Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | anyaberkut)
The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.
The trade associations petitioned the FCC in January to change the rules and renewed their call last week in a filing and in a meeting with FCC officials. The requirement that ISPs list all their monthly fees "would add unnecessary complexity and burdens to the label for consumers and providers and could result in some providers having to create many labels for any given plan," the groups said in the filing on Friday.
The trade groups said the FCC should instead "require providers to include an explanatory statement that such fees may apply and that they vary by jurisdiction, similar to the Commission's treatment of government-imposed taxes," or require "the display of the maximum level of government-imposed fees that might be passed through, so that consumers would not experience bill shock with respect to such fees."
Source: Hacker News
Every now and then I like to post one of these, just to show process I currently use. The magic of 3D printing is that once you’re set up this kind of quick job comes up all the time.
I have this cheap thread assortment that came on tubes rather than spools. It’s surprisingly decent thread, has good coverage for finding suitable colors for any project… and the 13mm ID tubes wobble badly on standard 4.5x40mm spool pins on sewing machines, especially when filling bobbins.
I was doing a little (ham fisted) machine sewing this weekend and it was irritating me …so I fixed it.
I’m finally getting less-incompetent with FreeCAD. Straight to “Part Design” workbench, sketch only one extruded pads’ features at a time, then decorate in any chamfers etc. at the interfaces. Import into PrusaSlicer with some sane defaults, send to the Anycubic Linear Kossel in the basement via OctoPrint (No, I don’t do it blind, I send and load the file, then go down to keep an eye on the startup sequence and make sure the filament hasn’t cracked and such), receive part.
Fit is intentionally a bit loose on all dimensions, nothing this part interacts with is consistent or close-tolerance, everything should move if it wants to, and the chamfer gets the tube seated well enough to not flop about.
FCStd and 3mf if anyone else happens to have this exact problem, which seems likely because similar thread assortments seem to be pretty ubiquitous on the usual eCommerce sites.
Source: Hacker News
Source: Hacker News
Source: Slashdot
The nation's best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators. Then they passed the bill along to students. From a report: The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America's poorest states, paid an average $18,693 to attend in 2021-22. Pennsylvania State University spent so much money that it now has a budget crisis -- even though it's among the most expensive public universities in the U.S. The University of Oklahoma hit students with some of the biggest tuition increases, while spending millions on projects including acquiring and renovating a 32,000-square-foot Italian monastery for its study-abroad program. The spending is inextricably tied to the nation's $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges have paid for their sprees in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects. It has long been clear to American families that the cost of college has gone up, even at public schools designed to be affordable for state residents. To get at the root cause, The Wall Street Journal examined financial statements since 2002 from 50 universities known as flagships, typically the oldest public school in each state, and adjusted for inflation. At the median flagship university, spending rose 38% between 2002 and 2022. Only one school in the Journal's analysis -- the University of Idaho -- spent less. The schools paid for it in part by pulling in tuition dollars. The median flagship received more than double the revenue from undergraduate and graduate tuition and fees it did 20 years prior. Even accounting for enrollment gains, that amounted to a 64% price increase for the average student, far outpacing the growth in most big household expenses.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Ars Technica
Enlarge / An 8th-generation Intel Core desktop CPU, one of several CPU generations affected by the Downfall bug. (credit: Mark Walton)
It's a big week for CPU security vulnerabilities. Yesterday, different security researchers published details on two different vulnerabilities, one affecting multiple generations of Intel processors and another affecting the newest AMD CPUs. "Downfall" and "Inception" (respectively) are different bugs, but both involve modern processors' extensive use of speculative execution (a la the original Meltdown and Spectre bugs), both are described as being of "medium" severity, and both can be patched either with OS-level microcode updates or firmware updates with fixes incorporated.
AMD and Intel have both already released OS-level microcode software updates to address both issues. Both companies have also said that they're not aware of any active in-the-wild exploits of either vulnerability. Consumer, workstation, and server CPUs are all affected, making patching particularly important for server administrators.
It will be up to your PC, server, or motherboard manufacturer to release firmware updates with the fixes after Intel and AMD make them available.
Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
Google resisted pleas to extend the lifetime of Chromebooks set to expire as of this June and throughout the summer. Thirteen Chromebook models have met their death date since June 1 and won't receive security updates or new features from Google anymore. But that hasn't stopped the Chromebooks from being listed for sale on sites like Amazon for the same prices as before.
Take the Asus Chromebook Flip C302. It came out in 2018, and on June 1—about five years later—it reached its automatic update expiration (AUE) date. But right now, you can buy a "new," unused Flip C302 for $550 from Amazon or $820 via Walmart's Marketplace (providing links for illustrative purposes; please don't buy these unsupported laptops).
That's just one of eight Chromebooks that expired since June while still being readily available on Amazon. The listings don't notify shoppers that the devices won't receive updates from Google. The US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) pointed this out in a press release Wednesday, sharing screenshots of the models:
