Neutrality vs. the Robots

On Monday, I posted about the importance of net neutrality, and of making your voice heard as the Trump FCC considers rolling back the existing strong enforcement policy.

Fortunately, that’s hardly a minority view, as more than a half million people have weighed in on the FCC’s public comment system to that end. (To reiterate, you should, too: go to gofccyourself.com, click “Express”, then leave a comment supporting “strong oversight of net neutrality based on Title II enforcement.”)

However, about ten percent of the comments have weighed in against net neutrality. And while that might elsewhere be a sign of healthy debate, it’s a bit suspicious that 58,000 of those comments use the exact same clip from a 2010 anti-neutrality press release, with posts cycling in perfect alphabetical order by posters’ names.

According to some crack reporting by ZDnet today, the supposed posters of those comments confirmed that they hadn’t left the comments themselves. Some didn’t even know what net neutrality was.

In other words, this looks like a textbook ‘astroturfing’ bot attack. Given the outsize role of bots during the 2016 election, I hope more media outlets will follow ZDnet’s lead, and give this issue the coverage it deserves. It’s bad enough that powerful internet service provider lobbies egged the FCC into considering scaling back enforcement in the first place; it’s even worse if those same players are resorting to underhanded tactics to try and make it seem like it’s what we, the people, want.

Additive

When people start getting serious about their fitness, they often start to opt for well-marketed “scientifically designed” food substitutes instead of actual food. They drop simple fish and chicken, for example, in favor of protein drinks and bars.

I’ve written before about one set of problems that causes, as breaking food down and then reassembling it from its constituent components leaves out all kinds of important micro-nutrients.

But problems exist in the opposite direction, too. A number of ‘harmless’ additives used in those reassembled food products are increasingly turning out to be not so harmless after all.

A study recently published in the journal Nature, for example, demonstrated that two widely-used emulsifiers (carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate-80) threw off the gut microbiome in mice, sufficient to cause inflammation, colitis, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.

As the researchers conclude, “the broad use of emulsifying agents might be contributing to an increased societal incidence of obesity/metabolic syndrome and other chronic inflammatory diseases.”

The solution? Eat real food instead of food products. It’s the simple, healthy choice.

Neutral

The internet is, by design, a very robust system. Instead of a hierarchy that can be controlled from a central point, it’s a distributed network. So, in the words of legendary computer scientist (and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder) John Gilmore, “the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

But there’s one real point of weakness in the internet’s design: the single pipe that connects from the distributed cloud directly to you, the end user. You depend on your mobile provider to connect your phone to the internet, or your cable provider to connect your desktop computer. Which, in turn, gives those providers unique power.

Imagine that the internet is like the island of Manhattan, and you live directly across the Hudson River in Fort Lee, New Jersey. For anything to make it to you from Manhattan, it would have to cross the George Washington Bridge.

Because the bridge is publicly owned, we take for granted that anyone who wants to can drive across. But what if that bridge was privately owned? All of a sudden, the owner of the bridge could start making rules about who could use it. For example, the bridge company could cut an exclusive deal with Domino’s Pizza, and prevent any other pizzeria from delivering to you over the bridge. Goodbye real New York slices, hello doughy circle of crap.

And that’s basically what net neutrality is about. Much like preventing the bridge company from making an exclusive deal with Domino’s, under net neutrality rules, Verizon isn’t allowed to make a deal with Amazon Prime that would then block you from accessing Netflix.

Back in 2000, the FCC put net neutrality rules in place using their Title I enforcement standard. Verizon, in turn, sued the FCC. And the courts ruled that, for the FCC to be able to actually enforce net neutrality, they would need to instead use the stricter Title II standard.

Three years ago, in a giant push that united the internet, consumers commented en masse and convinced the FCC to adopt that stricter Title II net neutrality standard. Victory!

But last month, Trump appointed a former Verizon attorney, Ajit Pai, as the new head of the FCC. And, as Pai said, “net neutrality’s days are numbered.”

Pai has now proposed moving net neutrality back to the looser Title I standard. Which, as the courts have already ruled, the FCC can’t actually enforce.

So, if you care about a free and open internet, about a level playing field in which new companies can compete against rich, entrenched players, now’s the time to act. Americans’ voices convinced the FCC to adopt a strong standard three years ago, and we can keep those protections in place by making our voices heard again today.

To help out, head to gofccyourself.com, and click the ‘express’ link. (Because of the huge wave of support thus far, the FCC’s website appears to be regularly crashing, so you may have to try again later if the site is currently down.)

Then leave a comment saying you want strong oversight of net neutrality based on Title II enforcement.

It takes two minutes, but it could have an immeasurable impact on the future of the Internet. That’s pretty solid ROI.

Again, gofccyourself.com, click express, then “strong oversight of net neutrality based on Title II enforcement.” Get to it.

Two

This morning, Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in two hours, twenty-five seconds. On the one hand, that fell short of the sub-two-hour goal that he and his Nike support team had been shooting for – a parallel to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile exactly 63 years back. But, on the other hand, it bests the prior world record time by more than two-and-a-half minutes, a nearly superhuman feat.

It’s hard to get a real sense of how crazy a sub-two-hour marathon is. As it’s a consecutive series of twenty-six 4:41 miles, it’s literally just harder than setting your treadmill to 13mph, then running for two hours nonstop. To demonstrate that, Wired put today this great video, which includes (along with some physiological analysis of the feat) a number of members of Wired’s running club trying to see how long they can hold that 13mph. In short, it turns out they can cruise for about a minute before things fall apart. So, just more than 99% of the race to go!

Congrats to Eliud and everyone at Nike. The two-hour barrier may not have fallen today, but it’s only a matter of time.