By Gareth Branwyn on Mar 13, 2020 07:59 am
Today I got a message from my friend and former Make: colleague, Matt Stultz. Matt now works for Prusa Research, the award-winning Czech 3D printer company created by force-of-nature, Josef Prusa. Matt forwarded me this tweet from Josef:
And Matt writes:
We have converted over some of the equipment we use to make 3D Printers into the production of hand sanitizer for our employees and the office. Kind of an interesting sign of the times and a show of what a flexible company who cares can do.
As Josef's tweet links to, the WHO has instructions [PDF] on how to DIY brew hand-sanitizer in large batches. Of course, you need to make sure you know what you're doing and that you have the right concentrations of ingredients. Also, a humectant (moisturizer) must be in the formulation as a skin care agent. Glycerol is used for this purpose in the WHO recipe. As is all things: Attempt at your own risk and use common sense.
It goes without saying that hand sanitizer is no substitute for 20 seconds of washing with soap. But if you don't have access to soap and water, it beats doing nothing. Read the rest
By Boing Boing's Shop on Mar 12, 2020 10:00 pm
If numbers and data science are all just a big mystery to you, think of today’s data scientists as modern-day versions of the old California gold rush prospectors panning the water. They’d sift through virtual mountains of soil, gravel and loads of various river debris, all in search of the tiniest fleck of valuable gold material.
Data science is a similar pursuit, sifting through volumes of raw and processed data, seeking patterns and conclusions that can give you an edge. With the training found in The Dynamic Data Scientist Bundle ft. Power BI, Python, and MATLAB, you can learn the methods and tools to become a digital prospector, plucking extreme value from all that data chaos.
This seven-course, 33-hour collection spotlights some of the most important tactics for organizing and analyzing large data sets to find meaningful takeaways that can inform important decision making in business or scientific endeavors.
Applying structure to all that data is a key first step — and the Easy to Advanced Data Structures course will have students creating efficient algorithms to bring a workable form to all that information. Power BI Desktop: Data Analytics for Everyone introduces new users to Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (BI), a program that allows small businesses to use data analytics, modeling and more just like companies with big internal IT departments.
Python is one of the most versatile programming languages for data science, so a pair of courses — Data Visualization with Python for Beginners and Master Data Visualization with Python — get users familiar with Matplotlib, a Python-based program used to plot data to create visually compelling representations that drive home the meaning of all your numbers. Read the rest
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 09:41 pm
Stock investors who are reeling after today's disaster on Wall Street can take comfort in the fact that people hodling Bitcoin fared even worse. The price of a bitcoin dropped from $7900 to $4900 in less than a day.
Nearly $63 billion has been wiped from the markets as the total market capitalization of all crypto fell from $223 billion to $161 billion, with BTC falling more than 39 percent over the past 24 hours to levels not seen since April 2019.
Balances containing 100 or more bitcoin have fallen to their lowest point since Dec. 31, 2019 signaling a flight to cash as other supposed safe-haven assets like gold fell 3.5 percent.
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 09:15 pm
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that will allow the state to take over hotels to house coronavirus patients in case hospitals are overloaded.
Under the order, the California Health and Human Services Agency and the Office of Emergency Services will be able to execute agreements to commandeer hotels, or medical facilities that are not in use, to quarantine, isolate and treat COVID-19 patients or those with a high risk of exposure, the order states.
The order also allows trained laboratory personnel to perform COVID-19 tests, which are ordinarily completed only by microbiologists.
By Peter Sheridan on Mar 12, 2020 04:56 pm
In the face of a pandemic of facts, tabloid reporters appear to be self-quarantining to avoid all contact with reality.
By Gareth Branwyn on Mar 12, 2020 04:48 pm
Not enough money in the world.
View this post on Instagram
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 04:35 pm
Disneyland Park and California Adventures in Anaheim, California today said it will close on March 14 through at least the end of the month due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This is only the fourth time in Disneyland's history that park operations have been fully suspended.
No word on Walt Disney World in Florida yet.
The three previous times Disneyland Park closed were on 9/11, after the Northridge earthquake, and on a national day of mourning following the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy.
Disney stock fell 1.6% in late trading.
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 04:25 pm
Citing “the COVID-19 public health threat,” the NCAA is canceling March Madness and all other winter and spring men's and women's college basketball tournaments amid a growing coronavirus pandemic.
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 04:13 pm
NYC mayor: 95 confirmed coronavirus cases, 42 just since yesterday
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 04:07 pm
Dow's 4th-worst loss in history
By Boing Boing's Shop on Mar 12, 2020 04:00 pm
So to say upstarts like SlideHeap are fighting their way upstream is a colossal understatement. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a trip worth taking, because sometimes it takes a challenger like SlideHeap to challenge that dominance and raise the presentation game. You can check all that SlideHeap Slide Templates are bringing to the table right now at over 90 percent off for a professional plan at just $29.99.
SlideHeap wants to shave hours off the prep time you spend putting a digital presentation together with unlimited access to over 600 attractive, professional-grade infographics and other design elements that can be customized to just your specifications.
These templates all fit into 25 different categories, so whether you’re doing a sales pitch, an organizational breakdown, a SWOT analysis or just trying to impart the right information, SlideHeap gives you a full graphics set tailored to just your needs. In case you don’t have the artistic chops to craft your own stylistic flourishes of a particular graphic, SlideHeap still has you covered with more than 1,000 different icons, images and more to give every graphic just the right professional touch.
And once you’ve got those slides just the way you want them, you probably won’t have to think twice about how to present them either. Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 03:46 pm
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) won the California Democratic Primary, multiple news organizations are now projecting based on incoming results. Yes, it really did take this long to count all those California primary votes.
Of all 50 U.S. states, California is the one with the largest number of delegates.
Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden are scheduled to debate on Sunday, and the location of that debate was today changed to Washington, DC instead of Arizona because of the coronavirus outbreak.
It's possible that by Sunday, the event will be canceled altogether. The pandemic situation is worsening quickly.
Some observations and early news tweets, below.
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 03:38 pm
Schools throughout Italy are completely shut down, which is reportedly driving a surge in internet traffic as bored kids forced to stay indoors turn to online games.
With schools, shops and restaurants closed in an attempt to limit Europe’s worst coronavirus outbreak, the amount of data passing through Telecom Italia SpA’s national network has surged by more than two-thirds in the past two weeks, the company said.
A lot of that extra activity is due to online games such as ‘Fortnite’ and ‘Call of Duty,’ which can involve multiple players and take up more bandwidth than the business programs and conference call apps used by adults working from home.
Gaming traffic can spike even higher when the games are refreshed and millions of kids download the latest 25-gigabyte update at once.
“We reported an increase of more than 70% of Internet traffic over our landline network, with a big contribution from online gaming such as Fortnite,” Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer Luigi Gubitosi said Wednesday on a call with analysts.
“All the big players in the video conferencing market have asked for bandwidth upgrades in the last 10 days and some are asking for a fivefold increase,” said the VP of Sweden's Telia Carrier, which is also cited in the article as seeing a big uptick in internet use due to the pandemic.
“If no one is able to fly, they will need a huge amount of additional bandwidth.” Read the rest
By Rusty Blazenhoff on Mar 12, 2020 03:27 pm
Now you can drink your way directly to diabetes with a newly announced line of Hostess brand bottled iced lattes -- yes, that means they're flavored like snack cakes. Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Honey Bun, and Sno Balls to be exact.
Twinkies Iced Latte bottles up the magic of the classic golden sponge cake flavor combined with creamy notes. Ding Dongs Iced Latte is full of rich chocolate flavors with wonderful vanilla tones. Honey Bun Iced Latte has a delightful honey flavor, finished with hints of glazed icing. Sno Balls Iced Latte combines flavors of coconut and sweet chocolate cake.
"This partnership checks all the boxes in our continued efforts to innovate for our beloved core brands, as well as bring consumers more ways to enjoy our products," said Chad Lusk, Chief Marketing Officer, Hostess Brands. "Whether one's 2pm-slump antidote is a sweet snack or a coffee run, they no longer need to choose."
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 03:04 pm
If you want to be able to open and close your garage door from your phone, and receive alerts on your phone when the door is opened or closed, this Meross Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener is a good choice. It's about the size of a bar of soap, and attaches to terminals on your garage door motor. (It requires wi-fi reception in your garage, obviously!)
I paid full price for it in November but Amazon currently has it on double discount: a checkbox coupon on the product page and a promo code: ZLUINGM5. Read the rest
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 02:38 pm
I had this Old Maid deck when I was a kid. I liked the oversize cards and the Paul Coker Jr-esque illustrations, but I share Steve Banes dread of Thermo Thelma, who "is looking at me with that over-sized rectal thermometer in her cruel clutches!" Read the rest
By David Pescovitz on Mar 12, 2020 02:17 pm
Ad agency Ogilvy Hong Kong teamed up with Ikea and Pizza Hut to create a life-size table, the Säva, that looks just like the little plastic "tables" inside pizza boxes. (Those little tables are officially called " pizza savers.") From Hypebeast:
Each table arrives in a humorous package that resembles a pizza box and, like other products, comes with details on how to assemble the product. IKEA illustrates a step-by-step process on unpacking the different parts, assembling the legs, calling Pizza Hut, receiving the pizza and placing it on the perfectly-sized table.
Read the rest
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 02:14 pm
This lengthy New York Times piece by Jon Mooallem is subtitled, "The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 surprised everyone by showing that natural disasters can bring out more kindness than selfishness." The piece is worth reading just for the stunning photos of the devastation that occurred in Anchorage on the evening of March 27, 1964 when the state was struck by "the most powerful earthquake in American history, and the second most powerful ever measured in the world."
Mooallem's piece packs a powerful punch, too. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Alaskans were sharing and cooperative, and it turns out that unselfish behavior during a disaster is the rule rather than the exception:
In the 56 years since the Great Alaska Earthquake, an entire field of sociology, disaster studies, blossomed around the Disaster Research Center, with sociologists parachuting into scores of other communities after natural disasters around the world, and it’s stunning to look back and recognize how much of the resilience, levelheadedness, kindness and cooperation those sociologists saw in Anchorage turned out to be characteristic of disasters everywhere.
The one thing that interferes with the tendency towards altruism in a disaster is something scholars call "elite panic."
Many of our ugliest assumptions about human behavior have been refuted by their observations of how actual humans behave — though we seem tragically slow to shed those old myths. (In some cases, disaster studies teaches us, those in power are so overcome with worry about mass panic and looting that they overreact and clamp down on a public that isn’t actually panicked at all.
Read the rest
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 12, 2020 01:51 pm
By David Pescovitz on Mar 12, 2020 01:44 pm
@gloriagaynor
♬ I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
Disco diva Gloria Gaynor picked her own 1978 jam for 20 seconds of handwashing. (And you are correct, the video doesn't show the full 20 seconds.)
Oh no, not I, I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And I've got all my love to give and I'll survive
I will survive, hey, hey
Read the rest
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 12, 2020 01:39 pm
This is the way to get a Baby Yoda minifig.
Baby Yoda!
By David Pescovitz on Mar 12, 2020 01:32 pm
My only complaint about Pixar's new film Soul is that is doesn't come out until June 19. Here's the description:
Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions.
Featuring the voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Daveed Diggs, “Soul” is directed by Academy Award winner Pete Docter (“Inside Out,” “Up”), co-directed by Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”) and produced by Academy Award nominee Dana Murray (Pixar short “Lou”). Globally renowned musician Jon Batiste will be writing original jazz music for the film, and Oscar-winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“The Social Network”), from Nine Inch Nails, will compose an original score that will drift between the real and soul worlds.
Read the rest
By David Pescovitz on Mar 12, 2020 01:14 pm
Danish company UVD Robots developed autonomous mobile robots outfitted with powerful ultraviolet lights that destroy microbes. The robots roam hospitals pausing at pre-determine points to fire up their disinfecting beams. According to UVD, they've shipped hundreds of robots to China in recent weeks as they rush to meet the demand from more than 2,000 medical facilities in that country alone. From Evan Ackerman's story in IEEE Spectrum:
...Each robot is a mobile array of powerful short wavelength ultraviolet-C (UVC) lights that emit enough energy to literally shred the DNA or RNA of any microorganisms that have the misfortune of being exposed to them....
It takes between 10 and 15 minutes to disinfect a typical room, with the robot spending 1 or 2 minutes in five or six different positions around the room to maximize the number of surfaces that it disinfects. The robot’s UV array emits 20 joules per square meter per second (at 1 meter distance) of 254-nanometer light, which will utterly wreck 99.99 percent of germs in just a few minutes without the robot having to do anything more complicated than just sit there. The process is more consistent than a human cleaning since the robot follows the same path each time, and its autonomy means that human staff can be freed up to do more interesting tasks, like interacting with patients....
Hundreds of these robots are at work in more than 40 countries, and they’ve recently completed hospital trials in Florida. Over the next few weeks, they’ll be tested at other medical facilities around the United States, and Nielsen points out that they could be useful in schools, cruise ships, or any other relatively structured spaces.
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 12:48 pm
Said Donald John Trump just now to reporters, on the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic:
"We need a little separation until such time as this goes away. It's gonna go away. It's gonna go away."
The full dump of word salad:
"We need a little separation until such time as this goes away. It's gonna go away, it's gonna go away. I was watching Scott, I was watching Scott this morning, and he was saying within 2 months. But in the meantime, we want to lose as few people as possible, so important"
We are so screwed.
By David Pescovitz on Mar 12, 2020 12:46 pm
The Misfits' Glenn Danzig will finally release his long-awaited album of Elvis covers on April 17. In celebration, the horror punk pioneer has also announced two intimate (and expensive) live performances of the material in San Francisco (4/17) and Los Angeles (4/22).
Above, Danzig's take on Elvis's “Let Yourself Go” from his 2015 covers album Skeletons.
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 12:38 pm
Clearview AI said its facial recognition tool was only for law enforcement, but Buzzfeed News reports they gave accounts to former Trump staffer Jason Miller, as well as various Republican political operatives and a figure known to be a Holocaust denier.
CEO Hoan Ton-That denies Buzzfeed's reporting, which shows access was provided to political connections, potential investors, and entities designated as “Friend.”
A BuzzFeed News review of the publicly available code for Clearview’s web app found that the company had created a list of “company type” designations — including “Government,” “Bank,” and “Investor” — for entities that had access to its tool. Among those 12 labels was one for “Friend.” A security researcher on Twitter also discovered the same label in an independent review of the code.
On a list of more than 2,200 entities seen by BuzzFeed News, Clearview apparently designated the “company type” of a handful of organizations as “Friend.” Among them was SHW Partners LLC, a company founded by Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign senior communications official and one-time nominee for White House communications director.
Miller, who cohosts a podcast with Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, declined to comment on Clearview or why his firm was listed as having access to the company’s facial recognition software. Clearview’s records show that an account tied to SHW had run nearly 20 searches, some as recently as October.
BuzzFeed News previously revealed that Clearview’s data listed the offices of four Republican members of Congress — including Rep.
Read the rest
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 12:29 pm
Rudy Gobert, who plays for Utah Jazz, tested positive for COVID-19. This is sad news, made worse by the fact that two days before his diagnosis, he was filed intentionally touching reporters' microphones after an interview.
While meeting in an interview room, instead of a locker room, as part of the league’s response to the outbreak, Gobert, 27, made a point to touch reporters’ microphones and recorders in an exaggerated manner during a pregame interview on Monday, seemingly a joke at the league’s cautiousness.
In a video that surfaced on social media, Gobert can be seen getting up from his seat after an interview. As he begins to leave the room, the athlete turns around to wipe his hands on the mouthpiece of several microphones attached to a podium before leaving the room.
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 12:20 pm
On the left, a tethered robot from 2009 hobbles on a treadmill. On the right, an untethered 2019 version agiley bounds over a pyramid of crates.
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm
Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau is self-isolating at home after his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau began displaying flu-like symptoms, and took a test for coronavirus.
They are awaiting results from COVID-19 tests, which are free in Canada, and widely available, unlike the United States.
Here is the official statement from the government of Canada [ via].
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 12, 2020 12:02 pm
“There’s normally a lot of tourists here to feed the monkeys but now there are not as many, because of the coronavirus,” a person in Lopburi, Thailand told a News Parliament reporter. As a results hundreds of the ravenous animals are "terrorising" the city "in search of food."
From the article:
Even locals who’re used to the animals’ behaviour appear stunned through their ferocity.
Onlooker Sasaluk Rattanachai, who captured the scene from out of doors a store the place she works, mentioned: ”They seemed extra like wild canines than monkeys.
“They went loopy for the one piece of food. I’ve by no means noticed them this competitive.
”I believe the monkeys had been very, very hungry.
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