Tech

Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are back for a third season of Killing Eve. Good news for those looking for fresh TV fare while sheltering in place: the third season of Killing Eve, the Emmy Award-winning spy thriller series starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, is coming to TV two weeks early. “We know how adored this series is and we know how keen people are for great content right now,” Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks Entertainment Group and AMC Studios, said in a statement. “This season of Killing Eve digs deep psychologically, and with actors like Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw the results are nothing short of astonishing. We literally couldnt wait for fans to see it.” (Some spoilers for first two seasons below.) Based on Luke Jennings' series of thriller novellas, Codename Villanelle, Killing Eve features a self-described psychopathic killer for hire named Villanelle (Comer), who is so good at her job that she frankly starts to be a bit reckless with her assassina..

Enlarge / We find Windows 10's Settings dialog difficult to love.Jim Salter You may have seen dark rumors around the Web that Microsoft is about to kill off the classic Control Panel. Rest assured, friend, we were as horrified as you are—but on more careful inspection, this seems not to be the case. A new set of Feature IDs popped up in the latest build of Windows 10—HideSystemControlPanel, SystemControlPanelFileExplorerRedirect, and SystemControlPanelHotkeyRedirect. This looks grim—but fortunately, developer Rafael Rivera discovered they really only apply to the System applet. Settings vs Control For about eight years now, Microsoft has been trying to pry everyone loose from the Control Panel and guide them gently to the newer Settings applet instead. They've encountered strong resistance in doing so, particularly from systems administrators and support technicians. For one thing, the newer Settings applet is a single-instance interface—you can't have Settings open fo..

Enlarge / President Donald Trump speaks as Vice President Mike Pence looks on during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the White House on March 26, 2020.Getty Images | Drew Angerer President Donald Trump today ordered General Motors to make ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients and accused the company of "wasting time." Trump announced that he "signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators." Hours before Trump took this step, GM said it is working with ventilator-maker Ventec Life Systems "to deliver the first ventilators next month and ramp up to a manufacturing capacity of more than 10,000 critical care ventilators per month with the infrastructure and capability to scale further." Trump's statement did not specify how many ventilators GM should build, but he said..

EnlargeGetty Images | imaginima Home-Internet download speeds have fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic in dozens of the biggest US cities as millions of Americans stay home due to school and business closures. However, typical download speeds remain high enough to support normal broadband-usage patterns, with the vast majority of cities still above the Federal Communications Commission's 25Mbps standard. In 88 of the 200 most populous US cities, Internet users "experienced some degree of network degradation over the past week compared to the 10 weeks prior," BroadbandNow said in a report released Wednesday. Of those, 27 cities suffered speed reductions of at least 20 percent. New York City speeds fell by 24 percent, with median download speeds down to 51.93Mbps—still enough for bandwidth-intensive services like streaming video. While New York City has been hit hard by the spread of the novel coronavirus, the city's broadband experience isn't replicated everywhere. Seat..

Enlarge / A man and a woman, properly socially distanced from the rest of Los Angeles, take in a view of the city on a low air quality day in November, 2019.Mario Tama | Getty Images 2020 has a new motto: "Cancelled due to the coronavirus." Businesses, schools, sports, travel, film, and TV production, conferences, meetings, and basically any and all business as usual has been suspended in the US as individuals and institutions try to slow the spread of COVID-19. We have, at least, had outdoor space to go to—staying at least six feet away from others as we do—when we need a break from the four walls of our homes. But those spaces, along with the air we breathe and the water we drink, may get a whole lot less pleasant going forward, as the Trump administration is adding environmental protection regulations to the temporary cancellation list. The Environmental Protection Agency is launching a "temporary enforcement discretion policy" due to the pandemic, it said late yesterday. The move ..

Enlarge / The sun is actually in the sky, not in your hand, which is key to playing Boktai.Konami The 2003 Game Boy Advance exclusive Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand! is a largely forgotten game, even among Hideo Kojima fans. The concept is as indulgent as a Kojima game could ever be: you play as young vampire hunter Django (named after a famed spaghetti Western hero) who fights immortals with a solar-powered gun. Like your namesake, you drag bosses into a solar pile driver in a coffin. The game's relative lack of popularity is probably due, in part, to its central conceit: a solar sensor embedded on the cartridge itself that affected in-game events. For players who lived in temperate regions or adults who lived on a strict schedule, this made playing Boktai a challenge. The vital sunlight needed to activate in-game events or defeat bosses meant you could only properly play this game if you had a very flexible schedule—or cheated the sensor with a blacklight. Unless you were lik..

Enlarge / The Electron launch vehicle is ready to soar.Rocket Lab Welcome to Edition 2.37 of the Rocket Report! As COVID-19 sweeps the globe and spreads across the United States, the world of launch continues to move along, too. However, we should not that—after Thursday's launch of an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station—there are just two additional launches in the coming year with confirmed dates: a Soyuz crew and Progress cargo mission in April. As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar. Virgin Orbit assessing plans amid pandemic. The Long Beach, California-based company is reassessing the schedule for the first orbital-flight demonstration of its LauncherOne vehicl..

Enlarge / NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 20: Doctors test hospital staff with flu-like symptoms for COVID-19 at St. Barnabas hospital on March 20, 2020, in New York City. St. Barnabas hospital in the Bronx set-up tents to triage possible COVID-19 patients outside before they enter the main Emergency department area. Getty | Mischa Friedman The new coronavirus doesnt just kill by storming lungs and other organs. It also kills by besieging health care systems. If left to swirl in a community unchecked for a few weeks, the virus can whip up a tsunami of cases that crash into urgent care clinics, emergency departments, and intensive care units, quickly washing out beds, supplies, and staff. In such a crisis, doctors must make heart-wrenching decisions about which patients get the last beds and which get scarce ventilators and respiratory therapists. At the same time, theyre likely facing shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as masks and gowns. Rationing and reusing such items lea..

EnlargeGoogle Googles threat analysis group, which counters targeted and government-backed hacking against the company and its users, sent account holders almost 40,000 warnings in 2019, with government officials, journalists, dissidents, and geopolitical rivals being the most targeted, team members said on Thursday. The number of warnings declined almost 25 percent from 2018, in part because of new protections designed to curb cyberattacks on Google properties. Attackers have responded by reducing the frequency of their hack attempts and being more deliberate. The group saw an increase in phishing attacks that impersonated news outlets and journalists. In many of these cases, attackers sought to spread disinformation by attempting to seed false stories with other reporters. Other times, attackers sent several benign messages in hopes of building a rapport with a journalist or foreign policy expert. The attackers, who most frequently came from Iran and North Korea, would later follow ..

EnlargeAnton Petrus | Getty Images As the nation and the world reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, many goods are in short supply and high demand. That basic economic formula means prices are going up—way up. Among the nation's largest digital storefronts, a combination of individual sellers out to make bank and algorithmic pricing that may or may not have a basis in reality has resulted in a wave of exploitative price gouging that state and federal regulators are trying to put to a stop. Attorneys general representing 33 US states and territories yesterday signed letters (PDF) urging online retailers to set and enforce policies banning price gouging on their platforms during this emergency. "While we appreciate reports of the efforts made by platforms and online retailers to crack down on price gouging," the attorneys general wrote to Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, Facebook, and Walmart, "we are calling on you to do more at a time that requires national unity." Hand sanitizer and fac..