An anonymous reader shares a column: The United States economy is grinding to a halt as the country grapples with the novel coronavirus pandemic, and one of the first major actions President Trump has floated is having the government bail out the cruise line industry, which he says is a "prime candidate." He shouldn't do it. There are myriad reasons not to bail out the cruise industry's biggest players.

Here are just a few: 1. They're not really US companies. [...] 2. They pay basically zero federal income tax. [...]
3. They're bad corporate actors: These companies use the protections offered by the countries they are incorporated in as a shield. They make passengers sign over a ton of rights before they even come aboard. Many employees often face long hours and brutal working conditions.
4. They pollute the air and oceans. Every fossil fuel-powered mode of transportation pollutes the air, but cruise ships are among the worst. They emit more sulfur dioxide than all of the passenger vehicles in Europe combined. Cruise ships also pollute the oceans by dumping waste. Not just illegally, for which these companies have been repeatedly fined, but also in some cases with impunity, again thanks to protections afforded by the laws of the countries where they're incorporated. And where they've been caught, there have been coverups.
5. They are not necessary. [...]

Microsoft announced today a new security feature for the Windows operating system. From a report: Named "Hardware-enforced Stack Protection," this feature allows applications to use the local CPU hardware to protect their code while running inside the CPU's memory. As the feature's name suggests, its primary role is to protect the (memory) stack -- where an app's code is stored during execution. "Hardware-enforced Stack Protection" works by enforcing strict management of the memory stack through the use of a combination between (1) modern CPU hardware and (2) shadow stacks. The term shadow stacks is a new one and refers to a copies of a program's intended execution flow (also referred to as the code's execution order). The new "Hardware-enforced Stack Protection" feature plans to use the hardware-based security features in modern CPUs to keep a copy of the app's shadow stack (intended code execution flow) in a hardware-secured environment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: A new cyber attack is hijacking router's DNS settings so that web browsers display alerts for a fake COVID-19 information app from the World Health Organization that is the Oski information-stealing malware. For the past five days, people have been reporting their web browser would open on its own and display a message prompting them to download a 'COVID-19 Inform App' that was allegedly from the World Health Organization (WHO). After further research, it was determined that these alerts were being caused by an attack that changed the DNS servers configured on their home D-Link or Linksys routers to use DNS servers operated by the attackers. As most computers use the IP address and DNS information provided by their router, the malicious DNS servers were redirecting victims to malicious content under the attacker's control. "If your browser is randomly opening to a page promoting a COVID-19 information app, then you need to login to your router and make sure you configure it to automatically receive its DNS servers from your ISP," the report says. It also recommends you set a strong password for your router and to disable remote administration.

"Finally, if you downloaded and installed the COVID-19 app, you should immediately perform a scan on your computer for malware. Once clean, you should change all of the passwords for sites whose credentials are saved in your browser and you should change the passwords for any site that you visited since being infected."

Venezuela's first and only state-owned communications satellite has been out of service since March 13 when a series of maneuvers left it tumbling in an unusable orbit. SpaceNews reports: The VeneSat-1 satellite, built by China Great Wall Industry Corp. and launched in late 2008 on a 15-year mission to provide television and broadband services to Venezuela, has been stuck for 10 days in an elliptical orbit above the geostationary arc, according to telescopic observations from two U.S. companies that track satellites. VeneSat-1's operator, the Venezuelan space agency ABAE, had issued no status reports on the satellite as of March 23 and could not be reached for comment March 22 or March 23. In January, ABAE said Venezuela and China planned to develop a replacement satellite, VeneSat-2, that would continue service after VeneSat-1 retired.

California-based ExoAnalytic Solutions, which operates a network of satellite- and debris-tracking telescopes, spotted a "significant orbit change" for VeneSat-1 on March 13 at 3:15 a.m. Eastern, when the satellite left its position at 78 degrees West longitude over Venezuela, Bill Therien, ExoAnalytic's vice president of engineering, told SpaceNews. Approximately three hours later, the satellite conducted another maneuver that sent it tumbling westward, he said. Telescope observations from ExoAnalytic and Pennsylvania-based AGI show VeneSat-1 tumbling in an elliptical orbit that at its lowest point is 50 kilometers above the geosynchronous arc where most large communications satellites reside. Venesat-1's highest point, or apogee, is roughly 36,300 kilometers -- or about 525 kilometers above the geosynchronous arc, according to the companies. Bob Hall, AGI technical director for space situational awareness, said VeneSat-1 has drifted 30 degrees from its original orbital slot since March 13. If the satellite drifts another 40 degrees, it will be beyond line of sight from Venezuela, complicating any efforts to restore control of the spacecraft unless Venezuela relies on ground stations in other countries. VeneSat-1 will likely be maneuvered into a so-called graveyard orbit around 300 to 500 kilometers above the geosynchronous belt, where inactive or dead satellites are expected to orbit for thousands of years without colliding with active satellites.

On Tuesday, the Air Force's 45th Space Wing confirmed that the timing for SpaceX's upcoming SAOCOM launch, which was set to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on March 30 using a Falcon 9 rocket, has been put on "indefinite" hold due to the impact of the current coronavirus crisis. TechCrunch reports: Vandenberg has declared a public health emergency as of this past weekend, and while there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the base thus far, the Air Force is limiting access to essential personnel, and providing only essential services, in addition to taking additional precautions to protect the safety of those who have to remain on site. The delay comes shortly after the company successfully launched 60 more of its Starlink satellites. The report notes that SpaceX still appears to be on track for its current mid-to-late May launch schedule for the first Commercial Crew mission with NASA.

Mozilla and Scroll have made an earlier-announced partnership slightly more official today with the wider release of a browser extension called "Firefox Better Web." It's part of Firefox's ongoing effort to combat tracking on the web, but with the small twist that it includes the option to sign up for Scroll. The Verge reports: Scroll, if you don't recall, is the $5-a-month service that stops ads from loading on certain websites. It's not technically an ad blocker, but rather lets publishers know they shouldn't serve them in the first place when you visit. For a limited time, the subscription will cost $2.50 per month for the first six months. The Mozilla partnership essentially builds Scroll into a package of tools that Mozilla offers as a test pilot. The idea is to see how far Firefox can go blocking trackers and other malfeasance (short of full ad blocking) without fully breaking the web or de-funding publishers.

The extension includes Scroll and also a "customized Enhanced Tracking Protection setting that will block third-party trackers, fingerprinters, and cryptominers," according to Mozilla. It will work across different desktop browsers, but of course it is designed primarily to be used with Firefox. The deal with Mozilla should get Scroll a much larger userbase, but neither company would disclose any financial terms. Scroll takes a 30 percent cut of your subscription fee and pays the rest out to its partner publishers based on your web browsing habits. It tracks those habits automatically, and the company tells me that it will soon offer users tools to delete their data -- on top of a pledge to never sell that data. Scroll also pledges to make it easier for small publishers to sign up through an automated system soon.

In response to high demand as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Microsoft has started taking action to preserve overall performance by throttling some services. ZDNet reports: On March 16, Microsoft posted to Microsoft 365/Office 365 admin dashboardds a warning about "temporary feature adjustments" that it might take. That warning told customers that Microsoft was "making temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities." Officials said they did not expect these changes to have significan impact on users' experiences. Among the examples of the types of changes Microsoft might take would be things like how often its services check for presence; intervals in which other parties typing are displayed; and video resolution. Today, March 24, Microsoft started cautioning Microsoft 365/Office 365 commercial users of some other "temporary changes" they should expect. The list:

OneNote:
- OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial tenants, excluding EDU. Users can go to OneNote for the web for editing.
- Download size and sync frequency of file attachments has been changed.
- You can find details on these and other OneNote related updates at http://aka.ms/notesupdates.

SharePoint:
- We are rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image.
- Reduced video resolution for playback videos

Stream:
- People timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. Pre-existing videos will not be impacted.

Apple today officially released versions 13.4 of iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS to the public, alongside macOS 10.15.4 and watchOS 6.2. While many of their improvements are minor, there are a few standout features across the updates. From a report: One of the most noteworthy additions is a dramatic expansion of iPadOS 13's prior trackpad and mouse support, which was limited solely to an Accessibility option before evolving to full system-wide support across all iPad models capable of running iPadOS 13.4. Now, keyboard-trackpad hybrids (such as the upcoming Magic Keyboard for iPad), standalone trackpads, and standalone mice can create a cursor that highlights and selects on-screen text and objects, paving the way for more Mac-like apps on Apple's tablets. Another major improvement is cross-platform support for a new universal app purchase option, enabling a single app developed using Apple's shared Catalyst framework to be purchased and run across Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs. This feature went live for developers yesterday, and it uses the iOS App Store as the base for universal apps. Standalone Mac App Store app listings will likely need to be abandoned for the transition to universal apps.

UPS' Flight Forward subsidiary focused on drone delivery is partnering with German drone-maker Wingcopter to develop the next generation of package delivery drones for a variety of use cases in the United States and internationally. GPS World reports: UPS chose Wingcopter for its unmanned aircraft technology and its track record in delivering a variety of goods over long distances in multiple international settings. As part of this collaboration -- UPSFF's first new relationship with a drone manufacturer since its formation -- both companies will work toward earning regulatory certification for a Wingcopter unmanned aircraft to make commercial delivery flights in the United States. It also is a critical step toward building a diverse fleet of drones with varying capabilities to meet potential customer needs.

The Wingcopter drones feature vertical takeoffs and landings in tight spaces, transitioning to efficient, high-speed horizontal flight, enabling ranges suitable for a variety of uses. These capabilities will allow UPSFF to begin developing solutions that, if approved, will go well beyond the healthcare and retail industries to solve long-standing challenges for high-tech, industrial manufacturing, hospitality, entertainment and other customers. [Wincopter's] electric vertical takeoff and landing drones have a patented tilt-rotor mechanism, which enables a seamless transition between two drone modes: multicopter for hovering and fixed-wing for low-noise forward flight. The aerodynamic Wingcopter aircrafts operate with stability even in harsh weather conditions. "Drone delivery is not a one-size-fits-all operation," said Bala Ganesh, vice president of the UPS Advanced Technology Group. "Our collaboration with Wingcopter helps pave the way for us to start drone delivery service in new use-cases. UPS Flight Forward is building a network of technology partners to broaden our unique capability to serve customers and extend our leadership in drone delivery."

China's homegrown operating systems haven't made much of a dent on the global stage. Now there's a Linux-based system that's aimed at weaning the country off Windows. From a report: UOS, or Unified Operating System, hit a new milestone after its first stable release in January: Union Tech's OS can now boot in 30 seconds on China-made chips. It's an important step as Chinese tech companies look to reduce their dependence on US-made software and hardware. The struggles of ZTE and Huawei illustrate this clearly: The former was reliant on chips made in the US to produce smartphones, while the latter has the difficult task of selling Android handsets outside China without Google apps or services. The "current international climate" has made it imperative for China to have its own foundational software to avoid being cut off by the US, said the general manager of Union Tech, Liu Wenhan. While Chinese operating systems currently account for less than 1% of the market, Liu said he expects them to grow to 20% to 30% in the future. Integrating homegrown Chinese chips could be the biggest accomplishment of UOS if it pans out. Although Chinese computer chips still don't approach the sophistication of those created by US-based companies, Union Tech said that it is actively working with Chinese chipmakers like Loongson and Sunway to facilitate the gradual replacement of American technology in the Chinese government and pillar industries. In December, Beijing ordered all government offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years.

Online video gaming just became the latest victim of COVID-19. New submitter watha2020 shares a report: Akamai Technologies of Cambridge, the data delivery company that handles Internet traffic for many of the world's biggest companies, said on Tuesday it will deliberately delay downloads of video games during peak hours because of bottlenecks from so many people playing from home during the coronavirus shutdown. The slowdown will specifically affect downloads of games during daytime and evening hours, so that someone buying a downloadable copy of a new game such as "Doom Eternal" will have to wait a lot longer to start playing. Akamai said it will continue to allow normal high speed downloads late at night. In a posting on the company's blog Akamai chief executive Tom Leighton said the company is trying to ensure the demand for gaming downloads doesn't overwhelm the system's capacity to the point where other information is affected. "This will help ensure healthcare workers and first responders working hard to contain the spread of COVID-19 have continual access to the vital digital services they need," Leighton said.

Firefox, the global web browser from Mozilla, is launching a new subscription product Tuesday called the "Firefox Better Web initiative," and it will feature former Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile's new product Scroll as a launch partner. From a report: It's uncommon for a web browser to launch a product that's explicitly tied to paying out publishers. Scroll's business is all about paying publishers for their content while giving users a better ad experience. The test pilot for the product, which is a subscription to a privacy-first Firefox extension, will only be available in the U.S. The money from a membership ($4.99 monthly, $2,99 for first six months) goes directly to fund publishers and writers.

The coronavirus has revived Facebook as a dominant news hub. According to an internal report by The New York Times, more than half of all news consumption on Facebook in America is about the virus. "Overall U.S. traffic from Facebook to other websites also increased by more than 50 percent last week from the week before, 'almost entirely' owing to intense interest in the virus," adds The New York Times. From the report: The report, which was posted to Facebook's internal network by Ranjan Subramanian, a data scientist at the company, was a lengthy analysis of what it called an "unprecedented increase in the consumption of news articles on Facebook" over the past several weeks. According to the report, more than 90 percent of the clicks to coronavirus content came from "Power News Consumers" and "Power News Discussers" -- Facebook's terms for users who read and comment on news stories much more frequently than the average user. The company is now considering several options for targeting those people with higher-quality information to make sure it is "being spread downstream."

The report shows that Facebook is closely monitoring people's news habits during a critical period and actively trying to steer them toward authoritative sources in what amounts to a global, real-time experiment in news distribution. At times, Facebook itself seemed unsure which news sources users would turn to in a crisis, with Mr. Subramanian noting that "fortunately" many people were clicking on links from publishers that the company considers high-quality.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Facebook will lower video streaming quality on its platform and on Instagram in Latin America, replicating measures adopted in Europe, to ease network congestion in a region that is starting to feel the grip of the coronavirus. On Sunday, the world's largest social network followed the steps of Netflix, Alphabet's YouTube, Amazon and Walt Disney in response to a call by the European Union to stave off internet gridlock as thousands of people work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Brazilian streaming platform GloboPlay, owned by the country's largest TV channel, announced that video streaming in 4K and Full High Definition would be temporarily suspended as of Monday to preserve Brazil's internet infrastructure and allow more people to access its contents. Asked about future plans to lower streaming quality in Brazil, like it did in Europe, Netflix said it "will continue to work with internet service providers and governments all over the world and will apply these changes in other places if necessary." Local telecoms regulator Anatel has signed a commitment pact with carriers and other providers to keep Brazilians connected during the coronavirus outbreak, creating a crisis committee to coordinate actions and monitor data traffic and the network capacity.

SpaceX has received government approval to deploy up to 1 million user terminals in the United States for its Starlink satellite-broadband constellation. Ars Technica reports: SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for the license in February 2019, and the FCC announced its approval in a public notice last week. The FCC approval is for "a blanket license for the operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed earth stations that will communicate with [SpaceX's] non-geostationary orbit satellite system." The license is good for 15 years. As SpaceX's application said, the earth stations are "user terminals [that] employ advanced phased-array beam-forming and digital-processing technologies to make highly efficient use of Ku-band spectrum resources by supporting highly directive, steered antenna beams that track the system's low-Earth orbit satellites."

One million terminals would only cover a fraction of U.S. homes, but SpaceX isn't necessarily looking to sign up huge portions of the U.S. population. Musk said at the conference that Starlink will likely serve the "3 or 4 percent hardest-to-reach customers for telcos" and "people who simply have no connectivity right now, or the connectivity is really bad." Starlink won't have lots of customers in big cities like LA "because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough," he said.

As the coronavirus has forced millions of families into lockdown, demand for Amazon's delivery service has surged. To help the company deal with rising demand, Amazon has prioritized several categories of essential items, including baby products, health items, and pet supplies. The results of that policy can now be seen on Amazon's website: numerous items now take weeks to ship. That's true even if you're a subscriber to Amazon Prime, which is supposed to provide two-day shipping. Ars Technica reports: An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Recode that these delivery dates weren't a technology glitch -- Amazon has chosen to de-prioritize these items in the face of surging demand for more time-sensitive items. "To serve our customers in need while also helping to ensure the safety of our associates, we've changed our logistics, transportation, supply chain, purchasing, and third-party seller processes to prioritize stocking and delivering items that are a higher priority for our customers," an Amazon spokesperson wrote.

At the same time, Amazon is taking steps to increase its shipping capacity. As we reported last week, the online retailer announced that it was seeking to hire 100,000 additional workers to help cope with rising demand and was raising its minimum pay from $15 to $17 per hour. On Saturday, Amazon announced it was boosting overtime pay for hourly workers. Through May 9, workers will get double their usual pay when they work more than 40 hours, up from the 1.5 times the company usually pays for overtime hours.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Speech recognition systems from five of the world's biggest tech companies -- Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft -- make far fewer errors with users who are white than with users who are black, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The systems misidentified words about 19 percent of the time with white people. With black people, mistakes jumped to 35 percent. About 2 percent of audio snippets from white people were considered unreadable by these systems, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at Stanford University. That rose to 20 percent with black people.

The study, which took an unusually comprehensive approach to measuring bias in speech recognition systems, offers another cautionary sign for A.I. technologies rapidly moving into everyday life. The Stanford study indicated that leading speech recognition systems could be flawed because companies are training the technology on data that is not as diverse as it could be -- learning their task mostly from white people, and relatively few black people. [...] The best performing system, from Microsoft, misidentified about 15 percent of words from white people and 27 percent from black people. Apple's system, the lowest performer, failed 23 percent of the time with whites and 45 percent of the time with black people.

The narration begins customarily, with the play-by-play announcer enthusiastically welcoming his audience live to a competition unfolding on the screen. But this is no ordinary competition. From a report: "It's the final of the two lonely blokes in a park contest," the announcer, Nick Heath, begins, setting the scene of two men idly kicking a ball in a park. When one of the men clips the ball and sends it rolling in the opposite direction, Mr. Heath observes: "Oh, that was absolutely terrible. It's what we've come to expect really from these two." He finishes the video with "Looking forward to the third- and fourth-place playoff later." Without live sports to cover because of the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. Heath, a freelance rugby commentator, has turned to covering everyday life in London.

His 20- to 30-second videos capture people in his neighborhood doing mundane tasks, like shoppers at a market ("Regional Qualifiers Market Bartering") or people pushing strollers ("International 4x4 Pushchair Formation Final. Live.") Marked with the hashtag #LifeCommentary, the clips have become a fun social media distraction for his more than 70,000 followers on Twitter. The clips blend irreverence and a sense of the absurd with a veneer of straight narration reminiscent of Monty Python's "Upper Class Twit of the Year" competition. Fans have found the videos wildly amusing thanks to Mr. Heath's over-the-top rapid delivery.

With medical supplies strained by the coronavirus outbreak, health care professionals and technologists are coming together online to crowdsource repairs and supplies of critical hospital equipment. From a report: Doctors, hospital technicians and 3D-printing specialists are also using Google Docs, WhatsApp groups and online databases to trade tips for building, fixing and modifying machines like ventilators to help treat the rising number of patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The efforts come as supply shortages loom in one of the biggest challenges for health care systems around the world. "We have millions of health care workers around this country who are prepared to do battle against this virus, but I am concerned there are a couple of areas of supplies they need to fight that virus as effectively as possible," Dr. Peter Slavin, president of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told NBC News, noting that protective equipment, including surgical masks and eye protection, was in particularly short supply. "We wouldn't want to send soldiers to war without helmets and armor," he said. "We don't want to do the same with our health care workers."

The American Hospital Association says COVID-19 could require the hospitalization of 4.8 million patients, 960,000 of whom would need ventilators. As the demand for the equipment surges, making timely repairs will be critical to saving lives. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Friday that the city could run out of basic medical supplies in as little as two weeks. 3D printing, a relatively new and niche technology that can create everything from houses to tiny and complex structures from raw materials, has remained mostly on the fringes of the manufacturing and health care sectors. But the coronavirus has suddenly made it a crucial resource. On Thursday, Slavin called on people with 3D printers to help make protective masks for hospital staff.

Microsoft says attackers are exploiting a previously undisclosed security vulnerability found in all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 10. From a report: But the software giant said there is currently no patch for the vulnerability. The security flaw, which Microsoft deems "critical" -- its highest severity rating -- is found in how Windows handles and renders fonts, according to the advisory posted Monday. The bug can be exploited by tricking a victim into opening a malicious document. Once the document is opened -- or viewed in Windows Preview -- an attacker can remotely run malware, such as ransomware, on a vulnerable device. The advisory said that Microsoft was aware of hackers launching "limited, targeted attacks," but did not say who was launching the attacks or at what scale.