Jack

The Federal Reserve just announced something a bit unnerving: they're planning to accept slower growth in the next few months.

Today the Fed wrapped up a meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy. The FOMC announced that it will continue scaling back its "quantitative easing" program, which was designed to inject money into the economy to promote faster growth. At the same time, the board released a new set of predictions for the economy.

But these predictions are much more than just predictions. They're statements of policy.

A "Forecast" is a statement about where the captain has decided to take the ship

Earlier this year, FOMC members had predicted that the economy would grow between 2.8 and 3.0 percent this year. Now, the FOMC's members think the economy will grow a more sluggish 2.1 to 2.3 in 2014. Most FOMC members think inflation will be between 1.5 and 1.7 percent in 2014 and that it will stay at or below the Fed's 2 percent target in 2015 and 2016.

To borrow one of Scott Sumner's favorite analogies, suppose you're on a ship that's supposed to be headed for New York. But then a strong wind starts blowing the ship off course. The captain announces that while he'd like to end up in New York, he forecasts that the ship is more likely to wind up in Boston. And no, he's not going to adjust the steering wheel to compensate for the wind.

Of course, if the captain were really committed to going to New York, he'd be turning the steering wheel to the left until the boat was really headed toward New York. A "forecast" by the captain of a ship about where the ship is going isn't really a forecast at all. It's a statement about where the captain has decided to take the ship.

The same principle applies to forecasts of the Federal Open Market Committee. FOMC members aren't just passive bystanders; they collectively control one of the most powerful levers of economic policy. If they wanted to, they could inject more money into the American economy to offset the expected economic slowdown. By forecasting a slowdown, and refusing to announce any policy change to compensate for it, the FOMC is effectively announcing that they're happy with the slower growth they anticipate.

This stance might be understandable if the FOMC believed that surging inflation was imminent. Sometimes you have to accept slower growth to keep inflation in check. But the FOMC members don't believe that. They're forecasting that inflation will stay at or below 2 percent in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

FOMC forecasts are particularly important because businesses rely on them for their own decision-making. And that can make Fed predictions self-fulfilling prophesies. When the Fed lowers its growth forecast and refuses to do anything to offset falling growth rates, that's a signal to businesses that demand for their products is going to be weaker than they expected. Businesses will naturally react to this pessimistic forecast by cutting back on investment, producing exactly the poor economic performance the FOMC predicted.

In contrast, imagine if the FOMC had announced that it was alarmed by the possibility of slower growth, and pledged to pump as much money into the economy as it takes to maintain a 3 percent growth rate. That would be a signal to businesses that demand for its services would be rising in the future. It would cause businesses to invest more today, helping to make the FOMC's bullish prediction come true. Indeed, the announcement that it was determined to achieve higher growth rates might boost growth without the FOMC actually printing very much more money.

So a "forecast" by the Federal Reserve is never just a forecast. It is always, at least implicitly, a statement of Fed policy. When the Fed "predicts" that growth is going to be slower, that's another way of saying that the Fed has chosen not to do any more to boost the economy.

For nearly two years, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and several of his associates have been dogged by an investigation into activities surrounding the contested recall elections of 2011 and 2012. Yet many details of the investigation have been kept secret, trickling out only gradually in various releases of documents. Meanwhile, state and federal courts have issued rulings that have slowed the investigation to a halt.

On Wednesday, September 24, though, a federal court issued a ruling removing one roadblock for the prosecutors — and making clear that this matter hasn't yet been resolved. Yet prosecutors still face another key obstacle — they're fighting for court permission to use the evidence they think they need to build a case, and so far, one state judge has refused their request. Here's what you need to know about the John Doe investigation.

no charges have been filed against anyone, and none appear imminent

What's the investigation about?

After Walker pushed through a law limiting the collective bargaining rights of public employees in 2011, several Republican state senators, and eventually Walker himself, were challenged in recall elections. Conservative outside groups spent millions on ads praising them and attacking their opponents.

State law requires that any such nonprofits spending on election ads do so independently, without any coordination with Walker or his aides. Prosecutors are arguing that they didn't do so — that, instead, Walker and two of his campaign consultants participated in a "criminal scheme" to "utilize and direct" the nonprofits' behavior. The investigation is being conducted under Wisconsin's unique John Doe law, which allows for many of the proceedings to be kept secret. The district attorney of Milwaukee, a Democrat, initiated the probe, but several other county prosecutors joined in, and a special prosecutor has since been appointed.

Importantly, no charges have been filed against anyone, and none appear imminent. Most of the legal wrangling so far has focused instead on whether prosecutors had probable cause to raid and subpoena documents from the consultants and nonprofit groups they believe to be involved.

Why do the prosecutors think a crime was committed?

As the recall campaigns began, Walker's top political adviser, RJ Johnson, was in close contact with conservative outside groups — especially one called the Wisconsin Club for Growth. It's undisputed that Johnson advised the Club to steer millions of dollars to other conservative nonprofits — some with close ties to him or his business partner, Deborah Jordahl. He also helped craft the Club's communications and advertising strategy, as it ran its own ads attacking or praising candidates in the state senate and state Supreme Court elections.

emails show walker and aides involved in fundraising for an outside group

In court documents, prosecutors claim that Johnson in fact directed the activities of the Club, and used it as a "hub" for coordinating outside spending on the recall. As evidence, they say that Johnson has stated "We own CFG," and that Jordahl was a signatory to the group's bank account. Since Johnson was being paid by Walker's campaign at the time, prosecutors argue that this is illegal coordination between a paid campaign "agent" and an avowedly-independent outside group. And they say that the ads Johnson helped coordinate were, effectively, contributions to political campaigns.

The prosecutors argued in one document that Walker, too, was involved in this "criminal scheme." Much of their basis for this claim was revealed in a court filing accidentally made public in August, In April 2011, Walker consultant Kate Doner wrote to Johnson, "As the Governor discussed... he wants all the issue advocacy efforts run thru one group to ensure correct messaging." She added, "The Governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth." A June 2011 email to Walker from an aide advises him to tell donors to donate to "your 501c4." Another email, from Doner to Walker and Johnson, suggests raising money from the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. An email from an associate to Walker, prepping him from a donor meeting, says "This meeting is for WiCFG Funds," and adds, "THE ASK: contribute $100k to WiCFG." It seems clear that Walker was involved in the group's fundraising. "State prosecutors detail instance after instance of Walker meeting with high dollar donors and a check being received shortly afterwards by WCFG," Mary Bottari writes.

It's important to note that a lawyer for the special prosecutor has clarified that Walker "was not a target" of the investigation, and that he has not been subpoenaed. The "criminal scheme" comment that mentioned his name, the lawyer said, was just an argument "in support of further investigation" to determine "if criminal charges against any person or entity are warranted." That doesn't mean Walker's in the clear — but it means that prosecutors probably weren't close to charging him with anything.

However, the current issue holding up the investigation isn't even about whether charges should be filed against anyone. Instead, there's a dispute about whether all this presented probable cause to justify subpoenaing Johnson, Jordhal, and the groups for documents. At first, the judge assigned to the case agreed with prosecutors that it did — in October 2013, the consultants' homes were raided, and subpoenas went out to the Club and other groups, asking for financial records, emails, and other documents.

Why wouldn't all this be probable cause for a subpoena?

There's one big problem for the prosecutors' case. Watch the ad below — do you think it's a campaign ad?

Most ordinary people would say — of course that's a campaign ad, designed to trash Sandy Pasch's reputation right before her election. But, actually, the ad never mentions anything about an election. In its final line, the ad urges viewers to call Sandy Pasch — not to vote against her. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, and the groups that it funded, only paid for these kinds of ads.  And under federal campaign finance law, that would mean this is an "issue ad" — and not an illegally-coordinated campaign ad.

Judge Peterson ruled that prosecutors failed to show probable cause

Since the Club and the groups it funded only paid for these kinds of ads, there's an argument that nothing illegal happened at all — and, therefore, that the prosecutors didn't have probable cause to suspect a crime. That instead, they were just going on a fishing expedition. So, after the raids, several targeted groups filed a motion asking for the subpoenas to be "quashed." In response, the prosecutors argued that Wisconsin law is more restrictive of issue ads than federal law is.

About a month after the subpoenas went out, the judge who had approved them, Barbara Kluka, recused herself from the case for unknown reasons, so judge Gregory Peterson replaced her. And in January 2014, Peterson ruled that the subpoenas should never have gone out, writing that prosecutors failed "to show probable cause that a crime was committed." He wrote that since the outside groups only funded issue ads, the coordination the prosecutors purported to show was in fact perfectly legal.

Initially, Peterson ordered the return of all documents seized. This could have significantly reduced, or perhaps even wiped out, the prosecution's chances at making a case. But two weeks later he stayed that order, so the evidence would be preserved in case a state appeals court ruled differently. The prosecutors' argument that they had probable cause, Peterson wrote, "is not frivolous. In fact, it is an arguable interpretation of the statutes. I simply happen to disagree. An appellate court may indeed agree with the state." The prosecutors soon appealed the ruling, but the state appellate court has not yet ruled on the matter — because a federal judge then halted the investigation for several months.

Why did a federal judge halt the investigation?

In February 2014, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and its director Eric O'Keefe filed a federal lawsuit. They alleged that the prosecutors' unjustified investigation and subpoenas had violated their First Amendment rights to free speech — chilling their group's fundraising and crippling its ability to advocate in this year's elections.

"This cannot square with the First Amendment"

In May, federal district court judge Rudolph Randa agreed. "The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process, merely by association with conservative politicians," Randa wrote, in a fiery opinion. "This cannot square with the First Amendment and what it was meant to protect." He agreed with Judge Peterson's ruling that the subpoenas were unjustified, because the groups only aired perfectly legal issue ads. Furthermore, Randa wrote, "The theory of 'coordination' forming the basis of the investigation... is not supported under Wisconsin law, and, if it were, would violate the United States Constitution." So Randa ordered that the state investigation be halted. He even ruled that all documents collected from the subpoenas and raids must be returned or destroyed.

But a federal appeals court panel stayed the order to destroy documents, and decided to hear prosecutors' appeal of Randa's ruling. On September 24, they voted unanimously to reverse it. "Principles of equity, comity and federalism counsel against a federal role here," wrote Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee. So, unless there's an appeal by Walker's team, the action will move back to state courts.

What happens next?

The federal roadblock to the investigation has been removed, but the state one remains. Now, the question of whether prosecutors had probable cause to launch raids against and subpoena documents from the consultants and nonprofit groups will be revisited by a Wisconsin appeals court. But this latest news makes it clear that the legal wrangling isn't yet over.

The most interesting argument in American politics today has nothing to do with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren or any other Democrat. And it has nothing to do with the Tea Party, the "Republican establishment," or immigration either. It's about taxes.

Specifically, it's about the merits of an idea endorsed in broad terms by Senator Mike Lee of Utah and spelled out in more detail and with more mathematical rigor by former Bush administration official Robert Stein in the new book Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class. If you want to know who's going to win next week's primary campaign in Mississippi, understanding this debate sure won't help you. But if you want to understand where a politically savvy GOP might go on its signature issue of taxes, you really ought to delve in.

1. Stein and Lee want to abandon supply-side tax policy

Senator Mike Lee (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call)

The signature idea of the conservative movement on taxes for the past 40 years has been a relentless focus on the allegedly massive economic gains to be reaped by improving the incentives in the tax code. That means not just reducing the amount of money people owe the government in taxes (which, of course, everyone likes) but specifically changing the rate at which the marginal dollar of additional income is taxed.

Right now if I were to write a freelance piece, a certain share of the money I earn would go to the federal government. The smaller you make that share, the more financial incentive I have to write the piece. But not every tax cut would change my incentives. Right now the first $18,150 of a married couple's taxable income is taxed at a 10 percent rate. If you cut that to a 5 percent rate, my wife and I would have an extra $907.50 a year in take home pay. But since we earn more than $18,150 a year, our incentives wouldn't change at all. I'd still be paying the same rate on my freelance piece, and wouldn't be more or less inclined to write it than before.

Conversely, if you took away our home mortgage interest deduction, our taxes would go up but my incentive to freelance wouldn't be reduced.

To change incentives you have to look at tax rates, and especially at tax rates on the higher brackets. That's what Ronald Reagan did, that's what George W. Bush did, and that's what Stein and Lee want to not do.

2. The new idea is a tax break for middle class families

An extra $2,500 sounds good (Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP)

What do they want to do instead? Lee's proposal is to take the current $1,000 per child tax credit and add another $2,500 per child credit on top of it.

The idea is twofold. On its most basic level, this would put a few thousand extra dollars per year into the pockets of middle class families with children.

On a more advanced level, it would change the incentives facing families. In the modern world, almost everyone faces a pretty strong financial incentive to have fewer children rather than more. An extra $2,500 off on your taxes wouldn't change that reality, but it would reduce the disincentive.

What Lee's plan wouldn't do, however, is what supply-side tax cuts have been promising for the past generation-and-a-half — increase incentives to work and earn.

3. This is the opposite of current GOP tax policy

What about the incentives? (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call)

The radicalism of this idea can be missed if you're not attuned to the current contours of debate. But even though the Stein proposal is a tax cut and conservatives are always talking about tax cuts, this tax cut is basically the opposite of recent GOP tax policy.

Mitt Romney ran on a program of eliminating tax deductions and using the revenue to cut tax rates. The budget Paul Ryan wrote and the House GOP passed earlier this year does the same thing. That's a recipe for higher taxes on middle class families in order to finance large tax cuts for the rich. The hope is that the impact on incentives will spark so much growth as to make everyone better off.

Stein's proposal, by contrast, would raise taxes on the high-income childless and some affluent families in order to cut taxes on middle class parents with kids. That's a huge change.

4. The plan is plausibly conservative

Moar babies (Orlando Sentinel)

One reason it's hard to get a good intra-movement policy fight going on the right is that Republicans obviously aren't going to stop being a very conservative political party. Most proposed changes are either boring because they're small, or not worth thinking about because they're not conservative.

But even though this plan is a huge change from current GOP tax policy, it's also arguably a conservative plan.

One way you can see that is that Mike Lee endorsed a version of it. Mike Lee is very conservative. Indeed, he was one of the early successful Tea Party challengers who got into the Senate by bumping off longtime incumbent Republican Robert Bennett.

Another way you can see it's a conservative plan is that it taps into a strain of cultural conservatism. The idea that middle class families that have children — and especially large numbers of children — deserve financial reward has a clear conservative basis. It's different from the traditional tax policy argument that rich people need incentives to further enrich themselves, but it's recognizably conservative.

5. It doesn't help poor people

No benefits for unemployed Octomom (Charles Norfleet/Getty)

This larger tax credit would be a boon to many non-rich American families, but it wouldn't help the poor very much. Lee's tax credit deducts from the income or payroll taxes that you owe, but it can't reduce your tax burden to less than zero. So poor people whose current tax burdens are already low don't get much help. An electrician married to a nurse with two kids is in a much more comfortable financial position than a waitress raising two kids on her own. But the Lee/Stein plan would do more to help the less-needy family than the more-needy one.

This is a clear contrast with the liberal approach to these issues.

But from a conservative viewpoint it helps the plan avoid the taint of "welfare." An increase in the child tax credit may not be an incentive-juicing supply-side reform but it is a tax cut in a way that a flat $3,500 baby bonus payment wouldn't be.

6. The fight is real

Sometimes novel ideas can get tossed out in an intellectual space without demonstrating any real appetite for a fight or intra-party controversy. But not only are conservative writers duking it out over the merits of this proposal — here's Stephen Moore standing up for the supply-side view while Ramesh Ponnuru touts Stein's plan — but political operatives are getting into the mix.

On the evening of June 19, Lee's deputy chief of staff Michael Connolly had an extended back and forth with Scott Lincicome, a libertarian writer and professor who's also an adjunct at the Cato Institute. Here's a taste:

Outsiders to the conservative movement are probably not going to be nearly as interested as these two are in the metaphysics of "redistribution." But this is the nature of a factional fight — it's conducted on terms that are important to the faction. The key bone of contention is that Connolly is saying that the existence of federal retirement programs — Social Security and Medicare — destroys economic incentives to have children. Thus his boss' tax plan should be understood as offsetting that previous distortion, rather than as creating a new redistribution scheme.

7. If Lee & Stein win, it could transform partisan politics

It's been too easy for this guy (Saul Loeb/AFP)

Whatever the merits of Lee/Stein-style tax reform versus Romney/Ryan-style plans, if Lee's faction were to win it would transform the argument between Republicans and Democrats.

Right now when Democrats propose a big new program for the poor and the middle class — whether it's Obamacare or future universal preschool benefit or what have you — Republicans counter by complaining about excessive spending and government waste. But the GOP alternate to spending money is tax cuts for a small number of very rich people. That in many ways sets the bar for a liberal proposal very low. Democrats don't need to convince voters that their programs are cost-effective, just that they are in some sense useful.

A reorientation of the tax cut debate around bigger tax credits for middle class parents rather than lower tax rates for hedge fund managers would change that. Republicans would be able to offer people more money in their pockets as the alternative to more public services — a potentially much more compelling offer.

Patent litigation has become a huge problem for the software industry. And on Thursday, the Supreme Court could have solved that problem with the stroke of a pen. Precedents dating back to the 1970s place strict limits on software patents. The court could have clearly reiterated that those old precedents still apply, and that they rule out most patents on software.

Instead, perhaps fearing the backlash from invalidating billions of dollars worth of patents, the court took an incremental approach. It ruled that the specific patent at issue in the case was invalid. But it didn't articulate any clear rules for software patents more generally. In effect, the court kicked the can down the road, leaving a huge question mark floating over most software patents.

The problem, at root, is that the courts are confused about the nature of software. The courts have repeatedly said that mathematical algorithms can't be patented. But many judges also seem to believe that some software is worthy of patent protection. The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms for the same thing. Until the courts understand that, the laws regarding software patents are going to be incoherent.

The rise of software patents

Since the 19th Century, the courts have held that abstract ideas couldn't be patented. In a 1972 ruling, the court applied that rule to an AT&T patent application. AT&T wanted a patent on a method for converting between two binary number formats. But the Supreme Court ruled that this kind of mathematical algorithm was exactly the kind of abstract idea that was excluded from patent protection. The courts extended this reasoning in 1978, invalidating a proposed patent on a method to use software to trigger an alarm when an industrial variable such as temperature or pressure reaches an unsafe level.

the Supreme Court could eliminate software patents with the stroke of a pen

In 1981, the court allowed a patent on a software-controlled rubber-curing process. Some have interpreted this decision as legalizing software patents, but a careful read of the opinion leads to a different conclusion. In its opinion, the court reiterated that mathematical algorithms — which is what software is — were not eligible for patent protection standing alone. The rubber-curing process was patentable, the court held, because it was focused on a physical manufacturing process that happened to have a software element, rather than trying to claim software standing alone.

In 1982, Congress created a new appeals court called the Federal Circuit Appeals Court and made it responsible for all appeals in patent cases. The court has proven to be the most patent-friendly court in the nation. And in the 1990s, it set about dismantling the limits on software patents that the Supreme Court had established in previous decades.

A turning point came in 1998, when the Federal Circuit approved a patent that claimed the concept of using software to manage mutual funds. When I spoke to the legal scholar Pam Samuelson earlier this year, she told me that it was "not possible" to square this ruling with the Supreme Court's own precedents. Rather, Samuel said, the Federal Circuit didn't like the Supreme Court's position on software patents, so "in effect, they overruled it. They thought the Supreme Court was going to continue to pay no attention, and so they had a free hand."

The Patent Office interpreted this ruling as a green light for software patents, resulting in a bonanza for patent lawyers but a disaster for the American economy. Since 1998, the number of software patents has soared, and so has the costs of patent litigation.

Data from James Bessen, Peter Neuhäusler, John Turner, and Jonathan Williams

A new type of firm, dubbed "patent trolls" by their detractors, began accumulating armloads of broad software patents and suing people who infringed them by accident. Big technology firms began hiring armies of patent lawyers to beef up their own patent portfolios. Today, trolls and large technology companies have so many software patents that they form an impenetrable patent thicket. It's almost impossible to write useful software without accidentally infringing a bunch of them.

The evidence suggests that in the software industry, the patent system does more to hinder innovation than to reward it. Inventors spend more money defending themselves against patent lawsuits than they earn from patent royalties. More and more entrepreneurs are losing sleep about the risk that patent litigation will drive them into bankruptcies. And companies that traditionally haven't had to worry about the patent system, like restaurants, grocery stores, and casinos, are facing demands from trolls over dubious patents, most of which involve software.

The nuclear option

If it had wanted to, the Supreme Court could eliminate software patents with the stroke of a pen. The Federal Circuit can ignore the Supreme Court's precedents, but it can't overrule them. The Supreme Court has already ruled that mathematical algorithms can't be patented. If the court made clear that software is nothing more than a collection of mathematical algorithms — which it is — that could have been the end of software patents.

One reason the courts might hesitate to do this is that it would be a big blow to the bottom lines of some of the biggest companies in America. Such a ruling would have invalidated thousands of dubious software patents held by trolls, but it also would have invalidated Amazon.com's infamous 1-click patent, the "data detectors" patent Apple used to sue Samsung, and Google's patent on its search ranking algorithm. Invalidating software patents would have wiped billions of dollars off the balance sheets of some of America's largest technology companies. The Supreme Court generally tries to avoid making waves, and those would have been some very big waves.

justices hope to salvage the good software patents while getting rid of the bad ones

But some members of the Supreme Court also seem to genuinely believe that some software patents should be allowed. In a 2010 opinion that was signed by four justices, Justice Anthony Kennedy worried about the risk that he might "create uncertainty as to the patentability of software, advanced diagnostic medicine techniques, and inventions based on linear programming, data compression, and the manipulation of digital signals."

This passage isn't legally binding because it was only signed by just four of the court's nine justices. But it suggests that some justices hope to salvage the good software patents while getting rid of the bad ones.

The problem is that the courts haven't been able to figure out how to tell the difference between good software patents and bad ones.

Justice Anthony Kennedy (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Software and algorithms are the same thing

In Thursday's ruling, the court rejected a patent that claimed the concept of using a computer to hedge against "counterparty risk" — the risk of making a bargain and then having the other guy not pay up. The Supreme Court complained that in the process described in the patent, "each step does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions." Such a generic patent, the court said, isn't eligible for patent protection.

The problem is that this criticism can be leveled at literally any software patent. At root, software is nothing more than a sequence of mathematical operations. "Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers," the computer scientist Donald Knuth once wrote.

If a sequence of conventional mathematical operations isn't patentable, then no software should enjoy patent protection. For example, the "data compression" patents that Justice Kennedy wants to preserve simply claim formulas for converting information from one digital format to another. If that's not a mathematical algorithm, nothing is.

This is the fundamental confusion at the heart of America's software patent jurisprudence: many judges seem to believe that mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patented but that certain kinds of software should be patentable.

If a sequence of mathematical operations isn't patentable, no software should enjoy protection

The court has suffered from this confusion since that very first software patent case in 1972. In that case, the court wrote. "It is said that the decision precludes a patent for any program servicing a computer. We do not so hold." But then the court invalidated the patent because "the mathematical formula involved here has no substantial practical application except in connection with a digital computer" and would "wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself."

It's hard to see how these two statements can be reconciled. A "program servicing a computer" and a "mathematical formula" used "in connection with a digital computer" are two ways of describing the same thing. If one isn't patentable, then neither is the other.

You can only patent hard math?

In practice, the courts have only allowed patents that claim complicated mathematical algorithms. For example, in a 2011 decision the Federal Circuit approved a patent because the mathematical algorithm it claimed "required the manipulation of computer data structures." Of course, a "computer data structure" is just the way a computer organizes numbers and symbols.

When I taught computer science in graduate school, I used to draw data structures on the blackboard and then walk students through the steps a computer would take to manipulate them. In principle, you can do this with any computer program, though of course there's no blackboard large enough to draw the data structures in Microsoft Word. Programs that use data structures are no less mathematical, and no less algorithms, than a program for converting between binary number formats.

If a patent claims a mathematical formula simple enough for a judge to understand how it works, she is likely to recognize that the patent claims a mathematical formula and invalidate it. But if the formula is too complex for her to understand, then she concludes that it's something more than a mathematical algorithm and uphold it.

But this makes the law highly unpredictable, since it effectively depends on the mathematical sophistication of the judge who happens to take the case. And it's also logically incoherent. The courts originally excluded algorithms from patent protection because they are basic building blocks for innovation — that's as true of complex algorithms like data compression as of simple ones.

The patent system works best for capital-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals or automobiles. In these industries, innovations are produced by large teams of engineers and scientists. Consulting a patent lawyer to see if a new drug or engine design is patented is relatively easy.

In contrast, software development is an individual, creative process more akin to writing a novel than designing a new car. A single programmer working over a weekend can write software that employs numerous sophisticated mathematical algorithms. It's unreasonable to expect that programmer to consult a patent lawyer before releasing his software to the public, just as it would be crazy to ask a novelist to consult a patent lawyer to make sure none of the ideas in his novel had been patented.

The mathematical ideas in software, like the literary ideas in novels, are part of society's common intellectual heritage. Neither should be eligible for patent protection.

This chart from Data Pointed shows that, since 1903, Crayola has come up with more and more shades of blue — and the number of colors in the company's box of crayons doubles every 28 years:

When crayons were imported to Japan in 1917, schoolchildren began to more clearly distinguish green from blue than in the past. But Crayola has since become an expert on distinguishing blue from other shades of blue, coming up with at least 19 different variations on the color in its standard boxes since 1903:

1. blue
2. blue green
3. blue violet
4. cornflower
5. Prussian blue (later renamed "midnight blue")
6. cadet blue
7. aquamarine
8. navy blue
9. sky blue
10. ultra blue
11. blizzard blue
12. cerulean
13. teal blue
14. Pacific blue
15. robin's egg blue
16. denim
17. blue bell
18. outer space
19. wild blue yonder

Color names have occasionally changed, and colors are periodically retired. "Indian Red" became "chestnut" in the 1990s, and "flesh" became "peach" in 1962.

If anything, the chart understates how many slight variations on everyday colors Crayola has come up with. An exhaustive collectors' website (there are at least two crayon collectors, one of whom has more than 50,000 individual crayons and created the website) lists every color Crayola has ever used. It also includes a 41-part history of the company's color choices. In all, the company has manufactured 331 different colors under 755 names — many for special edition boxes of crayons.

On what other subject is the public so grotesquely misinformed? And what does it say about the acumen of the Human Rights Campaign that its Number One legislative priority for the last 25 years (with 76 percent national support!) remains as out of sight as ever? Just keep sending them your checks, guys. In another quarter century, you might get something back for them.

Senator Marco Rubio evinces no mastery of foreign policy. Yet the Florida Republican often remarks confidently on geopolitics. Like so many hawkish pols, he's winging it.

On Sean Hannity's Fox News show, for example, Rubio critiqued President Obama's forthrightness on Iraq. “I don’t think it’s wise for the commander in chief to step forward and immediately begin to rule options out. Even if he never intends to send a single American soldier, he shouldn’t be signaling that to terrorists,” Rubio said. “You should not be going around announcing what you won’t do.”

This is problematic for several reasons.

Most troubling is the implication that the president should keep his intentions about using military force a secret. Whether or not ground troops will go to Iraq is not a minor matter to be decided quietly. If American democracy is working as it should, a major deployment of that sort would be preceded by a public debate on its wisdom, followed by a Congressional vote authorizing or denying it. To keep foreign fighters guessing about whether new troop deployments will occur, you'd need to sometimes order brand new interventions without debate or a vote in Congress. The strategy isn't viable unless you're willing to subvert basic democratic norms. Similarly, if the president has no intention of using force, the public and the Congress ought to be told that, so that they can plausibly deploy persuasion or democratic pressure to change an imprudently dovish defense posture.

Interestingly, Rubio has also argued that President Obama should take what amounts to an almost opposite approach. Take his Senate speech on Iraq this week. "We cannot allow a safe haven to develop there that can be used to carry out attacks that can kill Americans, including here in our homeland," Rubio said. "This is why we should care. And this is why it is so important that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, the President, come as quickly as possible before the American people and before this Congress with a plan to address this risk."

Later in the remarks, Rubio hypothesizes, "the only person who can rally this country behind a plan to address it is not a U.S. Senator or a Member of Congress, not the Majority Leader or the Speaker of the House, not the countless people who write very well-informed opinion pieces in our newspapers. The only person in this country who can rally us around a plan to address this is the President himself."

He adds:

Now, I have my own ideas, as do others, about what that plan should look like, but we want there to be a plan. We’re not asking the President to come forward with a plan because we’re looking for something to attack. We want him to come forward with a plan because only he can, and he must. In my opinion, that plan has to be: We must do whatever we can and everything we can to prevent this group, ISIL, from gaining operational long-term control of these territories in Iraq, and to me that means going after their command and control structure, that involves their ability to transit fighters and weapons and fuel and food and ammunition from their safe havens in Syria to their increasingly new spaces that they have now carved out for themselves in Iraq.

So in one sentence, "only" the president can come forward with a plan, says Rubio. Yet in the next, Rubio himself is coming forward with what sure sounds like a plan. In one media appearance, Rubio excoriates Obama for being so foolish as to reveal anything to terrorists about what we might do. Yet in another media appearance, it is incumbent on Obama to bring a specific plan before the public.

Rubio's foreign policy advice is too erratic to always be wrong.

Comedy Central

Did you know that Hillary Clinton has a new book out? Did you know she's been all over the media promoting it? Well, if you didn't, Jon Stewart is here to catch you up. 

The Hard Choices media extravaganza came to a head on Tuesday, when Clinton gave not one but two high-profile television interviews, to Fox News and CNN. And, as Stewart pointed out on last night's episode of The Daily Show, both networks promoted their interviews as "exclusives."

"Wow, imagine that. Two news networks expressly promoting exclusives with Hillary Clinton on the same day. It's like words have no meaning anymore," Stewart quipped. "But good get! They should be proud of themselves to score an exclusive interview form the Salinger-like recluse Hillary Clinton, a woman whose secretive nationwide book tour had restricted her access to NBC, CBS, ABC twice, and the Arlington, Virginia Costco."

CNN and Fox both seemed pretty psyched for their interviews. So psyched, in fact, that CNN ran a pre-interview segment showing exactly where Clinton would sit. 

"Honey, get in here!," Stewart said. "They're introducing the chairs. Honey, you're gonna miss it!" 

So what was covered in the interview? "Well I'm sure the interview lived up to the hype and was not in any way a one-hour infomercial for whatever it is her book is called," Stewart said. 

Stewart, after airing clips from the CNN interview in which "Hard Choices" is uttered seven times: "All I can say is it's a good thing she didn't name her book, Ultimate Fuckstorm."

Marvel Comics

It’s not hard to believe that Marvel is pressing on with a Doctor Strange movie—the studio has already greenlit projects based on even more obscure comics franchises (Guardians of the Galaxy) and ventured into fantasy territory (Thor) and made it work. Still, adapting Doctor Strange, which has always been a niche comic, will be a particularly tricky task, and so far the talent that’s been officially attached to the project has been shrug-worthy at best.

Scott Derrickson, announced as the director on June 3, is a competent horror director who has never made anything particularly memorable. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was a surprise hit back in 2005 but didn’t really do anything new to the exorcism genre outside of peppering in some courtroom scenes. His remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still felt largely unnecessary but his most recent effort, 2012 horror film Sinister, was at least effectively creepy.

It makes sense for Marvel to seek out a horror director for Doctor Strange—the superhero, who in the comics is Earth’s “Sorcerer Supreme,” often navigates into nightmarish dimensions and fights rather demonic villains. Don’t expect Marvel to change that up much—as they showed with Thor, the studio believes that even its more outlandish heroes can be a part of its grand cinematic universe. Derrickson may prove an Alan Taylor or even a Jon Favreau—a competent director-for-hire who slots in very nicely with producer Kevin Feige’s vision for the films. But it’s hard not to feel prickly about an uninspired hire like Derrickson after Edgar Wright’s sudden and mysterious departure from Ant-Man.

Today it was announced that Prometheus scripter Jon Spaihts has been contracted to write Doctor Strange, which is again, hard to get excited about. Spaihts has a script on the Black List (an industry tally of great unproduced screenplays) called Passengers that is now being developed for Keanu Reeves, but other than that, his resume is slim. Remember 2011 alien invasion horror film The Darkest Hour? Me neither, but he wrote it. And his contribution to Prometheus was the original script, which he wrote as a direct prequel to Alien. Damon Lindelof’s heavy re-write gave us the muddled film we saw, so it’s hard to judge Spaihts’ talent based on that.

The most important question is, of course, who will play the good Doctor? For the many years Marvel has mulled this project, fans have suggested slightly older marquee idol-types, reflecting Strange’s grey-flecked hair and air of superiority. These suggestions have ranged from the ludicrous (George Clooney) to the intriguing (Hugh Laurie), but industry reports have thrown out three names on Marvel’s actual shortlist: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy and Jared Leto. There’s not much linking those three names except that they’re all well-regarded actors who are a little…shall we say…strange?

Doctor Strange is supposed to be arrogant, especially at the start of his origin story, so Cumberbatch might be a nice fit in Sherlock mode. Hardy has a bulkier frame than Strange’s spindly comics form, but I can see him being fun if he’s in his preening Inception mode. Leto is the most distressing option—yes, he just won an Oscar and it means he can command some big offers, but he still primarily plays weasely weirdos, and Doctor Strange is supposed to be an imposing, wizened figure.

It’s still early days—Doctor Strange is apparently earmarked for a 2016 release but is still very much in the “long-term development” stage, as it has been, in some form or another, for more than 20 years now (Wes Craven almost directed this movie in the early ‘90s!). And Marvel has a good track record identifying talent that fits with its projects. But we’re all waiting for the bloom to come off the rose. Could that be now? 

Since Ta-Nehisi Coates's cover story on reparations was published this month, he's been asked repeatedly whether he really thought reparations for African Americans were politically feasible. His answer has been consistent: maybe not, and certainly no time soon.

But it seems my colleague overlooked one important asset for the pro-reparations side: elected officials' short attention spans. That's how Dallas County, Texas, ended up adopting a resolution this week that backed significant monetary awards for the victims of racism. And in the Old Confederacy, no less!

Here's what happened: The Dallas County Commissioners Court* was voting on an item labeled in their agenda as the "Juneteenth Resolution," referring to the annual commemoration of June 19, 1865, arrival of U.S. troops in Texas to free slaves after the Civil War. John Wiley Price, the only black member of the commission and evidently something of a character, submitted the resolution, which for some reason wasn't sent around to commissioners ahead of time, nor was it posted on the commission website. Instead, Price read it aloud as his colleagues ignored him, perhaps playing tic-tac-toe or checking Twitter. Then the resolution came up for a voice vote and passed unanimously. (You can watch it here, starting around the 20-minute mark.)

It isn't as if Price didn't loudly declaim the resolution. Here's the crucial closing: 

Therefore, be it resolved in the Dallas County Commissioners Court that Juneteenth and its historical mimicking of freedom is just that, and that the United States of America is derelict in its promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the African-American people. Be it further resolved that the dereliction that has caused 400 years of significant [inaudible] to millions and significant suffering to the descendants of those who have been enslaved Africans who built this country, should be satisfied with monetary and substantial reparations to same.

Yet it was only later that commissioners realized what they'd approved. Oops!

Price told the Dallas Morning News that he'd been inspired by Coates's article to sponsor the resolution, and that he didn't know why it hadn't been available ahead of time. (I still can't find a copy; I've called Price's office, and will post it if I can track it down.) Price's colleagues complained that they'd been deceived, but only lone Republican Mike Cantrell changed his vote, to an abstention, so the resolution stands.

In the entertaining local news report below, anchor Eric King asks, "What does this mean for the country?" In fact, it doesn't mean much for the country or the county: Since the resolution is nonbinding, don't expect Dallas to start calculating formulas and cutting checks any time soon.

Still, it wouldn't be the first mistaken vote to have major policy consequences. Maybe this could be the spark for a nationwide movement. But one note for Judge Price: It's pronounced "Ta-nuh-HA-see."

* The court is housed in the former Texas School Book Depository, the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, a fact I couldn't possibly make up.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Missing Email Is The Least Of The IRS’s Problems.

Naturally, many are suspicious that this is a convenient cover-up for destroying evidence, along the lines of the infamous missing 18 minutes of the Nixon tapes, which were allegedly erased when President Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, accidentally stepped on the recording pedal while answering the phone. The very least you can say is that the timing looks awfully suspicious: The sudden destruction of Lerner’s archived e-mail seems to have occurred on or around June 13, 2011, just 10 days after Representative David Camp sent a letter to then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman asking whether conservative groups were being targeted.

As it happens, I used to administer just the sort of e-mail systems that the IRS seems to be using. So I fired off a set of queries to the IRS about its e-mail system, its archiving policies and how the loss of data happened. Many of those queries remain unanswered, but I was given some documents that explain how the files could have been lost. My conclusion: It is plausible that this was an innocent coincidence. But it is only plausible if the IRS is managing its IT systems so badly that it is very easy to lose critical records — or for abusive employees to destroy the evidence of their misbehavior. A private company under investigation that responded to regulators, or a judge, with this sort of explanation rather than producing the requested documents would rightly expect to be handed an adverse judgment or a whopping fine. This incident should be thoroughly investigated, and steps should be taken throughout the government to make sure that no similar incident can ever happen again. . . .

To believe the IRS requires a pretty low opinion of government competence. My friends who work in regulated sectors such as finance are outraged by the IRS’s description of how it was running its backup process, because the government subjects them to constantly ratcheting standards for document retention — specifying how long, and on what format, they have to keep every communication ever generated by their firms. How dare they demand higher standards of regulated companies than they do of the regulators?

Standards are for the little people. But I favor collective punishment.

The auction for the world's biggest video game collection has ended, with a mystery bidder taking the 11,000-title lot for three quarters of a million dollars. The winning bid, after 56 offers, was $750,250 by a GameGavel bidder going by the username "peeps_10091970."

Auction holder Michael Thomasson launched the auction earlier this month so that he could address the needs of his immediate and extended family. He said previously that he thought his collection was worth between $700,000 and $800,000, so it looks like he got exactly what he was looking for. The collection includes the 10,607 titles needed for the world record as well as an additional 400+ obtained since.

$750,250 for the entire 11,000-game collection works out to around $68 per game.

According to the bid history, two main bidders--"peeps_10091970 and "catch123"--were locked in a tight bidding war. "catch123" submitted a $750,000 bid on June 11 at 9:36 a.m. EDT, before "peeps_10091970" offered $750,250 just two seconds later. The auction officially ended June 15 at 10:30 p.m. EDT.

A December 2013 profile of Thomasson revealed that his trek to the world record featured two start-overs. He sold his collection first in 1989 to raise money for a Sega Genesis and again in 1998 to pay for his wedding. Thomasson teaches courses on 2D animation, game design, and video game history at Canisius College in Buffalo and has time to play games for around three hours per week.

It's official: Game of Thrones has passed The Sopranos to become the most popular show in HBO's history.

Currently nearing the end of its fourth season, Thrones has had an average gross audience of 18.4 million viewers per episode. This season's average surpasses the previous record of 18.2 million viewers per episode set by The Sopranos in 2002. Season three episodes of the fantasy drama based on George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series had an average gross audience of 14.4 million viewers. [...]

The post ‘Game Of Thrones’ Passes ‘The Sopranos’ To Become Most Popular HBO Show Of All Time appeared first on Geeks of Doom.

People either love or hate the Transformers film franchise. On one hand, Michael Bay has helped bring the war between the Autobots and Decepticons to life; and on the other, we got to hear many variations of Shia LeBeouf saying "No, no, no." But the popularity of the source material is one of Paramount's cash cows, and now they will be extending it as they have announced that Transformers 5 will be hitting theaters in 2016.

Paramount made the sequel announcement recently at a film conference in Europe. Other titles announced for 2016 include: Star Trek 3, G.I. Joe 3, Beverly Hills Cop 4, Hansel and Gretel 2, and Paranormal Activity 5. Hit the jump for more info. [...]

The post ‘Transformers 5,’ ‘ Star Trek 3,’ ‘G.I. Joe 3′ & More Scheduled For 2016 appeared first on Geeks of Doom.

Super Mario Bros. has been around for almost 30 years, but people are not only still playing, they’re still coming across new cheats. YouTuber Games Haya posted a glitch that allows you to get infinite 1-Ups. Here’s the process as described by Retrocollect:

“First, you must first take player one’s Mario to the second level of the game and throw away your first life. With Luigi taking over, player two must traverse all the way to World 5-2 and find the hidden beanstalk block halfway through the stage. Once there, Luigi must start climbing the vines, however, he must await – and take on the chin – an incoming projectile from one of the Hammer Bros. Upon being hit, once player one resumes control of Mario, the beanstalk from World 5-2 will start growing in World 1-2, providing all you need to infinitely kick shells for unlimited bonuses.”

See how to trigger the glitch in the video after the break.

(Dorkly via Geekologie)

20th Century Fox just released the final trailer for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and we were surprised it actually made us jump back in our seats and go "Whoa."

We’ll admit that we’ve been pretty skeptical about this sequel.

Sure, the film, which pits the apes against humans in an inescapable war, does have Gary Oldman, who’s always golden on screen; however, director Rupert Wyatt and James Franco aren’t returning from the first film. 

According to Deadline, Wyatt thought a 2014 release would be a rush for the film and Franco will be seen through a video flashback.

So for this final trailer to make us actually jump halfway through and go "whoa" is a big deal. We watch a lot of trailers, and I think the last time I've had any sort of emotional response was while watching the first "X-Men: Days of Future Past" trailer or the one for "The Fault in Our Stars" (come on, it's a sad movie). Coincidentally, both also happen to be movies put out by Fox.

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is in theaters July 11.

Now, that you've watched the trailer, it's worth noting two versions of it were released that are slightly different from each other. The biggest change is the edit of the brutal gunning scene I was talking about.

In one version, an ape is seen viciously holding a firearm. In the the trailer above, a man’s hand obscures it from view. You'll notice the coloring is also different.

Here's what you see in the domestic trailer:

And here's what's shown in the international ones:

What really gets us and makes us jump is the man's reaction to watching his buddy get gunned down by an ape. It's visibly shown in the international trailer and cut from the other. I'm not putting an image in here because it's slightly graphic.

You can watch the other version with a few swapped out scenes, here.

SEE ALSO: Here's how the apes in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" look without CGI

Join the conversation about this story »

Alaska will soon become the second state to give away free pregnancy tests in bars. The program, organized by Healthy Brains For Children, is intended to reduce fetal alcohol syndrome in Alaska, which has the highest rate of the condition in the country.

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I consider mashed potatoes to be a major food group, but had never thought of them as a fast-food burger topping. It makes a lot more sense than putting fries on a burger, though, and Carl’s Jr. is forging ahead with this beautiful idea in some test markets.

(Brand Eating)

A Brand Eating reader spotted this vision of ‘taterness on a drive-thru menu in southern California. The idea of a potato-topped burger wasn’t beautiful enough by itself: the potatoes are garlic mashed potatoes, and the topping is in turn topped with onion straws and gravy. Well, of course, gravy. That’s a given.

There’s a variety of “mashers,” as they’re called. Your meat options include a regular old beef patty, a chicken patty, or the larger beef patty from the Six Dollar Burger. Inexplicably, this last option costs $5, while the basic burger costs $2.99. Upgrading your sandwich to a fresh-baked bun runs $6.99.

News: Carl’s Jr. Testing New Mashed Potato-Topped Burgers [Brand Eating]

Popeyes now owns the delicious rights to its own recipes. (Blue387)

If you’re wondering how this happens and how you can get into the rent-a-recipe business, it helps to know that the company that owned the recipes was started by the chain’s founder, Al Copeland, in 1984. Diversified Foods and Seasonings is a separate entity that sells most of the food that a Popeyes franchisee needs, from biscuit mixes to chicken batter to premade soups and macaroni and cheese.

In 1994, the company filed for bankruptcy and reorganized, and Copeland was ousted from the company he founded. He got to keep some Popeyes franchises…and DFS, the company with the contract to supply Popeyes restaurants with, well, food and seasonings. The recipe royalty was actually a “spice royalty” for the rights to use the recipes for those spice blends and mixes.

DFS still holds the exclusive contract to supply spice mixes and other products to Popeyes franchisees, but the company now owns its recipes. The $43 million figure was calculated based on the amount that Popeyes would have paid in royalties for the next 15 years.

Popeyes Buys Its Recipes for $43 Million. Wait, Popeyes Didn’t Own Its Recipes? [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Just strolling around after landing. (KPIX 5)

Surviving an experience like this California teen did is a rare thing — about 23.7% of people have lived through similar experiences, reported the Los Angeles Times at the time, as there’s the risk of not only being improperly secured and falling out, but it can get to 50 below zero up there at cruising altitude, where oxygen is also pretty darn scarce.

One doctor explained that the kid probably froze, sort of, for a little bit, as “the need for oxygen declines as the body cools. It’s exactly like the concept of cryogenic freezing…. The boy’s body went into a frozen state.”

So again, pretty scary. But the Bay Area teenager just spoke out to the first time in a reported interview over Google Chat with KPIX 5, saying the experience was not scary. Again, NOT scary, though he can’t believe he survived. He just took the closest plane he could find that was going west, in an attempt to reach his mother at a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

“It was above the clouds, I could see through the little holes,” he said, adding that he covered his ears as the plane took off.

“I only did it because I didn’t want to live with my stepmom. Second of all, I wanted to find my mom. I haven’t seen her since I was young,” he explained.

Since then he’s been busy doing things besides hopping airport fences and stowing away on planes, like going to the movies and playing video games. And it sounds like he’s got a good head on his shoulders after the whole thing — saying other kids with the same idea shouldn’t copy him.

“They shouldn’t run away because sometimes they will end up dying,” he said.

Teen Stowaway Tells All About Surviving Journey From San Jose Airport To Hawaii In KPIX 5 Interview [KPIX 5]

What does it mean when a cable company advertises “blazing fast Internet” or download speeds “up to 15 Mbps”? Does that mean all the time for everyone, or just an average? And how far from those “up to” speeds can an Internet service provider be before they have some explaining to do?

The FCC has released its latest Measuring Broadband America report for 2014, which looks at the actual speeds that American consumers are getting from the nation’s largest ISPs and how those stack up against what those ISPs are promising.

The good news: For the first time in the four years that the FCC has been doing this report, ISPs as a whole are delivering the speeds they promise… on average.

As the chart at the top shows, some ISPs are doing better than others. For example, Verizon FiOS, Comcast, and Cablevision are each delivering sustained uploads and download speeds that meet or exceed the advertised rates. Others, mostly DSL providers are still not able to deliver the speeds they promise. But even the worst provider in the study, Windstream, is still coming in above 80% of its advertised speeds.

But the FCC’s first look at the consistency of these speeds shows some cracks in the system.

This chart can be a little confusing. The standard for consistency set by the FCC for this metric was whether 80% of an ISP’s customers get the full advertised speed 80% of the time. So while Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, Mediacom, FiOS, and ViaSat/Exede all delivered sustained speeds that are above the advertised levels, only Cablevision and FiOS are consistently delivering the promised speeds. Meanwhile, many of the DSL providers — Frontier, Verizon, Windstream — are far from consistent in delivering advertised speeds.

FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has directed the commission to reach out to ISPs that are providing slower than advertised and/or highly inconsistent speeds to find out what these companies are doing to resolve these discrepancies.

“Consumers deserve to get what they pay for,” said Wheeler in a statement. “While it’s encouraging to see that in the past these reports have encouraged providers to improve their services, I’m concerned that some providers are failing to deliver consistent speeds to consumers that are commensurate to their advertised speeds.”

With regard to the hot-button topic of interconnection — the points at which commercial bandwidth providers dump off their data to ISPs to carry the last mile to consumers — and the congestion of interconnection points, the FCC didn’t include any data on that.

The report states that it has historically not counted statistics for data over degraded interconnection points because that had usually just been a correctable network error as opposed to something systemic.

However recent spats between ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T and Netflix’s bandwidth providers have affected a large number of people and the FCC recognizes that “consumers accessing services and content over the affected paths would likely see a significant degradation in their service.”

And so the report does not include measurements from degraded interconnection points, but the FCC has collected test results from impacted servers and is releasing this information for others to pick apart.

Chairman Wheeler recently directed his staff to investigate this type of congestion and has obtained details on the deals Netflix made with Comcast and Verizon to pay for better access to their networks.

Enriched, and ingrained. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)

If you took a little bit of dairy, added a slightly larger serving of vegetables, fruits and proteins, and then piled on as many superfluous oils, fats, and grains as possible, you'd have a mock, but also a reasonably accurate picture of the modern American diet.

The Americans on average eat nearly 2,600 calories a day, almost 500 more than they did thirty years ago, according to the USDA, which uses food production data, along with spoilage and waste estimates, to approximate per capita consumption.

That increase alone should be enough to raise an eyebrow (or three hundred million), but what's most troubling isn't the increase in our caloric intake, so much as its make-up. Over 92% of the uptick in per capita caloric intake since 1970 is attributable to oils, fats, and grains. Thirty years ago, the combination was responsible for roughly 37% of our daily calories; today, it makes up closer to 47% of our diet.

What exactly we should glean from that reality isn't entirely clear. Oils, fats, and grains, aren't inherently bad. In fact, there's good reason to believe that many fats and oils are actually just the opposite. And grains, despite a growing narrative about their potential harms, come in all shapes and sizes—some are protein-rich, like quinoa, while others offer little, if any, nutritional value, such as enriched white flour.

But to call a calorie a calorie is misguided—especially if one is highly processed, or refined—and it's easy enough to conjecture about the kind of calories we're consuming more of nowadays. It's likely of little coincidence, for instance, that the two food groups Americans are eating more and more of—added fats and oils, and flour and cereal products—are the same ones that are found in most processed and fast foods.

"It's hard to pinpoint why exactly it's increased," Jeanine Bentley, the social science analyst responsible for the USDA's food availability database, said in an interview. "But it probably comes from an increase in processed and fast foods."

Bentley isn't blindly holding her finger to the wind. A 2013 study by USDA's Economic Research Service seems to confirm her suspicion. Fast food is a much more integral part of the American diet than it was in the 1970s. Between 1977 and 1978, fast food accounted for just over 3% of calories in the US diet; between 2005 and 2008, that share skyrocketed to over 13%.

Americans are also spending almost three times the recommended amount on refined grains, and many times more than the recommended amount on frozen and refrigerated entrees, according to the same study.

The sum of all those calories, which appear to largely be the wrong kind of calories, is an ever-expanding American waistline. Americans aged 20 and older are now almost three times as likely to be obese as they were only 30 years ago—the increase is enough to afford the U.S. the unenviable distinction of being the most obese major country in the world.

That distinction is that its more than merely a health conundrum; it's a full-fledged economic problem, too. As of 2008, the annual medical costs alone of obesity amounted to almost $150 billion, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Some, including food journalist Mark Bittman, believe the total annual costs of the epidemic in the US could now exceed $1 trillion.

Comcast owns New York City's famous 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and now it wants everyone in the city to have a permanent reminder of that. The company has put forward a proposal to remove the "GE" initials that have stood atop the landmark building since the 1980s. They would be replaced with Comcast's own logo — NBC peacock in tow. According to The New York Times, a local community board has already given the green light for the switch, but that's not the only approval Comcast needs. Before it can put its own stamp on New York's skyline, Comcast must first obtain a "certificate of appropriateness" from the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

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Technology has added plenty of new annoyances to life, but it's also done away with countless others. One more that could be on its way out? A visit to the doctor's office. That's the vision of a company called Cue, which wants to make at-home medical diagnosis — everything from the flu to vitamin D levels — as common as pregnancy tests.

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