An anonymous reader writes with a report at Mobipicker (linking to a Korea Times story) that a 12-member committee from the International Telecommunication Union has hashed out a formal definition of the speed requirements for 5G mobile networking; the result has been designated IMT-2020, and it specifies that 5G networks should provide data speeds of up to 20Gbps — 20 times faster than 4G. From the Korea Times story: The 5G network will also have a capacity to provide more than 100 megabits-per-second average data transmission to over one million Internet of Things devices within 1 square kilometer. Video content services, including ones that use holography technology, will also be available thanks to the expanded data transmit capacity, the ministry said. … The union also decided to target commercializing the 5G network worldwide by 2020. To do so, it will start receiving applications for technology which can be candidates to become the standard for the new network. Consequently, the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games will be the world’s first international event to showcase and demonstrate 5G technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View the original here:
5G Network Speed Defined As 20 Gbps By the International Telecommunication Union
Visitors to Nortk Korea now have another unusual observation to add to their list: they don’t have a shred of 3G data access during their trip. Read more… 
After floods hit Denison, Texas last week, park rangers were mystified to find stringy clumps dotting the rain-soaked streets in inexplicably organized lines. It was no pasta-based apres -flood prank. It was just piles of living, squiggling worms. Read more… 
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: The dark web has become the go-to corner of the Internet to buy drugs, stolen financial data, guns…and counterfeit coupons for Clif bars and condoms? The FBI indicted Beauregard Wattigney yesterday for wire fraud and trademark counterfeiting on digital black market sites Silk Road and Silk Road 2. Wattigney allegedly spoofed coupons for dozens of products and sold collections of them online in exchange for Bitcoin. The FBI accused him of doing $1 million worth of collective damage to the companies he made coupons for, but a fraud consultancy believes the total financial cost of his actions was much higher. Wattigney also offered expensive lessons that taught people how to make their own coupons. “In his tutorials, [he] explained the simple breakdown of barcode creation using the increasingly universal GS1 standard: GS1 codes begin with a ‘company prefix’ that can be copied from any of the company’s products. The next six digits are the ‘offer code, ‘ which can be any random number for a counterfeit coupon, followed by the savings amount listed in cents and the required number of item purchases necessary to receive the discount.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Samsung already makes the most smartphones in the world, but now the South Korean company is pushing to make the most semiconductors. Samsung just started constructing its own version of Silicon Valley, starting with $14 billion semiconductor complex larger than 400 football fields. Read more…