Live data from Hacker News

F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

nytimes.com

921–930 of 1001 posts

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats. And the Democrats have spun reasonable measures, such as requiring some sort of identification to vote, as "suppression", possibly so those who aren't citizens can vote. Who cheats more? Who knows. The low-hanging fruit for the Democrats is, however: 1) Prioritize lower/middle class economic…

>The low-hanging fruit for the Democrats is, however: > >1) Prioritize lower/middle class economic concerns over progressive identity politics > >2) Push the DNC not to scuttle candidates, like Bernie, that people don't universally loathe I wouldn't say that these are really "low hanging fruit". I think it's difficult to overstate just how much the DNC insiders truly loathed him - he represented a threat to them that…

Well, Corbyn's story isn't quite that simple. He's reshaped the official opposition into something dominated by a tiny segment of the population with outlier views, and set things up in such a way that from now on the sort of MPs who actually won votes in non-safe seats won't be ideologically pure enough to be selected. Thus guaranteeing a hard-left Labour whether it wins elections or not in perpetuity. Before Corbyn the party wasn't left-wing enough for some, but it did hold power for a long time, so it was clearly acceptable to many.

As for it being "non crazy", that is surely your own political filter at work. Corbyn and his allies routinely do and say crazy things. McDonnell was caught on video saying "I'm a Marxist" and then when questioned on TV, he said "I'm not a Marxist". When the questioners pointed out that he'd said the exact opposite, on film, and anyone could find it on YouTube he doubled down and claimed he'd never said that! So anyone can go see that the man is willing to baldly lie about his own political beliefs.

He also keeps getting asked how much his spending plans would add to the national debt, and he keeps saying he doesn't know the answer because it's irrelevant for him to know, on the grounds that however much his plans cost they will pay for themselves. This didn't just happen once, it keeps happening. He's shadow chancellor! And as for Diane Abbott's grasp of numbers, well, let's not go there.

Finally, McDonnell also talked about how elections don't work and how he wants to seize power through insurrection. Every so often a similar statement crops up: he talks about using violence to achieve his political ends. Not surprising for a self-avowed communist.

In the US, the Republicans and Democrats at least pretend to care about the costs of policies, even if it's often a bit of theatre. And I don't recall any US politician literally threatening to overthrow the government in violent revolution. Labour has dispensed with the theatre entirely, its shadow cabinet happily and publicly revels in not knowing or caring about the cost of anything they propose.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#922

The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods. As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican la…

> The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine.

Even less surprising as the GOP has been opposing Title II all along, and a GOP FCC is how ISPs got moved to Title I in the first place.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#923
post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats. And the Democrats have spun reasonable measures, such as requiring some sort of identification to vote, as "suppression", possibly so those who aren't citizens can vote. Who cheats more? Who knows. The low-hanging fruit for the Democrats is, however: 1) Prioritize lower/middle class economic…

Requiring ID often is voter suppression. Democrats repeatedly offer to support these requirements if ID is free and easy to obtain. Of course, republicans often actively work against that. In 2015 in Alabama, DMVs in predominantly black (and therefore democrat) areas were going to be closed closed by republicans in power, making it harder to obtain ID for democrats. Republicans have repeatedly been caught talking abo…

Are you serious? With all the allegations of election fraud you seriously think it's okay to go to the voting station without identifying yourself? Do you have any idea how crazy this sounds to the rest of the developed world?

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilariously naive. You're essentially pointing fingers and laughing at people who you esteem to be less intelligent than yourself while making pretty absurd statements that have little to no basis in actual fact For instance the original, and probably fatal, blow to net neutrality was the 1996 Telecommunications act that was passed mainly to encourage "wire to wire competition", which has since become a total…

Yes, people are quick to forget that Obama's FCC was not anxious to implement these rules and did not do so until the very end of Obama's term, presumably because they knew it wouldn't hold up very long and by getting it done in the administration's final gasp, they could keep it as a feather in their political cap and pass the burden of "net neutrality repeal" onto the next guy. Interestingly, amidst the jokes about…

> Yes, people are quick to forget that Obama's FCC was not anxious to implement these rules and did not do so until the very end of Obama's term, presumably because they knew it wouldn't hold up very long and by getting it done in the administration's final gasp, they could keep it as a feather in their political cap

Nothing but damn lies.

Obama's FCC set up the Open Internet Order in 2010 (to formalise the informal 2005 rules which had been judged no basis for governance), they moved towards Title II following that being mostly invalidated by the courts in 2014 (the courts ruled that the 2010 rules couldn't be applied under Title I), the new rules were proposed in May 2014, the public comments period was opened in July, closed in September, and the FCC passed Title II rules in February 2015.

> pass the burden of "net neutrality repeal" onto the next guy.

What burden of net neutrality repeal? There was no burden because there was no requirement to repeal NN.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#925
post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

I'm always surprised that folks on here don't think about the future of last mile connectivity being wireless, instead of wired. Next generation wireless networks (5G) are poised to have broadband like speeds, faster latency, and high bandwidth. Wireless operators have been pretty explicit in that their plan to get into the home broadband game. These networks are a few years away from a broad roll out, AT&T is starti…

> I'm always surprised that folks on here don't think about the future of last mile connectivity being wireless, instead of wired.

Many people have and have tried, wireless last mile has been attempted hundreds of time since 2005 (and the end of mandatory line-sharing).

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples of outright falsehoods?

Among other things, the rules claim that DNS is an integral part of the service ISPs provide. The rules also claim that using a third party server requires unusual configuration on the part of consumers. That is false: an ISP could choose not to provide any DNS service and configure their customers' equipment to use a third party server. (Amazingly enough, DNS is one of the central points in the FCC's argument that I…

If that's the best example of a 'falsehood' the ISPs presented then I'm not surprised the ISPs won. What kind of consumer ISP doesn't provide DNS servers? And in which universe would it be acceptable to sign up for a new ISP and discover DNS resolution didn't work?

Yes, in theory ISPs can outsource it, in theory a company can outsource everything. That doesn't make any difference to arguments about whether it's an integral part of the service though.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#928
post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether there are mistakes in the official documents doesn't change anything about the policy. They weren't persuaded because they didn't receive a persuasive argument about why net neutrality is supposed to help. That doesn't mean they weren't persuaded that some of the "facts" were wrong, it means that they weren't persuaded in terms of opinions. The arguments of the ISP are obviously biased and that should surpris…

"That doesn't mean they weren't persuaded that some of the "facts" were wrong" Why did they repeat the false statements from the NPRM in the final draft is that is true? Why did they dismiss comments correcting falsehoods in the NPRM as not persuasive? "it means that they weren't persuaded in terms of opinions" I am not talking about opinions. I am talking about the details of core Internet technologies like IP, DHCP…

The core issue here is surely not Dems vs Reps but rather that there's a meaningful difference in law between "information service" and "telecommunications service". This is the kind of vague regulatory language that causes so many fights in the halls of power.

Can someone reasonably argue an ISP is an information service? Hell yes! The internet started out by being called "the information superhighway", I guess some of us here are old enough to remember that. The internet is literally used to retrieve information, that's all it does. If an ISP is the on-ramp to the information superhighway then it can obviously be classified as an information service.

Can someone else reasonably argue an ISP is a telecommunications service? Hell yes! ISPs move packets around, they may also provide other forms of information on top, but their core service is the movement of data over wires: surely the essence of being telecoms.

In such arguments it's important to take a step back and realise it can legitimately go either way. The problem is not the players, it's the game. And the only way to fix that is to change the rules of the game. Instead of bickering about the exact bucket into which ISPs fall, pass a new law that is explicitly targeting ISPs and say explicitly what they can or cannot do.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#929
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually the voters elected a Democrat. The electoral college elected the Republican. You mean 48.2% of 58% of eligible voters elected a Democrat. You can slice it many ways but the electoral college is all that matters.

Err, no. Winning the most votes is not "one of the ways you can slice it" -- it's the natural criterion that almost universally comes to mind when you ask somebody how democracy should be implemented.

Winning the most votes is irrelevant if the contest was something different. I‘m sure the campaigns would have looked differently if the contest had been about the number of votes.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#930
post #876

The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods. As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican la…

1. voters did not elect a Republican government. Gerrymandering has given Republicans wins in many places where Democrats would have won in any other universe. Likely rigged electronic voting machines that have no audit trail have given Republicans votes they would not have had. *Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats. 2. Republica…

> 1. voters did not elect a Republican government. Gerrymandering has given Republicans wins in many places where Democrats would have won in any other universe. Likely rigged electronic voting machines that have no audit trail have given Republicans votes they would not have had. *Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats.

Regardless of the other points, _millions_ of voters selected Republican. Fixing gerrymandering, voter suppression, voter turn out, etc, doesn't change the fact that of those who did vote, picked republican. Fixing those issues may change the _result_ of the election but it won't change millions of people's individual minds.

Millions picked this government and I would guess the primary reason is abortion law as this party seems to like laws that favor corporations over people.

Post reply on HN