Kris Guyer – Page 4

Being Santa Claus is a year-round calling

psychology, santa claus, Science / Kris Guyer / December 24, 2025

Not just a seasonal gig

Frankly, what’s most interesting about the paper isn’t those three fundamental categories, but the personalized glimpses it gives of the people who choose to become professional Santas. While a few Santas might make six figures, most do not, and may even lose money being Santa—they do it anyway for the sheer love of it. Professional Santas usually don’t see the role as seasonal; many build their identities around it, whether they fit the stereotypical Kris Kringle image or not. “My feeling is, if you’re Santa all the time, you have to live as Santa and give up whoever you are,” said one subject. “I’m just striving to be a better person.”

They’ll wear red and green all year round, for instance, or maintain a full white beard. One Santa trained himself to make “Ho, ho, ho!” his natural laugh. Another redecorated his house as “Santa’s house,” complete with Christmas trees and Santa figurines.

Sometimes it’s viewed as a role: a gay professional Santa, for instance, deliberately suppresses his sexual orientation when playing Santa, complete with partnering with a Mrs. Claus for public appearances. However, a female Santa who goes by Lynx (professional Santas typically take on pseudonyms) who is also a church leader, likens the job to a divine calling: “I can connect with people and remind them they’re loved,” she said. (She also binds her breasts when in costume because “Santa doesn’t have them double-Ds.”)

Perhaps that sense of a higher calling is why even non-prototypical Santas like Lynx persevere in the fact of occasional rejection. One Black Santa recalled being denied the position at a big box store once the interviewer found out his ethnicity, telling him the store didn’t hire Black or Hispanic Santas. “That hurt my heart so much,” he said. A disabled Santa who uses a scooter during parades recalled being criticized by other professional Santas for doing so—but stuck with it.

And while Bad Santa (2003) might be a fun holiday watch, actual “bad Santas” caught smoking, drinking, swearing, or otherwise behaving inappropriately are not popular figures within their community. “You’re never off,” one subject opined. “You lose a little bit of your identity because you can’t let your hair down and be yourself. You don’t know who’s watching you.”

“You’re Santa Claus 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year,” another Santa said. “If you act out, you risk shattering the magic.”

DOI: Academy of Management Journal, 2025. 10.5465/amj.2023.1161 (About DOIs).

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Call of Duty co-creator and Battlefield lead Vince Zampella dies in car crash

Battlefield, Call of Duty, EA, gaming, Infinity Ward, obituary, Respawn Entertainment, vince zampella / Kris Guyer / December 22, 2025

Vince Zampella, a video game developer who has co-created or helmed some of the most popular franchises in the world, died in a car crash on a Los Angeles highway at 12: 45 pm Pacific time on Sunday, December 21. He was 55 years old.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Zampella was in a car on Angeles Crest Highway when the vehicle veered off the road and crashed into a concrete barrier. No other vehicles were reported to be part of the crash.

A passenger was ejected from the vehicle, while the driver was trapped inside after the vehicle caught fire. The driver died at the scene, and the passenger died after being taken to the hospital. The report did not indicate whether Zampella was the passenger or the driver.

Angeles Crest Highway is a scenic road under the San Gabriel Mountains on the eastern end of LA and is commonly used for Sunday leisure drives. The vehicle involved in the crash was a 2026 Ferrari 296 GTS.

A storied career in game development

Early in his career, Zampella worked at SegaSoft and Panasonic, and he was the lead designer for the influential World War II shooter Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, which was released in 2002. But it was the famed studio Infinity Ward that turned him into a household name for gamers. He co-founded Infinity Ward with Jason West and Grant Collier in 2002.

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Safety panel says NASA should have taken Starliner incident more seriously

aerospace safety advisory panel, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Space, starliner, starliner crew flight test / Kris Guyer / December 22, 2025

Invoking the designation also ensures an independent investigation detached from the teams involved in the incident itself, according to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, chair of the safety panel. “We just, I think, are advocates of safety investigation best practices, and that clearly is one of the top best practices,” Helms said.

Another member of the safety panel, Mark Sirangelo, said NASA should formally declare mishaps and close calls as soon as possible. “It allows for the investigative team to be starting to be formed a lot sooner, which makes them more effective and makes the results quicker for everyone,” Sirangelo said.

In the case of last year’s Starliner test flight, NASA’s decision not to declare a mishap or close call created confusion within the agency, safety officials said.

A few weeks into the Starliner test flight last year, the manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich, told reporters the agency’s plan was “to continue to return [the astronauts] on Starliner and return them home at the right time.” Mark Nappi, then Boeing’s Starliner program manager, regularly appeared to downplay the seriousness of the thruster issues during press conferences throughout Starliner’s nearly three-month mission.

“Specifically, there’s a significant difference, philosophically, between we will work toward proving the Starliner is safe for crew return, versus a philosophy of Starliner is no-go for return, and the primary path is on an alternate vehicle, such as Dragon or Soyuz, unless and until we learn how to ensure the on-orbit failures won’t recur on entry with the Starliner,” Precourt said.

“The latter would have been the more appropriate direction,” he said. “However, there were many stakeholders that believed the direction was the former approach. This ambiguity continued throughout the summer months, while engineers and managers pursued multiple test protocols in the Starliner propulsion systems, undoubtedly affecting the workforce.”

After months of testing and analysis, NASA officials were unsure if the thruster problems would recur on Starliner’s flight home. They decided in August 2024 to return the spacecraft to the ground without the astronauts, and the capsule safely landed in New Mexico the following month. The next Starliner flight will carry only cargo to the ISS.

The safety panel recommended that NASA review its criteria and processes to ensure the language is “unambiguous” in requiring the agency to declare an in-flight mishap or a high-visibility close call for any event involving NASA personnel “that leads to an impact on crew or spacecraft safety.”

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Power outage paralyzes Waymo robotaxis when traffic lights go out

Cars, waymo / Kris Guyer / December 22, 2025

When the traffic lights went out, Waymo’s robotaxis got a little too cautious at intersections. With no red-yellow-green to cue drivers, the rule is to treat the intersection as a four-way stop. Indeed, Waymo’s cars are programmed to do this, but it seems the scale of the outage over the weekend was just too much to handle.

Social media and Reddit began to fill with videos of stationary Waymos at intersections, and the company temporarily suspended service.

Most areas saw power restored by noon yesterday, although Pacific Gas and Electric said it expected some power to remain out until Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis are up and running again. “We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area,” a company spokesperson told Ars. “Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”

“Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials. We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day,” Waymo said.

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No one loves President Trump more than FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

Anna Gomez, brendan carr, FCC, Features, Policy, president trump, tom wheeler / Kris Guyer / December 22, 2025

Trump’s biggest fan runs the FCC

Carr used to insist on FCC independence. Now he uses FCC to fight Trump’s battles.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell

Before he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency’s role as an independent branch of the federal government. According to the pre-2025 version of Brendan Carr, the White House interfered with the agency’s independence when a Democratic president publicly urged the FCC to adopt net neutrality rules.

When the Biden-era FCC reinstated Obama-era net neutrality rules in 2024, Carr alleged that President Biden “took the extraordinary step to pressure the FCC—an independent agency that is designed to operate outside undue political influence from the Executive Branch.” As evidence, Carr pointed to a 2021 executive order in which Biden called on agency heads to “consider using their authorities” for various types of pro-competitive policies, including the adoption of net neutrality rules.

Carr said that President Obama similarly “pressure[d] an independent agency into grabbing power that the Legislative Branch never said it had delegated.” Obama’s intrusion into this independence, according to Carr, came in November 2014 when the president released a two-minute video urging the agency to implement net neutrality rules and reclassify broadband providers as common carriers.

While the FCC was created as an independent agency, it isn’t apolitical. There are Republican and Democratic members, and by design, the president’s party has a majority. FCC policies change dramatically from one administration to the next.

But Carr couldn’t have been clearer about his belief that the president should not publicly urge the FCC to take specific actions. “The White House did not let the FCC chair do his job,” Carr said last year, referring to the events of 2014 and 2015 involving Obama and then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “The president intervened. He flipped him.”

But then Donald Trump won a second term in office and promoted Commissioner Carr to the position of FCC chairman in January 2025. A few weeks later, Trump issued an executive order declaring that historically independent agencies could no longer operate independently from the White House.

Carr’s devotion to President Trump

Trump has continued his longtime practice of publicly calling on FCC chairs to revoke broadcast licenses from news organizations that Trump dislikes. Former FCC chairs Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai rejected these calls when they led the agency. Carr has instead amplified Trump’s complaints and repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses through investigations into news distortion.

Carr, a longtime Trump supporter who sometimes wears a Trump-shaped lapel pin, wrote a Project 2025 chapter in 2023 describing how the FCC should be overhauled to achieve conservative priorities. It was never likely that he and Trump would differ much in their policy positions. But few, if any, leaders of historically independent agencies have aligned themselves with Trump as consistently and vocally as Carr has in his first year as FCC chairman.

Carr’s devotion to the president has been most obvious to the general public whenever he threatens broadcaster licenses. But Carr hardly seems independent of Trump when it comes to his other actions as head of the FCC. His press releases announcing various types of FCC decisions often praise Trump’s leadership and say the FCC is acting to advance a Trump priority.

“We are fully aligned with the agenda that President Trump is running,” Carr told The Wall Street Journal.

Far from insisting that the FCC make decisions independently, Carr has welcomed Trump’s direct orders. After Trump issued a December 11 executive order requiring the FCC to open a proceeding that could lead to preemption of state AI laws, Carr issued a statement saying that “the FCC welcomes President’s Trump’s direction.”

We emailed Carr in early December, requesting a phone interview or comments about whether he still believes the FCC should operate independently from the White House and did not receive a response. But on December 17, Carr confirmed during a Senate hearing that he no longer believes the FCC is independent from the White House.

“There’s been a sea change in the law since I wrote that sentence,” he said after being confronted with one of his previous statements describing the agency as independent. “The FCC is not an independent agency” because “the president can remove any member of the commission for any reason or no reason,” he said.

Wheeler, who is still active in tech and telecom policy at the Brookings Institution and Harvard Kennedy School, has watched the current FCC with dismay. “The FCC is a policy agency that exists in a political environment, and the Trump administration has turned it into a political agency existing in a policy environment,” Wheeler told Ars in a phone interview early this month.

Wheeler said he has “respect for Brendan, his brain, his political skills, his way of framing issues and expressing himself. I’m disappointed that he’s using them in the manner that he is, in just being a cipher for the MAGA agenda.”

Wheeler: Obama “never called me”

Congress created the FCC in 1934. As indications of its independence, the FCC has commissioners with specified tenures, a multimember structure, partisan balance, and adjudication authority. The agency can also issue regulations within limits set by Congress and courts.

US law lists 19 federal agencies, including the FCC, that are classified as “independent regulatory agencies.” The FCC’s independence was until recently acknowledged by the FCC itself, which said on its website that it is “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress.” Carr apparently wasn’t aware that the statement was still on the website until the December 17 Senate hearing. It was deleted quickly after Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) asked Carr, “Is your website wrong, is your website lying?”

Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai smiling and talking to each other before a Congressional hearing. — Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler (L) and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai talk before testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on March 25, 2015, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla

“Congress said, ‘you should be an independent agency,’ and Trump steps up and says, ‘no, you’re not an independent agency,’” Wheeler said. “Brendan apparently is going along with that if you judge from his trips to Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere.” Wheeler is also disappointed that after Trump’s executive order, “the Congress rolled over and just said, ‘oh, fine.’”

When Wheeler led a 2015 vote to implement net neutrality rules, Republicans in Congress claimed the agency was improperly influenced by Obama. “Five days of hearings under oath and an IG investigation that cleared me of wrongdoing,” Wheeler said, recalling the post-vote investigations by Congress and the FCC’s independent Inspector General’s office. “It was political. It was Republican-controlled committees who were looking for a reason to go after a Democratic-controlled FCC,” he said.

At the time, Wheeler told Congress there were “no secret instructions” from Obama. Wheeler said he treated Obama’s input “with respect” but also listened to “nearly four million Americans, who overwhelmingly spoke in favor of preserving a free and open Internet” in comments to the FCC.

Wheeler told Ars that during his term as FCC chairman, Obama “never called me.” Wheeler said that in his first week as chairman in 2013, “he said to me, ‘Tom, I will never call you. You’re an independent agency,’ and he was good to his word. Did he do a video? Yeah. Does he have a right to do a video? Of course.”

FCC decisions “coordinated through the White House”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, said in a phone interview in early December that “it is appropriate for the president to have an opinion, even to put an opinion out there,” as Biden and Obama did on net neutrality. “The public statements are different than actions,” she said. “What we’re seeing now are direct actions to undermine our independence.”

Gomez said Trump’s frequent demands on the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses have a “more coercive effect” because of “the overall actions by this president to fire anyone that doesn’t do his will.” That includes Trump firing both Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, another historically independent agency.

The Supreme Court has so far allowed the firing of former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to stand while Slaughter’s lawsuit against Trump remains pending. At oral arguments, it appeared likely that the Supreme Court will rule that Trump can fire FTC commissioners.

At the December 17 Senate hearing, Carr cited the FTC case to support his view that the FCC isn’t independent. Carr said it used to be assumed that FCC commissioners would be protected from removal by the Supreme Court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

The Communications Act was passed one year before Humphrey’s Executor and did not include explicit protection from removal, but “the theory had been that courts would read for-cause removal into the [Communications] statute and that was the basis for that viewpoint,” Carr said. “I think now it’s clear that’s not the case, so formally speaking the FCC isn’t independent because we don’t have that key piece, which is for-cause removal protection.” Carr said “the sine qua non of independence” is having protection from removal by the president.

Gomez has said she doesn’t know why Trump hasn’t fired her yet. “That erosion of our independence is negative for a variety of reasons,” Gomez said. “What worries me is that we will continue to see this White House pressure the FCC to favor or punish certain companies, to influence media ownership or media coverage, and to shape what information reaches the public.”

Gomez said the agency this year started sending decisions to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review before they are voted on. This practice is in line with one of the directives in the Trump executive order that declared independent agencies are no longer independent.

“We have a multi-member commission that makes these decisions, and somehow this is all getting coordinated through the White House before [the commissioners] vote on something. That is not independent,” Gomez said. While there were previously post-vote reviews, such as the standard reviews required under a 1980 law called the Paperwork Reduction Act, the OIRA process consists of “pre-clearance and approval of anything that we’re voting on. That is new,” Gomez said.

Gomez doesn’t know if those reviews have resulted in any significant changes to FCC actions before votes. “I’m not privy to that,” she said.

Carr heaps praise on Trump

Even before the Trump executive order that purported to eliminate the FCC’s independence, Carr attributed one of his first actions to an order from Trump. One day after the January 20 inauguration, Carr announced that he was ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies. The press release said the FCC action was taken “pursuant to” Trump’s day-one executive order on DEI.

“Today, pursuant to the policies stated in the Executive Order, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that he is ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI,” the January 21 press release said. In the months since, Carr has repeatedly demanded that companies end internal DEI practices in exchange for FCC merger approvals.

Carr’s press releases announcing FCC decisions have continued to praise Trump for his leadership of the country. Instead of stating that the FCC makes decisions independently, without “undue political influence from the Executive Branch,” Carr’s press releases often specifically describe FCC decisions as advancing Trump’s agenda.

“This action follows President Trump’s leadership and the Trump Administration’s decision to usher in prosperity through deregulation,” one such Carr press release said while announcing the “Delete, Delete, Delete” plan to eliminate many of the agency’s regulations.

Carr makes statements praising Trump both when he announces decisions on politically charged topics and when he announces decisions on more routine matters handled by the FCC. “With President Trump’s leadership, America is entering a new Golden Age of innovation in space—one where US businesses are going to dominate,” Carr said in October to explain why he was making changes to space licensing and spectrum use rules.

Carr: “Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape”

Of course, Carr’s most controversial initiative almost certainly wouldn’t exist if not for President Trump’s frequent demands that news outlets be punished for supposed bias. Carr’s approach differs markedly from the two previous FCC chairs—Rosenworcel, a Democrat, and Pai, a Republican—who said the FCC should avoid regulating broadcast content in order to uphold the free speech protections in the First Amendment.

By contrast, Carr has repeatedly threatened to enforce the FCC’s previously dormant news distortion policy against broadcasters by taking away station licenses. Carr has made it clear in numerous public statements that he’s taking his cue from Trump.

“For years, people cowed down to the executives behind these companies based in Hollywood and New York, and they just accepted that these national broadcasters could dictate how people think about topics, that they could set the narrative for the country—and President Trump fundamentally rejected it,” Carr told Newsmax in July. “He smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can determine what people think. Everything we’re seeing right now flows from that decision by President Trump, and he’s winning. PBS has been defunded. NPR has been defunded. CBS is committing to restoring fact-based journalism… President Trump stood up to these legacy media gatekeepers, and now their business models are falling apart.”

Carr made that statement after approving CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance on the condition that the company install an ombudsman, which Carr described as a “bias monitor.” Carr only approved the transaction once Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company because he didn’t like how CBS edited a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.

While the FCC order claimed the merger approval and ombudsman condition were unrelated to the Trump lawsuit, Carr repeatedly credited Trump for forcing changes at news broadcasters when giving interviews about that and other FCC actions. Carr uses similar language throughout these various interviews, saying that Trump “ran directly at” news organizations during his election campaign and “smashed the facade.”

“President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” he said in one interview. He said in another that “President Trump ran directly at the legacy mainstream media, and he smashed a facade that they’re the gatekeepers of truth.”

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul say Carr went too far

When Carr threatened the licenses of ABC stations over comments made by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, even some prominent Republicans said he went too far. “Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, calling Carr’s statement that ABC owner Disney must take action against Kimmel “absolutely inappropriate.”

Carr unconvincingly claimed that he never threatened ABC station licenses, even though he specifically said stations that continued to air Kimmel’s show were “running the possibility of fines or license revocations.” One person who didn’t buy Carr’s explanation was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The senator from Texas didn’t like it when Carr told ABC and Disney that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Cruz said Carr’s “easy way or the hard way” statement was an obvious threat and “right outta Goodfellas.” Cruz would later say at the December 17 hearing that Congress should restrict the FCC’s power to intimidate news broadcasters. Cruz said, “the public interest standard and its wretched offspring, like the news distortion rule, have outlived whatever utility they once had and it is long past time for Congress to pass reforms.”

Even after bipartisan criticism, Carr refused to end his news distortion investigations. “How about no,” Carr wrote in November. “On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.”

Wheeler: “Brendan needs to man up and own his decisions”

One of Carr’s defenses of his news distortion probes is that Rosenworcel’s FCC kept an advocacy group’s petition to deny a Fox station license renewal on the docket for over a year instead of dismissing it outright. Rosenworcel ultimately dismissed the petition, which alleged that Fox willfully distorted news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost.

The petition pointed out that a judge presiding over a Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox found that Fox News aired false statements about Dominion. Fox subsequently agreed to a $788 million settlement.

Rosenworcel simultaneously dismissed the Fox petition and three complaints alleging anti-Trump or anti-conservative bias by ABC, CBS, and NBC, saying that all four requests “seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment.” Carr reinstated the conservative complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC, but not the one against Fox.

Carr defended his actions by saying the Biden administration “weaponized our country’s communications laws,” and that his own FCC simply “put the CBS complaint on the same procedural footing that the Biden FCC determined it should apply to the Fox complaint.”

Wheeler said Carr shouldn’t blame his actions on his predecessors. “I own my decisions,” Wheeler said. “I think that Brendan needs to man up and own his decisions and quit this ‘what about.’ He’s always out there saying, ‘Well, what about what Jessica did or what about what Wheeler did?’… Is that the best he can do? I mean, take responsibility for your decisions and go forward.”

Gomez: “This administration has weaponized the FCC”

Gomez said that when Congress created the FCC’s predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission, “it decided that it was too dangerous to have one person beholden to the president, to the whims of one person, in charge of the most important communication medium of the time, which was radio. So Congress decided, after deliberating it, to create a multi-member independent agency. And when it created the FCC, it did exactly that as well.”

Gomez continued: “[I]t has been important throughout history to keep that independence from political pressure. And what you’re seeing in this administration is completely different. This administration has weaponized the FCC in order to retaliate, pressure, and intimidate companies into doing its will.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg

Gomez said the weaponization is evident in how the FCC handles mergers and other transactions in which the agency decides whether to approve the transfer of licenses from one company to another. Carr has explicitly demanded that companies eliminate their DEI policies in exchange for approvals.

“This FCC has said that it will not approve a single license transfer for companies that have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies,” Gomez said, noting that the FCC’s anti-DEI policies were implemented right after Trump’s anti-DEI executive order. “That is why you see the FCC granting transfers of control immediately after getting letters from companies agreeing to drop their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.”

Companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Skydance have ended DEI programs to gain Carr’s approval for transactions.

“We also saw that weaponization of the licensing authority with regard to the [FCC] pressuring EchoStar to give up its licenses,” Gomez said. “And that was done purposefully in order to ensure that other parties could get ahold of EchoStar’s licenses for spectrum.”

Trump intervened in EchoStar battle

SpaceX and AT&T struck deals to buy EchoStar spectrum licenses after Carr threatened to revoke the licenses. Trump intervened after Carr’s threat, as Bloomberg reported that Trump called Carr and summoned him to a White House meeting with EchoStar President Charlie Ergen and urged them to make a deal.

Carr’s pressuring of EchoStar was criticized by the Free State Foundation, a free-market group that usually supports Republican priorities at the FCC.

“Rescission of deadline extension orders granted months earlier undoubtedly creates a type of regulatory uncertainty,” the foundation said in reference to the FCC’s investigation into EchoStar. “Arbitrary and unforeseen” changes to rules or agency actions create instability in the market for wireless broadband deployment, it said.

Gomez said the FCC’s “authority rests on technical expertise, evidence, and the public record. When our agency’s decisions are insulated from partisan pressure, the public can trust the outcomes are driven by facts rather than politics.” She said it is also “important to maintain our global credibility because we have been viewed as a model for transparent, rule-based telecommunications regulation.”

Gomez, a telecommunications attorney, has worked in various private-sector and government roles over the past 30 years, including as deputy chief of the FCC International Bureau and senior legal adviser to then-FCC Chairman William Kennard during the Clinton administration. Prior to Biden’s nomination for her to serve as an FCC commissioner in 2023, she was at the US State Department as senior adviser for International Information and Communications Policy.

Executive order required review of FCC actions

Gomez said the FCC submitting decisions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before they’re voted on is a big change for an independent agency. Gomez said she’s deeply familiar with the OIRA process because of her previous work at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency that advises the president on telecom policy. She was the NTIA deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013.

The Trump executive order that purports to eliminate agency independence states that “all executive departments and agencies, including so-called independent agencies, shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.”

In a section titled “OIRA Review of Agency Regulations,” the Trump executive order amends a definition of agency that was previously included in Section 3(b) of a 1993 executive order on regulatory reviews. The specified section in that Clinton executive order defined agency as “any authority of the United States that is an ‘agency’ under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), other than those considered to be independent regulatory agencies.” This carveout excluded independent agencies like the FCC from the requirement to submit draft regulatory actions for review.

The definition of “agency” in Trump’s executive order removes the language that excluded all independent regulatory agencies from OIRA requirements but includes a carveout for the Federal Reserve. Trump’s order also added the Federal Election Commission to the roster of agencies whose actions require OIRA review of significant actions, such as rulemakings.

While Gomez objects to the pre-clearance requirement, she noted that there are proper ways in which the FCC coordinates with executive branch agencies. For example, the FCC has a memorandum of understanding with the NTIA on how to coordinate spectrum management actions to prevent interference with federal systems that rely on specific radio frequencies.

“Another good use of coordination is in security, for example, when we coordinate with the security agencies to make sure that we are taking national security into consideration with our actions,” she said. “Our statute requires us to coordinate with the State Department and the Department of Justice… and that’s important to do in advance, and it’s good government.”

It’s also not uncommon for the FCC to receive advice from the current president’s administration through the NTIA, which expresses the executive branch’s views on telecom-policy matters in filings submitted in the public record. Those dockets attract filings from government agencies, companies, industry trade groups, advocacy groups, and anyone else who is interested in filing a comment, and the FCC takes the input into account before making decisions.

“What is improper,” Gomez said, “is when our decisions are being directed by this administration and impeding us from making our independent, expert-based judgment of how to manage resources and act in the public interest.”

Pai defied Trump, insisted on FCC independence

Carr was hired as a legal adviser by then-Commissioner Pai in 2014 and was briefly the FCC’s general counsel during Pai’s first year as chair in 2017. Carr became an FCC commissioner in August 2017 after a nomination by President Trump.

Carr and Pai have seemingly agreed on nearly everything to do with the FCC, with the most obvious exception being the regulation of broadcast media content. “I believe in the First Amendment,” Pai said in 2017, six days after Trump called for NBC license revocations. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment. And under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”

In a January 2021 speech during his last week as FCC chairman, Pai discussed how he led a 2018 vote against Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media Company because it would violate station ownership limits. Carr joined Pai in the unanimous vote.

“Sinclair is widely perceived to be a right-leaning broadcaster,” Pai said in the speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute. “And the perception is probably accurate, just as it is probably accurate to say that many of our nation’s broadcast networks lean to the left. But the last time I checked, the First Amendment still applies to broadcasters, which means Sinclair’s perceived political views and the content of its newscasts should be entirely irrelevant to the FCC’s decision-making process.”

Trump didn’t like Pai’s rejection of the Sinclair deal. The president tweeted in July 2018, “So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn’t approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune. This would have been a great and much needed Conservative voice for and of the People. Liberal Fake News NBC and Comcast gets approved, much bigger, but not Sinclair. Disgraceful!”

Reflecting on this incident and other Trump comments about the Sinclair rejection in his January 2021 speech, Pai said, “in terms of powerful opponents in Washington, it’s hard to top the president.” Pai told the audience “that you don’t demonstrate the FCC’s independence by saying you’re independent. You do it by acting independently… This decision may have won me few friends, but I’m proud I lived up to my oath and preserved the agency’s independence.”

It’s no secret

Wheeler and Pai often clashed over policy differences when they served on the commission together. Pai even accused Wheeler of taking orders from Obama on net neutrality. But Pai’s exit speech made a positive impression on Wheeler.

“I seem to recall that Pai at the end of his term made a speech in which he talked about some of the proudest things he had done was maintaining the independence of the agency and protecting the First Amendment speech rights of the people,” Wheeler said.

While federal agency operations can change in ways that aren’t readily visible to the public, the changes to agency independence in Trump’s second term haven’t been hidden. “One thing about this is so much is out in the open, which I think is an effort to normalize it,” Gomez said. “And we have to resist it.”

Gomez knows she might not be able to serve out her entire term given that Trump fired Democrats from the FTC. The risk would be particularly high if the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor in the case filed by Slaughter. While the Senate has the authority to confirm or deny presidential nominations to the FCC and FTC, a Trump victory in the FTC case would give the president more power to dictate the membership of independent agencies.

“I don’t know why,” Gomez said when asked if she knows why Trump hasn’t fired her yet. “I don’t want to speculate. We’ll find out, I guess. But I’m focused on doing my work, and every day that I can continue to do my work and to speak out on behalf of consumers and the First Amendment is a good day.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

No one loves President Trump more than FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Read More »

These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about

aerospace, DiskSat, electron rocket, rocket lab, Science, Space / Kris Guyer / December 20, 2025

DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites.”

An artist’s illustration of DiskSats deploying from a rocket in low-Earth orbit. Credit: NASA

Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design.

The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at 12: 03 am EST (05: 03 UTC). A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers).

The launch was the starting gun for a proof-of-concept mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats. These satellites were designed by the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit federally funded research and development center. The project is jointly financed by NASA and the US Space Force, which paid for DiskSat’s development and launch, respectively.

“DiskSat is a lightweight, compact, flat disc-shaped satellite designed for optimizing future rideshare launches,” the Aerospace Corporation says in a statement.

The DiskSats are 39 inches (1 meter) wide, about twice the diameter of a New York-style pizza, and measure just 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick. Made of composite carbon fiber, each satellite carries solar cells, control avionics, reaction wheels, and an electric thruster to change and maintain altitude.

“The launch went perfectly, and the DiskSat dispenser worked exactly as designed,” said Darren Rowen, the project’s chief engineer, in a statement. “We’re pleased to have established contact with all four of the DiskSats, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the demonstration mission.”

An engineer prepares Aerospace Corporation’s DiskSats for launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: Aerospace Corporation

A new form factor

The Aerospace Corporation has a long history of supporting the US military and NASA since its founding in 1960. A few years ago, engineers at the center developed the DiskSat concept after surveying the government’s emerging needs in spaceflight.

CubeSats have been a ubiquitous part of the satellite industry for nearly a quarter-century. They are based on a cube-shaped design, measuring about 10 centimeters per side, but can be scaled from a single cube “unit” to three, six, 12, or more, depending on mission requirements. The CubeSat standard has become a popular choice for commercial companies, the military, NASA, and universities looking to build small satellites on a tight budget.

By one measure, nearly 3,000 CubeSats have launched since the first one soared into orbit in 2003. After originally being confined to low-Earth orbit, they have now flown to high-altitude orbits, to the Moon, and to Mars.

While CubeSats are now prolific, engineers at the Aerospace Corporation saw an opportunity to improve on the concept. Debra Emmons, Aerospace’s chief technology officer, said the idea originated from Rich Welle, a scientist recently retired from the center’s Experiments Lab, or xLab, division.

“They were asking questions,” Emmons told Ars. “They were looking at CubeSat studies and looking at some alternatives. The typical CubeSat is, in fact, a cube. So, the idea was could you look at some different types of form factors that might be able to generate more power … and offer up benefit for certain mission applications?”

Aerospace’s research team arrived at the DiskSat design. Emmons said the stackable flat-panel format is easier to pack for launch than a CubeSat. The concept is similar to SpaceX’s pioneering approach to launching stackable Starlink Internet satellites, but DiskSats are significantly smaller, lighter, and adaptable to different kinds of missions.

A batch of Starlink satellites prior to launch — A stack of Starlink satellites prior to launch. Credit: SpaceX

DiskSats have several advantages over CubeSats, according to the Aerospace Corporation. Each of the four DiskSats launched Thursday has a mass of about 35 pounds (16 kilograms), less than that of a typical 12U CubeSat. But a DiskSat has more than 13 times the surface area on a single side, providing valuable real estate for developers to load up the satellite with power-generating solar arrays, sensors, antennas, or other payloads that simply won’t fit on a CubeSat.

SpaceX’s current generation of mass-produced Starlink V2 satellites, by comparison, each has a mass of more than 1,100 pounds, or 500 kilograms.

DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites,” the Aerospace Corporation says. In a research paper published earlier this year, engineers from the Aerospace Corporation claimed DiskSat can generate five to 10 times more power than a CubeSat.

A disruptive solution?

What kinds of missions might DiskSat be useful for? One idea involves placing a large radar antenna—too big to fit on any other low-mass satellite—on the broadside of a DiskSat to collect all-weather surveillance imagery. Similarly-sized antennas on other DiskSats could support high-bandwidth communications.

With this demo mission, the Aerospace Corporation will test the performance of the DiskSat platform in space for the first time. Engineers will initially look at how the satellites function at 340 miles, then use their electric thrusters to gradually step down to lower altitudes, where another aspect of DiskSat’s design will shine.

Flying edge-on, the satellite’s pancake shape will minimize aerodynamic drag as the DiskSats encounter thicker air below 250 miles. Continual pulsing from the satellites’ electric thrusters will allow the DiskSats to maintain altitude as they glide through the uppermost layers of the atmosphere.

“The primary mission is to demonstrate and to understand the performance, functionality, and maneuverability of the DiskSat buses on orbit, particularly in low-Earth orbit, or LEO, and very low-Earth orbit, or VLEO,” said Catherine Venturini, DiskSat’s principal investigator.

“In theory, I think you could operate down to 200 kilometers (124 miles) with electric propulsion,” Emmons said. That is two to three times closer to Earth than most commercial radar imaging satellites. Other satellite operators are also assessing the viability of flying remote sensing missions in VLEO.

Flying closer to the ground delivers higher-resolution imagery, bringing cities, ships, airports, and military bases into sharper view. So it’s easy to see why the Space Force is interested in the DiskSat concept.

DiskSat’s engineers acknowledge there are drawbacks to the format. With such a large surface area, it’s more difficult to manage the temperature extremes of low-Earth orbit than it is with a conventional cube-shaped satellite. While DiskSats carry a lot of oomph to change altitude, their shape makes them somewhat clunky and hard to turn, and engineers say they aren’t well-suited for missions requiring agile pointing.

Rocket Lab’s Electron launcher lifts off to begin the DiskSat demo mission, a program co-funded by NASA and the US military’s Space Test Program. Credit: Austin DeSisto/Rocket Lab

The Aerospace Corporation is a research center, not a commercial satellite manufacturer. Officials at the nonprofit are looking to hand over the DiskSat design to industry through a technology transfer agreement. “The plan is to release or license the technology to partners once it is flight-proven,” the Aerospace Corporation says on its website.

“We think this new technology will be disruptive to the small spacecraft enterprise and ecosystem,” said Eric Breckheimer, DiskSat’s program manager.

DiskSat’s stackable design makes it possible to launch a fleet of high-power, low-mass satellites in one go, according to Emmons.

Following the trend toward bigger CubeSats, the DiskSat format could also grow larger to take advantage of heavier rockets. “There’s a key scalability aspect, and with that in mind, you could bring an entire constellation of DiskSats with you in a single launch,” Breckheimer said.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about Read More »

Strava puts popular “Year in Sport” recap behind an $80 paywall

culture, paywalls, strava / Kris Guyer / December 19, 2025

Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual “Year in Sport” wrap-up—a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user’s athletic achievements.

But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ($80 per year), rather than making it free to everyone, as it had been historically since the review’s debut in 2016.

This decision has roiled numerous Strava users, particularly those who have relished the app’s social encouragement features. One Strava user in India, Shobhit Srivastava, “begged” Strava to “let the plebs see their Year in Sport too, please.” He later explained to Ars that having this little animated video is more than just a collection of raw numbers.

“When someone makes a video of you and your achievements and tells you that these are the people who stood right behind you, motivated you, cheered for you—that feeling is of great significance to me!” he said by email.

Strava spokesperson Chris Morris declined to answer Ars’ specific questions about why the decision to put Year in Sport behind a paywall was made now.

Other users feel that Strava is getting a bit too greedy. Dominik Sklyarov, an Estonian startup founder, wrote on X that Strava’s decision was a “money hungry move, really sad to see. Instead of shipping useful features for athletes, Strava just continues getting worse.”

Meanwhile, Reddit user “andrewthesailor” pointed out, “Well, they want me to pay to look at data I gave them (power, [heart rate] etc). And the subscription is not that cheap, especially when you consider that you are also paying with your data.”

Sana Ajani, a business student at the University of Chicago, told Ars that she used to be a premium member but isn’t anymore.

“I did notice the Year in Sport and was a little annoyed that I couldn’t unlock it,” she said in an email. “I would’ve expected some overall stats for everyone and extra stats for subscribers. Year in Review-type stuff is great content and distribution for most apps since everyone shares it on socials, so I’m surprised that Strava is limiting its reach by only letting paid subscribers see it.”

Peacock showing ads upon launch opens the door for more disruptive streaming ads

ads, nbcuniversal, peacock, streaming, Tech / Kris Guyer / December 18, 2025

Peacock subscribers will see ads immediately upon opening the streaming app or website next year. It’s a bold new strategy for attracting advertisers—something that’s been increasingly important to subscription-based streaming services—but it also risks alienating viewers

As reported by Variety, the new type of ads will display on the profile selection page that shows when a subscriber launches Peacock. Starting next year, instead of the profile page just showing your different Peacock profiles, most of the page will be dominated by an advertorial image. The circles of NBCUniversal-owned characters selected for user profiles will be relegated to a vertical column on the screen’s left side, as you can see here.

To avoid seeing what NBCUniversal is calling “Arrival Ads” every time you open Peacock, you need to subscribe to Peacock’s most expensive plan, which is ad-free and starts at $17 per month (Peacock’s ad-based plans start at $8/month.)

NBCUniversal’s announcement claims that Peacock will be the first streaming service to implement this type of ad. But that may not be the brag the entertainment giant thinks it is, as subscribers may quickly find the startup ads disruptive.

Peacock isn’t making money

Over the past couple of years, it’s become increasingly important for streaming services to generate revenue beyond subscription fees. Peacock and many other streaming services have struggled with profitability after spending years focusing on pricey content production and licensing to attract subscribers.

For its part, Peacock has 41 million subscribers and isn’t profitable. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, shared in October, NBCUniversal parent company Comcast reported that the service lost $217 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, compared to losing $436 million in the same quarter in 2024. At the same time, Peacock has struggled to grow viewership and has had the same number of subscribers since Q1 2025. In Q1 2024, Peacock had 31 million subscribers.

Peacock showing ads upon launch opens the door for more disruptive streaming ads Read More »

LLMs’ impact on science: Booming publications, stagnating quality

AI, LLMs, Science, scientific publications / Kris Guyer / December 18, 2025

This effect was likely to be most pronounced in people that weren’t native speakers of English. If the researchers limited the analysis to people with Asian names working at institutions in Asia, their rate of submissions to bioRxiv and SSRN nearly doubled once they started using AI and rose by over 40 percent at the arXiv. This suggests that people who may not have the strongest English skills are using LLMs to overcome a major bottleneck: producing compelling text.

Quantity vs. quality

The value of producing compelling text should not be underestimated. “Papers with clear but complex language are perceived to be stronger and are cited more frequently,” the researchers note, suggesting that we may use the quality of writing as a proxy for the quality of the research it’s describing. And they found some indication of that here, as non-LLM-assisted papers were more likely to be published in the peer reviewed literature if they used complex language (the abstracts were scored for language complexity using a couple of standard measures).

But the dynamic was completely different for LLM-produced papers. The complexity of language in papers written with an LLM was generally higher than for those using natural language. But they were less likely to end up being published. “For LLM-assisted manuscripts,” the researchers write, “the positive correlation between linguistic complexity and scientific merit not only disappears, it inverts.”

But not all of the differences were bleak. When the researchers checked the references being used in AI-assisted papers, they found that the LLMs weren’t just citing the same papers that everyone else did. They instead cited a broader range of sources, and were more likely to cite books and recent papers. So, there’s a chance that AI use could ultimately diversify the published research that other researchers consider (assuming they check their own references, which they clearly should).

What does this tell us?

There are a couple of cautions for interpreting these results. One, acknowledged by the researchers, is that people may be using AI to produce initial text that’s then heavily edited, and that may be mislabeled as human-produced text here. So, the overall prevalence of AI use is likely to be higher. The other is that some manuscripts may take a while to get published, so their use of that as a standard for scientific quality may penalize more recent drafts—which are more likely to involve AI use. These may ultimately bias some of the results, but the effects the authors saw were so large that they’re unlikely to go away entirely.

LLMs’ impact on science: Booming publications, stagnating quality Read More »

Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations

AI, ai bot, Biz & IT, browser extensions, chrome, EDGE, privacy, Security / Kris Guyer / December 17, 2025

Besides ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the extensions harvest all conversations from Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI. Koi said the full description of the data captured includes:

Every prompt a user sends to the AI
Every response received
Conversation identifiers and timestamps
Session metadata
The specific AI platform and model used

The executor script runs independently from the VPN networking, ad blocking, or other core functionality. That means that even when a user toggles off VPN networking, AI protection, ad blocking, or other functions, the conversation collection continues. The only way to stop the harvesting is to disable the extension in the browser settings or to uninstall it.

Koi said it first discovered the conversation harvesting in Urban VPN Proxy, a VPN routing extension that lists “AI protection” as one of its benefits. The data collection began in early July with the release of version 5.5.0.

“Anyone who used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or the other targeted platforms while Urban VPN was installed after July 9, 2025 should assume those conversations are now on Urban VPN’s servers and have been shared with third parties,” the company said. “Medical questions, financial details, proprietary code, personal dilemmas—all of it, sold for ‘marketing analytics purposes.’”

Following that discovery, the security firm uncovered seven additional extensions with identical AI harvesting functionality. Four of the extensions are available in the Chrome Web Store. The other four are on the Edge add-ons page. Collectively, they have been installed more than 8 million times.

They are:

Chrome Store

Urban VPN Proxy: 6 million users
1ClickVPN Proxy: 600,000 users
Urban Browser Guard: 40,000 users
Urban Ad Blocker: 10,000 users

Edge Add-ons:

Urban VPN Proxy: 1,32 million users
1ClickVPN Proxy: 36,459 users
Urban Browser Guard – 12,624 users
Urban Ad Blocker – 6,476 users

Read the fine print

The extensions come with conflicting messages about how they handle bot conversations, which often contain deeply personal information about users’ physical and mental health, finances, personal relationships, and other sensitive information that could be a gold mine for marketers and data brokers. The Urban VPN Proxy in the Chrome Web Store, for instance, lists “AI protection” as a benefit. It goes on to say:

Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations Read More »

Reporter suggests Half-Life 3 will be a Steam Machine launch title

gaming, half-life, Half-Life 3, hl3, rumor, steam machine, valve / Kris Guyer / December 16, 2025

If you can take your mind way back to the beginning of 2025, you might remember a fresh wave of rumors suggesting that Half-Life 3 was finally reaching the final stages of production, and could be announced and/or released at any moment. Now, though, 2025 seems set to come to a close without any official news of a game fans have been waiting literal decades for.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a Half-Life 3 announcement and/or release isn’t imminent, though. On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that “everybody I’ve talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be a launch title with the Steam Machine.”

Straw—who has a long history of reporting gaming rumors from anonymous sources—said this Half-Life 3 information is “not [from] these run-of-the-mill sources that haven’t gotten me information before. … These aren’t like random, one-off people.” And those sources are “still adamant that the game is coming in the spring,” Straw added, noting that he was “specifically told [that] spring 2026 [is the window] for the Steam Machine, for the Frame, for the Controller, [and] for Half-Life 3.”

For real, this time?

Tying the long-awaited Half-Life 3 to a major hardware push that has already been announced for an “early 2026” window certainly sounds plausible, given previous leaks about the game’s advanced state of development. But there are still some reasons to doubt Straw’s “adamant” sources here.

For one, Straw admitted that the previous information he had received on potential Half-Life 3 launch and/or announcement dates was not reliable enough to report in detail. “I had been told a date. I was not going to report that date because they weren’t 100 percent confident in that date,” he said. “That date has since passed.”

Reporter suggests Half-Life 3 will be a Steam Machine launch title Read More »

Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

Features, phone unlocking, Policy, straight talk, tracfone, verizon / Kris Guyer / December 16, 2025

Verizon customer fights back

Verizon changed policy after he bought the phone, wouldn’t unlock it despite FCC rule.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

When Verizon refused to unlock an iPhone purchased by Kansas resident Patrick Roach, he had no intention of giving up without a fight. Roach sued the wireless carrier in small claims court and won.

Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon’s Straight Talk brand on February 28, 2025, as a gift for his wife’s birthday. He intended to pay for one month of service, cancel, and then switch the phone to the US Mobile service plan that the couple uses. Under federal rules that apply to Verizon and a Verizon unlocking policy that was in place when Roach bought the phone, this strategy should have worked.

“The best deals tend to be buying it from one of these MVNOs [Mobile Virtual Network Operators] and then activating it until it unlocks and then switching it to whatever you are planning to use it with. It usually saves you about half the value of the phone,” Roach said in a phone interview.

Unlocking a phone allows it to be used with another carrier. Verizon, unlike other carriers, is required by the Federal Communications Commission to unlock phones shortly after they are activated on its network. Verizon gained significant benefits in exchange for agreeing to the unlocking requirement, first in 2008 when it purchased licenses to use 700 MHz spectrum that came with open access requirements and then in 2021 when it agreed to merger conditions to obtain approval for its purchase of TracFone.

Verizon is thus required to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. This applies to Verizon’s flagship brand and TracFone brands such as Straight Talk.

“That was the compromise. For their competitive advantage of acquiring the spectrum, they had to give up the ability to lock down phones for an extended period of time,” Roach said.

Verizon decided it can change the rules

But 60 days after Roach activated his phone, Verizon refused to unlock it. Verizon claimed it didn’t have to because of a recent policy change in which Verizon decided to only unlock devices after “60 days of paid active service.” Roach had only paid for one month of service on the phone.

The FCC-imposed restriction says Verizon must unlock phones 60 days after activation and doesn’t say that Verizon may refuse to unlock a phone when a customer has not maintained paid service for 60 days. Moreover, Verizon implemented its “60 days of paid active service” policy for TracFone brands and Verizon prepaid phones on April 1, 2025, over a month after Roach bought the phone.

Company policy at the time Roach made the purchase was to unlock phones 60 days after activation, with no mention of needing 60 days of paid active service. In other words, Roach bought the phone under one policy, and Verizon refused to unlock it based on a different policy it implemented over a month later. Verizon’s attempt to retroactively enforce its new policy on Roach was not looked upon favorably by a magistrate judge in District Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas.

“Under the KCPA [Kansas Consumer Protection Act], a consumer is not required to prove intent to defraud. The fact that after plaintiff purchased the phone, the defendant changed the requirements for unlocking it so that plaintiff could go to a different network essentially altered the nature of the device purchased… With the change in defendant’s unlocking policy, the phone was essentially useless for the purpose plaintiff intended when he purchased it,” Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Henry wrote in an October 2025 ruling.

There’s still the question of why Verizon and its brands are demanding 60 days of paid active service before unlocking phones when the FCC-imposed conditions require it to unlock phones 60 days after activation. Roach filed a complaint to the FCC, alleging that Verizon violated the conditions. Verizon has meanwhile petitioned the FCC to eliminate the 60-day requirement altogether.

Customer rejected Verizon settlement offer

Before his small-claims court win, Roach turned down a Verizon settlement offer of $600 plus court fees because he didn’t want to give up the right to speak about the case publicly. Roach said he filed an arbitration case against Verizon nearly a decade ago on a different matter related to gift cards that were supposed to be provided through a device recycling program. He said he can’t reveal details about the settlement in that previous case because of a non-disclosure agreement.

After refusing Verizon’s settlement offer in the new case, Roach gained a modest financial benefit from his court victory. The judge ordered Verizon to pay back the $410.40 he paid for the device, plus court costs and service fees.

When it appeared that the Straight Talk iPhone wouldn’t be unlocked, Roach decided to buy an unlocked phone from Costco for $643.93. But he ended up returning that phone to Costco and paying Straight Talk for a second month of service to get the original phone unlocked, he said.

The now-unlocked phone—the one he bought from Straight Talk—is being used by his wife on their US Mobile plan. The court-ordered refund check that Verizon sent Roach included the phone cost and one month of service fees, he said.

Roach estimated he spent 20 or so hours on the suit, including arranging to have a summons served on Verizon and arguing his case in a court hearing. Roach didn’t get much of a payout considering the amount of time he spent, “but it wasn’t about that,” he said.

Roach provided Ars with the emails in which Verizon offered the $600 settlement. A Verizon executive relations employee wrote to Roach, “My offer is not an admission of guilt but trying to extend the olive branch.”

In his email declining the offer, Roach told Verizon, “I highly value the non-monetary outcomes I would achieve in court—transparency, accountability, and the absence of restrictions such as NDAs. Any settlement proposal that requires me to remain silent about the issue, while offering only modest monetary compensation, is less attractive to me than pursuing the matter through judgment. If Verizon Value is genuinely interested in settlement, the offer would need to reflect both the tangible costs I’ve incurred and the intangible but significant benefits the company receives by avoiding litigation and publicity.”

“It was really starting to irk me”

The FCC has taken no action on Roach’s complaint, and in fact, the commission could allow Verizon to scrap the 60-day requirement. As we reported in May, Verizon petitioned the FCC to let it lock phones to its network for longer periods of time. This would make it harder for customers to switch to other carriers, but Verizon claims longer locking periods are necessary to deter fraud.

The FCC hasn’t ruled yet on Verizon’s petition. Roach says Verizon seems to be acting as if it can change the rules without waiting for the FCC to do so formally. “It was really starting to irk me that they were basically just going ahead with it anyways while they had an open request,” Roach said.

He doesn’t expect the FCC to penalize Verizon, though. “It’s just kind of slimy of them, so I feel like it deserves a spotlight,” he said. “I’m not sure with the current state of the FCC that anything would happen, but the rule of law should be respected.”

The Verizon petition to relax the unlocking requirements was opposed in a filing by Public Knowledge and other consumer advocacy groups. Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer, who wrote the filing, told Ars that Roach “has a pretty strong argument under the law as it stands.”

Verizon must unlock phones automatically

The unlocking rules applying to Verizon used to be stricter, resulting in the company selling phones that were already unlocked. In 2019, Verizon requested a waiver to let it lock phones for 60 days.

The FCC granted the waiver in June 2019, allowing Verizon “to lock a customer’s handset for 60 days from the date it becomes active on Verizon’s network” and requiring it to unlock the handset once the period is over. This condition was expanded to TracFone and its brands such as Straight Talk in the 2021 merger, with the FCC approval stating that “For 700 MHz C Block TracFone devices that operate on the Verizon network and are capable of unlocking automatically (e.g., Apple devices), they will unlock automatically 60 days after activation.”

The 2019 waiver grant said Verizon must automatically unlock phones after 60 days “regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off.” The FCC order specifies that “the only exception to the rule will be that Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud.”

Bergmayer said the FCC order “granting the waiver just starts a countdown, with no ‘paid service’ requirement, or room for Verizon to just impose one. Many people may use prepaid phones that they don’t keep in continuous service but just charge up as needed. Maybe people are fine with just having Wi-Fi on their phones for a while if they’re at home anyway.”

Given the restrictive nature of the FCC conditions, “I don’t think that can be read to allow a paid service requirement,” Bergmayer said. But as a practical matter, the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr has been aggressively eliminating regulations that apply to telecom carriers under Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative. To actually enforce Verizon’s obligations under the current rules, “you have to convince the current FCC not to just change it,” Bergmayer said.

The FCC and Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Retroactive policy change irked other buyers, too

Roach wasn’t the only person whose plans to buy a discounted phone were thwarted by Verizon refusing to unlock the device after 60 days. Roach had learned of the discount offer from a Slick Deals thread. Eventually, users posting in that thread started reporting that they weren’t able to get the phone unlocked.

“My status: I used 30 days with Straight Talk. Waited another 35 days but it did not unlock,” one person wrote.

Some people in the thread said they canceled after 30 days, like Roach did, but eventually bought a second month of service in order to get the unlock. Although Verizon and its brands are required to unlock phones automatically, some commenters said they had to contact Straight Talk support to get an unlock. “Needless to say this has been an arduous journey. Good luck to others and hope you manage to successfully unlock your devices as well,” one user wrote.

There’s also a Reddit thread started by someone who said they bought a Samsung phone in February and complained that Straight Talk refused to honor the unlocking policy that was in place at the time.

“I called to ask for the phone to be unlocked on April 16 but was told it can’t be unlocked since it did not have 60 days of paid service,” the Reddit user wrote. “When I said that was not the policy on phones activated prior to April 1, the rep told me ‘we have the right to change our policy.’ I agreed, they do [have] the right to change their policy GOING FORWARD but can’t change the rules going backwards. He disagreed.”

FCC complaint didn’t go anywhere

Roach’s FCC complaint received a response from Verizon, but nothing substantial from the FCC itself. “There’s not really any sort of moderation or mediation from the FCC, it’s just kind of a dialogue between you and the other party. And I’m not really sure if any human eyes from the government even look at it. It’s probably just a data point,” Roach said.

Roach had previously called Straight Talk customer service about the changed terms. “There were a couple phone calls involved, and they were just very unrelenting that the only way that thing was getting unlocked is with the extra month of paid service,” he said.

In its formal response to the FCC, Verizon’s TracFone division asserted that it could apply the April 1, 2025, policy change to the phone that Roach bought over a month earlier. The carrier’s letter to the FCC said:

We understand Mr. Roach’s desire to use his device on another carrier’s network, and we want to provide clarity based on our Unlocking Policy, which became effective on April 1, 2025. As outlined in our policy, for cellphones capable of remote unlocking (this includes most iPhones and some Android cellphones) that were activated with Straight Talk service prior to November 23, 2021, on any carrier network, the device becomes eligible for remote unlocking upon the customer’s request after 60 days of active paid service.

Our redemption records indicate that Mr. Roach’s account does not have the required minimum 60 days of active paid service based on the payment records. Therefore, the device does not currently meet the eligibility criteria for unlocking as outlined in our policy. Once the account reflects the required 60 days of active paid service, and the device meets the other conditions, he can resubmit the unlocking request.

Verizon’s letter did not explain how its new policy complies with the FCC conditions or why the new policy should apply to phones purchased before the policy was in place.

Roach’s complaint said the FCC should force Straight Talk to “honor the FCC-mandated 60-day post-activation unlock condition for all affected phones, without imposing the additional ‘paid service’ requirement.” His complaint further urged the FCC to “investigate this practice as a violation of FCC rules and the merger conditions” and “take enforcement action to protect consumers’ rights.”

“Straight Talk’s new policy conflicts with the FCC’s binding conditions,” Roach told the agency. “The Commission’s order clearly requires unlocking after 60 days from activation, with no additional obligation to maintain service. By conditioning unlocks on two months of service, Straight Talk is effectively adding a term that Verizon did not promise and the FCC did not approve.”

Kansas consumer protection law to the rescue

In his small claims court filing, Roach alleged that Verizon and Straight violated the FCC conditions and that the retroactive application of the “60 days of paid service” term, without disclosure at the point of sale, is an unfair and deceptive practice prohibited by the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.

The magistrate judge’s ruling in Roach’s favor said, “It does appear that defendant’s change unlocking policy is contrary to the applicable FCC regulations.” She noted that federal communications law does not prevent users from suing carriers individually and that the Kansas Consumer Protection Act “contains provisions prohibiting deceptive acts by a supplier which would be applicable in this case.”

Roach asked for $10,000, mainly because that was the limit on damages in the venue, but the judge decided to award him damages in the amount of his actual losses. “He lost the beneﬁt of the bargain he made with defendant such that his damages were loss of the $410.40,” the ruling said.

Straight Talk’s terms of service require disputes to be resolved either in arbitration or small claims court. Verizon pays the arbitration fees if users go that route. Arbitration is “a little more murky” in terms of how the parties’ interests are aligned, Roach said.

“When the arbitrators are being paid by Verizon, are they really a neutral party?” he said. Roach also said he “thought it was honestly just a good opportunity for an easy win and an opportunity to learn about the small claims court system a bit. So at that point I was like, if I don’t make any money from this, whatever, but at least I’ll learn a little bit about the process.”

Verizon’s “argument was pretty weak”

Roach said he did not consult with a lawyer on his small claims case, instead opting to do it all himself. “The first time I showed up to court for the original date, they asked for proof of the returned mail summons, and I did not have that,” he said.

The court hearing was rescheduled. When it was eventually held, the carrier sent a representative to argue against Roach.

“Their argument was pretty weak, I guess,” Roach said. “It was basically like, ‘Well, he didn’t pay the two months of service, so we didn’t unlock his phone. We offered him a settlement but he rejected it.’… My argument was, yeah, the terms had changed in kind of a consumer-unfriendly way. But beyond that, it was the fact that the terms had changed from something that was legal to something that was not legal with the federal regs. So regardless of the fact that the terms had changed, the current terms were illegal, which I thought was my strongest argument. And then I also put in that it was probably a violation of Kansas consumer protection law, which I’m glad I did.”

Roach said that toward the end of the hearing, the judge indicated that she couldn’t make a judgment based on FCC regulations and would need to rule on what the Kansas court has jurisdiction over. She issued the ruling that Verizon violated the state’s consumer protection law about five or six weeks later, he said.

Given that the FCC hasn’t acted on Verizon’s petition to change the unlocking rules, the federal regulations “haven’t changed at all in regards to Verizon’s obligation to unlock devices,” Roach said. He believes it would be relatively easy for consumers who were similarly harmed to beat Verizon in court or even to pursue a class action.

“I would think this would be a slam dunk for any further cases,” Roach said. “I don’t think I have any grounds anymore since my damages have been resolved, but it seems like it’d be a very easy class action for somebody.”

Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won Read More »

Author name: Kris Guyer