Photo by Jonas Kakaroto from Pexels

Seems wherever you turn for news these days, the stories about COVID-19 abound.  This week’s episode has several stories on the impacts and implications of the virus, whether on pollution, event cancellations, collaboration tools for remote engagement and mapping of the evolution of the virus genome.

Michael and Michael take some time to reminisce about SETI@home, starting with the screensaver from way back when.  SETI@home will stop distributing work and “go into hibernation” on March 31st.

Rounding out the episode includes stories on indoor solar power for IoT devices, DuckDuckGo’s identification of trackers to block, a year long smartphone sabbatical as well as the revival of The Kids in The Hall.

Selected Links

Coronavirus: Nasa images show China pollution clear amid slowdown https://t.co/QguTq0uUAx— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) February 29, 2020

Macworld article: What happens if (and when) Apple cancels WWDC 2020 — https://www.macworld.com/article/3530298/what-happens-if-and-when-apple-cancels-wwdc-2020.html 

Random Thoughts blog post: WWDC Day 1 – Awesome Woes — http://michaelrowe01.com/index.php/2019/06/03/wwdc-day-1-awesome-woes/ 

Random Thoughts blog post: WWDC Day Two (early morning) — http://michaelrowe01.com/index.php/2019/06/04/wwdc-day-two-early-morning/ 

The Verge article: Google and Microsoft are giving away enterprise conferencing tools due to coronavirus — https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/3/21163744/google-microsoft-free-access-coronavirus-google-hangouts-meet-teams 

Is it cancelled yet? Apparently there’s a website for that:https://t.co/KLl8NUBUku— Frank(ie) Jania (@fjania) March 4, 2020

MIT article: Gene sleuths are tracking the coronavirus outbreak as it happens — https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615317/gene-sleuths-are-tracking-the-coronavirus-outbreak-as-it-happens/ 

Nextstrain — https://nextstrain.org 

Wired article: SETI@home Is Over.  But the Search for Alien Life Continues — https://www.wired.com/story/setihome-is-over-but-the-search-for-alien-life-continues/ 

Ars Technica article: The grandfather of distributed computing projects, SETI@home shuts down — https://arstechnica.