Stop the Cap!

I'm not. This would not be the first time ISPs have lied to consumers about their service. https://stopthecap.com/

There's a significant group of people adjacent to and overlapping with net neutrality advocates who are opposed to any form of bandwidth metering. https://stopthecap.com/

Comcast has hiked standalone broadband to $75 - http://stopthecap.com/2017/12/21/75-month-broadband-pricing-arrives-co… Interestingly, you can get a cheaper promotional rate if you bundle local TV channels (cheaper than $75/month for both internet + tv) so Comcast can inflate its video subscriber (to boost their stock price) amount and they hope you forget you're on a promotional rate your bill jumps $30-40 after you drop off promo. You're free to negotiate (most people do) to get back on the promo rate; many people have success with this, but it's just a cat/mouse game and a hassle. And Comcast also has a 1TB monthly usage cap. When the era of 2160p + HDR arrives in the next few years, people will chew through that cap rather quickly. Comcast will continue to jack up standalone broadband prices to hedge against fleeing video subscribers. Why? Because they can, and have very little competition in most markets.

Apparently, the following Verizon SMS text[1] Cody Brown got was genuine: >Free VZQ Msg: You're on the phone with Verizon and just authenticated with an alternative method. Not you? Please call us at 800-922-0204 immediately. And one of CB's followup recommendations is: >Make urgent text alerts actionable through SMS. If I received the original alert and was able to text a reply stopping it, or even delaying it, this entire hack would have stopped in its tracks. Instead I was told to ‘immediately’ call a number for Verizon that no one was there to answer. It seems inevitable that the Verizon SMS alert as a bonafide safety check would embolden social engineers to use that very same method to trick people into calling their own 800-555-2222. Then, a fake Verizon customer service agent "phishes" for even more sensitive identification data by asking official-sounding questions in the guise of "verifying the account". The tone of that Verizon SMS is panic-inducing and it's very easy for people to not realize they need to verify that the 800-922-0204 is actually a legitimate Verizon phone#. Even if non-techies take the extra step of googling "800-922-0204", they may get conflicting information and get confused on whether it's safe to call back: e.g. http://stopthecap.com/2015/10/05/got-a-call-from-1-800-922-0204-carefu… EDIT ADD: I think it's very challenging to come up with a generalized decision tree for non-techies (e.g. your…

The original article: https://stopthecap.com/2021/05/26/a-tale-of-two-homes-in-spectrum-terr…

Spectrum offers a "Gigabit" package, but it's asymmetric 940/35. Full Duplex DOCSIS via DOCSIS 4.0 is coming (https://stopthecap.com/2019/06/25/cables-docsis-4-0-symmetrical-broadb… and it looks like Comcast is demo'ing it in a lab (https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/10g/comcast-full-duplex-docsis… but who knows how much longer it'll take to get it fully up to speed.

Yes, you'd need either a valid cert, or for the user to click through the big scary warning to accept the invalid (or self-signed) cert, either of which raises the bar way above unencrypted HTTP, where this attack is trivial (ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep and https://stopthecap.com/2013/04/03/isp-crams-its-own-ads-all-over-your-… )

> 3G are okay now Is it really? AT&T and Verizon, two of the largest mobile data conglomerates in the US, have stated their intentions to shut down 3G service in favor of 5G by February 2021 and December 2020 respectively. https://techblog.comsoc.org/2019/02/22/att-to-shut-down-3g-network-in-… https://stopthecap.com/2019/08/01/verizon-delays-shutdown-of-3g-cdma-n…

If you want to know why America has such shitty infrastructure (especially cities like San Francisco where the density should warrant it), here is Exhibit A. Environmental studies, aesthetic objections,[1] fake health concerns, etc. In the 4.6 years Americans spend to prepare the average Environmental Impact Statement for an infrastructure project, Europeans can build city-wide subway systems or tunnel through mountains. Other countries are not going to hold up 5G deployment over fake health concerns. If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan, we must fight such distractions. [1] Remember when San Francisco held up AT&T fiber deployment in the city for years with a lawsuit about ugly fiber boxes? https://stopthecap.com/2011/06/29/san-francisco-still-in-stalemate-wit…

> I can't force my older relatives to update their machines or even stop them from running ancient versions of Windows. On that front, Windows 10 made things better. Unless your older relative is on a metered internet connection that charges downloads by the MB, costing them hundreds of dollars[1] on a speculative download that the user did not ask for. [1] http://stopthecap.com/2015/08/18/microsofts-windows-10-updates-cost-so…

Easy! Browse this database to select the telecom firm you find most compatible with your ethical standards: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/issuesum.php?id=TEC Drill down to find a list of firms who can recruit dead people and random special interests (see here from some of the interest groups who will rent you their outrage: http://stopthecap.com/2009/10/02/special-report-astroturf-overload-bro… ). Handily enough, you also get an idea of what it costs right on Open Secrets. I wish medical price lists were this easy, and I bet there are some dead people who think so, too.

Normal person would not support monopolies. Shills do it for money or whatever other bribes they get. The whole process of monopolists controlling various branches of power is the prime example of corruption. Except in US, this corruption is legalized, under pretense that it's "free speech". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC When you get cases like this: http://stopthecap.com/2017/10/23/mich-lawmaker-seeks-ban-community-bro… you can observe it very clearly. Pai is even worse, because he isn't an elected official.

It's no coincidence that Verizon announced FiOS expansion in Boston today. http://stopthecap.com/2016/04/12/breaking-news-waiting-forever-boston-…

Apparently AT&T offers much better pricing if you bargain. [1] [1] http://stopthecap.com/2013/12/04/how-to-score-a-better-deal-with-at-28…

Thanks for touching on the coop model. I think that's a phenomenal way of addressing the muni broadband situation. http://stopthecap.com/2012/01/03/want-rural-21st-century-broadband-for…

Cable companies have been astroturfing the net neutrality issue for years. In the Boston area in 2006, a Verizon astroturfing scheme was blown out of the water when a local blogger became suspicious after receiving a strange email from a local college student (1). Comcast has also employed professionally run astroturfing campaigns to serve its own ends (2). It would not surprise me if both companies have their anonymous shills drop by HN from time to time to pollute the waters. 1. http://borderlinenewtonwaltham.blogspot.com/2006/09/lies-cable-tv-and-… 2. http://stopthecap.com/2011/11/15/comcasts-snake-oil-astroturf-operatio…

Except the telecom companies make up 6 of the top 25 companies with the highest U.S. capital expenditures... Do you think no one is paying attention? We know very well that VZN & ATT's capital spending is in wireless, not wireline: http://stopthecap.com/2013/07/18/verizon-diverting-landline-fios-inves… Sure, one might see this as a sign that existing wireline regulations are already too onerous, and Ma Bell's poor daughters have to take their ball and go home. But the fact is, they know their wireline market is a captive one, and customers will stay no matter how little they invest. As soon as they bribe their way to a Sprint takeover, we'll see wireless investment head in the same direction.

A couple of years ago Verizon essentially halted all new fiber roll-outs -- nationwide. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303410404575151773… They are still wrapping up the details on a couple of long-term rollouts, but they decided they would rather spend their money on the more lucrative wireless oligopoly. They did manage to get the DoJ to sign off on a deal to collude with comcast so as not to poach each other's customers. http://stopthecap.com/2012/08/16/settlement-over-verizon-cable-cross-m… So there may well have been regulatory hurdles in your case, but Verizon pussing out (with a new CEO) is the reason you will never get FIOS.

http://stopthecap.com/2010/05/04/north-carolina-action-alert-municipal… http://www.wilsontimes.com/greenlight/Story/Settlement-Gets-Green-Ligh… http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2328116

A full list of the people who voted against the measure is presented here: http://stopthecap.com/2011/03/29/house-republicans-sell-out-north-caro… If there is a concerted effort to fight this legislation to which people (including those of us outside the state) can donate, I haven't found it; if anyone does, please post!

Good. They bought my isp and jacked up my prices (and did this to countless others as well of course). Who would have thought that it could get worse than Time Warner. I'm glad to see that CEO Rutledge's idea of playing hardball with customers and not allowing them to extend or take advantage of promotional offers is not paying off. I paid $60 a month with tw and would call in every year and extend that offer by explaining that I would consider going with the DSL provider. Annoying, but better than the standard $90 a month. Rutledge came in and killed that saying that those customers are undesirable. http://stopthecap.com/2017/05/24/get-better-deal-charterspectrum-2017/ Sure, if you are selling a low margin product and not making money on those long time customers that makes sense. But data has almost zero marginal cost once you've got the pipe hooked up and the autodraft payments flowing. Their refusal to not offer to extend to me, a long time customer, the same offer they are giving to all their new customers caused me to cancel with them and switch to a slower DSL connection, just out of spite. I suspect by these numbers that I am not alone. And they don't appear to bear out the idea that they would make more money by gouging a smaller set of willing customers either.

> So, now you need your artists to be programmers. There is some arguments if you should allow artists to program (Blender does have a built in scripting language). However, the same group that created the FPS demo also created a tool to create demos - artists can go as wild as they want without needing to write a line of code: http://www.farbrausch.com/prod.py?which=168 If you want something a little more well documented and updated you should check out ZGameEditor - http://www.zgameeditor.org/. > And that's ignoring the load times, which increases massively if you have to procedurally generate it. Any reason why you can't render and save the textures on first run? I feel like Natural Selection 2 does that. > Meanwhile, disk space is pretty damn cheap and will save you a bunch of time and money. You are forgetting the step in between. Using your argument that disk space is cheap (and assuming they don't use their hard drive to store anything else...) - in the US ISPs are playing a dangerous game. A small DSL provider has a 5GB cap and will charge outrageous fees for going over: http://stopthecap.com/2010/04/14/frontiers-5gb-cap-is-back-now-include… Downloading that 20GB RAGE game has turned into quite a challenge (of course you could always use the Valve response of "take your computer to a friends house").

Nothing is really stopping new entrants from joining the market -- other than the fact that deploying a broadband network in the US is really, really expensive Actually, a lot is: Google "cable franchise agreements" or "city broadband franchise agreements" and you'll find that many if not most cities and counties either forbid or make prohibitively expensive real competition. Here is one news article about a lawsuit related to them: http://stopthecap.com/2012/06/19/court-invalidates-existing-cable-fran… . Many states are also passing telco-financed laws prohibiting local municipalities from creating Internet access as a utility. Examples: http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/big-carriers-go-polit… or http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/30/municipal_broadband_s_d… .