John Burrows died at his mother's garage in Portland near Lithgow in 2015, with a bomb expert telling his murder trial he had never seen a device like the one used to kill the 58-year-old.

As the drought continues, water is being carted by train for the first time in decades to keep production on track at a NSW coal mine and secure 140 full-time jobs.

MORNING BRIEFING: A new video of missing Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez is released as his family attempt to solve what happened to the 18-year-old, last seen in Byron Bay.

IBM can help your company make it happen.

IBMers from all over the world collaborated to win a grant from FineP - Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos – the Brazilian government agency tasked with funding educational and scientific projects that will have lasting impact on the country's social development.

Clear, calming writing about how to interpret recent reports

Rockies all-star shortstop Trevor Story pays close attention to the reports about baseball's possible return in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rockies all-star shortstop Trevor Story pays close attention to the reports about baseball's possible return in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rockies all-star shortstop Trevor Story pays close attention to the reports about baseball's possible return in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The singer is running for the young people of Africa.

The controversial garment has an unexpected benefit.

A few weeks ago, the US telecom industry began pushing a bullshit narrative through its usual allies. In short, the claim revolves around the argument that the only reason the US internet still works during a pandemic was because the Trump FCC ignored the public, ignored most objective experts, and gutted itself at the behest of telecom industry lobbyists. The argument first popped up over at AEI, then the Trump FCC, then the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and has since been seen in numerous op-eds nationwide. I'd wager that's not a coincidence, and I'd also wager we'll be seeing a lot more of them.

All of the pieces try to argue that the only reason the US internet works during a pandemic is because the FCC gutted its authority over telecom as part of its "restoring internet freedom" net neutrality repeal. This repeal, the story goes, drove significant investment in US broadband networks (not remotely true), resulting in telecom Utopia (also not true). The argument also posits that in Europe, where regulators have generally taken a more active role in policing things like industry consolidation and telecom monopolies, the internet all but fell apart (guess what: not true).

Usually, like in this op-ed, there's ample insistence that the US broadband sector is largely wonderful while the EU has gone to hell:

"Unlike here, European networks are more heavily regulated. This has led to less investment and worse performance for consumers for years. American consumers are being generally well served by the private sector."

Anybody who has spent five minutes talking to Comcast customer support -- or tried to get scandal-plagued ISP like Frontier Communications to upgrade rotten DSL lines -- knows this is bullshit. Still, we penned a lengthy post exploring just how full of shit this argument is, and how there's absolutely zero supporting evidence for the claims. The entire house of cards is built on fluff and nonsense, and it's just ethically grotesque to use a disaster to help justify regulatory capture and market failure.

While it's true that the US internet, in general, has held up relatively well during a pandemic, the same can't be said of the so called "last mile," or the link from your ISP's network to your home. Yes, the core internet and most primary transit routes, designed to handle massive capacity spikes during events like the Superbowl, has handled the load relatively well. The problem, as Sascha Meinrath correctly notes here, is sluggish speeds on consumer and business lines that, for many, haven't been upgraded in years:

"Right now, an international consortium of network scientists is collecting 750,000 U.S. broadband speed tests from internet service provider (ISP) customers each day, and we’ve been tracking a stunning loss of connectivity speeds to people’s homes. According to most ISPs, the core network is handling the extra load. But our data show that the last-mile network infrastructure appears to be falling down on the job."

Again, your 5 Mbps DSL line might be ok during normal times, but it's not going to serve you well during a pandemic when your entire family is streaming 4K videos, gaming, and Zooming. And your DSL line isn't upgraded because there's (1) very little competition forcing your ISP to do so, and (2) the US government is filled to the brim with sycophants who prioritize campaign contributions and ISP revenues over the health of the market and consumer welfare. And while there's a contingency of industry-linked folks who try very hard to pretend otherwise, this is a policy failure that's directly tied to mindless deregulation, a lack of competition, and, more importantly, corruption. In short, the complete opposite of the industry's latest talking point.

For years we've been noting how US telcos have refused to repair or upgrade aging DSL lines because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. Facing no competition and no regulatory oversight, there's zero incentive for a giant US broadband provider to try very hard. Similarly, because our lawmakers and regulators are largely of the captured, revolving door variety, they rubber stamp shitty mergers, turn a blind eye to very obvious industry problems, routinely throwing billions in taxpayer money at monopolies in exchange for fiber networks that are usually only partially deployed -- if they're deployed at all.

Meanwhile, US telcos that have all but given up on upgrading aging DSL lines have helped cement an even bigger Comcast monopoly across vast swaths of America. It's a problem that the telecom sector, Trump FCC, and various industry apologists will ignore to almost comical effect. Also ignored is the fact that this results in US broadband subscribers paying some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world:

"Numerous studies, including those conducted by the FCC itself, show that broadband pricing is the second-largest barrier to broadband adoption (availability is the first). It’s obvious that if people are being charged a lot for a service, they’re less likely to purchase it. And independent researchers have already documented that poor areas often pay more than rich communities for connectivity. Redlining of minority and rural areas appears to be widespread, and we need accurate pricing data from the FCC to meaningfully address these disparities."

Try to find any instance where Ajit Pai, or anybody in this chorus of telecom monopoly apologists, actually admits that the US broadband market isn't competitive and, as a result, is hugely expensive for businesses and consumers alike. You simply won't find it. What you will find are a lot of excuses and straw men arguments like this latest one, designed to distract the press, public, and policymakers from very obvious market failure. Market failure that was a major problem in normal times, and exponentially more so during a pandemic where broadband is an essential lifeline.

Remember when all we had to complain about were crappy rail services?

Bork!Bork!Bork! Welcome to another in The Register's inexplicably long-lived series of digital signage suffering the odd public whoopsie.…

eLearning, to me, seems like an exciting new field that has barely been tapped and which has a wide open future. However, no matter how exciting and universal it seems, it is really a subset of training, instruction, education, etc. So, before I really embark on this adventure in eLearning, maybe I should think about […]

I'm relatively new to the world of Instructional Design and the development of eLearning material, but I've had a LOT of experience as a trainee. Much of that experience has been pretty painful (this should be no surprise to anyone). If you, as an Instructional Designer or course developer, want to keep me engaged in […]

IBM is bringing its expertise in sports venue infrastructure design and implementation to the practice field for newly formed Major League Soccer Club, Atlanta United, providing a year-round, state-of-the art technological experience for the players and staff.

Advancements in assistive image analytics and deep learning technology could in the future help doctors in the fight against preventable blindness.

Two StarWars.com writers debate Luke’s choice in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

1. Shah slams Bengal govt for 'not allowing' migrant trains; Centre lying, says TMC  Times of India
2. Not Allowing Migrants' Trains "Injustice": Amit Shah To Mamata Banerjee  NDTV
3. TMC releases 'proof' after Centre alleges blockade of migrant transport in West Bengal  TIMES NOW
4. News updates from Hindustan Times: Have 7-stage plan to bring back migrants, says TMC on Amit Shah’s...  Hindustan Times
5. Bengal Says 8 Trains to Bring Back Migrant Workers Scheduled as Amit Shah Writes to Mamata on 'Injustice'  News18
6. View Full coverage on Google News

This is a paper produced as part of the PROP2 (Practitioner Research: Outcomes and Partnership) programme, a partnership between the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) at the University of Edinburgh and Iriss that was about health and social care in Scotland. This paper was written by Alan Gilmour from Glasgow City Community Health Partnership who participated in the PROP2 programme. This research aimed to gain an understanding of how training and information support contributes to positive outcomes for carers. It provided a range of information to answer specific questions such as: • Do carers feel that their needs are identified appropriately at different stages of their journey? • Does training contribute to the carer’s outcomes? • What are the barriers to carers engaging in training?

Training to help health and social care professionals better understand #dementia https://t.co/E8SI7fFJlV @uobnews https://t.co/dFqcCae2tp

The Knowledge Network

The courses are tailored to artists at various career stages. They start on May 23.

The post Toon Boom Launches Remote Animation Training Courses appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

This week’s episode of the podcast is now up! This one’s on “Train Kept A-Rollin'” by Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio, and how a novelty song about cowboys written for an Abbot and Costello film became a … Continue reading →

And how could we EVER forget it 87hours four nights 5 time zones and 5185km on a 55 year old train that smelt of man sweat and cigarettes lolWe started our journey by getting the metro to the train station not an easy feat when you have the eq

Major players in commercial real estate, construction and organized labor are teaming up with the United Way to try to place thousands of and minorities into trade careers in Chicago, where there is both a shortage of skilled labor and a dearth of jobs in swaths of the city.