered a committee to investigate the problem: their report confirmed the accusations, finding more instances of plagiarism/self-plagiarism, as well as instances in which the same paper was […]
If you’re looking to build a career in web development, it starts with Javascript. This programming language was there at the golden age of the internet, and it’s still the basis for millions of web pages and apps worldwide. Suffice to say, if you’re a coder who doesn’t know JS yet, you’re not a coder. […]
We’ve all got a perfect website in our minds. In the past, the problem has been the barrier of language – specifically, the computer languages used to create those glittering, animation-filled pages you flock to. Now, Mac users have an alternative. Blocs 3 is a website builder that can provide an easy visual interface for […]
You can do all the pre-workout stretching in the world, but that doesn’t mean you’ll escape stiff muscles and nagging pain after a particularly grueling gym session. When those knots and their accompanying aches and soreness start barking, your options usually boil down to either a deep tissue massage or just grinning and bearing it. […]
