Covid-19 cases and deaths are climbing across the world for the first time in two months as the virus surges across Europe, World Health Organization officials said at a briefing Thursday. From a report: After weeks of decline, infections in Europe have risen over the last three consecutive weeks, even as cases fall in every other region across the world, according to WHO. There were nearly 3 million new Covid cases reported worldwide for the week ended Sunday, an increase of 4% from the previous seven days, according to WHO's most recent epidemiological update. Globally, Covid cases had fallen 4% the week before, despite a 7% increase across Europe over that same period. Cases in Europe surged by 18% over the last week alone, WHO data shows. "The global number of reported cases and deaths from Covid-19 is now increasing for the first time in two months, driven by an ongoing rise in Europe that outweighs declines in other regions," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "It's another reminder that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over." Covid has surged sharply in Czechia and Hungary, where the seven-day average of cases swelled more than 100% from the previous week as of Wednesday, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Croatia, Denmark, Norway and Poland each recorded weekly average case increases of more than 70% on Wednesday, JHU found.

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Huq, an established data vendor that obtains granular location information from ordinary apps installed on people's phones and then sells that data, has been receiving GPS coordinates even when people explicitly opted-out of such collection inside individual Android apps, researchers and Motherboard have found. From a report: The news highlights a stark problem for smartphone users: that they can't actually be sure if some apps are respecting their explicit preferences around data sharing. The data transfer also presents an issue for the location data companies themselves. Many claim to be collecting data with consent, and by extension, in line with privacy regulations. But Huq was seemingly not aware of the issue when contacted by Motherboard for comment, showing that location data firms harvesting and selling his data may not even know whether they are actually getting this data with consent or not. "This shows an urgent need for regulatory action," Joel Reardon, assistant professor at the University of Calgary and the forensics lead and co-founder of AppCensus, a company that analyzes apps, and who first flagged some of the issues around Huq to Motherboard, said in an email. "I feel that there's plenty wrong with the idea that -- as long as you say it in your privacy policy -- then it's fine to do things like track millions of people's every moment and sell it to private companies to do what they want with it. But how do we even start fixing problems like this when it's going to happen regardless of whether you agree, regardless of any consent whatsoever."

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"Listen where ever you get podcasts."I did that.

Update: the new CMS is deployed and seems to work. Most important the problems with international blogs appear to be solved. Drummer blogs are unique in that there are archive pages for each day, and month. Which is a date problem other blogging tools don't have. I was trying to think how we solved the problem in Manila and Radio, and then realized we didn't have the problem. Drummer is different. Which is kind of what you'd expect from a product with that name.

If Zuck had asked me what to name his company I would've said name it The New York Times.

I saw this and for a moment I thought it said Mets. Maybe he should have named Facebook The New York Mets. He could've bought the team with the change that falls out of his pocket at night.

Drummer is a better name than Meta.

I have to use Facebook because so many other people do. Something new from Zuck? Oh please hell no.

President Joe Biden wants to show the U.N. climate conference in Scotland that the United States is back in the fight against global warming. But continued haggling in Congress over legislation to advance his climate goals threatens to undermine that message on the world stage. From a report: Biden leaves for Europe on Thursday for a G20 meeting in Rome followed by a gathering of world leaders in Glasgow aimed at saving the planet from the devastation wreaked by rising temperatures. Biden had hoped to showcase legislation designed to fulfill a U.S. pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, seeking to provide an example that would encourage other nations to take bold, quick action to protect the Earth. The plan includes hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in clean energy, but some aspects such as a program that would reward electricity companies for investing in renewables and penalize those that did not, have been cut from a bill to fund his social and climate change agenda. As of Wednesday evening, Biden's fellow Democrats had still not reached an agreement, forcing him to leave Washington without a deal in hand.

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Microsoft is rolling out Windows 11 to more PCs this week. After an initial launch to mostly new PCs earlier this month, Microsoft is gradually making the free Windows 11 upgrade available to more existing and eligible devices. From a report: "The availability of Windows 11 has been increased and we are leveraging our latest generation machine learning model to offer the upgrade to an expanded set of eligible devices," says Microsoft. "We will continue to train our machine learning model throughout the phased rollout to deliver a smooth upgrade experience." If you've been waiting for the Windows 11 upgrade to appear in Windows Update, you might find the above prompt this week. Anecdotally, we've been offered the upgrade on a variety of devices today, including a custom gaming PC.

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Facebook unveiled a series of new moves in augmented and virtual reality on Thursday, as part of its longer-term effort to help build a "metaverse" that will bring physically distant people closer together. From a report: Facebook has said this is its next major push, but it comes as the company is under intense scrutiny for how it is managing the impact of its existing services. The company is using its annual Facebook Connect conference to outline a series of new features and products, as well as some investments to spur adoption of the technologies. Among them: Horizon Home: Facebook is making the home screen on Oculus Quest more social, allowing friends to gather, watch videos together and dive into games and apps. Messenger calling in VR: This will start with being able to call from VR and eventually that will be a launch point for hanging out in virtual reality. Bringing more 2D apps to VR: More than 20 apps are coming to Horizon Home, with the ability to be placed on a virtual screen. Apps include productivity titles like Slack and Dropbox as well as Facebook's own services, including Instagram. Developers will also be able to offer their own progressive web apps for use in VR. Horizon Marketplace: The company plans to operate its own marketplace where creators and developers can sell their own virtual goods. On the augmented reality front, Facebook is adding hand and body tracking to its Spark AR developer tools as well as Polar, a new app that allows people to create augmented reality filters without needing to code.

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Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to work with community colleges across the United States to fill 250,000 cybersecurity jobs over the next four years. From a report: Microsoft said it will provide scholarships or assistance to about 25,000 students and will provide training for new and existing teachers at 150 community colleges across the country. The company also said that it will provide curriculum materials for free to all community colleges, as well as four-year schools, in the country. "Over the next three years, we'll put many tens of millions of dollars behind this effort," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a press briefing. "This is an opportunity for us to get started. This is not the ceiling on what we'll do."

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Facebook said Thursday it's changing its name to Meta. "From now on, we''ll be metaverse first, not Facebook first," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company's Oculus Connect event. "Over time you won't need to use Facebook to use our other services."

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LinkedIn is rolling out a new platform for freelancers to help it better compete against the likes of Fiverr and Upwork. TechCrunch reports: Today it is taking the wraps off its Service Marketplace, a new feature that will let people advertise themselves for short-term engagements to those looking to hire people for such roles, competing against the likes of Fiverr and Upwork for sourcing skilled knowledge workers. The launch of its freelancer platform is coming alongside a few other key updates from LinkedIn around other job-hunting tools, underscoring how the company is looking to adapt to new currents in the job market and how we work. They include new search filters to find jobs (permanent jobs, that is) that are remote, hybrid or on-site; and these can also now be indicated on your "Open to Work" indicator if you have that turned on to invite recruiters to contact you. Alongside this, you can now also check out companies' vaccination requirements as part of how you evaluate jobs (if the employer has indicated those details itself). Service Marketplace was first leaked out as a small test in February this year. Since then LinkedIn has been running a quiet beta of the service in the U.S., which has already picked up 2 million users from among the nearly 800 million users (as of yesterday's earning report) that LinkedIn now has globally. As of today, Service Marketplace is going to be turned on for everyone globally: to set up a freelancer profile, you go to your own profile page, find the button near the top and follow the script to set it up and flag what you might be interested in working on. [...] Although Service Marketplace is not currently charging any fees, as it does for its other recruiting products, this will lay the groundwork for how over time LinkedIn can. The Service Marketplace is launching with 250 job categories, and the plan is to expand that to 500, product manager Matt Faustman told me in an interview. "We are barely scratching the surface," he said. Marketing has been one of the stronger categories to date, he added. "Barely scratching the surface" may be the operative phrase here: For now, there is no way of negotiating a fee for work, nor for invoicing, and those looking to find people are not required to give any specific guidance on fees until they get into a deeper conversation with a candidate. When it comes to reviews, clients can review those they have engaged, but the individuals cannot leave a review for the clients. And, those listing themselves on the Marketplace have no way of finding jobs themselves: they are there to be discovered, not to search for work themselves.

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