On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) told Apple that it would not accept any further deliveries of Pearson curriculum, which Apple has been providing as part of a $1.6 billion plan to give every student in the nation's second-largest school district an iPad. LAUSD also asked for a “multi-millon dollar refund” for software that had already been delivered, according to local public radio station KPCC.

In 2013 the school district signed an initial $30 million deal with Apple in a program that was supposed to cost up to $1.3 billion. As part of the program, LAUSD said it would buy iPads from Apple at $768 each, and then Pearson, a subcontractor with Apple, would provide math and science curriculum for the tablets at an additional $200 per unit.

Not a month after the pilot program launched, students were found disabling app and browser limitations on their tablets. A month after that, LAUSD reported that a third of the 2,100 iPads distributed during the pilot program had gone missing. A year later, media investigations revealed possible malfeasance in securing the contract with Apple and Pearson by LAUSD superintendent John Deasy. While Deasy has denied wrongdoing, he recently stepped down from his position and his successor, Ramon C. Cortines, has said he will scrap the program.

What if your mobile contract could be condensed into an app-based subscription service like Spotify or Netflix — one that you could put on pause when you don't need it, switch between phones without swapping SIM cards, and pay for by the gigabyte of data used? Those are the broad strokes of Google's planned wireless service in the US, according to a leaked app in an unofficial Nexus 6 firmware update. It's not possible to be certain that the leak originated from Google itself, however its level of detail and the way it meshes with earlier reports about Google's plans would suggest there's something to it.

The app in question is called Tycho, and it contains all the usual settings and options you might expect from a carrier app. You can pay bills, check your data usage, adjust plan details, and so on. But you can also activate your service with Google, request a new number, or switch numbers directly from within the app as well. This is also the spot where you'll be able to pause or suspend your wireless data service or even close your account entirely. So, in quite literal terms, wireless service turned into an app. Well, more than one app, actually, since there's also reference to a separate Project Fi app. Project Fi appears to be the codename for Google's wireless service, which this leaks suggests will offer free calls and texts within the United States while charging for data on a per-gigabyte basis.

T-Mobile and Sprint, the two carriers that were reported as Google's partners that would provide cellular connectivity, also make appearances in the leaked app. Verizon and AT&T are notable for their absence. Another interesting aspect of this leak is that it suggests Google will offer data-only options for at least some devices on a given plan. That could work out nicely if you don't care to make phone calls with your 4G tablet.

A month ago, Google's Sundar Pichai confirmed the rumors that the Mountain View company was planning a wireless service of its own, though he added an important caveat: "we don't intend to be a carrier at scale." As the chief in charge of Google's mobile products, Pichai is one of the key decision makers who'll shape the way the company's wireless service works, and his focus is on creating a seamless wireless service that exploits Wi-Fi as much as cellular networks. That's where Google can potentially disrupt the status quo, even if it doesn't have immediate plans to go to a large-scale deployment. In any case, Google I/O this summer looks like the time when Pichai and company will have more to disclose.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, before Facebook created the world's first billion-person social network, many of us stayed in touch through instant messaging. Services like AIM and ICQ let us stay in touch not just through chat, but through away messages — tiny fragments letting friends know what you were up to while away from your keyboard. (The indispensable YourAwayMessage offers a representative sample.) Today, Facebook is bringing those fragments back with what it's calling the "sidebar status" — a kind of away message you can post in the sidebar of its mobile apps for iOS and Android.

The sidebar, which you bring up by swiping right in Facebook's flagship app, currently shows your most frequently messaged friends. Starting today, in a test that Facebook is running in Taiwan and Australia, users will see short status messages under their friends' names: "making blueberry scones at home," say, or "watching the game at home." (Twitter was once derided as a place where people only posted about what they had for breakfast; the away message was a place where you could share your breakfast without shame.)

Messages can be accompanied with a little picture icon; Facebook has created more than a dozen to choose from. Your messages show up only in the sidebar — you won't see them in the News Feed, or on your profile — and they expire in 12 hours, or whenever you post a new one. And they come with fairly robust privacy settings: by default, your friends can see them, but you can restrict it in much the same way you can limit access to your profile. Facebook does save your old status messages, but they're visible only to you.

A more intimate, ephemeral news feed

It's not quite right to call these "away" messages, of course, because these days we're never really "away" in the way we were in the era of desktop computing. But sidebar statuses have the same look and feel, and they're intended for the same audience that away messages were: your closest friends. Of course, there was a time when Facebook's main News Feed was for your close friends, too. But over the years, the feed has become more cluttered: with ads, news stories, videos, and distant acquaintances.

Sidebar status messages appear only for your "favorites," a dynamically generated list of friends based on who you message most on Facebook. (You can also pin your favorites to the top.) "People were having a difficult time staying in touch with their friends and seeing what they're doing on a daily basis," Sue Young, a Facebook project manager, said in an interview. The idea behind the sidebar status, she said, is that "small things would make people feel connected in a big way." She added: "Now when I visit the sidebar, I can get an instant pulse of what all my friends are doing."

Of course, the sidebar isn't exactly prime real estate in Facebook's mobile app. Many users may not even be aware that it exists. But if Facebook rolls out the sidebar status broadly — and Young says she hopes to — I wouldn't be surprised to see people using it more. It's a throwback idea that scratches an itch most of us still have — to tell our closest friends what we're up to, and to hear the same from them. Even if it's only what we had for breakfast.

A 61-year-old Florida mailman was arrested Wednesday after he landed a gyrocopter on the US Capitol west lawn. The gyrocopter was carrying the pilot and 535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging "real reform" to campaign finance laws.

Doug Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times ahead of the afternoon stunt that he notified authorities "well over an hour in advance of getting to the no-fly zone, so they know who I am and what I'm doing."

Twitter

SpaceX's trial-and-error process of learning to land one of its Falcon main stages continued this week. After successfully sending a Dragon capsule toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station, the Falcon reversed course, fired its thrusters, and made its way back into the atmosphere over the Atlantic. After a controlled plunge through the air, it attempted to land on a barge named "Just Read the Instructions." This time, conditions enabled the company to have had an aircraft in the area to film the results.

The video above shows the Falcon dropping at a rather healthy clip until it's quite close to the barge. At that point, the rocket's electronics appear to try to adjust its location; the craft tips while firing its main engines at a much higher level. This appears to be enough to set it down on the barge, but now tilting in the opposite direction. Thrusters at the top of the rocket attempt to correct the tilt but can't; it slowly falls over until it explodes while nearly horizontal.

SpaceX originally posted video footage of the crash landing, but it was taken down and marked private on YouTube on Wednesday afternoon.

This morning Cleartrip, an Indian startup focused on travel, pulled out of Internet.org, the charity spearheaded by Facebook to help spread internet access to parts of the world where many people lack connectivity. Three other members of the original coalition — NDTV, Newshunt, and the Times Group — also declared that they were pulling some or all of their services from Internet.org due to concerns over net neutrality.

The concept of net neutrality has been a hot topic of debate in the US over the last few months as the FCC adopted more stringent rules. That recently became true of India, too. As ClearTrip wrote on their blog, "Over the past couple of weeks, a heated debate on net neutrality has come to the forefront, not just amongst India’s digerati, but in mainstream media as well, with national dailies carrying front page articles about it."

Airtel, a mobile network operator in India, was working with local startups to create a platform where startups could pay for data usage, making their services free for users. This would be similar to the sponsored data initiatives we've seen in the US, which the FCC recently said it would qualify as an unacceptable form of "paid prioritization." Internet.org worked the same way, providing users with free access to a selection of 39 "essential" services, including Facebook. Flipkart, one of India's largest e-commerce companies, decided against joining Airtel's new program, publicly citing the defense of net neutrality as its cause.

Questions linger over why Internet.org is being styled as a charity, rather than a business venture, and whether it might be trampling on net neutrality in its efforts to spread internet access. Just yesterday, during a Q&A session on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg was asked what he thought of the conflict.

"I think net neutrality is important to make sure network operators don’t discriminate and limit access to services people want to use, especially in countries where most people are online," he wrote. "For people who are not on the Internet, though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than having no ability to connect and share at all. That’s why programs like Internet.org are important and can coexist with net-neutrality regulations." It seems a growing number of Indian tech companies don't agree.

In a few years, when we’re all working ourselves to death in the streaming video mines of Planet Netflix, we’ll think back to stories like this and wonder why nobody stood up to try and save the human race. Why didn’t we watch the local news instead of Netflix? Why didn’t we just read books? Why did we keep paying to get discs in the mail for so long? Well, it’s because Netflix has been on a roll lately, especially with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Daredevil. If the price we have to pay for more shows like that is allowing Netflix to take over the planet (as they themselves just copped to planning), is it really so bad?

Hopefully you said no, because that’s what’s happening. As reported by Variety, Netflix added a record-breaking 4.9 million new subscribers in the first quarter ...