San Francisco Bay Area residents born and raised on the East Coast (or anywhere else outside the region) often hear the same question repeatedly from friends and family: Why would anyone live where it's so expensive?
The latest figures available from the federal government show just well workers in the city and its closest environs are doing. The average worker in the San Francisco -- San Mateo -- Redwood City metro area was paid a mean hourly wage of $32.41, or 45 percent higher than the US mean of $22.33, as of May, 2013. That's based on the latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that break down employment by income and geography.
Some jobs here pay particularly well compared to the rest of the US -- and those that pay the most are not the ones you might think. Indeed, the San Francisco metro area had just over 68,800 tech jobs as of 14 months ago. That's 6.6 percent of total jobs -- more than double the ratio for the entire US, where only 2.8 percent of all employment is in tech.
But a closer look at the numbers shows that tech workers are far from being the best-paid here, relative to the average American, compared to other professions.
Over half a million Americans have shared their feelings on network neutrality with the Federal Communications Commission as the agency ponders new rules that could drastically reshape the Internet.
Earlier, Chairman Tom Wheeler reported that the FCC has so far received around 647,000 comments as the July 15 deadline for initial feedback approaches. The commission will then accept responses to those comments into the month of September.
At best, a final decision on the controversial net neutrality proposal isn't expected until near the end of 2014.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has upped the stakes in the debate over how the Federal Communications Commission should regulate broadband Internet providers, by calling for them to be reclassified as so-called “common carriers.”
Sen Schumer invoked “Title II,” which has been a third rail in discussions on telecom policy, because it would require companies like Comcast to behave more like public utilities. His Facebook post reads in part: “Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all; not determined by the highest bidders … Title II reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.”
In response to the post, prominent figures from the tech world, including Reddit’s Alexis Onanain and lawyer Marvin Ammori, left comments hailing Sen Schumer’s plan as an important step for startups.
[Commentary] Desperate to save itself, Aereo is now rolling out Plan B. In the wake of the June 25 Supreme Court ruling that shot down its juvenile low-tech scheme for circumventing copyright law, the online distributor of local broadcast signals told the federal district court in New York that it wants to continue operating in a more conventional manner, with the cable compulsory license.
As required by law, Aereo said it is going ahead with the necessary paperwork with the Copyright Office. In making the case to the district court that it is a bona fide cable system entitled to the license, Aereo is relying somewhat ironically on the Supreme Court ruling that has pushed it to the precipice.
The problem with Plan B -- and evidence that Aereo is not ready to grow up and play by the rules -- is that it has still not acknowledged in any forum that it is willing to accept not only the privileges of being a cable system, most notably the compulsory license, but also the obligations, most notably retransmission consent and things like must-carry, network non-dupe, syndex and sports blackout. Without a commitment to pay retransmission consent, Aereo is simply playing the same old game, trying to skate by without paying for programming.
It's behaving like the ridiculous FilmOn, which has been claiming cable status for the compulsory license.
On July 11, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Report and Order establishing a budget and a methodology for selecting winning applications for the Connect America rural broadband experiments adopted by the Commission in its 2014 Technology Transitions Order. The following may be attributed to Benton Foundation Director of Policy Amina Fazlullah:
Earlier today, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Report & Order to modernize the E-rate program and expand support for Wi-Fi connectivity for schools and libraries. The following may be attributed to Benton Foundation Director of Policy Amina Fazlullah:
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) issue this joint notice to seek public comment on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommendation that the Secretary of Commerce establish a public-private partnership to facilitate the creation of an urban test city, that would support rapid experimentation and development of policies, underlying technologies, and system capabilities for advanced, dynamic spectrum sharing.
The test services for demonstrating and evaluating advanced spectrum sharing technologies could include large-scale sustainable facilities for systems-level testing in real-world environments across multiple frequency bands, including public safety and selected federal bands. Through this Joint Public Notice, NTIA and OET seek to promote the Model City concept in conjunction with: (1) the new Center for Advanced Communications established by NTIA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and (2) the FCC’s existing experimental licensing program.
Regulators are establishing new rules requiring closed captions for online video clips. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously Friday to approve the rules from Chairman Tom Wheeler.
Chairman Wheeler repeated a pledge he made at another closed captioning vote earlier this year.
“This is just the beginning in dealing with our responsibility to make sure that individuals with special needs are in the front of the technology train, not the back of the technology train,” he said.
The vote sets requirements for online video clips that have aired on television with closed captions, mimicking current requirements for full-length online videos that originally were broadcast with captions on television. The new requirements apply to video distributors like broadcasters and cable and satellite companies. Under the 2010 Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the FCC has the authority to require closed captions for online videos.
Big data -- the kind that statisticians and computer scientists scour for insights on human beings and our societies -- is cooked up using a recipe that’s been used a thousand times.
Here’s how it goes: Acquire a trove of people’s highly personal data -- say, medical records or shopping history. Run that huge set through a “de-identification” process to anonymize the data. And voila -- individuals become anonymous, chartable, and unencumbered by personal privacy concerns. So what’s the problem? It turns out that all that de-identified data may not be so anonymous after all.
So argues Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton computer scientist who first made waves in the privacy community by co-authoring a 2006 paper showing that Netflix users and their entire rental histories could be identified by cross-referencing supposedly anonymous Netflix ratings with the Internet Movie Database.
Narayanan and fellow Princeton professor Edward Felten delivered the latest blow to the case of de-identification proponents (those who maintain that de-identification is viable) with a July 9 paper that makes a serious case for data paranoia. They argue that de-identification doesn’t work -- in theory or in practice -- and that those who say it does are promoting a “false sense of security” by naively underestimating the attackers who might try to deduce personal information from big data.
[Commentary] The extremely aggressive bandwidth caps that most mobile providers impose -- particularly AT&T and Verizon -- don’t make any sense as a way to manage congestion and that they seriously undermine the value of mobile broadband to consumers.
The wireless carriers -- particularly AT&T and Verizon -- argue that they need to use caps to manage congestion and stop “bandwidth hogs” from destroying our national wireless networks with their cat videos. Now comes T-Mobile with fairly rock solid evidence that bandwidth caps have nothing to do with technical constraints and everything to do with AT&T and Verizon holding most of the good wireless spectrum used for mobile broadband.
Subscribers not using streaming media for fear of surpassing data caps hurts not only our ability to use broadband to its fullest potential, but has serious implications for the Open Internet and network neutrality. As we’ve argued all along, there’s no real reason to cap broadband. It’s not because AT&T and Verizon are protecting our networks from bandwidth hogs. It’s because AT&T and Verizon are leveraging their spectrum market power so they can overcharge subscribers and drive out competitors.
The FCC needs to fix data roaming. Separately, it needs to crack down on data caps that increasingly look like nothing more than a way to leverage market power to inflate prices and hurt potential competitors.
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