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As Google Fiber prepares to leave Louisville, Kentucky, Google has agreed to pay the city government $3.84 million to fix damage to city streets. "The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables and sealant from roads, milling and paving streets 'where needed' and removing Google's above-ground infrastructure," reports WDRB, citing a news release from Mayor Greg Fischer's office. From the report: Google Fiber also agreed to donate $150,000 to the Community Foundation of Louisville to support Metro's "digital inclusion" efforts, which include "refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville," according to the mayor's office. Google Fiber, a unit of the Silicon Valley tech giant, said Feb. 7 that it would abandon the Louisville market after running into too many problems with the micro-trenching technique it used to install its fiber-optic cables as shallow as two inches below the pavement surface of city streets. Louisville, which lobbied for years to get Google Fiber, has the distinction of being the first city to lose the super-fast internet service. The report notes that Google Fiber only reached a small slice of the city, estimating that the service was only available to, at most, about 11,000 households.

As Google Fiber prepares to leave Louisville, Kentucky, Google has agreed to pay the city government $3.84 million to fix damage to city streets. "The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables and sealant from roads, milling and paving streets 'where needed' and removing Google's above-ground infrastructure," reports WDRB, citing a news release from Mayor Greg Fischer's office. From the report: Google Fiber also agreed to donate $150,000 to the Community Foundation of Louisville to support Metro's "digital inclusion" efforts, which include "refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville," according to the mayor's office. Google Fiber, a unit of the Silicon Valley tech giant, said Feb. 7 that it would abandon the Louisville market after running into too many problems with the micro-trenching technique it used to install its fiber-optic cables as shallow as two inches below the pavement surface of city streets. Louisville, which lobbied for years to get Google Fiber, has the distinction of being the first city to lose the super-fast internet service. The report notes that Google Fiber only reached a small slice of the city, estimating that the service was only available to, at most, about 11,000 households.

stoborrobots writes: Google Fiber is leaving Louisville, as reported in The Verge: "Google Fiber's attempt to roll out its gigabit internet across the city of Louisville, Kentucky has apparently failed so spectacularly that the company has decided to completely shut down the service and leave town altogether. CNET has a report on the news, which Alphabet's Access division confirmed in a blog post on Thursday. 'We'll work with our customers and partners to minimize disruption, and we're committed to doing right by the community, which welcomed us as we tested methods of delivering high-speed internet in new and different ways,' the Fiber team said."

TechCrunch's take: "It's a rare admission of defeat for Google Fiber, though it's no secret that the company isn't exactly bullish on the prospect of the service anymore. Louisville was supposed to be somewhat of a comeback for Google Fiber, which like so many Google services is now under more pressure to generate a profit. Clearly, that didn't work out." The issue apparently has to do with "shallow trenching," a process that involves laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. "The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt," reports The Verge. "It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used -- but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground."

"Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn't interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Louisville customers that their service will end on April 15th." In an attempt to soften the blow, Google Fiber says it will not charge customers for their final two months of service.

According to Ars Technica, AT&T is reportedly abandoning its attempt to stop a Louisville ordinance that helped draw Google Fiber into the city. The telecommunications giant sued Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop an ordinance that gives Google Fiber and other ISPs faster access to utility poles. AT&T's lawsuit was dismissed in August by a district court, who determined that AT&T's claims that the ordinance is invalid are false. WDRB News and Louisville Business First are both reporting that AT&T has decided not to appeal the ruling.

Slashdot reader simkel shared an article from the Courier-Journal: A group affiliated with the Koch brothers' powerful political network is leading an online campaign against Mayor Greg Fischer's $5.4 million proposal to expand Louisville's ultra-fast internet access... Critics argue that building roughly 96 miles of fiber optic cabling is an unnecessary taxpayer giveaway to internet service providers, such as Google Fiber, which recently announced plans to begin building its high-speed network in the city. "Fundamentally, we don't believe that taxpayers should be funding broadband or internet systems," said David Williams, president of the taxpayers alliance, which is part of industrialists Charles and David Koch's political donor network... The group says $5.4 million is a misuse of taxpayer funds when the city has other needs, such as infrastructure and public safety.
To shore up public support, the mayor has begun arguing that high-speed connectivity would make it cheaper to install crime-monitoring cameras in violent neighborhoods.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is now marking fake news as "disputed," several sites reported today. "According to Facebook's Help Center, news stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent, third-party fact-checkers," writes WDRB Media. "The fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story will be marked as disputed if fact-checkers find the story to be fake."

Mashable reports that the feature was rolled out quietly, and didn't gain much attention until it was noticed Friday by a reporter from Gizmodo, who tweeted a screenshot showing Facebook's new "disputed" icon. Further investigation revealed Facebook's help center now includes a page explaining how news gets marked as disputed, and another page informing users how to mark a news story as fake (which points out this feature "isn't available to everyone yet.")

An anonymous reader writes: At least 12 different drones have been shot from the sky in the United States, including drone shootings in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Kentucky, and New Jersey. Now the FAA is confirming that drone shooting is a federal offense, citing regulations against aircraft sabotage. An aviation attorney (teaching drone law at New York's Vaughn College of Aeonautics) tells Forbes this means penalties of up to 20 years in prison for interfering with the "authorized" operation of an aircraft, while threatening a drone or a drone operator would also be a federal crime subject to five years in prison.
Slate notes that "This is bad news if you were planning to invest in the DroneDefender, a goofy-looking gun that promised to disrupt intrusive drones by bombarding them 'with radio waves that disrupt [their] remote control and GPS signals'." And Popular Science adds that "It also poses a complication for some local and state laws, like Utah's proposed HB 420, which would let police shoot down drones in emergency situations." Meanwhile, police in the Netherlands are actually training eagles to attack drones. And last week in South Africa, a drone crashed through the window of an office building and hit an unarmed office worker on the head.

An anonymous reader writes: Louisville was one of the cities identified in 2015 as a potential Google fiber location? Since then, Louisville has completed the pre-work Google requires and, most recently, unamiously passed an ordinance to remove legacy bureaucratic speed bumps to installing fiber on existing utility poles. This applies to any telco wanting to add infrastructure, so that's good, right? Well, not according to AT&T. They are suing the city to block this ordinance and prohibit the city from using its infrastructure as it sees fit to provide better broadband to its citizens.

EzInKy writes: Back in July, Kentucky resident William Merideth was arrested after he shot down a drone flying near his property. The arrest wasn't because of the destroyed drone, but because Merideth fired a gun within the city limits. Now, after a two-hour hearing in Bullitt District Court, a judge has dismissed all charges against Merideth. The owner of the drone, David Boggs, has always contested Merideth's claim that it was hovering over his yard. "But Judge Rebecca Ward says that since at least two witnesses could see the drone below the tree line, it was an invasion of privacy." Ward further said that Merideth "had a right to shoot at this drone."

McGruber writes: Hillview, Kentucky resident William H. Merideth describes his weekend: "Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard. And they come in and said, 'Dad, there's a drone out here, flying over everybody's yard.'" Merideth's neighbors saw it too. "It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off," said neighbor Kim VanMeter. Merideth grabbed his shotgun and waited to see if the drone crossed over his property. When it did, he took aim and shot it out of the sky.

The owners showed up shortly, and the police right after. He was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment before being released the next day. Merideth says he will pursue legal action against the drone's owner: "He didn't just fly over. If he had been moving and just kept moving, that would have been one thing -- but when he come directly over our heads, and just hovered there, I felt like I had the right. You know, when you're in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy. We don't know if he was looking at the girls. We don't know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing."

An anonymous reader writes: As Election Day in the U.S. starts to wind down, reports from around the country highlight another round of technological failures at the polls. In Virginia, the machines are casting votes for the wrong candidates. In North Carolina, polling sites received the wrong set of thumb drives, delaying voters for hours. In Michigan, software glitches turned voters away in the early morning, including a city mayor. A county in Indiana saw five of its polling sites spend hours trying to get the machines to boot correctly. And in Connecticut, an as-yet-unspecified computer glitch caused a judge to keep the polls open for extra time. When are we going to get this right?

With three earthquakes of some significance in the news this weekend (Chile, California, and Iceland), it seems a good time to ask: If you live in an area of seismic danger, how are you prepared for an earthquake (or tsunami, mudslide, or other associated danger) and how prepared are you? Do you have a stash of emergency supplies, and if so, how did you formulate it? In the U.S. alone, it's surprising how many areas there are with some reasonable chance of earthquakes, though only a few of them are actually famous for it — and those areas are the ones where everything from building codes to cultural awareness helps mitigate the risks. I'm not sure I'd want to be in a skyscraper in Memphis or St. Louis during a replay of the New Madrid quakes of 1811-1812, which is probably worth worrying about for those in the region. Beyond personal safety, do you have a plan for your electronics and data if the earth starts shaking?