Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky described the global pandemic as the "most harrowing crisis of our lifetime" and said the coronavirus has cut the company's anticipated revenue in more than half.

The ride-hailing company is cutting 3,700 jobs. It's the latest U.S. tech company to turn to layoffs to deal with fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

The company has faced criticism in recent years for its handling of issues ranging from user privacy to policing hate speech to stopping the spread of disinformation.

The musician’s breezy vocals sit quite well with his light acoustic guitar plucking on the track

The post Hear Jaipur Singer-Songwriter Akash Chopra’s Somber Debut Single ‘Peace’ appeared first on My Site.

Air-burning plasma thruster may be competitive with jet engines.

Trump admin allegedly told CDC its reopening guide would "never see the light of day."

China now has a capsule potentially capable of returning from the Moon.

The travel writer Pico Iyer has known Tokyo - Guardian readers' favourite non-European city - for decades but is still captivated by its curiosities and contradictions

It makes perfect sense that Tokyo is Guardian readers' favourite overseas city. Now that Shanghai looks in parts like Beverly Hills and Delhi is lighting up with Thai restaurants, there are few cities on the planet that are less western than Tokyo – even if it's not necessarily a part of any east that you might recognise. The abiding allure of Japan's huge network of tiny details is that, like something in a Salman Rushdie novel, it seems to blur all notions of high and low, east and west, old and new into one state-of-the-art global amusement park that is wildly fresh and novel in its best incarnations, and at least zany in its worst.

I've lived at a safe distance from Japan's capital for 23 years now, in Kyoto and Nara, three or four hours away by train and several centuries away in terms of their antique pasts. But if I were going to Tokyo tomorrow, I would, on arrival, hold off on the "maid cafes" in the nerds' electronic hive of Akihabara, on the Hysteric Glamour fashions around Harajuku, even on the gleaming shops of the Ginza that have long made Tokyo seem an early visitor from the 23rd century. Instead I'd begin by looking for the old.

The author of The Miniaturist on the beguiling blend of tradition and modernity (and pancakes) in a city that provided the inspiration for her 17th-century-set debut novel and Waterstones Book of the Year 2014

• Top 10 free things to do in Amsterdam
  
• A new Amsterdam – and a new Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam is classically romantic but is also funky, forward-thinking and citizen-friendly. In the old centre, around the southern canal belt, there are these beautiful 17th-century merchants’ houses that 21st-century Amsterdammers still live in. I’ve always thought it wears its historical cloak quite casually and doesn’t just dwell in the past.

The Rijksmuseum is stunning and I love it as a fascinating, cool, accessible museum, as well as for the part it played in inspiring The Miniaturist. I came across Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house there by chance. It’s an exact scale replica of her real home, and Oortman spent a fortune having it created. I thought at the time it was an interesting story, but I didn’t think I was going to write a novel about it. I’m in its debt, really.

From Fair Isle to German Bight, Charlie Connelly has visited all 31 sea areas, but still finds the poetry of the daily radio odyssey mesmerising

The shipping forecast is probably the closest thing we have in the modern age to a national epic. The institution’s rhythms and rituals have changed little since it was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1924: there is poetry in the daily litany and mystery in its terminology. “The radio’s prayer,” Carol Ann Duffy called it. For Seamus Heaney it was “a sibilant penumbra”.

The forecast reminds us we’re a maritime nation and its map binds us to our continent, covering not only our own coasts and waters but an area extending from Norway to Portugal to Iceland. There is democracy in its geography, where tiny Fair Isle carries as much heft as mighty Biscay while Lundy, a sliver of rock in the Bristol Channel, is equal in importance to the Irish Sea. And from the salty old seadog in his brine-encrusted fishing boat to the merchant banker on his yacht, the shipping forecast, all seafarers are equally reliant on it.

Unesco has named the capital of Rajasthan, India, a world heritage site, partly for its jewellery and artisanal traditions, which continue to thrive on one of its main commercial streets

‘Sir, want precious stones?” a man asks me, quietly. I am on the Johari Bazaar, one of Jaipur’s most notable thoroughfares, a straight colonnade screened above by the facades of adjoining houses. Everything is painted orange, terracotta and burnt pink. The man wears white shalwar kameez, and an air of indifference. He unfolds white paper, revealing colourful stones. “Emeralds, sapphires, rubies …” he says. He is among one of several groups of men gathered in this area; they’re local dealers, discussing prices. The avenue, whose name means gem shop road, is lined with dozens of shops displaying magnificent necklaces, bracelets and rings.

NASA has awarded a $2 million grant to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Aerospace Corp. — and Xplore, a Seattle-based space venture — to develop the design architecture for a far-out telescope array that would use the sun's gravitational field as a lens to focus on alien planets. The Phase III award from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, would cover two years of development work and could lead to the launch of a technology demonstration mission in the 2023-2024 time frame. Xplore's team will play a key role in designing the demonstration mission's spacecraft, which would be… Read More

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

As Elon Musk's Starlink and Jeff Bezos's Project Kuiper race to create high-speed internet using satellites orbiting Earth, there's a small problem that could get in the way: debris. From dead spacecraft that have been around since the dawn of the space age to flecks of paint smashing windows on the International Space Station, rubbish is clogging up our orbits. And with objects moving as fast as 15,500mph (25,000 kmph), the satellite services we've come to depend on are at constant risk of collision. So how to fix the problem with junk in space? Ian Anderson investigates

Two gems from the wizard of recreational maths

UPDATE: Puzzle solutions can be read here.

Today’s column is a celebration of John Horton Conway, the legendary British mathematician, who died of coronavirus earlier this month, aged 82.

Conway was an inspirational, iconoclastic genius who invented and studied countless puzzles and games, in addition to his more highbrow work in group theory, number theory, geometry, topology and many other fields.

The answers to today’s puzzles

Earlier today I set you two puzzles that the late John Horton Conway suggested for this column:

1) The Miracle Builders

The chance to put biodiversity and the environment at the heart of recovery from the pandemic should not be squandered

One night in April, birdwatchers from around Britain stepped outside their doors and listened intently to something most of them had never experienced before: the fluting, mysterious, melancholy cry of the common scoter on the wing.

Flocks of these dusky sea ducks were beating their way over Britain on their long migratory journey towards their Arctic breeding grounds, easily audible to the naked ear. The first great wave was heard on the Wirral before being picked up in the Peak District, and at last by the Humber. A second wave was made out as flocks made their way along the line of Hadrian’s wall, from the Solway Firth in the west to Northumberland in the east. A third wave flew above listeners from the Severn estuary to the Wash. The birds were heard in urban Blackburn, Stalybridge, Bristol and London. It was thanks to social media that so many listeners were alert to the birds’ progress – and thanks to the silence of lockdown that they could be heard.

Researchers say cannibalistic tendency may help explain why the invasive creatures thrive

When the going gets tough, most parents try to protect their offspring. But the warty comb jelly takes a different tack: it eats them.

Despite initial appearances, comb jellies are not jellyfish but belong to a different group of animals, ctenophora, which swim using tiny hair-like projections called cilia.

The United States on Friday objected to a proposed U.N. resolution on the coronavirus pandemic after diplomats said it had agreed to compromise language with China that didn’t directly mention the World Health Organization, an issue of growing dispute between the world’s two major economic powers. The U.S. objection to the Security Council resolution drafted by France and Tunisia reflects rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. It also leaves the U.N.’s most powerful body impotent on reacting to the greatest crisis facing the world — and unable to back Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ March 23 call for global cease-fires to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, which diplomats said all 15 Security Council members agree on and is the main point of the resolution.

On the 75th anniversary of the allied victory in the World War II, The Associated Press spoke to veterans in ex-Soviet countries and discovered that lessons they learned during the war are helping them cope with a new major challenge — the coronavirus pandemic. As they recalled the horrors of the war, they also talked about how strength and tenacity were key to survival both then and now. For Russian World War II veteran Valentina Efremova, the coronavirus pandemic is like going through the war all over again.

The back-and-forth continues.The Department of Homeland Security said Friday the United States will shorten the visa length for Chinese journalists working for non-American news outlets to 90 days. Previously, journalists with Chinese passports were granted open-ended visas. They can apply for extensions under the new rules, but renewed visas will also last just 90 days. The new limit won't apply to reporters from Hong Kong Macau, or to mainland Chinese citizens who hold green cards.It's the latest development in a media war between Washington and Beijing that has intensified during the coronavirus pandemic. American officials said the rules were meant to counterbalance the "suppression of independent journalism" in China, whose government expelled journalists from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post in March. Before that, the U.S. reduced the number of Chinese citizens employed by multiple state-controlled Chinese news organizations to work in the country. The New York Times notes the move wasn't unexpected; U.S. intelligence officials have long believed some journalists at Beijing-run outlets are spies, and the Trump administration has designated some Chinese news agencies foreign government functionaries.The heightened tensions between the world's two biggest powers didn't just show up in the media world Friday. U.S. lawmakers wrote to nearly 60 countries asking them to support Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization, a move that likely won't sit well with China. And Washington also blocked a United Nations security council resolution calling for a global ceasefire during the pandemic because it indirectly referenced the WHO, which the U.S. has blamed in conjunction with China for failing to suppress the outbreak.More stories from theweek.com Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame is running for Congress, and her launch video looks like a spy movie trailer 7 scathing cartoons about America's rush to reopen Trump says he couldn't have exposed WWII vets to COVID-19 because the wind was blowing the wrong way

Pai’s “baffling” report ignores broadband gaps and high prices, Democrats say.

Comcast hasn't enforced data cap since March 13 because of pandemic.

Last week NVIDIA announced the acquisition of SwiftStack, an object storage startup that, in the last year, refocused most of its work…

Thanks to them, everyone from Vancouver immigrants to Langley labourers are staying well fed and cared for. 

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Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could help us understand the origin of our universe, they say.

Comet had prompted excitement as astronomers expected it to be visible to the naked eye – but it has since broken up and is getting dimmer

Nazareth, once thought to have been a small village, likely to have been a town of around 1,000 people, new evidence suggests

Nasa and the European Space Agency have shared new images of Comet Atlas as it flies towards Earth.

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Pictures are some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever taken from the Earth

GameStop’s Pro Day Sale

Note:

For 4/18 only, Pro Deals for ALL at GameStop.com. 

On Saturday only, if you aren't a Pro Member, score 5,000 bonus points when you become a Power Up Rewards member and Pro Members score 2x points per dollar spent. See some of the top offers below!

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GameStop’s Pro Day Sale