Month: April 2020

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The NewsWorthy - Challenging Week, COVID-19 in Animals & Quibi Launches – Monday, April 6th, 2020

The news to know for Monday, April 6th, 2020!

Why America’s top doctors are saying this could be the most challenging week of this pandemic, and what they say can make a big difference.

Also, the first animal in the U.S. tested positive for COVID-19, so we're sharing what officials say now about our pets.

Plus, President Trump’s revenge, a new (and unique) way to stream original movies, and a new episode of Tiger King is possible...

Those stories and more in less than 10 minutes. 

This episode is brought to you by www.Blinkist.com/news 

 

Sources:

Current Case Count/Death Toll; Johns Hopkins, WaPo

U.S. Warns of Deadly Two Weeks Ahead: AP, ABC News, Politico

CDC Recommends Faces Covered in Public: CDC, NPR, CNBC

How-To Make a Face Covering: YouTube

Hot Spots Preparation: USA Today, Al Jazeera

Ventilator Shortage: Vox, Forbes 

Tiger at U.S. Zoo Gets COVID-19: Wildlife Conservation Society, Axios, ABC News

Italy Lowest Number of Deaths in Weeks: The Guardian, ABC News

Boris Johnson Hospitalized with COVID-19: AP, Al Jazeera, The Guardian

Queen Elizabeth Gives Rare Public Address: BBC, Axios

Trump Fires Inspector General: AP, NYT, Washington Post, Politico 

Letter from Captain Crozier: SF Chronicle

2020 Basketball Hall of Fame: CBS Sports, ESPN, USA Today

Quibi Launches: Quibi, The Verge, Cnet

Target Limiting Number of People in its Stores: Target, USA Today

Home Depot Fever Checks: Home Depot, CNBC, Fox Business

Amazon Fever Checks: Amazon TechCrunch, Reuters, Engadget, CNBC, Reuters

Pandemic is Making Earth Shake Less: CNN, CBS News

New Tiger King Episode: NBC News, Fox News, Variety

New Release Dates for Black Widow, Mulan: The Verge, Press Release

Monday Monday: How to Use your Stimulus Funds: Yahoo Money

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What A Day - Locked Up During Lockdown

We interview Keri Blakinger, a reporter at The Marshall Project who covers prisons, on how jails and detention centers are managing release of inmates to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and how the urgent push to get people out is affecting former inmates. 

Government officials say the coming two weeks could be the most difficult yet as some states approach their potential peaks for COVID-19. Other states have begun to ramp down. We discuss that as well as new demographic data that paints an early picture of who is disproportionately affected by the virus.

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The Daily Signal - The Second Amendment Is ‘Essential’

States all over America are mandating nonessential businesses close, which is forcing lawmakers to decide what businesses should and should not be deemed “essential.” In states like New York and Massachusetts, gun stores have already been told to close their doors. In Texas, on the other hand, the attorney general has said gun stores can remain open during the pandemic. 


Cam Edwards, Editor of BrearingArms.Com, joins The Daily Signal podcast to explain why gun shops should be considered essential businesses and how the coronavirus has affected firearm sales. 


Plus: we share an interview with Maj Toure, Founder of Black Guns Matter. He explains the mission of his organization and how communities can combat gun violence without restricting Second Amendment rights. 


And be sure to check out the Faith on Facebook Resource Hub and find all the tools your church, small group, or Bible study can use to build community and stay connected during the coronavirus.


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The Boring Talks - #50 – Windows

Where does the word 'Window' derive from? And what does it have to do with a Norwegian architectural historian and a bohemian Austrian poet? On a lyrical journey from death to inspiration, Anne Ulrikke Andersen takes a look through the windows in the life of Christian Norberg-Schulz.

James Ward introduces another curious talk about a subject that may seem boring, but is actually very interesting.... maybe.

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Unexpected Elements - Covid 19 – The fightback in Africa begins

Nigeria has seen a small number of Covid -19 cases, largely spread amongst the most affluent, people who travel abroad, However there is concern about the potential of the virus to spread to overcrowded slum areas. In such conditions social distancing measures would be difficult to enforce. What are the alternatives?

The US now has the majority of cases of the virus, New York has been heavily hit, medics have developed an app to help understand the spread of Covid 19 in the community.

The availability of test kits is an issue worldwide, we look at a novel idea, adapting a device made from paper that could help to see whether the virus is present in wastewater.

The WHO has launched international drug trials to tackle covid 19, but none of the drugs involved were developed specifically to target this virus we look at why they might just work.

In medicine, it’s long been recognised that a placebo, a sham medicine or treatment, can have a powerful positive effect on a patient’s health. Part of that effect relies on a person’s belief that an inactive substance or treatment (for example, a sugar pill) is in fact an active drug. Placebos come in many forms and the scientific study of placebo is an active area of research. With this in mind, CrowdScience listener Nigel got in touch to ask if can placebos be used to improve sports performance? As an amateur sports enthusiast, he’s been reading up on his sports psychology to try and improve his game but he wonders if any coaches or psychologists use placebos to improve performance? Always ready to take up a challenge, presenter Anand Jagatia explores the world of endurance sport to find out how a placebo might used to improve athletes’ performances as well as his own and look at how advances in brain science are helping us understand the unusual neurobiology of placebo. And what of the amateur golfer or rugby or table tennis player - can placebo help? On an individual level, so called ‘verbal placebo’ is a technique that can help players with anxiety, confidence and concentration, and ultimately make them win more. And what about team sports – when, say, a new manager takes over at an ailing football club, and sparks a massive reversal in poor results, is that placebo effect in action? The CrowdScience team investigates.

(Image: Getty Images)

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CoinDesk Podcast Network - LTB!: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on Coronavirus Second Order Effects and Improving on Bitcoin

In Today's discussion we'll briefly talk about some of the knock-on, or second order affects which the coronavirus disruption is having on our world today, and which may continue into the future. Then for the meat of the show we'll dig into specific areas where bitcoin could, or perhaps is being improved with the creator of one of the most impactful peer to peer technologies live in the world today.

Shownotes for LTB! #433

  • Topic 1 - Second Order Impacts of Coronavirus Lockdowns
  • Social distancing and the revenge of the Hikikomori
  • Coronavirus second order effects
  • It’s an extroverts world but we’re all introverts this month
  • The AOL moment for Zoom meetings and arguing the potato
  • Interpersonal compression, zoomers and enforced quality time
  • Will overall deaths go down because of pandemic lockdowns?
  • The end of “Bus Mode” for Lyft and Uber
  • Autonomous vehicles, grocery deliveries and the last mile problem
  • Tampons, cocktail sausages and a very weird month
  • This episode is sponsored by eToro
  • A friendly government delivery service?
  • Opportunities in sterilization and social changes that’ll last
  • Automated cleansing cycles and Far-UVC
  • Internet infrastructure, Netflix social signaling and the recycling dilemma
  • Masks, headphones and the changing standard of social isolation


  • TOPIC 2 - How the creator of BitTorrent thinks he’s created a less wasteful, more distributed, more secure approach to Nakamoto Consensus
  • Decentralized systems and the critical success of BitTorrent
  • Naming projects, vegetables and a list of grains
  • Proof of Space and Time
  • Warehouses of computers, competitive money burning and Keynesian stimulus
  • Proof of Work works and that’s a huge accomplishment, but could be better
  • Centralization, Nakamoto consensus and Proof of Stake
  • Moats and losing the battle with ASIC-hard consensus algorithms
  • “Grinding attacks” as the competitive strategy
  • Fundamental economics, storage capacity and the loophole
  • Airdrops for something over-resourced and under-provisioned
  • Losing money on buying “farming” hardware
  • The early days of bitcoin mining with CPUs
  • Power and CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs
  • Hard Drives ,hard drives, hard drives and hard drives
  • Storing data as proof, but not peoples data is like Proof of Work; the work isn’t useful, it’s just a measuring stick that doesn’t need your name or a long term commitment
  • Printing lottery tickets with ASICs vs. a hard drive full of bingo cards
  • Proofs of Space need Proofs of Time
  • Less wasteful by using an underutilized resource
  • More distributed because excess hard drive capacity is already distributed and there is no “ASIC” equivalent possible for hard drives. Just better or faster hard drives
  • More secure because less wasteful and more distributed equal better security in distributed consensus
  • Breaking, tweaking and proving proofs of time and space
  • Miners don’t run data centers
  • UTXOs, message passing on-chain programming environments and walking a fine line between Bitcoin and Ethereum
  • Rate limiting wallets and reversible paper wallets
  • Improving colored coins
  • Decentralized exchange doesn’t need decentralized exchanges
  • Farming, pre-farming, farming rewards and trailing emissions
  • Why pre-farm?
  • Is it viable to farm with AWS?
  • Carrying hundred dollar bills and Chia’s business model involves loaning Tokens To Large International Companies
  • Covenants replicate many banking system benefits without requiring banks or centralization
  • Complexity, Bitcoin Script and Protocol Level Improvements

This episode was sponsored by eToro.com, with music by Jared Rubens, Gurty Beats and Adam B. Levine.  Today's show featured Bram Cohen, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine with editing by Jonas.

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The Phil Ferguson Show - 336 John W. Loftus – Is Jesus Real?

Interview with John W. Loftus. We discuss his newest book " The Case Against Miracles". John and several other writers explains why Miracles likely do not happen.
John has several other books on religion:
- Unapologetic
- Christianity in the light of science
- How to defend the christian faith: Advice from an Atheist
- Christianity is NOT Great
- God or Godless?
- The Outsider Test for Faith
- Why I became an Atheist
- The end of Christianity
- The Christian Delusion

Investing Skeptically: ESG investing.
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Curious City - Pets And COVID-19: What You Need To Know

Chicagoans have become familiar with how COVID-19 is spread from person to person and what types of safety measures they should be taking during this time.

But WBEZ has gotten several questions from pet owners who are wondering about the risks to their furry friends, things like--are cats and dogs susceptible to the virus and who will care for my pet if I get hospitalized with COVID-19?

Scientists recently confirmed the first cases of COVID-19 in domestic pets- two cats and two dogs. But science journalist David Grimm says researchers, at this stage, believe the risk of transmission is low because the cell biology of animals is so different from humans.

Still, there are precautions people need to take.

In this episode, we explore how to best care for your pets right now, what to do if a pet owner gets sick with the virus and how our furry companions may also be responding to the emotional stress their owners might be experiencing right now.

More about our questioner


Dr. Samuel Farbstein is one of several people who asked WBEZ questions about pets and COVID-19. Samuel was wondering about whether his two dogs, J.C. and Benji, could possibly contract the virus and if they would be contagious if they did.

He’s an internist at DuPage Medical Group and has been reading all the medical literature about the novel coronavirus so he can up with his patients’ questions and concerns. He thinks J.C. and Benji sense he’s under an unusual kind of stress, and says they’ve tried to offer him some comfort.

“I [spent] 8 hours at my computer dictating yesterday and [both dogs] were basically at my side making sure I couldn't walk without stepping on them,” Sam says. “They knew I needed it; they know I'm under stress. They read us well.”

Jesse Dukes is the Curious City audio producer. You can follow him @CuriousDukes.