Draconi writes: The price of Bitcoin dropped from it's March 6th, 2020 high of $9,126 to under $5,800 today as market sell-offs accelerated with the S&P and Dow Jones dropping 7% in early hours trading. Bitcoin, long considered to be a safe-haven during times of economic stress, currently costs at least $4,313 in electricity per coin to generate. The latest drop has wiped out all 2020 gains for Bitcoin and sent a ripple effect across other cryptocurrencies, with Ethereum down nearly 35%. While the bitcoin price has recovered slightly to around $6,000, the 24-hour low was $5,721 per bitcoin from just under $8,000 yesterday. Forbes notes that the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market as a whole "is now down a staggering $100 billion in the last seven days -- and has wiped out its year-to-date gains after starting the year at around $7,000 per bitcoin." "Previously seen as a possible safe haven in difficult times, investors now seem to be selling out to take back liquidity in case the coronavirus spreads even further," said Simon Peters, analyst and crypto expert at multi-asset investment platform, eToro. Bitcoin's crash was also a result of oil cartel Opec's failure to agree to a supply cut last weekend, sending the oil price to historic lows.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Following D-Wave's announcement of Leap 2, a new version of its quantum cloud service for building and deploying quantum computing applications, VentureBeat had the opportunity to sit down with Murray Thom, D-Wave's VP of software and cloud services. We naturally talked about Leap 2, including the improvements the company hopes it will bring for businesses and developers. But we also discussed the business applications D-Wave has already seen to date. Thom explained that D-Wave has seen success particularly with optimization and machine learning use cases. And he has the data to back it up: D-Wave's customer applications are about 50% optimization, 20% AI and ML, 10% materials science, and 20% other. Thom believes quantum computing and machine learning are "extremely well matched. The features the technology has and the needs of the field are very close." "It's something I think is going to be a very productive use of the technology in the future because there's so many aspects of what the quantum computers can do in terms of the probabilistic sampling," Thom continued. "For optimization, the probabilistic sampling is like 'oh, I can do robust optimization with that.' But for machine learning it's essential for what you need to do. It's very hard to reproduce that with a classical computer and you get it natively from the quantum computer. So those features can't be accidental. It's just that it's going to take time for the community to find the right methods for incorporating it and then for the technology to insert into that space productively."

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China's National Health Commission said on Thursday that the country has passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic and that the number of new cases is declining. The officials noted that medical treatment work will remain the top priority and that work to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus will continue. From a report: The coronavirus outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, in December 2019. China has dealt with more than 80,900 cases, 3,100 deaths and more than 63,000 recoveries, according to DXY.cn, which compiles data from the National Health Commission and regional government sources. Reuters noted that Chinese authorities recorded eight new infections in Hubei, which marks the first time since the outbreak that the province recorded a daily tally of fewer than 10. As the number of new infections fall, Hubei will lift certain travel restrictions and will allow some industries to resume production. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said in other countries. The outbreak has spread across the globe with more than 134,000 infections and more than 4,900 deaths, causing the World Health Organization on Wednesday to declare the outbreak a pandemic.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast mistakenly published the names, phone numbers, and addresses of nearly 200,000 customers who paid monthly fees to make their numbers unlisted. The names and numbers were made available on Ecolisting, a directory run by Comcast, and picked up by third-party directories. After discovering the mistake, Comcast shut Ecolisting down, gave $100 credits to affected customers, and advised them that they can change their phone numbers at no charge. This is similar to a mistake in the early 2010s that resulted in Comcast paying a $33 million settlement in 2015. The Denver Post reported last week: "For years, customers have had the ability to pay a small sum per month to ensure their phone numbers and personal information remain off of telephone and online directories. But in January and February, thousands of people across the country received letters from Xfinity telling them the company had inadvertently published personal information on Comcast's online directory, Ecolisting.com. The issue affected 2 percent of Comcast's 9.9 million voice customers, the company said." In a statement to Ars, Comcast said, "We have corrected this issue for our identified customers, apologized to them for this error, and given them an additional $100 credit. We are working with our customers directly to address this issue and help make it right, and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again." Comcast also warned that "this information could be available on online directories or through other public sources that Comcast does not control." If that's the case, the company advises contacting those online directories directly and/or changing your Xfinity Voice telephone number.

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People who think they're humane, even liberal or progressive, think they have big hearts, treat people like statistics. Maybe part of the good of this virus is wakes people up that we're all human, mortal, frail.

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government's response to the contagion, Reuters is reporting, citing four Trump administration officials. From the report: The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus. Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said. "We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go," one official said. "These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary." The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification. "This came directly from the White House," one official said.

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I have a new slogan.

Must be spoken with a Southern accent.

• I'm a washin my hands.
• I'm a hand-washin man.

This is what it sounds like.

They said RuPaul is in the B-52s Love Shack video. I used to ski to that song in Park City. Really brings back memories.

Another great podcast. Fresh Air interview with RuPaul.

Microsoft today released a patch for a vulnerability in the SMBv3 protocol that accidentally leaked online earlier this week during the March 2020 Patch Tuesday preamble. From a report: The fix is available as KB4551762, an update for Windows 10, versions 1903 and 1909, and Windows Server 2019, versions 1903 and 1909. The update fixes CVE-2020-0796, a vulnerability in Server Message Block, a protocol for sharing files, printers, and other resources on local networks and the Internet. The bug allows attackers to connect to remote systems where the SMB service is enabled and run malicious code with SYSTEM privileges, allowing for remote takeovers of vulnerable systems. Earlier this week, due to what looks like a miscommunication between Microsoft and some antivirus vendors, details about this bug leaked online.

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An easy feel-good thing for Trump to announce last night. The government is giving Purell $1 billion to make as much hand sanitizer as they can. One bottle per person. A little thing, but man it would make people happy.

I'm keeping the list of What Should Close updated.

I had to drive to the car dealer today to pick up my car. Along the way, I had many opportunities to pick up the virus. First was when I crossed the Rhinecliff Bridge and had to stop to pay a toll. The toll booth operator had gloves on. I gave her six quarters and before continuing, I wiped the hand that touched hers. Her glove was accumulating all the viruses on everyone's hands who paid the toll. At the dealer, I had to sign a form to get my car back. They gave me a pen to use. I had no idea who else had used the pen. They did have hand sanitizer on the desk. I used it. Also thought about stealing it, but didn't. When I got my car, I rubbed down the steering wheel with sanitizer. Forgot to wipe the gear shift or the controls for the heating system, until after I touched them. On the way back I got a car wash. Paid the attendant $12 in cash, and he gave me change, again in cash. I thought about all the people who had touched the bills, including the attendant.

The tragedy of America's non-response to the virus is explained in today's Daily podcast. If you want to know the truth and what we should be demanding of our government, this is a must-listen.

IBM is taking Airbnb to court over what it claims is the illegal use of four patents -- the latest in a string of suits against online companies involving historic and arguably broad innovations -- in a move that threatens to cast a shadow over the short-term rental company's road to a proposed IPO. From a report: The computing giant has accused Airbnb of "building its business" by using patents relating to functions such as "presenting advertising in an interactive service" and "improved navigation using bookmarks." "After almost six years of unsuccessful discussions with Airbnb to reach a fair and reasonable patent licence agreement, we had no alternative but to file legal action to protect our intellectual property rights," IBM said. "Airbnb has chosen to ignore our patents and use our technology without compensation."

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