Message-ID: <20210731175447.GA547@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2021 17:54:47 +0000
From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org>
Subject: How internet and TV providers get away with jacking up your
bill
By Geoffrey A. Fowler
The Washington Post
I recently moved and needed to sign up for internet and TV service. I
chose a package that Comcast advertised would cost $90 per month.
When the first bill arrived, it totaled - surprise! - $127.72. That's
42 percent more.
...
We dont even know how much a normal internet bill costs, whether
people are getting the speed theyre paying for or how much prices go
up in areas without competition. To find out, the advocacy arm of
Consumer Reports is launching a first-of-its-kind initiative called
Broadband Together, where its asking Americans to upload copies of
their internet bills so it can gather raw data. It took me less than
seven minutes to join. Youll need a recent bill and an internet
connection to test your speed, as well as to answer a few questions.
https://broadbandtogether.org/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/how-internet-and-tv-providers-get-away-with-jacking-up-your-bill/
--
Bill Horne
Telecom Digest Moderator
Message-ID: <480A4BF2-55BF-4CB2-B8E3-76FD9EABE2A0@roscom.com>
Date: 31 Jul 2021 14:05:19 -0400
From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: The FBI's honeypot Pixel 4a gets detailed in new report
FBI honeypot phones are now public - and showing up on the secondary market.
By RON AMADEO
Last month, authorities disclosed that the FBI and Australian Federal
Police secretly operated an "encrypted device company" called "Anom."
The company sold 12,000 smartphones to criminal syndicates around the
world. These were pitched as secure devices but were actually honeypot
devices that routed all messages to an FBI-owned server. The
disclosure was light on details, but now that it's public, Anom phones
are being unloaded on the secondary market. That means us normal
people are finally getting a look at them, starting with this Vice
article detailing one of the devices.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b4gg/anom-phone-arcaneos-fbi-backdoor
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/how-the-fbi-weaponized-android-modding-with-anom-devices/
Message-ID: <99DAD4F3-F823-473F-AFF1-33A08E73F321@roscom.com>
Date: 31 Jul 2021 12:59:19 -0400
From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Hidden Costs and Flawed Training Plague the V.A.'s Huge
Software Upgrade
Hidden Costs and Flawed Training Plague the V.A.'s Huge Software
Upgrade
A $16 billion effort to modernize health records at the Department of
Veterans Affairs ran into major problems in its first installation,
two watchdog reports say.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/us/va-health-software-problems.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
Moderators are supposed to be neutral. I try to be objective.
But this report burns my butt, and tha's puttig it mildly. There is
$16 Billion dollars of the taxpayer's money gone and nothing to show
for it.
I served in Vietnam. There are a lot of Vietnam veterans committing
suicide, and even more of us wasting away from the "side-effects" of
toxic chemicals like Agent Orange. They need help, not brazenly
ill-designed and obviously incompetently written software that you and
I are paying for.
The Trump administration wrote the checks. If anyone wanted concrete
evidence that the ex-president is a "Useful idiot" (Vladimir Putin's
quote) suited only to respond to the flattery of his sycophants and
the machinations of corporate hucksters, this is it.
That, of course, is my personal opinion. Now, I'll go back to being
neutral again.
Bill Horne
Moderator
