Chase, Capital One, PNC Bank and others across the U.S. have reported outages with online and mobile banking Wednesday -- the same day the coronavirus IRS stimulus checks are expected to hit bank accounts of those eligible. CNET reports: Banks including Chase, Capital One, PNC Bank, US Bank and Navy Federal, as well as the app Cash App have all reported outages or access issues on Twitter support pages or their websites. Web outage monitoring site Down Detector also shows a spike in outages for these and other online banking services. Over 80 million Americans who have set up direct deposit with the IRS are expected to receive their coronavirus stimulus payments of up to $1,200 by the end of the day. Everyone else will get their check in the mail.

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Poll: Which is the worse disaster, Trump or the virus?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft is embarking on a new sustainability initiative as part of its overall approach to support environmental protection measures, with a project it calls the "Planetary Computer." This will actually be a computing endeavor that uses aggregated global environmental data collected from a number of sources as its input, and that will seek to employ machine learning and other techniques to better understand the challenges faced in planetary health, and provide answers to both Microsoft clients and scientists about how to plan for sustainability. If all that sounds pretty esoteric to you, you're not alone. But in a blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith detailed some specific examples of what it hopes the Planetary Computer will actually be capable of doing. Those include things like providing searchable satellite imagery, machine learning and user-sourced data around actual on-the-ground forest borders for use in industrial construction site surveys or forest preservation efforts; providing accurate current measurement sand impact forecast for water use for agricultural planning; providing wildlife biologists with global species habitat information to support preservation efforts; and more.

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Covering Trump's nonsense is worse than not-news, it blocks news. Takes up space that should be used by actual news.

When will we see branded promotional masks?

Verily, the Alphabet life sciences division that launched its COVID-19 screening and testing program last month, is still under scrutiny from lawmakers over how it is collecting users' data, as well as its plans to expand its test sites outside of California. From a report: At the end of March, five US senators wrote to Verily asking, among several other things, whether its screening website was compliant with the HIPAA Privacy Rule, and whether Verily intended to remove the requirement that all users who screen for COVID-19 have a Google account. Verily has now addressed those questions in a letter sent to the same senators and obtained by Business Insider. In it, Verily assured the senators that any data collected wouldn't be used for commercial purposes or sold to third parties. But it also confirmed that its screening site was not in compliance with the HIPAA privacy rule. "Verily has focused on the protection of the security and privacy of personal health information since the inception of its Baseline COVID-19 Program," the company wrote. "With respect to its Baseline COVID-19 Program, Verily is not acting as a covered entity or a business associate as defined by HIPAA. As the Program expands, we will continue to prioritize the protection of individual health data. However, in the future if we engage in a program where we do become a covered entity or we are required to sign a BAA we will take all the appropriate steps to ensure compliance with HIPAA."

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U.S. government officials warned on Wednesday about the threat of North Korean hackers, calling particular attention to banking and other finance. From a report: The reason for the advisory -- which was jointly issued by the U.S. Departments of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- was unclear. North Korean hackers have long been accused of targeting financial institutions, and the content of the warning appeared to draw on material already in the public domain. North Korea is alleged to be behind an ambitious, years-long campaign of digital theft, including siphoning tens of millions of dollars in cash from ATMs, carrying out gigantic thefts at major banks, extorting computer users worldwide, and hijacking digital currency exchanges. The global money-grab has been a topic of increasing international concern.

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The Defense Department's watchdog found no evidence that the Pentagon's controversial decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft was the result of interference from President Donald Trump, though it said its probe was limited by the White House. From a report: The 317-page report issued Wednesday by the inspector general also found that giving the JEDI contract to a single company -- Microsoft -- rather than dividing it among competitors was "consistent with applicable acquisition standards." While the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project was hotly disputed by rival technology companies from the start, the project gained broader attention when Trump publicly expressed concern about the assumption that the contract would go to Amazon.com.

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Apple today unveiled a new iPhone SE, updating the lineup for the first time in four years. It's a 4.7" iPhone with a physical home button, Touch ID, a single rear-facing camera and the A13 Bionic chip on board. With a $399 starting price point, the new SE is aimed squarely at new iPhone users or first time smartphone buyers but could appeal to those who want the smallest iPhone model currently available above other considerations. In some markets, including those in the developing region, the iPhone SE is more expensive. In India, for instance, it starts at $555.

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The Associated Press: In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data. Six days. That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus. But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time -- the beginning of the outbreak. China's attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than 126,000 lives.

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The UK's mobile networks have reported a further 20 cases of phone masts being targeted in suspected arson attacks over the Easter weekend. From a report: Trade group Mobile UK said it had been notified of incidents in England, Wales and Scotland. One of the targeted sites provides mobile connectivity to a hospital in Birmingham. The figure represents a lower incidence rate than had been the case the previous weekend. Mobile UK added it had received no reports of staff being targeted over the period. Attacks on 5G masts pre-date the coronavirus pandemic. But there are concerns a surge in the amount of vandalism has been caused by conspiracy theories, which falsely claim the deployment of 5G networks has caused or helped accelerate the spread of Covid-19. "Theories being spread about 5G are baseless and are not grounded in credible scientific theory," said a spokesman for Mobile UK. "Mobile operators are dedicated to keeping the UK connected, and careless talk could cause untold damage. "Continuing attacks on mobile infrastructure risk lives and, at this challenging time, the UK's critical sectors must be able to focus all their efforts on fighting this pandemic."

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From a friend in the city...

• I just woke up about an hour ago, and really needing coffee and a bagel, so I put on my mask and went to my nearby bakery. Three people were inside, none wearing masks; I waited for two to leave then stepped in carefully. The remaining customer was a middle-aged woman who seemed to be speaking in great detail to the worker helping her, and getting very close to be heard, maybe 3 feet. The employees were all wearing masks (the crappy surgical mask type) but she wasn't. Then she went to pay and checkout and seemed to have another intensive conversation at 3 feet away from the employee at the register.
• I thought I probably should have said something, I was still three quarters asleep at that point, but what should I have done in that situation? Did that woman already get sick and figured she didn't need to be careful? Was she a Trump supporter who wanted to flaunt the rules? Something in-between, or just a jerk?
• Help me figure out what I should do the next time that happens, maybe you can crowdsource this to your readers? I want to clearly communicate to that person that her mouth is a lethal weapon, and that the bakery employees didn't deserve to be "shot at" just to be paid their 12 or 15 bucks an hour... but, you know, nicely. Thanks.
• Silver lining: that bagel was amazing, something about the 0.001% chance of dying really makes it that much better!

If you have an idea for my friend post a note here. (I have an idea which I will post in the thread.)

Cloud-free skies played a key role in one of the worst years for Greenland's ice sheet.

Nectar Gan, Caitlin Hu and Ivan Watson, reporting for CNN: China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts. A medical expert in Hong Kong who collaborated with mainland researchers to publish a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in an international medical journal said his work did not undergo such vetting in February. The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sickened 1.7 million people worldwide since it first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. Since late January, Chinese researchers have published a series of Covid-19 studies in influential international medical journals.

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The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which is the organization that rates the content of video games, announced a new label today to indicate that a game will offer in-game purchases of loot boxes or similar types of items that provide a player with randomized rewards. The Verge reports: "This new Interactive Element, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), will be assigned to any game that contains in-game offers to purchase digital goods or premiums with real world currency (or with virtual coins or other forms of in-game currency that can be purchased with real world currency) for which the player doesn't know prior to purchase the specific digital goods or premiums they will be receiving (e.g., loot boxes, item packs, mystery awards)," according to the ESRB. The label will be applied to "loot boxes, gacha games, item or card packs, prize wheels, treasure chests, and more," the organization said. The new label will sit below the game's content rating, as seen in the photo above. The ESRB originally introduced the "in-game purchases" label in February 2018, but that label was broad enough that it could be applied to any game that offered any sort of buyable digital good, including non-randomized items like subscriptions, season passes, or upgrades to disable ads.

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