In some states and major cities, it's now mandatory to wear a mask in public to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That mask could be anything from a handkerchief to a designer cotton mask to a full-blown N95 respirator, so long as you have something between your mouth and nose and the world around you. But in California's Bay Area, there's a new stipulation: You can wear any style of mask you want, so long as it doesn't have a valve in it. What? Why? Because a mask with a valve may protect you from some pathogens in the air, but it doesn't protect the people around you from your own breath.

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Intel compromised worker safety at some of its factories to maintain chip production in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to complaints filed with government agencies and employees at one of the sites. From a report: At a plant in Chandler, Arizona, the world's largest semiconductor maker did not isolate staff that worked closely with teammates who had tested positive and did not institute tests, people who work there said. Factory managers also dismissed concerns that social-distancing guidelines were not being followed properly, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they fear sanction by their employer. Many of these virus-related concerns were also raised in filings to state agencies that regulate workplace safety. The company said it responded with new policies to improve employee safety and kept factory output high because its products are essential.

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Lots of developers really want to learn Go, a programming language for large systems created by Google, meanwhile most developers are sick of attending meetings, and most of those working at multinational corporations aren't happy there. From a report: That's according to the results of a survey of over 16,655 developers from 76 countries carried out by HackerEarth, a company with offices in India and San Francisco that provides tools for recruiters to remotely assess developer coding skills. Go comes out top of the languages most developers want to know. The survey finds that 32% of experienced developers pick Go as the programming language they want to learn, well ahead of Python, which 24% say they want to learn. The desire for learning Go lines up with the results of a similar survey by remote developer hiring firm HackerRank. Go is used at Google, Netflix, American Express, Salesforce, IBM, Target, Twitch, Twitter, Uber, and Dropbox.

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IT services provider Cognizant said in an earnings call this week that a ransomware incident that took place last month in April 2020 will negatively impact its Q2 revenue. From a report: "While we anticipate that the revenue impact related to this issue will be largely resolved by the middle of the quarter, we do anticipate the revenue and corresponding margin impact to be in the range of $50 million to $70 million for the quarter," said Karen McLoughlin, Cognizant Chief Financial Officer in an earnings call yesterday. McLoughlin also expects the incident to incur additional and unforeseen legal, consulting, and other costs associated with the investigation, service restoration, and remediation of the breach. The Cognizant CFO says the company has now fully recovered from the ransomware infection and restored the majority of its services.

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Google and Facebook want their staff to stay home for all of 2020. From a report: Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive officer, told employees on Thursday to prepare to work remotely through October and possibly to the end of the year, according to people familiar with the decision. A spokeswoman confirmed that the majority of staff is expected to work from home until 2021. Two weeks ago, Pichai wrote an email to his workforce that said some offices would open as soon as June. This week, employees were told returns would vary by division and location but that most Google staff would not return until at least the end of October, according to the people who were not authorized to speak publicly. On Thursday, Facebook told employees that they can work remotely through 2020 if they like. The social media company doesn't expect to open most offices until July 6 at the earliest. The edicts from the internet giants come as states and corporations grapple with ways to reopen as the virus pandemic rages on. California, Google's home state, is letting some businesses open in limited ways, including some manufacturing.

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The coronavirus pandemic has gutted the so-called sharing economy. Its most valuable companies, which started the year by promising that they would soon become profitable, now say consumer demand has all but vanished. It is not likely to return anytime soon. From a report: In earnings reports this week, Uber and Lyft disclosed the depth of the financial damage. The companies said their ride-hailing businesses all but collapsed in March, the last month of the first quarter, as shelter-in-place orders spread through Europe and the United States. The red ink extends beyond ride hailing. The home-sharing company Airbnb, which investors valued at $31 billion, had planned to go public this year. Instead, the company has slashed costs and raised emergency funding, and on Tuesday it laid off 1,900 employees, about 25 percent of its staff. It also reduced its revenue forecast for this year to half of what it brought in last year. "While we know Airbnb's business will fully recover, the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short-lived," Brian Chesky, Airbnb's chief executive, wrote in a memo to employees.

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The world's most robust study of universal basic income has concluded that it boosts recipients' mental and financial well-being, as well as modestly improving employment. From a report: Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings attached. The payments of 560 euro ($600) per month weren't means tested and were unconditional, so they weren't reduced if an individual got a job or later had a pay rise. The study was nationwide and selected recipients weren't able to opt out, because the test was written into legislation. Minna Ylikanno at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland announced the findings in Helsinki today via livestream. The study compared the employment and well-being of basic income recipients against a control group of 173,000 people who were on unemployment benefits. Between November 2017 and October 2018, people on basic income worked an average of 78 days, which was six days more than those on unemployment benefits. There was a greater increase in employment for people in families with children, as well as those whose first language wasn't Finnish or Swedish -- but the researchers aren't yet sure why. When surveyed, people who received universal basic income instead of regular unemployment benefits reported better financial well-being, mental health and cognitive functioning, as well as higher levels of confidence in the future.

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Maddow even seethed over the fact that the tech industry in Salt Lake City calls itself Silicon Slopes. It's dorky, and so what. NYC calls its tech industry Silicon Alley.

A couple of nights ago Rachel Maddow was telling the story of a group of entrepreneurs in Salt Lake City who set up a free Covid testing program. Yes, they had the arrogance that's common to tech entrepreneurs, I know it very well. But they were trying to do good. I heard the seething arrogance of the way Maddow tells her stories, dripping with sarcasm and superiority. I kept waiting for her to tell what evil thing they had done, it never came. Some doctors commented that their arrogance was ugly, and their tests could suck, sure, but it colored everything I hear from Maddow in a new way, the way she seethed when she talked about Facebook a couple of years ago, from ignorance. In that case I knew the facts. So why not just report the facts, without so much attitude, and let us make up our own minds. And then I wondered how much do I listen to her for the seething superiority versus getting any real information. Another way to see it is what if a Fox News person used the tone she used. Would you see it then. I actually shut her off in the middle of the show last night, I want to re-think whether she is a force for good, and should I be paying attention to her at all. I know I've been here before with her and the rest of MSNBC. There aren't a whole lot of choices.

BTW, when I get fed up with MSNBC, I switch to 30 Rock reruns on Amazon. At least their attitude is funny. Really funny. LOL funny.

We don't know who will be affected by Covid-19 in the future. People assume most young people don't have symptoms, but we really have no idea. One thing we do know that it isn't binary. You don't necessarily just recover back to who you were before you got the disease. The symptoms linger. The damage in some cases is permanent. Chickenpox shows up again later in life as shingles, for example. Covid is a serious illness. People who play politics with it, and want to convince you it's not serious, don't have a clue, because even the most skilled and educated medical scientists don't know what lies ahead.

A Microsoft executive urged Amazon Web Services to "stand down on its litigation" opposing the award of the military's lucrative JEDI commercial cloud transformation contract, arguing the ongoing legal and administrative challenges are keeping the best tools out of the hands of U.S. warfighters. From a report: The statement from Frank Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president for communications, came in response to Amazon's latest attempt to compel a re-evaluation of the potentially $10 billion contract won by Microsoft -- a protest filed Monday directly with the Pentagon. The Defense Department's "decision to source a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to deliver the latest advancements in enterprise cloud could be a great step forward," Shaw said. "But only if Amazon gets out of the way." Shaw repeated Microsoft's now-common refrain against AWS: the cloud market leader bid too high, and it is now looking for a "re-do." "This latest filing -- filed with the DoD this time -- is another example of Amazon trying to bog down JEDI in complaints, litigation and other delays designed to force a do-over to rescue its failed bid," he said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The new coronavirus can persist in men's semen even after they have begun to recover, a finding that raises the possibility the virus could be sexually transmitted, Chinese researchers said Thursday. A team at Shangqiu Municipal Hospital tested 38 male patients treated there at the height of the pandemic in China, in January and February. About 16% of them had evidence of the coronavirus in their semen, the team reported in the journal JAMA Network Open. About a quarter of them were in the acute stage of infection and nearly 9% of them were recovering, the team reported. It's not a surprising finding. Many viruses can live in the male reproductive tract. Ebola and Zika virus were both found to spread in semen, sometimes months after a male patient had recovered. It's not yet clear if coronavirus can spread this way. Finding evidence of virus does not necessarily mean it's infectious.

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theodp shares a report from The Washington Post: New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) rocked the education world -- and drew strong criticism from teachers and others -- by questioning why school buildings still exist and announcing that he would work with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to 'reimagine education' (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), with technology at the forefront. Cuomo, who in the past has angered educators by supporting controversial Gates-funded school reforms, said Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic offers an opportunity to change how students are educated, and he called Gates "a visionary" whose "thoughts on technology and education" should be advanced. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions of dollars on education reform projects it has conceded did not work as hoped. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been chosen to 'revolutionize' online learning for the fall and was asked by Cuomo on Tuesday to develop a 'blueprint' for how to do so," adds Vox. Cuomo has also tapped Google CEO Eric Schmidt to help not only "reimagine" New York's school system, but the state's economy and health care system too. While details are scarce about what exactly these groups have in mind, Schmidt said during Cuomo's daily news conference on Wednesday he would focus on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband access.

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The Hawaii-based Gemini telescope produces a super-sharp picture of the gas giant in the infrared.