AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said he will retire at the end of June (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), handing leadership of one of the world's largest media and telecommunications companies to longtime deputy John Stankey. The Wall Street Journal reports: Mr. Stephenson, who turned 60 this week, has spent most of his 13 years as chairman and CEO piecing together a modern media business by scooping up DirecTV and then Time Warner, remaking the staid telephone company he inherited. He had been preparing to retire at some point in 2020 until an activist investor surfaced late last year challenging his strategy, according to people familiar with the matter. "John will be an outstanding CEO for this company, and I couldn't be more confident or pleased in passing him the baton," Mr. Stephenson said of his successor in a video to AT&T's staff. Mr. Stankey, like the man he is succeeding, earned his stripes in the telephone business but has been a leading proponent AT&T's hard turn toward entertainment. "The entire industry is in transformation right now and that transformation extends beyond just the business model," Mr. Stankey said in a recent interview. "It's how markets and how corporations operate." Mr. Stephenson said he will remain chairman until January, when the Dallas-based company is expected to elect an independent chairman. The change was announced at AT&T's annual meeting Friday, which was held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this morning, President Trump commented on the move. He tweeted: "Great News! Randall Stephenson, the CEO of heavily indebted AT&T, which owns and presides over Fake News @CNN, is leaving, or was forced out. Anyone who lets a garbage 'network' do and say the things that CNN does, should leave ASAP. Hopefully replacement will be much better!" Ars Technica notes that AT&T's mobile business revenue in Q1 2020 was $42.8 billion, "down from $44.8 billion in last year's first quarter." It adds: "AT&T's WarnerMedia division, a result of Stephenson's Time Warner acquisition, reported a 12.2-percent year-over-year revenue decline and expects tough times ahead as the pandemic forced the cancellation of big sporting events and TV and film production." The company also just yesterday announced that it lost another 897,000 premium TV subscribers in Q1 2020. It looks like the new CEO will have his work cut out for him.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump has to keep escalating the outrage to keep your attention. Look at how much outrage it takes now. 50,000 Americans dead. What's next? Government refugee camps for displaced people. Of course with the virus all would get sick, many would die. You think that could never happen? Did you honestly think what has happened could happen?

News emerged last week that WD, Seagate and Toshiba are all shipping hard drives using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), a slower form of HDD technology that can result in reduced performance in some types of workloads, but without disclosing that critical bit of information in marketing materials or specification sheets. The backlash has been swift, and now WD is striking a conciliatory tone with its customers in an update to its blog. The company also divulged that it is also shipping SMR technology in some of its WD Blue and WD Black hard drives for desktop PCs and laptops. Tom's Hardware reports: The new disclosure comes on the heels of WD's blog post yesterday that outlined its stance on using SMR drives. The company contends that SMR technology is adequate for the applications the drives are designed for, but that is certainly an open matter of debate with many users claiming the drives cause problems in RAID arrays. The issues purportedly stem from the slow random write speeds, which do cause a measurable reduction in performance, and background activities that are purportedly responsible for the drives dropping from RAID arrays. In either case, The WD blog advised users they should step up to more expensive models designed for heavier workloads if they have more demanding needs. Today the company updated its blog with a more conciliatory tone, and also disclosed all of its drive models that are shipping with SMR tech. In addition to the WD Red NAS drives that the company previously admitted used SMR tech, WD is also shipping the tech into its 2.5"and 3.5" WD Blue and 2.5" WD Black lineups. Both models are designed for desktop PCs and laptops, with the former coming as a value drive while the latter is designed for high-performance users. WD acknowledged the recent brouhaha surrounding the fact it was shipping drives without disclosing they use the slower recording technology, stating: "The past week has been eventful, to say the least. As a team, it was important that we listened carefully and understood your feedback about our WD Red NAS drives, specifically how we communicated which recording technologies are used. Your concerns were heard loud and clear..." Importantly, the blog states, "...Thank you for letting us know how we can do better. We will update our marketing materials, as well as provide more information about SMR technology, including benchmarks and ideal use cases." WD also said that they will share further data in the future, including benchmarks that might prove otherwise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon's witness at a hearing last year "may have lied to Congress" about how the company uses data from its third-party sellers to come up with its private-label products, House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said Thursday. The assertion comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation found Amazon employees had used non-aggregated or easily identifiable data from sellers on its platform to inform its proprietary product strategy, according to interviews with more than 20 former employees and documents reviewed by the Journal. "At best, Amazon's witness appears to have misrepresented key aspects of Amazon's business practices while omitting important details in response to pointed questioning," Cicilline said in a statement on the report. "At worst, the witness Amazon sent to speak on its behalf may have lied to Congress." Cicilline is leading an investigation into Amazon and its tech peers that will culminate in a report about the health of competition in digital markets. In a January interview with CNBC, Cicilline said it was evident the digital marketplace was "not functioning properly" and said he planned to create bipartisan regulatory proposals to address the issues after releasing the report. The report was initially expected by early April but has been delayed due to the pandemic. The chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said that if true, the Journal's report "raises deep concerns about Amazon's apparent lack of candor before the Committee regarding an issue that is central to our investigation." "Amazon has had opportunities to correct the record on its business practices. It is deeply concerning that, beginning with the hearing last year, they may have misled Congress rather than be fully forthcoming on this matter, notwithstanding our repeated requests in this regard," Nadler said, adding that the committee would "seek clarification from Amazon in short order."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zuck gave a video briefing today.

50,000 dead and our flags aren't flying at half staff.

Instant messaging service Telegram has amassed 400 million monthly active users, it said today, up from 300 million active users the seven-year-old service disclosed to the SEC last October. From a report: The service -- founded by Pavel Durov, who also created Russian social networking site VK -- said it adds about 1.5 million users each day and is the most downloaded social media app in over 20 nations. Telegram is working on bringing a secure video call feature to its users this year in response to the growing popularity of Zoom and Houseparty, it said. The company, headquartered in Dubai, however, did not talk about the future of its Gram cryptocurrency wallet and TON Blockchain that it had revealed in 2018 but put on hold early this year. "As the gap in popularity between Telegram and its older competitors narrows, we find more and more validity in that original assumption," the firm said in a blog post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canonical has released the newest version of its Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 20.04. This long-term-support (LTS) version is more than just the latest version of one of the most popular Linux distributions; it's a major update for desktop, server, and cloud users. From a news story: Called "Focal Fossa," it is an LTS version, meaning "Long Term Support." Just how long is that support? An impressive five years! Ubuntu 20.04 will feature many new visual cues and tweaks too thanks to a refreshed theme. "Ubuntu has become the platform of choice for Linux workstations. Canonical certifies multiple Dell, HP, and Lenovo workstations, and supports enterprise developer desktops. Machine learning and AI tools from a range of vendors are available immediately for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, along with 6,000 applications in the Snapcraft Linux App Store including Slack, Skype, Plex, Spotify, the entire JetBrains portfolio and Visual Studio Code. WireGuard is a new, simplified VPN with modern cryptography defaults. WireGuard is included in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and will be backported to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to support widespread enterprise adoption," says Canonical.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I have a new feature in my blog, that allows me to say that the subs of this headline are code. It just means it's displayed in a monospace font, and the vertical spacing is a little tighter. The result is it looks like code, not prose.

Note -- it's not working properly yet. Still testing.

Here's an example.

• function bumpUrlString (s) { //5/10/14 by DW
• Changes
• 5/10/14; 5:25:06 PM by DW
• Generate file names suitable for short URL generating.
• if (s === undefined) {
• s = "0";
• }
• function bumpChar (ch) {
• function num (ch) {
• return (ch.charCodeAt (0));
• }
• if ((ch >= "0") && (ch < = "8")) {
• ch = String.fromCharCode (num (ch) + 1);
• }
• else {
• if (ch == "9") {
• ch = "a";
• }
• else {
• if ((ch >= "a") && (ch < = "y")) {
• ch = String.fromCharCode (num (ch) + 1);
• }
• else {
• throw "rollover!";
• }
• }
• return (ch);
• }
• • var chlast = bumpChar (s [s.length - 1]);
  • s = s.substr (0, s.length - 1) + chlast;
  • return (s);
  • }
• catch (tryError) {
• if (s.length == 1) {
• return ("00");
• }
• else {
• s = s.substr (0, s.length - 1);
• s = bumpUrlString (s) + "0";
• return (s);
• }
• }
• }

The NYT isn't punting on whether drinking or injecting disinfectant is possibly not bad for a human.

They're taking a stand.

There aren't two sides to that, per the NYT.

No he-said-she-said.

No let's agree to disagree.

Not subject to alternate facts.

I am not being sarcastic. This is how bad it has been. They've accepted as reality lies that have cost us dearly. Two sides to ridiculous things that are not two-sided. Finally they have been pushed to the brink of their cowardice by a psychotic president who insists that ingesting random poisons could cure a person of the disease caused by the pandemic that is ravishing our country.

The NYT and Trump were in perfect sync on the possibility of this idea being true until now. Let's hope they come to their senses and start showing a bit of the courage and integrity that they take so much credit for having.

The Times takes a stand.

Dropbox on Linux appears to be killing itself.

When I do a "dropbox status" from the CL, it says: "Upgrading Dropbox..."

It never stops trying to upgrade itself.

It isn't syncing while supposedly upgrading.

I've searched and on various support boards that this has been happening for years for others.

A project out of design studio Libermann Kiepe Reddemann (LKR) in Hamburg, Germany, in conjunction with designer Elias Hanzer, Times New Arial is a variable font that combines two of the most instantly recognizable fonts of the last two decades. From a report: Variable fonts are children of the internet. They're single font files that can dynamically adjust their height, width, slant, or other attributes without the need for a larger font file size, which makes them great for responsive web design. "The possibility to use custom fonts in the world wide web is rather new and has only been possible since the introduction of CSS2 in 1998," LKR explains. "Until then it was only possible to use fonts for the web that were installed on the user's computer, the so-called system fonts." Those system fonts were Times New Roman -- the serif option -- and Arial -- the grotesque or sans-serif one. That's why, according to LKR, that pair of fonts "nowadays embody default and nostalgic web design." In an interview with It's Nice That, LKR's David Liebermann says, "We wanted to combine this conventional aesthetic with new technical possibility in order to revive and refine them, so in turn, we could experiment with them in our projects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump has long pinned his hopes on the powers of sunlight to defeat the Covid-19 virus. He returned to that theme at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday, bringing in a science administrator to back up his assertions and eagerly theorizing about treatments involving the use of household disinfectant that would be dangerous if put inside the body, as well as the power of sunlight and ultraviolet light. From a report: After the administrator, William N. Bryan, the head of science at the Department of Homeland Security, told the briefing that the agency had tested how sunlight and disinfectants -- including bleach and alcohol -- can kill the coronavirus on surfaces in as little as 30 seconds, an excited Mr. Trump returned to the lectern. "Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light," Mr. Trump said. "And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but we're going to test it?" he added, turning to Mr. Bryan, who had returned to his seat. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or some other way." Apparently reassured that the tests he was proposing would take place, Mr. Trump then theorized about the possible medical benefits of disinfectants in the fight against the virus. "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute -- one minute -- and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?" he asked. "Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that." Experts have long warned that ultraviolet lamps can harm humans if used improperly -- when the exposure is outside the body, much less inside. The link between ultraviolet light and skin cancer is well established. Bleach and other disinfectants may kill microbes but they also can kill humans if swallowed or if fumes are too powerful. That is why bottles of bleach and other disinfectants carry sharp warnings of ingestion dangers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Citing a "primary outcome" of death, researchers cut short a study testing anti-malaria drug chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 after some patients developed irregular heart rates and nearly two dozen of them died after taking doses of the drug daily. From a report: Scientists say the findings, published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, should prompt some degree of skepticism from the public toward enthusiastic claims about and perhaps "serve to curb the exuberant use" of the drug, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential "game-changer" in the fight against the coronavirus. Chloroquine gained widespread international attention following two small studies, including one with 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France, found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. The JAMA report said those trials didn't meet the publishing society's standards.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More men die from Covid than women. Older people and people with other problems like heart disease, diabetes, hypertension make up a large share of the deaths. From that, we conclude that people in these groups are more likely to die than not if they get the virus. But that's not a logical inference. I'd love to hear the numbers expressed the other way. If you have some or all of these conditions, and you get the disease, what's the probability that you will die.