Facebook Is Testing a Solar-Powered Internet-Beaming Drone
Imagine looking up at the sky and seeing a 900 lb. drone the size of Boeing 737 moving in slow circles 11 miles above you. As part of Facebook’s plan to provide Internet access to the 4 billion people who currently lack it, that could soon be the reality for the 10 percent of Earth’s population that lives far from cell towers or fiber optic lines.
Researchers at Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, a division of Facebook’s Internet.org, announced yesterday that the first such drone has been completed as a step toward building a larger fleet. The craft hasn’t been flown yet, but Facebook has been testing versions one-tenth the size over the U.K. and plans on beginning flight tests of the full-size craft before the end of this year.
Related: 12 Weird Uses for Drones
The drone, termed Aquila (Latin for “Eagle), is a solar-powered V-shaped carbon fiber craft that will carry equipment such as solar panels and communications gear that can beam down wireless Internet connectivity. Lacking wheels or the ability to climb, the drone will be launched using helium balloons and will be able to fly for 90 days at a time.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in the project has been the team developing a way to increase the data capacity of the lasers involved. The new system allows a ground-based laser to transmit information to a dome on the underside of the plane at 10 GB per second, about 10 times faster than previously thought possible.
Facebook’s mission isn’t without controversy. Worldwide, critics have been questioning many of Internet.org’s practices on privacy, fairness and security grounds. Those opponents fear that users of Internet.org might be monitored through state-run telecoms, in some cases allowing countries to spy on and repress their citizens. In addition, first-time users of the Internet might confuse Facebook for the entire Internet and only receive news and information from the one site.
The flack Internet.org is receiving isn’t the only problem Facebook has to deal with. Rival Google also has a project in the works to bring wireless Internet to rural communities. Their program, called “Project Loon,” involves high-altitude helium balloons that have transmitters attached to them. Although the project hasn’t been launched yet, it’s in more advanced stages than Aquila.
Watch the video from Facebook’s Connectivity Lab:
The High Cost of Child Poverty
Childhood poverty cost $1.03 trillion in 2015, including the loss of economic productivity, increased spending on health care and increased crime rates, according to a recent study in the journal Social Work Research. That annual cost represents about 5.4 percent of U.S. GDP. “It is estimated that for every dollar spent on reducing childhood poverty, the country would save at least $7 with respect to the economic costs of poverty,” says Mark R. Rank, a co-author of the study and professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. (Futurity)
Do You Know What Your Tax Rate Is?
Complaining about taxes is a favorite American pastime, and the grumbling might reach its annual peak right about now, as tax day approaches. But new research from Michigan State University highlighted by the Money magazine website finds that Americans — or at least Michiganders — dramatically overstate their average tax rate.
In a survey of 978 adults in the Wolverine State, almost 220 people said they didn’t know what percentage of their income went to federal taxes. Of the people who did provide an answer, almost 85 percent overstated their actual rate, sometimes by a large margin. On average, those taxpayers said they pay 25.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. But the study’s authors estimated that their actual average tax rate was just under 14 percent.
The large number of people who didn’t want to venture a guess as to their tax rate and the even larger number who were wildly off both suggest to the researchers “that a very substantial portion of the population is uninformed or misinformed about average federal income-tax rates.”
Why don’t we know what we’re paying?
Part of the answer may be that our tax system is complicated and many of us rely on professionals or specialized software to prepare our filings. Money’s Ian Salisbury notes that taxpayers in the survey who relied on that kind of help tended to be further off in their estimates, after controlling for other factors.
Also, many people likely don’t understand the different types of taxes they pay. While the survey asked specifically about federal taxes, the tax rates people provided more closely matched their total tax rate, including federal, state, local and payroll taxes.
But our politics likely play a role here as well. People who believe that taxes on households like theirs should be lower and those who believe tax dollars are spent ineffectively tended to overstate their tax rates more.
“Since the time of Ronald Reagan, American[s] have been inundated with messages about how high taxes are,” one of the study’s authors told Salisbury. “The notion they are too high has become deeply ingrained.”
Wealthy Investors Are Worried About Washington, and the Debt
A new survey by the Spectrem Group, a market research firm, finds that almost 80 percent of investors with net worth between $100,000 and $25 million (not including their home) say that the U.S. political environment is their biggest concern, followed by government gridlock (76 percent) and the national debt (75 percent).
Trump’s Push to Reverse Parts of $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill May Be DOA
At least two key Republican senators are unlikely to support an effort to roll back parts of the $1.3. trillion spending bill passed by Congress last month, The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis reported Monday evening. While aides to President Trump are working with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on a package of spending cuts, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) expressed opposition to the idea, meaning a rescission bill might not be able to get a simple majority vote in the Senate. And Roll Call reports that other Republican senators have expressed significant skepticism, too. “It’s going nowhere,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said.
Goldman Sees Profit in the Tax Cuts
David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said in a note to clients Friday cited by CNBC that companies in the S&P 500 can expect to see a boost in return on equity (ROE) thanks to the tax cuts. Return on equity should hit the highest level since 2007, Kostin said, providing a strong tailwind for stock prices even as uncertainty grows about possible conflicts over trade.
Return on equity, defined as the amount of net income returned as a percentage of shareholders’ equity, rose to 16.3 percent in 2016, and Kostin is forecasting an increase to 17.6 percent in 2018. "The reduction in the corporate tax rate alone will boost ROE by roughly 70 [basis points], outweighing margin pressures from rising labor, commodity, and borrow costs," Kostin wrote.
