An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last April, The Verge reported that the Foxconn "innovation centers" scattered around Wisconsin were largely empty and that renovations were stalled. Several days after that article published, Foxconn held a press conference to announce that it had bought yet another building and told reporters that The Verge's reporting was incorrect. Specifically, Foxconn's Alan Yeung said The Verge's story had "a lot of inaccuracies, and we will actually make a correction, and we will make a statement about that." Yeung made those comments on April 12th, 2019. It is now April 12th, 2020, making it exactly one year since Foxconn promised a statement or correction regarding The Verge's report of empty buildings in Wisconsin. That statement or correction has never arrived. And the buildings are still empty. TheThe main Foxconn project -- the factory in Mount Pleasant -- appears to be moving forward, albeit at a much smaller scale than the massive Generation 10.5 LCD fabrication plant originally promised and specified in the company's contract with the state. Earlier this month, the company submitted a project report to the state claiming it now employs more than 550 people, enough to qualify for lucrative subsidies. (Most were hired at the end of last year.) And although no LCD fabrication equipment has been reported as arriving at the factory, Foxconn has announced a giant glass dome that will house a data center, along with deals to make robotic coffee kiosks and alarm system components in what's been described as a "high-mix, low-to-medium volume" manufacturing strategy. And last week, Foxconn and Medtronic announced plans to build ventilators at the factory within four to six weeks. But it's unclear whether Foxconn will receive any subsidies. [...] The factory is set to open in May. Foxconn has deemed construction "essential," and work continues even under Wisconsin's stay-at-home order. It is unclear exactly what the factory will produce when it becomes operational.

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There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, with three candidates already being tested in human trials, according to the World Health Organization, as drugmakers race to find a cure for the deadly pathogen. From a report: The furthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine developed by Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, which is in phase 2. The other two being tested in humans are treatments developed separately by U.S. drugmakers Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, according to a WHO document. Progress is occurring at unprecedented speed in developing vaccines as the infectious pathogen looks unlikely to be stamped out through containment measures alone. The drug industry is hoping to compress the time it takes to get a vaccine to market -- usually about 10 to 15 years -- to within the next year.

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An urgent call is to go out to children's television broadcasters this weekend, backed by major names in British entertainment, politics and technology. From a report: Writer and performer Stephen Fry, best-selling author Cressida Cowell and businesswoman Martha Lane Fox are joined by former children's television presenter Floella Benjamin as signatories to a letter, carried in today's Observer, that urges all leading streaming, network and terrestrial children's channels to make one simple change to boost literacy among the young: turn on the subtitles. If English-language subtitles were to be run along the bottom of the screen for all programming, they argue, reading levels across the country would automatically rise. Longstanding international academic research projects prove, they say, that spelling, grammar and vocabulary would all be enhanced, even if children watching TV are not aware they are learning. The campaign aims to improve reading ability across the English-speaking world and has won backing from former President Bill Clinton, who said: "Same-language subtitling doubles the number of functional readers among primary school children. It's a small thing that has a staggering impact on people's lives." The drive is being run by a campaign group called Tots, or Turn On The Subtitles, and launches this week. The open letter to broadcasters from the organization, founded by old friends and entrepreneurs Henry Warren and Oli Barrett, draws attention to the benefits of featuring same-language subtitles as a default on programming aimed at children across the world -- almost a billion of whom are now being educated inside their own homes.

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The blazes, burning for several days, also threaten the storage depot for the most dangerous waste.

As the coronavirus pandemic leads to anxiety over the strength of the world's food supply chains, everyone from governments to banks are turning to the skies for help. From a report: Orbital Insight, a California-based Big Data company that uses satellites, drones, balloons and cell phone geolocation data to track what's happening on Earth, has seen inquiries about monitoring food supplies double in the past two months, according to James Crawford, founder and chief executive officer of the company. "We're helping supply chain managers, financial institutions, and government agencies answer questions they never thought they would have to ask," Crawford said in a phone interview. The coronavirus outbreak has triggered a fresh surge in demand for alternative data to shed light on how the pandemic is impacting industries and trade across the globe. That's especially important as multiple government lockdowns and tighter restrictions on the movement of people and goods upend supply chains and logistics everywhere from Asia to Europe and the Americas. Risks to food supply chains are becoming more noticeable as millions of people around the world are affected by government-imposed lockdowns, causing logistical nightmares, and as infections spread including among workers that are responsible to getting food from farms to supermarket shelves.

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It would be smart imho for them to finally allow us to subscribe centrally so we didn't have to create accounts on each site. They have been unwilling to budge on this. I bet there's a ton of revenue out there they can have if each of them would stop trying to be world dominant.

The pricing model of online pubs is as if each is publishing a whole magazine or newspaper, as they did before the web. I'm sure that's still their internal model, how their organizations work, but it's not the way we read them. We read an article here, another one there. Their pricing is utterly inflexible. It's a shame to waste a crisis. We need information like never before. And they need money because advertising is evaporating. Can't we arrive at a compromise?

A deadly pathogen affecting Europe's olive trees could cost over 20 billion euros.

The UK public will soon be able to find out if they may have been in the vicinity of people unwell with coronavirus via a new contact-tracing app, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has said. From a report: At No 10's daily press conference on Sunday, Hancock said the NHS app would allow people to report their symptoms, and then the app would anonymously alert other app users that had been in contact with that person in recent days. The Guardian reported last week that the app, developed by NHSX -- the health service's digital transformation arm -- with academic and industry partners, is in the advanced stages of evaluation and is weeks away from being ready to be deployed. About 60% of the adult population would need to sign up and engage with the app by registering their symptoms or positive test results for it to be effective. Their proximity to other users would be logged, and they would follow advice given in alerts to self-isolate -- even in cases where they were not aware of having been in contact with someone infected.

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The world's abrupt slowing down in the past few weeks may have introduced millions of Covid-19-wary professionals to the whole new paradigm of work-from-home. Yet, a third of India's four million IT employees are still trudging regularly to the office even if mostly to make life easier for clients abroad. From a report: Every working day, these thousands risk contracting coronavirus, jeopardising even their families' health, by going to work amid India's ongoing 21-day lockdown. Only because their jobs, in cities like Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad, form the backroom spine of some of the world's corporate behemoths. Indian IT majors like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro service giants like General Electric, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Airbus, Cisco, British Telecom, Vodafone, and Nielsen, among thousands of other companies across the globe. "We power the financial backbones of several countries, support some of the largest health care and pharmacy companies in the world, run technology for governments and public services organisations," a TCS spokesperson told Quartz when asked about the lockdown. Besides, many global businesses also have essential functions -- accounting, payments, billing, human resources, and payroll -- being carried out in their own back offices in India.

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Newspapers, websites, and TV channels have all been decimated by the coronavirus. And YouTubers are also feeling the pinch. From a report: While boredom-inducing stay-at-home orders may be good for YouTube channel traffic, increasing by 15%, according to the New York Times, YouTubers say that the rates companies pay to advertise on their videos are dropping significantly. That means that despite increased audiences, some YouTubers are making less money. Carlos Pacheco, a former media buyer turned YouTube adviser, says that across 180 YouTube channels he works with -- which have a total of nearly 68 million subscribers worldwide across a range of different interests -- advertising rates have tanked by an average of nearly 50% since the start of February. "Everyone is pausing their campaigns on YouTube," Pacheco says. Data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an advertising industry body, suggests that one in four media buyers and brands have paused all advertising for the first half of 2020, and a further 46% have adjusted their spending downwards. Three-quarters say the coronavirus will be more damaging for the ad industry than the 2008-'09 financial crisis. That means fewer ads for Big Macs on TV and in newspapers, but it also means advertisers are less likely to compete for the pre-roll ads that usher you toward your next YouTube video. Digital ad spending is down by a third, according to the IAB -- a slightly less painful drop than the traditional media's 39% cut, but still damaging. YouTubers are reporting anywhere from 30% to 50% declines in their cost per mille (CPM), or the amount YouTube receives for every 1,000 views of an advertisement served against a video. YouTube takes that money, keeps 45% for itself, and gives 55% to creators.

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A team in Colombia is to test a ventilator made with a Raspberry Pi computer and easy-to-source parts. From a report: The design and computer code were posted online in March by a man in California, who had no prior experience at creating medical equipment. Marco Mascorro, a robotics engineer, said he built the ventilator because knew the machines were in high demand to treat Covid-19. His post prompted a flood of feedback from healthcare workers. He has used the advice to make improvements. "I am a true believer that technology can solve a lot of the problems we have right now specifically in this pandemic," he told the BBC. The Colombian team said the design was important for their South American country because parts for traditional models could be hard to obtain. By contrast, Mr Mascorro's design uses only easy-to-find parts -- for example, the valves it employs can commonly be found at car and plumbing supply stores. The machine is set to be put through a fast-tracked round of tests at two institutions in Bogota -- the University Hospital of the Pontifical Xavierian University and Los Andes University.

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Amazon will begin to put new grocery delivery customers on a wait list and curtail shopping hours at some Whole Foods stores to prioritize orders from existing customers buying food online during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said. From a report: Many shoppers recently seeking to purchase groceries from the Seattle-based e-commerce company found they could not place orders due to a lack of available delivery slots. Amazon said it would have to relegate all new online grocery customers to a wait list starting Monday while working on adding capacity each week. In recent weeks, it increased the number of Whole Foods stores offering grocery pickup to more than 150 locations, up from 80 previously. Amazon also plans to shorten some Whole Foods stores' hours for the public so its employees can more quickly fulfill online grocery orders, the company said. The moves illustrates how the world's largest online retailer, which showed its ambition to enter the grocery industry by acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in August 2017, is now leveraging its presence both online and in physical stores to handle high demand from consumers who are stuck eating at home, with many restaurant dining rooms closed to the public.

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Node devs, I'm having a weird problem with NPM, I think.