Intel’s flagship Core i9-10900K processor reaches speeds up to 5.3 GHz out of the box with the Intel Thermal Velocity Boost.
from Electronic Products Technology Center Articles https://ift.tt/3fZ9A2z
Intel’s flagship Core i9-10900K processor reaches speeds up to 5.3 GHz out of the box with the Intel Thermal Velocity Boost.
Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.
NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT
Arizona State University: Professors’ coloring book gives parents tools to help minimize kids’ COVID-19 anxiety. “Parents often struggle to explain certain things to their children. There are topics that can be embarrassing, like sex, or tougher situations, like the death of a beloved pet or divorce. But what about pandemics? When the world found itself in the grip of COVID-19, a global wave of illness unseen in the lifetimes of almost every living person, resources for parents were few. That’s part of what motivated Paige Safyer, Sara Stein, Julie Ribaudo and Kate Rosenblum to create Tender Press Books and write a coloring storybook to help children cope with what they may see or hear about the virus and its effects.” The coloring book is free.
Cornell Chronicle: Botanic Gardens’ Wildflower Explorations goes online. “The Cornell Botanic Gardens’ hands-on wildflower discovery program now is available online, making the ephemeral flowers of spring available from home or by virtual class instruction. During a typical spring, most Ithaca area third-graders participate in Wildflower Explorations, which includes in-classroom preparation and an instructional visit to the Mundy Wildflower Garden. It is one of the Kids Discover the Trail experience-based programs, where children visit eight cultural and historic sites in Tompkins County during their school years. With schools closed for COVID-19 containment, Cornell Botanic Gardens adapted the program for virtual learning and fun.”
Bucks Free Press: Let’s Rock Lockdown: Retro festival goes online in special show tomorrow. “The 80s LockdownFest will feature appearances by Tony Hadley, Wet Wet Wet, ABC, Howard Jones, Midge Ure, Jason Donovan, Toyah, Hue & Cry, Chesney Hawkes, Brother Beyond, Five Star, Then Jerico and more. The evening will be hosted by Pat Sharp and Dave Benson Phillips and the fun kicks off at 7pm on YouTube and across all the Let’s Rock locations Facebook pages. The 80s Lockdownfest online festival is completely free to enjoy – but the Let’s Rock team raise thousands of pounds for charity every year, so music fans will have the option to donate to Child Bereavement UK.”
NEW RESOURCES – STATE-SPECIFIC
WTHR: New search tool reveals COVID-19 cases & deaths at Indiana nursing homes. “…despite a lack of transparency by state officials and many nursing home operators, data showing what is happening inside Indiana long-term care facilities is now being exposed as local and federal agencies begin to release COVID-19 data that is crucial in understanding the spread of the virus. After weeks of collecting this data, 13News is now releasing the information in a searchable online database to help seniors and their families make more informed healthcare decisions.”
NBC12: New tool helps you track COVID-19 cases in your neighborhood. “Virginians can now access a new tool from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) to see the number of COVID-19 cases in your neighborhood. The Virginia Department of Health has a new map that breaks down cases and testing numbers by zip code.”
WABI (Maine): New website aims to help teachers and families find online learning resources. “Rural Aspirations Project held a launch party Thursday afternoon for their new site ‘Community Learning For ME.’ It’s designed to help teachers, parents, and organizations find resources for online learning. It can suit the needs of Pre-K through grade 12.”
NBC Chicago: Illinois Launches ‘Get Hired’ Portal To Connect Workers With Job Opportunities Amid Pandemic Unemployment Crisis. “The Get Hired portal provides information on both job opportunities and unemployment information. It is designed to be user-friendly for all job seekers regardless of backgrounds, and will also allow employers not only to upload jobs, but also to set up virtual job fairs and training. As of Thursday, Get Hired already featured nearly 60,000 available jobs in several industries. More than 70 employers have also committed to hosting virtual job fairs through the website.”
NEW RESOURCES – OTHER
MeriTalk: Wiki-Style Handbook Provides Governments With COVID-19 Tech Resources. “Newspeak House, a residential college in London, has stepped up to compile a handbook of tech resources for all affected by the virus. With 600,000 views, 4,000 projects, and over 130 sections, resident fellow at Newspeak House and Coronavirus Tech Handbook co-founder Nathan Young flags the handbook as the ‘largest online library of resources around coronavirus’ on his resume.”
USEFUL STUFF
SportingLife: Coronavirus: List of returning sports across the world, including football, rugby, darts, cricket, tennis and golf. “With sport slowly returning as countries across the world continue to fight the coronavirus, Sporting Life has a list of which sports are returning and when.”
UPDATES
BBC: One in four US workers claiming jobless benefits. “The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by almost 3 million last week as virus shutdowns continue to weigh on the US economy. The filings brought the total number of new jobless claims since the middle of March to more than 36 million. That amounts to nearly a quarter of the American workforce.”
SOCIETAL IMPACT
Slate: A Biologist Explains Why She and 1.8 Million Others Are Role-Playing as Ants on Facebook. “Since early March, a private Facebook group titled simply ‘A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony’ has attracted more than 1.8 million members. The premise is as bizarre as it is self-explanatory: People join the group and act like ants. That’s it. That’s the whole idea. Originally founded in June 2019, the group had a modest following until social distancing rules went into effect earlier this year, sending the numbers skyrocketing. Once accepted by the moderators, users role-play as ants in a variety of ways, posting from the imagined perspective of members of a vast and collaborative colony.”
New York Times: Quarantining With a Ghost? It’s Scary. “For those whose experience of self-isolation involves what they to believe to be a ghost, their days are punctuated not just by Zoom meetings or home schooling, but by disembodied voices, shadowy figures, misbehaving electronics, invisible cats cozying up on couches, caresses from hands that aren’t there and even, in some cases — to borrow the technical parlance of ‘Ghostbusters’ — free-floating, full-torso vaporous apparitions. Some of these people are frightened, of course. Others say they just appreciate the company.”
Phys .org: Home wine consumption has significantly increased during confinement. “The frequency of wine consumption has increased significantly during the confinement caused by the coronavirus in Spain, as well as in the rest of Europe. However, this is not the case regarding the number of buyers, which has decreased, as well as the average expenditure per bottle, due to domestic self-supply, among other issues. These are the conclusions that can be drawn about the behaviour of European wine consumers after more than a month of confinement, with over 6,600 people polled in eight European countries (Spain, Belgium, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland), which included the participation of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, University of Zaragoza and Public University of Navarre.”
New York Times: Pakistan’s Deficit and Poverty Rate to Soar Due to Coronavirus. “Pakistan’s fiscal deficit will be significantly worse than projected this fiscal year, with the fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic pushing millions into unemployment and poverty, according to government estimates reviewed by Reuters.”
BET: Common Launches Campaign To Free Prisoners Amid Coronavirus Pandemic. “Common has launched a new advocacy campaign, #WeMatterToo, to help those who are incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The Grammy and Academy award-winning rapper unveiled the new campaign on his Instagram page on Wednesday (May 13).”
Free Press: Coronavirus wrap: IOC reveals cost of postponing Tokyo Olympics. “The International Olympic Committee faces a £650 million bill following the postponement of the Tokyo Games to 2021. IOC president Thomas Bach revealed on Thursday the organisation’s executive committee has set aside the sum to cover the costs of reorganisation and to support individual sports federations and national Olympic committees.” £650 million is a bit under $791 million USD.
INSTITUTION / CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT
Salon: “What are you hiding?”: Nebraska stops releasing coronavirus data from meat plants after cases spike. “Nebraska officials stopped releasing data on coronavirus infections at meatpacking plants as cases spiked at multiple facilities run by companies like Tyson and Smithfield. Through the first week of May, Nebraska officials reported 96 infections at a Tyson plant in Madison, 123 at a Smithfield plant in Crete and 237 at a JBS plant in Grand Island. Then the updates abruptly stopped, The Washington Post reported.”
New York Daily News: War of words between NYC health commissioner, NYPD erupted over face masks for cops; police unions fuming. “An NYPD move to commandeer a half-million hospital-grade masks at the peak of the coronavirus epidemic set off a heated war of words between the city’s health commissioner and the police department’s top cop, sources say. The standoff over the in-demand N-95 masks —headed for the swamped hospital and health care workers overwhelmed by a daily flood of COVID-19 patients — came in mid-March when cops showed up unnannounced at an out-of-state FEMA warehouse and demanded the protective gear.”
Politico: How Google and Apple outflanked governments in the race to build coronavirus apps. “In the digital fight against COVID-19, Big Tech squared off against governments — and won. As policymakers around Europe pushed to develop smartphone apps to track the spread of the coronavirus, Apple and Google flexed their muscles by laying out conditions for building the tools, which are now set to be rolled out across the bloc and beyond by early June.”
Arkansas Online: Chinese retailers embrace livestreaming. “At the height of China’s coronavirus outbreak, the skin-care-products maker Forest Cabin closed more than half of its 300 stores across the nation as shoppers stayed home. With sales plunging, founder Sun Laichun decided it was time to reach his customers more directly. ‘We knew it was time for us to focus on an online strategy to survive,’ Sun said. But the company didn’t launch an online ad blitz or announce big giveaways. Instead, it trained hundreds of its salespeople to begin hosting live video streams where viewers could get skin-care tips and buy products without ever cutting away from the online patter. Within just a month, Sun said, Forest Cabin’s February sales were up by 20% compared with a year earlier, despite a plunge in store sales.”
HEALTH
CBS News: Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to the Navajo Nation. “Jean Stowell, head of the organization’s U.S. COVID-19 Response Team, told CBS News that Doctors Without Borders has dispatched a team of nine to the hard-hit Navajo Nation in the southwest U.S. because of the crisis unfolding there. The team consists of two physicians, three nurse/midwives, a water sanitation specialist, two logisticians and a health promoter who specializes in community health education.”
The Courier: EXCLUSIVE: 30,000 coronavirus test results in Scotland unaccounted for. “A fifth of Scotland’s coronavirus test results are unaccounted for, raising fears the country has thousands more confirmed cases than is being reported. The 30,000 swabs, taken since mid-April, are still being processed in a ‘data exchange’ between the UK Government and Scottish Government. It means Scotland’s confirmed figure of 13,929 is likely to be significantly higher and also casts doubt on recent regional figures.”
RESEARCH
MIT Technology Review: Loud talking could leave coronavirus in the air for up to 14 minutes. “Thousands of droplets from the mouths of people who are talking loudly can stay in the air for between eight and 14 minutes before disappearing, according to a new study. The research, conducted by a team with the US National Institutes of Health and published in PNAS Wednesday, could have significant impact on our understanding of covid-19 transmission.”
Slate: Inside a COVID-19 Vaccine Trial. “Usually when you run an experiment, there is tons of red tape. There are ethical boards to consult, subjects to recruit. And you’ve got to convince other people. People with money that your research is important enough to move forward at all. Now, there’s none of that. Everyone agrees on the priority list. A vaccine against this novel coronavirus is at the very top of that list.” Podcast with transcript available.
Berkeley Lab: New Research Launched on Airborne Virus Transmission in Buildings. “As society prepares to reopen indoor spaces and ease back into some sense of normalcy during the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is launching a study of the risk of airborne transmission of viruses within buildings and how to mitigate those risks.”
University of Pennsylvania Almanac: Penn Vet Launches COVID-19 Canine Scent Detection Study. “A pilot training program using scent detection dogs to discriminate between samples from COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative patients is the focus of a new research initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet).”
Phys .org: Pandemic research: Economics project to explore impact of biases on social distancing. “With neither a vaccine nor a proven treatment available, many communities are relying on social distancing to battle the coronavirus pandemic, from closing non-essential businesses to wearing masks in public. The problem: Not everyone agrees to follow these measures, seen by recent protests across the country. A team of economists at Binghamton University, State University of New York is studying the phenomenon for a new research project on ‘The Role of Intertemporal Biases in Influencing Individual’s Demand for Social Distancing.'”
OH THAT’S SO NICE
Journal-News: ‘A bright spot to the confinement’: Hamilton brothers build new tool to visit mother in nursing home. “Dick Meyer, 65, and his brother, Joe, 62, former owners of Meyer Brothers and Sons construction company in Hamilton, built a Plexiglas u-shaped partition. They unloaded it off a trailer and wheeled it near the front door of Barrington Of West Chester senior living community where their mother has resided since February, right before Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine closed nursing home facilities to visitors. With more than 20 of her relatives all standing outside wearing masks, Virginia ‘Ginny’ Meyer was wheeled out of the nursing home. The contraption allowed Meyer, 95, an opportunity to be closer to many of her family members, some she hadn’t seen in months, while also having a barrier for protection from the virus.”
SECURITY
BetaNews: COVID-19 scam sites pass quarter of a million. “The first quarter of this year has seen a massive growth in phishing and counterfeit pages, with around a third of them related to COVID-19. A new report from fraud prevention company Bolster shows that it detected 854,441 confirmed phishing and counterfeit pages and four million suspicious pages, with more than a quarter of a million devoted to COVID-19.”
POLITICS
Politico: Pentagon fires its point person for Defense Production Act. “Jennifer Santos, the Pentagon’s industrial policy chief who oversees efforts to ramp up production of masks and other equipment to help fight Covid-19, was fired from her job this week and will move to a position in the Navy, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
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NEW RESOURCES
Invision Community: New Website Launched Dedicated to Cosplay. “ReedPop has announced the launch of Cosplay Central – a new multiplatform destination that is designed to be the global voice of the cosplay community and the premier destination for all things Cosplay, including the latest news, special features, videos, advice columns, interviews, tutorials, photo galleries and much more.”
USGS: New Land Cover Maps Depict 15 Years of Alaska Change. “The Alaska data amount to the most up-to-date and comprehensive land cover map ever produced for the largest U.S. state in the Union, offering critical insight into some of North America’s most rapidly- and dramatically-changing landscapes…. As with NLCD 2016’s CONUS data products, the Alaska land cover maps depict 15 years of change, from 2001-2016.”
Asian and African Studies Blog: Digitised East India Company ships’ journals and related records. “Enhanced catalogue descriptions have been created for journals of ships that visited ports in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, and these journals have been digitised and are being made freely available on the Qatar Digital Library website as part of the British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership. They constitute an extraordinarily rich and valuable set of primary sources for numerous areas of research, including: the history of global trade networks; encounters between British merchants and crews and diverse people in different parts of Asia, Africa and elsewhere; the origins of British imperialism; rivalry between European powers in Asia; long-distance marine navigation; the experience of everyday life on board ship, and during lengthy voyages, for members of the crew; and historic weather patterns over the course of more than two centuries.”
Adam Matthew: Adam Matthew Digital announces publication of ‘Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive’. “Drawn from the holdings of the National Library of Scotland, AM Digital’s latest collection, Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive is an unparalleled resource for scholars and academics interested in the history of the book, literature and nineteenth-century history. From its inception in 1768, the John Murray publishing house worked with influential authors whose famed titles continue to shape literature to this day, including Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Herman Melville and Lord Byron.” If you’re not familiar with Adam Matthew, I’ll let you know it’s not free.
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
National Library of New Zealand: Six million pages and counting. “As of today, Papers Past now holds more than 6 million pages of newspapers! We’ve reached this important milestone thanks to the addition of four completely new titles and some additional, early issues of the Wanganui Chronicle (its coverage now extends all the way back to 1860). The other four titles are the Gisborne Times (1901-1937), Hokitika Guardian (1917-1940), Opotiki News (1938-1950) and the Saturday Advertiser (July 1875-1878).”
TechRadar: Facebook and Google will be forced to pay for news content in Australia. “The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been instructed by the Australian government to create a mandatory code of conduct to instruct tech giants on how to share the revenue they generate from using content produced by news outlets, which Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said seeks to ‘level the playing field’.”
The Mennonite: MC USA Archives joins expanded Mennonite Archival Information Database. “Mennonite Church USA Archives is one of five new partners to join the recently expanded Mennonite Archival Information Database (MAID). The public database now represents 14 partners and features thousands of historic photos and a quickly growing number of entries, including one-of-a-kind letters, diaries, meeting minutes, travel documents, biographies, and audio and video recordings.”
USEFUL STUFF
Towards Data Science: Google Data Studio: 5 Charts for Visualizing your Data. “As the second part of the GDS series, this tutorial will go over specific types of visualizations. With each chart, there are dimensions, metrics, sort, date range, interactions, and style menus that are changeable. In addition to these charts, there is the text you can add, as well as data and filter controls. The dataset below that is used for this tutorial and chart highlight has a filter control to display certain categories over others. The date range filter, also consisting of a drop-down menu, is useful if you want to zoom in or out of your data. The best part of these features is that when you edit a filter in the dashboard view, the data is, therefore, adjusted as well with its respective charts.”
Digital Inspiration: Simple URL Tricks for Google Drive You Should Know. “With Google Drive, you can store files in the cloud and share them easily with anyone. Open any file in Google Drive, click the Share button and you’ll get a URL (link) that others can use to access your file. This is common knowledge but Google Drive has plenty of URL tricks up its sleeve that will make these simple Drive links even more powerful.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
MIT Technology Review: The race to save the first draft of coronavirus history from internet oblivion. “According to Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder, his organization is already collecting about 1 billion URLs a day across the web. Archiving the pandemic means trying to identify and collect the pages their ordinary efforts might otherwise overlook, relying on a network of library professionals and members of the public: local and international public health pages, petitions, resources for medical professionals trying to fight covid-19, and accounts from those who have had the virus. It’s not easy. ‘The average life of a web page is only 100 days before it’s changed or deleted,’ he says.
SECURITY & LEGAL
Tom’s Guide: Google Chrome security alert impacts billions: What to do now . “Google last week issued an update to its Chrome web browser that includes a fix for a critical security flaw. But because it doesn’t want evil hackers exploiting the vulnerability, the browser maker didn’t give many details other than that the flaw involves ‘use after free in speech recognizer.’ Thanks to Sophos security researcher Paul Ducklin, we have a somewhat better idea about the fix inside Chrome version 81.0.4044.113 for Windows, Mac and Linux users — and why and how you should check to make sure you have the update.” If you’re using Linux, check to see if you’ve upgraded — I had to reinstall Chrome to get the update.
The Register: Multi-part Android spyware lurked on Google Play Store for 4 years, posing as a bunch of legit-looking apps . “A newly uncovered strain of Android spyware lurked on the Google Play Store disguised as cryptocurrency wallet Coinbase, among other things, for up to four years, according to a new report by Bitdefender.” Good morning, Internet…
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I added a new section; you’ll know it when you see it. Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.
NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH
Notre Dame News: New online portal forecasts coronavirus transmission to aid officials in management, planning. “Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have developed an online portal that forecasts how hospital services and resources may be impacted during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Developed for government and public health service officials, the portal models predict COVID-19 disease transmission by using county data of daily reported infections and current human movement restrictions, such as shelter-in-place and social distancing orders.”
Environmental Protection Agency: EPA Makes it Easier for Consumers to Find Safe, Effective Disinfectant Products to Use Against the Novel Coronavirus. “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its List N Tool, a new web-based application (app) that allows smart phone users and others to quickly identify disinfectant products that meet EPA’s criteria for use against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.”
NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT
BroadwayWorld: Arts@Home: New Website Offers Free Resources And Activities For Educators And People Of All Ages (PRESS RELEASE). “For so many, Toronto is our creative, cultural home. That’s why during the COVID-19 crisis, several local cultural organizations, in collaboration with arts educators and with the support of the City of Toronto, have come together to launch Arts@Home, a shared online space promoting free cultural resources for both educators and the community…. The portal features resources for educators and people of all ages in several diverse and broad-based categories: Art, Dance, Music, Theatre, Media, and More. Subsections include Film and Photography, as well as offerings from Indigenous arts organizations. All tools and activities are free of charge, and available to everyone.”
Variety: London Indian Film Festival Goes Online with Satyajit Ray Short Film Winners. “The London Indian Film Festival is to go online, launching its own streaming platform with a selection of winners from the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition. Due to be held in June this year, LIFF has gone digital because of coronavirus restrictions and will show movies online in a range of South Asian languages.”
NEW RESOURCES – LEGAL / SECURITY / PRIVACY
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: CFPB, FHFA, & HUD Launch Joint Mortgage and Housing Assistance Website for Americans Impacted by COVID-19. “CFPB, FHFA and HUD are offering extensive CARES Act assistance and protection for Americans having trouble paying their mortgage or rent during the COVID-19 national health emergency. This joint website consolidates the CARES Act mortgage relief, protections for renters, resources for additional help, and information on how to avoid COVID-19 related scams. It also provides lookup tools for homeowners to determine if their mortgage is federally backed, and for renters to find out if their rental unit is financed by FHA, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac.”
NEW RESOURCES – STATE-SPECIFIC
TimesDaily: Sweet Grown Alabama launches searchable database for products. “Consumers looking to buy locally grown products are encouraged to visit the website and search for farmers in their area. Each farmer profile features products grown, location, social media links, website links and how to purchase products.”
NEW RESOURCES – OTHER
New Statesman: Dreaming of Covid-19. “Visit [the site] and you can browse strangers’ dreams chronologically, by location or by theme, from ‘animals’ to ‘Zoom’. It’s a surreal, poignant, often darkly comic online archive. The peculiarity of dreams, their abstraction, emotional intensity and crude symbolism, makes them feel universal: my dreams could be your dreams. Someone dreams that masks have become part of our faces, that their wardrobe is hanging with human organs, that people have started smuggling themselves out of their homes in shipping boxes, that they were disqualified from a post-pandemic global sex tape competition because they had hallucinated their partner and were just having air sex.”
PR Newswire: Virtual Meetings Help Overcome Social Distance; Spatial Makes Platform Accessible For All With Free Service (PRESS RELEASE). “Spatial, the leading VR/AR collaboration platform that allows people to work over distance as if in the same room, today announced that in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s opening up unlimited access to its premium services to everyone free of charge, for the coming months. In addition to access via major headsets, Spatial can now be used by the masses via a web version on your desktop or iPhone/Android, allowing anyone to enter a Spatial AR/VR meeting by simply clicking on a meeting link – no downloads required. The company is also announcing a much-improved experience and general availability of Spatial on the leading all-in-one VR headset today, Oculus Quest, previously only available in private beta.”
WROK: Skip The Store, Local Farms Will Deliver To Your Door. “I literally had no idea you could just go to farms and buy stuff or order online and have it shipped to your door. This is a great way to directly support local farmers and avoid going to crowded grocery stores during the pandemic. I poked around the website a little and found a handful of farms about 30 minutes away that would make a nice weekend trip.”
USEFUL STUFF
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Protections for renters during the coronavirus pandemic. “If you’re having trouble making rent payments as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, you are not alone. Across the country, many tenants are facing job losses, furloughs, or reduced hours, and having to make tough financial decisions in order to make ends meet. Fortunately, there are steps all renters can take, as well as many significant protections from eviction that apply in certain situations.”
Lifehacker: Use These Extensions To Trick Out Google Meet. “Google Meet is now free for everyone to use. The search giant has finished its rollout, and anyone with an email address—a Gmail address, that is—can use it to hold free video chats. Meet isn’t as fully-featured as other video chat apps, but a few useful browser extensions can add in much-needed functionality. Oh, and they’re free, too.”
UPDATES
The Guardian: Record death tolls in Mexico and Brazil add to fears of Covid-19 surge in Latin America. “In Brazil – where the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has dismissed the virus as ‘a little flu’ – the health ministry reported a new grim record of 881 deaths in 24 hours on Tuesday night. It has now confirmed 12,461 deaths, the sixth-highest death toll in the world, and 178,214 cases. Mexico also reached a new landmark on Tuesday night, reporting 353 new deaths over the previous 24 hours and 1,997 new confirmed cases.”
BuzzFeed News: Russia Sold The US A Bunch Of Ventilators That Never Got Used. The Same Model Just Burst Into Flames And Killed Six People In Russia.. “They were delivered in crates stamped ‘from Russia, with love.’ But dozens of ventilators sent from Moscow to New York and New Jersey to help their hospitals respond to the coronavirus outbreak have gone unused — and will now be handed over to federal authorities.”
Search Engine Journal: Facebook & Instagram Add More Ways to Support Local Businesses. “Facebook and Instagram are receiving new features that will allow other users to discover and support small businesses in their area. Both platforms are also adding tools to help businesses stay informed and connected with their customers.”
The Guardian: Lesotho records first coronavirus case a week after lifting lockdown. “One of the few places in the world to remain apparently free of coronavirus has recorded its first case. The government of Lesotho said on Wednesday there is now a likelihood that more cases could be recorded before the end of the week after the Ministry of Health said it was awaiting results for 301 cases where tests had been done and sent to neighbouring South Africa.”
SOCIETAL IMPACT
Asia Times: Cambodia poised to be big Covid-19 loser. “Cambodia, despite reporting fewer coronavirus cases than most of its neighbors, could be among the region’s biggest Covid-19 losers due to economic and financial contagion effects. The country’s most crucial business sectors, including tourism and garment manufacturing, have ground to a virtual halt since the pandemic first emerged in China in January and thereafter spread worldwide.”
NBC News: Arctic explorers stranded amid coronavirus lockdowns. “Sunniva Sorby, 59, and Hilde Fålulm Strøm, 52, co-founders of the Hearts in the Ice polar education campaign, set off in August to the Svalbard archipelago, located between Norway’s mainland and the North Pole, to collect environmental data and raise awareness about climate change. They were due to return this month but the vessel designated to pick them up was canceled amid global travel restrictions.”
Variety: Pornhub Offers to Stream Germany’s Oldenburg Film Festival Amid Coronavirus Shutdown (EXCLUSIVE). “Digital juggernaut Pornhub has offered itself as a streaming partner to Germany’s Oldenburg Film Festival, a 26-year-old indie movie event known for edgy programming and quirky celebrity tributes. The offer, extended by Pornhub vice president Corey Price, comes nearly a week after the festival announced it will forge ahead as planned for a September run. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the festival is aiming for a combination of physical and virtual screenings. The move is yet another recent sign of Pornhub’s seriousness about participating in mainstream cinema.”
New York Times: Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm. “Before the coronavirus crisis, three of New York City’s largest commercial tenants — Barclays, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley — had tens of thousands of workers in towers across Manhattan. Now, as the city wrestles with when and how to reopen, executives at all three firms have decided that it is highly unlikely that all their workers will ever return to those buildings.”
INSTITUTION / CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT
CNN: FEMA cancels $55 million contract for N95 masks. “The Federal Emergency Management Agency canceled a $55 million unfulfilled contract with a Virginia company for an order of N95 masks that was supposed to be sent earlier this month — the latest in a string of cancellations many states and agencies have faced amid the scramble to procure personal protective equipment for front-line workers.”
HEALTH
Fast Company: Thermal cameras are terrible at exposing COVID-19. Companies are buying them anyway. “The new technology is part of an evolving infrastructure aimed at keeping workers protected from COVID-19. Companies like Suffolk are buying up a range of cameras, applications, and even robots to mitigate virus transmission. While such precautions may be helpful, they are far from a panacea—even though some companies treat them that way. COVID-19 has been a particularly difficult virus to curb in part because of its long incubation period and high portion of asymptomatic cases, making it hard to detect even with technology.”
AP: Counterfeit masks reaching frontline health workers in US. “On a day when COVID-19 cases soared, healthcare supplies were scarce and an anguished doctor warned he was being sent to war without bullets, a cargo plane landed at the Los Angeles International Airport, supposedly loaded with the ammo doctors and nurses were begging for: some of the first N95 medical masks to reach the U.S. in almost six weeks…. But the shipment arriving that night in late March wasn’t going to solve the problem. An Associated Press investigation has found those masks were counterfeits — as are millions of medical masks, gloves, gowns and other supplies being used in hospitals across the country, putting lives at risk.”
RESEARCH
NPR: How To Make Sense of All The COVID-19 Projections? A New Model Combines Them. “More than 82,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday. How many more lives will be lost? Scientists have built dozens of computational models to answer that question. But the profusion of forecasts poses a challenge: The models use such a wide range of methodologies, formats and time frames that it’s hard to get even a ballpark sense of what the future has in store. Enter Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Reich and his colleagues have developed a method to compare and ultimately to merge the diverse models of the disease’s progression into one ‘ensemble’ projection. The resulting forecast is sobering. By June 6, it projects, the cumulative death toll in the U.S. will reach 110,000.”
CNN: Covid-19 infects intestines, kidneys and other organs, studies find. “The new coronavirus can infect organs throughout the body, including lungs, throat, heart, liver, brain, kidneys and the intestines, researchers reported Wednesday. Two separate reports suggest the virus goes far beyond the lungs and can attack various organs — findings that can help explain the wide range of symptoms caused by Covid-19 infection.”
University of Queensland: Global study of ICU data to guide COVID-19 treatments. “Queensland researchers are leading a worldwide clinical study using AI to examine COVID-19 patient data from 300 intensive care units (ICU) to provide insight for health professionals to determine the best treatments for the disease. University of Queensland researcher Professor John Fraser, a pre-eminent specialist at The Prince Charles Hospital and Director of ICU at Brisbane’s St Andrews Hospital, said the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium Study is the first of its kind in the world.”
NPR: A New Study Explores The Spread Of Misinformation About Coronavirus On Facebook. “NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Neil Johnson, a professor of physics at George Washington University, about his study on the spread of scientific misinformation about the coronavirus and its effects.” Audio with transcript.
Inside Science: Anti-Vaccine Messaging Is Well-Connected on Social Media. ” A video dubbed ‘Plandemic’ that brought together unsubstantiated and debunked claims and conspiracies about the coronavirus, featuring a discredited virologist who is also aligned with the anti-vaccine movement, gathered millions of views last week. Social media platforms have since removed the video for violating misinformation policies, but the 26-minute video highlights one way that the anti-vaccine movement is feeding into the recent surge of misinformation and disinformation swirling around COVID-19.”
OH THAT’S SO NICE
LADbible: Dad Builds Huge Stage On Driveway So Daughter Doesn’t Miss Out On Graduation. “Many US student have been given the upsetting news that their graduation ceremonies have been cancelled, but one kind-hearted dad made sure that his daughter wouldn’t miss out by setting up this incredible stage in his driveway so she still got to enjoy her special day.”
CRIME
BuzzFeed News: Facebook Banned Mask Ads. They’re Still Running.. “Founded in 2015, ZestAds sources cheap electronics, clothing, and household products from China to sell around the globe using slick and at times misleading Facebook ads. On its website, ZestAds claims to be one of the top e-commerce companies in Asia. Since March, the company has made a mockery of Facebook’s ban by running ads that dangerously claimed its masks would ‘fully protect’ from the virus, cited a fake expert, and falsely listed US companies as behind the ads.”
POLITICS
AP: Whistleblower: US could face virus rebound ‘darkest winter’. “America faces the ‘darkest winter in modern history’ unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the coronavirus, says a government whistleblower who alleges he was ousted from his job after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic. Immunologist Dr. Rick Bright makes his sobering prediction in testimony prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Aspects of his complaint about early administration handling of the crisis are expected to be backed up by testimony from an executive of a company that manufactures, respirator masks.”
Sun Prairie Star: Candidates get creative in collecting nomination signatures amid social distancing. “In normal circumstances, candidates would spend the time between April 15 to June 1 going door to door or showing up at festivals, farmer’s markets or the local library to collect enough signatures. The signature requirements range from a minimum of 200 for the Assembly to a minimum of 400 for the state Senate to a minimum of 1,000 for congressional candidates. The highest threshold is a minimum of 2,000 signatures for statewide office. But social distancing requirements and Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order ruled out things like going door to door.”
Seattle Times: Emails: Trump nominee involved in shelving CDC virus guide. “A former chemical industry executive nominated to be the nation’s top consumer safety watchdog was involved in sidelining detailed guidelines to help communities reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, internal government emails show.”
Daily Beast: Team Trump Pushes CDC to Revise Down Its COVID Death Counts. “President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they’re pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government’s response to the pandemic.”
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