In other news today...
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
CenturyLink is an evil ISP.
EMore than enough said.Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
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Oh deer, isn't this ripe for a "cruel and unusual punishment" case?
Poacher ordered to watch 'Bambi' once a month in jail - UPI.com
A Missouri judge ordered a convicted deer poacher to watch Disney's "Bambi" once a month during the year he spends behind bars.
EDIT:
Some deer are asking to be poached though:
Watch: Deer rescued from same soccer net twice - UPI.com
Police in Ohio said officers and concerned bystanders twice came to the rescue of a deer that became entangled in a soccer net.
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Talk about a high-end "happy meal":
Watch: Man finds pearl in oyster at New York restaurant - UPI.com
A man eating oysters for lunch at a New York restaurant found a pearl in his meal that could be worth thousands.
The pearl has not yet been officially appraised, but experts estimated it could be worth $2,000 to $4,000.
Luckily the man didn't swallow it! The article didn't say if he was allowed to keep it but I presume he paid for the lunch.
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@JBert said in In other news today...:
Oh deer, isn't this ripe for a "cruel and unusual punishment" case?
Poacher ordered to watch 'Bambi' once a month in jail - UPI.com
A Missouri judge ordered a convicted deer poacher to watch Disney's "Bambi" once a month during the year he spends behind bars.
EDIT:
Some deer are asking to be poached though:
Watch: Deer rescued from same soccer net twice - UPI.com
Police in Ohio said officers and concerned bystanders twice came to the rescue of a deer that became entangled in a soccer net.
Oh no, now you're giving fetish fuel! A new furry is about to be born!
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@JBert
GAOOOOL!!!
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Nineteen Eighty-Four was NOT a set of instructions
UK police are testing facial recognition on Christmas shoppers in London this week
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Last minute present buying and facial recognition scans
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Finally a decent emotional support animal!
You Can Get 'Emotional Support Chicken' From Popeyes To Ease Your Holiday Travel Stress
You can even sneak it onto the plane.
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
By 2030 car emissions have to be reduced by another 37.5% compared to 2021 limits.
The only conclusion one can draw is that the EU still has a car industry and this is apparently totally unacceptable.
If you're being sued by the state of California for seventy bajillion dollars for some tiny amounts of NOx while they happily drive much more polluting cars, it only makes sense to enforce that everywhere...
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
Nothing about how it's blocked, nothing about who does the blocking, nothing about advertising other companies or making money out of it.
You didn't read far enough, then.
103 (b) A service provider may comply with Subsection (1)(a) by engaging a third party to
104 provide [software, or referring users to a third party that provides filtering software, by]
105 providing a clear and conspicuous hyperlink or written statement, for installation on the
106 consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and commercially reasonable manner,
107 or referring a consumer to a third party that provides a commercially reasonable method of
108 filtering to block the receipt of material harmful to minors.109 [
(b)] (c) A service provider may charge a consumer a commercially reasonable fee for
110 providing filtering under this Subsection (3)[(a)].@PJH said in In other news today...:
The problem is how this particular ISP chose to go about doing it, which I pointed out in the other 80% of points I raised.
The law said "in a conspicuous manner".
As far as I'm concerned, they did a great job of complying with the law. They notified customers in a very conspicuous manner.
Hiding it, a la
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
a single-sentence notice in the bill, no one would have cared
...nobody would have cared, because no one would have noticed it. That would be the opposite of "a conspicuous manner".
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@brie said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
Nothing about how it's blocked, nothing about who does the blocking, nothing about advertising other companies or making money out of it.
You didn't read far enough, then.
103 (b) A service provider may comply with Subsection (1)(a) by engaging a third party to
104 provide [software, or referring users to a third party that provides filtering software, by]
105 providing a clear and conspicuous hyperlink or written statement, for installation on the
106 consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and commercially reasonable manner,
107 or referring a consumer to a third party that provides a commercially reasonable method of
108 filtering to block the receipt of material harmful to minors.That's about how they do it, not about informing customers.
109 [
(b)] (c) A service provider may charge a consumer a commercially reasonable fee for
110 providing filtering under this Subsection (3)[(a)].Again, implementation details, not informing customers.
@PJH said in In other news today...:
The problem is how this particular ISP chose to go about doing it, which I pointed out in the other 80% of points I raised.
The law said "in a conspicuous manner".
As far as I'm concerned, they did a great job of complying with the law. They notified customers in a very conspicuous manner.
You're conflating obnoxious with conspicuous. Disabling internet, and only allowing re-enabling via devices that can
- show a landing page if
- the DNS is set up in a certain way
is not conspicuous. One could say that if the system is not under those optimal circumstances, it was hidden, and not at all conspicuous.
Or, indeed, visible.
Hiding it, a la
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
a single-sentence notice in the bill, no one would have cared
...nobody would have cared, because no one would have noticed it. That would be the opposite of "a conspicuous manner".
Flyer with the bill. Text messages. Email dedicated to the announcement.
Lots of ways they could have done it, rather than 'disabling the service.'
In fact, as already pointed out, other ISPs have managed to do this simple thing without coming across as "oh, shit, we should have done this ages ago, and now we have only 2 weeks to comply..."
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
That's about how they do it, not about informing customers.
At some point, either during or after advertising it to the customers, they would've had to refer them to the third party to actually purchase the service. When and how is irrelevant. The point is that they're "informing customers" by telling them about another product that the customers can purchase. That's an advertisement.
Disabling internet, and only allowing re-enabling via devices that can
- show a landing page if
- the DNS is set up in a certain way
is not conspicuous.
So... the vast majority of them?
Seriously, how many internet-connected homes don't have at least one device that is primarily used to connect to the internet and which knows about such things as networks that require an additional login before connecting to the internet? Those people can just call the ISP's support number, and a helpful guy in California with a suspicious Indian accent can get everything sorted out for all five of them.
Flyer with the bill. Text messages. Email dedicated to the announcement.
Lots of ways they could have done it, rather than 'disabling the service.'
Those lack the ability to have verification that the customer actually received the notice. It wasn't lost in the mail, sent to a fake phone number, or an email address that they forgot they even had.
And if ISPs fail to provide this notice, they could potentially be hit with fines for noncompliance.
Better to just be safe.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
Those lack the ability to have verification that the customer actually received the notice.
If we're rules lawyering about this, that is not a requirement. Merely that a notice was sent is sufficient.
Otherwise we shall start requiring that the customer receives verification that the ISP has received verification that the customer has received the notice.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html
I like how facebook security breaches are somehow less worse then their business model for years.
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
Those lack the ability to have verification that the customer actually received the notice.
If we're rules lawyering about this, that is not a requirement. Merely that a notice was sent is sufficient.
No, but "conspicuous" was a requirement. Demonstrating merely that you sent a notice (which nobody really saw) is not necessarily sufficient.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
Demonstrating merely that you sent a notice (which nobody really saw) is not necessarily sufficient.
It was for the other ISPs. To repeat:
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@brie
You're not going to win the argument. When it comes to ISPs versus anyone else, most people on the Internet are nearly NPC-like in their behavior.Personally, I understand CenturyLink's approach, and can definitely see why they took that tactic. And, from a technical perspective, they didn't explictly say "oh hey let's wait until the last second and then just flip the 'your Internet is busted' switch on all of our customers to throw a snit fit!" They determined that they needed a click-through notification for their customers, so they went with a Hotspot Portal approach (like the hotel wifi), which is going to take some time to test and engineer before you just deploy it for all of your customer traffic.
And for people complaining that you can't accept the Hotspot Portal terms from a game system or other non-browser-device... well, yes, that's a side affect they probably overlooked (whereas in hotels that's likely a desired feature). But how many people have home or business Internet service with absolutely no browser-based-devices? This is something that's going to happen once, or maybe like once a month, per service account, and then the Hotspot controller is going to remember "this account has accepted the T&C" and non-browser devices will work fine. Yeesh. Molehills ain't mountains, folks.
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@PJH On any given day they probably have hundreds of emails bounce back as undeliverable... and that's just the ones that they know about. Hundreds more probably just never get read. The law doesn't say anything about a good faith effort when it comes to sending out the notice. If they know that some number of their customers definitely didn't get notified, then they know they haven't followed the law.
A bill insert would be a pretty safe option, since they presumably have the physical mailing address of the homes that they serve (where I assume they've actually gone and installed hardware at some point). But it would also probably be the most costly option. Sticking a line or two on the customer's existing bill would be cheaper, but not very conspicuous, so they could potentially open themselves up to liability.
But really, I just like the poetic justice of "your government said that we cannot sell internet access until we spam you with this ad, so you're not allowed to access the internet until you click to acknowledge that you've seen it".
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@brie said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
Those lack the ability to have verification that the customer actually received the notice.
If we're rules lawyering about this, that is not a requirement. Merely that a notice was sent is sufficient.
No, but "conspicuous" was a requirement. Demonstrating merely that you sent a notice (which nobody really saw) is not necessarily sufficient.
Except that the law gives clear examples on what would be a valid way. Which include a "notice at the bottom of your monthly invoice".
If that is too complicated a concept for you that does not surprise us at all.
But sure, please continue your argument: "Oh, but a notice on the incoice would not be sufficient!" when the fucking law itself clearly states that it is.
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@izzion said in In other news today...:
But how many people have home or business Internet service with absolutely no browser-based-devices? This is something that's going to happen once, or maybe like once a month, per service account, and then the Hotspot controller is going to remember "this account has accepted the T&C" and non-browser devices will work fine. Yeesh. Molehills ain't mountains, folks.
There were several people giving examples of just that in the ArsTechnica thread.
Please remember that this also blocked everything. Which includes stuff like alarms or medical health devices. This would have been fun for one of my uncles who relies on such a service for his heart monitor.
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
I like how facebook security breaches are somehow less worse then their business model for years.
Speaking of Facebook, I'm sure this will surprise no one here:
Turning Off Location Tracking Doesn't Stop Facebook From Tracking You
Aleksandra Korolova has turned off Facebook’s access to her location in every way that she can. She has turned off location history in the Facebook app and told her iPhone that she “Never” wants the app to get her location. She doesn’t “check-in” to places and doesn’t list her current city on her...
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@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
No, but "conspicuous" was a requirement. Demonstrating merely that you sent a notice (which nobody really saw) is not necessarily sufficient.
Except that the law gives clear examples on what would be a valid way. Which include a "notice at the bottom of your monthly invoice".
If that is too complicated a concept for you that does not surprise us at all.
But sure, please continue your argument: "Oh, but a notice on the incoice would not be sufficient!" when the fucking law itself clearly states that it is.
And it is remarkably scant on details about what makes a "notice at the bottom of your monthly invoice" conspicuous enough. So if "a notice on the incockice" is sufficient, I guess they can put a one-line notice in 3pt light gray font. A judge would certainly find that meets the letter of the law, right?
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
Please remember that this also blocked everything. Which includes stuff like alarms or medical health devices. This would have been fun for one of my uncles who relies on such a service for his heart monitor.
If some elderly shut-in's 24/7 medical alarm only works when it's within range of wi-fi (which means that they can never leave the house), and the monitoring device goes offline for, say, 30 minutes, alarm bells should be going off at whatever company that monitors it and they should be calling to make sure that everything's okay. And really, if it needs to be constantly connected, they should probably just put a SIM card in it with a data plan. Your ISP does not guarantee enough 9s of uptime (or any 9s of uptime, probably, if they're a residential ISP) to rely on it like that.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
and they should be calling to make sure that everything's okay.
They tried, but the customer's phone line is a SIP line, so it couldn't be reached.
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@TimeBandit Then there should be an EMT knocking on the front door in the next 30 minutes or so. Or maybe a relative, who the company had as an emergency contact.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
@TimeBandit Then there should be an EMT knocking on the front door in the next 30 minutes or so. Or maybe a relative, who the company had as an emergency contact.
And that's not expensive or anything--EMTs only bill small amounts, especially for non-emergency calls...</sarc>
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
And that's not expensive or anything--EMTs only bill small amounts, especially for non-emergency calls...</sarc>
Not nearly as expensive as the damage they will pay when the customer died because he couldn't reach 911 when he needed it
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
And that's not expensive or anything--EMTs only bill small amounts, especially for non-emergency calls...</sarc>
Not nearly as expensive as the damage they will pay when the customer died because he couldn't reach 911 when he needed it
But I doubt there's anything in the ISP contract that will indemnify the consumer for such expenses. That means that if the ISP goes down like that, the customer is the one paying the bill. Not the ISP. Sure, they might be able to sue...but then only the lawyers win.
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@Benjamin-Hall Bill it to the insurance. Bill it to Medicare. Hell, try to get the ISP to pay it (they won't, but you can try).
There needs to be some response. For all the monitoring company knows, the patient has slipped and fallen in the bath and their health monitor cracked and/or got wet (I'd presume that it would be at least moderately protected from water ingress, so that they could bathe normally with it, but after it's struck porcelain and maybe had someone land on top of it, it may have taken some damage) and stopped working.
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@brie And all that shit is a reasonable outcome in your book?
You're more insane than we thought.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Bill it to the insurance. Bill it to Medicare. Hell, try to get the ISP to pay it (they won't, but you can try).
There needs to be some response. For all the monitoring company knows, the patient has slipped and fallen in the bath and their health monitor cracked and/or got wet (I'd presume that it would be at least moderately protected from water ingress, so that they could bathe normally with it, but after it's struck porcelain and maybe had someone land on top of it, it may have taken some damage) and stopped working.
Oh absolutely there should be a response. That's not even the question. The question is--how in the world is it fair to anyone for the ISP to intentionally disable life-support systems when this method is not required and there is a non-intrusive workaround right there in the statute? Especially if such things trigger huge expenses on the part of the consumer? And billing it to the insurance won't work. They only cover medically necessary treatment. And Medicare is even worse about that.
The ISP did a bad thing here. 100% their fault. The fact that the triggering statute was moronic is no excuse for actively evil behavior on the part of the ISP.
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@Rhywden Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely. If someone could die if they're not monitored 24/7, then their monitor going dark for any substantial length of time should be cause for alarm.
If that's not practical, they should be in 24/7 assisted living where there are staff on hand to immediately respond if anything goes wrong.
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@brie Yes, I see. "So this connection is unreliable so let's make it more unreliable!"
Good business sense right there.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely.
That's the key point to me, at least as it relates to critical life support equipment. Regardless of how boneheaded the ISP's solution for presenting the information, if something absolutely must stay connected to the internet at all times, don't put it on a residential ISP.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely.
Get a better ISP. My home internet doesn't even go down once a year.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
The question is--how in the world is it fair to anyone for the ISP to intentionally disable life-support systems when this method is not required and there is a non-intrusive workaround right there in the statute?
I can almost guarantee that buried somewhere in their TOS there is a conspicuous notice that the internet connection they provide is not suitable for life-support systems and they cannot be held liable for anything bad that happens if you do use it for a life-support system.
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely.
Get a better ISP. My home internet doesn't even go down once a year.
Mine only goes down when one of two things happens--
- Power outage (but now I have a UPS, so no big deal for short outages)
- Some moron digs up a cable. Also very rare--I don't think I've had that happen yet.
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely.
Get a better ISP. My home internet doesn't even go down once a year.
You must be lucky to live somewhere where the cables are all buried and they rarely ever have to do construction.
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@brie said in In other news today...:
Residential internet connections go down pretty routinely.
Get a better ISP. My home internet doesn't even go down once a year.
LOL. I have AT&T uVerse. Seems every couple weeks/months the system randomly breaks. Last one was 3 outages (of about 1 minute) within one hour. And I'm in Silly Valley.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
You must be lucky to live somewhere where the cables are all buried and they rarely ever have to do construction.
The cables are not buried, and they have to suffer Canadian winter
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@TimeBandit That's different, then. Your trees dropped all of the limbs that a heavy snow would drop long before any telcos came in and ran cables.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
I have AT&T uVerse. Seems every couple weeks/months the system randomly breaks. Last one was 3 outages (of about 1 minute) within one hour.
So AT&T is US equivalent of Bell Canada.
I'm not a Bell customer for a reason
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@dcon
TR is why are you still on DSL service in Silly Valley?Unless for some reason they used the DSL branding for Fiber internet service out there, which is possibly even more TRTR
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@TimeBandit I've had my (Rogers infrastructure) cable go down for a minute or two at a time, a few times this past month that I noticed. Maybe even more when I'm not actively using the internet.
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@hungrier If my connection dropped that often, I would actively be looking for a different provider.
The main reason I'm with my current provider (for more than 15 years) is because it's rock-stable.
Stability is key !
Sir, your connection only dropped a couple times this month, it's not that big of a deal
So, what you're saying is that it's ok if I drop only a couple payment a year, right?
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
I'm not a Bell customer for a reason
Same here!
Possibly different reason.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Bill it to the insurance. Bill it to Medicare.
You are why American healthcare is a shitpile.
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@brie said in In other news today...:
If they know that some number of their customers definitely didn't get notified, then they know they haven't followed the law.
False.
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@izzion said in In other news today...:
@dcon
TR is why are you still on DSL service in Silly Valley?Unless for some reason they used the DSL branding for Fiber internet service out there, which is possibly even more TRTR
From www.broadband-square.com
AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet is technically a DSL connection. This service level, where available, does provide more than average features. Using a fiber to node and fiber to premises network, AT&T is able to provide its subscribers with lightning fast speeds and a variety of other package options.
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@pie_flavor We're talking about someone who legitimately needs to be monitored 24/7. They're nearly to the point where they need to be in a 24/7 care facility, but just not quite yet. They're coming to the stage of life that Medicare was designed for.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet is technically a DSL connection. This service level, where available, does provide more than average features. Using a fiber to node and fiber to premises network, AT&T is able to provide its subscribers with lightning fast speeds and a variety of other package options.
Note that nowhere they talk about reliability.
Coincidence? I think not
