Technology

California’s legislature has voted unanimously to approve a $6 billion plan to build a statewide open access fiber network (h/t ArsTechnica). The state will provide $3.25 billion to hire a third party to build and maintain a so-called “middle-mile” network, which won’t bring internet directly from backbone infrastructure to customers, but rather to connection points, leaving the last mile to be handled by internet service providers (ISPs). The legislation provides $2 billion for last-mile infrastructure lines to connect residences and businesses to local networks. Making the middle-mile network open access will allow “non-discriminatory access to eligible entities on a technology and competitively neutral basis, regardless of whether the entity is privately or publicly owned,” the bill sta...

Virtual weddings, one of the more endearing traditions to emerge during last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns, are no longer legal in New York now that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has lifted his April executive order. First reported by the New York Times, the order Cuomo signed was meant for a state of emergency, and he rescinded the EO effective June 25th. New York state law requires that a couple planning to wed “must state in the presence of an authorized public official or authorized member of the clergy and at least one other witness that each takes the other as his or her spouse.” So in order to keep Zoom and other virtual weddings legal, new legislation would be necessary. Zoom weddings allowed brides and grooms to keep their wedding plans somewhat intact at the height of the coronavirus pan...

Richard Branson’s extravagant jaunt to space on Sunday signaled the dawning of a new space age — for the few people that can afford it. Jeff Bezos is about to set off on a similar excursion next Tuesday when he launches to space with three others on his company Blue Origin’s first crewed flight. The two billionaires are validating their companies’ tourist-tailored rockets and, they say, fulfilling lifelong dreams to get a brief taste of space. But what Virgin Galactic’s mission on Sunday proved, and what Bezos’ flight will similarly show, is that space is almost open, not for you and me or the general public, but for more billionaires. Opening up the cosmos to the masses and normalizing space travel is a goal companies and their billionaire backers have been targeting for years but haven’t...

Amazon has added two new celebrity personalities to its Alexa voice assistant in the disembodied form of Shaquille O’Neal and Melissa McCarthy. They join Samuel L. Jackson as downloadable voice options for the device, with each bringing their own unique repertoire. There’s certainly demand as Jackson’s voice became the bestselling digital item on Amazon on the day it went on sale in 2019. “It’s on! Shaq is in the house to make your speakers bounce. Boomshakalaka! I’m so excited to be a part of the Alexa experience,” said O’Neal. Opening with “Hey Melissa” or “Hey Shaq” will allow Alexa users to get the latest weather report in their voice, hear a joke, or hear a personal story and, in case you’d forgotten about Shaq’s 1990s rap career, the Big Shamrock is ready to remind you. [embedded con...

Due to the surging popularity of Apple AirPods Pro, the U.S. government has recently reported that they have commandeered a record number of counterfeit wireless headphones. According to The Information, approximately “360,000 counterfeit headphones with a retail value of $62.2 million USD were confiscated in the first nine months of the U.S. government’s fiscal year.” In comparison, throughout the entire 2020 fiscal year, the reports have also claimed that they only seized 295,000 counterfeits with a total value of $61.7 million USD. 80 percent of the counterfeit products coming into the U.S. were reportedly from mainland China or Hong Kong. It is unclear how much of the confiscated headphones were AirPods counterfeits, but American Customs has increased by 50 percent in the past half a d...

On Friday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced that the state plans to invest $700 million in American Rescue Plan funding to reach universal broadband connectivity by 2024. This new investment shaves four years off of the governor’s original plan to connect every household to high-speed broadband. The pandemic dramatically affected the ways in which people work and attend school — pushing many office-holders to renew efforts to ensure citizens are able to get online. According to Northam, more than 233,000 homes and businesses in Virginia are without broadband access. “Not just a luxury for some, but an essential utility for all” “It’s time to close the digital divide in our Commonwealth and treat Internet service like the 21st century necessity that it is — not just a luxury for so...

Sometimes you want the text in your app to be smaller, so you can fit more content on a single screen. Sometimes you want it to be bigger, especially if you’ve been putting off buying those reading glasses. But until recently, if you had an iPhone, you had to pick a single text size as a standard for all your apps. Not anymore. In iOS 15, you can adjust the text size separately for each of your apps. So you can, for example, keep the text small for your email, but make it a bit larger in Twitter — or vice versa. (Thanks to @OmarShahine for the info.) One of the best hidden new iOS 15 features is per app font sizes. I like to use the smallest dynamic size system wide but bump up Outlook by one side since I read so much email. pic.twitter.com/aL8TxOIXVA — Omar Shahine (@OmarShahine) July 16,...

When you’re using WhatsApp your messages are encrypted end-to-end, which means prying eyes can’t easily see what’s in them as they travel back and forth. However, if you keep a backup stored in the cloud, authorities can use a search warrant to have Google Drive or iCloud hand over access to the data. But WABetaInfo has reported previously that WhatsApp is working on the technology to independently encrypt your backups in the cloud, and says that in the most recent beta update on Android (2.21.15.5), the system has been enabled. Opting in should keep your chat history and media securely backed up, with the significant caveat that if you forget your passcode / lose the 64-digit recovery key, then they’ll be locked away permanently — even WhatsApp can’t help you get in. If you’re OK with bei...

The Federal Communications Commission this month granted Amazon the rights to use a radar sensor to improve sleep tracking on its smart devices. But a new column in the The Los Angeles Times explores the implications of this decision and what it means for user privacy. David Lazarus of The Times spoke to a variety of researchers, who stated that while the potential physical harm these sensors can have on our bodies is minimal (they have about the same amount of radiation as a lightbulb), the technology raises serious privacy concerns. It’s unclear exactly what Amazon has in store for its new radar sensors, though the company said in its filing that it planned to “use the radar’s capability of capturing motion in a three-dimensional space to enable contactless sleep tracing functionalities....

So you just dropped a cool $59,000 on a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, your own sporty slice of our electric future, made by a company that only knows how to build them tough (Ford Tough, to be precise). What happens when you go to plug in your new car and you miss that telltale whiff of chemical-y gasoline smell wafting from its insides? According to Ford, you substitute it with a “premium fragrance” inspired by gasoline called “Mach-Eau.” Mach-Eau — the name does not get better the more I type it — was born from a survey conducted by Ford Europe that found that 1 in 5 drivers will miss the “smell of petrol most” when they switch to an electric car. Naturally, wanting to push more Mach-Es and F-150 Lightnings into the world, Ford settled on an olfactory solution. Unfortunately, as Electrek notes...