<b>T-Mobile deploys nationwide 5G coverage in the US</b>; Robots that can repair and augment themselves; <b>Legacy social media platforms have fake account problems, too</b>; Ethereum <i>Istanbul</i> hardfork has been completed; and <b>a Steem essay providing a deep dive into IP addressing and subnetting</b>

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<center><b><i>Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain</i></b></center>
<table>
<tr><td><h5>Straight from <A HREF=https://theoldreader.com>my RSS feed</A></h5></td><td><h5>Whatever gets my attention</h5></td></tr>
</table>

<h6>Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines.  I filter them so you don't have to.</h6>

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<div class=pull-right><p>

![image.png](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/remlaps-lite/u3hc4WUW-image.png)
<h6> pixabay license: <a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/working-on-cell-tower-cellular-tower-3850689/">source</a>.</h6>

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<ol>
<li> <A HREF="https://www.businessinsider.com/t-mobile-5g-network-more-coverage-than-att-verizon-2019-12">T-Mobile just pushed the button for its 5G network that it says will cover way more Americans than AT&T and Verizon</A> - On Monday, December 2, T-Mobile announced the launch of its 5G network, providing coverage for about 200 million Americans.  This coverage is far broader than 5G offerings from competitors, but the "<i>longer range low-band 600MHz spectrum</i>" used to attain such broad reach supports slower transfer speeds than other firms' "<i>ultra-fast gigabit speeds</i>". Here is a <A HREF="https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/5g-coverage-map">coverage map</A> for the entire US, although it doesn't zoom in quite enough for my needs.  T-Mobile says it covers 1 million miles in 5,000 towns, which represents 20,000% more customers than its competitors' networks.  The firm also says it offers more rural coverage, and its signal will reach indoor locations.  T-Mobile says their 5G plan will cost roughly the same as their existing 4G plans.  The article doesn't give specific speed comparison numbers, but it says that T-Mobile's 5G speeds should be markedly faster than its existing 4G LTE network.</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/japanese-researchers-teaching-robots-to-repair-themselves">Japanese Researchers Teaching Robots to Repair Themselves</A> - Researchers from the University of Tokyo demonstrated to the <i>Humanoids 2019</i> conference that they had trained a <A HREF="https://robots.ieee.org/robots/pr2/">PR2</A> to tighten its own screws and perform minor repairs on itself.  This skill also enabled the robot to augment itself by attaching accessories.  The robot cannot yet tell when a screw needs tightening, although it can automatically tighten them from time to time.  Like humans who need assistance when applying sun screen in some locations, the robot cannot reach all of its screws, so may need assistance from a companion robot.<br><br><b>Here is a video:</b><br>

https://youtu.be/47NjYRWVjLk

</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/social-media-platforms-leave-95-of-reported-fake-accounts-up-study-finds/">Social media platforms leave 95% of reported fake accounts up, study finds</A> - Many suggest that Steem may have a problem with "fake account networks", but the question should be "Compared to what?"  In a new report, researchers from <i>NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence</i> (StratCom), reported that they examined "<i>Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube,</i>" and found that it's  easy to buy one's way into a network of fake accounts and difficult to get fake accounts removed.  The researchers bought large volumes of engagement on all platforms for a total of $332, and used the engagement to identify the networks of fake accounts.  A month later, 80% of those accounts were still active, and three weeks after reporting fake accounts to the respective platforms, 95% of the reported accounts had not been removed.  The article goes on to argue that, "Self regulation is not working", noting that facebook regularly reports on removal of coordinated inauthentic behavior, but the scale of the actions in their reports is drastically smaller than the scale of the actual problem.  Most of the fake accounts, it says, are engaged in commercial behavior, but a small percentage of them could be acting in ways that are unhealthy for effective democratic governance.</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-istanbul-hard-fork-is-now-live">Ethereum has successfully completed the Istanbul hard fork.</A> - Block number 9,069,000 at 0:25 UTC on Sunday, December 8, activated Ethereum's Istanbul fork.  The main changes are: (i) Attack resilience against DDOS attacks; Added a capability to interoperate with "<i>equihash-based proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies like zcash</i>"; and changes affecting Gas costs.  Click <A HREF="https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-istanbul-hard-fork-is-now-live">through</A> for the specifics on those changes.  Notably, this quote from the article, <blockquote>Ethereum is not a toy anymore, it’s a platform with a sizable investment and a big reach, and as such changes like this need to be professionally measured before being taken.</blockquote> reminds me of this argument, <blockquote>I think we should have more than our intuitions to guide a decision like this, and a more mature approach is needed before tampering with blockchain economics</blockquote> from <A HREF="/@remlaps/on-steemit-s-economic-change-proposal-measure-thrice-cut-once">my own post</A> before the most recent Steem hardforks.</li><br>

<li> STEEM <A HREF="/@joshman/showcase-sunday-or-ip-addresssing-and-subnetting-deep-dive-full-course">Showcase Sunday | IP Addresssing And Subnetting Deep Dive (Full Course)</A> - In this post, @joshman rolls up all 9 parts of an <i>IP Addressing and Subnetting tutorial</i> into a single comprehensive post.  The post covers topics that include an overview of the TCP/IP protocol suite; the history, definition, and format of an ip address; subnet masking; conversion between decimal and binary numbers; classless addressing; public and private addressing, and more.  This post will serve as a basis for an upcoming tutorial video, so keep your eyes on @joshman's feed. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @joshman.)</li><br>
</ol>

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