Starlink explains why its FCC map listings are so different from reality

Starlink filings lump RV and home service together; SpaceX blames FCC system.

A Starlink satellite dish pictured on the ground, near an RV.

Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish. (credit: Starlink)

SpaceX has offered a public explanation for why Starlink's actual service availability falls far short of what it claimed on the Federal Communications Commission's national broadband map.

SpaceX's FCC filings indicate it offers fixed broadband at virtually every address in the US even though the Starlink website's service map shows it has a waitlist in huge portions of the country. As we previously reported, SpaceX removed some homes from the FCC database when residents filed challenges because they were unable to order Starlink at addresses listed as served on the FCC map.

SpaceX tried to clear up the confusion in an FCC filing last week. The company says it followed FCC rules when submitting data and blamed the FCC system for not allowing it to report data more precisely. Under the map system rules, SpaceX argues that it is allowed to report an address as "served" even if the resident can only order Starlink's RV service.

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Starlink explains why its FCC map listings are so different from reality

Starlink filings lump RV and home service together; SpaceX blames FCC system.

A Starlink satellite dish pictured on the ground, near an RV.

Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish. (credit: Starlink)

SpaceX has offered a public explanation for why Starlink's actual service availability falls far short of what it claimed on the Federal Communications Commission's national broadband map.

SpaceX's FCC filings indicate it offers fixed broadband at virtually every address in the US even though the Starlink website's service map shows it has a waitlist in huge portions of the country. As we previously reported, SpaceX removed some homes from the FCC database when residents filed challenges because they were unable to order Starlink at addresses listed as served on the FCC map.

SpaceX tried to clear up the confusion in an FCC filing last week. The company says it followed FCC rules when submitting data and blamed the FCC system for not allowing it to report data more precisely. Under the map system rules, SpaceX argues that it is allowed to report an address as "served" even if the resident can only order Starlink's RV service.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Daily Deals (3-08-2022)

Humble Bundle is running a deal that lets you pick up 8 PC games with female protagonists. And  Amazon Prime members can stream 4 games from the company’s Luna game streaming service for free during the month of March. Here are some of the day&#…

Humble Bundle is running a deal that lets you pick up 8 PC games with female protagonists. And  Amazon Prime members can stream 4 games from the company’s Luna game streaming service for free during the month of March. Here are some of the day’s best deals. Downloads & Streaming Pay $15 or more for […]

The post Daily Deals (3-08-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.

Wikipedia + AI = truth? DuckDuckGo hopes so with new answerbot

DuckAssist provides an AI-powered Wikipedia summary, hoping to avoid hallucinations.

An AI-generated image of a cyborg duck.

Enlarge / An AI-generated image of a cyborg duck. (credit: Ars Technica)

Not to be left out of the rush to integrate generative AI into search, on Wednesday DuckDuckGo announced DuckAssist, an AI-powered factual summary service powered by technology from Anthropic and OpenAI. It is available for free today as a wide beta test for users of DuckDuckGo’s browser extensions and browsing apps. Being powered by an AI model, the company admits that DuckAssist might make stuff up but hopes it will happen rarely.

Here's how it works: If a DuckDuckGo user searches a question that can be answered by Wikipedia, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to generate a brief summary of what it finds in Wikipedia, with source links listed below. The summary appears above DuckDuckGo's regular search results in a special box.

The company positions DuckAssist as a new form of "Instant Answer"—a feature that prevents users from having to dig through web search results to find quick information on topics like news, maps, and weather. Instead, the search engine presents the Instant Answer results above the usual list of websites.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Wikipedia + AI = truth? DuckDuckGo hopes so with new answerbot

DuckAssist provides an AI-powered Wikipedia summary, hoping to avoid hallucinations.

An AI-generated image of a cyborg duck.

Enlarge / An AI-generated image of a cyborg duck. (credit: Ars Technica)

Not to be left out of the rush to integrate generative AI into search, on Wednesday DuckDuckGo announced DuckAssist, an AI-powered factual summary service powered by technology from Anthropic and OpenAI. It is available for free today as a wide beta test for users of DuckDuckGo’s browser extensions and browsing apps. Being powered by an AI model, the company admits that DuckAssist might make stuff up but hopes it will happen rarely.

Here's how it works: If a DuckDuckGo user searches a question that can be answered by Wikipedia, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to generate a brief summary of what it finds in Wikipedia, with source links listed below. The summary appears above DuckDuckGo's regular search results in a special box.

The company positions DuckAssist as a new form of "Instant Answer"—a feature that prevents users from having to dig through web search results to find quick information on topics like news, maps, and weather. Instead, the search engine presents the Instant Answer results above the usual list of websites.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Remember that ancient Roman “dildo”? It might just be an old Roman drop spindle

“It’s a bit understated as a dildo, and would make for a more satisfying spin than anything else.”

The phallus-shaped object

Enlarge / This phallus-shaped object went viral last month, but it might not be an ancient Roman dildo after all. (credit: Vindolanda Trust)

Odds are good you read at least one of the umpteen media stories last month about a possible 2,000-year-old "dildo" unearthed near the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort in the UK called Vindolanda. Well, it's either a dildo; a pestle used for grinding cooking, cosmetic, or medicinal ingredients; or something meant to be inserted into a statue and rubbed for good fortune (a common Roman practice). That's what the authors of a February paper in Antiquity concluded, anyway. But now we have another possible explanation to consider: The phallus-shaped artifact might be a drop spindle used for spinning yarn.

As we've reported previously, the Vindolanda site is located south of the defense fortification known as Hadrian's Wall. An antiquarian named William Camden recorded the existence of the ruins in a 1586 treatise. Over the next 200 years, many people visited the site, discovering a military bathhouse in 1702 and an altar in 1715. The Rev. Anthony Hedley began excavating the site in 1814, but he died before he could record what he found for posterity. Another altar found in 1914 confirmed that the fort had been called Vindolanda.

Serious archaeological excavation at the site began in the 1930s under the leadership of Eric Birley, whose sons and grandson continued the work after his death, right up to the present day. The oxygen-deprived conditions of the deposits (some of which extend 6 meters, or 19 feet, into the earth) mean that the recovered artifacts are remarkably well-preserved. These include wooden writing tablets and over 100 boxwood combs, which would have disintegrated long ago in more oxygen-rich conditions.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Remember that ancient Roman “dildo”? It might just be an old Roman drop spindle

“It’s a bit understated as a dildo, and would make for a more satisfying spin than anything else.”

The phallus-shaped object

Enlarge / This phallus-shaped object went viral last month, but it might not be an ancient Roman dildo after all. (credit: Vindolanda Trust)

Odds are good you read at least one of the umpteen media stories last month about a possible 2,000-year-old "dildo" unearthed near the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort in the UK called Vindolanda. Well, it's either a dildo; a pestle used for grinding cooking, cosmetic, or medicinal ingredients; or something meant to be inserted into a statue and rubbed for good fortune (a common Roman practice). That's what the authors of a February paper in Antiquity concluded, anyway. But now we have another possible explanation to consider: The phallus-shaped artifact might be a drop spindle used for spinning yarn.

As we've reported previously, the Vindolanda site is located south of the defense fortification known as Hadrian's Wall. An antiquarian named William Camden recorded the existence of the ruins in a 1586 treatise. Over the next 200 years, many people visited the site, discovering a military bathhouse in 1702 and an altar in 1715. The Rev. Anthony Hedley began excavating the site in 1814, but he died before he could record what he found for posterity. Another altar found in 1914 confirmed that the fort had been called Vindolanda.

Serious archaeological excavation at the site began in the 1930s under the leadership of Eric Birley, whose sons and grandson continued the work after his death, right up to the present day. The oxygen-deprived conditions of the deposits (some of which extend 6 meters, or 19 feet, into the earth) mean that the recovered artifacts are remarkably well-preserved. These include wooden writing tablets and over 100 boxwood combs, which would have disintegrated long ago in more oxygen-rich conditions.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Room-temperature superconductor works at lower pressures

Results come from a lab that had an earlier superconductivity paper retracted.

A small chunk of material, primarily blue with silvery speckles.

Enlarge / **FOCUS STACK OF 33 IMAGES, COLOR ENHANCED** An approximately 1 mm diameter sample of lutetium hydride is pictured though a microscope in the lab of University of Rochester assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics and Astronomy Ranga Dias in Hopeman Hall December 15, 2022. Dias uses the material in a high pressure diamond anvil cell (DAC) in his goal to create novel quantum materials such as superconductors with a critical temperature at or near room temperature. Photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester (credit: University of Rochester)

On Wednesday, a paper was released by Nature that describes a mixture of elements that can superconduct at room temperature. The work follows a general trend of finding new ways of stuffing hydrogen into a mixture of other atoms by using extreme pressure. This trend had produced a variety of high-temperature superconductors in previous research, though characterizing them was difficult because of the pressures involved. This new chemical, however, superconducts at much lower pressures than previous versions, which should make it easier for others to replicate the work.

The lab that produced the chemical, however, had one of its earlier papers on high-temperature superconductivity retracted due to a lack of details regarding one of its key measurements. So, it's a fair bet that a lot of other researchers will try to replicate it.

Low(ish)-pressure environment

The form of superconductivity involved here requires that electrons partner up with each other, forming what are called Cooper pairs. One of the things that encourages Cooper pair formation is a high-frequency vibration (called a phonon) among the atomic nuclei that these electrons are associated with. That's easier to arrange with light nuclei, and hydrogen is the lightest around. So finding ways to stuff more hydrogen into a chemical is thought to be a viable route toward producing higher-temperature superconductors.

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Simply NUC’s Chapel Rock mini PCs have 12th-gen Intel embedded chips with vPro

Compact computer company Simply NUC has launched a new line of systems with Intel Alder Lake UE embedded processors options featuring Intel vPro, dual 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, and support for up to 64GB of RAM and 10TB of storage. The new Simply NUC Ch…

Compact computer company Simply NUC has launched a new line of systems with Intel Alder Lake UE embedded processors options featuring Intel vPro, dual 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, and support for up to 64GB of RAM and 10TB of storage. The new Simply NUC Chapel Rock mini PCs aren’t cheap – prices start at $969 for […]

The post Simply NUC’s Chapel Rock mini PCs have 12th-gen Intel embedded chips with vPro appeared first on Liliputing.

Omi in a Hellcat Handed 66 Months in Prison For Pirate IPTV, Forfeits $30m

Bill Omar Carrasquillo, better known online as Omi in a Hellcat, has been sentenced to 66 months in prison for a number of crimes related to his now-defunct pirate IPTV services. In comments outside a Pennsylvania federal court, Carrasquillo said the judge had been “super lenient but fair” and described the sentence – which includes almost $11m in restitution to several cable companies – as “probably salvation for my fat ass to lose some weight.”

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

omi in a hellcat carAfter entering a guilty plea some time ago, former pirate IPTV service operator Bill Omar Carrasquillo was sentenced Tuesday in a Philadelphia court.

Last month the U.S. government called for 15.5 years in prison for crimes related to Carrasquillo’s pirate IPTV service, Gears TV, which was shut down by the FBI in 2019.

That was still a far cry from the 500+ years thrown around in the earlier stages of the case, but after causing an estimated $167 million in damages to TV providers Charter Communications, Comcast, DirecTV, Frontier Corporation, and Verizon Fios, perhaps not completely out of the question.

Plea Agreement

Some details were already settled prior to sentencing. In Carrasquillo’s plea agreement, the YouTuber acknowledged a laundry list of crimes, from the most serious copyright offenses to fraud and money laundering crimes.

Among them, conspiracy to commit felony & misdemeanor copyright infringement, circumvention of access controls, access device fraud, & wire fraud, circumvention of an access control device, reproduction of a protected work, public performance of a protected work, and wire fraud against the cable companies. Other crimes included making false statements to a bank, money laundering, and tax evasion.

Financial penalties included forfeiture of just over $30 million, including $5.89 million in cash seized from bank accounts, Carrasquillo’s now-famous supercar collection, and multiple pieces of real estate in the Philadelphia area.

Hearing in Philadelphia

In a hearing scheduled for 2:30pm yesterday at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Carrasquillo appeared in courtroom 16A before Judge Harvey Bartle III.

In a sentencing memorandum for the defense, details of Carrasquillo’s early life – most of which had already been made public by Carrasquillo in videos posted to social media – make for depressing reading.

One of 38 children, Carrasquillo had no stable care or supervision. Physically and sexually abused by family members, Carrasquillo was intentionally committed to mental health facilities by one supposed caregiver, purely for the purposes of obtaining prescriptions for narcotics which were then sold.

Carrasquillo’s mother was deported for various crimes and then died as a result of drug addiction. The only constant in his life was his father, who taught a 12-year-old Carrasquillo how to cook crack and sell drugs.

“Omar battles constant battles of depression because he questions his own self-worth. He could have easily accepted that there is no ‘better’ for him,” his attorney said, adding: “HE DID NOT!”

“He began to look for opportunities that did not require formal training or a high school diploma. He found passion and love in the business of marketing and internet sales.”

Despite no formal training or schooling beyond the 11th grade, Carrasquillo developed a highly successful YouTube channel and a construction company, among other legal businesses. The story of how he entered the IPTV business and generated millions in profit is well-documented, but today his “legal loophole” theory has been discarded.

“Omar is not asking for a pass,” his attorney assured the Court. “Protected works should not be copied. Period. He crossed the line and he knew he should not have.”

Sentencing

All parties agreed that the TV companies are entitled to restitution and together they will receive $$10,761,573.20. A similar position was adopted for the IRS, which is entitled to restitution in the amount of $5,717,912.02.

From 500+ years imprisonment through to a theoretical 98 years for the crimes listed in the plea agreement, the U.S. government recently acknowledged that the advisory guidelines of 24 years would be “highly unusual” for a copyright matter. Instead, government attorneys recommended a sentence of between 188 and 235 months.

When sentencing Carrasquillo Tuesday, Judge Harvey Bartle III decided that 66 months would be enough to punish Carrasquillo and send a deterrent message to any of his followers considering the same type of behavior.

Carrasquillo: Judge Was “Super Fair”

In video recorded outside the Court, Carrasquillo said he’d been dreading the sentencing hearing but is pleased with the outcome.

“I feel like the Judge was super fair. He heard everyone’s testimony about my character [from] everyone who came to Court. The judge ordered me to 66 months of federal prison, which I thought was fair, especially how much money I made,” he said.

“I’ve got to pay ten point something million in restitution [to the TV companies] which they already have, which will be applied. And I got to pay another $5.7 million in restitution to the IRS. So you know, I’ll be home in the next two to three years.”

After being raided by the FBI in 2019 and being charged in 2021, Carrasquillo said the day had “been a long time coming.”

“You know, the Judge was super lenient but fair, but also [wanted to] deter other people from committing the same type of TV piracy that I committed. But it’s over,” he said.

“I already know what I’m doing, I know what I’m getting. There’s no more stress, no more nothing. I know when I come home, everything will be fine. I’m good. 66 months was super fair. And you know, it sucks for my kids, but I’m happy with it.”

Well-known for his ability to transform dust into gold and losses into wins, Carrasquillo revisited his well-documented struggles with weight and noted an opportunity ahead.

“It’s probably salvation for my fat ass to lose some weight anyway,” he said.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.