AT&T Discriminated Against Low-Income Neighborhoods, Study Finds

Stephanie Keith / Reuters

Over the past decade, AT&T has likely engaged in “digital redlining” of high poverty communities in Cleveland, leaving households there with limited internet access, according to a study released Friday by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community, a Cleveland nonprofit.

Based on new government filings detailing broadband availability, the analysis “strongly suggests that AT&T has systematically discriminated against lower-income Cleveland neighborhoods in its deployment of home Internet and video technologies,” the groups said. The scope of the study was limited to the Cleveland area.

The groups argue that AT&T deliberately neglected key internet investments in many low income neighborhoods, where 35% of residents make less than the poverty threshold.

A spokesperson for AT&T told BuzzFeed news: “The report does not accurately reflect the investment we've made in bringing faster internet to urban and rural areas across the US.”

Thirty-four million Americans, which is about 10 percent of the population, lack access to broadband internet, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Race, income, education, and geography each play a part in defining the digital divide. And even as more Americans are using smartphones to connect, the shift to mobile hasn&039;t solved the problem of connectivity for those who can only get online using their phones. These Americans tend to be people of color, less educated, younger, and lower income, which are the same groups that tend not to have internet at home, according to Pew researchers.

The Cleveland analysis looks specifically at AT&T&039;s broadband technology known as “fiber to the node,” in which data travels through fiber into a neighborhood device and then to individual homes. While most middle-income neighborhoods and suburbs that surround Cleveland have this technology, most of the high poverty communities inside Cleveland do not, the analysis found. These communities depend on older tech, in which data travels longer distances from a “central office” often located miles away from households, the groups said.

The difference in tech translates to vastly inferior internet speeds for economically disadvantaged communities. According to the analysis, fiber to the node can deliver speeds of 18, 24, 45, and 75 mbps. But the older technology delivers only 18 and 24 mbps, with customers experiencing 3 or 6 mbps depending on how far their homes are from the “central office.” That&039;s a significant disparity — someone with only 3 mbsp internet access can be quite limited in what they can do online compared to someone with 24 mbps speed.

The analysis shows “a clear and troubling pattern,” the report concludes. “A pattern of long-term, systematic failure to invest in the infrastructure required to provide equitable, mainstream Internet access to residents of the central city (compared to the suburbs) and to lower-income city neighborhoods.”

AT&T said in a statement that it has invested $135 billion in its wireless and wired networks in the past four years. But according to the study, “there is no indication that AT&T has expanded its [node] infrastructure to any new areas of the city of Cleveland since 2013.”

The analysis was based in part on documents AT&T filed with the Federal Communications Commission detailing where the company offers internet service, as well as city construction permits.

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Do You Have What It Takes To Be A CIA Hacker?

The US spy agency uses some ridiculous names for its pretty scary programs — can you pick the real ones from the bunch?

Wikileaks’ latest document dump provided details about some scary-sounding projects being run out of the CIA.

The leaked documents, courtesy of the group that distributed emails stolen by Russian hackers during last year&#039;s election, are filled with projects aimed at figuring out how to hack things like your phone and smart TV. (Though they don&039;t say that the CIA has figured out how to break into your encrypted apps.) But in there with the detailed charts about the ways the CIA is trying to collect digital information, there are also things like a giant list of emojis and the revelation that some of the projects have totally ridiculous names.

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

Quelle: <a href="Do You Have What It Takes To Be A CIA Hacker?“>BuzzFeed

This Goldman Sachs Conference Has 76 Speakers And Only Five Are Women

Tamer Cosgun

Goldman Sachs is hosting a two-day technology conference in London where 76 people are scheduled to speak, and just five of them are women.

The event agenda, seen by BuzzFeed News, features investors, technology executives, Goldman employees, and even the former head of the British signals intelligence agency, discussing everything from “Driverless Cars: Turning Vision into Reality” to “Investing in a Time of Constant Disruption.”

But 93% of those speakers are men. Of the five women speaking, three of them are Goldman Sachs employees, one of whom was recently added to the agenda as a replacement for a male Goldman banker originally selected to speak.

Matthew Zeitlin

The gender disparity is most stark in the presentations to be given by technology companies, who select their own representatives to speak at the conference. Just one of those 37 presentations features a woman. About 11% of the investors attending the conference are women, the source familiar with the conference said.

Leaders and workers in the tech industry and beyond have frequently objected to the lack of women represented at industry conferences. The events offer speakers the chance to promote both themselves and their companies, and to network with industry leaders and financial power brokers like Goldman Sachs.

Just four events on the Goldman conference agenda have any female panelists or speakers. Sherry Coutu, an entrepreneur who runs Founders4Schools, a UK organization that brings businesspeople to schools to give talks to schoolchildren, will talk on a panel moderated by Joanne Hannaford, a Goldman technology executive. Stephanie Eltz, the founder of health startup Doctify, is scheduled to speak with the company&#039;s CEO, Oliver Thomas.

The four tech executives on a panel titled “What you soon won&039;t be able to live without” are all men, but they&039;ll be moderated by Sumana Manohar, a Goldman analyst. Another all-male panel, “The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Listed,” is being moderated by Katherine Ward, one of Goldman&039;s UK-based managing directors.

Ward is a new addition to the event: A version of the conference agenda available online Thursday listed another male executive moderating the panel. That agenda has since been updated, with Ward switched in as the moderator.

The male-dominated banks of Wall Street have launched a number of women-friendly initiatives in recent years, including Goldman 10,000 Women program, which invests in and trains female entrepreneurs. Just this week, State Street earned itself a round of friendly coverage when it set up a statue of a little girl facing down the famous Wall Street bull on International Women&039;s Day.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Women made up 23% of the 84 Goldman bankers promoted to the coveted partner level in 2016, the highest proportion ever. But men still dominate the bank&039;s leadership, with just five women on its 33-person management committee and two women among its nine executive officers.

At a women-focused conference hosted by Fortune last year, Goldman&039;s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein joked that he could replace the bank&039;s staff with the participants in the 10,000 Women program.

“You could take the population of Goldman Sachs, brush them aside, give them a few more weeks of training, and we could replace them with this crowd,” he said. When asked to follow up on the comment, he said “I said ‘could,’ but that would be a little bit of a radical step.”

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Apple Is Fighting Laws That Make It Easier To Repair Your iPhone

Shailesh Andrade / Reuters

Apple is opposing a bill in Nebraska that&#039;s designed to make it easier and possibly cheaper for you to repair your iPhone. On Thursday afternoon, legislators in Nebraska considered a “right to repair” proposal, which was designed to open up the state&039;s repair market for electronic equipment. It would require manufacturers to provide manuals and diagnostic tools that would allow independent shops to fix devices like computers and smartphones. But, according to the bill&039;s supporters, Apple wants to it see it fail. And it wouldn’t be the first time the company has tried to defeat such a proposal.

The chair of the Judiciary Committee in Nebraska&039;s legislature concluded Thursday&039;s hearing by saying the bill will likely not be considered this year, reflecting the challenge of passing new legislation with enough urgency and support in state houses.

Eight states — Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Wyoming — are considering right to repair legislation. The laws would require that device manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and John Deere provide repair manuals and parts to independent repair shops, giving customers more options to fix their phones and ultimately lower the cost of repairs, proponents say.

Opponents of right to repair say such laws would unfairly expose their trade secrets and could lead to safety and security concerns for consumers. But one prominent repair organization estimates that phone manufacturers stand to lose billions of dollars in repair services that for now they largely control.

State Senator Lydia Brasch, who is sponsoring the Nebraska bill, told BuzzFeed News that in a recent meeting with Apple representative Steve Kester, she was told her state would become the “Mecca for bad actors” if the bill passed, with hackers flooding into the state. According to Sen. Brasch, the Apple representative said if she were to except phones from the legislation, then Apple would not oppose it. The bill wouldn&039;t just apply to smartphones but to host of electronic devices, including tablets, computers, and printers, as well as computerized farming equipment like tractors.

New York State Senator Phil Boyle first introduced right to repair legislation in 2014, but he told BuzzFeed News he faced an uphill battle, with tech companies, Apple among them, lobbying him and his colleagues against it.

“Some of us believe that this practice is monopolistic,” Sen. Boyle said. “If I buy a computer, they are almost requiring me to go back to the facility to get it fixed at an inflated rate.”

“The last time, it came up against strong lobbying from the tech sector,” Sen. Boyle said. The bill in the previous session never made it to a vote. But he has reintroduced the right to repair bill with jobs and antitrust concerns in mind.

Massachusetts State Representative Claire Cronin also received opposition from Apple on her right to repair bill during the last legislative session. “Currently, there is a monopoly on the repair industry,” Rep. Cronin told BuzzFeed News in a statement. “This legislation serves to expand competition in the repair market, which helps consumers repair their electronic products at a reasonable and affordable cost.”

Other state legislators have drawn inspiration from Massachusetts&039; fight. Signed into law in 2013, landmark automotive right to repair rules there prompted car dealers to pledge to share repair and diagnostic information to mechanics across the country. Rep. Cronin extends the principle behind the automative law into the world of consumer electronics. “Apple opposed this legislation in the last session. However, we sense growing public support and look forward to the hearing and public debate on the issue,” she said.

Apple declined to comment on Nebraska&039;s right to repair legislation or its lobbying efforts in other states. But the company said that limiting repairs to authorized vendors is the only way it can guarantee that genuine parts are used and that the devices are fixed correctly.

Speaking of manufacturers generally, Sen. Boyle of New York told BuzzFeed News that he is open to allowing businesses to authorize specific repair shops to work on their devices, but only if the certification requirements are reasonable. In the past, Boyle said, certifications have included exorbitant fees for small businesses, he said, mentioning one such fee at $5,000, “effectively making it impossible.”

A host of tech industry groups, including CompTIA, the Consumer Technology Association, and the Information Technology Industry Council are also opposing the Nebraska legislation. The groups represent some of the biggest names in consumer tech: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nintendo and Sony.

In a recent letter to Sen. Brasch, the groups wrote that her proposed legislation “compromises intellectual property” and would “jeopardize consumer safety and security,” making them vulnerable to hackers and improper repairs. The groups also say that right to repair is unnecessary, since customers already have “substantial choice when it comes to visiting the repair facility that best suits their needs.”

Apple told BuzzFeed News that it has 1,371 authorized service partner locations in the country, in addition to 270 Apple Stores across 44 states.

But Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, said that authorized repair providers are limited in the types of repairs they can perform. And Sen. Brasch emphasized that it&039;s harder for Americans living in rural communities to access a narrow set of authorized vendors. There is only one Apple Store in the state of Nebraska.

A spokesperson for CompTIA, one of the tech groups opposing the bill, told BuzzFeed News in a statement that: “It’s important to stress that we support the ability of consumers to freely and safely repair their electronic devices. But that’s not really what these bills are about.” CompTIA went on to argue that the Nebraska legislation and similar bills “expose trade secrets,” a claim that Sen. Brasch, Sen. Boyle, and Gordon-Byrn insist is false.

“Anybody who deals with technology repair is getting a raw deal in the marketplace,” Gordon-Byrne said. “We should be able to repair the things we buy.”

Quelle: <a href="Apple Is Fighting Laws That Make It Easier To Repair Your iPhone“>BuzzFeed

Google Is Building A New Corporate Campus That Seems To Rival Apple's

Google&#039;s plans for a new, massive corporate campus in Mountain View, California have been approved.

The city council gave the final approval for Google&039;s plans at a March 7 meeting.

The campus will be a giant dome and other buildings, collectively dubbed “Charleston East,” after the street it occupies.

It&039;ll be 18 acres. Google unveiled plans for the office park two years ago, and preparations for construction have already begun. The building, slated to be nearly 600,000 square feet and completed by 2019, will serve as office space for 2,700 Google employees as well as contractors and service workers. That&039;s basically as big as 10.3 football fields. It amounts to about 220 square feet per employee. Now think about how big your office space is.

Google

The company released renderings of the campus back in 2015. They look like Hudson River School paintings from the future.

Google

Amirite?? “The Oxbow,” by Thomas Cole.

Wikipedia

The rendering of the inside looks like a temple.

“The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire” by Thomas Cole.

LACMA

~Coincidentally~ rival tech giant Apple announced the upcoming opening of its new 175-acre corporate campus two weeks ago.

“Apple Park” will open in Cupertino, CA in April. Its campus will be nearly 10 times bigger than Charleston East and will house 12,000 employees.

The campus will feature a theater named after Steve Jobs, the company&039;s co-founder, accessible only by glass cylinder, pictured below.

Quelle: <a href="Google Is Building A New Corporate Campus That Seems To Rival Apple&039;s“>BuzzFeed

Uber Rallies Drivers Against Teamster Unionization Efforts With Podcasts And Pizza Parties

As Uber scrambles to address an internal scandal over employee allegations of systemic sexism, it’s facing another, increasingly heated labor battle in Seattle — a union drive led by the Teamsters.

The ride-hail giant has opposed the unionization movement in Seattle since it began in late 2015. While the Teamsters worked to win the city approvals necessary to represent drivers, Uber ramped up a sprawling phalanx of anti-union efforts, including everything from in-app notifications and text messages to in-person seminars, collective bargaining pizza parties, and Teamster-critical podcasts.

Just this week, an alert sent via Uber’s driver app warned drivers that Teamsters had been granted “approval to begin pressuring drivers for support” and directed them to information on how they might “protect [their] freedom.”

An in-app message sent to drivers from Uber warning them about the risk of joining the Teamsters union.

The gist of Uber&#039;s argument against the Teamsters: The organization isn’t qualified to represent Uber driver interests because of past efforts to cap the number of ride-hail drivers on the streets in Seattle and otherwise hamstring drivers.

Caleb Weaver, who runs public affairs for Uber in Washington, says the company has good reason to believe this. “Right now as an independent driver, drivers have the ability to decide when, where, and how much they want to drive,” he said. “If there are a series of new requirements imposed on the conditions of work, including things like minimum hours of driving, there will be a loss of control for drivers.”

Unions are typically reserved for employees, and Uber drivers are not employees of the company, but independent contractors; the Seattle collective bargaining ordinance is therefore unique, and the yearlong process of hammering out how a union of independent contractors would actually work has been understandably fraught.

Uber, which sued Seattle to block the ordinance, has been aggressively broadcasting its view in recent weeks. The company deployed a form-letter tool that allows drivers to email half a dozen elected officials in Seattle asking them to “deny the Teamsters’ application” to represent Uber drivers. It has also been holding in-person seminars on unionization efforts that frame the Teamsters as “the opponent of the independent driver” and an organization that “fights against” driver interests.

Lisa, a Seattle driver who attended one of Uber&039;s recent anti-Teamster meetings, said it played host to a mix of sentiments, with some drivers speaking out against unionization efforts, some interested in hearing directly from the Teamsters, and others airing grievances against Uber. “If I felt Uber had mistreated me, or violated civil rights or had workplace rights issues, then I would be fully supportive of a union,” Lisa told BuzzFeed News. “But I don&039;t feel that way about Uber.”

Another driver, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for his future employment opportunities, has never been in a union before but supports the idea wholeheartedly.

“Uber’s treatment of the drivers is one-sided and abusive,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Uber holds all the power, and the drivers are voiceless.”

In New York, frustrated Uber drivers have found a voice in the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), an Uber-endorsed labor organization run by the Machinists Union. “It&039;s unfortunate that Uber has taken an anti-union approach in Seattle,” said IDG founder Jim Conigliaro Jr. “They should afford workers a voice as they have here in New York. The dismissive attitude toward drivers who are simply trying to make a living is nothing new.”

An Uber spokesperson was unable to say whether the Drive Forward group in Seattle — co-founded by Uber and a group called Eastside for Hire — might one day resemble the IDG.

The Teamsters, meanwhile, reject claims that they’re wresting control away from drivers. “Uber drivers, like all Teamster members, will have the opportunity to negotiate, review, and vote on their contract before it goes into effect,” said Seattle Teamsters representative Dawn Gearhart. “Drivers have the final say on whether or not it makes sense to have a union, and they won’t approve an agreement that goes against their self-interest.”

For some Uber drivers drawn to the platform by its promise of a boss-free job with flexible hours, union membership — which comes with dues and a hierarchical power structure — can be off-putting. Said Fredrick Rice, an Uber driver who has appeared on the company&039;s podcast, “There is nothing to be gained by Uber drivers being incarcerated into a union, other than money into the union coffers.”

Uber isn’t the only startup that has a problem with how the driver-for-hire union effort has unfolded in Seattle; Lyft drivers are also impacted, and the company likewise opposes it. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Lyft described the collective bargaining ordinance as “an unfair, undemocratic process,” arguing that a “significant percentage of drivers will be disenfranchised” because the collective bargaining ordinance currently only allows drivers who work a certain amount to vote for representation.

Members of Seattle’s city council have not yet responded to a request for comment. The city will be holding its next hearing on the ride-hail collective bargaining issue on March 21; Uber’s current lawsuit against the city is scheduled to be heard in court on March 17.

Quelle: <a href="Uber Rallies Drivers Against Teamster Unionization Efforts With Podcasts And Pizza Parties“>BuzzFeed

A Week After Snap's IPO, Facebook Brings Stories Copy To Messenger's 1 Billion+ Users

Facebook

A week after Snap Inc.&#039;s high profile IPO, Facebook is going for the jugular.

The social giant on Thursday introduced yet another copy of Snapchat’s Stories feature — this time to its wildly popular Facebook Messenger app and the 1 billion people who use it.

Called Messenger Day, the new feature — which allows users to post photo and video snippets of their day in updates that appear at the top of the app — rolls out globally to Android and iOS users starting today. It could further undermine Snap’s growth prospects just as the nascently public company is getting its footing on the New York Stock Exchange. As BuzzFeed News reported in last month, Snap has been falling behind Instagram in time spent per user on Android devices after leading it in the category prior to Instagram’s introduction of Stories.

With the addition of Messenger Day, Facebook now offers three major products featuring obvious copies of Snapchat’s Stories — Instagram (600 million users), Whatsapp (1.2 billion users) and now Messenger (1 billion users). Facebook is also currently testing a version of Stories in its 1.82 billion user main app. Snapchat, by comparison, has 158 million daily users.

Though it did provide a feature rich camera filled with fun lenses and stickers similar to the ones on which Snapchat built its success, Messenger previously did not offer a means of broadly sharing the photos and videos created with it. Now, thanks to some more shameless borrowing from Snap, it does. Facebook has been testing Day since last fall.

Facebook

Snapchat’s Snap Inc. parent company has been largely silent about Facebook’s copying of its signature feature with the exception of an acknowledgement in its S-1 IPO filing that the company “may be directly competitive.” Not so model Miranda Kerr, fiance to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. “How do they sleep at night?” Kerr said of Facebook in a February interview. “When you directly copy someone, that&039;s not innovation.”

Facebook seems largely unbothered by such accusations. Asked for comment on perceptions that it is aggressively cribbing from an emerging rival a company spokesperson offered a statement that essentially shrugs them off:

“The way people share today is different than it was five or even two years ago, not only on our platform, but across any social media platform. The stories format is popular and we&039;ve seen it work in a variety of contexts. We&039;re now making that available in a way that we think people who use Messenger will enjoy. Just as News Feed eventually became a standard industry format to display updates from multiple people or sources, stories-style formats that allow people to post a collection of snapshots of their day in an ephemeral way are now a prominent way that people want to share.”

Though the “stories-style format” is indeed a prominent new method of sharing, it’s prominent across a number platforms largely because Facebook brought it to so many of its own. And while the social giant was once quick to give credit to Snapchat for developing Stories, it’s since abandoned that talking point. Pressed about Snapchat’s influence during Facebook’s rollout of the Snapchat-inspired “Status” on WhatsApp, for instance, a WhatsApp product manager would only say “I don’t think the format exists in just one app at this point.”

It&039;s worth noting that Facebook is launching Messenger Day with a strong nod to the social media influencers and creators that built up massive followings on Snapchat, but have recently become disillusioned with platform&039;s lack of analytics, technical support and how hard it is to find their content there. As part of its roll-out plan for Day, Facebook is promoting a handful of popular influencers. The implicit pitch: there&039;s a home for you on Messenger.

From a financial standpoint, the introduction of a Snapchat Stories clone to Messenger could be a boon to Facebook, which has yet to make meaningful revenue from Messenger. That said, the company has said it has no immediate plans to sell advertising inside Messenger Day, though the feature does seem a good candidate for generating both advertiser interest and inventory.

Quelle: <a href="A Week After Snap&039;s IPO, Facebook Brings Stories Copy To Messenger&039;s 1 Billion+ Users“>BuzzFeed