The Supreme Court slammed the door again on a request from internet service providers to kill New York’s $15 broadband law. Arstechnica.com reports that the New York law requires that ISPs with over 20,000 customers must provide $15 broadband with download speeds of at least 25 mbps, and $20 per month service with 200 mbps download speeds. The plans have to be offered to people that meet income-eligibility requirements. The ISPs worry that more states will follow suit. AT&T had already stopped offering its 5G home internet service in New York in response to the law. 

Apple will be staying ‘woke,’ after a shareholder vote. According to appleinsider.com, shareholders voted at the annual meeting to approve the board’s recommendations to keep their DEI initiative, and also voted in the affirmative for Apple’s ethical AI data acquisition and usage. Shareholders didn’t support changes in the company’s charitable giving that were called for by a Shareholder group. The Inspire Investing group wanted to have Apple’s giving directed more to groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Center for American Progress. Apple pointed out that their corporate donations program follows a ’strict internal governance and approval process.’ 

Taking a page out of streaming services books, Microsoft is testing out a ‘free with ads’ version of Office. Engadget.com says that right now, the free version is only available on the web. The version allows users to access Powerpoint, Word, Excel, and more for free. There aren’t a lot of conditions, but there is an ever-present banner on the right side, and also a 15 second video ad that plays ever free hours. Also…you can only store documents in One Drive and not keep on your machine as local files. The programs are a bit cut down…Word doesn’t have drawing or design tools or dictation. Excel won’t have conditional formatting and recommended charts. Powerpoint doesn’t have draw, animation, and record tools….but hey, free…right? Right now, Microsoft won’t say when they might release this version to the general public. 

Google has bowed a free AI coding assistant with very high usage caps. TechCrunch.com reports it’s called Gemini Code Assist for Individuals. It uses a chat window that lets developers talk in natural language with a Google AI model that can access and edit their code base. It offers 180,000 code completions a month, which is 90 times the GitHub Copilot cap. It also comes with 240 chat requests a day. Developers can sign up for a free public preview today. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.