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"In 2013, the top four ISPs invested a combined $46 billion in the U.S. economy—with Comcast investing $6.6 billion in infrastructure in America, up from $5.7 billion in 2012," Cohen wrote. "This investment has been made possible through the sound application of light touch regulation and it is simply indisputable that Title II would put these significant investments in jeopardy and diminish innovation and job creation as a direct result." Things were going Comcast's way earlier this year when the FCC unveiled a tentative net neutrality plan that relied upon Section 706, requiring minimum levels of service but allowing Internet service providers to charge websites for faster access to consumers. Comcast supported that plan, but it was heavily criticized by consumer advocates. A final decision isn't expected until next year, but Obama's public support of reclassification will put increased pressure on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to scrap Section 706 and use Title II instead.

Doing this changes the primary ID by which Google knows your device. As far as the servers are concerned, the device was basically factory reset. There are many downstream effects of this, but a big one is that this invalidates the tokens used by any app that uses GCM (which is nearly all the Google apps, and a ton of third-party apps.)

“Sonic continues to adhere to the net neutrality practices implemented since its founding in 1994,” the company explains. “We don’t disadvantage any source or type of traffic. There are no speed tiers and no usage caps. We host content delivery equipment as close to our customers as possible. By partnering with large content sources, we save money on Internet transit while delivering the best performance to our members.”

RT @Techmeme: Keyssa 'Kiss Connectivity' tech can wirelessly transfer up to 6GB/sec via EHF between devices

RT @Techmeme: Keyssa 'Kiss Connectivity' tech can wirelessly transfer up to 6GB/sec via EHF between devices

RT @Techmeme: Harry Reid Moves For Senate Vote on NSA Reform (@dnvolz / National Journal)

RT @Techmeme: Harry Reid Moves For Senate Vote on NSA Reform (@dnvolz / National Journal)

RT @Techmeme: Amazon and Hachette Resolve Dispute (@davidstreitfeld / New York Times)

RT @Techmeme: Amazon and Hachette Resolve Dispute (@davidstreitfeld / New York Times)

Under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has worked to overcome its reputation as a clumsy behemoth struggling to keep up with new tech trends and consumer habits. Nadella has cut expenses - and jobs - while pledging to refocus the company on mobile technology and cloud computing. His efforts have fueled a stock surge that drove Microsoft's total market value above $410 billion on Friday. That leapfrogged Exxon's value of $404 billion, which has been dinged by the drop in oil prices.

The move comes after AT&T and Verizon received a slew of critical news coverage for inserting tracking numbers into their subscribers' Internet activity, even after users opted out. Last month, ProPublica reported that Twitter's mobile advertising unit was enabling its clients to use the Verizon identifier. The tracking numbers can be used by sites to build a dossier about a person's behavior on mobile devices – including which apps they use, what sites they visit and for how long.

What we know is that the Apple iPhone 5S was owned via the Safari browser by exploiting two bugs, the Amazon Fire Phone was breached via three bugs in its browser, Samsung Galaxy S5 was successfully targeted via NFC by two different teams (one by triggering a deserialization issue in certain code, and the other by targeting a logical error), and the Nexus 5 was forced to pair with another phone via Bluetooth.

Two days after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company would delay building out its fiber network because of uncertainty about net neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission has some questions. Stephenson said the company would build fiber to homes as promised as part of its deal to acquire DirecTV but other investments would be delayed. The agency emailed AT&T Friday asking for more information about that announcement, including “all documents” related to that decision.

Starting next week, as a Google Play Music subscriber, you’ll get free and complete access to the YouTube Music Key beta, a new service from YouTube where you can watch ad-free music videos, and keep the music playing in the background or when you’re offline. The Google Play Music app will also include ad-free music videos alongside select tracks. Stay tuned for more information.

Walgreens, for example, says that since the release of Apple Pay, the number of mobile transactions conducted in its stores has doubled. Whole Foods says it has seen over 150,000 Apple Pay transactions since the iOS 8.1 update was released. McDonald’s has also seen a rush by customers to give the new tech a try, noting that an impressive 50% of its tap-to-pay transactions since the release of iOS 8.1 came from Apple Pay.

iOS is twice as memory-efficient as Android. Here’s why.

Why Did Google Decide To Split Inbox From Gmail?

The basic factual allegations asserted that CoastNews ranked at the top of search results on Bing and Yahoo for San Francisco neighborhood keywords but didn’t rank in a comparable position (or remotely near that) on Google. Plaintiff Martin asserted that Google was a search monopoly and that he was harmed (and so were consumers) accordingly. He asked for a jury trial and sought roughly $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Now, however, not only can you share them with others to view, you can collaborate on them in real-time – so if you and your other-half use shared shopping lists, for example, you can see items being scored off in real-time. The feature will be hitting the Android app today, but is already available on the Web and the Chrome app incarnations.

"In 2015, we will lower the number of smartphone models by one fourth to one third compared to this year," said Robert Yi, senior vice president and head of investor relations at Samsung Electronics, during Samsung Investors Forum 2014.

Podcasts in 2010 were a lot like podcasts in 2007, which were a lot like podcasts in 2004, which are a lot like podcasts in 2014. There’s a lot of tech shows (and a lot of tech listeners), but most of the biggest are professionally produced public-radio shows released as podcasts, with other strong contingents in comedy, business, and religion, followed by a huge long tail of special interests with small but passionate audiences.

The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we’ll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We’ll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed.

A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.

Last week at Apple’s yearly briefing for accessory makers in its Made-for-iPhone/iPad (MFi) licensing program, the company unveiled new Lightning connectors and specs for Lightning receptacles that will soon be available for implementation in MFi accessories. The new Lightning receptacle, scheduled to start shipping next year, will allow accessory makers to build new types of accessories that include a port for Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector previously reserved for its own iOS devices (pictured above).

Uber said Tuesday that it is investigating its top New York executive for tracking a BuzzFeed News reporter without her permission in violation of what the transit giant says has long been its privacy policy. The company also published its privacy policy for the first time on Tuesday, though it said the policy had always been in effect.