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The Free Laptop Program Built Into the Biden Reconciliation Plan (theverge.com) 120

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
After months of negotiations, President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda advanced into its last phase of debate this week. The bipartisan infrastructure bill contains billions to expand high-speed broadband across the country, aiming to close the digital divide over the next 10 years. From a report: But the administration's $65 billion down payment on broadband can only help connect families who can afford a computer. So Biden's latest version of the Build Back Better program goes further, allocating new funds to bring federally funded desktops, laptops, and tablets to poor Americans. Last week, the White House released its latest version of the Build Back Better plan, outlining a $1.75 trillion budget proposal to tackle climate change and invest in other social services like Medicare. Deep within the over 1,600 pages of the bill is a new initiative -- the Connected Device Grant Program -- that would help provide free or discounted desktops, laptops, or tablets to low-income households. To accomplish that goal, the Commerce Department would receive $475 million to award community groups that want to distribute these devices locally.
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The Free Laptop Program Built Into the Biden Reconciliation Plan More

The Free Laptop Program Built Into the Biden Reconciliation Plan

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  • and will apple, dell, hp, microsoft, others bid (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:35PM (#61952001)

    and will apple, dell, hp, microsoft, others bid to get on that plan to be the provider of them?

  • Bidentop doesn't sound as good as Obamaphone (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:41PM (#61952017) Journal

    No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.

  • yet they can't read (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rookiebeotch ( 6202512 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:48PM (#61952039)
    Why don't you focus on teaching kids to read and write before making me pay for computers?

    • I am not sure if you had priced books recently. A good hard cover text book with thick pages to prevent tares, and the general abuse kids put on the book can cost upwards of $300 and and for 3-8 classes. A study laptop can be under 1k, about the cost of a few classes textbooks, and the license to get the text in digital form can be much cheaper overall.

      Oddly enough trying to save money is often very expensive in the long run. Buying on Value is a much more worthwhile goal.

      I myself have dyslexia, and stru

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Train0987 ( 1059246 )

        That $300 textbook will last a whole lot longer than that sub-$1k laptop and more likely to be used for its intended purpose.

        • Re:yet they can't read (Score:5, Informative)

          by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:53PM (#61952225)

          Also.. most Textbooks are less than $100 per book, even Hardcover, and that's if just buying directly off Amazon -- If you are ordering and having a specific book printed in bulk and getting a wholesale rate with no middleman like a school might, Or perhaps a University's bookstore might if they're not trying to ring a profit, then presumably there should be some major volume discounts in order and it should be a heck of a lot less than $100. Yeah, there are some expensive ones out there.. but it seems like $300 is more likely to be price for a Student's entire Textbook needs.

      • A good hard cover text book with thick pages to prevent tares

        While I can see the need to get common vetches out of the classroom, I rather suspect that you're an example of why we need lower-priced books....

        Hint: the word you were looking for, but failing to find, was "tears" (pronounced the same way as "tares", but different meaning, or spelled the same as "tears", but different pronunciation...

        • She also used the phrase "threw my career", but, as she admitted, she suffers from dyslexia and therefor might have issues with homonyms or perhaps uses a speech-to-text system that is less than perfect.

          I don't agree with some of her conclusions, but in this case I'd give her a soft pass on her spelling errors. She described both her limitations and some of the methods she employed to work around them so her post was more informative than average.

          --
          Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an op

      • Re:yet they can't read (Score:4, Interesting)

        by kenh ( 9056 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @07:55PM (#61952689) Homepage Journal

        A study laptop can be under 1k, about the cost of a few classes textbooks, and the license to get the text in digital form can be much cheaper overall.

        You haven't priced eBook textbooks have you? I wouldn't describe the price difference as "much cheaper overall".

        eBook textbooks are licensed annually, while it may be a quarter of the cost of a printed text book (for example) for a HS science text book, the average HS science text book has a useful life that extends beyond four years, making eBook textbooks more expensive, but you do save on physically handling the textbooks, storing them, and replacing lost/damaged textbooks. eBook textbooks are priced for convenience, not savings for the school districts.

        The economics are better for college textbooks (where the student pays for them out-of-pocket), but I think we're talking K-12 students for the most part.

        • You haven't priced eBook textbooks have you? I wouldn't describe the price difference as "much cheaper overall".

          There is no reason for this, other than a corrupt process.

          If Wikipedia can be crowdsourced and available for free, then why can't we produce free quality curriculum for schools?

          There are several projects to doing this, on a tiny fraction of what the government gives to the commercial textbook racket.

          • Re: yet they can't read (Score:4, Interesting)

            by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @09:42PM (#61952937)

            The soft power of credentialled education experts is analogous to that of credentialled MPHs regarding medical issues.

            It's quite a bit more perverse when you look into the details. Feynman in one of his memoirs had a story of sitting down to review his kid's high school physics textbook for the local school board and finding raging nonsense in the mid 70s.
            And yet even as a Nobel laureate physicist, he wasn't the one writing the high school physics text. He wasn't a credentialled elementary and secondary school educator, so he was on the receiving end of the text and wouldn't have been allowed to write one.

            Good private tutors, and even some good school teachers who have their shit together, tend to supplement the textbooks with a combination of their own curriculum and some samizdat-style outside material from trained specialists in the discipline in question who aren't professional educators. Some of it is foreign produced school textbooks where these pathologies that affect American education aren't as prevalent.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kenh ( 9056 )

              Feynman in one of his memoirs had a story of sitting down to review his kid's high school physics textbook for the local school board and finding raging nonsense in the mid 70s. And yet even as a Nobel laureate physicist, he wasn't the one writing the high school physics text. He wasn't a credentialled elementary and secondary school educator, so he was on the receiving end of the text and wouldn't have been allowed to write one.

              I don't believe your story.

              Feynman could have written his own HS Physics textbook, submitted it to a publisher, and derived a nice income from the effort - who do you imagine was preventing him from doing so?

              • If Feynman could have, many university professors could have. But there was nonsense in the book that did get published. Who wrote it and why?

                What do you mean you don't believe my story? Go read Feynman's memoirs yourself.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kenh ( 9056 )

            If Wikipedia can be crowdsourced and available for free, then why can't we produce free quality curriculum for schools?

            Are you serious? How trivial do you imagine it is to put together a "free quality curriculum"? We've got 50 states, which state do you trust to write the history books? Physics courses? Mathematics? Most literature is copyright protected, thus must be licensed from authors/publishers, that's not free.

            There are several projects to doing this, on a tiny fraction of what the government gives to the commercial textbook racket.

            That sounds more expensive than "free" (see above), who's funding it? Who's committed to use what they generate?

            Are you aware that K-12 teachers charge their school districts thousands of dollars every summer t

      • But you're also an outlier, and as such a poor focus for national policy decisions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The best way to get kids to learn to read and write is to motivate them to learn, rather than trying to force them.

      A laptop is a decent way to do that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mblr0z ( 8359963 )
      And teach them how to use computers productively rather than teaching them how to code
  • Why not sure give a low income subsidy on a smartphone, it seems to be as or more functional than a low end laptop would be....in fact I think that program already exist.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Harder for a cop to mistake a laptop for a gun, just might save some lives

    • Give everyone a Tesla Pi phone. [youtu.be] Takes care of two problems, phone, and connectivity.

    • Why not sure give a low income subsidy on a smartphone

      Because low-income kids already have smartphones.

      If you want to spend money, you need to find a problem that isn't already solved.

  • Sounds Like (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rotorbudd ( 1242864 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:58PM (#61952075)

    you'll soon be able to pick up a sweet ChromeBook at your local pawn shop for a couple of bucks!

    • A buddy of mine's ex pawned their kids Nintendo. I wouldn't say a sweet Chromebook as these are likely to be cheap. But barring something as extreme as a parent that bad (they really aren't that common) the kids are likely to take good care of the laptop with the full understanding that they're not going to get another one. Now they're kids, and poor kids at that, so bad things can and will still happen to them and their things. But it won't be because of a lack of moral character, it'll be because life is
      • Lol the noble poor. Spoken like a true suburban middle class white male who has never experienced poverty. You really are a disgusting person using the plight of the ACTUAL poor to further your sick political objectives. The Democrats have been using the poor for decades and they are rapidly becoming sick of it. The red wave is coming.

      • Re:Possibly (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @07:28PM (#61952637)

        if you know any teachers ask them what happens whenever schools hand out tech such as tablets or computers. almost universally it's a complete and total disaster. the devices are "lost" at an alarming rate, if they aren't sold or outright just destroyed.

        and the other question is, how much of a benefit do these devices actually provide? it's unpleasant but the schools/districts most eligible for these devices are also the ones which will get the least benefit from them.

  • Good (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    Imagine being a poor kid and having an entry level laptop and internet. How much easier would school be? How much information will you have access too? Sure, not all of them will make the best of it, but they'll all use it to see degree. A Better educated populous can't help but be a good thing. Plus getting them used to the internet when their minds are still young and sharp and capable of critical thinking also sounds like a good thing.

    • Re: Good (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ravenshrike ( 808508 )

      They will use it for Thottok, Instawhore, and Trashtube. Maybe Facebook if they ever get Facebook kids popular. Evidence you ask? The past year living in a school district that gave out chromebooks.

      • Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:22PM (#61952151)

        Cool story bro.

      • Some will (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:35PM (#61952183)
        But a lot will use it to do schoolwork. In fact most will. When my kid was in high school they couldn't possibly have completed the course assignments without access to a computer in the internet. Wasn't so much a problem for the math courses but for the humanities courses especially English the teachers assignments would be disorganized and lack the information they needed. If you are lucky you got that information in class that day but you were fucked if you missed a day of school. You have to piece everything together from Google searches to figure out what the teacher wanted you to put down and I assure you they didn't give a rat's ass if you got something wrong because of their incomplete or unclear assignments.

        Never mind the insane amount of information available online for anything a kid might want to do or learn. Kids actually do like to learn and they like to apply that knowledge we just grind that out of people in order to make them more pliable and useful to employers and large corporations.

        • Oh no, they might have to do schoolwork with pen and paper. The horror. Also, kids(As in, middle school and elementary school age kids) don't like to learn. They like to pay attention and soak up whatever catches their attention, which in the age of screens everywhere anytime is thottok and trashtube. This is why you get the utter scam channels like 5 min crafts on youtube and their affiliates as well as pretty much the entirety of thottok.

        • In many inner city schools, attendance for online classes was 20%-30% with the rest of them skipping school, some never showing up a single day in the year.

          Most schools already provide laptops and tablets, either in-school or at home. Itâ(TM)s a boondoggle, nobody NEEDS a laptop, they need complete set of parents, a classroom and a teacher and that alone will guarantee success.

          • they need complete set of parents

            Oh, I can assure you there are plenty of hetero couples who pop out kids and have little interest in actually raising them.

            Kids need parental figures who take an active role in their well-being and education. This can be a single parent who is up to the job, a traditional nuclear family, a blended family, a gay/lesbian couple, or even foster parents. Again, all that matters is that you have one or two adults who understand and are fully committed to their role as caretaker of a child.

        • When my kid was in high school they couldn't possibly have completed the course assignments without access to a computer in the internet.

          Shouldn't the school have a library or resource center where there are computers for the students' use?

          When I was a kid, our school had a library and yes, sometimes the teachers gave assignments that required doing some research to complete. What are they even teaching kids these days?

      • This really is the problem. There is soo much more to the problem of teaching low income kids than tossing a free laptop at them. The funny thing was, a friend taught in a poor district, The kids often had a better phone than he did. Like way better. How can that be explained when the kids had no money for lunch?

        • How can that be explained when the kids had no money for lunch?

          Why do some people with no money have nice cell phones? They must've spent all their money on the phone, obviously! /s

          It couldn't possibly be that service providers frequently give away free phones when you sign up/switch providers. Nah. Crap, do I need another sarcasm tag?

          • You have to have a pretty good credit rating to get postpaid cell service that offers perks like that. I have them, and so do you probably. But poor people not so much. A big problem for the poor is just getting a bank account. USPS may start offering banking services again for just that reason.

      • Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:18PM (#61952295)
        And? Who gives a crap, as long as it's the things you mentioned ALONG SIDE the stuff they are supposed to be looking at. Heaven forbid you make some poor kid's shitty life a little bit better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        I owe my early IT skills to downloading UUENCODED porn off USENET over a modem. They just need to hide porn and tiktok behind mild encryption and we'll have the worlds most elite hacking force.

        a.b.p.e.o

      • They will use it for Thottok, Instawhore, and Trashtube. Maybe Facebook

        If social media keeps them off the street, it is a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Comcast has been giving out cheap ($99?) laptops and desktop as part of their Internet Essentials program for years now. Sure, they probably did it as part of some government settlement, but it shows that it's possible to run a program like this without a ton of government funding.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      . . . when their minds are still young and sharp and capable of critical thinking . . .

      Seems like you've not been exposed to many young minds.

    • How much easier would school be?

      School is difficult for some children because teaching is an underpaid profession, and classrooms are overcrowded. Also, some kids can't concentrate on school because they have a terrible home life, which is way beyond the scope of easily fixed problems (good luck coming up with a way of making sure every kid has parents who take good care of them and show an interest in their education). Giving kids a laptop to watch YouTube and play Minecraft isn't going to fix any of this.

    • Will get access to a tracked version of the World Wide Web, not unrestricted or tracked Internet.?

  • Wherein (Score:1, Insightful)

    by bodog ( 231448 )

    80% of laptops will end up in the warehouse of a politically connected fella that will make a mint on ebay?

  • Hopefully, a CPU capable of Windows 11?

    I am betting someone is going to dump a lot of old, obsolete computer equipment into this program. We need good system hardware requirements, or maybe require Linux if the computers are just recycled business computers.

  • Complete Waste (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sudnshok ( 136477 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:17PM (#61952291)

    While I'm in favor of helping lower income folks get ahead, we all know this money will be completely wasted (just like the rest of the 1.75T).

    Half will come off the top for "Administrative costs" for these "local groups". Tony Soprano is licking his chops looking at this bill.

    Then, for the remainder, instead of buying inexpensive Chromebooks and Android tablets, they will buy Dell XPS and iPads to reach as few people as possible

    Finally, half of those people who actually receive a device will sell it.

    If half a billion of my tax money will be spent on this, why can't the feds buy gov't labeled Chromebooks and tablets in bulk (1 model of each). Then, create a website where people can request one (libraries and schools have computers people can use to submit their requests, even though they likely already have phones with internet). Then, the request is checked against their tax returns and shipped to them. Finally, you make it a federal crime to sell one of the gov't branded devices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by theCoder ( 23772 )

      While I agree, if the government did this people would complain that

      a) The government branded equipment somehow isn't as good as what they could buy from $VENDOR. Regardless of the quality of either. See Government [wikipedia.org] Cheese [npr.org].

      b) Students using government branded equipment would be branded as poor and discriminated against at school. As silly as this seems, it probably is a real concern, since people (especially children) will use things like this to push people into their out-group. See any brand name produc

    • I had to retire my folks' 12-year old machine. It could do everything they wanted it to, including playing older 3D games, but it could not handle the ever-slowing websites! This waste is completely avoidable...

  • The community groups will eat the money (Score:3)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:33PM (#61952343)

    In the past, whenever these programs have run the community groups manage to consume about 80% of the money on staff salaries and overhead. This program won't be much different.

  • Internet! Not laptops (Score:4, Interesting)

    by meisdug ( 1603907 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:48PM (#61952373)

    Rural American here. The vast majority of people in my area, including the poorest of the poor, already have far more devices than they do connectivity options.

    All of the local schools already give laptops to anyone who doesn't already have one. (Now the spyware the schools install is another story) It still doesn't help kids with homework when there is no internet availability.

    There is a huge divide being created right now between those with internet access and those without. Covid has only exacerbated this division.

    There's no shortage of laptops, there's a shortage of broadband!

    I got excited about Obama's broadband stimulus ..then Trump's

    And yet when I call the local telcom they still try to sell me dial-up. Because it's the only option.

    Now it's Biden's turn. While I sure hope he manages to do *something* I can't say I have high expectations. I've seen this show before.

    Elon, take my money!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      The best part about Starlink is that it can't be stopped by anti-competition rules and exclusivity deals put in place by state and local governments (often at the behest of dinosaur telcos like Comcast & AT&T) and federal laws mean that its hard for HOAs and similar bodies to restrict the installation of Starlink dishes (especially if its a detached house with no common property involved.

  • Absolutely zero chance these devices show up on eBay.

  • the Free Obama phones, how we have the Free Biden computers/tables. And YOUR paying for it!

    There is gonna be a flood of super cheap laptops on ebay after this passes. Stock up on Linux distros!

  • This sounds like a nice idea, but considering all the laptops public schools have and will be buying with all the COVID money that rained down on them this past year and a half, so the likelihood that we will wind up at multiple devices per child (school laptop and home tablet).

    Could someone please decide if every child needs a home laptop or a school laptop, giving them both seems wasteful.

    Let's see - free broadband, free smartphone, and soon a free laptop/tablet AND $250 or $300/child every month pretty s

  • ... with the TRUTH social media app, no doubt.

  • Give them Raspberry Pis and a handful of Picos while you are at it! Tell them that if they want the new fangled laptop form factor, they will have to make it themselves!

  • I am paying for it. I bet you are, too.

  • Are a dumpster fire. I'm half convinced half are just one guy with DID arguing with her/himselves with numerous alt accounts....
  • Demand already exceeds supply. Subsidize demand and it increases, thus increasing prices. That's why there's so much inflation in higher education and healthcare.

    There's already more than enough inflation, so, thank you but no. This is a stupid idea and a stupider time to try it.

  • "But the administration's $65 billion down payment on broadband can only help connect families who can afford a computer."

    False, unless you redefine "computer." What about smart TVs? What about smartphones? This is basically just handing out more free stuff for the sake of handing out more free stuff. The idea seems to be that everyone deserves the same high standard of living regardless of their actual productivity.

  • Talk to anyone who works in a school district and they will tell you this is true. Where is the plan to replace a device every time they break one? Where pays for repairs? Are they just going to hand them another one? Where is the plan for missing devices? I admit I didn't read the entire article nor the 1600 page proposed bill, but I'm certain none of these problems are taken into account. Including what they're going to do as the devices age and become obsolete. Who is tracking these?

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