Month: February 2019

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | jangeltun)

A federal appeals court has overturned Ajit Pai's attempt to take broadband subsidies away from Tribal residents.

The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in November 2017 to make it much harder for Tribal residents to obtain a $25-per-month Lifeline subsidy that reduces the cost of Internet or phone service.

The change didn't take effect because in August 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed the FCC decision pending appeal. The same court followed that up on Friday last week with a ruling that reversed the FCC decision and remanded the matter back to the commission for a new rule-making proceeding.

A portion of the book cover for The Abominable Snowman by R.A. Montgomery. (credit: ChooseCo)

The classic children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure is now an interactive Amazon Alexa skill, available today. The release is a partnership between Amazon-owned Audible and ChooseCo, the current owner of the Choose Your Own Adventure brand.

Founded in 2003 by R.A. Montgomery and Shannon Gilligan, ChooseCo has printed new editions of Choose Your Own Adventure books over the years. In the new Alexa skill, the story will be read to you, and then Alexa will beep whenever a choice that branches the narrative comes up. You just speak the choice to proceed.

It also comes with a few simple commands to help you navigate. Critically, and in the spirit of how kids read the books back in the day, you can say “go back” to revert a single scene if you think you’ve made a bad call. You can say “start over” to go back to the very beginning of the story, and you can say “change story” to switch from the one you’re listening to over to another one. Sadly, you can't cheat by reading ahead like many kids have over the years.

Enlarge (credit: Matt Madd)

A 13-year-old Indiana boy was detained last week by police in Valparaiso, Indiana, after he posted a screenshot to social media suggesting he wanted to shoot up a school.

The boy, who attends nearby Chesterton Middle School, reportedly told Siri “I am going to shoot up a school.” Siri helpfully responded with a list of schools in the Valparaiso area, where the boy was at the time. The boy took a screenshot and posted it to social media.

Some of his contacts alerted the police in Chesterton, who in turn notified Valparaiso cops.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

YouTube's dislike button can be a source of anxiety for many creators, and now YouTube is considering a number of options to prevent viewers from abusing that tool. Tom Leung, director of project management at YouTube, posted an update to the Creator Insider channel recently in which he detailed some "lightly discussed" options for combatting "dislike mobs," or large groups of users who slam the dislike button on a video before watching the whole thing, or even watching the video at all.

While none of the options Leung details may ever become permanent, YouTube is thinking about experimentation. Currently, like and dislike ratings are shown by default—that's why anyone can see the number of likes and dislikes a video has by checking out the numbers next to the thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons beneath the video player. However, users can change their settings to make ratings invisible.

One of the new options YouTube has talked about is making those ratings invisible by default, so you wouldn't be able to see the number of likes or dislikes a video has. Other options include asking users to provide more information about why they disliked a video (possibly in the form of a checklist), removing the dislike count across the board, and removing the dislike button entirely.