New model looks at what might happen if SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay

Enlarge / Face masks may be a regular feature in our near-term future. (credit: Rob Kim/Getty Images)

Most of the optimistic ideas about what to do about SARS-CoV-2 involve engineering the virus' extinction. We could ramp up testing and isolate anyone who's been in contact with an infected individual. We could carefully manage infections to build up herd immunity without exceeding our hospital capacity. Or, in an ideal world, we could develop herd immunity using an effective vaccine.

Unfortunately, there are reasons to be worried that none of these will work. Tracing the contacts of infected individuals may be impossible with a virus that spreads as easily as SARS-CoV-2. And some of the virus' closest relatives don't build up the long-lasting immune response that's needed for persistent herd immunity. All of which raises a disturbing question: what happens then?

A group of Harvard epidemiologists attempted to answer the question by trying out models that tested the impacts of different assumptions about the virus' behavior and the immune system's response to it. The researchers find that there's a risk that it could become a seasonal menace, and we might have to be socially isolating every winter.

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Microsoft patches 4 Windows 0days under active exploit

Enlarge / A man looks at the home screen for the "new" Windows 7 platform when it was launched in October 2009. Microsoft has ended support, but the OS lives on. (credit: Katie Collins - PA Images / Getty Images)

Microsoft has patched four actively exploited vulnerabilities that allow attackers to execute malicious code or elevate system privileges on devices that run Windows.

Two of the security flaws—tracked as CVE-2020-1020 and CVE-2020-0938—reside in the Adobe Type Manager Library, a Windows DLL file that a wide variety of apps use to manage and render fonts available from Adobe Systems. On supported operating systems other than Windows 10, attackers who successfully exploit the vulnerabilities can remotely execute code. On Windows 10, attackers can run code inside an AppContainer sandbox. The measure limits the system privileges malicious code has, but even then, attackers can use it to create accounts with full user rights, install programs, and view, change, or delete data.

Attackers can exploit the flaws by convincing a target to open a booby-trapped document or viewing it in the Windows preview pane. Tuesday’s advisories said that Microsoft is “aware of limited, targeted attacks that attempt to leverage” both vulnerabilities. Microsoft revealed last month that one of the bugs was being exploited in limited attacks against Windows 7 machines.

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We may need 300,000 contact tracers to defeat COVID-19. We have 2,200

Enlarge / Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

As Americans anxiously await news of when they can emerge from their 4-meter-wide personal-space bubbles and go back to something resembling normal life, public health experts are working furiously to determine essential steps to get us there safely. And a consensus is emerging that key among those steps is recruiting a massive number of people to perform contact tracing.

"It is going to be critical," director Robert Redfield of the US Centers for Disease Control told NPR in an interview late last week. Scaled-up contact tracing, along with increased testing, is needed to "make sure that when we open up, we open up for good."

"We can't afford to have multiple community outbreaks that can spiral up into sustained community transmission," he said, "so it is going to be very aggressive, what I call 'block and tackle,' 'block and tackle.'"

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Lenovo A7 With Dual Rear Cameras, Unisoc SC9863A SoC Revealed

Lenovo A7 smartphone with 6.09-inch waterdrop display, 1.6GHz octa-core Unisoc (previously Spreadtrum) SC9863A SoC, dual rear cameras confirmed. https://ift.tt/2RzUiqe

Joker Is Out Next Week on Prime Video in India

Joker - the Joaquin Phoenix-starrer standalone DC movie - will be available April 20 on Amazon Prime Video in India. https://ift.tt/3crEfTB

Quibi Reports 1.7 Million Downloads in Its First Week

About 1.7 million people downloaded the new entertainment streaming app Quibi during its first week on the market, Chief Executive Meg Whitman told CNBC television on Monday. https://ift.tt/34ALoy3

Binance adds Bitcoin options trading to its mobile app, six months after adding futures trading, as it looks to widen its lead in the Bitcoin derivatives market (Colin Harper/Decrypt)

Colin Harper / Decrypt:
Binance adds Bitcoin options trading to its mobile app, six months after adding futures trading, as it looks to widen its lead in the Bitcoin derivatives market  —  Binance launched Bitcoin futures trading half a year ago, and it's now the biggest derivatives market in the industry.

Amazon Fills 100,000 Jobs in the US to Meet Demand From Coronavirus Outbreak

Amazon said Monday it had filled the 100,000 US jobs it promised a month ago to meet demands from the coronavirus outbreak, and was ready to take on 75,000 more. https://ift.tt/3c9UILM

India’s lockdown is making life hard for its most popular apps

The coronavirus pandemic, which has forced billions of people to stay home, has led to a surge in new downloads of several consumer and enterprise focused apps in the west. But in India, the biggest open market globally, things have taken a slightly different turn.

Daily downloads for several popular apps including TikTok, WhatsApp, Truecaller, Helo, Vmate, Facebook, Google Pay, and Paytm have either remained unchanged in the last three months or taken a dip, according to a TechCrunch analysis of figures provided by research firm Apptopia.

Additionally, several popular apps that offer in-app purchases have seen their revenue dramatically drop in the last four weeks as most companies in India recommended employees to work from home and New Delhi imposed a 21-day nationwide lockdown — now extended to May 3.

TikTok was downloaded 20.2 million times in India in a 31-day period ending April 12, down from 21.6 million times it was downloaded in the month of January, for instance. During the same period, WhatsApp’s download plummeted to 12 million from 17 million; Hotstar fell from 9.8 million to 3 million; and ByteDance’s Helo dropped from 10.5 million to 7.5 million.

For most of February, TikTok saw more than 700,000 downloads a day in India, peaking at 891,000. In the last one week, volume of daily downloads of the app has fallen below 450,000. WhatsApp’s figure has dropped from about 650,000 to below 250,000, according to Apptopia.

Aarogya Setu, an app launched by the Indian government to help people know if they have been in the vicinity of someone who has tested positive for coronavirus, is currently topping the chart in India with more than 780,000 downloads a day.

Tinder clocked $319,102 in in-app revenue on the App Store and Google Play Store in India between March 13 to April 12, down from $547,103 in January. Netflix’s in-app revenue fell from $285,562 to $192,154 during the same period. LinkedIn and YouTube also observed a decline.

One app that has seen its in-app revenue improve noticeably is Hotstar, which went from $173,253 to $329,675. Disney launched Disney+ atop Hotstar in India earlier this month.

Grocery delivery apps BigBasket, which raised $60 million last week, and Grofers have surged considerably, while Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal that have halted taking non-essential orders in recent weeks have seen a decline in volume of daily downloads and active users on Android in India, according to marketing research firm SimilarWeb.

Zoom, a popular video chat app, has seen its daily downloads surge to over 500,000 in recent weeks, up from about 9,000 in early February. Ludo King, a popular game in Asian markets, has seen its daily download figure jump from about 150,000 in early February to over 450,000 in India in recent days.

As people stay at home, desktop usage has also increased in India, a mobile-first nation with nearly half a billion smartphone users.

“India has consistently seen mobile web browsing account for the heavy majority compared to the desktop, however from February to March, desktop usage increased its share of total visits to the top 100 sites by 1.6%. While this may seem small, it is 1.6% of 31.32 billion visits, so it is still rather significant,” a SimilarWeb representative told TechCrunch.

Coronavirus lockdown: 30 things most-searched by Indians on Google

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Smartphone makers plan sops, aggressive prices to push sales

Organic growth will be difficult and consumers will only buy a phone out of necessity or maybe settle for a refurbished one depending on their spending ability https://ift.tt/3bbDZHW https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Trump claims “total authority” to override governors, force states to reopen

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

President Donald Trump today falsely claimed he has "total" authority to override governors and force states to reopen their economies despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Trump faced numerous questions from reporters about his views on federal authority hours after he tweeted that the president, not governors, gets to make the "decision to open up the states."

"When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that's the way it's got to be. It's total, and the governors know that," Trump said in response to one of the questions at a press briefing.

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Under lockdown, India changes shopping habits

More transactions witnessed during work hours while weekend spends fall, reversing normal trends https://ift.tt/2K6fmAk https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Oyo executives accused of faking NOCs from Treebo-listed hotels

Brands like Oyo and Treebo list their properties on other platforms like Booking.com. They have to be given NOCs from property owners to list any ownership changes. https://ift.tt/34znQti https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

ESRB, the organization that rates the content of video games, announces a new label for games that offer in-game purchases of loot boxes or other similar items (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Jay Peters / The Verge:
ESRB, the organization that rates the content of video games, announces a new label for games that offer in-game purchases of loot boxes or other similar items  —  It's an additional descriptor to the ‘In-Game Purchases’ label introduced in 2018  —  The Entertainment Software Rating Board …