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NHS Covid-19 app: 12m downloads - and lots of questions

The government says more than 12 million people across England and Wales have downloaded the NHS Covid-19 app since its launch on 24 September.
The Department for Health and Social Care has emphasised that using it is voluntary. It also says the guidance the app issues about whether to self-isolate or get a test is not enforceable by law. The app itself may look simple, but it has thrown up lots of questions about how it works and what its limits are. But people have noticed that while you can log in you cannot log out, and even if you soon leave the app thinks you are still there until midnight unless you log in somewhere else. The point however of the QR scan is just to register your presence at that location rather than your proximity to someone infectious, which is registered via the Bluetooth contact-tracing feature. If the location is later identified as a virus hotspot then an alert may be sent out to anyone who scanned a QR code there - not to self-isolate, but to be on the lookout for any symptoms of the virus.

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Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware

"I'd absolutely love to have [an M1 laptop] if it just ran Linux," Torvalds said.
In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?" "I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS." Torvalds, of course, can already have an ARM based Linux laptop if he wants one—for example, the Pinebook Pro. The unspoken part here is that he'd like a high-performance ARM based laptop, rather than a budget-friendly but extremely performance constrained design such as one finds in the Pinebook Pro, the Raspberry Pi, or a legion of other inexpensive gadgets.

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Man has two guesses to unlock bitcoin worth $240m

We've all been there - brain fog makes us forget our password and after eight frantic attempts, we have just two left.
That's the situation for programmer Stefan Thomas but the stakes are higher than most - the forgotten password will let him unlock a hard drive containing $240m (£175m) worth of Bitcoin. His plight, reported in the New York Times, has gone viral. Ex-Facebook security head Alex Stamos has offered to help - for a 10% cut. Bitcoin has surged in value in recent months. One bitcoin is currently worth $34,000. But the cryptocurrency is volatile. And experts are divided about whether it will continue to rise or crash.

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Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find

Pigs can play video games, scientists have found, after putting four fun-loving swine to the test.
Four pigs - Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory - were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls. Researchers said the fact that the pigs understood the connection between the stick and the game "is no small feat". And the pigs even continued playing when the food reward dispenser broke - apparently for the social contact. Usually, the pigs would be given a food pellet for "winning" the game level. But during testing, it broke - and they kept clearing the game levels when encouraged by some of the researchers' kind words. "This sort of study is important because, as with any sentient beings, how we interact with pigs and what we do to them impacts and matters to them," lead author Dr Candace Croney said.

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Nvidia limits crypto-mining on new graphics card

Graphics card-maker Nvidia says it will deliberately reduce the efficiency of its latest card by 50% when it is used to mine the crypto-currency Ethereum.
Crypto-currency enthusiasts have contributed to a shortage of graphics cards by snapping up supplies to use for non-gaming purposes. Nvidia said it had intervened to make sure its products "end up in the hands of gamers". But it will also sell a bespoke crypto-currency mining processor. Graphics cards (GPUs) are a crucial component of a gaming PC. A modern card can produce the high-resolution and high frame-rate graphics that gamers expect. But several factors, including manufacturing delays during the coronavirus pandemic, have contributed to a shortage.

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Musk: Starlink will hit 300Mbps and expand to “most of Earth” this year

SpaceX CEO teases higher speeds, lower latency, and near-global coverage.
Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps "later this year," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter yesterday. SpaceX has been telling users to expect speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps since the beta began a few months ago. Musk also wrote that "latency will drop to ~20ms later this year." This is no surprise, as SpaceX promised latency of 20ms to 40ms during the beta and had said months ago that "we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021." It sounds like the speed and latency improvements will roll out around the same time as when Starlink switches from beta to more widespread availability. Two weeks ago, Starlink opened preorders for service expected to be available in the second half of 2021, albeit with limited availability in each region.

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SpaceX Starlink factory in Texas will speed up production of Dishy McFlatface

Austin factory to create systems that improve SpaceX's high-volume manufacturing.
SpaceX says it is building a factory in Austin, Texas, to design systems that will help make satellite dishes, Wi-Fi routers, and other equipment for its Starlink satellite broadband network. The news comes from a job posting for an automation and controls engineer position flagged in a story Tuesday by local news channel KXAN. "To keep up with global demand, SpaceX is breaking ground on a new, state of the art manufacturing facility in Austin, TX," the job posting said. "The Automation & Controls Engineer will play a key role as we strive to manufacture millions of consumer facing devices that we ship directly to customers (Starlink dishes, Wi-Fi routers, mounting hardware, etc)."

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Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets

Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page.

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Apple under pressure over iPhone security after NSO spyware claims

Apple urged to work with rivals after alleged surveillance of journalists, activists.
Apple has come under pressure to collaborate with its Silicon Valley rivals to fend off the common threat of surveillance technology after a report alleged that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was used to target journalists and human rights activists. Amnesty International, which analyzed dozens of smartphones targeted by clients of NSO, said Apple’s marketing claims about its devices’ superior security and privacy had been “ripped apart” by the discovery of vulnerabilities in even the most recent versions of its iPhones and iOS software.

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Today’s Firefox 91 release adds new site-wide cookie-clearing action

New features build on Total Cookie Protection, simplifying privacy management.
Mozilla's Firefox 91, released this morning, includes a new privacy management feature called Enhanced Cookie Clearing. The new feature allows users to manage all cookies and locally stored data generated by a particular website—regardless of whether they're cookies tagged to that site's domain or cookies placed from that site but belonging to a third-party domain, eg Facebook or Google.

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