⏱A very costly mistake

Feb 01, 2021

Good morning and happy Monday! What does February have in store for us? Read on to find out...

In the last couple of weeks before the Trump administration left office, the FCC approved bids for the rural internet initiative, a program that’s designed to close the “persistent gaps in US high-speed internet service.” During that process, SpaceX received $886M in funding to launch Starlink, its collection of low orbiting satellites. However, despite the approval on January 19th, more than 150 members of Congress wrote to the FCC asking for further vetting of candidates, forcing SpaceX to submit a new report showing their capabilities. If approved again, SpaceX will be able to provide broadband to 640k locations in 35 states.

Given all the confusion with the vaccine rollout, many people have found themselves asking, “Why is there not a government website to handle this?” The answer is rather frustrating— there is, and it cost the US government more than $44M. Back in May of 2020, the CDC paid Deloitte $16M in a no-bid contract to build a vaccine rollout system. Then in December, it paid Deloitte another $28M to finally release VAMS (Vaccine Administration Management System) much to the displeasure of healthcare workers everywhere. It has now been dropped by many states due to countless bugs and errors, and experts claim that it has actually slowed the process down.

Over the past two years, more than 2,000 police and fire departments have partnered with Ring, Amazon’s video doorbell company, to help with investigations. This partnership allows the departments to both request and subpoena users for video footage from their doorbells in an effort to gather data about questions — something that an NBC News investigation found inconclusive. This may be at an end though — user data is now end-to-end encrypted, meaning user’s will need to cooperate, and cannot be forced.

Necessity is the mother of innovation, and for car companies training new employees, that has rang true during the pandemic. Mercedes-Benz has been utilizing Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 hardware to overlay guided repair instructions over a technician’s field of view, resulting in a 60% reduction for field calls.

Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you tomorrow bright and early!

-The 90 Second News Team

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