Davemichels

The White House is reportedly considering a ban on personal mobile phones for staff at work, according to Bloomberg.

The Trump administration has been beset by leaks — in February, then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer was reportedly coordinating unplanned “phone checks,” as staffers turned to encrypted messaging apps — and a ban could be used to curb contact with the press, but the ban would also cause technical hurdles for staff: Bloomberg reports that staff aren’t able to send texts on government-issued devices.

Bloomberg quotes one source saying the ban is for cybersecurity reasons, as personal devices are not as secure as White House phones. On that front, the White House has also run into problems: chief of staff John Kelly’s personal...

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I want to start out this post by making a key point: I know that it's become fashionable to launch into personal and ad hominem attacks on people we disagree with politically of late. We've sought to avoid doing that here on Techdirt, even if we often will criticize people and their positions in stark terms. Over the past few days, however, the ad hominem attacks on FCC chair Ajit Pai by some have been absolutely disgraceful -- and absolutely counterproductive. I disagree with Pai quite a lot (as you'll see below). But the venom and attacks he's received from many are not just unfair and misguided, but only serve to bolster the idea that the people arguing against him are unhinged from reality. I've met Pai a few times and have found him to be both thoughtful and intelligent. I still believe that he is deeply misguided about multiple important issues, but we can debate those issues without resorting to personal attacks. I hope that others will follow suit.

Ever since Ajit Pai became chair of the FCC he's been systematically undoing more or less everything his predecessor, Tom Wheeler, accomplished during his (perhaps surprisingly) effective chairmanship. To do that, Pai has engaged in a series of statements and positions that, at best, have involved misrepresentations of reality. There are a number of these that may be worth exploring, but I want to focus on one that I'll refer to as Ajit Pai's Big Lie, because it's the key argument he's made, underlining his reasoning for chucking out the existing net neutrality rules. Here is the opening paragraph from the FAQ that Pai released last week, setting out his reasoning... and also succinctly presenting Ajit Pai's Big Lie:

Over twenty years ago, President Clinton and a Republican Congress established the policy of the United States “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet . . . unfettered by Federal or State regulation.” For decades, Commission policies encouraged broadband deployment and the development of the Internet. That ended two years ago. In 2015, the Commission imposed heavy-handed, utility-style regulation on Internet service providers (ISPs). Since then, broadband investment has fallen for two years in a row—the first time that that’s happened outside a recession in the Internet era. And new services have been delayed or scuttled by a regulatory environment that stifles innovation.

You might think that the "Big Lie" is the idea that the 2015 rules killed investment. And that is a lie. Actual evidence from financial reports has proven that completely false repeatedly. But, that's a smaller lie here. Ajit Pai's Big Lie is the idea that gutting all net neutrality protections is somehow returning FCC policy to the way things were two years ago, and that "for decades" the FCC kept out of this debate. All of that is wrong. And, unlike the other lie concerning investment -- where Pai and others can fiddle with numbers to make his claims look right -- Ajit Pai knows that the Big Lie is false.

Pai likes to point back to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as his starting point in claiming that the internet is free from regulations, and suggests that things just changed with the 2015 FCC order. But he literally knows this is wrong. First of all, for all his talk of using 1996 as the starting date to show "decades" of supposedly unchanged FCC positions on this, he conveniently leaves out that the FCC didn't actually classify cable broadband as an information service... until 2002. That's from the FCC's own announcement about it. And this was fought out in court, eventually leading to the Brand X Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that said the FCC had the right to determine if broadband was an information service or a telco service (which is why the 2015 order has been upheld).

And, even then, telco (i.e., DSL) based broadband was still classified under Title II. It was only in 2005 that the FCC officially reclassified telco-based broadband as an information service, rather than a Title II covered telco service. This move actually stripped broadband of the one feature that had created the most competitive markets: the requirement to share their lines.

So, as a starting point, the idea that there's been a consistent policy position from 1996 until 2015 is simply wrong. The FCC itself changed the classification of broadband providers in 2002 and again in 2005.

Next, the idea that "net neutrality" itself is a new concept that only came about with the 2015 order is complete and utter hogwash. And, again, this is something that Pai knows well. If you go back through the previous four FCC chairs -- under both Democrat and Republican administrations -- they all supported net neutrality. They just struggled with how to implement it. In 2004, then FCC chair Michael Powell presented his "guiding principles" for "preserving internet freedom." In that document, Powell laid out an early argument for net neutrality (before the term had really caught on), noting that it was important that broadband providers offer up full access to the entire internet equally.

In that speech, he actually warned of why it would be dangerous for an internet access provider to block a competing VoIP service, and that the FCC "must keep a sharp eye on market practices that will continue to evolve rapidly." And, indeed, a year later, when Powell discovered that a small ISP named Madison River was blocking VoIP calls via Vonage, Powell's FCC fined Madison River using Title II as the justification (the consent decree refers to 47 USC 208, which is part of Title II).

So we had a Republican FCC chair who clearly supported net neutrality and used Title II to make it happen. How the hell can Ajit Pai square this with his claim of no one using Title II or supporting net neutrality until Tom Wheeler's 2015 order?

And we're just getting started. Powell's successor was Kevin Martin -- another Republican under President George W. Bush. Martin also strongly supported net neutrality and, in many ways, kicked off the process that eventually resulted in Wheeler's order. It was under Martin's watch that it was discovered that Comcast was throttling BitTorrent and the FCC issued an order telling Comcast to knock it off. By that point, the FCC had already (see above) made it clear that broadband was not a Title II service, so it relied on other parts of its claimed mandate to issue the order.

That went to court and the court said that the FCC did not have the proper authority to police such a net neutrality violation under the existing rules. The court said that the FCC was trying to stretch its ancillary authority too far -- that even though the FCC wanted to, it could not enforce net neutrality requirements on information services. Basically, the court was telling the FCC it fucked up in reclassifying broadband away from Title II, even as it still believed in the importance of net neutrality (and, yes, again, as a reminder, this was under a Republican FCC).

That's why the next FCC chair, Julius Genachowski, proposed a different set of rules for net neutrality in 2010. However, under tremendous pressure from the broadband providers, Genachowski punted and tried to craft net neutrality rules without reclassifying broadband companies under Title II. Verizon (who helped write the rules) still sued over these new rules... and won. Basically, the court said (again) "Hey, FCC, you clearly want net neutrality, but the only way to do that is to reclassify broadband under Title II."

It was only then, with the next FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, that the FCC actually did so. And that's why Wheeler's Open Internet order has been held up in court already.

But read through all of this carefully, and try to square this with Ajit Pai's Big Lie -- that since 1996, broadband has been treated one way, and there's been no FCC push for net neutrality. The FCC considered broadband covered by Title II for nearly a decade after the Communications Act of 1996, and even as it was reclassifying broadband to be an information service, every single FCC chair expressed strong support for net neutrality and tried to enforce it against those who violated those principles. It was only because the courts pushed back, and noted that if the FCC wanted to enforce net neutrality, broadband needed to be Title II, that the FCC made that switch, supported with both the backing of the court (in those earlier rulings and following the order) and plenty of evidence for why it was necessary.

For Pai to argue that he's trying to bring things back to how they were from 1996 to 2015, he has to ignore all of that history. He's not taking us back to that era. He's doing something worse. He's wiping out the rules that courts said were necessary to enforce the FCC's long-held position on net neutrality. And, more importantly, he's reversed course on the FCC's long-held position on net neutrality.

And he's doing so with his Big Lie that he's merely reverting back to where things used to be.

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Microsoft has been testing out its Office apps on Chromebooks for the past year, but they’ve been mainly limited to Google’s latest PixelBook device. It now appears that testing has concluded, and a number of Chromebooks are now reliably seeing the Office apps in the Google Play Store for Chromebooks. Chrome Unboxed reports that the apps are showing up on Samsung’s Chromebook Pro, Acer’s Chromebook 15, and Acer’s C771.

The apps are Android versions of Office which include the same features you’d find on an Android tablet running Office. Devices like Asus’ Chromebook Flip (with a 10.1-inch display) will get free access to Office on Chrome OS, but larger devices will need a subscription. Microsoft has a rule across Windows, iOS, and...

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Do you use a laptop or tablet to take notes during school lectures or meetings? If so then maybe you should reconsider pen and paper because there’s increasing evidence that using laptops during lectures decreases learning which can result in lower grades, reports The New York Times.

A study at Princeton University and the University of California, investigated this by asking some students to take notes at a lecture using pen and paper, while another group used laptops. The experiment found that the students who used a laptop did not understand the lecture as well as those who wrote their notes out by hand. The researchers hypothesized that this was because students who wrote notes by hand had to process what the lecturer was saying...

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As the Federal Communications Commission prepares to dismantle its net neutrality rules for internet providers, a mounting backlash from agency critics is zeroing in on what they say are thousands of fake or automated comments submitted to the FCC that unfairly skewed the policymaking process.

Allegations about anomalies in the record are quickly becoming a central component of a campaign by online activists and some government officials to discredit the FCC’s plan.

“The process the FCC has employed,” wrote New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this week in a letter to the FCC, “has been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans’ identities .”

For the past six months, Schneiderman continued, the New York attorney general’s office has been reviewing the comments filed at the FCC on net neutrality. It found that “hundreds of thousands” of submissions may have impersonated New York residents – a potential violation of state law. But, he said, the FCC has declined to provide further evidence that could help move the investigation forward, such as data logs and other information.

Some consumers have complained that their own names or addresses have been hijacked and used to submit false comments to the FCC that they did not support. Others have pointed to the bizarre appearance of comments submitted by people who are deceased. Public comments play an important role at the FCC, which typically solicits feedback from Americans before it votes to make significant policy changes. The agency didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The comments targeted by Internet activists largely back the FCC’s decision to repeal Obama-era regulations aimed at ensuring all websites, large and small, are treated equally by internet providers. Consumer groups fear that without the rules, internet providers could begin charging some websites or services more to reach their customers – regular internet users, who may ultimately bear the cost of the new fees. They also say internet providers could artificially speed up services they own or have special relationships with, to the detriment of start-ups and small businesses. For their part, internet providers have promised not to block or slow down content that they do not like.

But internet providers have also spent significant time and money lobbying for the regulations to be reversed. And some of the public comments, critics say, bear a striking resemblance to industry talking points.

“It was particularly chilling to see these spam comments all in one place, as they are exactly the type of policy arguments and language you expect to see in industry comments on the proposed repeal,” wrote Jeff Kao, a data scientist who published a study of the pro-repeal comments Thursday, in a blog post.

Like Schneiderman, Kao performed his own analysis of the net neutrality comment record. Using an algorithm to sort out duplicate entries, Kao said he was then able to apply another algorithm to identify the remaining comments that could be considered “unique.” Further analysis revealed that even some of the unique submissions shared common language and syntax, suggesting they weren’t unique at all but perhaps written by a computer program in ways that made each submission appear slightly different.

For example, one submission read “Citizens, as opposed to Washington bureaucrats, should be empowered to buy whatever products they prefer.” Another retained much the same format but with certain words rearranged: “Individual citizens, as opposed to Washington bureaucrats, should be able to select whichever services they desire.”

While it is common for advocacy campaigns to recruit people to sign and submit form letters to the FCC, Kao said that those who supported keeping the rules were far more likely to write personal, heartfelt messages. Despite the polarizing nature of the policy fight, few commenters who supported the repeal were moved to develop their own, original messages – an indication to Kao that many in the pro-repeal camp may have been bots, or spam.

“It’s scary to think that organic, authentic voices in the public debate are being drowned out by a chorus of spambots,” Kao wrote.

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• December 12, 2017 Colorado’s Mike Coffman is first Republican U.S. Rep. to ask FCC to delay vote on net neutrality
• December 8, 2017 Net neutrality fans speak up as FCC set to strike down rules
• December 5, 2017 Google blocks YouTube on Amazon devices in escalating feud

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said repeatedly that when it comes to the comments on net neutrality, the agency’s rulemaking process would favor quality over quantity.

But Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic FCC commissioner who supports keeping the rules, said Pai needs to do more.

“They need to get out from behind their desks and computers and speak to the public directly,” Rosenworcel wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. “The FCC needs to hold hearings around the country to get a better sense of how the public feels about the proposal.”

Calling the FCC comment system “a mess,” Rosenworcel added that some 50,000 consumer complaints appear to have disappeared from the agency’s records. She also highlighted a Government Accountability Office probe into an alleged denial-of-service attack that the FCC claimed prevented consumers from filing submissions on the net neutrality plan.

As with most things in the internet of things space, secure, smart door locks have traditionally been frequently shown to be neither. In fact, a recent study that looked at 16 different smart locks found twelve of them to be easily compromised. And again, many of these vulnerabilities were of the vanilla stupid variety, with passwords being transmitted unencrypted, letting anybody with a modicum of technical skill and a Bluetooth sniffer to pluck your front door access code out of thin air. Like most things in the IOT space, companies have been so eager to make a buck they've left common sense standing on the front porch.

So when Amazon introduced its new $250 Smart Key system a few weeks back, most people were understandably skeptical. The product promises to securely let Amazon delivery folk unlock your front door and place packages inside, with an accompanying camera that tracks every move the deliveryman makes to ensure personal security. But the idea of Amazon delivery personnel gaining access to your home immediately raised all manner of questions among journalists, ranging from obvious questions of personal security to what happens if Amazon lets fido out by accident:

"Amazon flat-out says that, if your pet has access to the front door, you should not use the service. Dogs don't take kindly to strangers entering the home, and cats may try to bolt through an open door. Then again, Amazon also touts the joy of allowing pet sitters and dog walkers to access your home with the smart lock."

This skepticism is understandable. Amazon already has a live microphone sitting in millions of customer homes worldwide, and the idea of letting Amazon also open your front door at will is a bridge too far for many. As if on cue, reports quickly emerged last week that justified this concerns, highlighting how the Amazon Key camera system could be easily exploited to disable system safeguards. Researchers at Rhino Security Labs demonstrated that by using a simple program within WiFi range, the camera can be not only disabled, but frozen -- presenting the image of a closed door while burglars happily pilfer your possessions.

As with many of these vulnerabilities, Rhino Security researchers note that the attack isn't particularly complicated, leaving traces neither in the image recordings or the system logs:

"In their demonstration, shown in the video above, a delivery person unlocks the door with their Amazon Key app, opens the door, drops off a package, and then closes the door behind them. Normally, they'd then lock the door with their app. In this attack, they instead run a program on their laptop—or, Rhino's researchers suggest, on a simple handheld device anyone could build using a Raspberry Pi minicomputer and an antenna—that sends a series of "deauthorization" commands to the home's Cloud Cam."

Amazon is promising an update that resolves the problem shortly, though the service has -- as countless IOT devices have before it -- already acted as an unintentional advertisement to the fact that dumb technology often remains the smartest option.

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As the FCC moves ahead with its plan to dismantle net neutrality protections, pro-net neutrality groups say they’re planning protests at Verizon stores around the country on December 7th.

“We'll demand that our members of Congress take action to stop Verizon's puppet FCC from killing net neutrality,” the organizers write on a website dedicated to the protests.

The groups, which have organized protests like the digital “day of action,” say volunteer organizers are planning for the protests, which will be held in several cities. In some cases, protesters will march to lawmakers’ offices as well.

This week, the FCC announced its intention to vote on a rollback of net neutrality...

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Popular chatbots commonly used today, such as Siri and Amazon Alexa, are examples of how far automated assistants have come.

But they also show how far they still have to go.

Some companies were developing a standalone application because it seemed popular to do so; however, for any application to have a chance at success, it must provide substantial value. Given that the use of messaging apps is growing in popularity, chatbot uses for enterprise have also grown, which has fueled major industry players to integrate more chatbots into their systems for both individual and enterprise use.

Facebook Bots

In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook’s Messenger Platform, a service that allows businesses of any size to build custom bots into Messenger. It also includes Messenger codes, unique images that are used as a visual thumbprint for businesses and bots on Messenger. This allows businesses to redirect customers to the corresponding company page or bot.

Facebook’s experimental Messenger bot, M, proves the value of a bot and its ability to not only just retrieve simple pieces of information from its database, but understand complex requests as your digital butler.

Similar to Siri, you can type out or speak your request. But when your request cannot be fulfilled, instead of searching the web or replying that it cannot understand, a Facebook human representative invisibly takes over responding to your request as if the algorithms were still decoding your request.

On trial with a few thousand users in 2015, the semi-public R&D project reveals how people would react to an omniscient virtual assistant and provides data that would let the algorithms learn to take over the work of their human counterparts.

Slack Bots 

IBM partnered with fast-growing workplace messaging app Slack in 2016 to power the next iteration of Slackbot, Slack’s virtual assistant. The incorporation of IBM's artificial intelligence into the Slack app allows the chat platform to understand the inner workings of a company, as well as an individual user’s role within it.

Its purpose will be to provide useful answers to questions answered by employees. Already, companies that use Slack have employees that spend about 20 percent of their time looking for information or looking for someone who has the information they need.

Among the countless existing frameworks that users have access to online, Slack allows you to build your own chatbot and makes it simple for users to publish their bots on their app store. They also provide detailed launch documentation that you can use as a checklist. Bots must be approved for various permissions and access to data that is dependent on the bot built. 

Skype Bots 

Microsoft is making its flagship messaging platform Skype open for chatbots with a Skype bot SDK. As a Microsoft product, Skype opened its APIs in 2016, and developers from all around the world could now build chatbots on their platform.

The Skype bot SDK allows developers to write in text, voice, and video bots, which likely feature animated characters. The bot directory makes it easy for Skype users to easily install and search for bots with the feature to discover bots on its own webpage so that users are able to interact directly on the webpage without installing it into the messaging app.

Skype chatbots are able to integrate deep within Microsoft’s own digital assistant Cortana. Cortana can pass the conversation to third-party chatbots as needed to address specific user issues. The conversation control and context are then passed along from bot to bot.

Chatbot Platforms Market Growing

A successful integration of a chatbot creates a perfect vehicle for businesses to reach customers and achieve higher retention rates, while also appealing to a younger demographic.

AI has reached a stage where chatbots have increasingly engaging human conversations and allow companies to leverage this inexpensive and wide-reaching technology. Platforms such as Kik and Facebook Messenger offer a series of responses that users receive quickly. This helps developers build a stronger conversational design philosophy within their chatbot.

More to Learn

Chatbots for business will continue to improve in the coming years. Chatbot architecture and design will evolve to the point that interactive AI will become standard for customer service. But there are numerous applications for chatbots across a variety of sectors.

That's why BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a bundle of detailed reports on chatbots:

• The Chatbots Explainer
• Chatbots in Banking
• Chatbot Monetization
• Conversational Commerce

To get all four reports, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full reports using the links above.

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Uber suffered a large-scale cyberattack in October of 2016 that exposed the confidential data of 57 million customers and drivers, the company disclosed today in a statement following a damning Bloomberg report. Among Uber’s faults include not only failing to disclose the hack, but in covering it up as well. Former CEO Travis Kalanick was informed of the attack just one month after it transpired, but it was not publicly announced and in fact was concealed by Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan and his subordinates, the report says, leading Uber to fire the executive and one of his lieutenants this week.

The company allegedly paid its hackers a $100,000 ransom to delete the data and not publicize the breach to media or regulators. “None...

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• The Federal Communications Commission has officially voted to ditch net neutrality, which requires internet providers to treat all data online equally.
• A Portuguese internet provider hints at what the American internet could eventually look like.
• The company charges people more for additional "zero-rated" data based on the kind of app they want to use, such as those for messaging or for video.

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On Thursday, the US Federal Communications Commission officially voted to roll back Obama-era rules governing net neutrality.

Simply put, net neutrality means that all data on the internet is treated equally. An internet service provider can't prioritize certain companies or types of data, charge users more to access certain websites and apps, or charge businesses for preferential access.

Advocates of net neutrality argue that it ensures a level playing field for everyone on the internet. Telecoms firms, however, are largely against it because of the additional restrictions it places on them.

Pro-net neutrality advocates have vowed to fight the FCC in the courts — but what might the American internet look like without net neutrality? 

Take a look at Portugal. The country is bound by the European Union's net-neutrality rules, but it allows for certain kinds of pricing schemes that hint at what a net neutality-less internet might look like.

The country's wireless carrier Meo offers a package where users pay for traditional "data" for their smartphones — and on top of that, they can pay for additional packages based on the kind of data and apps they want to use, "zero-rating" those services.

Really into messaging? Then pay €4.99 ($5.86 or £4.43) a month and get more data for apps like WhatsApp, Skype, and FaceTime. Prefer social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger, and so on? That'll be another €4.99 a month.

Zero-rating for video apps like Netflix and YouTube are available as another add-on, while music (Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, etc.) is another, as is email and cloud (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, etc.).

Net-neutrality advocates argue that this kind of model is dangerous because it risks creating a two-tier system that harms competition — people will just use the big-name apps included in the bundles they pay for, while upstart challengers will be left out in the cold.

For example: If you love watching videos, and Netflix is included in the video bundle but Hulu isn't, you're likely to try to save money by using only Netflix, making it harder for its competitors. (Note: Hulu isn't available in Portugal, but you get the idea.)

And without net neutrality, big-name apps could theoretically even pay telecoms firms for preferential access, offering them money — and smaller companies just couldn't compete with that. (It's not clear whether any of the companies named above have paid for preferential access.)

An ISP could even refuse to grant customers access to an app at all unless they (or the app company) paid up. 

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California originally shared the Meo example on Twitter in October, though he mischaracterised Portugal's net neutrality laws.

"In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages," he wrote. "A huge advantage for entrenched companies, but it totally ices out startups trying to get in front of people which stifles innovation. This is what's at stake, and that's why we have to save net neutrality."

Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee, recently retweeted Khanna's tweet, adding: "This isn't even the worst part of ending net neutrality. The worst part happens when ISPs say 'we don't like this site's politics,' or 'this site competes with us,' and block or throttle it."

SEE ALSO: Tech firms are starting to speak up against the FCC's plan to kill net neutrality: 'We are disappointed'

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NOW WATCH: Amazon has an oddly efficient way of storing stuff in its warehouses

The Internet of Things has the potential to make professionals more efficient and productive through the use of enhanced machine learning, augmented reality and connected devices.

Android phones gather your location data and send it to Google, even if you’ve turned off location services and don’t have a SIM card, Quartz reported today.

The term “location services” oftentimes refers to exact GPS data for app usage, such as Google Maps finding your best commute route, or Uber figuring out exactly where you’re standing to let drivers know your pickup point. Quartz’s report details a practice in which Google was able to track user locations by triangulating which cell towers were currently servicing a specific device.

Since January, all kinds of Android phones and tablets have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers and sending the encrypted data to...

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Voice Biometrics has traditionally been implemented as a ‘point solution’ in contact centers and mobile devices. In our recent paper, “Voice Biometrics, What Could Go Wrong?“, we stressed the importance of multi-layer, multi-modal and multi-factor strategies.

Eckoh, the London-based provider of global payment products and customer service solutions, has been assisting organizations to de-scope their Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance by masking sensitive card information that is entered via DTMF tones through their patented ‘audio tokenization’ CallGuard solution. They recently announced that they will be awarded a patent that combines voice biometrics with phone ‘footprinting’, adding yet another innovative layer to their secure payments solutions.

Other firms that have been offering various audio-path authentication include TrustID with their patented network, telephony and phone verification solutions, and Pindrop’s whose patented Phoneprint technology has been in place since 2015, and has already demonstrated immense value to curbing millions of dollars in contact center fraud for IVR and live-agent calls.

When one considers that a phone ‘footprint’ is also regarded as a unique template, very much like a biometric template (voice, finger, face, etc), this combination of factors actually satisfies all three criteria:

• Multi-layer – speaker and device, both components that make up the ‘edge’ of a connection
• Multi-modal – voice and phone ‘biometrics’
• Multi-factor – something you are (voice) and something you ‘have’ (phone)

The application of Big Data Analytics on various network components such as the SIM card (the primary network authentication layer), phone, carrier network(s), internal enterprise systems and other nodes across the entire voice ecosystem is yielding immense improvements in caller authentication. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon announced in September that they have joined their considerable resources to create the Mobile Authentication Taskforce, whose goal to develop mobile authentication solutions using components such as network-based device authentication, geo-location and SIM card recognition.

As Machine Learning is applied to an ever increasing set of nodes across the entire voice ecosystem, we expect to see exponential improvements in Intelligent Authentication.

• People are thinking a lot about what Amazon could do to the healthcare industry if it decided to get involved. 
• Should Amazon get into the business of prescription drugs, analysts at Morgan Stanley say that building pharmacies at Whole Foods could be a good way to get more Amazon Prime members who are over 55. 
• Building pharmacies in Whole Foods could also generate $2.3 billion in sales and help grow Amazon's Prime Now business. 

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People are starting to seriously think about what it might mean if Amazon were to get into the healthcare industry. 

In a 70-page report released Monday, analysts at Morgan Stanley broke down all of the potential ways Amazon could get into the industry, at varying degrees of involvement. 

"Amazon’s disruption of healthcare is a foregone conclusion," the analysts wrote. "Recent hires and public statements make it clear that Amazon is already moving into medical supply distribution."

If Amazon wanted to go all-in and get into the pharmacy business, especially by opening pharmacies at Whole Foods locations, it could be a major boost to Amazon Prime membership in one key demographic: People over 55.

"We note too that the older demographic still under-indexes toward Prime membership...which speaks to the opportunity for Pharma to help Amazon further penetrate the ~80 million 55+ population in the United States," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in the note.

In particular, getting into the pharmacy business might be the right avenue to approach potential Prime members who are over 55 because they're already internet-savvy when it comes to finding cheaper prices or coupons to help them afford their medications.

Prime is a big advantage that Amazon has over other online retailers. According to survey data from RBC Capital Markets, more than half of the 2,200 people the group surveyed signed up for Amazon Prime, with more than half of that group spending more than $800 a year on Amazon.

Whole Foods doesn't have a pharmacy, though it does sell vitamins and supplements. Setting up pharmacies within Whole Foods could generate an estimated $2.3 billion of pharmacy sales within stores as well, Morgan Stanley analysts said, as well as drive Amazon's Prime Now business, which has free two-hour delivery. 

"Offering this benefit of convenience will help it compete against traditional retail pharmacies and will provide yet another benefit to being a Prime member," the report said. 

It still remains to be seen whether Amazon does enter the pharmacy business. If it does, what that business will look like could widely vary. There are a lot of people involved in the process of delivering and paying for your prescription, from the drugmakers, to insurers, to the pharmacy. 

SEE ALSO: A futuristic doctor's office that doesn't take insurance and is backed by Eric Schmidt and Marc Benioff is opening in LA

DON'T MISS: Healthcare companies are taking Amazon very seriously

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NOW WATCH: Gary Shilling: Here's how I'd fix the Fed

• Everyone has bad workplace habits.
• Whether you realize it or not, they could be driving your coworkers nuts.
• You're best avoiding certain habits at work, like eating smelly food at your desk or talking politics.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's understandable that, in all the time we spend with coworkers and bosses, we might have let a bad habit or two slip.

Many of these office faux pas, however, may be avoided — you just need to know what it is that drives everyone around you nuts.

For the sake of your office companions, take a moment to remind yourself what behavior at work may be getting on someone's last nerve.

Here are 31 habits that might be annoying the heck out of your coworkers (or out of you).

DON'T MISS: 21 unprofessional email habits that make everyone hate you

SEE ALSO: 22 signs your coworkers secretly hate you

Showing up late to work

"Punctuality is critical," said Rosalinda Oropeza Randall, an etiquette and civility expert and author of "Don't Burp in the Boardroom."

"The professional thing to do is to arrive on time, ready to do what is expected. It's not like they just sprung this job on you," she said.

Rolling in 10 minutes late to every meeting

Similarly, arriving late to meetings shows that you neither respect your coworkers — who showed up on time, by the way — nor the meeting organizer, Vicky Oliver, author of "301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions," told Business Insider.

"Keeping people waiting can be construed as inconsiderate, rude, or arrogant," Randall said.

Calling in sick when you aren't

"Remember the adage that half of life is showing up," Oliver said.

You won't prove you deserve the promotion if you fake sick every few weeks.

Eating particularly smelly food at your desk

Eat lunch at your desk at your own peril.

Experts say you should never eat lunch at your desk because it's unhealthy.

But eating lunch at your desk doesn't just affect you — foods that are messy, crumby, smelly, or noisy can have a serious impact on your coworkers' happiness.

This is especially true for pungent foods, which can be hard to ignore.

Smelly foods like the following should stay out of the office:

• Reheated fish

• Hard boiled eggs

• Brussels sprouts

• Raw onions

• Garlic

• Tuna salad

• Stinky cheese

Being negative all the time

Repeatedly responding to suggestions with a pessimistic or contrary attitude can be construed as being uncooperative, Randall said. Phrases like "That won't work," "That sounds too hard," or, "I wouldn't know how to start," should be avoided.

Similarly, complaining too much puts you in a bad light.

"While there may be times when everyone feels the desire to complain about the boss, a coworker, or a task, voicing it will only make you look unprofessional," Randall said. "It's even worse if you complain every day, all day, from the moment you walk into work. Before long, people will go out of their way to avoid you."

"There's nothing as energy-draining as having to deal with a pessimistic coworker," Rosemary Haefner, the former chief human resources officer for CareerBuilder, told Business Insider. "Things do go wrong, but even when they do, focus your energy towards what you've learned from a bad situation."

She pointed to a recent CareerBuilder survey, which shows that a majority of employers — 62% — say they are less likely to promote employees who have a negative or pessimistic attitude.

Playing "20 Questions" on every new assignment

There may be no stupid questions, Oliver said, but there are certainly annoying questions. These are the kinds of questions that prove you really don't want to do the assignment or illustrate you only want to hear yourself talk.

"When you receive a new assignment, gather your questions, and pose them in an organized way," Oliver suggested. "Never just spout out question after question off the cuff."

Being a slob

"Whether you're at your desk or in the break room, being known as the office slob is never a compliment," said Randall.

When you clog the office kitchen sink and leave your garbage around, who exactly are you expecting to clean up after you?

"Leaving your mess behind shows lack of responsibility or consideration, arrogance, and immaturity," Randall said.

Similarly, your workspace can be a reflection of you, she said.

"If you're like me, who works well in a semi-messy environment, it can be inhibiting to be clutter-free. But with open cubicles or workspaces, the professional thing to do is to make some compromises," Randall said. "It would be disrespectful and inconsiderate to expect your coworkers to deal with your mess."

According to Haefner, employees who don't clean up after themselves can hurt their chances for a promotion in the eyes of 36% of employers.

Being distracted during meetings

"There is a reason why texting is illegal while driving: It's impossible to concentrate fully on two things simultaneously," Oliver said.

Texting, surfing the web on your laptop, instant messaging, emailing — doing any of these things during a meeting shows everyone else in the meeting, especially your boss, that you're not paying attention.

"They know that while your butt may be planted in the chair, your mind is roaming," Oliver said.

Interrupting your colleagues

"It's rude to interrupt. When you do, it shows others that you don't have any respect, judgment, or patience," Randall said.

While participation can earn you some brownie points, bad timing can wipe those points away.

Acting like you know everything

"Piggybacking with a comment either to outdo, correct, or worse, rephrase the comment and claim it as your original thought is a sure way to make your coworkers' eyes roll," Randall said.

Bragging to your coworkers

"When we're proud of an accomplishment or about something good that happens to us, it's natural to want to share the news with others," Randall said.

But sharing can easily become bragging, and she said there are a few key indicators that this is happening:

• If you go on and on, telling everyone and anyone who walks by.

• If you speak of it in a loud tone so that even the window washer can hear it through the thick glass.

• If you use a tone of superiority.

• If you feel the need to put down others and point out their failures.

• If you fail to say "thank you" when you are congratulated.

• If you start embellishing the story.

"When in doubt, try a little humility" Randall suggested.

Grooming yourself at your desk

In most fields, casual grooming in public is frowned on, Oliver said. If you need a touch up, she suggests heading to the bathroom.

Practicing poor hygiene and grooming

At the same time, you want to look like you take your job seriously when you walk into work, and your hygiene and appearance play a role in that.

"Poor hygiene and sloppy clothes scream, 'I don't care!' and are a surefire way to put off those around you," Randall said.

Your boss may wonder whether your attitude about how you present yourself extends to your work, she explains, and you may be passed over for a promotion, overlooked when it's time to meet with a client or represent the company at a conference, and not invited to social gatherings.

"Burping, passing gas, picking your teeth, adjusting your body parts, and rarely showering are not just unprofessional behaviors for the workplace, but they're pretty darn gross as well," Randall said.

Discussing your personal problems

Oliver said there are two issues that arise from openly discussing personal problems like your ongoing divorce at work: "First, you just don't look like you are actively employed when you spend hours a day dishing about your ex. Second, you're discussing a personal problem at the office when you're supposed to be a maestro at solving problems."

"The place for disclosing confidences is outside the office," Oliver said.

Talking about political or partisan issues

If they're divisive issues in politics, they're probably divisive at work, too.

You spend so much time at work that you may have built up a chummy relationship with your coworkers and bosses, which makes you feel entitled to express your opinions. 

But you're walking a fine line when you bring politics into the workplace.

Passionate discussions are to be expected in the workplace, but they should really be focused on work-related issues.

At the end of the day, you're there to do work, and political or partisan arguments can be distracting to both you and your coworkers.

What's more, as an employee expressing yourself at work, it turns out you have fewer protections than you'd think — and if your boss doesn't like what they hear, you could get fired for it.

"Before you pull up your soapbox, you should be aware that in most cases, free speech in the workplace is limited or non-existent when it comes to controversial movements or topics," Randall said.

Being too nosy

"There is a line between curiosity and nosiness, which you don't want to cross," Oliver said. Curiosity, she explained, is when you ask who the new hire is. Nosiness, on the other hand, is when you rifle through your boss's files to see how much the woman three cubicles down earns.

Unseemly bathroom chatter

Never strike up a conversation with someone who is using the bathroom. It's awkward.

"Cornering someone in the restroom to hold a conversation, especially when they are in their private stall, is awkward and intrusive," Randall said. "They have the right not to respond while conducting their business." If you must converse, at least wait until you're washing your hands.

Selling stuff to your coworkers

It seems like almost every office has one or two people who sell cookies for their kids. But Randall said that some companies prohibit soliciting at work because it takes up work time and places people in an awkward position. Breaking the rules could be grounds for firing.

Soliciting signatures, volunteers, or donations

"Before you go cubicle to cubicle enlightening your coworkers about your cause, read the company policies and procedures manual. Most companies discourage or forbid promoting personal causes, especially on company time because it's deemed disruptive," Randall said.

Getting drunk on the job

Some employers stock beer in the fridge and host weekly happy hours. Others do not.

But regardless of whether social drinking is part of your company's work culture or not, it's still not a good idea to drink at work so frequently and heavily that you become labeled the office drunk.

This rule of thumb also extends outside the office to company gatherings and happy hours.

Commenting on someone's appearance

Even if you see it as a compliment, your coworker may view your comments about their appearance as harassing or discriminatory.

It's best to stick to valid compliments pertaining to work rather than how you think someone looks.

Being too noisy

If you play music loudly while others are trying to work or have conversations the entire office can hear, then your coworkers likely consider you one of the most annoying distractions on earth.

Being noisy, especially in an open office, has a significant effect on your coworkers' focus and productivity, and the noise could hurt business if it carries into an important phone call.

"Try to show your coworkers that you respect them by keeping the music down, and hopefully they will return the favor," Oliver said.

Making personal calls all day long

Talking or texting with friends or family on company time is unprofessional and could be against company policy, Randall said. What's more, doing it during a break is fine, but these correspondences should be kept out of the workplace, even the lunch room.

"You never know when your boss may walk by for an impromptu chat," she said. "What will they see or hear?"

"If the topic of conversation is of a delicate nature, be sure to keep it private. One overheard juicy tidbit can spread like wildfire," Randall said.

Being overtly cliquey

"Maybe the new guy who smells like French onion soup is not your favorite person on staff," Oliver says. "That's no reason to flee him every time he asks you for help on an assignment." Nor should you be spreading gossip about him, Haefner said.

It's best to act friendly toward everyone, Oliver explained: "You will come across as more of a team player and show you have management aptitude."

And according to Haefner, nearly half of the employers CareerBuilder surveyed say they would think twice before moving an employee who participates in office gossip up the ranks.

"Take care that any criticism you make about someone's performance is deemed to be constructive, measured, and deserved," Oliver suggested. Not keeping the discourse civil could cost you your job.

Spreading your things all over the place

Don't be the one who edges into other people's personal space, Randall warned.

"You know the ones — they place their coffee mug just so, a comfortable reaching distance, making room for their notebook, elbows, and of course their cell phone and protein bar," she said. "As the person seated next to them, you're left with only enough room for a water bottle."

Swearing a lot at work

"Using foul words or questionable language is not only a bad habit, but in most places of business, it's still considered unprofessional and can even land you in Human Resources for a little chat," Randall said.

Swearing demonstrates to others that you aren't able to calmly and thoughtfully deal with a situation, and it could make you the last resort in an even more difficult or extreme dilemma, she says.

Haefner says that more than half of employers CareerBuilder surveyed consider vulgar language an indication that an employee is not ready for promotion. 

"Consider learning some new adjectives," Randall suggested.

Displaying nervous habits

Jingling your keys, tapping your pen, shaking your leg, constantly checking your phone, chewing gum, biting your fingernails, scratching your head — the list of nervous habits goes on, and you probably don't even realize you're doing it, but your office mates probably do, Randall said.

Not only can these habits be distracting to others, but they could also be perceived as boredom.

"Perception is a person's reality," Randall said.

Avoiding work social events

Whether you're shy or you feel like you have better things to do, never attending company-hosted events, declining coworker lunches, and calling in sick on team-building days gives the impression that you are antisocial, arrogant, and not a part of the team, Randall said.

"So, next time when you need a favor from your coworkers, don't be surprised if they go MIA," she warned.

Obnoxious email habits

From not including subject lines to sending "urgent" emails that aren't urgent, poor email form can really rub your coworkers the wrong way.

While mastering the art of good email etiquette doesn't mean sending out beautifully crafted prose each time — that would take forever — if you can avoid these bad habits, you'll be off to a great start.

Berating a subordinate in front of others

Don't misuse your power over your subordinates by screaming at them in front of everyone.

"In fact, no berating ever," Ross McCammon, author of "Works Well with Others," previously told Business Insider.

Judging your colleagues too harshly

If you're just starting out at a company, give everyone (and everything) a chance. Try to keep an open mind and maintain a positive attitude.

Otherwise, you might earn yourself a reputation of being judgmental and mean.

Plus, crystallizing your negative opinions about those you work with can dull your critical thinking in the long run.

"We need to recognize that we're not the only ones making judgments, nor are any of the judgments facts," Psychology Today contributor and psychology Ph.D. candidate Rubin Khoddam wrote. "Judgments are simply our way of seeing the world, which is just one perspective."

• Former GM exec Bob Lutz has been skeptical about Tesla's future for years.
• He had a front-row seat for GM's 2009 bankruptcy.
• Tesla's cash position means that it could struggle to stay afloat amid a US sales downturn.

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Former GM executive Bob Lutz returned to Tesla-skeptic mode last week and said that the company is doomed. 

This isn't the first time Lutz — who retired from General Motors after also working for Ford, Chrysler, and BMW — has foretold Tesla's demise.

For the record (and I've asked him about this), he doesn't think Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a poor leader; quite the contrary, he admires what Musk and Tesla have done. It's just that he doesn't think Tesla has any meaningful technological advantages over the rest of the auto industry.

And he's right: GM brought a long-range, affordable EV, the Chevy Bolt, to market a year ahead of the Tesla's own Model 3. Tesla had thus far struggled to deliver it's cars, while GM could finish the year selling 5,000 Bolts a month.

Tesla brand is formidable, but relative to the major companies in the traditional auto industry, Tesla is cash-compromised. GM and Ford, for example, are sitting on strong balance sheets. Tesla, meanwhile, has enough cash on had to operate for about a year.

Tesla is also spending about $1 billion per quarter, in-line with what GM spends — but GM is selling dozens of vehicles and raking in profits. Tesla is selling, effectively, two cars and hemorrhaging funds. 

Prepare for the sales downturn

Plus, Tesla is subject to the same market dynamics as everybody else. At the moment, the US market is riding an extended sales boom. By the time the numbers are added up, 2017 should see around 17 million in new-vehicle sales. Tesla's little slice of that translates into a near-monopoly on luxury electric cars. 

When the downturn in sales arrives, it's not outlandish to predict that Tesla's sales will fall alongside the rest of the industry's. The revenue drop-off wouldn't be arriving at a good time, as the company has to (1) build the Model 3 in mass quantities; (2) develop its just unveiled Semi Truck and new Roadster; (3) expand it manufacturing footprint beyond a single factory. 

That's all going to cost billions, and lacking profits, Tesla can ill-afford to backpedal on revenue, which has been climbing year-over-year.

The problem with companies that don't make money in the car business is that eventually the lack of profits always catches up with them. GM hadn't made money for a few years prior to its 2009 bankruptcy. The financial crisis pushed the company over the edge, but even a prolonged downturn in sales would have punished the carmaker's overleveraged balance sheet.

Lutz had a front-row seat for this, by the way. That doesn't mean Tesla will go bankrupt. But the risk that it might is significant and its financial condition points in that direction, so investors have to take it into account.

SEE ALSO: GM Could Put Tesla Out Of Business Tomorrow If It Wanted

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NOW WATCH: Watch Elon Musk show off Tesla’s first electric semi — which can go from 0-60 mph in five seconds

Germany’s telecommunication agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, has banned smartwatches for kids, and is asking parents to destroy them. According to Bleeping Computer, (via Gizmodo) the regulators have deemed smartwatches targeted at kids “prohibitive listening devices” and are asking parents to destroy any smartwatches their kids have and advising schools to pay closer attention to kids with them.

Germany is targeting the listening capabilities of smartwatches but strangely didn’t say anything about the European Consumer Organization’s (BEUC) announcement that smartwatches pose a security threat to kids’ privacy. The BEUC warned that GPS-tracking smartwatches could be hacked and attackers could track or spoof the GPS location of kids’...

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The number of hours Americans work has gone down over the last several decades, according to data from the OECD, while leisure time has gone up. But that's hardly the perception for many working people.

How come?

The psychologist Adam Alter offered one reason in his 2017 TED talk "Why our screens make us less happy." He says that screen-based devices eat up what precious free time we have left.

But that may only be part of the story when it comes to the lack of leisure time. Here's why it feels like you have no free time anymore.

SEE ALSO: Meet the first-ever robot citizen — a humanoid named Sophia that once said it would 'destroy humans'

Our view of free time has changed.

Now that Americans have left the Industrial Age for the Information Age, the way people think about the value of time has changed.

Psychologists have found people do actually equate time with its monetary value (i.e. "Time is money."). At the same time, people have more opportunities than ever for multi-tasking. The result is time not spent working feels like a waste.

"Multi-tasking is what makes us feel pressed for time," Elizabeth Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Economist.

People are working from home more often.

A 2017 Gallup survey of 15,000 American workers found that 43% of people spent at least some of their time working remotely — an increase of four percentage points since 2012.

They're also doing it more often: While the share of people who said they work remotely one day a week or less has fallen since 2012, the share of people who do it four or five times a week has risen, from 24% to 31%.

On the one hand, more flexibility in where to work has made it easier for parents and people who travel a lot to get their work done. But it's also had the side effect of getting people comfortable with working at home, at times they'd normally be relaxing.

We are spending longer hours in the office.

A 2011 survey of more than 300 companies in the US and Canada found nearly two-thirds of employers were demanding longer hours of their employees than they did three years prior.

Roughly half said they expected the longer hours to get even longer over the next three years.

According to additional survey results, the attitude may be due to the fact employers weren't aware that workers felt their mental health had suffered due to the longer hours.

 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

China-based gadget maker Xiaomi is bringing more of its products to the US this week. Two headphone models, a 10,000mAh Mi Power Bank Pro, a 360-degree camera, and a robot coding kit are all coming to Amazon. This continues the company's slow march toward wider device releases in the US.

Xiaomi currently sells its Android TV set-top box, Mi TV, at Walmart locations around the US, and previously launched items in its Mi online store for the US, including a fitness tracker, battery packs, and headphones. Those devices sold out within 30 minutes.

The Amazon-listed battery pack and 360-degree camera are already temporarily unavailable, while both of the headphones don't go on sale until November 24th. I'd assume these will sell out too,...

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Republic Wireless, a popular MVNO that runs off of Sprint and T-Mobile, offers, among other things, some pretty comprehensive Wi-Fi calling features that caught the eye of Walt Mossberg last year.

So now the company is doing something a little differently for its first hardware product, a smart speakerphone called Anywhere HQ. According to Republic’s website, Anywhere HQ syncs with your regular phone number and allows you to make and receive calls.

There isn’t a ton of information on the device out yet, but it seems that the Anywhere HQ consists of a cordless phone that lives on a dock that can also function as a speakerphone using a speaker on the back. The page also says that the speaker will include some kind of smart...

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Today, two major international carriers announced plans to dramatically improve Wi-Fi connectivity on their flights.

First, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airlines and its subsidiary, Cathay Dragon, announced the selection of Gogo’s satellite-based 2Ku inflight connectivity for its Airbus A330 and Boeing 777 aircraft. The service is expected to go live mid-2018.

Meanwhile, Emirates Airline said it would be partnering with Thales to install satellite broadband Wi-Fi with speeds of up to 50Mbps on its Boeing 777X fleet, according to ZDNet. That would be an order of magnitude faster than Wi-Fi that is available in most flights today.

Domestic carriers in the US have made their own in-roads. JetBlue announced in January that it had completed...

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 Google today announced the beta launch of its enterprise edition of Dialogflow, its tool for building chatbots and other conversational applications. In addition, Dialogflow (both in its free and enterprise version) is now getting built-in support for speech recognition, something that developers previously had to source through the Google Cloud Speech API or similar services. Unsurprisingly,… Read More

• Cisco reported a top-line beat in its first-quarter earnings results.
• For the first time in the last eight quarters, the company said it expects to increase revenue next quarter.
• Watch Cisco trade in real time.

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Cisco hit an all-time high of $36.69 on Thursday after saying it expects to break its eight-quarter long decline in revenue next quarter.

The IT and networking company rose 6.60% after its first-quarter earnings report. Cisco reported adjusted earnings of $0.61 per share compared to Wall Streets estimates of $0.60 per share. The company reported revenues of $12.136 billion vs. estimates of $12.11 billion.

Revenue was down 2% compared from the year-ago period, but the company said it expects revenue to come in 1-3% higher in the second quarter compared to the same time last year. If the company succeeds, it will be the first revenue growth in two years.

"Cisco is executing according to plan and we are impressed by the security growth, recurring revenue growth, and the steady capital allocation program," Mitch Steves, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients.

Steves rates Cisco a buy and raised his price target to $4o, about 10% higher than the company's current price, after earnings.

George Notter, an analyst at Jefferies, is also bullish after earnings. "The IT/networking environment for Cisco is relatively strong right now – despite some specific slowness in Service Providers, Emerging markets, and Routing," Notter said in a note to clients.

Notter rates Cisco a buy with the same price target as Steves of $40.

Cisco is up 19.06% this year.

Read more about Cisco's earnings results.

SEE ALSO: Cisco beats analysts' expectations and finally sees its way out an 8-quarter revenue decline streak

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NOW WATCH: A $6 trillion investment chief reveals the one area of the stock market to avoid

More than 22 million comments and complaints were filed to the FCC regarding the future of net neutrality after the agency announced plans for rule rollback earlier this year. 

One of the reasons for the U.S.' pricey and mediocre broadband is our historical habit of throwing oodles of tax breaks and subsidies for fiber optic networks at giant ISPs, then letting them tap dance over and around those obligations when it comes time to deliver. Verizon, for example, has gobbled up millions in subsidies and tax breaks from cities and states up and down the Eastern seaboard for fiber optic networks it fails to fully deploy. Given the stranglehold large ISPs have on federal and state regulators and lawmakers, efforts to hold these companies accountable for any of this have been decidedly mixed.

AT&T has similarly spent decades demanding all manner of regulatory concessions, tax breaks or subsidies in exchange for broadband upgrades that seem perpetually just around the next corner. Whether it's gunning for tax cuts and subsidies, or looking for approval of its latest megamerger, AT&T's an absolute master of the regulatory carrot and a stick game. Even if the carrot is entirely hallucinated, as we saw when AT&T threatened to curtail its already modest fiber optic deployment unless net neutrality was killed.

Ignoring the fact that AT&T has been making the same empty broadband deployment promises for the better part of the last decade, the company popped up this week to throw its support behind Trump's latest attempt at "tax reform." According to an AT&T statement, the company insisted that reducing the company's tax burden will result in all manner of new broadband investment:

"By immediately lowering the corporate tax rate to 20%, this bill will stimulate investment, job creation and economic growth in the United States,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO.

"With a rate of 20% combined with provisions for full expensing of capital expenditures for the next five years, we’re prepared to increase our investment in the United States. If the House bill is signed into law, we’d commit to increase our domestic investment by $1 billion in the first year in which the new rates are in place. And research tells us that every $1 billion in capital invested in telecom creates about 7,000 good jobs for the middle class."

The problem, again, is that AT&T simply has no credibility when it comes to broadband deployment promises. The company has a long-standing history of promising greater broadband investment if it gets "X" (the death of net neutrality rules, the death of privacy rules, more subsidies), then either ignoring those promises outright, or fiddling with its deployment numbers to make it appear that it adhered to its own promises. Meanwhile, in the real world, AT&T remains under fire for failing to upgrade broadband in numerous urban areas that should have been upgraded to fiber decades ago.

AT&T has whined fairly incessantly about the U.S. tax rate being among the highest in the developed world. And while technically true, telecom providers in particular use all manner of loopholes to ensure they often pay a pittance in taxes. That includes using Reverse Morris Trusts to dodge all tax obligations as they sell off chunks of their networks they refuse to upgrade, efforts that have resulted in a few bankruptcies for smaller ISPs on the receiving end of this creative bookkeeping. The end result is often an effective tax rate of 0% for companies like Verizon.

History generally indicates that any additional tax cuts will be pocketed by telecom sector executives, not put back into the network. That's because we've built a system where we not only refuse to do anything about a lack of competition in the broadband sector, but actively reward companies that falsely promise the broadband we truly want is just around the next corner, but only if we're willing to give these companies everything under the sun.

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Forward, a futuristic doctor's office that charges a $150 monthly fee and doesn't take insurance, is expanding beyond San Francisco to Los Angeles, with plans to go nationwide.

Launched in January, Forward is the product of several dozen veterans of Google, Facebook, Uber, and Palantir, who got together to reinvent the doctor's office for the 21st century. Its flagship location in San Francisco looks like an Apple Store meets "Westworld," complete with state-of-the-art diagnostics tools and an AI system that listens and takes notes for doctors.

Forward has raised a reported $100 million from investors including Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Durant, Matthew McConaughey, Alphabet's Eric Schmidt, and Salesforce's Marc Benioff.

In addition to the new outpost in Los Angeles, Forward has launched a mobile doctor's office built on an 18-foot-long trailer bed. The truck is expected to roll through additional cities.

I toured Forward's location in San Francisco earlier this year. Here's what it was like.

SEE ALSO: After trying One Medical, I could never use a regular doctor again

This is how Silicon Valley does the doctor's office.

In 2015, Aoun was riding his bike to Google's offices in Menlo Park — where he worked on artificial intelligence and ran the special projects division at Alphabet — when he got a call.

"Don't freak out, but I'm having a heart attack," his thirty-something relative said over the sounds of sirens blaring. "I'm in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. So what do I do?"

After months of doctor appointments, phone calls with billing offices and insurance companies, and countless hours spent on Google trying to figure out what all the jargon meant, Aoun became frustrated by how difficult the healthcare system was to navigate.

"Doctors are kind of awesome. They're incredibly smart. They're crazy well-educated. They mean well," Aoun told Business Insider. "But the problem is, they're totally set up for failure."

"It's kind of not their fault as much as, I would actually argue, it's my fault," he said. "[If I'm] representing the engineering community, we totally dropped the ball."

His relative's near-death experience was an eye-opener, Aoun told Business Insider. He set out to make the healthcare system more predictable, consistent, and convenient.

He assembled a team of some of the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley, including one of his cofounders, Ilya Abyzov, an early Uber employee who helped launch UberX.

Founded in 2016, Forward makes over every touch point in healthcare. The company's engineers built things like diagnostics tools and a mobile app that patients use to book appointments. The technology creates a better user experience for members and their doctors, according to Aaliya Yaqub, a Forward physician and Facebook Health Center alumna.

Forward's vision has made an impression on venture capitalists. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Benioff.

Forward's flagship location, which opened January 17, mimics the look and feel of an Apple Store. When members arrive, they sign in on an iPad at the reception desk.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Google Docs went down for a little over an hour today for what Google says was a “significant subset of users.” For a product with a user base that reaches into the hundreds of millions at a minimum, that’s certain to mean a huge number of people who experienced a disruption.

Oddly, the outage was limited only to Google Docs — other portions of Drive and G Suite were still working for everyone. And for the people who were still able to access Docs, there didn’t seem to be any problems at all.

Those in the unfortunate affected group were essentially locked out of their documents from shortly before 4PM ET to shortly after 5PM ET. Google’s services remain up nearly all of the time, so even the slightest outage is a surprise. It also...

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Microsoft is creating a unique version of Skype for small business owners and freelancers. The software giant is planning to preview the new version of Skype shortly as a desktop client in the US. Microsoft’s “Skype Professional Account” combines Skype calls, calendar meetings, and payments. This is particularly useful for freelancers that might use Skype to provide tutorials, training, or consulting.

The new Skype version will let small business owners and freelancers book meetings and accept payments all within the same tool, instead of third-party alternatives. It’s not clear if Microsoft intends to run this as a free service once the preview is finished, but testers can sign-up to try it out over at Microsoft’s Skype homepage.

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Nestled hundreds of pages into the proposed bill to fund the Department of Defense sits a small, unassuming section. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 is the engine that powers the Pentagon, turning legislative will into tangible cash for whatever Congress can fit inside. Thanks to an amendment introduced by Sen. Mike Rounds of (R-SD) and co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), this year the NDAA could institute a big change: should the bill pass in its present form, the Pentagon will be going open source.

“Open source” is the industry term for using publicly accessible code, published for all to see and read. It’s contrasted with “closed source” or “proprietary” code, which a company guards closely as a...

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