Technology

‘Designed to fail:’ Advocates highlight economic, environmental problem with Chromebooks in schools

April 18, 2023 by pkzadmin

Chromebooks purchased by schools in the pandemic are starting to hit their expiration date, an advocacy group detailed in a new report — highlighting a big problem with mass public use of cheap devices with short lives.

“Laptops for each student are here to stay, meaning the possible impacts of balancing the use and sustainability of these pieces is huge,” said Lucas Rockett Gutterman, director of the U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s “Designed to Last” campaign, speaking on the report in front of the Google facility in Cambridge on Tuesday afternoon.

The “Chromebook Churn” report released by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund laid out how Chromebooks now widely used in schools have a built-in “death date,” after which they can’t receive updates or access secure websites like state testing sites.

Just in Massachusetts, the report said, doubling the life of Chromebooks from four to eight years would equal $34 million in savings and a cut in emissions equal to taking 17,000 cars off the road.

Boston Public Schools, among many other districts across the U.S., primarily provide Chromebooks as laptops in classrooms. Since 2020, the report noted, 90% of middle and high schools provide a some type of electronic device to every child.

“We put a little over 1,000 Chromebooks into crates and put them aside due to them being considered as trash because they couldn’t be updated,” Worcester Technical High School senior Monse Genao recalled of her school’s laptop disposal last summer. “And most of them were still in pretty good condition.”

The laptops’ hardware is also designed to be difficult to repair and replace, the report noted.

People trying to repair Chromebooks find issues like specific parts not cross-compatible with similar models and memory and drive soldered to the mainboard, said David Webb, owner of Hamilton Computer Repairs, calling them the “epitome of planned obsolescence.”

Speakers also called out the Digital Right to Repair bill currently proposed in the Massachusetts Legislature, aiming to make it easier and cheaper to repair electronic devices.

The report called on two main changes from Google: extending the Chromebooks’ operating system automatic expiration to 10 years and making the hardware more long-lasting, repairable and replaceable.

“With more tech in our lives and in our classrooms, if Google wants to provide these laptops for hundreds of millions of students, they should really do it right,” said Gutterman.

Google does offer a series of steps customers can take to fix most Chromebook problems. The company adds when it comes to reporting problems online, “we’ll investigate your report and use the information you provide to improve ChromeOS.”

Google ‘not truthful,’ tried to ‘subvert’ court process by deleting evidence in monopoly case, judge rules

March 29, 2023 by pkzadmin

A federal court judge has lambasted Google for deceptive tactics in a high-stakes court case, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta also attacking the technology behemoth for “egregious behavior.”

The judge’s excoriation came in a multi-lawsuit legal action involving dozens of states, including California, accusing the Mountain View-based digital advertising giant of monopolizing the distribution of apps that use Google’s Android operating system.

Judge James Donato found Google broke federal court rules, and potentially weakened the antitrust case against the company, by auto-deleting internal employee messages the firm was obligated to hand over to the states and other plaintiffs as evidence.

“Google has tried to downplay the problem and displayed a dismissive attitude ill tuned to the gravity of its conduct,” Donato wrote in his decision Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The plaintiffs, in a court filing Monday, had claimed Google engaged in “a company-wide culture of concealment coming from the very top, including CEO Sundar Pichai.”

Bonta responded Tuesday to Donato’s findings, saying in a statement, “This egregious behavior demonstrates the lengths that Google will go to maintain its anticompetitive stronghold on the marketplace.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment on Donato’s decision and the plaintiffs’ allegations. The company is accused in the four related lawsuits of putting up contractual and technological barriers to block Android users from using other app-distribution platforms than the Google Play store.

The communications at issue in Donato’s ruling took place in Google’s internal instant-messaging system known as “Chat.” Donato found that Google in the litigation had cast Chat as “primarily a social outlet akin to an electronic break room,” but in fact, company employees routinely used it to “discuss substantive business topics, including matters relevant to this antitrust litigation.”

Chats involving hundreds of specific Google employees were supposed to be preserved for the court case via a “history on” setting in the messaging platform, the judge wrote in his decision. Those communications would then be given to the plaintiffs to use as potential evidence, in a process called “discovery.” Instead, Google “intended to subvert the discovery process” and the Chat evidence “was lost .. with the intent to deprive (the plaintiffs) of the information’s use in the litigation,” Donato found.

Google initially claimed it had no ability to change default settings for individual employees’ Chat history, but evidence in a court hearing “plainly established that this representation was not truthful,” Donato wrote. He added that Google had the ability to set the Chat history function to “on” for all the employees whose communications were relevant to the case, but chose not to.

Shortly after the case was filed in October 2020 and before the issue with the Chat function arose, the company “falsely assured the Court” that it had taken appropriate steps to preserve all relevant evidence “without saying a word about Chats,” Donato wrote. “The Court has repeatedly asked Google why it never mentioned Chat until the issue became a substantial problem. It has not provided an explanation, which is worrisome, especially in light of its unlimited access to accomplished legal counsel, and its long experience with the duty of evidence preservation.”

The plaintiffs claimed in their filing Monday that Google CEO Pichai in one Chat started to discuss a matter relevant to the antitrust case, then immediately asked if the Chat setting could be set to “history off” so the message would auto-delete, before unsuccessfully trying to delete the “incriminating” message himself.

“Like Mr. Pichai, other key Google employees, including those in leadership roles, routinely opted to move … to history-off Chats to hold sensitive conversations … in order to avoid leaving a record that could be produced in litigation,” the filing alleged.

Donato ordered that Google pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and other costs related to litigation over destruction of the messages, and said “determination of an appropriate non-monetary sanction requires further proceedings.” The additional proceedings will shed light on how consequential Google’s failure to preserve the communications evidence is for the plaintiffs’ case, Donato indicated.

Vaughn Walker, former Chief Judge of the Northern California U.S. District Court, said judges, when deciding on sanctions in such cases, give heavy weight to the importance of lost evidence. In the most serious cases, a judge may tell a jury “that the party destroyed evidence or allowed it to be destroyed and the jury should infer that the evidence was incriminating,” Walker said.

The group of lawsuits also includes as plaintiffs millions of consumers and several companies.

Connecting a community: Fitchburg Fiber wants to bring quality, affordable internet to city

March 10, 2023 by pkzadmin

FITCHBURG — Once seen as a luxury or commodity, internet access has quickly become a necessity for modern living, one that has only increased in importance as more and more people work or learn from home. And yet, many today are left without such access, their connection outdated and far too slow or the service from their local internet service provider too costly.

Many in the city find themselves amid similar circumstances. But, now, one group is doing everything it can to make sure those that need internet access can obtain it and do so affordably.

Fitchburg Fiber, a relatively new ISP headed by residents Tristan Taylor, Andrew DeChristopher and Nick Madden, is ready to provide the city with secure, high-speed internet access for the paltry sum of just $40 per month. Taylor, co-founder and CEO, said everyone at Fitchburg Fiber is committed to the community and he expects their service to play a significant role in the “revitalization” of the city.

“We’re investing a lot of money and unpaid time to build something that I’m absolutely convinced will be a big part of Fitchburg’s future growth,” Taylor said. “Our purpose here is to build a high-quality internet network and provide affordable service to as many people as we can — the community is the heart behind our mission.”

“We’re still very much in the early stages, but what we’re doing is impactful and, as more and more people learn about us, we hope to bring some serious change to the city,” he said.

Founded in December 2020, Taylor said Fitchburg Fiber was born out of his and DeChristopher’s frustrations with larger ISPs and local internet access, a lack of which “made [Taylor’s] blood boil.”

The fact that other residents shared similar stories pushed them to act.

“You know how it works, you sign a contract at a specific rate and, over time, they raise and raise and raise it,” Taylor said. “We wanted to get away from that model and provide others in the area with options.”

“Back when internet bandwidth was scarce, the typical pricing you see out there sort of made sense. But that just isn’t the case anymore,” he said.

Between COVID-19 and other pandemic-related delays, it took some time to get started. There was also the matter of startup cost: the price to dig up a paved street or sidewalk and deploy underground fiber around the city would have made the venture unfeasible.

Newer technology presented them with a solution, however: rather than physical cable, the Fitchburg Fiber team opted for wireless distribution — internet access served through point-to-point wireless transmitters. According to Taylor, their wireless network can deliver service that is “functionally the same” when compared to a physical cable connection for a fraction of the cost.

The technology made it possible for the group to move forward — and they did so out of their own pocket.

“Suddenly, this wasn’t something that we had to go and ask the bank to lend us a few million dollars for or apply for grant funding, it was something we could self-fund,” he said. “And, realizing the difference we could make, we took our savings and just dove in.”

Each transmitter, described as a “distribution node,” can be mounted to a building and, when able to “bridge” or communicate with another node in the network through a wireless, line-of-sight connection, can provide internet access to an area of about “500 or 600 feet,” according to Taylor.

If a node is blocked by a large building or other obstruction, a separate transmitter could be installed elsewhere to serve as an intermediary point between the established network and the obstructed node in order to re-establish a connection.

Work truly began for the trio midway through 2021 as Taylor, DeChristopher and Madden started to build up their operating infrastructure. A year later, in April 2022, they connected their first customers to the network and have not looked back.

“It was a bit slow at first, but we’ve had more and more people sign up,” Taylor said. “Eventually we’ll reach a point where we have enough customers that we can fund expansions into other neighborhoods.”

While Fitchburg Fiber’s current coverage is limited to the downtown area — stretches of Main Street and Boulder Drive — Taylor said the team had identified “several ideal buildings” as potential points to expand the network and avoid any connection issues.

He also made it clear that the venture was “not about profit” and said Fitchburg Fiber’s goal was to extend access “to every home and business in Fitchburg.” While that may prove “ambitious” in the short term, Taylor said the team’s dedication and commitment to the city would continue to push them toward that goal.

“If we can make a living off of this someday, that would be wonderful, but that’s not what this is about,” he said. “It’s important to us that people are able to get the quality of service they need, deserve and can afford — I don’t think you’ll find a group that’s less profit-motivated.”

“I’m not really sure how to articulate it, but we’re all just super excited about the future,” he said.

As he thanked those that have been early to adopt and or support Fitchburg Fiber, particularly InTown Fitchburg and the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority, Taylor described the enterprise as the “most gratifying thing” he has ever been a part of and said the company “wouldn’t be here” without the so far ardent support of the Fitchburg community.

“We wouldn’t be anywhere without community buy-in,” he said. “People have to be willing to take a shot on us — and, to those that have taken that chance, we can’t thank you enough.”

“We literally wouldn’t be here without you — our customers, the community make us who we are,” he said.

To prospective customers and those on the fence, he also stressed that those at Fitchburg Fiber are “no BS” kind of people. “The whole point of what we do is to provide you with quality service for an affordable price, no contract, no hidden anything — and, if and when you’re ready to switch, we’ll be here for you,” he said.

“To the more skeptical customers, just keep an eye out. Our reputation is growing, we’re committed to the people we serve, to the Fitchburg community and we’re looking forward to being a real part of that community.”

For more information, those interested in Fitchburg Fiber can visit their website at fbfiber.net or contact the company at 978-696-8699.

Technology

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