According to The Associated Press and confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler will shut down their factories for at least two weeks. "Meanwhile, Tesla appears to be defying officials in Alameda County, California -- the site of its only North American factory, in Freemont -- who have ordered Tesla to stop operations," reports Ars Technica. From the report: TechCrunch reports that a Wednesday email from the company's human resources department instructed employees to come to work. "We still do not have final word from the city, county, state and federal government on the status of our operations," the email said. "We have had conflicting guidance from different levels of government."

In an email published Tuesday by Eletrek, Tesla's head of HR argued that Tesla didn't need to shut down because the company counts as National Critical Infrastructure, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security. The category "includes auto manufacturing and energy infrastructure," according to Tesla. "People need access to transportation and energy, and we are essential to providing it," the email said. Tesla evidently believes that its interpretation of this DHS guidance supersedes the instructions of Alameda County officials to shut down. It remains to be seen if Alameda County officials agree. UPDATE: BuzzFeed News is reporting that Tesla will drop from around 10,000 employees to 2,500, following a shelter-in-place order announced on Monday in six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's unclear when the scaleback will take place, or what the company is doing to prevent those workers from being infected with or spreading the virus.

Louis Poinsignon of Cloudflare, sharing findings in a blog post: As the COVID-19 emergency continues and an increasing number of cities and countries are establishing quarantines or cordons sanitaire, the Internet has become, for many, the primary method to keep in touch with their friends and families. And it's a vital motor of the global economy as many companies have employees who are now working from home. Traffic towards video conferencing, streaming services and news, e-commerce websites has surged. We've seen growth in traffic from residential broadband networks, and a slowing of traffic from businesses and universities.

The Cloudflare team is fully operational and the Network Operating Center (NOC) is watching the changing traffic patterns in the more than 200 cities in which we operate hardware. Big changes in Internet traffic aren't unusual. They often occur around large sporting events like the Olympics or World Cup, cultural events like the Eurovision Song Contest and even during Ramadan at the breaking of the fast each day. The Internet was built to cope with an ever changing environment. In fact, it was literally created, tested, debugged and designed to deal with changing load patterns. Over the last few weeks, the Cloudflare Network team has noticed some new patterns and we wanted to share a few of them with you.

Google said today it is pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. From a report: The company cited "adjusted work schedules" as the primary reason for the delay, as most of its engineers are now working from home. The company published an official statement today after ZDNet reached out for comment last night, when Google failed to release Chrome v81. YouTube videos, tweets, and blog posts announcing the new Chrome release were posted online yesterday -- most likely scheduled days or weeks in advance. However, the actual Chrome v81 release never made it to users' devices, and the same videos, tweets, and blog posts were removed shortly after Google's PR realized their mistake.

Today, we get another diminutive desktop option, but this one is designed for Linux and privacy. From a report: Yes, Purism is finally launching a tiny desktop, and it will come pre-installed with the Debian-based PureOS. Called "Librem Mini," the cute bugger has 4 USB-A ports on the front, along with a 3.5mm audio jack, and the power button. On the rear, there are two more USB-A ports, a single USB-C port, Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, and the power port. "Announcing the Purism Librem Mini. Our small form-factor mini-PC that puts freedom, privacy and security first. We're really excited about the Librem Mini, it's a device our community have wanted and we've wanted to offer for some time. The Librem Mini is accessible, small, light and powerful featuring a new 8th gen quad core i7 processor, up to 64 GB of fast DDR4 memory and 4k 60 fps video playback. It's a desktop for your home or oïfce, a media center for your entertainment, or an expandable home server for your files and applications," says Purism.

The 2019 Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computing, was today awarded to Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull, founding members of Pixar who helped shape the future of computer graphics. From a report: The two will share a $1M prize and, of course, the satisfaction of receiving this prestigious award for doing something they clearly love. The award has recently been given to such luminaries as Tim Berners-Lee, cryptographer Martin Hellman, and last year AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun. Catmull was at Pixar for more than 30 years, appointed its president from the very beginning as a LucasFilm animation studio bought and repurposed by Steve Jobs. Hanrahan was an early hire, and between them the two would have had enormous effects on the world of CG, even if they hadn't built the poster child for the technology. TechCrunch spoke with Catmull and Hanrahan about the origins of the field and their early work in it that the Association for Computing Machinery chose to recognize this year. "When I started out, graphics didn't really exist," Hanrahan recalled. "I sort of discovered graphics in grad school, but there were no professors, no classes, it wasn't even in the computer sciences, really."

McGruber shares a report from Business Insider: Facebook is blocking users from posting some legitimate news articles about the coronavirus in what appears to be a bug in its spam filters. On Tuesday, multiple Facebook users reported on Twitter that they found themselves unable to post articles from certain news outlets including Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, and the Times of Israel. It's not clear exactly what has gone wrong, and Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Alex Stamos, an outspoken former Facebook security exec, speculated that it might be caused by Facebook's shift to automated software after it sent its human content moderators home. "It looks like an anti-spam rule at FB is going haywire," he wrote on Twitter. "Facebook sent home content moderators yesterday, who generally can't [work from home] due to privacy commitments the company has made. We might be seeing the start of the machine learning going nuts with less human oversight. In a tweet, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen said: "We're on this -- this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce. We're in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back."

Tubi, a leader in the fast-growing free ad-supported streaming category, is being purchased by Fox for about $440 million. It's paying for the acquisition using cash from the sale of a minority stake in Roku. Deadline reports: Tubi brings Fox an expanded consumer offering with a sizable, younger-skewing and directly connected user base that spends over 160 million hours per month watching content on the service. Tubi is available on more than 25 digital platforms in the U.S. with some 20,000 titles and 56,000 hours of film and episodic television programming from over 250 content partners. Fox plans to continue to run Tubi as an independent service and said it will evaluate opportunities to expand its offering -- not through original content but in a "more cost-effective manner by leveraging our expertise in national and local news and sports programming." Tubi founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi will continue to lead the service. "Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale. Importantly, coupled with the combined power of Fox's existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena," said Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch.

TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company's efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to new documents published by the Intercept. From a report: The documents detail how moderators for the social video app were instructed to select content for the influential "For You" feed, an algorithmic timeline that is most users' first port of call when they open the app. As a result, being selected for For You can drive huge numbers of views to a given video, but the selection criteria have always remained a secret, with little understanding as to the amount of automation involved. TikTok's moderators were instructed to exclude videos from the For You feed if they failed on any one of a number of categories, the documents show. Users with an "abnormal body shape (not limited to: dwarf, acromegaly)," who are "chubby ... obese or too thin" or who have "ugly facial looks or facial deformities" should be removed, one document says, since "if the character's appearance is not good, the video will be much less attractive, not worthing [sic] to be recommended to new users."

Similarly, the documents show, videos were to be removed from the feed if "the shooting environment is shabby and dilapidated," since "this kind of environment is ... less fancy and appealing." A TikTok spokesperson said the goal was to prevent bullying on the platform, tying the document to a report from December that showed that the company was suppressing vulnerable users' videos in a misguided effort to prevent them from becoming the centre of attention that could turn sour. The categories of video suppressed in the latest document are far broader than those revealed in December, however, nor is any mention of bullying, a discrepancy the company attributes to a local interpretation of the wider policy. The documents also "show the extent of TikTok's former rules requiring moderators to enforce Chinese foreign policy overseas," the report adds. "The site published the company's livestreaming policies, which instruct moderators to take down 'controversial content' that promotes Taiwanese independence or is 'uglification' of history, such as the Tiananmen Square 'incidents.'"

An Austin, Texas based technology company is launching "artificially intelligent thermal cameras" that it claims will be able to detect fevers in people, and in turn send an alert that they may be carrying the coronavirus. Motherboard reports: Athena Security is pitching the product to be used in grocery stores, hospitals, and voting locations. It claims to be deploying the product at several customer locations over the coming weeks, including government agencies, airports, and large Fortune 500 companies. "Our Fever Detection COVID19 Screening System is now a part of our platform along with our gun detection system which connects directly to your current security camera system to deliver fast, accurate threat detection," Athena's website reads. Athena previously sold software that it claims can detect guns and knives in video feeds and then send alerts to an app or security system.

"The AI detects it, and it says I have a 99.5 degrees temperature. It notices that I have a fever, and that I am infected," an Athena employee says during a video demonstration of the product. "Since higher temperature is one of the first symptoms, these cameras can be life-saving" warning the person that they could have the virus and encouraging that person to take serious steps to self-quarantine," the representative added in an email, suggesting that the company could deploy them at polling locations. "Although many voters today are bound to get it, steps in the coming weeks could prevent them from spreading the bug to loved ones and strangers alike." The representative claimed that the software is accurate within half a degree and that it detects a dozen different parts on the body. They added the system has "no facial recognition, no personal tracking."

An anonymous reader shares a report from TechCrunch, written by Devin Coldewey: It's no secret I'm a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that's focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better. Designed for the creation and consumption of monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface. The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round. One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.

The most obvious change is to the design. It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet's main use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties. The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony's competing Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm. Let's be honest -- at these levels of thinness it's getting hard to tell the difference, but it's an accomplishment nevertheless. [...] The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on. But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web. The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great. The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a folio case.

Popcorn Time, the highly popular and extremely-easy-to-use "Netflix for piracy" service, came back Tuesday after a years-long hiatus. The move comes as people around the world are quarantined or being asked to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Motherboard reports: Popcorn Time allows people to stream movies using BitTorrent, without actually downloading the movies or worrying about finding a tracker to use. Essentially, it removes any torrenting learning curve, allowing people to (illegally) stream movies and television shows from an easy-to-use app. Because it's so simple to use, Popcorn Time became instantly popular upon its release in 2014 and was immediately targeted by the movie industry. The service was shut down multiple times by court order, police raids, and IP blocks all over the world between 2014 and now; the open source app was forked several times and has worked intermittently, but has been largely offline over the last few years.

Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Charter Communications engineer called the company's rules against working from home during the coronavirus pandemic "pointlessly reckless" and "socially irresponsible" before subsequently resigning instead of continuing to work in the office, according to a TechCrunch article published yesterday. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge last week told employees in a memo to keep coming to the office even if their jobs can be performed from home, because people "are more effective from the office." Employees should only stay home if they "are sick, or caring for someone who is sick," Rutledge wrote.

Nick Wheeler, a video operations engineer for Charter in Denver, sent an email expressing his displeasure with the policy to a senior vice president and "hundreds of engineers on Friday," TechCrunch wrote. The email said: "I do not understand why we are still coming into the office as the COVID-19 pandemic surges around us. The CDC guidelines are clear. The CDPHE [Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment] guidelines are clear. The WHO guidelines are clear. The science of social distancing is real. We have the complete ability to do our jobs entirely from home. Coming into the office now is pointlessly reckless. It's also socially irresponsible. Charter, like the rest of us, should do what is necessary to help reduce the spread of coronavirus. Social distancing has a real slowing effect on the virus -- that means lives can be saved. A hazard condition isn't acceptable for the infrastructure beyond the short-term. Why is it acceptable for our health?" Within hours of sending the email, Wheeler was out of a job. "Wheeler said he was given an ultimatum," reports TechCrunch. "Either he could work from the office or take sick leave. Staff are not allowed to work from home, he was told. Wheeler offered his resignation, but was sent home instead and asked to think about his decision until Monday. Later in the day, he received a call from work. Charter accepted his resignation, effective immediately."

The U.S. government is in active talks with Facebook, Google and a wide array of tech companies and health experts about how they can use location data gleaned from Americans' phones to combat the novel coronavirus, including tracking whether people are keeping one another at safe distances to stem the outbreak. From a report: Public-health experts are interested in the possibility that private-sector companies could compile the data in anonymous, aggregated form, which they could then use to map the spread of the infection, according to three people familiar with the effort, who requested anonymity because the project is in its early stages. Analyzing trends in smartphone owners' whereabouts could prove to be a powerful tool for health authorities looking to track coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 people globally. But it's also an approach that could leave some Americans uncomfortable, depending on how it's implemented, given the sensitivity when it comes to details about their daily whereabouts.

Google Translate today launched Transcribe for Android, a feature that delivers a continual, real-time translation of a conversation. From a report: Transcribe will begin by rolling out support for 8 languages in the coming days: English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai. With Transcribe, Translate is now capable of translating classroom or conference lectures with no time limits, whereas before speech-to-text AI in Translate lasted no longer than a word, phrase, or sentence. Google plans to bring Transcribe to iOS devices at an unspecified date in the future.

Transcribe users can change the size of text that appears on screen for real-time translations or pause or resume a translation at any time. This is the latest real-time speech-to-text AI from Google. News today follows the announcement that Google Assistant now has the ability to read or translate 43 languages from a website with simple voice commands. Both the text-reading feature for Google Assistant and Transcribe for Translate were first previewed by Google in January.

Facebook on Tuesday told employees that it would give each of them $1,000 bonuses in an effort to support its workforce working remotely as they wait out the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Facebook employs nearly 45,000 full-time workers, according to a January financial filing, but it also employs several thousands more contract workers. It is unclear if those contractors will also receive a bonus. Facebook isn't the only tech company providing cash bonuses to workers. Workday announced Monday it would pay cash bonuses worth two weeks of pay to its employees. Facebook on Tuesday also announced a $100 million program to help small businesses impacted by COVID-19. The program will provide up to 30,000 eligible small business with "cash grants and ad credits to help during this challenging time."

Microsoft's Bing team has launched a website for tracking coronavirus (COVID-19) infections across the globe. From a report: "Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," said Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft. The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, is a basic tracker. It shows up-to-date infection statistics for each country around the globe and all the US states. Data is aggregated from authoritative sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Uber said on Tuesday that it has begun suspending shared rides on its ride-hailing platform in the United States and Canada to limit the spread of the coronavirus. From a report: The pooled option, which allows riders to book trips at lower prices by sharing the car with up to three other passengers traveling in the same direction, has been disabled for users opening the apps in the two countries. "Our goal is to help flatten the curve on community spread in the cities we serve," senior vice president Uber Rides and Platform Andrew Macdonald said in a statement. A spokesman said similar steps outside the U.S. and Canada would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Regular rides and the company's food delivery platform Uber Eats remain available, but Uber said it was in contact with local authorities to adjust operations as needed.

A website intended to facilitate nationwide testing for coronavirus that was promoted by President Trump in a news conference on Friday quickly reached capacity when it went live in a small pilot project late on Sunday night. The New York Times reports: The website, created by Verily, a life sciences unit of Google's parent company, Alphabet, fell far short of the wide-ranging capabilities administration officials described on Friday. In its initial rollout, it was meant to point people to testing locations in two San Francisco Bay Area counties. It ran into two issues: First, it was telling people with symptoms of the virus that they were not eligible for the screening program. And second, they were asked to create an account with Google or log in to an existing Google account and sign an authorization form. Still, within a few hours of launching, Verily said it could not schedule any more appointments at the time because it had reached capacity.

Brave has filed a formal complaint against Google with the lead GDPR enforcer in Europe. The complaint comes after Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave's chief policy and industry relations officer, promised to take Google to court if it didn't stop abusing its power by sharing user data collected by dozens of its distinct services, and creating a "free for all" data warehouse. Cointelegraph reports: Now, the complaint is with the Irish Data Protection Commission. It accuses Google of violating Article 5(1)b of the GDPR. Dublin is Google's European headquarters and, as Dr. Ryan explained to Cointelegraph, the Commission "is responsible for regulating Google's data protection across the European Economic Area." Article 5(1)b of the GDPR requires that data be "collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes." According to Dr. Ryan: "Enforcement of Brave's GDPR 'purpose limitation' complaint against Google would be tantamount to a functional separation, giving everyone the power to decide what parts of Google they chose to reward with their data."

In addition to filing a formal complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission, Brave has reportedly written to the European Commission, German Bundeskartellamt, UK Competition & Markets Authority, and French Autorite de la concurrence. If none of these regulatory bodies take action against Google, Brave has suggested that it may take the tech giant to court itself.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It might be stating the obvious, but your car's headlights are a safety device, and not all headlights are created equal. For a while, carmakers have been fitting powerful LED headlights to their high-end offerings, but more often than not, their cheaper cars -- and particularly cheaper trim levels -- get saddled with much-weaker illumination. But sometimes a commuter wants to see more of where they're going when the sun goes down. Eventually, they go looking for a solution, starting with their local automotive parts store. But stuffing aftermarket LED headlight bulbs into OEM housings designed for conventional halogen units results in dangerous glare for oncoming drivers. While LEDs can deliver more intense light at a higher end of the spectrum, most aftermarket units also create a hazardous condition.

The major brick-and-mortar auto parts stores know this, which is why they tend to shy away from aftermarket H11 LED bulbs, other than ones clearly marked for use in fog lamps or "for off-road use only." It's a different world online, with off-brand H11 LED bulb listings on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart websites failing to carry the same prominent warnings. [...] Do your lighting research before you make your next vehicle purchase. Headlamp technology has typically been bundled with the trim level. The base model would get fitted with reflector headlamps, with projectors offered in the mid-range and higher trim levels. Adaptive headlights have been the preserve of the top trim levels. All that means that less-expensive vehicles are often stuck with reflectors across the range in America. (IIHS recently changed its testing rules and will now only give its coveted Top Safety Pick+ to models that offer the best headlights across all trim levels.) "While halogen filaments deliver 360-degree illumination, LED bulbs typically emit light with a pair of back-to-back 180-degree planes," writes Daniel Gray for Ars Technica. "When LED alignment gets skipped, oncoming drivers are blinded, as are drivers ahead of them in traffic. Poorly aimed headlamps are especially bothersome with pickup trucks and SUVs due to the vehicle height."

Make sure to do your homework if you choose to install aftermarket LEDs. "Find a reputable manufacturer and domestic retailer. Buy based on quality, not price. The optimal LED replacement bulbs mimic OEM halogen filament bulbs as closely as possible. The worst bulbs are a stab in the eyes. And don't skip alignment -- take your time and do it right."