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posted by Fnord666 on Friday April 24 2020, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Betteridge-says-nope dept.

Coronavirus: Scientists brand 5G claims 'complete rubbish':

Conspiracy theories claiming 5G technology helps transmit coronavirus have been condemned by the scientific community.

Videos have been shared on social media showing mobile phone masts on fire in Birmingham and Merseyside - along with the claims.

The UK's mobile networks have reported 20 cases of masts being targeted in suspected arson attacks over the Easter weekend, including damage to a mast providing mobile connectivity to Birmingham's Nightingale Hospital.

The posts have been shared on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram - including by verified accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.

TV regulator Ofcom is assessing comments made by presenter Eamonn Holmes in which he cast doubts on media outlets for their attempts to debunk the claims.

But scientists say the idea of a connection between Covid-19 and 5G is "complete rubbish" and biologically impossible.

The conspiracy theories have been branded "the worst kind of fake news" by NHS England Medical Director Stephen Powis.

[...] Many of those sharing the post are pushing a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that 5G - which is used in mobile phone networks and relies on signals carried by radio waves - is somehow responsible for coronavirus.

Tough sledding for the engineers, but concerns about 5G have been raised prior to the coronavirus.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Friday April 24 2020, @05:03PM (12 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday April 24 2020, @05:03PM (#986563)

    The willingness of people to attack 5G rollout over stupid conspiracy theories proves something pretty meaningful, I think. People don't give 2 shits about 5G.

    Think about it. Humans are remarkably capable of ignoring their better judgement when it comes to things they like. If these people were really looking forward to 5G, they'd be a lot more skeptical about any weird claims about COVID-19.

    --

    I've never understood what the purpose of 5G is supposed to be. We don't need it for an "internet of things". 4G/LTE carries plenty of bandwidth for the security cameras, let alone your toaster. It's not like 5G is some low-power thing that would make IoT devices cheaper and easier to deploy; by all accounts, 5G costs more to implement and uses more electricity to operate.

    Even if 5G was somehow better than 4G/LTE in the ways they claim, it wouldn't matter. Nobody should want their devices directly on the public internet anyway. Your security camera should be behind a firewall, on a private network. And even if it wasn't for security, there just aren't enough IPv4 addresses for all those toasters. You're going to need IPv6 rolled out first. Good luck.

    So maybe 5G is supposed to be for faster smartphones? Except we don't need faster internet than 4G/LTE on our smartphones. 4G/LTE is fast enough for 4K streaming [opensignal.com], which is more than enough for our tiny screens.

    What about competing with land-based networks? Well, I'd love to think about replacing my land-based internet with my cell carrier, but there are a few problems with that. One problem is that cell carriers have bandwidth caps (and sure, cable companies are starting to do it too, but the caps are still nowhere near as low). Another is that cell networks are potentially more expensive than wires. Another problem is that 5G in particular takes way more costly infrastructure than wires.

    But what about burst speeds? What about raw bandwidth? Well, there are only two kinds of users who need that kind of speed: enterprises (or wannabe enterprises), and pirates.

    Enterprises have no trouble paying for fiber lines and private WiFi. In fact, they will want to run the network themselves anyway because it lets them continue to run things insecurely on that internal network like they've always done.

    Pirates? You or I might like to build a multi-billion dollar ubiquitous high-speed wireless network so the pirates can download the latest Hollywood not-yet-releases in seconds. But I just can't see the powers-that-be thinking that's a good idea.

    --

    As far as I can tell, the whole 5G rollout is a great big gamble. "Build it; they will come" seems to be the ultimate plan.

    In the meantime, telecoms get to completely ignore finishing the 4G/LTE rollout. Rural areas are just not served. Many cities even still don't have enough capacity to meet demand.

    --

    Like I said, if people were really looking forward to 5G, they'd ignore proof that it caused COVID-19.

    The fact that they're willing to go burn down 5G towers on vague rumors means these people really never cared in the first place. If anything, they already hated 5G and just needed a reason.

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    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by epitaxial on Friday April 24 2020, @05:32PM (9 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Friday April 24 2020, @05:32PM (#986582)

    You're a moron. I can't understand why anyone needs paved roads. Those horses have no problems on cobblestones. Why does anyone need faster than dialup? It's all text based anyhow. I don't understand why we need color film, black and white is fine,

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @05:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @05:38PM (#986591)

      >> I don't understand why we need color film, black and white is fine,

      Pornography with Asian chicks.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @06:41PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @06:41PM (#986633)

      What is "color film" grampa?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @10:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @10:03PM (#986711)

        It's the film on your teeth sonnyboy.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday April 24 2020, @10:35PM (5 children)

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday April 24 2020, @10:35PM (#986724)

      Then how about you tell me one thing, just one thing that needs 5G. One thing that wouldn't work or be practical on 4G/LTE or WiFi connected to DSL/cable/fibre, but will finally be practical with 5G.

      It doesn't have to be waiting in the wings for as soon as the network is ready. It can be a glimmer in somebody's eye. It can be as pie in the sky as you like.

      If 5G were just a straight upgrade to 4G/LTE, then I'd say sure, why not widen the pipes? But it's not. 5G has serious flaws compared to 4G/LTE. It's extremely short-range, so it needs a mesh installation like some kind of city-wide WiFi. As a result, it will never reach rural areas. It also has serious power draw and processing requirements for connected devices, and as far as I can tell those requirements are not going away. The only solution seems to be bigger batteries and faster processors. Get used to >$1000 phones, I guess.

      As for your examples...what?

      Cobblestones are a form of paved road, and asphalt is thousands of years old, not some fancy new thing. A quick search for WTF you could be implying turned up a story about Rome replacing its historic cobblestone streets [travelandleisure.com]. But they're doing it because they have a reason to: high traffic is dislodging the stones. They wouldn't go to all that trouble if they didn't need to. There are still plenty of cobblestone streets in the world, and most of them are perfectly adequate for the amount of automobile traffic they receive.

      Dial-up internet always had serious flaws. Everybody knew it. Anybody who was paying attention could predict that soon it would be feasible to store enough megabytes of data that computers would be capable of sharing photos and music, given enough network capacity. Corporations were lining up to be the first ones with viable services as soon as people had broad access to broadband. Customers waited anxiously for broadband to become available in their area. I guarantee you, DSL could have caused AIDS and we wouldn't have people burning down the phone lines.

      If the color film thing is meant to imply we need better than 4K video, you're wrong. At least for mobile devices. While anybody can see the difference between color and grayscale, nobody can see the difference between 4K and 8K on anything smaller than a 40cm display unless they get closer than 75cm. That's because the human eye can only perceive so much detail [transvideointl.com]. Your 1080p 5" smartphone is already pushing the limits of human perception at 440ppi [saji8k.com]. This is the reason, by the way, that Apple didn't keep boosting their pixel density past 326ppi after the iPhone 4, and why the iPad Pro is only 224ppi even though they probably could push the pixel density to equal the iPhone. There's just no point. So if you're powering any kind of mobile device, 4K is literally at the limit of human perception. You would need to be powering a bigger screen for the added fidelity to make any kind of difference.

      --

      5G is a massive infrastructure project with no defined purpose. They try to market it for IoT, but it doesn't seem particularly well suited to that application. They try to market it for video streaming, but 4K streaming is already possible with 4G/LTE, and anything higher definition is more than humans are physically capable of seeing on mobile devices.

      I might salivate at the pure bandwidth, but I can't think of anything besides large-scale data processing or piracy that needs it. Neither of those makes sense within the limitations of 5G (and public policy).

      I ask again: If you're so damned smart, you tell me what is the application of 5G. What could we possibly use all that bandwidth for that isn't already better served by hard-wired connections? And for those applications where WiFi 6 isn't fast enough (and it's not even an order of magnitude slower), why wouldn't you just set up a private 5G network instead of sourcing it from the sleazy cell companies?

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      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @11:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @11:04PM (#986736)

        Come back in 5 years and I'll bet you're looking like a dumbass. More of a dumbass.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday April 24 2020, @11:30PM (3 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 24 2020, @11:30PM (#986750) Journal

        3-d animated movies with octa-sound speakers. Interactive lidar (or sonar) based applications. Fast-acting remote controlled AI devices. (Not sure about that one, as compression might be good enough.)

        You did say it didn't need to be currently feasible.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday April 26 2020, @02:34AM (2 children)

          by meustrus (4961) on Sunday April 26 2020, @02:34AM (#987174)

          Interactive lidar (or sonar) based applications.

          Oh yeah, self driving cars! I forgot about that proposed application of 5G.

          It's an interesting proposition. But cell networks are not known for constant uptime. Even if they had full coverage, which 5G certainly will not, I really don't want to trust it to inform my car or the cars I'm sharing the road with.

          Maybe if 5G were actually reliable, unlike any prior cell data tech, it could be a profound change to society. I really fear what that could mean for the left-behinds, though.

          --
          If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday April 26 2020, @03:28AM (1 child)

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 26 2020, @03:28AM (#987182) Journal

            I wasn't thinking so much of cars, which I would definitely prefer run from local AI, as low end robots of various sorts. (Yeah, it's a lot further away, I think.)

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Monday April 27 2020, @02:28PM

              by meustrus (4961) on Monday April 27 2020, @02:28PM (#987533)

              The expensive part of self-driving cars is modeling the space and knowing about everything moving around in it. It's not a processing problem as much as a sensing problem; although one could imagine human-level visual processing algorithms solving this problem without all the fancy sensors that we use now, that's not where we are with AI right now.

              I was under the impression that a reliable high-speed wireless network would enable cars to receive space modeling data from the network, either from other cars or from street-installed sensor arrays. This could dramatically cut the costs for self-driving cars by reducing the amount of exotic sensors that need to be packed into each individual vehicle.

              But it still raises concerns about 1) whether the network is reliable enough, and 2) how this concept starts to distinguish self-driving-enabled streets from everything else.

              --
              If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by legont on Friday April 24 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)

    by legont (4179) on Friday April 24 2020, @05:40PM (#986595)

    The willingness of people to attack 5G rollout over stupid conspiracy theories proves something pretty meaningful, I think. People don't give 2 shits about 5G.

    There is always a minority that likes or hates something. I am sure "burn Apple stores" would be even more popular.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 24 2020, @10:03PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday April 24 2020, @10:03PM (#986710) Journal

      True. My best friend is a professional clown. He invited me to watch them bring the elephants through the Midtown Tunnel on the way to the Barnum and Bailey Circus in Madison Square Garden. There were people protesting the use of animals in the circus.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.