The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed that of the 1918 flu pandemic, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. The Hill reports: The U.S. has passed 675,000 deaths, the estimated toll from the 1918 pandemic, which for a century had been the worst pandemic to hit the country. "The number of reported deaths from Covid in the US will surpass the toll of the 1918 flu pandemic this month," Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tweeted earlier this month. "We cannot become hardened to the continuing, and largely preventable, tragedy." Deaths from COVID-19 are also far from over. The U.S. is averaging about 2,000 more deaths from the virus every day, according to a New York Times tracker. Those deaths are overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, though, highlighting that the continuing toll of COVID-19 is now largely preventable now that vaccines are widely available in the U.S. In 1918, there was no vaccine to help stop the flu pandemic. Still, the U.S. population was far smaller a century ago, meaning that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic is still higher than for COVID-19. E. Thomas Ewing, a Virginia Tech history professor, wrote in Health Affairs earlier this year that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic was about six in every 1,000 people, given the U.S. population at the time of around 100 million. The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is about two in every 1,000 people. A disproportionate share of COVID-19 deaths are also in the United States. Worldwide, the 1918 flu killed far more people than COVID-19 has so far, at about 50 million compared to about 5 million.

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Luke Plunkett, writing for Kotaku: A few days ago Eurogamer closed their forums, bringing to an end over 20 years of community discussion. The site explained the move like sites and companies always do (only a few are still using them), and it made sense the way it always does (that's a lot of money for not much gain), but that doesn't mean the process itself isn't something that sucks. [...] Readers are then urged to move to the site's Discord, because of course they would be. Now, I don't want to pick on Eurogamer here, as like I said up top, in every individual case companies and sites have their reasons for doing this. The most frequently cited are the fact that forums need to be maintained (true!) and that people's conversational habits have changed, with forum use dwindling (also true!). But I simply do not care, because a) I don't work for these companies, and b) I'm more interested in looking at the long-term damage this is doing to the internet. Forums and Discord are apples and oranges. Users aren't being moved from one similar thing to another, they're being shifted to platforms with fundamentally different ways of approaching discussions. Discord is great for talking in the moment. [...] Forums aren't the same though. They're nothing like it. Forums are more deliberate, more considered, and while they're far from perfect -- I'm sure you can post a billion examples of people being neither deliberate nor considered on forums -- the point is that they're more permanent. Forums create a record, an archive we can search through, so that whenever we want to revisit issues, or find help with a problem, or see what was happening during a certain time, we can do that. There's a paper trail, and while sometimes that leads to embarrassing takes on tv shows and game reveals, other times it's providing an enormous help with technical issues or parts of a game you're stuck on.

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The average American's workweek has gotten 10% longer during the pandemic, according to a new Microsoft study published in Nature Human Behaviour. From a report: These longer hours are a key part of the pandemic-induced crisis of burnout at U.S. firms -- and workers are quitting in droves. Microsoft calculated the length of the workday based on the time between Teams users' first email, message or work call and their last. So the longer workweeks don't necessarily mean we're working more, the study says. People may be spending more time logged on because they are distracted with other obligations while working from home and so are less productive. This contributes to burnout because the lines between work life and home life are increasingly blurred, experts say. Further reading: Study of 61,000 Microsoft Employees Finds Remote Work Threatened Productivity and Innovation.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Search for "toothpaste" on Amazon, and the top of the web page will show you a mix of popular brands like Colgate, Crest and Sensodyne. Try a separate search for "deodorant" and you'll first see products from Secret, Dove and Native. Look a little closer, though, and you'll notice that those listings are advertisements with the "sponsored" label affixed to them. Amazon is generating hefty revenue from the top consumer brands because getting valuable placement on the biggest e-commerce site comes with a rising price tag. "There's fewer organic search results on the page, so that increasingly means the only way to get on the page is to buy your way on there," said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at advertising firm Publicis. For consumers looking for toothpaste on Amazon, getting to unpaid results requires two full swipes up on the mobile app. ntil recently, Amazon put two or three sponsored products at the top of search results. Now, there may be as many as six sponsored products that appear ahead of any organic results, with more promotions elsewhere on the page, said Juozas Kaziukenas, who runs e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. The number of ads that appear differs depending on the exact search term and other factors such as whether users are shopping on desktop, mobile or in the Amazon app, Amazon says.

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Apple today released iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, the newest operating system updates designed for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. From a report: As with all of Apple's software updates, iOS and iPadOS 15 can be downloaded at no cost. iOS 15 is available on the iPhone 6s and later while iPadOS 15 is available on the iPad Air 2 and later. The new software can be downloaded on eligible devices over-the-air by going to Settings - General - Software Update. It may take a few minutes for the updates to propagate to all users due to high demand. A new Focus mode cuts down on distractions by limiting what's accessible and who can contact you, and notifications can now be grouped up in daily summaries. There's an option for a new Safari design that moves the tab bar to the bottom of the interface, and Tab Groups keep all of your tabs organized. Maps has been overhauled with even more detail, a 3D view in major cities, a globe view, improved transit, a close-up driving view when navigating complicated routes, and AR walking directions. Across the operating system, there's a new Live Text feature that detects text in any image and lets you copy, paste, and translate it, plus there's a system-wide translation feature. In Photos, plants, pets, landmarks, and more can be identified, and there's a system-wide translation feature that goes well with Live Text. iCloud+ with iCloud Private Relay protects your IP address and obscures your location to prevent websites from tracking you, and a Hide My Email feature lets you create temporary email addresses. You can even use your personal domain with iCloud in iOS 15. Further reading: 19 Things You Can Do in iOS 15 That You Couldn't Do Before.

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The UK prime minister says he is "increasingly frustrated" at support offered to poorer countries.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has canceled plans to launch Lend, a product designed to deliver high-interest returns on USDC stablecoin holdings. From a report: A Coinbase representative confirmed the news to Decrypt this morning, referring us to a quietly updated recent blog post about the planned initiative, which was first announced in June but put on hold following the threat of legal action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "Our goal is to create great products for our customers and to advance our mission to increase economic freedom in the world," the update reads. "As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we've made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below." Coinbase wrote that it had hundreds of thousands of people signed up to its waitlist, which has now been discontinued. "We will not stop looking for ways to bring innovative, trusted programs and products to our customers," the update concludes. Further reading: Is Lending Your Bitcoins a Security?

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Iowa-based grain cooperative New Cooperative was struck by ransomware in recent days and has shut down its computer systems as it tries to mitigate the attack. From a report: The attack occurred on or around Friday, according to Allan Liska, senior threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. The ransomware gang, which goes by the name BlackMatter, is demanding a $5.9 million ransom, Liska said. New Cooperative confirmed that they had been attacked and said they had contacted law enforcement and were working with data security experts to investigate and remediate the situation. "New Cooperative recently identified a cybersecurity incident that is impacting some of our company's devices and systems," according to a statement from the cooperative. "Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline to contain the threat, and we can confirm it has been successfully contained." New Cooperative has communicated with its feed customers and is working to create workarounds to get feed to animals while its systems are down, a person familiar with the matter said.

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A nation-state cyber-espionage group has gained access to the IT network of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Service (DHSS), the agency said last week. From a report: The attack, which is still being investigated, was discovered on May 2, earlier this year, by a security firm, which notified the agency. While the DHSS made the incident public on May 18 and published two updates in June and August, the agency did not reveal any details about the intrusion until last week, when it officially dispelled the rumor that this was a ransomware attack. Instead, the agency described the intruders as a "nation-state sponsored attacker" and "a highly sophisticated group known to conduct complex cyberattacks against organizations that include state governments and health care entities."

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Just days ahead of Microsoft's next Surface hardware event, Twitter user @Shadlow_Leak has posted what appears to be a leaked retail listing showing some key specs of a new Surface Pro device. From a report: According to the listing, the new convertible tablet appears to ditch USB-C and USB-A ports in favor of a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and it also adds 11th-gen Intel Core processors, a 13-inch screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate, and a user-replaceable SSD like the ones in some other current Surface devices. The renders show a Surface with a design similar to the current Surface Pro 7, just with a notably larger screen and smaller bezels than the current Surface Pro 7. Take this with a larger grain of salt the "screens" in these press renders are often superimposed on the devices after the fact, and they've been known to get the screen size wrong. Still, a larger screen with smaller bezels lines up with other Surface Pro 8 rumors that have been circulating, as well as general design trends in the PC industry.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Remember when gadget vendors Aukey, Mpow, RavPower, Vava, TaoTronics and Choetech started mysteriously disappearing from Amazon's online storefront, and it turned out Amazon had intentionally yanked them while vaguely gesturing to the sanctity of its user reviews? Turns out they were just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon has now permanently banned over 600 Chinese brands across 3,000 different seller accounts, the company confirms to The Verge. Amazon says that's the grand tally after five months of its global crackdown, and it's no longer being shy about why: a spokesperson tells us these 600 brands were banned for knowingly, repeatedly and significantly violating Amazon's policies, especially the ones around review abuse. The South China Morning Post reported the numbers earlier, citing an interview with an Amazon Asia VP on state-owned television.

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Amazon has launched an investigation into the conduct of its legal representatives in India following a complaint from a whistleblower who alleged that one or more of the company's reps had bribed government officials, Indian news and analysis outlet the Morning Context reported on Monday. From a report: The company is investigating whether legal fees financed by it was used for bribing government officials, the report said, which cited unnamed sources and didn't identify the government officials. Amazon has placed Rahul Sundaram, a senior corporate counsel, on leave, the report added. In a statement to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said the company has "zero tolerance" for corruption, but didn't comment on the investigation.

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ellithligraw writes: Last month a Stanford research paper coauthored by dozens of Stanford researchers which terms some artificial intelligence models "foundations" is causing a debate over the future of AI. A new research facility is proposed at Stanford to study these so-called "models." Critics call these "foundations" will "mess up the discourse." The debate centers on what Wired calls "colossal neural networks and oceans of data." Some object to the limited capabilities and sometimes freakish behavior of these models; others warn of focusing too heavily on one way of making machines smarter. "I think the term 'foundation' is horribly wrong," Jitendra Malik, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies AI, told workshop attendees in a video discussion. Malik acknowledged that one type of model identified by the Stanford researchers — large language models that can answer questions or generate text from a prompt — has great practical use. But he said evolutionary biology suggests that language builds on other aspects of intelligence like interaction with the physical world. "These models are really castles in the air; they have no foundation whatsoever," Malik said. "The language we have in these models is not grounded, there is this fakeness, there is no real understanding...." Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor at Arizona State University [says] there is no clear path from these models to more general forms of AI... Emily M. Bender, a professor in the linguistics department at the University of Washington, says she worries that the idea of foundation models reflects a bias toward investing in the data-centric approach to AI favored by industry... "There are all of these other adjacent, really important fields that are just starved for funding," she says. "Before we throw money into the cloud, I would like to see money going into other disciplines."

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Seaweed production has been affected by warming seas – this is how farmers are adapting.

The president asks leaders to commit to cutting emissions by at least 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.