Initially, the new season was slated to premiere Wednesday, June 17.

One of the most important tips for protecting yourself from COVID-19 is to wash your hands for 20 seconds, or as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice. British teen William Gibson decided he wanted the public to have more song options while fighting the spread of coronavirus.

Gibson created an online tool that allows a user to enter the title of their chosen song and artist to automatically generate a poster. The poster matches lyrics from the song to a 13-step washing routine. The UK’s NHS Health Secretary Matt Hancock has publically praised Gibson’s initiative as the posters have been shared extensively on social media. Gibson thought it would be popular, but has still been surprised to see some of his favorite celebrities posting about it. Visit the Wash Your Lyrics website to create your own poster for washing hands with your favorite song.

Chicago high school junior Jessica Tansey was concerned about her classmates whose families would struggle with food insecurity during the school closure for COVID-19. At the same time, she was concerned about the restaurants in her neighborhood and the negative effect the COVID-19 shutdowns were having on them. She came up with and launched a campaign called “A Meal Today, A Meal Tomorrow” to help with both community issues.

It works by a customer buying one gift card at a nearby restaurant, and the restaurant agreeing to donate a second gift card to Tansey’s high school, which is then given to a school family in need. While some of the larger restaurant chains are able to commit to matching gift cards dollar-for-dollar, many smaller restaurants are donating gift cards worth a percentage of the one purchased to help out. Tansey said, “If we can connect restaurants and students with one solution, maybe it can make a difference for everybody. I want to get all of us thinking about how to bring communities together to support each other during rough times.”

Giant-scale physics experiments are increasingly reliant on big data and complex algorithms fed into powerful computers, and managing this multiplying mass of data presents its own unique challenges. To better prepare for this data deluge posed by next-generation upgrades and new experiments, physicists are turning to the fledgling field of quantum computing.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it will establish Quantum Information Science Centers to help lay the foundation for these technologies. As Congress put forth in the National Quantum Initiative Act, the DOE's Office of Science will make awards for at least two and up to five centers.

The Big Questions series features perspectives from the five recipients of the Department of Energy Office of Science's 2019 Distinguished Scientists Fellows Award describing their research and what they plan to do with the award. Sally Dawson is a senior scientist at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The Big Questions series features perspectives from the five recipients of the Department of Energy Office of Science's 2019 Distinguished Scientists Fellows Award describing their research and what they plan to do with the award. Ian Foster is the director of Argonne National Laboratory's Data Science and Learning Division.

Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat

Ivy came into my life on December 22, 2012. She was the most beautiful little creature I had ever seen and I knew instantly that she was supposed to be

Несмотря ни на что, жизнь продолжается, и наступает май - один из волшебных месяцев года. Во многих регионах и странах люди по-прежнему остаются дома, а это значит, что у всех дел есть шанс быть переделанными, и можно посвятить больше времени любимым сайтам.

The government loves its secrets. It loves them so much it does stupid things to, say, "secure the nation..." or "protect the integrity of deliberative processes" or whatever the fuck. We should not trust the government's reasoning when it chooses to redact information from documents it releases to FOIA requesters. These assertions should always be challenged because the government's track record on redactions is objectively awful.

Here's the latest case-in-point: Emma Best -- someone the government feels is a "vexatious" FOIA filer -- just received a completely stupid set of redactions from the Secret Service. Best requested documents mentioning darknet market Hansa, which was shut down (along with Alpha Bay) following an investigation by US and Dutch law enforcement agencies.

The documents returned to Best contained redactions. This is unsurprising given the nature of the investigation. What's surprising is what the Secret Service decided to redact. As Best pointed out on Twitter, the Secret Service decided public press releases by the DOJ were too sensitive to be released to the general public.

Here's one of the redactions [PDF] the Secret Service applied to a press release that can be found unaltered and unedited at the Justice Department's publicly-accessible website:

And here's what the Secret Service excised, under the bullshit theory that a publicly-released press statement is somehow an "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letter which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency."

“This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Make no mistake, the forces of law and justice face a new challenge from the criminals and transnational criminal organizations who think they can commit their crimes with impunity using the dark net. The dark net is not a place to hide. The Department will continue to find, arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate criminals, drug traffickers and their enablers wherever they are. We will use every tool we have to stop criminals from exploiting vulnerable people and sending so many Americans to an early grave. I believe that because of this operation, the American people are safer – safer from the threat of identity fraud and malware, and safer from deadly drugs.”

Um. Is Jeff Sessions being Yezhoved by the Secret Service? Does the agency consider him to be enough of a persona non grata after his firing by Trump to be excised from the Secret Services' official recollection of this dark web takedown? This insane conspiracy theory I just made up makes as much sense as anything the Secret Service could offer in explanation for this redaction. The redaction removed nothing but the sort of swaggering statement Attorney Generals always make after a huge bust.

Needless to say, Emma Best is challenging the Secret Service's redactions. Pithily.

I am appealing the integrity of the redactions, as you withheld public press releases under b5, which is grossly inappropriate.

Yeah. That's an understatement. The Secret Service has no business redacting publicly-available info. Even if this was a clerical error, it's so bad it's insulting. And that's why you can't trust the government on things like this: when it's not being malicious, it's being stupid.

This seems to be something of a thing. Our last "Tales From the Quarantine" post focused on how television celebrities had taken to offering people help on Twitter with their virtual home decor in the latest Animal Crossing game. This post also involves Animal Crossing, but in a much more direct way. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are enormous numbers of people who have suddenly found themselves without jobs or regular income. And, so, they've turned to irregular sources of income instead.

Ars Technica has an interesting interview with one of many people who have taken to the internet to indirectly sell Animal Crossing's "bells", the currency of the game.

In the midst of COVID-19, some New Horizons players are turning to World of Warcraft-style gold farming methods to make ends meet. In early April, Lexy, a 23-year-old recent college grad, created a Twitter account offering up bells (Animal Crossing’s in-game currency) for real-world cash (she requested we refer to her by a nickname to avoid potential reprisal from Nintendo). “I got laid off due to COVID so I'm farming bells in ACNH,” she wrote. “I really need to make rent this month so I'm selling 2 mil bells per $5, please message me if interested, I'll give you a discount the more you buy.”

Before setting up this unorthodox income stream, Lexy had been working at a supermarket while developing her animation portfolio. She began exploring the idea of turning bells into cash after showing friends just how much in-game income she’d been making. “One of them asked to legitimately buy some for me,” she recalled in a Twitter interview. “I did some research and found some people selling bells on sites such as eBay, but for pretty ridiculous prices.” (Current prices on eBay seem more competitive, with some sellers offering rare gold tools and gold nuggets to sweeten the deal).

The threat from Nintendo is probably real. After all, unlike some other games where people do this sort of thing, Nintendo's game doesn't include any method for selling in-game resources for real currency. Nintendo is also notoriously prudish about things like this. And, finally, to make an effective go at this sort of thing, it takes some manipulation of the console in a way that is somewhat controversial with gamers generally.

Understandably, Lexy adjusts the clock on her Nintendo Switch to speed up the game’s slow, “natural” money-making cycle of harvesting daily fruit, digging up bells from the ground, and planting a daily “money tree” that can yield big profits. This kind of in-game “time traveling” is controversial practice among casual Animal Crossing players, but it's a practical necessity to maximize real-world bell-farming profits.

As for how much money people like Lexy are bringing in, it's in the four figures, but she wasn't any more specific than that. Payments are made through digital apps like PayPal, after which she visits the game islands of others and deposits the bells.

That all of this is going on during a global pandemic that has some folks farming bells to make ends meet and others with apparently enough disposable income to be buyers is all, of course, deeply strange. But it's also just yet another way technology is having an impact on our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blacow* speaks of four players: the Wargamer, the Power-Gamer, the Role-Player, and the Story-Teller. The Wargamer, what does he say?...

I recently travelled to Pittsburgh, USA, to present the paper “From Playing Games to Committing Crimes: A Multi-Technique Approach to Predicting Key Actors on an Online Gaming Forum” at eCrime 2019, co-authored with Ben Collier and Alice Hutchings. The accepted version of the paper can be accessed here. The structure and content of various underground … Continue reading From Playing Games to Committing Crimes: A Multi-Technique Approach to Predicting Key Actors on an Online Gaming Forum →

Decades-old theory may require a rethink thanks to Japanese probe

The Moon is believed to have formed from the leftovers of a proto-Earth smashing into a Mars-sized Theia nearly 4.5 billion years ago.…

NoSQL, no problem for Facebook-originating RocksDB

MongoDB and fellow database biz Rockset have integrated products in a bid to make it easier to work with the NoSQL database through standard relational database query language SQL.…

John Cena!* Online resources only for free and end users due to the 'unprecedented period'

Video conferencing darling of the hour, Zoom, has tightened up support rules in order to "better serve" users.…

Despite you know what, little evidence of a rush to new racks

Equinix has posted its Q1 FY2020 results for the period ending March 31st, along with some interesting insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted data centre consumption.…

It's like three buses showing up at once carrying $8bn

India’s largest mobile carrier, Jio, has just scored a third new investor in three weeks!…

And now to avoid container sprawl costing you plenty

Microsoft has slipped out licensing details for SQL Server running in containers and it will likely encourage developers to be pretty diligent in their use of Redmond’s database.…

Zero-click remote-code exec hole found by Googler, updates emitted

Samsung has patched a serious security hole in its smartphones that can be exploited by maliciously crafted text messages to hijack devices.…

«Расскажи, что для Победы все мы отдадим»

Tattoo pistols are definitely the devices that are used to create and use tattoos. These pistols are also known as tattoo models. They have been utilized for several years to create stylish and delightful bits of system craft. Right now,… Continue Reading →

At Let Grow, a wise mom named Kate Sundquist admits that while her kids were already good at playing, they certainly weren’t good at filling hours and hours of free time, playing by themselves. (Read the piece here.) So she her and boys created a schedule. “While these routines might seem restrictive or even the […]

What expression does — did — your mom use all the time? What skill did you learn from her?  What does (or did) she encourage you to do? These are great questions for any mom and child, whether the kid is 5 or 50. And if you click here, you can print out a very […]

At least for some kids, yes, being flung from the stress of a super-structured, super-supervised existence is having a calming, life-expanding effect. I discuss this amazing phenom in this Big Think article, including six short essays by kids themselves, and also in this interview with Bored Panda,  the  pop culture site, where I note that […]

The Miami Beach danger zone for mosquitoes carrying Zika virus is expanding. This isn't just about microcephaly in developing fetuses. Since Zika attacks neural progenitor cells it might cause lasting damage in adults too. A case of acute sensory polyneuropathy in an adult caused symptoms that lasted for months. It is suspected that Zika causes inflammation of sensory nerves and possibly an auto-immune response. So Zika is bad. What should we do about it? Wipe out the mosquitoes that carry it. Totally drive them to extinction. These mosquitoes are invasive in the Western Hemisphere. If a mosquito causes major health problems for the human species we should just wipe it out. Wiping out a mosquito species could be done with...

Ziggy, is that you?

On accorde "The World of Art Award" (WAA) aux artistes, aux galeries et aux musées qui poursuivent les "meilleures pratiques" dans l'art et la culture. Cette concurrence cherche à attirer dies artistes, galeries, les musées qui redéfinissent des normes de l'excellence d'art. Ceux qui défie des trends et des tendances existantes dans l'art et la culture.