Dec 3 9:28pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (12/3/20)
The state has been simulating the distribution of COVID vaccines before they arrive. We learned a test run involved confusion with the state of Kentucky. - Who has final say on who gets vaccines first. - The Kid of the Year is from Colorado.
Dec 2 10:04pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (12/2/20)
Health care workers will get the first batch of COVID vaccines, but how long will that take? We talk to a doctor who helped plan distribution in Colorado.
Dec 1 10:26pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (12/1/20)
We look at the fine print as state lawmakers prepare to send cash to Colorado businesses. - Will a prisoner in our state be able to get a COVID vaccine before your grandma who lives at home? We look at the plan as it stands now and what might change.
Nov 27 8:34pm
Woman remembers mother who died of COVID-19
Ruth Anderson, in Louisville, lost her mom Elaine Morrison to COVID-19 last week. She hopes others think of how their actions impact others as the virus spreads.
Nov 23 11:41pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (11/23/20)
A crucial week for COVID in Colorado as hospitalizations hit new heights. We find some reason for optimism. - And an answer to your question - why can people eat and drink and be merry at the airport, but not the rest of the metro area?
Nov 19 9:44pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (11/19/20)
Colorado hits 1,500 COVID hospitalizations. - A county reports its ICU beds are full. - And growing numbers of hospitals say staff shortages are coming. But people can still go to Broncos games. We look at why.
Nov 18 10:43pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (11/18/20)
Colorado calls for help staffing hospitals as healthcare workers contract COVID. - A doctor tells us about patients who still think the pandemic is a hoax. - Answers to your questions about how businesses will make it.
Nov 17 9:29pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (11/17/20)
We just got the list of 15 Colorado counties going under tougher COVID restrictions. Call it lockdown-lite. - A word about why the state is punishing other people, instead of those spreading the virus.
Nov 13 10:52am
Denver Restaurant Week kicks off Friday
This is the first time Visit Denver has organized a fall iteration of the event, which aims to help struggling restaurants and offers in-person and to-go options.
Nov 12 5:47pm
Why is COVID spreading despite mask orders?
Why is COVID spreading so like this if people are wearing masks? Kyle and Chris Vanderveen discussed this today, as well as the data lag – which means even if you social distance now, it will take a while to see the results of your efforts.
Nov 9 1:13pm
Adams 12 will move to remote learning
The school district follows the path of several other districts that recently announced they will shift students to remote learning amid rising COVID-19 cases.
Nov 7 1:42pm
2020 Colorado Election Results
Find real-time 2020 Colorado election results for state, local and federal races, including the U.S. presidential battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Nov 5 10:03pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (11/5/20)
The governor issues a warning after we reach all-time COVID-19 highs. - A word about something we may take for granted on Election Day in Colorado. - Rural Colorado gets wolves handed to it by those of us who live in cities.
Nov 3 11:05pm
Voters reject 1 judge for retention
Unofficial results showed District Court Judge Tomee Crespin losing her seat as of 9:35 p.m., with 55% of voters casting ballots against her retention.
Nov 3 3:34pm
2020 Election Results
Find real-time 2020 Colorado election results for state, local and federal races, including the U.S. presidential battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Nov 3 2:00pm
9Health to reduce operations
The nonprofit cited financial hardship amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and said its board will assess and reinvent the organization.
Oct 29 9:32pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (10/29/20)
COVID-19 hospitalizations are still spiking. We take an in-depth look at whether a second lockdown is likely, or if the virus, and our response, has changed to the point we can avoid that.
Oct 29 9:07pm
Can Colorado avoid a second shutdown?
COVID-19 hospitalizations are still spiking in Colorado. Kyle and Chris Vanderveen take an in-depth look at whether a second lockdown is likely, or if the virus, and our response, has changed to the point we can avoid that.
Oct 24 2:53pm
Funeral for fallen Commerce City detective
Detective Curt Holland, 37, had served the department for four years and four months, the last six months. He leaves behind a wife and two young children.
Oct 22 7:21pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (10/22/20)
An update on the East Troublesome Fire, which burned through Grand Lake last night and is now threatening Estes Park -- And a thanks for your generosity.
Oct 22 8:23am
Pepsi Center renamed Ball Arena
Aluminum beverage packaging company Ball Corporation and Kroenke Sports & Entertainment announced a new partnership Thursday.
Oct 22 8:23am
Pepsi Center renamed to Ball Arena
Aluminum beverage packaging company Ball Corporation and Kroenke Sports & Entertainment announced a new partnership Thursday.
Oct 20 6:45pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (10/20/20)
The court case against unlicensed security guard Matthew Dolloff begins tomorrow. What to expect. --And a lot more people are voting in person this election.
Oct 18 3:48pm
Broncos hang on to beat Patriots, 18-12
Broncos dominated most of game in building 18-3 lead, then held on. Offense had to settle for 6 McManus field goals. Denver D forced three turnovers.
Oct 18 2:04pm
Denver Broncos beat Patriots, 18-12
Broncos dominated most of game in building, 18-3 lead, then held on. Offense had to settle for 6 McManus field goals. Denver D has forced three turnovers.
Oct 16 10:28pm
Next with Kyle Clark full show (10/16/20)
Last time Colorado saw a COVID-19 surge like this - we were headed for a statewide shutdown. -The wall of smoke that swept down the Front Range. - And grab your ballot - our Lets Just Vote series continues on Next.
Oct 16 11:26am
Thornton hires new police chief
Terrence Gordon will assume to role of police chief in December. He served with the Milwaukee Police Department for more than 24 years.
Oct 14 10:41am
How to protect yourself from wildfire smoke
The increased amount of fine particulate matter in wildfire smoke can hurt your eyes, irritate your respiratory system, and worsen chronic heart and lung diseases.
Oct 8 12:09pm
Denver hotel ranked among 25 best in world
The Art is a 165-room luxury hotel at 1201 Broadway that is bedecked in artwork and features a fourth-floor balcony lounge overlooking the Golden Triangle district.
Oct 8 10:04am
9Preps Game of the Week: 10/9
The 9Preps Game of the Week is back! Vote to determine which high school football game we showcase on Friday, October 9.
Jun 16 2:19pm
U.S. wants face-to-face meeting with Iran on prisoners
The United States would like a face-to-face meeting with Iran to discuss prisoner releases and it wants the U.N. Security Council to impose an indefinite arms embargo on the Islamic Republic, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday.
Jun 16 12:55pm
Turkey accuses France of exacerbating Libya crisis
Turkey angrily accused France on Tuesday of exacerbating the crisis in Libya and violating U.N. and NATO decisions by supporting the forces of Khalifa Haftar against the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
Slashdot Dec 4 9:06am
iPhones Can Now Automatically Recognize and Label Buttons and UI Features for Blind Users
Apple has always gone out of its way to build features for users with disabilities, and VoiceOver on iOS is an invaluable tool for anyone with a vision impairment -- assuming every element of the interface has been manually labeled. But the company just unveiled a brand new feature that uses machine learning to identify and label every button, slider and tab automatically. From a report: Screen Recognition, available now in iOS 14, is a computer vision system that has been trained on thousands of images of apps in use, learning what a button looks like, what icons mean and so on. Such systems are very flexible -- depending on the data you give them, they can become expert at spotting cats, facial expressions or, as in this case, the different parts of a user interface. The result is that in any app now, users can invoke the feature and a fraction of a second later every item on screen will be labeled. And by "every," they mean every -- after all, screen readers need to be aware of every thing that a sighted user would see and be able to interact with, from images (which iOS has been able to create one-sentence summaries of for some time) to common icons (home, back) and context-specific ones like "..." menus that appear just about everywhere. The idea is not to make manual labeling obsolete -- developers know best how to label their own apps, but updates, changing standards and challenging situations (in-game interfaces, for instance) can lead to things not being as accessible as they could be.

Dec 4 7:58am
Trump Signs Another Executive Order on Governmental AI Development
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that aims to guide how federal agencies adopt artificial intelligence (AI) as part of efforts to build public trust in the government using this technology. From a report: The order itself directs federal agencies to be guided by nine principles when designing, developing, acquiring, and using AI. These principles emphasise that AI use by federal agencies be lawful; purposeful and performance-driven; accurate, reliable, and effective; safe, secure, and resilient; understandable; responsible and traceable; regularly monitored; transparent; and accountable. To implement these principles, the order directs the Office of Management and Budget to create a roadmap by the end of May 2021 for how the government will better support the use of AI. This roadmap will include a schedule for engaging with the public and timelines for finalising relevant policy guidance. The order also calls on agencies to continue to use voluntary consensus standards developed with industry participation. "This order recognises the potential for AI to improve government operations, such as by reducing outdated or duplicative regulations, enhancing the security of federal information systems, and streamlining application processes," Trump said in a statement. Federal agencies will also be required to prepare an inventory of AI use cases, as well as review and assess these use cases for consistency. The General Services Administration, meanwhile, has been directed to establish an AI track within the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to attract experts from industry and academia to work within agencies to further the design, development, acquisition, and use of AI in government.

Dec 3 8:31am
Python and TypeScript Gain Popularity Among Programming Languages
GitHub has released its annual Octoverse report, revealing trends in one of the largest developer communities on the planet, including a spike in open source project activity following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. VentureBeat: JavaScript continues to be the most popular programming language on GitHub, while Python is now the second most popular, followed by Java and the fast-growing TypeScript community. Maintained by GitHub owner Microsoft, TypeScript has climbed from seventh place in 2018 and 2019 to fourth overall this year. PHP and Ruby, languages that ranked among the most popular five years ago, continued to decline in popularity.

Dec 1 6:00pm
Hector Martin Promises To Bring Linux To the M1 Chip
Joe2020 writes: Famous developer Hector Martin who put Linux on the PS4 now wants to port Linux to the new Apple M1, and he wants to do it with the help of crowdfunding by making it his full-time job. One can find his official pledge for support here. "Since these devices are brand new and bespoke silicon, porting Linux to run on them is a huge undertaking. Well beyond a hobby project, it is a full-time job," the developer explains. "The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job. Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.

Nov 30 8:30pm
Engineers Are Building Huge Salt Caves To Store Huge Amounts of Hydrogen
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Scientists are going back to the salt mines, literally, to find a revolutionary new way to store large quantities of hydrogen for energy. Proponents say this could be a step toward unlocking hydrogen for renewables -- something that could change the energy landscape if it were resolved. "The project would initially have enough energy to power 150,000 households for one year and is scheduled to be operational by 2025," Fuel Cell Works reports. "It is being managed by Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS), a maker of gas turbines, and Magnum Development, which owns salt caverns for liquid fuel storage." This works by basically repurposing existing, enormous caves to store reserves of hydrogen as well as other fuels. Salt in particular makes a great medium for storing and then continuing to generate green hydrogen. CNBC explains how the caves are used to store and generate hydrogen: "Caverns can be created in salt domes by drilling into the salt dome and injecting the rock with water, which dissolves the salt. The resulting brine is extracted, leaving a large cavity. The next step is storing hydrogen in the cavern. Hydrogen electrolyzers can convert water into hydrogen by using renewable energy from solar and other sources. The hydrogen can then be stored, and reconverted to electricity when needed." Fuel Cell Works reports that while these caves are in the U.S., the major push for salt cave storage is in Europe.

Nov 30 10:29am
Facebook Buys Customer-Service Software Maker Kustomer For About $1 Billion
Facebook has acquired Kustomer, a New York-based software company that helps businesses manage customer conversations from multiple services on one dashboard. From a report: The social media giant made the deal to bolster its nascent messaging business, which is expanding to include customer-service products that help companies interact with people via chat apps, like WhatsApp and Messenger. "Any business knows that when the phone rings, they need to answer it. Increasingly, texts and messages have become just as important as that phone call -- and businesses need to adapt," Facebook executives wrote in a blog post. Kustomer also offers automated tools so companies can handle easier customer requests using bots. The deal values Kustomer at a little over $1 billion, WSJ reported.

Nov 27 7:30pm
FCC Maintains Ban on Mobile Phone Voice Calls During Flights
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission killed a proposal to allow in-flight voice calls via mobile phones, ending its examination of an idea that evoked fears of air rage from passengers trapped beside jabbering seat mates. From a report: The idea drew "strong opposition" from pilots and flight attendants, the agency said Friday in a four-paragraph order. The FCC in 2013 proposed allowing mobile telephone conversations above 10,000 feet, adopting practices followed in Europe and elsewhere, where in-flight voice calling is more common. But the proposal led to strong and immediate pushback, with travelers, flight attendants, members of Congress and others saying they were troubled by the idea of passengers talking on phones in flight. One group raised "the potential for air rage if passengers are using their cell phone."

Nov 27 8:09am
Leaf-Cutter Ants Have Rocky Crystal Armor, Never Before Seen in Insects
Leaf-cutter ants are named for their Herculean feats: they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies. There they chew up the leaves to feed underground fungus farms. Along the way, the insects brave all manner of predators -- and regularly engage in wars with other ants. But these insects are even tougher than previously thought. From a report: A new study shows that one Central American leaf-cutter ant species has natural armor that covers its exoskeleton. This shield-like coating is made of calcite with high levels of magnesium, a type found only in one other biological structure: sea urchin teeth, which can grind limestone. Bones and teeth of many animals contain calciferous minerals, and crustaceans, such as crabs and lobsters, have mineralized shells and other body parts. But before this finding, no type of calcite had been found in any adult insect. In leaf-cutter ants, this coating is made of thousands of tiny, plate-like crystals that harden their exoskeleton. This "armor" helps prevent the insects from losing limbs in battles with other ants and staves off fungal infections, according to a paper published November 24 in the journal Nature Communications. The discovery is especially surprising because the ants are well known. "There are thousands of papers on leaf-cutter ants," says study co-author Cameron Currie, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We were really excited to find [this in] one of the most well-studied insects in nature," he says. Though this paper looked only at one species, Acromyrmex echinatior, Currie and colleagues suspect other related ants have the biomineral too.

Nov 26 4:00pm
Tired of Mockery, Austrian Village Changes Name
Residents of an Austrian village will ring in the new year under a new name -- Fugging -- after ridicule of their signposts, especially on social media, became too much to bear. From a report: They finally grew weary of Fucking, its current name, which some experts say dates back to the 11th century. Minutes from a municipal council meeting published on Thursday showed that the village of about 100 people, 350km (215 miles) east of Vienna, will be named Fugging from 1 January 2021. Increasing numbers of English-speaking tourists have made a point of stopping in to snap pictures of themselves by the signpost at the entrance to the village, sometimes striking lascivious poses for social media. Some have reportedly even stolen the signposts, leading the local authorities to use theft-resistant concrete when putting up replacements. Finally, a majority of the villagers decided they had had enough. "I can confirm that the village is being renamed," said Andrea Holzner, the mayor of Tarsdorf, the municipality to which the village belongs.

Nov 26 8:07am
Sophos Notifies Customers of Data Exposure After Database Misconfiguration
UK-based cyber-security vendor Sophos is currently notifying customers via email about a security breach the company suffered earlier this week. From a report: "On November 24, 2020, Sophos was advised of an access permission issue in a tool used to store information on customers who have contacted Sophos Support," the company said in an email sent to customers and obtained by ZDNet. Exposed information included details such as customer first and last names, email addresses, and phone numbers (if provided).

Nov 26 12:00am
Amateur Astronomer Alberto Caballero Finds Possible Source of Wow! Signal
Amateur astronomer and YouTuber Alberto Caballero, one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel, has found a small amount of evidence for a source of the notorious Wow! signal. Phys.Org reports: Back in 1977, astronomers working with the Big Ear Radio Telescope -- at the time, situated in Delaware, Ohio -- recorded a unique signal from somewhere in space. It was so strong and unusual that one of the workers on the team, Jerry Ehman, famously scrawled the word Wow! on the printout. Despite years of work and many man hours, no one has ever been able to trace the source of the signal or explain the strong, unique signal, which lasted for all of 72 seconds. Since that time, many people have suggested the only explanation for such a strong and unique signal is extraterrestrial intelligent life. In this new effort, Caballero reasoned that if the source was some other life form, it would likely be living on an exoplanet -- and if that were the case, it would stand to reason that such a life form might be living on a planet similar to Earth -- one circling its own sun-like star. Pursuing this logic, Caballero began searching the publicly available Gaia database for just such a star. The Gaia database has been assembled by a team working at the Gaia observatory run by the European Space Agency. Launched back in 2013, the project has worked steadily on assembling the best map of the night sky ever created. To date, the team has mapped approximately 1.3 billion stars. In studying his search results, Caballero found what appears to fit the bill -- a star (2MASS 19281982-2640123) that is very nearly a mirror image of the sun -- and is located in the part of the sky where the Wow! signal originated. He notes that there are other possible candidates in the area but suggests his candidate might provide the best launching point for a new research effort by astronomers who have the tools to look for exoplanets. Caballero shared his findings via arXiv.

Nov 24 3:40pm
Zoomquilt
This 2004 project is garnering interest from users who have found it for the first time. You might also like Zoomquilt2, from 2007, and Arkadia, from 2015.

Nov 24 12:00am
OneWeb Emerges From Bankruptcy, Plans Global Satellite Broadband By 2022
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OneWeb has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy under new ownership and says it will begin launching more broadband satellites next month. Similar to SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb is building a network of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that can provide high-speed broadband with much lower latencies than traditional geostationary satellites. After a launch in December, "launches will continue throughout 2021 and 2022 and OneWeb is now on track to begin commercial connectivity services to the UK and the Arctic region in late 2021 and will expand to delivering global services in 2022," OneWeb said in an announcement Friday. In March this year, OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and reportedly laid off most of its staff. In July, OneWeb agreed to sell the business to a consortium including the UK government and Bharti Global Limited for $1 billion. In the Friday announcement, OneWeb said it has secured "all relevant regulatory approvals" needed to exit bankruptcy. "Together with our UK Government partner, we recognized that OneWeb has valuable global spectrum with priority rights, and we benefit from $3.3 billion invested to date and from the satellites already in orbit, securing our usage rights," Bharti founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said.

Nov 21 10:34pm
Are There Active Volcanoes on Mars?
Mars is a dead planet — "Or is it?" asks the New York Times: Previous research has hinted at volcanic eruptions on Mars 2.5 million years ago. But a new paper suggests an eruption occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago in a region called Cerberus Fossae, which would be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. That drives home the prospect that beneath its rusty surface pocked with gigantic volcanoes that have gone silent, some volcanism still erupts to the surface at rare intervals. "If this deposit is of volcanic origin then the Cerberus Fossae region may not be extinct and Mars may still be volcanically active today," scientists at the University of Arizona and Smithsonian Institution, write in their paper — which was posted online ahead of peer review and has been submitted to the journal Icarus... If it holds up to scrutiny, the discovery would have large implications for Mars. In geological terms, 53,000 years is the blink of an eye, suggesting Mars might well still be volcanically active now. It could also have big implications for the search for life on Mars. Such volcanic activity could melt subsurface ice, providing a potential habitable environment for living things. "To have life, you need energy, carbon, water and nutrients," said Steven Anderson, an earth sciences professor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, who was not involved in the paper. "And a volcanic system provides all of those."

Nov 21 3:34pm
Does the Human Brain Resemble the Universe?
"Does the human brain resemble the Universe?" teases an announcement that an astrophysicist of the University of Bologna and a neurosurgeon of the University of Verona "compared the network of neuronal cells in the human brain with the cosmic network of galaxies...and surprising similarities emerged." Slashdot reader Iwastheone shares their report: Despite the substantial difference in scale between the two networks (more than 27 orders of magnitude), their quantitative analysis, which sits at the crossroads of cosmology and neurosurgery, suggests that diverse physical processes can build structures characterized by similar levels of complexity and self-organization. The human brain functions thanks to its wide neuronal network that is deemed to contain approximately 69 billion neurons. On the other hand, the observable universe can count upon a cosmic web of at least 100 billion galaxies. Within both systems, only 30% of their masses are composed of galaxies and neurons. Within both systems, galaxies and neurons arrange themselves in long filaments or nodes between the filaments. Finally, within both system, 70% of the distribution of mass or energy is composed of components playing an apparently passive role: water in the brain and dark energy in the observable Universe. Starting from the shared features of the two systems, researchers compared a simulation of the network of galaxies to sections of the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. The goal was to observe how matter fluctuations scatter over such diverse scales. "We calculated the spectral density of both systems. This is a technique often employed in cosmology for studying the spatial distribution of galaxies", explains Franco Vazza (astrophysicist at the University of Bologna). "Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometre to 0.1 millimetres follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years". The two researchers also calculated some parameters characterising both the neuronal network and the cosmic web: the average number of connections in each node and the tendency of clustering several connections in relevant central nodes within the network. "Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels. Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons", adds Alberto Feletti (neurosurgeon at the University of Verona).

Nov 21 12:34pm
In Historic Test, US Navy Shoots Down an Intercontinental Ballastic Missile
"In a historic test, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warhead aimed at a patch of ocean off the Hawaiian Islands," reports Popular Mechanics: Once the missile launched, a network of sensors picked it up. The data was then handed off to the guided missile destroyer USS John Finn, which launched a SM-3 Block IIA interceptor. Just as the ICBM released a [simulated] nuclear warhead, the SM-3 released an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) designed to smash itself into the incoming warhead. Infrared cameras recorded a visible explosion as the EKV took out the simulated nuclear warhead. Most types of ballistic missiles are basically small payload space rockets designed to boost nuclear warheads into low-Earth orbit. Once in space, the warhead coasts through orbit at several thousand miles per hour — the so-called midcourse phase when the warhead is midway between its launch point and target. The warhead then de-orbits into a trajectory that sends it plunging toward its target. Meanwhile, space-based infrared sensors pick up the hot launch plume of the ballistic missile. A launch alert is passed on to ground-based long range radars, which search the skies for the incoming threat. As the missile falls away and the warhead continues on to its target, missile defense radars track the target, plot its trajectory, and alert any "shooters" in the flight path capable of shooting down the warhead. The shooter then launches an interceptor, and the EKV steers itself into the warhead path... The article includes video of the test, and concludes that the ability to shoot down missiles is "terrible news for China" — while adding this "could very well cause Beijing to increase its nuclear arsenal."

Nov 20 5:50pm
Xbox Series X Controller Support Coming To Apple Devices
Apple and Microsoft are working on adding support for the Xbox Series X controller to Apple devices, according to an Apple Support page spotted by a Reddit user. MacRumors reports: The support page states that Apple devices only support the Xbox Wireless Controller with Bluetooth, Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2, Xbox Adaptive Controller, PlayStation DualShock 4 Wireless Controller, and various other MFi Bluetooth controllers. However, small print on the page states: "Microsoft and Apple are working together to bring compatibility for the Xbox Series X controller to customers in a future update." There is no mention of the Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense Controller or the Amazon Luna Controller on the Apple Support page, but MacRumors has spotted code mentioning the controllers in the iOS and iPadOS 14.3 betas.

Nov 20 3:00am
Twisted Graphene Could Power a New Generation of Superconducting Electronics
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene -- sheets of carbon one atom thick -- and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an insulator and then, suddenly, into a superconductor: a material that frictionlessly conducts electricity. Dozens of labs leapt into the newly born field of "twistronics," hoping to conjure up novel electronic devices without the hassles of fusing together chemically different materials. Two groups -- including the pioneering MIT group -- are now delivering on that promise by turning twisted graphene into working devices, including superconducting switches like those used in many quantum computers. The studies mark a crucial step for the material, which is already maturing into a basic science tool able to capture and control individual electrons and photons. Now, it is showing that it could one day be the basis of new electronic devices.

Nov 19 5:50pm
Facebook Antitrust Probes Will Target Acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram
A group of state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, is on track to file antitrust charges against Facebook in early December, according to a report Thursday from the Washington Post. CNET: The move comes as the US Federal Trade Commission is also reportedly finalizing its antitrust probe into the social media giant. State and federal investigators plan to bring antitrust charges against Facebook over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that the deals "helped create an anti-competitive social networking juggernaut," according to the Post. Investigators may also reportedly argue that Facebook weaponized its vast trove of user data to help quash rivals.

Nov 18 4:30pm
The Worst Passwords of 2020 Show We Are Just As Lazy About Security As Ever
After analyzing 275,699,516 passwords leaked during 2020 data breaches, NordPass and partners found that the most common passwords are incredibly easy to guess -- and it could take less than a second or two for attackers to break into accounts using these credentials. Only 44% of those recorded were considered "unique." ZDNet reports: On Wednesday, the password manager solutions provider published its annual report on the state of password security, finding that the most popular options were "123456," "123456789," "picture1," "password," and "12345678." With the exception of "picture1," which would take approximately three hours to decipher using a brute-force attack, each password would take seconds using either dictionary scripts -- which compile common phrases and numerical combinations to try -- or simple, human guesswork. As one of the entrants on the 200-strong list describes the state of affairs when it comes to password security, "whatever," it seems many of us are still reluctant to use strong, difficult-to-crack passwords -- and instead, we are going for options including "football," "iloveyou," "letmein," and "pokemon." When selecting a password, you should avoid patterns or repetitions, such as letters or numbers that are next to each other on a keyboard. Adding a capital letter, symbols, and numbers in unexpected places can help, too -- and in all cases, you should not use personal information as a password, such as birthdates or names.

Nov 18 1:50pm
Immunity To the Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint
How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study -- the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination. From a report: Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come. The research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date. "That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years," said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study. The findings are likely to come as a relief to experts worried that immunity to the virus might be short-lived, and that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control. And the research squares with another recent finding: that survivors of SARS, caused by another coronavirus, still carry certain important immune cells 17 years after recovering. The findings are consistent with encouraging evidence emerging from other labs. Researchers at the University of Washington, led by the immunologist Marion Pepper, had earlier shown that certain "memory" cells that were produced following infection with the coronavirus persist for at least three months in the body. The study has yet to be published and peer-reviewed.

Nov 17 4:30pm
$6 Billion Linux Deal? SUSE IPO Rumored
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to Bloomberg, EQT is planning an IPO for German Linux and enterprise software company SUSE. EQT is a Swedish-based private equity firm with 50 billion euros in raised capital. SUSE is the leading European Union (EU) Linux distributor. Over the years, SUSE has changed owners several times. First, it was acquired by Novell in 2004. Then, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE in 2010. This was followed in 2014 when Micro Focus purchased Attachmate and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. Then, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in March 2019. With an IPO of approximately $6 billion, EQT would do very well for itself in very little time. Bloomberg states that the IPO talks are in a very preliminary stage. Nothing may yet come of these conversations. As for SUSE, a company representative said, "As a company, we are constantly exploring ways to grow. But as a matter of corporate policy, we do not comment on rumor or speculation in the market."

Nov 17 7:41am
Amazon Launches Amazon Pharmacy For Prescription Medicine Delivery
Amazon is making its biggest push into the healthcare industry yet with the launch today of Amazon Pharmacy: a new service offering home delivery for prescription medication. From a report: Customers can sign up to the new store by creating a "secure pharmacy profile," with the option of adding information about their health insurance, any outstanding medical issues like allergies, and any regular prescriptions. The store will offer a range of "generic and brand-name drugs," reports CNBC, including "commonly prescribed drugs like insulin, triamcinolone steroid creams, metformin for controlling blood sugar, and sumatriptan for migraines." Notably, the pharmacy will not sell Schedule II medications, which includes many common opioids like Oxycontin. As usual for Amazon, Prime members will get a number of advantages over regular customers. These perks include free, two-day delivery on orders and discounts on medication. Amazon claims Prime members will be able to save "up to 80 percent off generic and 40 percent off brand name medications when paying without insurance." Prime members will also be able to save on medication bought in person from over 50,000 pharmacies across the US, including Rite Aid, CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens.

Nov 17 12:05am
4 Astronauts Aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon Successfully Dock With Space Station
Four astronauts aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule "Resilience" have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above the Earth, where they will stay until spring. From a report: The capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, chasing the ISS for 27 hours before matching its altitude and speed for an orbital dock. The flight marks only the second crewed flight for Crew Dragon, which became the first commercial vehicle to put humans in orbit when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched in May. "SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job, right down the center," commander Hopkins radioed to mission control after the docking. "SpaceX and NASA, congratulations." The flight marks another milestone for SpaceX flying its first fully operational mission. After the May launch, designated "Demo-2" with Hurley and Behnken, NASA certified the capsule for operational use in its Commercial Crew program. The Resilience crew includes three NASA astronauts and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who were mostly passengers during the flight of Crew Dragon, which generally flies without human input and docks to the ISS autonomously.

Nov 16 5:10pm
Demand For Employee Surveillance Increased As Workers Transitioned To Home Working
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A new study shows that the demand for employee surveillance software was up 55% in June 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic average. From webcam access to random screenshot monitoring, these surveillance software products can record almost everything an employee does on their computer. VPN review website Top10VPN used its global monitoring data to analyze over 200 terms related to employee surveillance software. It took into account both generic and brand-specific queries for its study which compared searches during March-May 2020 with internet searches in the preceding year. Global demand for employee monitoring software increased by 108% in April, and 70% in May 2020 compared with searches carried out the preceding year. Queries for "How to monitor employees working from home" increased by 1,705% in April and 652% in May 2020 compared with searches carried out the preceding year. The surge in popularity of such an open-ended phrase like this reveals how unprepared many companies were for the abrupt shift to mass home-working. The most popular surveillance tools are Time Doctor, Hubstaff, and FlexiSPY. The tools with the biggest increase in demand include Teramind, DeskTime, Kickidler, and Time Doctor, with interest for the latter tripling compared to the pre-pandemic levels. The top three tools account for almost 60% of global demand in surveillance software because of the range of features offered. The radical shift away from office-working has clearly made employers nervous about a reduction in productivity and its potential impact on their business. Greater surveillance, however, may actually reduce long-term productivity. Your boss watching your every move may make you less productive in the long run and could significantly impact your feelings about the company itself.

Nov 16 4:50pm
Airbnb Files To Go Public
Airbnb released its prospectus today, becoming the latest big name to join the push to go public during the COVID-19 pandemic. CNBC reports: The company made $219 million in net income on revenues of $1.34 billion last quarter. That was down nearly 19% from $1.65 billion in revenue a year prior. Despite primarily turning net losses, the company has had other occasional quarters of profitability, including the second and third quarters of 2018 and the third quarter of 2019. The company said it plans to trade under the symbol "ABNB" on the Nasdaq. In its prospectus, the company put an emphasis on building a community around its hosts and guests, positioning that community as a differentiating factor from its competitors. The company said it would set up 9.2 million shares of non-voting stock aside in an endowment fund for hosts. "Our guests are not transactions -- they are engaged, contributing members of our community," the company said in its prospectus summary. "Once they become a part of Airbnb, guests actively participate in our community, return regularly to our platform to book again, and recommend Airbnb to others who then join themselves. This demand encourages new hosts to join, which in turn attracts even more guests. It is a virtuous cycle -- guests attract hosts, and hosts attract guests."

Nov 16 12:33pm
Ok Google: Please Publish Your DKIM Secret Keys
Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, writes: The Internet is a dangerous place in the best of times. Sometimes Internet engineers find ways to mitigate the worst of these threats, and sometimes they fail. Every now and then, however, a major Internet company finds a solution that actually makes the situation worse for just about everyone. Today I want to talk about one of those cases, and how a big company like Google might be able to lead the way in fixing it. This post is about the situation with Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), a harmless little spam protocol that has somehow become a monster. My request is simple and can be summarized as follows: Dear Google: would you mind rotating and publishing your DKIM secret keys on a periodic basis? This would make the entire Internet quite a bit more secure, by removing a strong incentive for criminals to steal and leak emails. The fix would cost you basically nothing, and would remove a powerful tool from hands of thieves.

Nov 14 10:34am
Ubuntu Patches Bug That Tricked Gnome Desktop Into Giving Root Access
"Ubuntu developers have fixed a series of vulnerabilities that made it easy for standard users to gain coveted root privileges," reports Ars Technica: "This blog post is about an astonishingly straightforward way to escalate privileges on Ubuntu," Kevin Backhouse, a researcher at GitHub, wrote in a post published on Tuesday. "With a few simple commands in the terminal, and a few mouse clicks, a standard user can create an administrator account for themselves." The first series of commands triggered a denial-of-service bug in a daemon called accountsservice, which as its name suggests is used to manage user accounts on the computer... With the help of a few extra commands, Backhouse was able to set a timer that gave him just enough time to log out of the account before accountsservice crashed. When done correctly, Ubuntu would restart and open a window that allowed the user to create a new account that — you guessed it — had root privileges... The second bug involved in the hack resided in the GNOME display manager, which among other things manages user sessions and the login screen. The display manager, which is often abbreviated as gdm3, also triggers the initial setup of the OS when it detects no users currently exist. "How does gdm3 check how many users there are on the system?" Backhouse asked rhetorically. "You probably already guessed it: by asking accounts-daemon! So what happens if accounts-daemon is unresponsive....?" The vulnerabilities could be triggered only when someone had physical access to, and a valid account on, a vulnerable machine. It worked only on desktop versions of Ubuntu. "This bug is now tracked as CVE-2020-16125 and rated with a high severity score of 7.2 out of 10. It affects Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 18.04..." reports Bleeping Computer. They add that the GitHub security research who discovered the bugs "reported them to Ubuntu and GNOME maintainers on October 17, and fixes are available in the latest code."

Nov 13 7:02pm
Election Was Most Secure In American History, US Officials Say
"The Nov. 3rd election was the most secure in American history," state and federal election officials said in a statement Thursday. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Bloomberg reports: The statement acknowledged the "many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections" and urged Americans to turn to election administrators and officials for accurate information. The statement was signed by officials from the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which shares information among state, local and federal officials, and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, which includes election infrastructure owners and operators. Among the 10 signatories were Benjamin Hovland, who chairs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and Bob Kolasky, the assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. Key officials at the cybersecurity agency, including its head, Christopher Krebs, are stepping down or expecting to get fired as Trump refuses to concede. Krebs, who has enjoyed bipartisan support for his role in helping run secure U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020, has told associates he expects to be dismissed, according to three people familiar with internal discussions. His departure would follow the resignation of Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, who resigned on Thursday morning after about two years at the agency. In addition, Valerie Boyd, the assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CISA, has also left, according to two other people. Krebs and Ware are both Trump appointees.

Nov 11 9:04am
Chrome To Block Tab-Nabbing Attacks
Google will deploy a new security feature in Chrome next year to prevent tab-nabbing, a type of web attack that allows newly opened tabs to hijack the original tab from where they were opened. From a report: The new feature is scheduled to go live with Chrome 88, to be released in January 2021. While the term "tab-nabbing" refers to a broad class of tab hijacking attacks [see OWASP, Wikipedia], Google is addressing a particular scenario. This scenario refers to situations when users click on a link, and the link opens in a new tab (via the "target=_blank" attribute). These new tabs have access to the original page that opened the new link. Via the JavaScript "window.opener" function, the newly opened tabs can modify the original page and redirect users to malicious sites. This type of attack has powered quite a few phishing campaigns across the years. To mitigate this threat, browser makers like Apple, Google, and Mozilla have created the rel="noopener" attribute.

Nov 11 6:00am
Hyundai Reportedly In Talks To Buy Softbank-Owned Boston Dynamics
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to sell robot maker Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, people familiar with the matter said. Proposed terms of the deal would give the South Korean automaker control of the robotics company in a transaction valued at as much as $1 billion, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The terms have yet to be finalized, and the deal could fall apart, said the people. A sale of Boston Dynamics would mark another twist in the trajectory of a company that spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s and operated independently until Google bought it in 2013. It was sold again in 2017, that time to SoftBank. At times, Boston Dynamics has functioned more like a research organization than a business, churning out machines that are technologically advanced and whimsical but unprofitable. That includes Spot, a maneuverable dog-like robot. Videos of its creations regularly rack up millions of views on YouTube; however, the company has said it is not currently generating profits. By contrast, Hyundai makes highly practical industrial robots intended for factory use.

Nov 11 12:00am
UK Firm To Turn Moon Rock Into Oxygen and Building Materials
A British firm has won a European Space Agency contract to develop the technology to turn moon dust and rocks into oxygen, leaving behind aluminium, iron and other metal powders for lunar construction workers to build with. The Guardian reports: If the process can be made to work well enough, it will pave the way for extraction facilities on the moon that make oxygen and valuable materials on the surface, rather than having to haul them into space at enormous cost. Analyses of rocks brought back from the moon reveal that oxygen makes up about 45% of the material by weight. The remainder is largely iron, aluminium and silicon. In work published this year, scientists at Metalysis and the University of Glasgow found they could extract 96% of the oxygen from simulated lunar soil, leaving useful metal alloy powders behind. The Esa contract will fund Metalysis for nine months to perfect an electrochemical process that releases oxygen from lunar dust and rocks by sending an electrical current through the material. The process is already used on Earth, but the oxygen is released as an unwanted byproduct of mineral extraction. To make it work for lunar explorers, the oxygen must be captured and stored. Under the contract, the firm will try to boost the yield and purity of oxygen and metals from the rock while reducing the amount of energy the process consumes. If the technology looks promising, the next step will be to demonstrate oxygen extraction on the moon. The oxygen released from the lunar surface can be combined with other gases to produce breathable air, but it is also a vital component of rocket propellant that could be manufactured on the moon and used to refuel spacecraft bound for deep space.

Nov 9 3:10pm
Scientists Find a New Way To Search for Habitable Exoplanets
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earthlings are lucky to live near a relatively stable Sun, which has enabled life on our planet to emerge and thrive over the past four billion years. While many worlds in our galaxy might contain the right ingredients to support life, though, a lot of them could be stuck with a more volatile star that prevents them from becoming -- or remaining -- habitable. To get a better grip on which types of star systems might be most likely to host aliens, a pair of scientists at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Center for Space Science have observed space weather around nearly 500 stars, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. The results suggest that planets subjected to occasional but intense flares are probably more hospitable to life than worlds that receive a constant flux of radiation and low-energy flares, which blows their protective atmospheres away. Planetary habitability "is one of the most important concepts in exoplanet science" and "is defined as the zone around a star in which a planet is able to sustain liquid water on its surface," said research scientist Dimitra Atri and graduate student Shane Carberry Mogan, both at NYUAD, in the study. "While this approach is useful to identify potentially hospitable planets around stars, it fails to take into account the damaging aspect of stellar activity on such planets," the pair added. "The main goal of this paper is to understand how stellar luminosity and flares can lead to atmospheric escape on [habitable zone] planets on long time-scales and how these losses impact planetary habitability."

Nov 9 1:14pm
Right-Leaning Social Network Parler Tops Free App Charts
Parler, which calls itself a "viewpoint-neutral" social network and is growing popular among conservatives who feel mainstream social platforms are censoring them, is now topping the free app download charts, according to both Apple and Sensor Tower. From a report: With Twitter and other mainstream social media apps more strictly enforcing rules against election-related falsehoods, more permissive, often right-leaning platforms have seen a surge of interest. The app for Newsmax, a right-leaning news network, also began surging on the download charts after all the major networks, including Fox News, called the election for Biden. It remains to be seen if the gains are more than temporary, but the shift has certainly raised eyebrows.

Nov 9 9:45am
FTC Announces a Settlement With Zoom Over Security Issues
Zoom will implement new security practices as part of a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced on Monday. From a report: "Zoom has agreed to a requirement to establish and implement a comprehensive security program, a prohibition on privacy and security misrepresentations, and other detailed and specific relief to protect its user base, which has skyrocketed from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic," the FTC said in a press release.

Nov 6 8:30pm
A One Hundred Thousand-Fold Enhancement In the Nonlinearity of Silicon
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers led by Osaka University and National Taiwan University created a system of nanoscale silicon resonators that can act as logic gates for light pulses. ... [The scientists] have increased the nonlinearity of silicon 100,000 times by creating a nano-optical resonator, so that all-optical switches can be operated using a continuous low-power laser. They accomplished this by fabricating tiny resonators from blocks of silicon less than 200 nm in size. Laser light with a wavelength of 592 nm can become trapped inside and rapidly heat the blocks, based on the principle of Mie resonance. "A Mie resonance occurs when the size of a nanoparticle matches a multiple of the light wavelength," author Yusuke Nagasaki says. With a nanoblock in a thermo-optically induced hot state, a second laser pulse at 543 nm can pass with almost no scattering, which is not the case when first laser is off. The block can cool with relaxation times measured in nanoseconds. This large and fast nonlinearity leads to potential applications for GHz all-optical control at the nanoscale. "Silicon is expected to remain the material of choice for optical integrated circuits and optical devices," senior author Junichi Takahara says. The current work allows for optical switches that take up much less space than previous attempts. This advance opens the way for direct on-chip integration as well as super-resolution imaging. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Nov 6 7:46am
Sega Sells Off Its Arcade Business Due To Coronavirus
New submitter clubalien writes: Sega has sold off its arcade business due to coronavirus. In a press release, parent company Sega Sammy Holdings Inc said it has sold the vast majority (85.1 per cent) of Sega Entertainment, its Japanese amusement business, to amusement machine company Genda. Sega put the sale down to Covid-19, which has devastated its arcade business. Sega expects to record "extraordinary losses" from the transition. "As Amusement Center Operations area in Entertainment Contents Business is strongly affected by COVID-19, utilisation of facilities has declined remarkably, and a significant loss was recorded at 1Q of the fiscal year ending March 2021," Sega said. "In addition, despite the recent recovery trend, the situation remains uncertain. We have been considering various options in order to adapt to these changes in business aiming for improvement of the profitability and early recovery of sales of Amusement Center Operations area. "In this process, we have been discussing the transfer of SE shares to GENDA, a company that has a strong desire to expand Amusement Center Operations business and has decided to conclude the share transfer agreement at Board of Directors meeting held today."

Nov 6 6:00am
Woman Sheds Coronavirus For 70 Days Without Symptoms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from LiveScience: A woman with COVID-19 in Washington state shed infectious virus particles for 70 days, meaning she was contagious during that entire time, despite never showing symptoms of the disease, according to a new report. The 71-year-old woman had a type of leukemia, or cancer of the white blood cells, and so her immune system was weakened and less able to clear her body of the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2. Although researchers have suspected that people with weakened immune systems may shed the virus for longer than typical, there was little evidence of this happening, until now. The findings contradict guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which say that immunocompromised people with COVID-19 are likely not infectious after 20 days. The new findings suggest "long-term shedding of infectious virus may be a concern in certain immunocompromised patients," the authors wrote in their paper, published in the journal Cell. "The virus was detected in her upper respiratory tract for 105 days; and infectious virus particles -- meaning they were capable of spreading the disease -- were detected for at least 70 days," the report says. "Typically, people with COVID-19 are contagious for about eight days after infection, according to the report. Previously, the longest duration of infectious virus shedding in a COVID-19 patient was reported to be 20 days."

Nov 4 12:59am
Trump Attacks Legitimate Vote-Counting Efforts and Claims Fraud Without Basis
President Trump attacked legitimate vote-counting efforts in remarks from the White House early Wednesday, suggesting attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters, CNN reports. From the report: "Millions and millions of people voted for us," Trump said in the East Room. "A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people." His remarks were laced with misleading statements and outright falsehoods and amounted to an assault on the Democratic process. He insisted that states where vote tallies currently show him leading should be called in his favor, despite significant outstanding votes yet to be counted. He said he was preparing to declare victory earlier in the evening. "We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off," he said. Trump baselessly claimed a fraud was being committed. "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country," Trump claimed. "Frankly we did win this election," he said, despite millions of votes still outstanding. Saying he would go to the US Supreme Court, Trump said he wanted "all voting to stop."

Nov 3 11:58am
Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms
The Motion Picture Association says that circumvention services such as VPNs, DNS masks and Tor networks can pose a direct threat to legitimate streaming services. In comments submitted to the US Trade Representative, the movie industry group highlights PDF various other piracy challenges around the globe.

Nov 1 3:42pm
Support Grows For Universal Basic Income Trials in UK
On the U.K. political scene, support may be growing for new tests of a Univerisal Basic Income. The Guardian reports: A cross-party group of MPs has called on the government to allow councils to run universal basic income trials in response to mass unemployment triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. A letter to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, signed by more than 500 MPs, lords and local councillors says pilot schemes are urgently needed as the pandemic unleashes widespread economic disruption and drives up redundancies at the fastest rate on record this winter... "We must trial innovative approaches which create an income floor for everyone, allowing our families and communities to thrive. The pandemic has shown that we urgently need to strengthen our social security system. The creation of a universal basic income (UBI) — a regular and unconditional cash payment to every individual in the UK — could be the solution," the letter states. One UBI option flagged by the group would be to launch an initial £48 per week payment. [Roughly $62.08 in U.S. dollars] Demands for such an intervention have gathered pace since the onset of Covid-19 as governments around the world increase spending to help businesses and workers. There have been UBI trials in Finland and Scotland in recent years.

Oct 31 3:36pm
Moderna On Track to Report COVID-19 Vaccine Late-Stage Trial Data in November
This week Moderna "said it is on track to report early data from a late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine next month, reports Reuters, "offering the clearest timeline yet for when the world will know whether it is effective." The company, one of the front-runners in the global race to produce vaccines to protect against COVID-19, said an independent data monitoring committee is expected to conduct an interim review of its ongoing 30,000-person trial in November... The company said it is preparing to distribute the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, and expects to be able to produce 20 million doses by the end of the year, and between 500 million and 1 billion in 2021. Moderna said infection rates in the trial were on track with expectations... Moderna said it expects two-month follow-up safety data, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in the second half of November, after which it will file for an emergency use authorization.

Oct 31 9:34am
Therapy Patients Blackmailed For Cash After Clinic Data Breach
"Many patients of a large psychotherapy clinic in Finland have been contacted individually by a blackmailer, after their data was stolen," reports the BBC: The data appears to have included personal identification records and notes about what was discussed in therapy sessions. Vastaamo is a nationwide practice with about 20 branches and thousands of patients. The clinic has advised those affected to contact the police. It said it believed the data had been stolen in November 2018, with a further potential breach in March 2019... About 300 records have already been published on the dark web, according to the Associated Press news agency. On its website, the clinic calls the attack "a great crisis". It has set up a helpline and is offering all victims one free therapy session, the details of which will not be recorded. According to the article, the blackmailer claims Vastaamo refused to pay the 40 bitcoin ransom — so they are instead blackmailing individual patients. And one patient even complained that while his therapist took notes in a physical notebook, "he had not been told these would be uploaded to a server."

Oct 30 2:45pm
RIAA Obtains Subpoenas Targeting 40 YouTube-Ripping Platforms and Pirate Sites
An anonymous reader shares a report: The RIAA is ramping up the pressure on a wide range of platforms allegedly involved in music piracy. Two DMCA subpoenas obtained against Cloudflare and Namecheap require the companies to hand over all information they hold on more than 40 torrent sites, streaming portals and YouTube-ripping services. Also included in the mix are several file-hosting platforms.

Oct 30 10:47am
Chinese Spacecraft Set for Mars Landing in May: State Media
A Chinese spacecraft is expected to land on Mars in May, state-run media reported on Thursday, citing a space agency official. From a report: The spacecraft, which left Earth in July, is set to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the China News Service reported, citing Liu Tongjie, spokesman for the Mars mission. Separate spacecraft launched by the United States and the United Arab Emirates this year are also en route to Mars, though only the U.S. one will attempt a landing.

Oct 29 10:19am
TikTok-parent ByteDance Launches Its First Gadget, a Smart Lamp With Camera and Display
ByteDance on Thursday unveiled its first consumer hardware product, a smart light lamp with a display and camera, that it says is part of its education technology portfolio as the Chinese internet giant continues to expand to categories beyond social video. From a report: The Dali smart lamp features a display, camera, and a built-in digital assistant. The Dali smart lamp, which starts at $119, is aimed at school-going children who can use the device to finish their homework, ByteDance said at a press conference. The camera will enable parents to tutor their kids and check in remotely via a mobile app.

Oct 28 12:16pm
Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Windows 7 and Windows 8
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has announced that it is ending the ability to cross-sign drivers, effective 1 July 2021. This will effectively make it impossible to release new or updated drivers for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 systems, including Server 2012 R2. This is not an exaggeration. The only option that will remain available to devs who want to release drivers for versions of Windows other than Windows 10 will be to have those drivers pass HLK/WHQL testing. Unfortunately, not all drivers are even eligible for HLK/WHQL testing, and even for those that are eligible, getting some drivers to pass the HLK/WHQL tests is effectively impossible. [...]

Oct 27 6:50pm
Russia Orders National Mask Mandate As COVID-19 Cases Spike
In an effort to curb the second wave of COVID-19, the Russian government on Tuesday implemented a nationwide mask mandate, as coronavirus cases spike worldwide. CBS News reports: Under the new mandate, effective Wednesday, masks will be mandatory in crowded public spaces, such as public transportation, parking lots and elevators, according to the order published on the website for the federal health watchdog agency Rospotrebnadzor, also known as the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing. The department has also advised local authorities to ban all entertainment activities, including bars and restaurants, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. It recommended strengthening safety protocols on public transport, taxis, shops, restaurants and theaters. People not wearing masks will be refused service in these establishments. However, Moscow authorities said that they are not planning to close nightclubs and bars overnight. Russia has had over 1,520,000 cases of COVID-19 and over 26,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University. It recorded a record-high number of new cases on Monday, with 17,148, and October has seen more confirmed cases in the country overall than any other month. [...] The country has the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, behind the United States, India and Brazil.

Oct 27 1:35pm
UK Study Finds Evidence of Waning Antibody Immunity To COVID-19 Over Time
Antibodies against the novel coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday, suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community. From a report: Scientists at Imperial College London have tracked antibody levels in the British population following the first wave of COVID-19 infections in March and April. Their study found that antibody prevalence fell by a quarter, from 6% of the population around the end of June to just 4.4% in September. That raises the prospect of decreasing population immunity ahead of a second wave of infections in recent weeks that has forced local lockdowns and restrictions. Although immunity to the novel coronavirus is a complex and murky area, and may be assisted by T cells, as well as B cells that can stimulate the quick production of antibodies following re-exposure to the virus, the researchers said the experience of other coronaviruses suggested immunity might not be enduring.

Oct 23 2:10pm
NVIDIA Cancels GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB: Report
VideoCardz reports: NVIDIA has just told its board partners that it will not launch GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB cards as planned. NVIDIA allegedly cancels its December launch of GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB. This still very fresh information comes from two independent sources. Technically GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB could launch at a later time, but the information that we have clearly stated that those SKUs have been canceled, not postponed. NVIDIA has already canceled its RTX 3070 Ti model (PG141 SKU 0), so the RTX 3070 16GB (PG141 SKU5) and RTX 3080 20GB (PG132 SKU20) will be joining the list. The GeForce RTX 3080 20GB was expected to be a response to AMD Radeon RX 6900/6800 series featuring Navi 21 GPU. All three AMD SKUs will feature 16GB of memory, leaving NVIDIA with a smaller frame buffer to compete with. We do not know the official reason for the cancellation. The RTX 3080 20GB might have been scrapped due to low GDDR6X yield issues, one source claims. The reason behind RTX 3070 16GB cancellation is unknown (this SKU uses GDDR6 memory). The plans for GeForce RTX 3060 Ti remain unchanged. The PG190 SKU 10 remains on track for mid-November launch.

Oct 23 1:30pm
National Guard Called In To Thwart Cyberattack in Louisiana Weeks Before Election
The Louisiana National Guard was called in to stop a series of cyberattacks aimed at small government offices across the state in recent weeks, Reuters reported Friday, citing two people with knowledge of the events, highlighting the cyber threat facing local governments in the run up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. From the report: The situation in Louisiana follows a similar case in Washington state, according to a cybersecurity consultant familiar with the matter, where hackers infected some government offices with a type of malware known for deploying ransomware, which locks up systems and demands payment to regain access. Senior U.S. security officials have warned here since at least 2019 that ransomware poses a risk to the U.S. election, namely that an attack against certain state government offices around the election could disrupt systems needed to administer aspects of the vote. It is unclear if the hackers sought to target systems tied to the election in Louisiana or were simply hoping for a payday. Yet the attacks raised alarms because of the potential harm it could have led to and due to evidence suggesting a sophisticated hacking group was involved. Experts investigating the Louisiana incidents found a tool used by the hackers that was previously linked to a group associated with the North Korean government, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Oct 22 6:02pm
Print These Electronic Circuits Directly Onto Skin
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: New circuits can get printed directly on human skin to help monitor vital signs, a new study finds. In the new study, researchers developed a way to sinter nanoparticles of silver at room temperature. The key behind this advance is a so-called a sintering aid layer, consisting of a biodegradable polymer paste and additives such as titanium dioxide or calcium carbonate. Positive electrical charges in the sintering aid layer neutralized the negative electrical charges the silver nanoparticles could accumulate from other compounds in their ink. This meant it took less energy for the silver nanoparticles printed on top of the sintering aid layer to come together, says study senior author Huanyu Cheng, a mechanical engineer at Pennsylvania State University. The sintering aid layer also created a smooth base for circuits printed on top of it. This in turn improved the performance of these circuits in the face of bending, folding, twisting and wrinkling. In experiments, the scientists placed the silver nanoparticle circuit designs and the sintering aid layer onto a wooden stamp, which they pressed onto the back of a human hand. They next used a hair dryer set to cool to evaporate the solvent in the ink. A hot shower could easily remove these circuits without damaging the underlying skin. After the circuits sintered, they could help the researchers measure body temperature, skin moisture, blood oxygen, heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure and bodily electrical signals such as electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) readings. The data from these sensors were comparable to or better than those measured using conventional commercial sensors that were simply stuck onto the skin, Cheng says. The findings have been published in the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Oct 22 10:50am
How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark
than two years of reporting involving sources from the law enforcement, organized crime, and cybersecurity worlds. It features daring escapes from Las Vegas hotels, undercover agents, and a silver-plated AK-47 emblazoned with the Louis Vuitton logo.

Oct 21 12:17pm
Tesla Starts Full Self-Driving Beta Rollout
Tesla has started the rollout of its Full Self-Driving Beta update, which Elon Musk said "will be extremely slow and cautious." From the report: We have been expecting the update for a while now. Over the last few months, Elon Musk has been talking about Tesla working on "a significant foundational rewrite in the Tesla Autopilot." He has been teasing the new core change to Autopilot, which should be able to interpret its environment in 4D instead of 2D after the update and should result in a rapid improvement in performance and new features being released quicker. More recently, the CEO has been referring to the update as "Full Self-Driving Beta" or "FSD Beta." Last week, Musk said that Tesla will start to release "Full Self-Driving Beta" to some customers on Tuesday. Yesterday, the CEO confirmed that the rollout is happening as planned tonight and added that the system will be "extremely slow and cautious."

Oct 20 3:28pm
Google Locks In Search Monopoly With $1 Billion To Carriers
Google doled out more than $1 billion last year to U.S. mobile carriers to distribute its search engine, according to the landmark antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department. From a report: The DOJ suit, filed Tuesday, details several methods Google uses to make its search the default service on browsers, smartphones and other devices. That includes deals with Apple and Android manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics. Google also cut hefty revenue sharing agreements with major mobile carriers to box out competing search engines and browsers, the Justice Department said. In exchange for placing Google search as the default on phones, carriers received a portion of search advertising revenue. "If a carrier or manufacturer does not renew its revenue sharing agreement with Google, the distributor loses out on revenue share not only for new mobile devices but also for the phones and tablets previously sold and in the hands of consumers," the Justice Department said in the suit. "This provision is punitive to the carrier or manufacturer and helps to ensure that carriers and manufacturers will not stray from Google."

Oct 19 12:09pm
Drivers To Be Banned From Picking Up Mobile Phones
It will become illegal for anyone in the UK to pick up and use their mobile phone while driving, under new legislation to be enacted next year. From a report: The change will end a loophole that can allow drivers to escape punishment for using a hand-held phone to take a photo or play a game. Mobiles will still be able to be used to pay for a drive-through takeaway. And drivers will still be able to use devices hands-free under the plans, the Department for Transport said. At present, making phone calls and sending text messages are banned while driving. Ministers have rejected calls to also ban the use of hands-free function, for example using a sat-nav in a phone cradle. Roads minister Baroness Vere said hand-held phone use behind the wheel was "distracting and dangerous" and that "for too long risky drivers have been able to escape punishment." The change in law would apply across the UK and is expected to come into effect early next year, depending on the outcome of the consultation.

Oct 18 5:52pm
Three npm Packages Opened Remote-Access Shells on Linux and Windows Systems
"Three JavaScript packages have been removed from the npm portal on Thursday for containing malicious code," reports ZDNet. "According to advisories from the npm security team, the three JavaScript libraries opened shells on the computers of developers who imported the packages into their projects." The shells, a technical term used by cyber-security researchers, allowed threat actors to connect remotely to the infected computer and execute malicious operations. The npm security team said the shells could work on both Windows and *nix operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and others. All three packages were uploaded on the npm portal in May (first) and September 2018 (last two). Each package had hundreds of downloads since being uploaded on the npm portal. The packages names were: plutov-slack-client nodetest199 nodetest1010 "Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised. All secrets and keys stored on that computer should be rotated immediately from a different computer," the npm security team said.

Oct 18 4:59pm
Stupid Russian Disinformation Campaign Targets Oxford Vaccine
The Times of London reports that "a Russian disinformation campaign designed to undermine and spread fear about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has been exposed by a Times investigation." Pictures, memes and video clips depicting the British-made vaccine as dangerous have been devised in Russia and middlemen are now seeking to "seed" the images on social media networks around the world. The crude theme of the distorted images is that the vaccine, millions of doses of which will be manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca, could turn people into monkeys because it uses a chimpanzee virus as a vector. The campaign is being targeted at countries where Russia wants to sell its own Sputnik V vaccine, as well as western nations. CNN points out that this "monkey vaccine" narrative "has been voiced by Russian officials and the state media before."

Oct 18 12:51pm
Zeptoseconds! Scientists Measure the Shortest Unit of Time Ever
nickwinlund77 quotes Live Science: Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule. That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1. Previously, researchers had dipped into the realm of zeptoseconds; in 2016, researchers reporting in the journal Nature Physics used lasers to measure time in increments down to 850 zeptoseconds. This accuracy is a huge leap from the 1999 Nobel Prize-winning work that first measured time in femtoseconds, which are millionths of a billionths of seconds. It takes femtoseconds for chemical bonds to break and form, but it takes zeptoseconds for light to travel across a single hydrogen molecule (H2). To measure this very short trip, physicist Reinhard Dörner of Goethe University in Germany and his colleagues shot X-rays from the PETRA III at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a particle accelerator in Hamburg. The researchers set the energy of the X-rays so that a single photon, or particle of light, knocked the two electrons out of the hydrogen molecule. (A hydrogen molecule consists of two protons and two electrons.) The photon bounced one electron out of the molecule, and then the other, a bit like a pebble skipping over the top of a pond. These interactions created a wave pattern called an interference pattern, which Dörner and his colleagues could measure with a tool called a Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy (COLTRIMS) reaction microscope.

Oct 17 1:00am
Japan Decides To Release Treated Fukushima Water Into the Sea
hcs_$reboot shares a report from CBS News: Japan will release more than a million tons of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reports said Friday, despite strong opposition from environmentalists, local fishermen and farmers. The release of the water, which has been filtered to reduce radioactivity, is likely to start in 2022 at the earliest. The decision ends years of debate over how to dispose of the liquid that includes water used to cool the power station after it was hit by a massive tsunami in 2011. A government panel said earlier this year that releasing the water into the sea or evaporating it were both "realistic options." The treated water is currently kept in a thousand huge tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi site, where reactors went into meltdown nearly a decade ago after the earthquake-triggered tsunami. Plant operator TEPCO is building more tanks, but all will be full by mid-2022.

Oct 16 9:30pm
US Surpasses 8 Million Coronavirus Cases
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: America surpassed 8 million cases of the novel coronavirus on Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The grim milestone that puts the U.S. ahead of every other country in terms of total cases. Over 218,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported in the U.S. as well, again setting a record that represents about 20% of total deaths worldwide. COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, has rapidly spread across the globe, infecting nearly 40 million and killing over 1.1 million. Beside the U.S., India has the highest number of cases, at almost 7.4 million, while some countries like New Zealand have all but eliminated COVID-19 with the number of active infections now at zero.

Oct 16 8:06am
Developer Says AWS Forked His Project and Launched It As Its Own Service
Tim Nolet, founder and chief technology officer of Checkly, tweeted on Friday: Oh @awscloud I really do love you! But next time you fork my OS project and present it as your new service, give the maintainers a short "nice job, kids" or something. Not necessary as per the APLv2 license, but still, ya know?

Oct 16 4:00am
NASA Funds Nokia Plan To Provide Cellular Service On Moon
schwit1 shares a report from UPI: NASA will fund a project by Nokia to build a 4G cellular communication network on the moon with $14.1 million, the space agency announced. That project was part of $370 million in new contracts for lunar surface research missions NASA announced Wednesday. Most of the money went to large space companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to perfect techniques to make and handle rocket propellant in space. The space agency must quickly develop new technologies for living and working on the moon if it wants to realize its goal to have astronauts working at a lunar base by 2028, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a live broadcast.

Oct 15 9:25am
YouTube Bans Coronavirus Vaccine Misinformation
YouTube said this week it would remove videos from YouTube containing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, expanding its current rules against falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. From a report: The video platform said it would now ban any content with claims about COVID-19 vaccines that contradict consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. YouTube said in an email that this would include removing claims that the vaccine will kill people or cause infertility, or that microchips will be implanted in people who receive the vaccine.

Oct 13 2:07pm
iPhone 12 Lineup Does Not Ship With a Power Adapter; Apple Begins Selling 20W USB-C Adapter for $19
With the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro models no longer shipping with a power adapter, Apple has started selling the 20W USB-C power adapter that was first introduced with the iPad Air on a standalone basis for $19. From a report: The 20W power adapter is included in the box with the iPad Air, but those who want one for use with the new iPhone models will need to shell out $19. All of the new iPhone 12 models and older iPhone models ship only with a USB-C to Lightning cable, with customers expected to provide their own power adapters. Most people likely have several USB-C power adapters on hand from past device purchases, but this will be an inconvenience for those who have few power adapters available already.

Oct 13 7:00am
UK Ad Authority Bans Misleading Homescapes and Gardenscapes Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Two misleading ads for mobile games that bear little relation to the actual product have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ads, for the Homescapes and Gardenscapes games, both come from developer Playrix. They showed a game where users pull pins in a specific order to solve a puzzle -- though the actual games had totally different "core gameplay." The ASA said the ads should not be used again. Homescapes and Gardenscapes both use the same core gameplay loop: a home or garden needs to be renovated, and players earn the resources they need by playing a "match three" type game -- similar to other popular games such as Bejewelled or Candy Crush. Both Homescapes and Gardenscapes are hugely popular, with more than 100 million app installs each from the Google Play store. But the games have often used ads that show a multiple-choice type puzzle to avert a catastrophe, or, more recently, the pin-pulling puzzle type. Two Facebook ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes, from March and April this year, were referred to the ASA for being misleading. Despite a brief warning at the bottom of the video that "not all images represent actual gameplay", the ASA sided with the seven people who complained.

Oct 12 4:10pm
Microsoft Releases Update for Windows 10 To Prevent Swollen Laptop Batteries
Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft has teamed up with HP to work on a fix for a problem affecting various HP Business Notebooks. The flaw not only causes a reduction in performance and battery life, but can also lead to swollen batteries. The problem lies with the HP Battery Health Manager, and the update from Microsoft and HP is rolling out to enable a new charging algorithm to help alleviate the issue. Writing about the update, Microsoft says: "Microsoft is working with HP to distribute a solution to help address a configuration setting issue within HP Battery Health Manager on select HP Business Notebooks that can affect battery life and performance. This update does not require a restart to take effect."

Oct 12 1:25pm
PC Market Shipments Grow a Stellar 13% in Q3 2020 To Break Ten-Year Record
Recently released Canalys data shows the global PC market climbed 12.7% from a year ago to reach 79.2 million units in Q3 2020 as it continued to benefit hugely from the COVID-19 crisis. From a report by the research firm: This is the highest growth the market has seen in the past 10 years. After a weak Q1, the recovery in Q2 continued into Q3 this year, and it even grew on top of a strong market the previous year. Global notebook shipments touched 64 million units (almost as much as the record high of Q4 2011 when notebook shipments were 64.6 million) as demand continued to surge due to second waves of COVID-19 in many countries and companies continued to invest in longer-term transitions to remote working. Shipments of notebooks and mobile workstations grew 28.3% year-on-year. This contrasted with desktop and desktop workstations, which saw shipments shrink by 26.0%. Lenovo regained top spot in the PC market in Q3 with growth of 11.4% and shipments surpassed the 19 million mark. HP posted a similarly impressive growth of 11.9% to secure second place with 18.7 million units shipped. Dell, in third, suffered a small decline of 0.5% in shipments from a year ago. Apple and Acer rounded out the top five rankings, posting stellar growth of 13.2% and 15.0% respectively.

Oct 6 9:25am
Facebook Removes Trump Post Falsely Saying Flu is More Lethal Than Covid
Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that Covid-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu. From a report: Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation. President Trump has, by his own admission, played down the threat of Covid-19. Now, while battling his own bout of the disease, he has continued to dishonestly downplay the severity of the virus. His post on Tuesday falsely equated Covid-19 to the seasonal flu. Twitter has shielded the post with a label and is preventing users from retweeting the post.

Oct 5 2:05pm
MS Excel Data Files Exceeding the Maximum Size Resulted in Nearly 16,000 Covid-19 Cases Go Unreported in England
rastos1 shares a report: The health secretary has said a technical glitch that saw nearly 16,000 Covid-19 cases go unreported in England "should never have happened." The error meant that although those who tested positive were told about their results, their close contacts were not traced. By Monday afternoon, around half of those who tested positive had yet to be asked about their close contacts. Labour said the missing results were "putting lives at risk." Experts advise that ideally contacts should be tracked down within 48 hours. The technical error was caused by some Microsoft Excel data files exceeding the maximum size after they were sent from NHS Test and Trace to Public Health England. It meant 15,841 cases between 25 September and 2 October were left out of the UK daily case figures. PHE said the error itself, discovered overnight on Friday, has been fixed, and outstanding cases had been passed on to tracers by 01:00 BST on Saturday. But Health Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs the incident as a whole had not yet been resolved - with only 51% of those whose positive results were caught up in the glitch now reached by contact tracers.

Oct 5 1:25pm
Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded To Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C Virus
Raisey-raison writes: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had "made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives." "For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population," the committee said in a statement. They announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. About 71 million people worldwide live with a chronic infection of the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne pathogen that can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis, and is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure. Tests and treatments "all start with being able to recognize the virus exists," said Craig Cameron, chair of the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a hepatitis C virus researcher.

Oct 3 8:34pm
Google Is Building a Special Android Security Team to Hunt Bugs in Sensitive Apps
"Google is hiring to create a special Android security team that will be tasked with finding vulnerabilities in highly sensitive apps on the Google Play Store," reports ZDNet: "As a Security Engineering Manager in Android Security... Your team will perform application security assessments against highly sensitive, third party Android apps on Google Play, working to identify vulnerabilities and provide remediation guidance to impacted application developers," reads a new Google job listing posted on Wednesday. Applications that this new team will focus on include the likes of COVID-19 contact tracing apps and election-related applications, with others to follow, according to Sebastian Porst, Software Engineering Manager for Google Play Protect.

Oct 3 3:45pm
Will New Object Storage Protocol Mean the End For POSIX?
"POSIX has been the standard file system interface for Unix-based systems (which includes Linux) since its launch more than 30 years ago," writes Enterprise Storage Forum, noting the POSIX-compliant Lustre file system "powers most supercomputers." Now Slashdot reader storagedude writes: POSIX has scalability and performance limitations that will become increasingly important in data-intensive applications like deep learning, but until now it has retained one key advantage over the infinitely scalable object storage: the ability to process data in memory. That advantage is now gone with the new mmap_obj() function, which paves the way for object storage to become the preferred approach to Big Data applications. POSIX features like statefulness, prescriptive metadata, and strong consistency "become a performance bottleneck as I/O requests multiply and data scale..." claims the article. "The mmap_obj() developers note that one piece of work still needs to be done: there needs to be a munmap_obj() function to release data from the user space, similar to the POSIX function."

Feld Thoughts Dec 4 11:55am
The Expanse: Season 5: 12/16/20

In the category of all of this has happened before, and will happen again. I read The Legend of Bagger Vance yesterday and then watched the movie last night. The book is much better than the movie, and the book is really, really good, even if you don’t care about golf at all. And, since I don’t care about golf, I am comfortable stating that the book is excellent. My journey to the book was via Seth Godin’s new book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, which is worth reading every page. That led me to Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art – also outstanding. And, then I realized I’d never read anything by Pressfield, and up came The Legend of Bagger Vance,...

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AVC Dec 4 3:52am
Funding Friday: Looking Glass Holographic Display
I saw this project as I was browsing Kickstarter this morning and I watched the video and thought “I need to get one of those.” If you would like to display a favorite photograph in holograph form you can back this project and get one for yourself here.
Dec 3 4:03am
Digital Dollars
I have written about stablecoins a bunch here at AVC. I believe cryptocurrencies that are not highly volatile are important for use cases like e-commerce. I explained why here. So we need crypto assets that are price stabilized and one of the best ways to do that is to peg a crypto asset to a […]
Dec 2 7:16am
Cliff Vesting
It is very typical that options and RSUs that are issued to new employees upon joining a company will have “one year cliff vesting.” This means that the first year of vesting into your options or RSUs will not happen until you have completed one entire year. After that vesting usually happens quarterly or monthly. […]
Feld Thoughts Dec 2 7:15am
1000 Holograms on Your Desk

“Either this is madness or it is Hell.”  “It is neither,” calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, “it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily.”   -Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Anyone who has read this blog knows that I’m not a fan of prognostications. In a collision of complex systems like what we are all living through right now, predicting the future is especially pointless. That’s why I’m happy when I don’t need to make a prediction when something long promised in science fiction futures arrives in the present.  That just happened today with holograms. For anyone who watched Minority Report the first time and wondered...

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Dec 1 11:32am
@bfeld v55.0

Simply begin again. A year ago, I wrote in my v54.0 post that I’d decided not to have any goals for the year ahead. Instead of having goals, I wrote: I’m embracing the moment. Every moment. Simply being in the moment. Being present with whomever I’m with or whatever I’m doing. But that’s not a goal. I know I’ll drift – regularly – just like my mind does when I meditate. As I reflect on that last 365 days, I’m glad I had no goals. I could never have anticipated the 365 days that just occurred. Someone changed some of the fundamental code in the simulation we are in, and it sent everything off in an extremely unexpected direction. Nothing...

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AVC Dec 1 5:24am
Giving Tuesday
I’m not much for the shopping mania that happens on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but I do like the idea of taking a day at this time of year to give back. Today is that day. This year is a particularly hard year for so many and so giving back, if you can, is […]
Nov 30 4:32am
Crypto Wallets Are Not Bank Accounts
We learned last week that the US Treasury wants to regulate crypto wallets like bank accounts. On the surface, one can understand that temptation. If people store, send, receive, and sell crypto assets in crypto wallets, then surely they should be regulated like bank accounts. Except that is only one use case for a crypto […]
Nov 29 4:21am
We Will Miss You Arnold
I learned yesterday of the passing of Arnold Waldstein. Arnold was as regular a reader of this blog as there ever was or ever will be. His warmth is what I will remember most. He cared about people. Arnold was a born and bred NYer who went to Silicon Valley and built a career in […]
Nov 27 5:19am
Funding Friday: Active Shield
I’ve been biking several times a week in NYC this fall and every mask I’ve worn has caused me problems with fogging my glasses and making it harder to breath. I’ve tried a bunch of different masks and nothing works great. So when I saw this project to make something better for working out on […]
Nov 26 5:22am
Thanksgiving 2020
As years go, 2020 is not one that generates a lot of gratitude in my mind. Global pandemic, racial struggles, millions without jobs, local merchants closing up, a surreal election here in the US, and that is just what comes to mind in the time it takes me to write this. And yet, I am […]
Nov 25 4:36am
Exposure Notification Express
I have New York State’s exposure alerting app on my phone and check it every day. It gives me great statistics about what is going on in my location. You can download it here for iOS and Android. It will also notify me if anyone who is using the app and has been with me […]
Nov 24 4:34am
Thoughts On Charles Duhigg’s New Yorker Piece
I saw this tweet in my feed yesterday and read the New Yorker piece when I woke up this morning: Here’s what I think. There is more truth to that article than anyone in the venture capital industry wants to admit. The idea that capital alone can create a strong company is a flawed idea […]
Nov 23 4:35am
Knowing What You Are Looking For
There are many ways to invest successfully. Public stocks, bonds, private equity, real estate, venture capital, etc. And within each category, there are so many different investment opportunities. In public stocks, there are something like 5,000 listed stocks in the US. In venture capital, there were something like 30,000 companies that raised venture capital in […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 20 10:03am
Behold, Now As Ever

From Ryan Holiday’s amazing and wonderful book The Daily Stoic. Thanks Adam for the email exchange and for sending this to me today.

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AVC Nov 20 3:46am
Funding Friday: Remotely
I was on a zoom board meeting in early July and one of the board members started whipping out cards instead of interrupting. I captured the moment because I thought it was awesome. Since then, I have wanted my own set of zoom meeting cards, but never took the initiative to make them. So when […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 19 11:57am
Can Do Colorado – A New Energize Colorado Project

During the Covid crisis, I’ve been regularly discussing the dramatic amplification of inequities that already existed. From a business perspective, some businesses have benefited during this crisis, while other businesses (and entire categories of business) are being wiped off the face of the earth. Here’s a blunt statement of what’s going on that showed up in a Slack channel yesterday. Working through my market portfolio this am and thought This metric would be of interest to this group. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Microsoft have added 3 trillion dollars to their value since COVID started. This is a deep wealth transfer from small businesses. These 6 companies have more market cap than the entire emerging market sector. I’d like...

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AVC Nov 19 4:43am
Link 230 Protections To Opening Up
The latest charade of bringing Jack and Zuck in front of Congress to yell at them reminds me that our elected officials and regulators don’t have a plan for how to properly regulate social media. Jack and Zuck probably do have a plan and if they play their cards correctly, they will be able to […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 18 9:00am
The Manipulation Machine

I’m tired (today’s Whoop recovery score of 15). Almost everyone in my virtual universe is tense, tired, frustrated, angry, annoyed, exasperated, irked, or outraged. Fortunately, the only person in my physical world – and there is only one (Amy) – is generally calm. While we each have our moments, our morning coffee resets both of us for the day ahead and syncs up our energy as we simply begin again. Last night I read Maelle Gavet’s book Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It. It was excellent and is consistent with my worldview. I knew many of the examples, but a few new ones jumped out at me. The second half of the book contains...

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AVC Nov 18 4:27am
Some Thoughts On The Pandemic
When I go back and read my Jan 1st post on what would happen in the 2020s, I am reminded how hard it is to predict the future. The Covid Pandemic changed everything in 2020 and likely for years to come. And yet it was not one of my predictions, even though Covid was already […]
Nov 17 4:48am
Starting At The Start
A reader emailed me yesterday and I replied: Hi Fred, do you have any suggestion for good primers/book explaining cryptocurrencies a bit better to the inexperienced and uninitiated?    i would start at the start https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The Bitcoin Whitepaper, originally published in October 2008, is a work of art. Eight pages long and it describes most […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 16 1:35pm
Help Support Black-Owned Businesses

A few months ago, Jasper Kuria reached out to me about a new non-profit he was starting called The Black-Owned Business. His goal is to create a community of vetted, high-quality Black-owned professional services companies. Like many things Amy and I have been supporting around racial equity; this was an easy yes. I have not historically paid close attention to the gender or race of the service providers that we use. After almost six months of learning about racial inequity in the US and what I can do to help eliminate racism, supporting more Black-owned businesses is something I’m committed to. Jasper has started a campaign called Do the BOB. It consists of providing your support and sending out the...

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AVC Nov 16 4:52am
Bitcoin – The Gateway Drug
The first crypto asset most people purchase is Bitcoin. It has the highest market capitalization. It has way more search interest. But Bitcoin is not all there is to the crypto sector. There is about $160bn of market value in the crypto sector outside of Bitcoin. The “non-Bitcoin” portion of the crypto sector has risen […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 15 11:12am
Book: Becoming Monday

I read G. W. Constable’s near term sci-fi book Becoming Monday. If you are a fan of near term sci-fi, AGI, or the singularity, go get a copy right now – you’ll love it. I woke up in a customer service booth. Or perhaps more accurately, since I couldn’t remember a damn thing, my new existence began in that booth. If you’re born in hell, does that make you a bad person? It took me about ten pages to get my bearings, which is pretty fast for a book like this. Moon cut in. “I get where you’re coming from, Grog, but I’m not convinced that fear and control is a good start or foundation for inter-species relations.” While the...

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AVC Nov 13 3:59am
Funding Friday: Lifted
AVC regular Charlie Crystle told me that his neighbors are doing a fun Kickstarter. So I went and watched the video (here for email readers): The video is only 30 seconds and it sold me instantly. I backed it and I bet you will too if you like to drink beer with friends. It’s a […]
Nov 12 7:24am
Educating Electeds
A number of members of Congress sent a letter to the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Tuesday. I have embedded it below but readers via email may need to click here to read it. Letter to the OCC on Fintec… by CoinDesk These elected officials are correct that way too many people […]
Nov 11 4:51am
The Star Pupils
I was looking at the numbers on an early-stage VC fund that the Gotham Gal and I are invested in. I am not very familiar with the portfolio but this fund was formed in 2012. There are 24 names (investments) in the portfolio and 3 of them have produced 92% of the value in the […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 10 8:51am
Startup Communities Audiobooks

The audiobooks for The Startup Community Way and Startup Communities, 2e are both available. I’ve gotten this request from many people, so I’m glad they are finally out. If you are an Audible listener, you can get them at: The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem  Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, 2nd Edition The Audiobook.com versions are available at: The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, 2nd edition

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AVC Nov 10 3:56am
The Covid Rotation
Yesterday morning we got the news that Pfizer’s mRNA Covid vaccine developed in partnership with BioNTech saw 90% efficacy in phase three clinical trials. While this is terrific news, Wall Street saw it as bad news for companies that are doing well during this pandemic (Zoom, Peloton, e-commerce, etc). This is a chart of Jim […]
Nov 9 7:53am
Some Good News
There has been a fair bit of good news in the last 48 hours. Here is some more. I logged onto Twitter just now and saw this tweet from my colleague Matt: It has taken almost nine months, but our USV portfolio companies have as many open and unfilled jobs this morning as they did […]
Nov 6 4:03am
Funding Friday: Shower Power
I’ve always been a fan of music in the shower. So when a long time AVC reader sent me a link to his Kickstarter project, Shower Power, I immediately backed it. If you are into music in the shower like I am, you might want to check it out and support it too.
Nov 5 2:16pm
Early Liquidity vs Holding
There was a good Twitter discussion of this issue over the weekend between some folks who work in the VC sector. I think it is worth sharing more broadly. Here it is as a Twitter Moment.
Feld Thoughts Nov 5 9:10am
The Liminal Space

I’ve personally been in a liminal space for most of 2020. Today, most of America is in a liminal space. The word liminal comes from the Latin word ‘limen’, meaning threshold – any point or place of entering or beginning. A liminal space is the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’ It is a place of transition, a season of waiting, and not knowing. Liminal space is where all transformation takes place, if we learn to wait and let it form us. I’m participating in the first annual DEIS Practicum with Rodney Sampson of Ohub today. In our opening discussion, we touched on the importance of being uncomfortable. Liminal spaces are uncomfortable. When you sell your company, leave, and think...

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AVC Nov 4 5:40am
Turnout
Well, we don’t know who won the election this morning, but we know that the turnout was the strongest in 120 years at roughly 2/3 of eligible voters. We can thank mail-in votes and early voting for that. Some will take offense at the late counting of mail-in votes and claim fraud. I am not […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 3 10:21am
Please Vote Today

If you haven’t voted yet, today is the day. Please vote.

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AVC Nov 3 3:34am
Vote
I am not working today. USV gave everyone the day off. It is Election Day in the US. I believe it should be a national holiday so everyone can have the day off and vote. I can’t think of many things more important than participating in the selection of our government. I saw that over […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 2 8:05am
Roam: My New Favorite Software Product

Until six weeks ago, my favorite software product of all time was Lotus Agenda. We ran my first company (Feld Technologies) on Lotus Agenda from when the first version of Agenda came out sometime in 1990 to when we sold the company in 1993. If you aren’t familiar with Agenda and want a quick, readable description, take a look at AGENDA: A Personal Information Manager (Belove, Drake Kaplan, Kapor, Landsman). Agenda was the brainchild of Mitch Kapor (and several others) and, after Lotus killed it off in the time of a transition to Windows (Lotus Organizer was not an adequate Windows replacement), there was an effort (again led by Mitch Kapor) to recreate it with an open-source project called Chandler...

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AVC Nov 2 5:10am
Going Direct To Learners With Software
I was talking to a group of education entrepreneurs (on Zoom naturally) last week and was advocating for the “direct to learner” approach that defines our eduction investing strategy at USV. For the most part, we do not like to back companies that sell learning tools to educational institutions. We like to back companies that […]
Feld Thoughts Nov 1 10:47am
Progress on the Discussion Around Gender Equity at the Boulder Country Club

I rarely take down a blog post.  After plenty of feedback and activity, I’ve decided to take down the post from last week titled A Conversation With Dan Caruso About Gender Equity at the Boulder Country Club. The primary reason is the progress from the BCC board’s approach in the past week. I received a lot of positive and negative feedback on the post. The feedback covered a wide range of topics, including: Gender equity Privilege and the notion that two rich White guys were complaining about an issue at an exclusive country club The approach we were taking How golf works Not surprisingly, there were a few ad-hominem attacks at Dan and me, but I’ve become used to that...

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Oct 30 9:50am
Coloradans – Activite Exposure Notification on Your iPhone/Android to Help Keep Colorado Safe from Covid

We’ve learned many things in the last six months that help slow the spread of the Covid, such as social distancing, outdoor vs. indoor activity, and mask-wearing. We’ve also learned a lot about how to treat the disease. But, regardless of what you think of the severity or impact of Covid, the transmission characteristics of the disease remain unchanged. Many people worldwide, and in Colorado, are working tirelessly on controlling and mitigating the disease. Technology-based solutions around exposure notifications have been under discussion since April (here’s a post of mine from 4/23/20 titled Names Matter: Exposure Alerting vs. Digital Contact Tracing.) Last week, the State of Colorado rolled out an exposure notification application built on and integrated into the Apple/Google...

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AVC Oct 30 4:33am
Funding Fridays: Agi’s
This project has a bunch of things that interest/excite me: 1/ Entrepreneurs committing to building new things in NYC during the pandemic 2/ Young chefs going out on their own 3/ Brooklyn 4/ Jelly donuts I backed this project just now and took the jelly donuts reward because how could I resist? The video is […]
Oct 29 5:05am
When are we going to know who won the election?
Our portfolio company Recount put out this two minute video primer on the question of “when will we know.” I like getting the information I want in a very short period of time. This does that so well.
Feld Thoughts Oct 28 7:43am
The Queen’s Gambit

If you can’t imagine that a drama about chess would be riveting, you need to watch The Queen’s Gambit. And, if you love (or even like) chess, start watching it tonight. The first two episodes are the Opening. The Middlegame happens in episodes 3, 4, and 5. The Endgame is episodes 6 and 7. Each is delicious. The Endgame is spectacular. We watched it in three nights. Last night was episode 5, 6, and 7. We normally would have gone to bed after episode 6, but we played through rather than taking an adjournment. So wonderful. Thanks Netflix for the distraction from everything else.

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AVC Oct 28 4:49am
The NYC Fintech Innovation Lab
The NYC Fintech Innovation Lab is a program which accepts fintech entrepreneurs to develop their businesses with the assistance of senior execs at the leading NYC banks and insurance companies. The key priorities of the CTOs and CIOs of the Lab’s partner organizations include:   cloud, cyber-tech, data, digital engagement, enterprise IT and sustainability. If you […]
Oct 27 4:13am
The David Prize
The David Prize is a philanthropic effort to find NYers who are doing amazing things and support them financially. They recently announced five winners, you can see them here. They have an open call for new applicants and you can apply here. The deadline is December 4th. They are eager to support entrepreneurs of all […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 26 7:30am
A Conversation With Dan Caruso About Gender Equity at the Boulder Country Club

Brad:  Hey, Dan. Like Cindy and you, Amy and I are Boulder Country Club members, but we play tennis, not golf. Is it true that only men can golf on Saturday mornings? Dan: Yes. Believe it or not, you must indeed be male to golf on Saturday mornings. There are a few exceptions. During the winter season, women can golf on Saturday mornings. Women can also use the 9-hole Par 3 course on Saturday mornings all year round. Brad:  Wow. Really? Women aren’t allowed to golf on the main course on Saturday mornings except during winter months? Dan: Yes. Brad:  That’s disappointing. Why is the policy of men-only golf on Saturday mornings still in place? Dan: That’s a good question,...

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AVC Oct 26 4:23am
Removing The CEO
In almost thirty five years of working on boards, the hardest decisions I have had to make involve removing the CEO. It is an important decision and one that must be made from time to time. I am not a fan of removing the CEO until and unless it is abundantly clear that it must […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 23 5:12am
Zoom Secret Magic Trick – Hide Self View

Here’s a simple one to make your 10 hours a day on Zoom more enjoyable. Hide Self View Click on the three little dots next to Mute in your video window. Choose “Hide Self View.” The following view … is much better to look at that the one with my own picture in it. Staring at yourself for 10 hours a day is exhausting. If you are having trouble relating to this, put a mirror on your desk in front of you and look at it all day. That’s basically what you are doing when you don’t hide self view. For some crazy reason, Zoom hasn’t made this a default feature yet (Dear Zoom, make it a default to Hide...

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AVC Oct 23 4:30am
Funding Friday: Hidemi Takagi: Stories
I like how Hidemi Takagi set up a free photo studio in her front yard in Bed-Stuy and took photos of her neighbors. For those on email, you can see the video here. I backed this creative project and a bunch of others this morning on Kickstarter.
Feld Thoughts Oct 22 7:56am
When The Big Companies Show Up

I find it fascinating when a large company enters a new arena. Some of you will remember this happening back in 1981 when IBM announced it was getting into the personal computer market. This was a field that up until that point had been completely dominated by smaller players like Apple. Steve Jobs’s response was the now-infamous full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal welcoming IBM to the game. Fast forward to today. Sony just announced they are going to start shipping a holographic display. This is the first large company entering this nascent field that I’m aware up. And, as far as I know, the only company actually shipping a product at this point is Looking Glass (I sit...

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AVC Oct 22 4:35am
Extending And Improving Bluetooth On A Mac Mini
As I have written here a few times, I prefer to do video meetings from a couch (vs a desk). I find it allows me to stay present in the meeting and not get distracted by everything on my desk. I call these couch setups “Zoom Rooms” and I have been doing this long before […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 21 11:35am
Simply Begin Again

One of my mantras for v54 is “Simply Begin Again.” As I get closer to v55 (58 days from now), I’ve been thinking about it more. During my morning meditation, I repeated it for a stretch and then did the same for about a mile on my run this morning. Garth gets so many things correct. I made a big shift earlier this summer after I finished up some of the work I was doing with the State of Colorado around Covid, specifically around the Innovation Response Team. A lot of that energy shifted to new work around racial equity and the release of my new book with Ian Hathaway The Startup Community Way. At the same time, my Foundry...

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AVC Oct 21 5:28am
Offsetting Your Flights
I realize that most of us are not flying much these days, but I am confident that we will return to flying when the pandemic is over and when we do, we should offset the carbon footprints of our flights. The Gotham Gal and I have been doing this for the last five years. Here […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 20 2:40pm
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Solutions (DEIS) Practicum

On November 5th, from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT, I’m co-hosting a DEIS Practicum with Rodney Sampson and the OHUB Foundation. Rodney was one of the dozen Black colleagues I reached out to after George Floyd was murdered. I asked them each the question, “What are two things you are doing to eliminate racism that I can support you with time, network, and money?” If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ve seen some of the Black colleagues and initiatives I’ve gotten involved with. Rodney and I have embarked on several projects together. The DEIS Practicum is one of them. We selected “Practicum” rather than “Summit” or “Conference” to signal that this is a “how-to” experience rather...

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AVC Oct 20 7:02am
Spreading Jam
If your job requires you to design, build, and ship software applications and you want a better way to get feedback on the application, the design, etc, then I have a suggestion for you. Try Jam. Or Jam.dev to be specific. Jam allows you to turn your web application into something akin to Google Docs, […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 19 10:04am
Supporting Sophie’s Neighborhood on World Pediatric Bone & Joint Day

Today, I’m helping amplify a $50,000 fundraiser for Sophia’s Neighborhood as part of World Pediatric Bone & Joint Day. Amy and I just contributed $25,000 so we are effectively matching any contributions dollar for dollar up to $50,000. Whenever I feel exogenous stress from the world, it helps me lower it by doing something to support someone in need. The #Calwood fires just outside of Boulder that broke out on Saturday added to a pile from 2020 that is beyond anything I’ve experienced in my life. Boulder is a magnificent city, but there are plenty of challenges for people everywhere. If you’ve eaten at Blackbelly, Jax Fish House, Dandelion, or Triana (remember Triana?), you probably know Chef Hosea Rosenberg. And...

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AVC Oct 19 5:11am
Setting Off On Your Own
I read Alex Konrad’s profile of Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang of Paradigm yesterday and was reminded of my own career. In 1996, after almost a decade at Euclid Partners, I left to start Flatiron Partners with Jerry Colonna. I was 35. Jerry was 33. We had a lot to learn but we did know […]
Oct 16 4:19am
Funding Friday: Westbeth
The Gotham Gal and I have lived a block away from Westbeth for almost fifteen years. Westbeth is a treasure. It was Bell Labs for most of the first half of the twentieth century and became an artist community in 1970 about twenty years after Bell Labs left for New Jersey. Earlier this week, I […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 15 11:53am
Come Join Us at Foundry Group: Hiring a Head of Network

At Foundry Group, we are hiring a Head of Network. Following is a repost of the overview of the role and why we are adding a Head of Network to our team. If you are interested in applying, please reach out to us at apply@foundrygroup.com. And please help us get the word out! We’re looking for a leader to create a more robust, dynamic, and connected network program at Foundry Group. The Foundry Network, as we’ve been calling it, encompasses founders, CEOs, executives, general partners of our underlying venture capital fund investments, limited partners (our investors as well as other investors in the funds we have investments in), and other members of our ecosystem. We regularly bring together members of this...

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AVC Oct 15 4:41am
A Failing Grade
I wrote yesterday, about the quarterly numbers for VC investing activity: If this was a student coming home with a report card, it would be straight As. Well, I missed something in the data that was subsequently reported on by PitchBook, one of the authors of the report: Venture funding for female founders has hit […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 14 8:00am
A $25K Matching Gift To Boost Entrepreneurship in Kansas City Through Storytelling

Today, Amy and I are announcing a matching gift from our Anchor Point Foundation to the Startland News’ Give A Start donor campaign. We will match any contributions from this point forward, up to $25,000. Since 2015, Startland News has helped Kansas City entrepreneurs shout their triumphs from the rooftops — a critical piece of storytelling as the local startup community evolves beyond good ideas written on napkins to the home of powerhouse startups and nine-figure exits. Startland News is part of Startland, formerly the Kansas City Startup Foundation, and is a community-building 501(c)3 nonprofit activating a thriving and inclusive culture of innovation in Kansas City through stories, experiences, and talent. A thriving startup community also explores its failures, the...

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AVC Oct 14 7:42am
Venture Funding Trends Intact
The NVCA and Pitch Book are out with their Q3 report on the VC industry and what they report is that the VC industry continues to be very active throughout the pandemic. Deal counts and deal values are stable to up over last year. The massive expansion of later-stage private capital continues unabated. Valuations continue […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 13 9:47am
Definition of #GiveFirst

Jaclyn Hester, one of my Foundry Group partners, recently asked if there was an online definition of #GiveFirst. I spent some time looking around, and, while it’s embedded in numerous podcasts and video interviews, I couldn’t find a clear definition on the web. The closest I found was from January 1, 2013, in a post titled Give Before You Get. #GiveFirst first appeared as “Give Before You Get” in my book Startup Communities published in 2012. It was turned into the #GiveFirst hashtag by someone at Techstars around 2014. I updated it in the 2nd Edition of Startup Communities (2e) which was published in 2020. I also defined it in The Startup Community Way, also published in 2020. The definition,...

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AVC Oct 13 4:52am
Numerai Signals
Our portfolio company Numerai, which operates the crowdsourced Numerai Hedge Fund and is the creator of the Numeraire crypto token introduced their latest effort, Numerai Signals, with this video yesterday:
Feld Thoughts Oct 12 4:48pm
RIP Larry Nelson

Larry Nelson, a very close friend, passed away on Friday. If you don’t know Larry, he was a super positive participant in the Boulder and the Denver startup communities for many years. He and his wife Pat produced w3w3.com well before podcasts were trendy (Larry and Pat referred to it as “Internet Talk Radio.”) I always thought of Larry and Pat as the encouraging storytellers of the Boulder and the Denver startup communities. Going back to some time in the late 1990s, Larry and Pat started showing up at every event I can remember participating in, which were a lot. I’d be doing a thing and there was Larry and Pat, with their cameras and their microphones. They took it...

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AVC Oct 12 5:08am
The De-Carbonization Of The Economy
Over the last decade, the Gotham Gal and I have moved away from oil and gas in our homes and have installed solar panels for electricity and heat pumps for heating and cooling. It has gotten less expensive to do this swap out as solar and heat pump costs have come down. My partner Albert […]
Oct 9 5:07am
Funding Friday: Getting Through The Winter
I backed Basilica Hudson earlier this week when I saw a friend had backed it in my notifications. Helping a leading upstate arts organization keep going during this pandemic felt like a good thing to do. This morning, I backed a few other similar projects: Dirty Precious: Off Premises Museum Of The Moving Image As […]
Oct 8 5:00am
E-Commerce and Retail
Most of us have seen some version of this chart that shows how the Covid pandemic has accelerated e-commerce adoption: What is interesting to me is that it has also impacted in person retail experiences. Most restaurants in NYC are not passing out menus anymore. They just have a QR code at the table that […]
Oct 7 4:11am
Business Books and Podcasts
I’m not a fan of business books. I find that you get most of the value from them in the opening chapter and then it is a lot of repetition from then on. But there are some great concepts that one can glean from business books and I’ve often wanted to find an efficient way […]
Oct 6 4:00am
AirPod Alternatives?
We have been back in NYC for the last month and enjoying the city very much. One of the many things we love about NYC is that we walk everywhere (or most everywhere). I enjoy walking around NYC by myself and listening to music, podcasts, or talking to friends or colleagues on the phone. But […]
Feld Thoughts Oct 5 10:57am
Fundraiser for the Energize Colorado Gap Fund on October 8th

$135 million. That is the amount that over 5,600 Colorado small businesses requested from the Energize Colorado Gap Fund in our first three weeks of open applications.  According to the SBA, small businesses in Colorado employ more than 1.1 million Coloradans, almost half of the state’s private workforce. 90% of the applicant pool came from one or more of the Gap Fund’s priority groups: BIPOC, women, veteran-owned, or companies in rural Colorado.  We anticipated that the demand for the Gap Fund would be massive and that we needed to provide a model that could offer a sustainable path through the post-Covid economic recovery. To that end, the Gap Fund provides a combination of grant and loan funds to recipients. We...

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AVC Oct 5 5:09am
Negative Social Proof
I explained this last week on a call with some of our investors and I thought it might be useful to explain it more broadly. Most of USV’s big wins have been in companies where we were the first institutional VC to talk to the company or where we had way more conviction about the […]
Oct 3 6:52am
NBA Top Shot Public Launch
Our portfolio company Dapper took the ropes off NBA Top Shot this past week and it is now open to anyone who wants to play this super fun NBA collectibles game. I wrote about NBA Top Shot in early August and provided access codes to AVC readers who wanted to get in on the beta. […]
Oct 2 5:39am
Covid Alert NY
I’ve written a bunch about Exposure Alerting and its potential to limit the spread of Covid by alerting people when they have come in contact with someone contagious. Back in April, Google and Apple came together to create GAEN, a framework for secure and private proximity data sharing on mobile phones. In July, the Linux […]
Oct 1 7:17am
Sora
My partner Rebecca wrote about our most recent education investment, Sora, on the USV blog today. We have been investing in learning for over a decade at USV and have built a terrific learning portfolio focusing on companies that are providing services direct to the learner (as opposed to selling “ed tech” to institutions). What […]
Sep 30 4:35am
Talk:NYC Podcast
I have been saying no to podcast requests and will continue to do so. But when Julie Samuels asked me to be the first guest on the Tech:NYC podcast, called Talk:NYC, I had to say yes. We talked about tech, NYC, the current moment we are living through, and a lot more. It’s about 35mins. […]
Sep 29 4:35am
Tabs
Our portfolio company Helium started shipping a new product called Tabs last week. Tabs competes with Tile and a bunch of other Bluetooth trackers and smart dog collars. But Tabs uses the Helium network (aka The People’s Network) and that makes all of the difference as you can see in this chart: The Helium Network […]
Sep 25 5:22am
Funding Friday: NextMaker Box
Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan and funder of teaching kids to code. I believe helping young people learn to think logically via coding exercises is helpful to their development in so many ways. So when I came across the NextMaker project on Kickstarter, I backed it instantly. NextMaker is a […]
Sep 24 5:29am
Universal Access and Choice
Our current investing thesis at USV is about expanding access to knowledge, wellness, and capital. We believe that these are core human needs and that opening up access to them is both good for society and also good business. Our approach to these challenges is centered on lowering the costs of these services and increasing […]
Sep 23 5:10am
Priorities
I am in the middle of a week of back to back to back to back all day meetings. Which means I am not responsive on email, which means I am not getting anything done, which means I can’t be easily reached. Which means I am stressed. In times like this, I like to remind […]
Sep 22 4:38am
Stablecoin Adoption Revisited
I saw that the SEC and the OCC issued guidance on fiat backed stablecoins yesterday. Better late than never. Because fiat backed stablecoins are seeing significant adoption this year. I wrote a post about stablecoin adoption in June in which I said this: I was perusing the crypto markets today and noticed that Tether, the […]
Sep 21 3:47am
Rebuilding NYC
The Gotham Gal and I spent a good part of saturday walking around NYC. At one point, we walked through the massive and amazing Chelsea Piers complex and saw this plaque: Think about that. In one four year period, the New York Public Library, Grand Central, the subway, the Queensboro and Manhattan bridges, the fire […]
Feld Thoughts Sep 13 11:41am
Are You Spending Your Weeks The Way You Want To?

Amy has a birthday coming up. We spent some time this morning talking about her next year. Since the two of us are together all day every day, we also discussed how I’m spending my time over the upcoming year that begins at her birthday. A few hours later, I stumbled upon Your Life in Weeks on Wait But Why, one of my favorite blogs. The following are the number of weeks (measured in boxes) that a typical 90-year-old human has on this planet. Think you have all 90 years worth of boxes? Here’s some perspective. Don’t want to think in weeks? Ok, let’s scope it down to months. When you look at it this way, there aren’t that many....

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Sep 11 11:50am
Denver Startup Week 2020

Denver Startup Week, the largest startup week in the world, happens next week. In the time of Covid, it’s virtual, so I hope we attract a lot of people from all over the world. I’m involved in a bunch of stuff this year, which I’ll list below, but I want to highlight a few specific events, including the Keynote Kickoff with Robert Smith of Vista Equity Partners who grew up in Denver. He will be doing a fireside chat with Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock. There is a large effort around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Listen to a short overview with Dianne Myles. Following are the specific events I’m involved in. Monday, September 14th from 11:00-12 noon MT – Innovation...

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Sep 10 11:54am
Book: Portrait of Resilience

Daniel Jackson created a magnificent book. It’s a combination of three things: 1) Extraordinary personal stories about 2) The struggle with mental health, anxiety, and depression while 3) at MIT. MIT is a foundational part of my life. I spent seven years there. I got into graduate school in my fourth year and got into a Ph.D. program in my fifth year. I also started three companies while I was there – the first failed after my sophomore year, the second failed after my junior year, but the third turned into Feld Technologies, which was my first successful company. I vividly remember my first major depressive episode. It was 1990. My first marriage had fallen apart. My company was doing...

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Sep 9 11:53am
Bolster and the Next Executive Network

Historically, almost everything I do uses a network model. Foundry Group runs as a network. If you take a look at the Foundry Group partner funds or talk to us about our investment strategy, you’ll immediately see the texture of a network. Techstars is a worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. All of my ideas around Startup Communities incorporate network theory. If you are involved in any organizations I’ve helped create, such as Energize Colorado, you’ll immediately recognize the network model underlying them. For me, a network is very different than a social network such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Now that my entire life has shifted to a virtual one, I’ve been playing around with a lot of new...

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Sep 8 9:18am
Venture Deals Online Course – Fall 2020 Edition

We are running the Venture Deals Online Course from September 13, 2020 – November 6, 2020. Our summer session had over 10,000 registrants and over 2,000 people completing the course. We got a lot of feedback about things to improve, several of which we are introducing into the Fall session. Once again, we’ll do a weekly AMA with a variety of people participating. We are also creating a new Venture Deals online community available to all past and current participants of the course. We’ll provide the link for the online community on day one (we’ll be using Mighty Networks, which I’ve loved for my virtual Startup Community.) For now, registration is open. Please sign up if you want to take the Fall...

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Sep 4 11:05am
Art by Julie Maren

Amy and I have been collecting art since we first got together in 1990. My mom, Cecelia Feld, is an artist, and I have been around contemporary art my entire life. We prefer non-representational art from living artists. While we have paintings, sculptures, and photographs from artists who live all over the world, many of the artists are from the Western United States. We first met Julie Maren through a gallery in Boulder on the Pearl Street Mall called MacLaren Markowitz Gallery. When the Internet and telecom bubble collapsed, the gallery ran into trouble, so Amy and I invested in it to help support it and keep it open. We met many artists in the ensuing years and expanded the...

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Sep 3 11:48am
Founders Mental Health in the Time of Covid

Mental health has been an issue among tech entrepreneurs for a long time, but has been exacerbated by the stresses of the Covid crisis. On March 31, I wrote a post called The Three Crises in which I suggested that the Covid crisis was the collision of three crises, each of which is a complex system. The health crisis (the disease) created the economic crisis (our economy was in strong shape before Covid), which would accelerate a mental health crisis. In the US, we have a fourth crisis amplified – the racial equity crisis – which has been going on since the inception of our country. Since these are complex systems, they are interconnected and don’t have a deterministic outcome. There are endless...

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Sep 2 10:52am
Book: Celebrating Entrepreneurs

My long-time friend and former MIT professor, Professor Edward Roberts, who founded and still chairs the MIT entrepreneurship program, recently published “Celebrating Entrepreneurs: How MIT Nurtured Pioneering Entrepreneurs Who Built Great Companies”. The book is fascinating, especially its five chapters filled with in-depth interviews and background on the MIT “spinoff startups” that became the leaders of: the life sciences and biotechnology industry, the Internet, from CAD-CAM to robotics, and even “modern finance”, plus a host of other companies, including such recent successes as HubSpot, Okta and PillPack, all founded and led by MIT alums. Chapter 11 is the one on Modern Finance. Who said professors at MIT didn’t have a sense of humor. Having known Ed for 35 years, he...

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Sep 1 6:54am
The Energize Colorado Gap Fund Application Process Is Open

The Energize Colorado Gap Fund is open for applications. At some point, I’ll write a blog post about the story of how this came together via a public-private partnership to fill a much-needed gap in the Federal funding for small businesses throughout Colorado due to the Covid crisis, but for now either send this to people you think it is relevant to or, if it is relevant to you, please apply for funding. If you are a business or nonprofit with less than 25 full-time employees (including sole proprietors) you can apply for up to a $15,000 grant and a $20,000 loan for a possible combined total of $35,000 in financial assistance. The applications and awards will be done in...

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Aug 31 9:47am
Endless Meaningless Words in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

I read On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings by Nietzsche yesterday. It was chewy, but soaked me in an interesting set of ideas about what words mean, along with a bunch of stuff around the concept of truth. I get a lot of inbound random email where I get asked a lot of questions, so I see lots of questions repeat or get asked in different ways. For example, I continually get asked some version of “How do I get a job as a VC” and point everyone at my partner Seth’s post How To Get a Job In Venture Capital. This morning, as I was grinding through email, I saw a few questions that could be generally categorized as...

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