An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A new study has found the FCC's primary justification for repealing net neutrality was indisputably false. For years, big ISPs and Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai have told anyone who'd listen that the FCC's net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed last year in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the United States. Repeal the rules, Pai declared, and U.S. broadband investment would explode. But a new study from George Washington University indicates that Pai's claims were patently false. The study took a closer look at the earnings reports and SEC filings of 8,577 unique companies from Q1 2009 through Q3 2018 to conclude that the passage and repeal of the rules had no meaningful impact on broadband investment. Several hundred of these were telecom companies. "The results of the paper are clear and should be both unsurprising and uncontroversial," The researchers said. "The key finding is there were no impacts on telecommunication industry investment from the net neutrality policy changes. Neither the 2010 or 2015 U.S. net neutrality rule changes had any causal impact on telecommunications investment." While the study is the biggest yet to do so, it's not the first to reach this conclusion. "This paper once again validates what the FCC found in 2015 and what net neutrality advocates have said for years -- that neither the net neutrality rules nor Title II classification had any impact on ISP investment," Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer who helped craft the FCC's 2015 rules, said. "Not surprisingly, the ISPs and their friends at the FCC and the Hill keep saying the opposite, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary," she added. "Hopefully this comprehensive study, which studies ISP investment over nearly a decade, will put this matter to rest."

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The rights group says 'universities are under no obligation to further the [Trump] administration's anti-Muslim agenda".

An anonymous reader shares a report: Yes, 5G is coming and data rates will improve, but we, the mobile industry, still have a lot of work to do. We could regale you with litanies of woe about roaming and hand-offs, or belabor the small cell backhaul density logjam. But perhaps the best example of roadblocks to 5G is much easier to grasp -- Heat. 5G phones get hot. Really hot. Probably not hot enough to ignite your battery (probably), but enough to generate a definite burning sensation in your pants pockets. At Mobile World Congress in February, we spoke with an engineer from Sony who was demo'ing a phone (behind glass) that was clocking 1 Gbps speeds. Wow, fast. We asked the engineer why it was not going faster and he said "It overheats." A good solid answer, from a nuts-and-bolts-and-antenna person. We will wager any amount that at next year's show, no one on the floor will be as open about this problem. The big improvement in data rates for 5G will only come with mmWave radios. This is a whole new spectrum band that allows for really high data rates (again, let's set aside the whole densification issue for now). The trouble is that mmWave radios generate a lot of heat. To greatly oversimplify, mmWave frequencies are pretty close to microwave frequencies, as in the thing we use to reheat our lunches. From some of our very recent industry conversations we know that the handset industry is using a tried-and-tested method for dealing with this problem -- ignoring it and hoping it goes away. The whole issue strikes us as one of those issues where middle management really does not want to raise the subject with senior management who have wrapped themselves so tightly around the 5G flagpole. "Uh boss, your pants are literally on fire."

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The world's largest offshore wind farm is taking shape off the east coast of Britain, a landmark project that demonstrates one way to combat climate change at scale. From a report: Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020. The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to see than any other wind farm. It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines that are each 100 meters tall. The blades have a circumference of 75 meters, and cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn. Just a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for an entire day, according to Stefan Hoonings, senior project manager at Orsted (DOGEF), the Danish energy company that built the farm. The project will take the United Kingdom closer to hitting its target of deriving a third of the country's electricity from offshore wind by 2030. It's the kind of project that can help governments achieve environmental targets set out at this week's United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. Some 77 countries committed at the summit to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but climate activists including Greta Thunberg say that major emitters must do more to mitigate rising temperatures.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's largest offshore wind farm is taking shape off the east coast of Britain, a landmark project that demonstrates one way to combat climate change at scale. From a report: Located 120 kilometers (75 miles) off England's Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One will produce enough energy to supply 1 million UK homes with clean electricity when it is completed in 2020. The project spans an area that's bigger than the Maldives or Malta, and is located farther out to see than any other wind farm. It consists of 174 seven-megawatt wind turbines that are each 100 meters tall. The blades have a circumference of 75 meters, and cover an area bigger than the London Eye observation wheel as they turn. Just a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for an entire day, according to Stefan Hoonings, senior project manager at Orsted (DOGEF), the Danish energy company that built the farm. The project will take the United Kingdom closer to hitting its target of deriving a third of the country's electricity from offshore wind by 2030. It's the kind of project that can help governments achieve environmental targets set out at this week's United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. Some 77 countries committed at the summit to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but climate activists including Greta Thunberg say that major emitters must do more to mitigate rising temperatures.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The @nbariver Twitter feed is flowing again.

I'm also getting the @podc Twitter feed going too. It started in 2007, when podcasting was pretty new. Look at the profile picture of the group of people with their Apple laptops. That's some of the earliest devs and podcasters working on the new medium at one of the first BloggerCons.

Rivers are like Twitter timelines except made out of RSS feeds, which are distributed all over the internet, not just on Twitter. So there's "nbariver.com" and @nbariver. They carry the same information, in the same order (newest first) -- one on my server, and the other on Twitter. Similarly, there's Podcatch.com and @podc.

I know this might be confusing, but it's worth understanding imho,.

The call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart has led to more questions from the US Congress.

The call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart has led to more questions from the US Congress.

Thunberg responds to critics, says her message to all politicians is the same: 'Just listen and act on the science'.

Thunberg responds to critics, says her message to all politicians is the same: 'Just listen and act on the science'.

Artificial intelligence is on a par with human experts when it comes to making medical diagnoses based on images, a review has found. From a report: The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare has caused excitement, with advocates saying it will ease the strain on resources, free up time for doctor-patient interactions and even aid the development of tailored treatment. Last month the government announced $305 million of funding for a new NHS artificial intelligence laboratory. However, experts have warned the latest findings are based on a small number of studies, since the field is littered with poor-quality research. One burgeoning application is the use of AI in interpreting medical images -- a field that relies on deep learning, a sophisticated form of machine learning in which a series of labelled images are fed into algorithms that pick out features within them and learn how to classify similar images. This approach has shown promise in diagnosis of diseases from cancers to eye conditions. However questions remain about how such deep learning systems measure up to human skills. Now researchers say they have conducted the first comprehensive review of published studies on the issue, and found humans and machines are on a par. Prof Alastair Denniston, at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust and a co-author of the study, said the results were encouraging but the study was a reality check for some of the hype about AI. Dr Xiaoxuan Liu, the lead author of the study and from the same NHS trust, agreed. "There are a lot of headlines about AI outperforming humans, but our message is that it can at best be equivalent," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artificial intelligence is on a par with human experts when it comes to making medical diagnoses based on images, a review has found. From a report: The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare has caused excitement, with advocates saying it will ease the strain on resources, free up time for doctor-patient interactions and even aid the development of tailored treatment. Last month the government announced $305 million of funding for a new NHS artificial intelligence laboratory. However, experts have warned the latest findings are based on a small number of studies, since the field is littered with poor-quality research. One burgeoning application is the use of AI in interpreting medical images -- a field that relies on deep learning, a sophisticated form of machine learning in which a series of labelled images are fed into algorithms that pick out features within them and learn how to classify similar images. This approach has shown promise in diagnosis of diseases from cancers to eye conditions. However questions remain about how such deep learning systems measure up to human skills. Now researchers say they have conducted the first comprehensive review of published studies on the issue, and found humans and machines are on a par. Prof Alastair Denniston, at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust and a co-author of the study, said the results were encouraging but the study was a reality check for some of the hype about AI. Dr Xiaoxuan Liu, the lead author of the study and from the same NHS trust, agreed. "There are a lot of headlines about AI outperforming humans, but our message is that it can at best be equivalent," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canonical today released the official beta for the upcoming Ubuntu Linux 19.10. Code-named "Eoan Ermine," it features Linux kernel 5.3. From a report: There are several great desktop environments from which to choose too, such as KDE Plasma, Budgie, and the default GNOME. Ubuntu 19.10 is not a long term support (LTS) version, sadly, so support for the stable release will only be a mere 9 months. "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the beta pre-release of the Ubuntu 19.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. Codenamed "Eoan Ermine," 19.10 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs," says Adam Conrad, Software Engineer, Canonical.

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UN Human Rights Council agrees to send fact-finding mission to Venezuela to investigate alleged rights violations.

At UN General Assembly, Imran Khan accuses India of 'cruelty' in Kashmir as his Indian counterpart does not mention it.