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Submission + - Study Proves the FCC's Core Justification For Killing Net Neutrality Was False (vice.com)

An anonymous reader writes: 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ISPs and Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai have told anyone who’d listen that the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed last year in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the United States.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 US 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 US 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.

Security

Submission + - Cancer cluster possibly found among TSA workers (epic.org)

OverTheGeicoE writes: TSA employees at Logan International Airport believe they have identified a cancer cluster in their ranks, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They have requested dosimetry to counter "TSA's improperly non-monitored radiation threat". So far, at least, they have not received it.

The documents also reveal a document from Johns Hopkins that in effect questions whether it is even safe to stand near an operating scanner, let alone inside one. Also, the National Institute of Standards and Technology says that the Dept. of Homeland Security "mischaracterized" their work by telling USA Today that NIST affirmed the safety of the scanners when in fact NIST does not do product safety testing and never tested a scanner for safety.

News

Submission + - Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth (nytimes.com)

mdsolar writes: "For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.

Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."

Linux

Submission + - Shuttleworth: Chrome nearly replaced FF in Ubuntu (networkworld.com)

jbrodkin writes: "Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is a big fan of Google Chrome, and says the browser could replace the standard Firefox in future versions of Ubuntu Linux. "We looked at it closely in the last cycle and the decision was to stick with Firefox," he says. But the work that Google is doing with Chrome OS — essentially the Chrome browser on top of Linux — is potentially leading to a future in which "Chrome on Ubuntu and Chrome on Linux is a better experience than Chrome on any other platform [i.e. Windows and Mac]." In a wide-ranging interview, Shuttleworth also discussed why he spent $20 million to become a space tourist but doesn't own a smartphone, controversies over Linux and Unity, the future of Ubuntu tablets, and says the move toward putting personal data in the cloud is "a little scary.""
Government

Submission + - LulzSec Hacks The US Senate (itworld.com)

jfruhlinger writes: "LulzSec might not be as famous as Anonymous — they're really best known for hacking sites they like, to prove a point about security — but they may have just raised their profile significantly, posting what appears to be data taken from an internally facing server at the U.S. Senate. However, they fun-loving group might find that the Senate reacts a lot more harshly to intrusions than, say, PBS did."
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft to dump .Net for HTML5/JavaScript? (i-programmer.info)

joelholdsworth writes: Microsoft seem to be set on adopting HTML5 and JavaScript as its main application development tools for Windows 8 — is this the end of .NET?" "Microsoft developers feel left in the dark and very angry at the way they are being treated. You only have to browse the Microsoft forums to discover how strong the feeling is: forum post 1, forum post 2 and an open letter.
Security

Submission + - Security Service Accidentally Makes Web 60% Faster (thenextweb.com)

EastDakota writes: CloudFlare was originally conceived by the team behind the open source communityProject Honey Pot as an easy way to protect any website from hackers and spammers. The concern from the beginning was that it would add latency. It was quite a surprise when the free service launched 8 months ago and ended up speeding up websites by 60%.
Privacy

Submission + - Checkpoint of the future coming soon to airports (yahoo.com)

cultiv8 writes: "Eye scanners and futuristic security tunnels may be standard in airports soon as the airline industry seeks to maintain safety while reducing the hassles of boarding a plane that deter some people from flying.

The International Air Transport Association unveiled a mock-up Tuesday in Singapore of what it dubbed the "Checkpoint of the Future," where passengers separated by security risk would walk through one of three high-tech, 20-foot-long (6.1-meters-long) tunnels that can quickly scan shoes and carry-on luggage and check for liquids and explosives.

In the IATA prototype, passengers would be categorized based on the results of a government risk assessment that is put into a chip in a passenger's passport or other identification. An eye scan would then match the passenger to the passport."

GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - GPL'd Linux supported H.264 capture card (bluecherrydvr.com)

azop writes: Almost a year ago Slashdot covered the story of a MPEG-4 multiple input capture card with a GPL Video4Linux licensed driver (http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/06/17/1929230/Bluecherry-Releases-GPLd-MPEG-4-Driver). Earlier this year Ben Collins added H.264 support into the solo6x10 Video4Linux2 GPL driver (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fbluecherrydvr%2Fsolo6x10%2Fcommit%2F7fac80bba138d2e0d01f76c6a7eb7174409ec5a7). The H.264 PCIe cards are finally released and shipping to customers (http://www.bluecherrydvr.com/2011/05/multi-input-h-264-linux-supported-encoder-cards/). The new cards support faster frame rates and sport a PCIe interface. The driver is available for forkin' on Github (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fbluecherrydvr%2Fsolo6x10).
Graphics

Submission + - What Makes a Photograph Memorable?

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Anne Trafton writes in MIT News that next time you go on vacation, you may want to think twice before shooting hundreds of photos of that scenic mountain or lake because researchers have developed a computer algorithm that can rank images based on memorability and found that in general, images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space — such as the produce aisle of a grocery store — and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes. Researchers built a collection of about 10,000 images of all kinds for the study — interior-design photos, nature scenes, streetscapes and others and human subjects who participated through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program were told to indicate, by pressing a key on their keyboard, when an image appeared that they had already seen. The researchers then used machine-learning techniques to create a computational model that analyzed the images and their memorability as rated by humans by analyzing various statistics — such as color, or the distribution of edges — and correlated them with the image’s memorability. “There has been a lot of work in trying to understand what makes an image interesting, or appealing, or what makes people like a particular image," says Alexei Efros at Carnegie Mellon University. “What [the MIT researchers] did was basically approach the problem from a very scientific point of view and say that one thing we can measure is memorability.” Researchers believe the algorithm may be useful to graphic designers, photo editors, or anyone trying to decide which of their vacation photos to post on Facebook (PDF)."
Idle

Submission + - AC/DC music attracts great white sharks (australiangeographic.com.au) 1

bazzalunatic writes: That's right, great white sharks can be lured underwater to cages by playing hits from AC/DC — specifically "Shook me all night long".

Some shark diving tour operators in Australia have found this curious fact. But it's not just music, as the sharks weren't attracted by other tunes.

One wonders if they'll be turned off by Celine Dion music — a new type of shark repellent perhaps?

The Internet

Submission + - California Assembly Approves Internet Tax (nbclosangeles.com)

ClientNine writes: ...California could collect more than $1 billion a year by taxing Amazon and other online retailers if a bill approved by the Assembly becomes law. Assemblyman Charles Calderon, a Democrat from Whittier, says his legislation doesn't impose a new sales tax, but extends one that California should already have been enforcing. AB155 passed, 47-16, with the support of one GOP lawmaker Tuesday. It now heads to the Senate. Other Republicans rejected the bill because they said it would invite lawsuits, drive business out of California, and get the state entangled in the messy task of regulating the Internet.
Music

Submission + - MuseScore makes Open Goldberg Variations available (musescore.com)

rDouglass writes: "MuseScore, the open source music notation project, has created a new edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and a set of online tools that facilitates the public scholarly review of the work. The review period is intended to help the MuseScore team identify any problems with the score. The score can be viewed and played in the browser. Annotations and discussions for each part of the score enable review and corrections. Downloadable versions include MuseScore, MusicXML, MIDI, mp3, or PDF. Video scores (YouTube videos that are synchronized to play with the score) let the score be viewed in the context of individual performances. MuseScore is a partner in the Open Goldberg Variations Project, a crowd-funded effort to place a definitive score and recording of the work into the public domain in such a way as to make them widely and freely available, without usage restrictions (Creative Commons Zero). German pianist Kimiko Ishizka will produce the studio recording of the work later this year. Funding continues on Kickstarter until June 3, 2011."
EU

Submission + - Flight 447 "Black Box" Decoded (washingtonpost.com)

fermion writes: An initial report has been released by the BEA concerning the details of the last minutes of Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. According the report the autopilot disengaged and stall warning engaged at 2 hours 10 minutes and 5 seconds into flight. Less than 2 minutes later the recorded speeds became invalid. At 2 hours 14 minutes and 28 seconds, the recording stopped. The final vertical speed was recorded around 10,912 ft/min.

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