Sunday, March 22, 2020
India lays out $6 billion roadmap to boost electronics manufacturing
Canada, Australia pull athletes out of Olympics, as the IOC says it will consider postponing Tokyo Games
The Canadian Olympic Committee announced that it will not send athletes to the Tokyo Olympic Games, as the International Olympic Committee weighs a decision on whether or not to postpone the event during the COVID-19 pandemic is currently. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee told athletes to prepare for the Games being delayed by year.
The Canadian and Australian announcements were made after the International Olympic Committee said on Sunday that it will make a decision on whether or not to postpone the games within the next four weeks.
In a letter to athletes, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach wrote, “together with all the stakeholders, we have started detailed discussions today to complete our assessment of the rapid development of the worldwide health situation and its impact on the Olympic Games, including a scenario of postponement.”
But the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees called on the IOC to postpone the games for one year.
“With COVID-19 and the associated risks, it is not safe for our athletes, and the health and safety of their families and broader Canadian community for athletes to continue training towards these games,” they wrote. “In fact, it runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow.”
In its statement, the Australian Olympics Committee said it “believes our athletes now need to prioritise their own health and of those around them, and to be able to return to their families, in discussion with their National Federations,” especially as travel restrictions are implemented by countries around the world.
The Summer Olympics, which take place every four years, have become an opportunity to gauge the adoption and impact of streaming technology. In 2016, the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil set new viewership records for a live-streamed event.
According to a report by Akamai Technologies (whose streaming technology was used by NBC), the 2016 Games were streamed for a total of 3.3 billion minutes, including 2.71 billion live-streaming minutes, with 100 million unique users watching the Games on a NBC Digital platform.
In addition to being a major sporting event, the Olympics are also a proving ground for new technologies, with robotics being a highlight of the 2020 Games. The Tokyo Olympics was supposed to give companies, including Toyota and Panasonic, a chance to show off new assistive and delivery robots, and demonstrate how they can fit into major events as well as daily routines.
Telcos want streaming firms to cut load
SC to conduct hearings via video conferencing from today
State curbs choke ecommerce supplies
Reports: data on 538M Weibo users, including real names, site usernames, gender, location info, and 172M phone numbers, is up for sale on the dark web (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
Reports: data on 538M Weibo users, including real names, site usernames, gender, location info, and 172M phone numbers, is up for sale on the dark web — Data for 538 million Weibo users, including 172 million phone numbers, has been put up for sale on the dark web.
IBM, Department of Energy, White House OSTP, others launch a consortium to give COVID-19 researchers access to supercomputers, 330+ petaflops of computing power (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
IBM, Department of Energy, White House OSTP, others launch a consortium to give COVID-19 researchers access to supercomputers, 330+ petaflops of computing power — Following the launch of its 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge, IBM today announced that it will help coordinate an effort …
Searching these 10 coronavirus related things online can prove to be 'dangerous'
Westworld S3, episode 2: Back in the game, breaking parks again
Enlarge / You better watch out, because she's back in the game. (credit: HBO)
This piece contains heavy spoilers for Westworld season three, episodes one and two. You probably won't want to read it unless you're caught up.
Every premiere episode of Westworld has had to introduce (and re-introduce) viewers to the rules of the world, and last week's episode was no exception—the show had to cram a lot of information into an hour of runtime to make sure we all start the season on the same page. This week's episode, by contrast, spends a lot of time in old familiar places—and with old familiar faces, too.
More than anything else, this is a workmanlike episode—it doesn't wash us down with a firehose of revelations, but it covers its ground efficiently. There are symbolism and neat visuals to dissect here, too, but that stuff needs to wait a couple more weeks—we need a few more reveals to happen first. (As a brief aside, discussing single episodes of a foreshadowing-heavy show like Westworld when I've already seen half the season is a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be. I've got a new respect for folks who do this kind of writing on the regular, since it involves a hell of a lot of compartmentalization!)
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Samsung Galaxy M21 Goes on Sale Today in India via Amazon
MX Player switches on data saver mode to cut broadband strain
Fake Covid-19 apps fish in the troubled waters
MasterClass is launching free, live Q&A sessions with big shots in their respective industries
MasterClass is known for selling access to pre-recorded online classes by a long list of people who are among the best at what they do, from tennis great Serena Williams to writer David Sedaris to chef Thomas Keller.
More recently, however, the company added live Q&A sessions with these same stars as a member benefit, and now, for the foreseeable future, it’s opening these sessions to non-members, too It’s the San Francisco startup’s way of making itself more accessible to a broader audience that perhaps can’t rationalize paying $90 per class or $180 for a yearly all-access pass, especially in this market.
The first free session streams live on Wednesday at noon PT from MasterClass’s site and will feature Chris Voss, who was once the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. Voss had earlier created a module for MasterClass on the art of negotiation, and he’ll be talking to whomever wants to tune in with the help of a moderator who will be asking questions that have been submitted in advance by students.
It’s just “one of a bunch” of such live Q&A sessions that will be made available, according to MasterClass CEO David Rogier, who we chatted with Friday afternoon and who describes Voss’s mission partly is to help families that are stuck at home better negotiate who is going to use the big-screen TV or the laptops at any one time (though more broadly the idea is to teach empathy).
It’s a small step from MasterClass, which separately gives away 130,000 all-access passes each year to organizations in need and has committed to giving away an addition 200,000 of these passes this year. (It’s opening this up soon to in-need organizations that will be able to apply on its website, says a spokeswoman.) Seemingly, MasterClass could lean in even further while much of America, and the rest of the globe, is trapped at home and looking for both entertainment and high-quality educational content.
In the meantime, Rogier is quick to note that MasterClass has a variety of kid-friendly content that’s instructive — if best consumed with parental supervision.
Among the now 80 classes available through the site — including new classes by interior designer Kelly Wearstler, a class on self expression and identity by RuPaul, and Gabriela Cámara teaching Mexican cooking — are classes, for example, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who walks viewers through his take on scientific thinking and communication. Another segment stars Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose class centers on U.S. presidential history.
Other courses recommended by Rogier himself include Penn and Teller’s class on the art of magic; a class on space exploration by retired astronaut and former Commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield; and, for older kids who might be trying to make sense of the world right now, a class by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on the economy.
As for how five-year-old MasterClass was doing before the world changed, Rogier declines to share specific growth stats, merely describing its numbers as “great.” He also notes that MasterClass is now available not only via its website and app but on the big screen through Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.
It’s also rolling out Android TV and Roku soon.
Pictured above: Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss.
Defence, atomic labs join the fight against Covid-19 outbreak
The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its Staten Island warehouse; Amazon plans to appeal (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)
Greg Bensinger / Reuters : The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its ...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
