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An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.coindesk.com/decentralized-protocol-removed-from-eu-contact-tracing-website-with-no-notice:

martyb writes:Intelsat orbital comms satellite is back online after first robo-recovery mounting and tug job gets it back into position:

DannyB writes:NASA sets a date for historic SpaceX launch, the first flight of NASA crews from U.S. in nearly a decade

martyb writes:With all of the Pandemic precautions that have been put into effect, many people are turning to "free" on-line conferencing services. As the saying goes, "If you are not paying for the service, you are the product". And, even if paid for (by yourself or by an employer), that does not mean freedom from having your information mined for advertising or other purposes.I've not used any of the following, so please forgive me if I got the product names incorrect. Here are some of the big "free" services that I've seen mentioned: Zoom (whose security issues have been cited many times on SoylentNews), Apple (Group Facetime), Google (Hangouts), Facebook (Facebook Live) and Microsoft (Teams).I suspect many Soylentils have now acquired some experience with on-line conferencing. I am hoping to draw upon your experience. Better still, I would love to see development and proliferation of alternatives to the "Big Names". Solutions that are self-hosted and as free as reasonably possible from the prying eyes of the big, data-warehousing corporations. Open source — free as in beer and libre — would be good, tooRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

[Ed Note: I debated whether or not to run this submission. This could be perceived as a relatively innocuous change. But what's next? Back in 1982 there was a huge outcry when National Geographic "moved" the Great Pyramids closer together. Back then, technological advances increased the ease by which images couldbe manipulated without detection. Technology has continued marching forward. Now, the same manipulations are starting to appear with video. What's next? What are the limits. Where does it end? I saw an opportunity for discussion and decided to run the story.]An Anonymous Coward writes:With great digital platforms comes great digital enhancements? Following on from changes to Star Wars no one asked for (Who shot first?) comes Disney+ hilariously censors nudity in classic movie Splash:

An Anonymous Coward writes:The question of "how did supermarkets sell out of months worth of toilet paper in days" has been answered in part:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:Amazon fires three workers who criticized warehouse conditions:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Why didn't the universe annihilate itself? Neutrinos may hold the answer:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:YouTube borked when users enable Firefox anti-fingerprinting:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Vaccine skeptics actually think differently than other people:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:The secret behind "unkillable" Android backdoor called xHelper has been revealed:

We received three different submissions pertaining to the effects of smoking on COVID-19. One study suggests that those who smoke have a reduced likelihood of hospitalization. The comingling of separate data for male and female patients and analysis based on that data seems unusual to me. The second report is not restricted to hospitalizations, but only to those who tested positive for the virus. Their results also suggested a lessened number of self-identified smokers than smoking rates in the general public would suggest. The third and final story submission introduced vaping to the discussion, and comes to the opposite conclusion in suggesting that smoking or vaping may increase the risk of contracting COVID-19.Confounding these analyses is that all reports of smoking are self-reported. I can well imagine if someone had tried to quit smoking, and had convinced their spouse they had indeed stayed stopped, they would be reluctant to reveal in their spouse's presence that they were a smoker. If anything, though, would that not run counter to the possibility of a protective effect? As with most things pertaining to the virus, it is likely too early to tell for certain, but it does add another dimension to the discussion. Assuming that smoking does have a preventative effect, what could be the cause? Increased residue in the lungs makes it harder for the virus to latch onto the lung's cells and infect? Could it be that chemicals in the smoke serve to impair the virus's ability to survive in the lungs and cause an infection?Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Satellite galaxies of the Milky Way help test dark matter theory:

An Anonymous Coward writes:SMR hard drive encoding is generally higher density but slower than traditional perpendicular recording.Seagate 'submarines' SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD – Blocks and Files

bradley13 writes:Stephen Wolfram thinks he may have found the theory that unifies physics: it's basically automata theory. According to his theory, the universe is basically an automaton running a simple set of computational rules. The link leads to his layman's summary of the work.Even if this isn't how things work, it lends a completely new perspective: based on a relatively simple analysis of his idea, he derives the basics of relativity and quantum mechanics. His article makes for a mind-bending and fascinating read, but it's already a summary, and trying to do a summary of a summary here makes little sense. If you're into physics, mathematics or cosmology, have a look!Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Little scientists: Children prefer storybooks that explain why and how things happen:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:A more plant-based diet without stomach troubles: Getting rid of FODMAPs with enzymes:

martyb writes:It was before I was scheduled to have my wisdom teeth extracted, when my dad suggested I "should prepare by staying up late and getting some good books to read because afterwards all I'll want to do is sleep or read." I stopped by the bookstore and looking around came upon Dune. It had a couple sequels and seemed to be well recommended, so I bought all three. It was the weekend with the surgery scheduled for Monday. I made the mistake of reading the dust cover and before I knew it, had finished reading the first book before having the operation!With all the stories on the COVID-19 virus, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the first half of Dune is being newly brought to the screen. Vanity Fair presents an exclusive first glimpse into its actors, history, and production. Though the film is currently scheduled for release on December 18, 2020 I thought others might like a little distraction, as well. If so, read on!Necessarily, there will be spoilers. So, if by chance you're unfamiliar with the story, consider yourself warned and stop here.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

Oracle's April 2020 Critical Patch Update Brings 397 Security Fixesupstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Oracle's April 2020 Critical Patch Update Brings 397 Security Fixes:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Intel Fixes High-Severity Flaws in NUC, Discontinues Buggy Compute Module:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:NASA's Curiosity Keeps Rolling As Team Operates Rover From Home:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:California orders auto insurers to refund premiums due to coronavirus - Roadshow:

martyb writes:IBM age discrimination lawsuit suddenly ends, suggests Big Blue was willing to pay to avoid discovery process:

An Anonymous Coward writes:Anything where we can install it and watch it change all by itself, improving upon itself and not just some random action but something which LEARNS.[Ed. note: All of the preceding is exactly as received. AI has so many branches and sub-branches (twigs?) and has evolved greatly over the years. I suspect the submitter, like most of us, has seen numerous mentions of AI in the press: self-driving cars, natural language translation, Google's Deep Mind, IBM's Jeapordy-playing computer, object recognition... but knows not even where to begin. So, fellow Soylentils, what has been helpful to you in your explorations of AI? What software can be downloaded and experimented with so as to get some hands-on appreciation for what it can do? I suspect there are many others in the community who would not mind playing around with it, too. --martyb]Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[20200416_005831 UTC; Updated title and corrected spelling of balanceTags(). --martyb]martyb writes:Ooops! Things should be working correctly, now.tl;dr: Back on March 20th, someone tripped over a bug that appears to be in the balanceTags() routine in our Perl code. I found a way to made a quick fix to prevent its happening again, but the fix was missing a couple steps. I caught and fixed one of them, but only now just handled the other.Workaround: When writing a comment, writing or editing a journal entry, or when submitting a story, use "DEL" instead of "STRIKE" to make text look like this.This story is the result of something I learned in the process: properly notify the community of any changes to the site!Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

c0lo writes:BBC: Coronavirus: US to halt funding to WHO, says Trump

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:GitHub is now free for all teams – TechCrunch:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for both AzumaHazuki and SoyCow8192:Medical device "jailbreak" could help solve the dangerous shortage of ventilators:

takyon writes:Google wants to dump Qualcomm, launch smartphone SoC as early as next year

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:Over 500,000 Zoom accounts sold on hacker forums, the dark web:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Water quality could change in buildings closed down during COVID-19 pandemic, engineers say:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Tesla's robotaxi fleet will be 'functionally ready' in 2020, Musk says - Roadshow:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Scientists Discover Brightest Supernova Ever Seen:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:So What Is Protein Folding, Anyway?:

DannyB writes:Boeing customers cancel staggering 150 Max plane orders, deepening crisis as coronavirus roils air travel:

wirelessduck submitted a link which brought us to:In a number system where the real numbers could not have an infinite number of digits, how would our physics models change?Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math.:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:ACLU Sues Baltimore Police Department Over Aerial Surveillance Program:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Team designs carbon nanostructure stronger than diamonds:

canopic jug writes:Tom's Hardware is reporting that Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of its $5 Raspberry Pi Zero to meet demand from ventilator manufacturers which are using the board in their designs. The higher end Raspberry Pi boards are also reasonable desktop units for many typical home office uses, so they are being distributed in place of laptops to many working at home for the NHS. The Raspberry Pi is a low wattage single-board computer with convenient input-output hardware suitable for embedded applications but running a full Debian-based GNU/Linux distro, Raspbian.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth's core:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Here's an unprecedented look at Apollo 13's damaged Service Module:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:Trump signs an executive order allowing mining the moon and asteroids: