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  2. December 2015

December 2015

Google accused of invading students' privacy

Google is being accused of invading the privacy of students using laptop computers powered by the Internet company's Chrome operating system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, depicts Google as a two-faced opportunist in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission. Google disputes the unflattering portrait and says it isn't doing anything wrong.

The complaint alleges that Google rigged the "Chromebook" computers in a way that enables the company to collect information about students' Internet search requests and online video habits. The foundation says Google is dissecting the activities of students in kindergarten through 12th grade so it can improve its digital services. The complaint contends Google's storage and analysis of the student profile violates a "Student Privacy Pledge" that the company signed in 2014. The pledge, which covers more than 200 companies, contains a provision guaranteeing that students' personal information won't be exploited for "non-educational" purposes. The foundation is calling on the FTC to investigate Google, stop it from using information on students' activities for its own purposes and order it to destroy any information it has collected that's not related to education.

NAB: Consolidated Cable Needs No FCC Retransmission Aid

The National Association of Broadcasters hammered multichannel video programming distributors as a consolidated industry that has unprecedented market power and "significant leverage" over broadcasters in retransmission negotiations. That came in comments at the Federal Communications Commission on its review of the "totality of circumstances" test for determining whether those negotiations are conducted in good faith.

NAB said the FCC's proposed rulemaking would change the regime in favor of MVPDs while "virtually ignoring" the new video world order, dominated by 10 MVPDs that collectively "control" 94 percent of subscribers, with the top four controlling 79 percent. NAB said any leverage broadcasters do have is not from market power, but from investing in quality content that consumers want. The FCC's rulemaking proposal hinges on the conclusion that pay TV operators are no longer monopolists, says NAB, but the fact that there is now a "modicum" of competition has only allowed retransmission to become relevant, it said, now that cable operators can't simply refuse to may anything to broadcasters in return for reselling their signals.

Lending Startups Look at Borrowers’ Phone Usage to Assess Creditworthiness

A handful of Silicon Valley-backed startups are looking to revolutionize lending in the developing world, where banks are scarce and many would-be borrowers have no credit history. Their strategy: Show me your smartphone, and my app will find out how creditworthy you are.

Smartphones can dramatically reduce the cost of lending, experts say, because the apps they run generate huge amounts of data - texts, e-mails, GPS coordinates, social-media posts, retail receipts, and so on -- indicating thousands of subtle patterns of behavior that correlate with repayment or default. Even obscure variables such as how frequently a user recharges the phone’s battery, how many incoming text messages they receive, how many miles they travel in a given day or how they enter contacts into their phone -- the decision to add last name correlates with creditworthiness -- can bear on a decision to extend credit.

Why Are There So Many Data Centers in Iowa?

The variables that determine where to locate a data center form a carefully calibrated form of real estate alchemy. When I’ve asked data center operations managers, the answer has varied from approximately forty characteristics to a blunt four: "Networks, land, power, and taxes." Regardless of the exact incantations and calculations performed, many companies have concluded that central Iowa was an ideal location for their data centers.

While there are somewhat romantic historical reasons that make Iowa a compelling location for data centers, the majority of factors that attracted these companies speak to more contemporary concerns, like power costs and environmental impact. Iowa's electricity rates are, relative to many other states, low. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iowa's electricity rates for August 2015 were 10.92 cents/kilowatt for commercial use and 7.03 cents/kilowatt for industrial use (for comparison, California's power rates are about 18.13 cents/kilowatt commercial and 13.87 cents/kilowatt industrial). While that rate isn't that much lower than the national average, Iowa also doesn't apply sales tax to power use. And while the majority of that power doesn't come from wind, it's a significant source - in 2013, 27.5 percent of Iowa's electricity generation came from wind power (58.5 percent came from coal).

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