Facebook against net neutrality tweaks because they are afraid of a no-Facebook plan?

“F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms” (nytimes):

The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

“We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the F.C.C. fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone,” Erin Egan, a vice president at Facebook, said in a statement. “We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle.”

In some ways this is a yawn because it takes us back to where the Internet was for decades. But, on the other hand the Internet didn’t always have the addictive services that it has now.

What if Verizon were to offer a plan to businesses that limited access to non-work sites, e.g., Facebook, to 15 minutes per day? That would be illegal under the regulations adopted recently, but legal if the current FCC revokes them.

A lot of companies, of course, run firewalls that block Netflix, Facebook, et al., on their wired and WiFi internal networks. But if the company provides a phone with unlimited LTE data maybe there is no current practical and legal way to stop employees from spending time on these services during the workday (because the handheld device gets Internet service without going through the company’s Facebook-blocking firewall).

[What do my Facebook friends say about this return to the 2014 rules? “This is huge. This is terrible. This is the beginning of the end. This is fascism. … This is the beginning of censorship the likes of which we have never seen.”]

On the third hand, how would it be possible for Internet providers to block particular sites as the New York Times suggests? If consumers are using a VPN service (example) then how would the ISP have any idea which sites were being visited? Even if consumers aren’t using a VPN service, wouldn’t censoring sites expose an ISP to the risk of losing lucrative municipal monopolies? Time Warner doesn’t want a city council deciding to allow Verizon FiOS to compete, right? Why give politicians a chance to take money from Verizon, give Verizon a license, and say that they’re doing it in the name of free speech?

Finally, why would we expect a change to net neutrality laws to result in significantly higher rates paid by consumers? If the Internet providers are monopolies (which they are in a lot of places, including Cambridge, Massachusetts (part of Komcast Kountry)) and they’ve read an Econ 101 textbook they are already extracting the maximum $$ from consumers via their Triple Play plans.

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Christmas shopping idea: Harvey Weinstein-endorsed massage chair

Happy Black Friday.

On a recent trip to the mall, a friend stopped in at Brookstone to shop for gifts for her brothers. Her husband and I relaxed in the massage chairs. It occurred to me what Harvey Weinstein’s next job could be… endorsing massage chairs! (The ads could run next to Al Franken ads for a doorknob/door-knocker manufacturer.)

Readers: What is on your Christmas list this year?

Here are some of my own ideas:

Ideas that aren’t in the photo-nerd category:

  • Nokia watch. It looks like a regular watch, but has a 0-100% activity dial so that your friend can be constantly reminded of his or her progress against a goal, e.g., 10,000 steps, but not have to keep checking a phone. 8-month battery life so it doesn’t become another hassle in your friend’s life.

Ideas in the flying-nerd category:

  • for pilot friends with iPhones: Foreflight gift certificate
  • for pilot friends: offer to go over to their hangar and send the life jackets and/or life raft in for recertification (needs to be done every 1-5 years and is a hassle)
  • Aero Vodochody L-39NG(!); see Wikipedia for the vanilla L-39, a beautiful example of which, complete with ejection seats, can be purchased for $300,000 (less than an Icon A5!)
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Thanksgiving Idea: Give government back to the Native Americans?

I’m thankful for a lot of things this year, but I don’t want to disfigure this blog too much with the maudlin friends-and-family sentiments that are more conventional on Facebook.

Let me try something in the old-style Thanksgiving spirit and just say thank-you to the Native Americans for not insisting that all of the Europeans who landed here return back home. Without Native American hospitality I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the use of this great continent for 54 years.

However, I wonder if we European-Americans haven’t overstayed our welcome. I haven’t kept in touch with the Native American friends whom I made while living in New Mexico, but I can’t imagine that they looked at the 2016 Presidential election and said “It is amazing that these European immigrants managed to find two such fantastic candidates.”

Maybe we can’t all clear out and leave North America to its rightful inhabitants (unless we start to do better on the PISA test, other countries probably wouldn’t want us), but could we at least clear out politically? Why not let the Native Americans set up a government (presumably they’d pick a British-style parliamentary system, as have most countries) and we non-Native Americans can agree to respect their decisions?

Related:

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Europe and competition among U.S. states prove that high corporate tax rates are unsustainable?

My Facebook friends continue to be filled with wrath regarding the Republican proposal to cut corporate tax rates to the levels that prevail in Europe (18.9 percent, average). One friend, for example, recently cited to “The Republican War on College: For the cost of cutting corporate income taxes, the U.S. could provide universal pre-K and make tuition free at public colleges for nonaffluent students.” (Atlantic)

These same folks often cite European welfare states as examples to which the U.S. should aspire. I’m wondering if those same welfare states haven’t proven that it isn’t possible to sustain a high corporate tax rate.

The average human is reluctant to move and the average American is no longer even willing to move from state to state (see Tyler Cowen: “These days Americans are less likely to switch jobs, less likely to move around the country, and, on a given day, less likely to go outside the house at all.”). But corporate shells don’t miss friends and family when they move to Bermuda (tax-free), or Ireland (12.5 percent tax), or nowhere at all (Apple Computer’s profits!).

I wonder if we’ve already run this experiment on a smaller scale here in the U.S. among the states. In theory a lot of states have corporate income taxes. But in practice the big companies don’t need to pay this because they demand 20 years of tax-free living in exchange for locating a headquarters or factory in a state. So if our states can’t collect these taxes in practice, except on some hapless small businesses that don’t generate much profit, why is there any possibility of collecting big $$ at the national level now that world business is global?

The Europeans became experts at collecting the highest possible percentage of GDP as tax revenue to run their massive welfare states (since trimmed back, of course, and now the U.S. has caught up!). If Europe can’t make high corporate income tax rates work, why do we think that we can?

[The Facebook friends who are most vehement about the need to retain high corporate tax rates are those who have never worked as a private-sector manager. I did a little bit of questioning and it seems that there are two assumptions underlying their passion for the current tax code: (1) the supply of rich people and rich companies is essentially fixed and one need not be concerned about the U.S. getting a share of the next crop of rich people and companies, (2) corporations will not move in order to shield shareholders’ money from high tax rates (“everyone wants to be in the US” was one response). So maybe the debate is actually about whether or not corporations and business capital are mobile.]

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UndocuAlly training

Here’s a career path that I hadn’t known about: UndocuAlly trainer.

From a mole within one of America’s more expensive liberal arts colleges, a letter sent to all faculty members:

Dear all,
My name is **** and I’m the Program Coordinator for Undocumented Student Initiatives… . As continuing from last year, we are offering another UndocuAlly training for faculty and staff. We encourage all to attend if possible. Please share this message with you [sic] department.
Warm wishes,
****
Dear colleagues,
Our Undocu-Ally trainings [nobody can agree if this is spelled with or without a hyphen?] have been fully attended and well received in the past year. Thank you for those who have already joined us for these. We are pleased to announce that we are offering another Undocu-Ally training in the next couple of weeks. Please sign up as soon as possible. We will have 30 spots available.

Requirements for Certification:
1. Attend the training in-full, no arriving late or leaving early. (Yes, the training is three hours long)
2. …
5. Sign Undocu-Ally commitment letter and Educator Activist decal.

​If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. We will be offering more Undocu-Ally trainings soon in case you are not able to make it to this one.

Apparently there is a lot of demand nationwide for people to deliver these classes. For example, see UC Berkeley’s corresponding program, which also includes a sticker of a butterfly (people are ugly caterpillars when living in a country other than the U.S. and metamorphose into beautiful butterflies once established in the U.S.?).

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75-year-old guy parades naked and doesn’t realize that this pains others

Here’s a Guardian article on the latest vacancy in showbiz:

Charlie Rose has been suspended by CBS News after becoming the latest media figure to be accused of sexual harassment when eight women came forward to describe unwanted advances, including lewd phone calls, parading naked, and groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.

Rose, 75, whose eponymous show airs on PBS, also serves as a host on CBS This Morning and as a correspondent for 60 Minutes.

“I have learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will too. All of us, including me, are coming to a newer and deeper recognition of the pain caused by conduct in the past, and have come to a profound new respect for women and their lives.”

In short, it didn’t occur to him that it might be painful for others to witness the naked parade of his nearly 75-year-old body! Maybe his next stop will be Burning Man?

[Thanks to Jonathan Graehl for brightening my day with this one.]

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Air Force F-16 runway overrun: good argument for the dome light copilot

“Poor Airspeed Control Caused Thunderbird Crash” (Avweb):

The U.S. Air Force F-16, assigned to the Thunderbirds, that crashed following a runway overrun at Dayton International Airport in June was more than 40 knots too fast on final approach and did not touch down until nearly 5,000 feet down the runway. The $29 million aircraft was entirely destroyed … In addition to being 43 knots fast over the threshold, … the pilot, did not pull the throttle to idle until the aircraft had flown 3,000 feet down the runway, according to the AIB.

The pilot was injured, unfortunately, in addition to the loss suffered by the taxpayer (also kind of embarrassing given that the Thunderbirds air show team members are supposed to be among our best pilots; a runway overrun is more typically associated with a weekend pilot recently upgraded to a higher-performance airplane).

I think this is a good illustration of why the time has come for my “dome light copilot” idea. With a video camera up in the dome light area, a microprocessor can see all of the same instruments and view out the window as the pilot. This avoids the multi-year certification process for anything that is truly hooked into the aircraft. The dome light copilot is connected only to power (which had previously supplied only the light) and to the audio panel. This accident might have been avoided with minimal intelligence, e.g., “hey, you’re more than 15 knots fast; why don’t you go around?” and “you didn’t touch down in the touchdown zone; how about adding power and going around?”

Related:

 

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Lady Bird vs. Thor: Ragnarok

A joint review of the last two movies that I have seen: Lady Bird and Thor: Ragnarok.

Thor has way better sets. Also, an awesome play-within-a-play that answers the question “What would you do if you’d faked your own death and then set yourself up as king?”

“Everything was real,” was my friend’s comment on Lady Bird. “The people were real, the houses were real, the cars were real,” she continued. Her just-out-of-college son agreed that it was a realistic depiction of youth. So it was six thumbs-ups for Lady Bird.

Maybe more realism that you’d want on a casual night out: The aging software engineer can’t get a job. The nurse who married and stayed married to a middle-class earner struggles financially compared to if she’d had sex with a specialist physician and collected child support. Teenagers take up a lot of room in the house and parenting them is unrewarding emotionally.

Nits: Saoirse Ronan is an accomplished actor, but she is and looks 23 years old while her character was supposed to be 17. At times the movie wasn’t super subtle. There is a teenager who loves musical theater, wants to curl his hair, and dreams of visiting Paris. Can you guess what sexual orientation will be revealed? The rich kids were cartoonishly rendered.

Readers: What did you think of these two movies?

 

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America has produced citizens who seldom have sex, but demand free birth control

iGen concerns Americans born 1995-2012, about 74 million people and 1/4 of our population.

This generation has been vocal on Facebook, decrying the possibility that some working Americans will have to pay $9/month for birth control pills (see Why the demand for lesbian and transgender women to subsidize cisgender heterosexual women?). Yet it turns out that they may not need these pills:

The lack of dating leads to the next surprising fact about iGen: they are less likely to have sex than teens in previous decades

The drop is the largest for 9th graders, where the number of sexually active teens has almost been cut in half since the 1990s. The average teen now has sex around the spring of 11th grade , while most GenX’ers in the 1990s got started a year earlier, by the spring of 10th grade. Fifteen percent fewer 12th graders in 2015 ( vs . 1991 ) have had sex. Fewer teens having sex is one of the reasons behind what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: the teen birthrate hit an all – time low in 2015 , cut by more than half since its modern peak in the early 1990s ( see Figure 1.4 ). Only 2.4 % of girls aged 15 to 19 had a baby in 2015, down from 6% in 1992 . So with fewer teens having sex, fewer are getting pregnant and fewer are giving birth at a young age . Parenthood, one of the more irrevocable milestones of adulthood, is less likely to be reached by today’s teens .

The low teen birthrate is also an interesting contrast to the post–World War II era—in 1960, for example, 9% of teen girls had babies. Back then, though, most of them were married; the median age at first marriage for women in 1960 was 20. Thus, half of the women getting married for the first time in 1960 were teenagers—unthinkable today but completely accepted then. These days, marriage and children are many years off for the average teen, something we’ll explore more in chapter 8 (along with another intriguing question: Does the trend toward less sexual activity continue into adulthood?). Overall, the decline in teen sex and teen pregnancy is another sign of the slowed developmental speed of iGen: teens are waiting longer to have sex and have babies just as they are waiting longer to go out without their parents and date.

These young folks are more likely to have at least some kinds of sex, but those kinds wouldn’t seem to require birth control pills:

If younger generations are more likely to believe that there’s nothing wrong with gay and lesbian sex, does that mean they are more likely to have it themselves? They are: the number of young women who have had sex with at least one other woman has nearly tripled since the early 1990s. More men now report having had a male sexual partner as well

There is a particularly large generation gap in lesbian sexual experience. Among women born in the 1940s and 1950s, only about six in one hundred had had a lesbian partner during her lifetime by 2014–2016. But among those born in the 1980s and 1990s, nearly one in seven already had even though she’d lived decades less. Millennial and iGen women are much more likely than their predecessors to have had sex with another woman.

Maybe they need the free pills because, compared to the bad old non-free days, there is a greater chance of sexual assault leading to pregnancy?

From 1992 to 2015, the rate of rape was nearly cut in half in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, which are based on reports to police.

the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), administered by the US Department of Justice. In a 2014 report, the DOJ broke down the data by age and student status. Figure 6.6 shows the rate of rape for 18- to 24-year olds enrolled in a college or university, an important population given the recent attention paid to sexual assault on campus. Here, too, rape was less common in recent years, with the rate more than cut in half (from 9.2 to 4.4 per 1,000) between 1997 and 2013.

More: read iGen.

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The German pilot’s life in Occupied France

What was it like to be a Luftwaffe pilot in Occupied France? Below are some excerpts from transcripts of interviews done 10 years after D-Day:

The quiet months of 1944:

Thomas Beike was a Leutnant (Pilot Officer) attached to Jagdabschnittführer 5 (Leading Fighter Group 5) in the area North of Evreux, Normandy.

our section’s small airbase, which was in the Evreux-Lisieux sector was one of several in that area positioned quite near to the coast. The base was on a plain belonging to a country estate of some kind, and the chateau had been requisitioned to provide accommodation for the pilots and senior officers. So I went from bedding down in a frozen hut, as I did in my posting on the Eastern Front, to sleeping in a proper bed with a staff servant to attend to meals and the polishing of boots and other necessities. This chateau had a wine cellar which was very well stocked, and the quality of food available locally was remarkable.

As you are a man of the world, sir, you can also appreciate that we pilots were popular fellows with the French ladies. We were officially forbidden from having anything more than a passing relationship, if you understand me, with French women, but in many cases the pilots and the ground crews, the Flak crews and so on formed quite affectionate bonds with some of these girls. The ladies were extremely astute, I remember, and in many ways they ran the local villages and towns in the absence of their menfolk, who were often in the labour force or the internment system.

The effects of Allied bombing and blockades:

To keep a fighter aircraft in service, you need a great deal of spare parts, oil, coolant, lubricants and so on, and all of these were in short supply in 1944. It was quite common for a fighter to be waiting in its hangar, fully armed, pilot ready, fuelled, but unable to take off because coolant could not be found for the engine. Or, when the coolant arrived, the special air filters could not be replaced, and so on, with endless combinations of things that were missing or could not be repaired. This meant that units took off below strength, meaning that yet more planes were lost when they ran up against the big Allied formations. As for the pilots, we simply did not have enough good quality, fresh pilots to replace those lost in the air. … our units were under strength and each individual man was badly over-stretched, with all the mental stress that is a result. So each Luftwaffe pilot, living in his chateau with his polished boots and so on, was under the surface a somewhat tormented individual.

D-Day:

On the 5th, it was the birthday of one of the other pilots, and we had a small gathering at the farmhouse to mark this event.

Well, there were six of us pilot officers, and two senior officers, one of whom attended with his wife, who was visiting the base from Germany. You may look surprised, Herr Eckhertz, but this was quite acceptable in our section. At about nine pm, the senior attendees departed, leaving only us pilots. We were joined after that by several French ladies, who were well-connected locally and were excellent company. In what role did the French ladies attend this gathering? In what role? As guests. I am sure you can understand that if one is in France, it is inevitable that such ladies will find their way into the company of pilots.

The ladies, I must say, were very upset at this display of air power that the Allies were making over France. We could tell that these were Allied aircraft from their engine tone, which was level, whereas our large aircraft had a rise-and-fall tone to the engines. We stood in the darkness listening to all this going on in the air. The ladies made remarks such as ‘You must save us from those salauds Anglaises’ (English bastards) and similar things. For them, it was very upsetting, this threatening force, and we sent a squadron car to return them to their homes.

In the end, in the mid-morning, three of us were ordered to take off and fly to the coast near Caen as an armed reconnaissance patrol. … Was the Messerschmitt suitable as a reconnaissance plane? No, it was completely unsuitable. Visibility was very limited forward, because the engine cowling was right here, under your chin. You were meant to dive on things to be able to see them. We could see nothing behind, with no bubble canopy, and even to the sides the wings obstructed the view. … our planes had no radio connection to our base . . . in the air, we could only speak to each other. So we would have to observe, see what we could, and then return to base at speed without being shot down, to make our report.

The Allies own the air:

As my ground crew were closing my canopy, my commander stepped up on the ladder and shouted to me that this was a vital mission, that the aerial information we could bring back was essential to the task of driving the enemy back to the sea. He gave me his personal Leica aviation camera, … As soon as we levelled out, we were hit by a pair of Mustangs that came down from the 120 degree point, on our rear quadrant. They tore right through us before we got our wits together . . . damn, I blush with shame when I remember that, to be attacked so quickly and in such a basic fashion.

I wasn’t hit, but one of my comrades was, . . . and then he was simply lost in all the flames. This was the pilot whose birthday we celebrated the night before; he was twenty-five years old. I doubt if he has a grave or a headstone of any sort in France.

[on returning] I saw on the runway the burning outline of our third Messerschmitt. I found out later that he had returned with an engine fire, and blown up as he came in. I was the only one to survive of us three, you see.

Friendly fire was a problem:

Flak tracer was coming up as well, which must have been German fire, as we were still inland. Those Flak gunners were in a panic and shooting at anything, it seemed.

(The book also contains stories of Allied planes strafing Allied soldiers.)

He was able to contribute to the German defense effort:

I am not proud of it, but I personally shot up a row of Churchill tank men in that week after the invasion. … We got this information about their position from a local French civilian, in fact, who was passing us intelligence about the Allied locations. You see, we couldn’t go up, patrol around for targets and then attack them, as the Allied pilots did. We were so outnumbered that we would have been brought down immediately. But if we had reliable, specific information that a certain target was at a certain location, we could race over in one pass and hit them and then go for home, with no need for a second run at them. The French who sympathised with us, and there were many, often gave us this kind of target information, through channels that our people had set up as we retreated.

Why would French citizens be helping the Germans?

In the first days and weeks, it was by no means certain that the landings were a permanent lodgement, or that they would develop into a full invasion even if they were. Everyone remembered the peculiar attack on Dieppe, when the Canadians invaded but then left after a few hours. Was this going to be a repeat of that, but on a bigger scale? So, because of this uncertainty, many of the French in the Allied zone put their bets on both horses, if you see what I mean, and they played up to the Allied invaders while secretly passing information to us. A certain contact gave us excellent information, and this particular alert about a group of the Churchill tanks came from her. I went up and set myself on a direct course for the location, knowing I would only have one pass before having to break for my base again. As soon as I saw the copse of trees, I saw the outline of the Churchills, which were stationary with no attempt to break up their outlines with foliage or nets. I also saw the crews assembled in a large group, in a meadow to the rear. Perhaps they were having some kind of briefing there.

The fact was that quite a number of the French followed us out of France, rather than be paraded as ‘collaborators’ and the like by the Allies and the French patriots who sprang up all over the place after the invasion. Such French helpers were welcomed into the Reich, even though they gave us more mouths to feed.

From a German military police officer:

I am pointing out that from July 1940 to August 1944, which is almost the entire war, really, the French government supported and cooperated with Germany in all areas. And not just the French government, but the French state: the police, the civil service, the factories, the transports and all the rest of it.

From “static infantry” private Marten Eineg:

Our life, by the standards of what most German soldiers experienced, was frankly very soft. Our military rations were basic, but these were amply supplemented by produce from local farmers and retailers, … When I read today about the French Resistance, I am impressed at their tenacity, but if the readers of such books could see the trading that went on between us and the local French, they might form a different view of life in France at that time. Well, but this is perhaps a case of history being written by victors.

I would like to be able to boast that I was the first to sight the allied ships, …, but in fact I was not on observation duty at the time. On the Monday evening, I had accompanied two of my comrades to a small bar in the nearby town, which was friendly to Germans, and we had stayed there for several hours. They served a very light red wine which we were very fond of, and there were young ladies who would sit at our tables and speak with us.

I was astonished at the number of craft; … These craft included destroyer-type warships, tugs, and numerous low vessels which seemed to be invasion barges. There was a great variety of other boats. I was struck speechless at this sight, which I had never imagined possible. The sheer volume of craft was what amazed me. Even as I stared, more ships came into view, endlessly filling the sea.

I thought that this bombardment would be over soon, but I found that it continued on and on. It became impossible to react, or even to think clearly, because there was no pause between the explosions,… I assure you that I was not afraid to fight, but to be subjected to these colossal, ceaseless explosions was not the same as fighting. The man who was the gun loader reacted even worse than me, and he began to scream and bang his hands on the concrete wall; I could not hear his voice, but I could see his mouth and fists moving.

The other Germans interviewed in the book tell a similar story of sudden transition from a comfortable quiet life to absolute hell. Here’s a “concrete Panzer” (static gun) private soldier’s version:

Apart

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