With medical supplies strained by the coronavirus outbreak, health care professionals and technologists are coming together online to crowdsource repairs and supplies of critical hospital equipment. From a report: Doctors, hospital technicians and 3D-printing specialists are also using Google Docs, WhatsApp groups and online databases to trade tips for building, fixing and modifying machines like ventilators to help treat the rising number of patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The efforts come as supply shortages loom in one of the biggest challenges for health care systems around the world. "We have millions of health care workers around this country who are prepared to do battle against this virus, but I am concerned there are a couple of areas of supplies they need to fight that virus as effectively as possible," Dr. Peter Slavin, president of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told NBC News, noting that protective equipment, including surgical masks and eye protection, was in particularly short supply. "We wouldn't want to send soldiers to war without helmets and armor," he said. "We don't want to do the same with our health care workers." The American Hospital Association says COVID-19 could require the hospitalization of 4.8 million patients, 960,000 of whom would need ventilators. As the demand for the equipment surges, making timely repairs will be critical to saving lives. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Friday that the city could run out of basic medical supplies in as little as two weeks. 3D printing, a relatively new and niche technology that can create everything from houses to tiny and complex structures from raw materials, has remained mostly on the fringes of the manufacturing and health care sectors. But the coronavirus has suddenly made it a crucial resource. On Thursday, Slavin called on people with 3D printers to help make protective masks for hospital staff.

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced strict measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. He says a "huge national effort" has been needed to halt the spread, adding: "there will come a moment when no health service in the world could possibly cope because there won't be enough ventilators, enough intensive care beds, enough doctors and nurses." Non-essential businesses will be closed and citizens are being ordered to stay in their homes. They can only leave for the following "very limited purposes": shopping for basic necessities; one form of exercise a day alone or with members of your household; any medical need, to provide care or to help a vulnerable person; and/or traveling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home. "That's all -- these are the only reasons you should leave your home," says Johnson. "You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say No. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine -- and you should do this as little as you can. And use food delivery services where you can." The police will be able to take action through fines and dispersing gatherings. The lockdown restrictions will be looked at again in three weeks to determine if they'll be relaxed or not. You can read the full text of Boris Johnson's address to the nation here.

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In cities across the United States, traffic on roads and highways has fallen dramatically over the past week as the coronavirus outbreak forces people to stay at home and everyday life grinds to a halt. Pollution has dropped too. From a report: A satellite that detects emissions in the atmosphere linked to cars and trucks shows huge declines in pollution over major metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Atlanta. In Los Angeles, as businesses and schools have closed this month and drivers have stayed off the roads, air pollution has declined and traffic jams have all but vanished. Preliminary data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-5P satellite show that atmospheric levels of nitrogen dioxide, which are influenced in large part by car and truck emissions, were considerably lower over Los Angeles in the first two weeks of March compared to the same period last year. Air pollution from vehicles has likewise plummeted in the Seattle area, which had one of the earliest recognized coronavirus outbreaks in the country. Traffic patterns there changed drastically before most other cities. [...] In New York City, residents are less dependent on car travel than in other metro areas, but vehicle traffic has still seen a steep drop-off in recent days as office buildings, schools and restaurants have shut down. On Wednesday afternoon, rush-hour traffic moved 36 percent faster than normal as the roads cleared out, according to data from INRIX.

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A chimpanzee using Instagram.

I have a rule. No online debates. Here's a reason why. Even with friends there could be a basic disconnect early in the discussion. If it's done in voice, you can hear that. In text you might not hear it until you've gone back four or five times. Feelings get hurt.

It might not show much of a family resemblance but fossil hunters say a newly discovered creature, that looks like a teardrop-shaped jellybean and is about half the size of a grain of rice, is an early relative of humans and a vast array of other animals. From a report: The team discovered the fossils in rocks in the outback of South Australia that are thought to be at least 555 million years old. The researchers say the diminutive creatures are one of the earliest examples of a bilateral organism -- animals with features including a front and a back, a plane of symmetry that results in a left and a right side, and often a gut that opens at each end. Humans, pigs, spiders and butterflies are all bilaterians, but creatures such as jellyfish are not. Dr Scott Evans, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and a co-author of the research, said: "The major finding of the paper is that this is possibly the oldest bilaterian yet recognised in the fossil record. "Because humans are bilaterians, we can say that this was a very early relative and possibly one of the first on the diverse bilaterian tree of life." Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scott and colleagues in the US and Australia report how they made their discovery in sandstone at sites including fossil-rich Nilpena. They say careful analysis ruled out the possibility that the fossils were actually formed by the action of currents or from microbial mats. The animal has been named Ikaria wariootia in reference to an Indigenous term for Wilpena Pound, a nearby landmark, and the Warioota Creek that is close to the sites of the find.

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On 11 April 1970, the Lovells watched their husband and father blast off on an ill-fated mission to the Moon.

An anonymous reader writes: If you are a cryptocurrency enthusiast living in a brutal dictatorship, and you use cryptocurrency as a way to evade the restrictions and bad economic policies of that dictatorship, and one day the brutal dictator comes to you and asks you to design a cryptocurrency for him, do you think that designing that cryptocurrency for him will usher in a new era of freedom and wise economic policies? Or, you know, not? The answer is "not," of course, but I appreciated the naive idealism of Gabriel Jimenez, the designer of Venezuela's Petro cryptocurrency, in this story by Nathaniel Popper and Ana Vanessa Herrero. From the report: Mr. Jimenez was just 27, ran a tiny start-up, and had spent years protesting the dictator. Mr. Maduro had not just mismanaged his country into financial crisis -- he had detained, tortured and murdered those who challenged his power. But whatever Mr. Jimenez felt about the regime, he felt just as strongly about the potential of cryptocurrency. When the Maduro administration approached him about creating a digital coin, Mr. Jimenez saw an opportunity to change his country from within. If a national cryptocurrency was done right, Mr. Jimenez believed, he could give the government what it wanted -- a way to fight hyperinflation -- while also stealthily introducing technology that would give Venezuelans a measure of freedom from a government that dictated every detail of daily life. His friends and family warned him that working with the regime could only end badly. It ended badly.

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Microsoft says attackers are exploiting a previously undisclosed security vulnerability found in all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 10. From a report: But the software giant said there is currently no patch for the vulnerability. The security flaw, which Microsoft deems "critical" -- its highest severity rating -- is found in how Windows handles and renders fonts, according to the advisory posted Monday. The bug can be exploited by tricking a victim into opening a malicious document. Once the document is opened -- or viewed in Windows Preview -- an attacker can remotely run malware, such as ransomware, on a vulnerable device. The advisory said that Microsoft was aware of hackers launching "limited, targeted attacks," but did not say who was launching the attacks or at what scale.

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The personal details of more than 538 million users of Chinese social network Weibo are currently available for sale online, according to ads seen by ZDNet and corroborating reports from Chinese media. From the report: In ads posted on the dark web and other places, a hacker claims to have breached Weibo in mid-2019 and obtained a dump of the company's user database. The database allegedly contains the details for 538 million Weibo users. Personal details include the likes of real names, site usernames, gender, location, and -- for 172 million users -- phone numbers. Passwords were not included, which explains why the hacker is selling the Weibo data for only $250.

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India is turning to WhatsApp, the most popular app in the country, to create awareness about the coronavirus pandemic and has urged social media services to tackle the spread of misinformation on their platforms. From a report: Narendra Modi, India's Prime Minister, said on Saturday that citizens in the country can text a WhatsApp bot -- called MyGov Corona Helpdesk -- to get instant authoritative answers to their coronavirus queries such as the symptoms of the viral disease and how they could seek help. An individual is required to text +919013151515 to connect to the bot. The bot was built by Mumbai-based firm Haptik Technologies, which local telecom giant Reliance Jio acquired last year, and the information is being provided by the nation's Ministry of Health.

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Microsoft has announced that it is pausing the rollout of Edge v81, citing the ongoing "global circumstances" surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. From a report: New Edge releases (or any other kind of software updates) usually entail security reviews and compatibility testing to ensure operating systems and internal web applications don't break. Due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, most system administrators are most likely busy handling the security of employees working from home and taking care of their families in these tough times. Microsoft said it does not want to put an extra strain on system administrators and other IT staff personnel by releasing a new Edge version at this particular time. Redmond's decision comes days after Google announced a similar measure for Chrome v81, postponing the v81 release indefinitely.

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I try to imagine living in Manhattan as I did for 8 years, riding in the elevator up to your apartment and thinking about all the people you're riding up with. Even in normal times this can be disturbing. ;-)

I like to question assumptions, in that I find things worth doing. I've always been that way. For a long time I thought everyone did it.

I watched the finale of season 3 of The Expanse without realizing it was the last episode before Amazon took it over. It was masterful. I'm going to have to watch it again. BTW, my favorite character is Drummer. I am a Belter, for sure.