Obama Backs Away From Net Neutrality Campaign Promises After FCC Vote

Haley Sweetland Edwards writing for Time:

Barack Obama was crystal clear during the 2008 campaign about his commitment to ensuring equal treatment of all online content over American broadband lines. “I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality,” Obama told a crowd at Google in 2008. “Because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose.”

At a 2007 campaign forum, he went so far as to specifically promise that his Federal Communications Commission appointments would defend the principle of a “level playing field for whoever has the best idea.” “As president, I am going to make sure that that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward,” he said.

But on Thursday, the President made no public statement when three Democrats he appointed to the FCC voted to move forward with a plan to allow broadband carriers to provide an exclusive “fast lane” to commercial companies that pay extra fees to get their content transmitted online. Instead, White House aides released a press release distancing the President from the decision.

Typical. I stopped being surprised about this President failing to keep promises to the technology industry long ago in favor of corporate lobbyists'special interests. This is ENTIRELY the President's fault for appointing former cable/telecom industry lobbyists to the FCC that are supposed to be protecting the public from these very people. You can release all of the bullshit press releases you want. Its too late for "distancing yourself".

Pragmatic Podcast

Do you listen to podcasts? If so, you should be listening to Pragmatic. Their most recent episode, I'll Take The Gold-Free Extra Oxygen Cable Please is a wonderful example of the type of episode you can expect from this podcast.  Hosts John Chidgey and Ben Alexander do an excellent job of picking engineering or tech-related topics and breaking down the specifics behind how something works.

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For instance, this week's show goes into the details of audio and video cables. I always knew that "gold plated" cables were a ripoff and thus bullshit. Thanks to this week's show, John and Ben have explained just exactly why that is. Over the past four months of listening to this podcast I've grown to love it more with each episode, and it has been promoted to my "must listen to" playlist in my current podcast listening app of choice. You should go subscribe to Pragmatic right now.

A few other great episodes you shouldn't miss:

  1. Stuxnet
  2. The World's Most Popular Camera
  3. Turn The Damn Light Off
  4. The Battery Problem
  5. The Next Ubiquitous Thing

Designer Duds

Mills Baker, writing on the Mokriya blog:

Hoping that users “worry more” about the quality of their photos seems like the wrong attitude to have. It’s worth noting that everyone I know who’s happiest with Facebook uploads whatever they want, including ugly, low-resolution photos, garbage meme-images, random, hyper-compressed videos, and the rest of the junk that they find interesting. It all looks insane in Paper. Wanting users to spring for DSLRs and learn how to shoot their kale salad with a shallow depth of field so that the very lovely new app you’ve built isn’t ruined by their tastelessness is exactly backwards.

On the topic that design needs to be more than just pretty in order to actually be good design.