Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - FDA Authorizes NASA-Developed Ventilator For Use In COVID-19 Treatment (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized for emergency use as outlined in the agency’s COVID-19 guidelines a new ventilator designed by engineers working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The ventilator, which has an acronym because this is NASA we’re talking about, is called “VITAL” (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), and its design is being offered for free, licensed use for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. The JPL-developed emergency use ventilator is an intubation ventilator, meaning that a patient has to be sedated, with a breathing tube inserted all the way down their airway to assist their breathing. It’s reserved for COVID-19 patients exhibiting the most serious symptoms, and even then is really designed for use only to free up availability of existing, fully approved ventilator hardware in the case of extreme shortages.

What makes VITAL most interesting is that it is made of “far fewer” parts than existing traditional ventilators, according to NASA, and it also can be assembled much more quickly, and maintained with less expertise and effort over time. The design provides for use for between three or four months, however, rather than years for traditional hardware, and is meant specifically for COVID-19 patient use, hence its simpler design versus models that are made to serve in a number of different medical situations. NASA’s JPL is seeking commercial manufacturing partners for the hardware now that it has its authorization, however, in order to get it built in large numbers for distribution to hospitals in need.

Submission + - Quibi, JetBlue and Others Gave Away Email Addresses, Report Says (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Millions of people gave their email addresses to Quibi, JetBlue, Wish and other companies — and those email addresses got away. They ended up in the hands of advertising and analytics companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, leaving the people with those email addresses more easily targeted by advertisers and able to be tracked by companies that study shopping behavior, according toa reportpublished on Wednesday. The customers unwittingly exposed their email addresses when signing up for apps or clicking on links in marketing emails, said the researcher Zach Edwards, who runs the digital strategy firm Victory Medium. In the report, he described the giveaway of personal data as part of a “sloppy and dangerous growth hack.”

Mr. Edwards, a contributorto a recent studythat examined potential privacy violations by dating serviceslike Grindr and OkCupid, wrote in the new report that one of the “most egregious” leaks involvedQuibi, a short-form video platform based in Los Angeles that is run by the veteran executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. Quibi went live on April 6, long after new data privacy regulations went into effect inEuropeandCalifornia. People who downloaded the Quibi app were asked to submit their email addresses. Then they received a confirmation link. Clicking on the link made their email addresses available to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, according to the report. Quibi said in a statement on Wednesday that data security “is of the highest priority” and that “the moment the issue on our webpage was revealed to our security and engineering team, we fixed it immediately.”

Submission + - SPAM: Minnesota to start reopening on Monday

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 employees could return to work Monday under a plan by Gov. Tim Walz to dial back the state’s stay-at-home order, which was imposed to reduce or delay the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move is tailored to manufacturers and offices that don’t have face-to-face interaction with clients and weren’t deemed critical industries that were exempt from the stay-at-home order.

Roughly 20,000 companies in this category now have the option to reopen if they complete and publicize plans to maintain social distancing, worker hygiene and workspace cleanliness, said Steve Grove, commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

“This is a limited first step in the process of safely reopening some businesses and returning Minnesotans to work,” he said.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Julian Assange fathered two children inside the Ecuadorian embassy (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Mail on Sunday reports that Julian Assange fathered two sons while hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden and the United States. The mother, Stella Morris, a South-African born lawyer, visited him initially in 2015 as part of legal work on Assange's behalf. The two have been engaged since 2017. Assange had been thought to be living a near-monastic life in the embassy which now seems to have been in error.

Submission + - SPAM: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Move is likely to be part of attempt to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic

China is cracking down on publication of academic research about the origins of the novel coronavirus, in what is likely to be part of a wider attempt to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic, documents published online by Chinese universities appear to show.

Two websites for leading Chinese universities appear to have recently published and then removed pages that reference a new policy requiring academic papers dealing with Covid-19 to undergo extra vetting before they are submitted for publication.

Research on the origins of the virus is particularly sensitive and subject to checks by government officials, the notices posted on the websites of Fudan University and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) said. Both the deleted pages were accessed from online caches.

Prof Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, said the Chinese government had had a heavy focus on how the evolution and management of the virus is perceived since the early days of the outbreak.

“In terms of priority, controlling the narrative is more important than the public health or the economic fallout,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the economy and public health aren’t important. But the narrative is paramount.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Apple acquires popular weather app Dark Sky and will shut down the Android versi (theverge.com)

Submitted by John Trumpian
John Trumpian writes: Apple has acquired popular weather app Dark Sky and will be shutting down the Dark Sky Android and Wear OS apps in July, Dark Sky announced in a blog post today.

âoeOur goal has always been to provide the world with the best weather information possible, to help as many people as we can stay dry and safe, and to do so in a way that respects your privacy,â Dark Sky co-founder Adam Grossman writes in the post. âoeThere is no better place to accomplish these goals than at Apple. Weâ(TM)re thrilled to have the opportunity to reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone.â

Submission + - Chinese-Backed Company Raids Australia's Medical Supplies, Ships Them to China

Submitted by RoccamOccam
RoccamOccam writes: As the coronavirus took hold in Wuhan earlier this year, staff from the Chinese government-backed global property giant Greenland Group were instructed to put their normal work on hold and source bulk supplies of essential medical items to ship back to China.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a whistleblower from the company has told the Herald it was a worldwide Greenland effort — and the Sydney office was no different, sourcing bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes, hand sanitisers, gloves and Panadol for shipping.

Submission + - SPAM: Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has treated 699 COVID-19 patients with 100% success rate 4

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Last Wednesday, we published the success story from Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a board-certified family practitioner in New York, after he successfully treated 350 coronavirus patients with 100 percent success using a cocktail of drugs: hydroxychloroquine, in combination with azithromycin (Z-Pak), an antibiotic to treat secondary infections, and zinc sulfate. Dr. Zelenko said he saw the symptom of shortness of breath resolved within four to six hours after treatment.

Now, Dr. Zelenko provides updates on the treatment after he successfully treated 699 COVID-19 patients in New York. Dr. Vladmir Zelenko shared the results of his latest study, which showed that out of his 699 patients treated, zero patients died, zero patients intubated, and four hospitalizations.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - FDA grants emergency approval for (hydroxy)chloroquine for COVID-19

Submitted by knorthern knight
knorthern knight writes: As posted at https://www.kron4.com/news/nat...

(CNN) — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

Do the drugs work? In its statement, HHS said:

        “Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
        “The safety profile of these drugs has only been studied for FDA approved indications, not COVID-19.”

It would take several months of clinical trials to guage its effectiveness, but we don't have the luxury of time. We do know that it helps some COVID-19 patients, and has been in use for many years to treat malaria and other diseases. So it's not poisonous (and no, don't confuse it with fish tank cleaner).

Submission + - Italy and France prescribing hydroxychloroquine as treatment for coronavirus (techstartups.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In France, the government caved to pressure from renowned Dr. Didier Raoult, who led the new additional study on 80 patients, results show a combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin to be effective in treating COVID-19. Dr Didier Raoult, a professor of infectious diseases who works at La Timone hospital in Marseille, then declared in a video on YouTube that chloroquine was a cure for Covid-19 and should be used immediately.

Dr. Raoult reportedly walked out of the scientific advisory committee advising the government after allegations that the government was being influenced by the big pharmaceutical companies which wanted to block hydroxychloroquine because it was cheap, being out of patent.

Italian government also announced on Friday that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine could be used to treat all coronavirus patients.

Submission + - A mysterious hacker group is eavesdropping on corporate email and FTP traffic (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since at least early December 2019, a mysterious hacker group has been taking over DrayTek enterprise routers to eavesdrop on FTP and email traffic inside corporate networks. Hackers are abusing a vulnerability in the RSA-encrypted login mechanism of DrayTek routers and VPN gateways to hide malicious code inside the router's username login field. When a DrayTek device receives and decrypts the boobytrapped RSA-encrypted login data, it runs the malicious code and granted the hackers control over the router.

esearchers say the hackers deployed a script that recorded traffic coming over port 21 (FTP — file transfer), port 25 (SMTP — email), port 110 (POP3 — email), and port 143 (IMAP — email). Then, on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 0:00, the script would upload all the recorded traffic to a remote server.

Submission + - U.S. rated #1 in the world for disaster readiness by Global Health Security (washingtontimes.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Johns Hopkins University source rates 195 nations. “The U.S. has a Global Health Security Index score that was 83.5 out of a possible 100 — the highest ranking in the analysis. Britain placed second with a score of 77.9, Netherlands third at 75.6., Australia fourth at 75.5 and Canada fifth at 75.3.”

Submission + - New Zealand birds show humanlike ability to make predictions (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Whether it’s calculating your risk of catching the new coronavirus or gauging the chance of rain on your upcoming beach vacation, you use a mix of statistical, physical, and social information to make a decision. So do New Zealand parrots known as keas, scientists report today. It’s the first time this cognitive ability has been demonstrated outside of apes, and it may have implications for understanding how intelligence evolved.

The findings indicate that keas, like humans, have something known as “domain general intelligence”—the mental ability to integrate several kinds of information, the researchers argue. That’s despite the fact that birds and humans last shared a common ancestor some 312 million years ago and have markedly different brain anatomies. Previously, cognitive researchers have argued that domain general intelligence requires language.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What features would your ideal telework systems incorporate? 1

Submitted by couchslug
couchslug writes: Physical commuting has a horrific and enormously expensive carbon footprint. It's costly in lives (auto and other transportation accidents, pollution) and wasted time (billions of hours every year) better spent doing something else. What software and hardware features would your ideal telework systems incorporate to minimize physical interaction? How can we use technology to avoid costly, wasteful and sometimes dangerous meatspace gatherings? What don't you like about existing options?

Slashdot Top Deals

I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller

Close