Popcorn Time, the highly popular and extremely-easy-to-use "Netflix for piracy" service, came back Tuesday after a years-long hiatus. The move comes as people around the world are quarantined or being asked to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Motherboard reports: Popcorn Time allows people to stream movies using BitTorrent, without actually downloading the movies or worrying about finding a tracker to use. Essentially, it removes any torrenting learning curve, allowing people to (illegally) stream movies and television shows from an easy-to-use app. Because it's so simple to use, Popcorn Time became instantly popular upon its release in 2014 and was immediately targeted by the movie industry. The service was shut down multiple times by court order, police raids, and IP blocks all over the world between 2014 and now; the open source app was forked several times and has worked intermittently, but has been largely offline over the last few years. Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Charter Communications engineer called the company's rules against working from home during the coronavirus pandemic "pointlessly reckless" and "socially irresponsible" before subsequently resigning instead of continuing to work in the office, according to a TechCrunch article published yesterday. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge last week told employees in a memo to keep coming to the office even if their jobs can be performed from home, because people "are more effective from the office." Employees should only stay home if they "are sick, or caring for someone who is sick," Rutledge wrote. Nick Wheeler, a video operations engineer for Charter in Denver, sent an email expressing his displeasure with the policy to a senior vice president and "hundreds of engineers on Friday," TechCrunch wrote. The email said: "I do not understand why we are still coming into the office as the COVID-19 pandemic surges around us. The CDC guidelines are clear. The CDPHE [Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment] guidelines are clear. The WHO guidelines are clear. The science of social distancing is real. We have the complete ability to do our jobs entirely from home. Coming into the office now is pointlessly reckless. It's also socially irresponsible. Charter, like the rest of us, should do what is necessary to help reduce the spread of coronavirus. Social distancing has a real slowing effect on the virus -- that means lives can be saved. A hazard condition isn't acceptable for the infrastructure beyond the short-term. Why is it acceptable for our health?" Within hours of sending the email, Wheeler was out of a job. "Wheeler said he was given an ultimatum," reports TechCrunch. "Either he could work from the office or take sick leave. Staff are not allowed to work from home, he was told. Wheeler offered his resignation, but was sent home instead and asked to think about his decision until Monday. Later in the day, he received a call from work. Charter accepted his resignation, effective immediately."

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The U.S. government is in active talks with Facebook, Google and a wide array of tech companies and health experts about how they can use location data gleaned from Americans' phones to combat the novel coronavirus, including tracking whether people are keeping one another at safe distances to stem the outbreak. From a report: Public-health experts are interested in the possibility that private-sector companies could compile the data in anonymous, aggregated form, which they could then use to map the spread of the infection, according to three people familiar with the effort, who requested anonymity because the project is in its early stages. Analyzing trends in smartphone owners' whereabouts could prove to be a powerful tool for health authorities looking to track coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 people globally. But it's also an approach that could leave some Americans uncomfortable, depending on how it's implemented, given the sensitivity when it comes to details about their daily whereabouts.

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India could become the next global hotspot for virus cases, with experts warning containment measures that proved successful elsewhere in Asia may not work in the world's second-most populous country. From a report: The South Asian nation, which has so far reported 137 infections and three deaths, is trying to contain the virus by closing its borders, testing incoming travelers and contact tracing from those who tested positive. On Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research announced it was ramping up the country's testing capacity to 8,000 samples a day from the current 500. Its director general Balram Bhargava maintained there was "no evidence" of the transmission of the virus in the community. But some experts in the nation of 1.3 billion people say that won't be enough to contain the spread. Other measures like widespread testing and social distancing may be infeasible in cities with a high population density and rickety health infrastructure. While growth in total numbers has been slow until now, "the number will be 10 times higher" by April 15, said Dr. T. Jacob John, the former head of the Indian Council for Medical Research's Centre for Advanced Research in Virology, a government-funded institution. "They are not understanding that this is an avalanche," said John, who was also chairman of the Indian Government Expert Advisory Group on Polio Eradication and chief of the National HIV/AIDS Reference Centre at the Christian Medical College in Vellore. "As every week passes, the avalanche is growing bigger and bigger." So far India has been relatively unscathed by the virus compared with other countries in Asia.

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Cambridge scientists say they are working "as hard and as fast as we possibly can" to find a vaccine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Tuesday that European Union member nations will close EU's external borders for 30 days to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. CNBC reports: Movement of people within European Union member nations will be still be allowed under the restrictions. "The union and its member states will do whatever it takes," said European Council President Charles Michel. Michel said the EU will arrange for the repatriation of citizens of member countries. Breaking...

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Google Translate today launched Transcribe for Android, a feature that delivers a continual, real-time translation of a conversation. From a report: Transcribe will begin by rolling out support for 8 languages in the coming days: English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai. With Transcribe, Translate is now capable of translating classroom or conference lectures with no time limits, whereas before speech-to-text AI in Translate lasted no longer than a word, phrase, or sentence. Google plans to bring Transcribe to iOS devices at an unspecified date in the future. Transcribe users can change the size of text that appears on screen for real-time translations or pause or resume a translation at any time. This is the latest real-time speech-to-text AI from Google. News today follows the announcement that Google Assistant now has the ability to read or translate 43 languages from a website with simple voice commands. Both the text-reading feature for Google Assistant and Transcribe for Translate were first previewed by Google in January.

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Anthony Fauci is a master of communication and math.

New York City and Seattle should lock down now.

Airlines and cruise ships should be allowed to die.

Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how rapidly false claims are spreading -- and how often it is happening beyond the familiar misinformation vehicles of Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The false texts spread so widely that on Sunday night the White House's National Security Council, fearing the texts were an attempt to spook the stock market as it opened Monday, decided to directly debunk the misleading claims in a Twitter post: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown." But by then the messages already had spread widely, as had similar ones both in the United States and Europe in recent days. Text messages, encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and some social media platforms have carried similarly alarming misinformation, much of it with the apparent goal of spurring people to overrun stores to buy basic items ahead of a new wave of government restrictions. The one claiming that Trump was going to impose a national quarantine included the advice: "Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network." In fact, authorities have warned against aggressive buying that could disrupt supply chains and fuel panic. Trump addressed the misleading text messages at an afternoon news conference Monday, saying, "It could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games." On the possibility of a national quarantine, Trump said: "We haven't determined to do that at all. ... Hopefully we won't have to."

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Chart of symptons of Covid19, cold and flu.

I met a driver for a big delivery company that does a lot of work for Amazon. He said they can't get gloves or hand cleaners. They know the boxes carry the virus for up to a day. Can't get time off to take care of the kids, so the grandmother is. The union is involved. Sounds like the whole thing is about to be shut down, which of course should not be allowed to happen. We need direct-to-home delivery. It's hugely important. If we had a government this would be high on the priority list.

CBC Radio: How a chance meeting between a software developer and a longtime NPR host led to podcasting as we know it today.

Highly recommend today's Daily podcast -- an interview with a doctor in Bergamo, Italy. They give an idea of where our hospitals will be in two weeks if we don't lock down immediately. It should be a country-wide thing now. Every day we delay makes it that much worse.