Last week, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver teased his latest project on Covid-19 to his 3.2 million Twitter followers: “Working on something where you can model the number of detected cases of a disease as a function of the number of actual cases and various assumptions about how/how many tests are conducted.”While his attempt at Twitter epidemiology…
During the last week, the world passed a gruesome milestone: More than 1 million people have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Countless others are out there undetected or undiagnosed. As a record 6.6 million people file for unemployment in the US, a sign of the destruction brought by the pandemic beyond simply the sickness,…
How are you doing? As we move into the second month of the US’ coronavirus crisis, it’s the question that’s peppered every email, text, and Slack message. Like most simple queries, the answer is often, “Well, it’s complicated.” Essential workers—like those who staff emergency rooms and grocery stores—feel fortunate to still have paychecks. But they…
The universe has cooked up all sorts of bizarre and beautiful forms of matter, from blazing stars to purring cats, out of just three basic ingredients. Electrons and two types of quarks, dubbed “up” and “down,” mix in various ways to produce every atom in existence. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an…
This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.Record heat and drought across Australia delivered the worst conditions in the country since at least 2000, with river flows, tree cover, and wildlife being hit on an “unprecedented scale,” according to a new report titled Australia’s Environment. The index of…
Remember 1999? SpongeBob SquarePants premiered for the first time. President Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted. And, of course, Polaroid released its iconic Barbie camera! It was truly a time to be alive. Sure, there was Y2K, but I was 5 years old and blissfully unaware of all the drama.In the midst of the coronavirus…
Last Friday, more than 720 readers of WIRED’s coronavirus newsletter tuned in to a livestream with editor in chief Nicholas Thompson and senior correspondent Adam Rogers. Over the course of an hour, Thompson and Rogers answered questions from readers about the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic, covering everything from testing to virology to the…
More than 1 in 34,000 humans on the planet have tested positive and then recovered from Covid-19. The actual number of the recovered is much greater and continues to grow. They are a vastly underappreciated resource!Their privileged immune state makes them ideal candidates for a hopeful concept: the CoronaCorps, a civilian army that may be…
With so many people stuck inside, Zoom has become the default video chat platform for millions. Its simple, accessible interface makes keeping in touch with family, friends, and coworkers a cinch. At the same time, many have found Zoom’s default privacy and security features lacking, exposing users to trolls and unwanted oversight. If you’re using…
Saturday April 4, 2020 3:30 pm PDT by Frank McShaniOS 14 could offer home screen widgets and wallpaper customizations for the first time, according to 9to5Mac and Twitter user DongleBookPro. Apple is reportedly working to implement widgets that can be moved freely around like icons on the iPhone and iPad homescreen for the very first…
