The fight to contain the coronavirus entered an alarming new phase on Thursday as caseloads soared in Europe and the Middle East, and health officials in the United States and Germany dealt with patients with no known connection to others with the infection. From a report: The German and American cases raised the possibility that the virus could have begun to spread locally, or that infected people had spread it to others sequentially, making it virtually impossible to trace and isolate the origins. Either way, the cases, thousands of miles apart, underscored how quickly the virus was making its way around the globe after emerging in China. Japan's government closed all schools through March in an effort to combat the outbreak. Iran canceled Friday Prayers in major cities, a cornerstone ritual of the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia barred pilgrims from visiting Mecca and Medina. President Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would lead the American effort to combat the virus, but the administration continued to send mixed messages. Public health officials warned of potentially "major disruptions," while Mr. Trump blamed Democrats and cable news channels for overstating the threat. Financial markets continued their weeklong declines. In the Middle East, concerns built about the growing severity of the outbreak in Iran, the source of infections in many other countries. The government said on Thursday that 245 people had been infected and 26 had died, but experts say there are probably many more cases. Several countries registered new infections that illustrated the diverse ways the pathogen could cross borders.

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Facebook filed today a federal lawsuit in a California court against OneAudience, a New Jersey-based data analytics firm. From a report: The social networking giant claims that OneAudience paid app developers to install its Software Development Kit (SDK) in their apps, and later used the control it had over the SDK's code to harvest data on Facebook users. According to court documents obtained by ZDNet, the SDK was embedded in shopping, gaming, and utility-type apps, some of which were made available through the official Google Play Store. "After a user installed one of these apps on their device, the malicious SDK enabled OneAudience to collect information about the user from their device and their Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts, in instances where the user logged into the app using those accounts," the complaint reads. "With respect to Facebook, OneAudience used the malicious SDK -- without authorization from Facebook -- to access and obtain a user's name, email address, locale (i.e. the country that the user logged in from), time zone, Facebook ID, and, in limited instances, gender," Facebook said. Twitter was the first to expose OneAudience's secret data harvesting practices on November 26, last year.

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Weeks after Uber exited India's food delivery market, conceding defeat to local giants Swiggy and Zomato, a new player is gearing up to challenge the heavily-backed duopoly: Amazon. From a report: The e-commerce giant plans to enter the Indian food delivery market in the coming weeks, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The launch of the service, which would be offered as part of either Amazon's Prime Now or Amazon Fresh platform, could happen as soon as next month, we are told. In the run up to the launch, the e-commerce giant has been testing its food delivery service with select restaurant partners in Bangalore, the source said, requesting anonymity as details of the new business are still private.

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Facebook has canceled the in-person portion of F8, the company's annual developer conference, due to coronavirus concerns. F8 was originally scheduled to take place on May 5th and May 6th later this year. From a report: Instead, Facebook says that it will replace the main F8 conference with "locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, Forbes published an article titled "'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' Needs to Respect Its Players and Add an Easy Mode." In the piece, Dave Thier, the author, argues that the title's egregiously high difficulty settings detract from the superb world and character design. "The difficulty is only one part of what defines these games for me, and honestly, it's not the most important part," wrote Thier. Easier difficulty settings would allow those with physical or cognitive limitations -- or just limited time to play games -- the opportunity to experience the studio's artistic vision. It was the latest salvo in a debate that has taken on a culture war-level valence among players online, a debate that has been litigated and re-litigated to no apparent end. Fans of the series, angered by the article, argued that not all games are meant for disabled players. Futzing with difficulty settings, they said, tampers with the creative intent of a game, especially in genres where a game's key selling point may be its difficulty (as is the case with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice). But the recent efforts of accessibility consultants and developers to create inclusive products tell a different story. Unbeknown to many, accessibility consultants have been pushing for an accessible industry for years. From menus containing a plethora of options, including the ability to customize controls and adjust subtitle size, to disabled inclusion within the workspace and gaming community, the often-hidden efforts of accessibility consultants are beginning to become standard practice within the industry.

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I think it would be awesome if, out of a brokered convention, Nancy Pelosi leads us to victory in the fall.

Amazon Prime has devastated traditional retail. Walmart is about to fight back. From a report: When Amazon launched a funky membership program called Amazon Prime in 2005, Walmart boasted larger profits than Amazon had revenue. Fifteen years later, though, Prime is the key reason for Amazon's dominance over Walmart in online sales. That pressure has pushed the traditional retailer to burn tens of billions of dollars to fight back while its executives have cycled through various stages of reaction to Prime's ascent: denial, followed by meek competition, followed by a reversal that seemed to signal Walmart wanted to stick to a free, no-membership strategy. But Recode has learned that over the past 18 months, the world's largest brick-and-mortar retailer has explored creating its own paid membership program that would include perks that Amazon can't replicate, in part to avoid a direct comparison to Prime. Amazon now accounts for nearly 40 percent of all online retail sales in the US, according to eMarketer, and Prime is a huge reason why. Walmart is a distant No. 2 with only a little more than 5 percent of the US e-commerce market. As soon as next month, Walmart plans to start publicly testing a membership program called Walmart+, according to sources. The program is expected to essentially launch as a rebrand of Walmart's existing Delivery Unlimited service, which charges customers $98 a year for unlimited, same-day delivery of fresh groceries from one of the 1,600-plus Walmart stores in the US where the program is available. The company is also considering launching Walmart+ with a feature that would allow customers to use text messaging to place orders. Sources said that the amount of the Walmart+ fee could still change or the company might test multiple price points.

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Suppose the delegate count going into the convention is roughly as shown to the right. Sanders has a plurality, but not a majority. Most voters chose someone other than Sanders. No one can "steal" the nomination. He doesn't own it.

The numbers with Sanders having a plurality.

I wonder how much people outside of NYC understand how much power the unions have. The mayor comes and goes, but NYPD is a constant. That's how they look at it.

The Chang'e-4 mission, the first to land on the lunar far side, is demonstrating the promise and peril of using ground-penetrating radar in planetary science. From a report: China's robotic Chang'e-4 spacecraft did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon's far side, and Yutu-2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover's instruments, a ground-penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, a team of Chinese and Italian researchers showed that the top layer of the lunar soil on that part of the moon is considerably thicker than some expected -- about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith. "It's a fine, dusty, sandy environment," said Elena Pettinelli, a professor of mathematics and physics at Rome Tre University who was one of the authors of the paper. Based on what NASA astronauts observed during the Apollo moon landings, other scientists said they would have expected one-quarter as much soil. "That's a lot of regolith," said David A. Kring, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston who is not involved with the Chinese moon mission. "That's food for thought." Chang'e-4 landed just over a year ago inside Von Karman crater, a 110-mile-wide depression, and continues to explore a part of the moon that has not been seen up close before.

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It seems Sanders will rule MSNBC the way Trump rules Fox; if so -- I'm going to CNN, which I did last night. It was a good choice because I got to see the Bloomberg town hall, which was excellent. If he's not really a sweet smart guy, then he's a great actor who plays one, and I don't think he's an actor. If you get a chance, watch it, if for no other reason just to observe how bad the debate format is about informing our choices.

He was a good mayor in NYC, I didn't imagine it. He actually got stuff done, where most NYC mayors tread water and are quickly hated.

In all his recent public demos, the debates and the town hall, Bloomberg misses obvious opportunities most politicians wouldn't miss. When someone greets you with a smile, smile back and when their question is done, no matter how pointed, say "That's a really good question." Bloomberg doesn't. These are easy things to learn, and they go a long way toward being likable, trusted, and perceived as authentic. Yes, it matters that a leader know the niceties of meeting the public he leads.

In the final question of the debate they asked a softball question that he muffed. What's the biggest misperception about you? A good answer: "I'm a liberal, and yes I'm very rich, but I put my money behind our ideas. I am dedicated to doing good. It's a luxury I have because I'm so rich, but I am trying to help, and it's working."

On the other hand, in last night's town hall, he was open and vulnerable, explained himself, and I got the feeling over and over, this is my ideal of a president. I don't want someone who blows smoke and points fingers, I want someone who works at making things better, and protects us, listens and is open-minded. He has done all that both in his civic and private life, and he's made mistakes which have been pointed out, and unlike many leaders, esp the current president, and other candidates, he admits when he was wrong.

PS: I haven't been able to find a video of the full town hall. If you find it, please send it to me on Twitter or via email.

If MSNBC is going to be all-in for Sanders the way Fox is for Trump, then I'm going to watch CNN.

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: The Raspberry Pi line has provided great little Linux computers to nerds -- its low price and small size makes it ideal for tinkering and doing projects. But also, the device has proven to be a solid media device, wonderful for watching videos and emulating classic video games. In other words, it has been a very versatile computer, serving as many things to many people. With the release of the Raspberry Pi 4, however, it finally became powerful enough to serve as a true desktop computer. By installing a Linux distribution, some people can use it for day-to-day computer use, such as web browsing, playing media, and word processing. Unfortunately, the $35 base model came with a paltry 1GB of RAM. Today, this changes, as the company has dropped the price of the 2GB version to $35, effectively doubling the memory for the base model.

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This song is rolling around in me this morning. Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

Nokia Oyj is exploring strategic options as fierce competition puts pressure on the Finnish network equipment maker's earnings, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The company is working with advisers to consider alternatives ranging from potential asset sales to mergers, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Other options include shifting investments and making balance-sheet adjustments, one of them said. Deliberations are ongoing, and there's no certainty they will lead to any transactions, the people said. Nokia shares have lost roughly a third of their value over the past year before news of its deliberations.

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