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How many people will you kill?

We’re all on lockdown at the moment here in the UK. Following in the footsteps of Italy, Spain and France. Though it may seem like it’s nothing to go out and live life as you normally would. You could be putting a silly amount of people at risk. So website How many people will you kill, helps to shock you into behaving correctly.

The site does some mathematical magic to work out how many people you will kill by going out. Potentially infecting people. Remember you may be infected and not even know it!

You put in your location, how many people will be there and an average age. It will give you a run down of how many people you’ll infect. Furthermore it will tell you of those infected how many people you will kill.

How Many People Will You Kill?

(The below information has been copied/pasted, we need it to be 100% accurate)

The calculator pulls in the latest figures for confirmed cases for each country and region. Due to limited testing, asymptomatic cases and a lag between contracting the virus and test results, the true numbers of infected people are much higher. This is evident when looking at the number of diagnosed cases vs true cases in the early stages of the spread in Hubei:

The proportion of undetected cases is estimated by comparing the measured fatality rate with the fatality rate in countries with the best testing, for instance South Korea. Higher fatality rates in a country are assumed to imply limited testing and hence more hidden cases.

The data from South Korea also depicts considerable variation in the number of confirmed cases across different age groups. Party-goers in their 20s are more likely to contract the virus than typically less sociable older people. This distribution is hidden in countries such as Italy, where only those with the most severe symptoms are tested:

Combining the recent infections data with the hidden case and age factors gives a probability that each of your attendees is infected.

Number of immediate infections

COVID-19 has proven to be very infectious, so it’s assumed that for small gatherings if anyone in your group has the virus, they’ll infect everyone else.

Crucially this means the expected number of direct infections scales as the square of the number of attendees. If you’re really set on holding an event, best not allow +1s as that’ll make the impact 4 times worse.

Long-term impact of these infections

Exponential growth means a small number of infections can quickly explode to a vast number, as has been seen around the world. For the countries still battling with the epidemic, we assume the worst (but very possible) scenario, that they fail to control the spread, and eventually 60% of the population become infected. For the countries who have demonstrated they can contain the disease. The number of possible final infections has been capped to a much smaller proportion of their population.

Your event is responsible for the infections it causes instantly as a fraction of all the infections at that time. Multiplied by the final number of infections. The expected deaths are estimated to be 1% of this figure.

There’s an argument that, in this worst-case scenario, the deaths would have happened anyway, with or without your event, you just make them happen sooner. In which case you’d need to calculate the extra pressure on the health care system, due to the larger and more sudden peak in infections. This approach would also work for considering the non-worst-case scenarios, where the disease is eradicated before it infects most of the population. This refinement can be added when the effectiveness of the European lockdowns becomes apparent.

(How Many People Will You Kill)

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Amazon Tracking Employees

Amazon shipping only essential products in Italy and France

Amazon has temporarily stopped taking orders on non essential products on it’s Italian and French sites. This in an effort to stop the spread and contain the novel coronavirus.

“As customers use e-commerce to support their social distancing efforts, we too have implemented social distancing guidance within our fulfillment centers to keep our employees safe and healthy,” An email from an Amazon spokesperson to The Verge 

While customers can still order many of the products from 3rd party sellers who are able to shop directly to customers. Essential products include food and hygiene items. Amazon have said that the measure will allow “fulfillment center associates to focus on receiving and shipping the products customers need most at this time.”

Furthermore a notice on Amazon read:

“We are prioritizing the most requested products and some items may be temporarily unavailable. We appreciate your understanding at this time when we prioritize the products that customers need most. All orders already confirmed will be delivered regularly.”

While 5 workers have tested positive at Amazon Warehouses in Europe for coronavirus Bloomberg reported. Workers at an Amazon Warehouse in Italy went on strike on March 17th to protest inadequate action by the company to protect them.

Italy has become one of the hardest areas hit by COVID-19. As more than 53K people infected and 48K dead according to the New York Times. With Saturday alone, reporting 793 new deaths in one day, reported by the Times.

(The Verge)

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APPLE FINED £25M!

Apple have been slapped with a £25M fine for slowing down older iPhones deliberately! The fine was given to them by France’s competition and fraud watchdog DGCCRF as they said that consumers were not warned.

In 2017 Apple did confirm that they slowed down older iPhones to prolong the lives of the devices. Apple said in a statement that it had resolved the issue with the watchdog.

Why did Apple slow down old iPhones?

While many consumers had long suspected that Apple were slowing down their older iPhones in an attempt to encourage upgrades, it was never confirmed unti 2017. Though Apple said that they did it to help consumers devices run better and prolong the lives of them.

The tech giant said that the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying the growing demands of the phones newer software as they aged.

It could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect itself. So they released an update for the iPhone 6, 6s and SE which smoothed out performance.

The practice was confirmed again after a customer shared performance tests on reddit. Showing their older iPhone 6S had slowed down considerably as it aged. Yet once the battery had been replaced it sped up.

Regulators

DGCCRF said that iPhone owners  “were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices”.

So, as part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month.

They said that Apple had “committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission” and the tech giant agreed to pay the fine.

Does it still happen?

Yes. Since the 2017 fix the software battery smoothing out process has been implemented it on several more iPhones including:

  • iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus
  • 8 and 8 Plus running iOS 12.1 or higher
  • X running iOS 12.1 or higher
  • XS, XS Max and XR running iOS 13.1 or higher

The setting for these phones is only enabled once the battery begins to degrade. The iOS software now shows clear information to consumers when performance management has been enabled.

“The effects of performance management on these newer models may be less noticeable due to their more advanced hardware and software design,” Apple said.

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Fifa Ultimate Team Gambling?

Fifa Ultimate Team can be argued that it’s a form of gambling. To be honest, they would probably be right. You buy packs and you don’t know what’s in them, you get a bad pack, so you buy more packs. The cycle repeats itself.

It’s unregulated gambling and the Belgian Game Commission called it illegal. Now two French lawyers are looking to file two separate lawsuits against EA in France. They claim that FIFA features gambling mechanics.

A quote from 2 lawyers shows how loot boxes are perceived in Europe| Source: Kotaku

EA have allegedly referred to them as “surprise mechanics” which isn’t that what gambling is? The lawsuits are due to players who have spent over $650 on Ultimate Team. According to the clients of the lawsuits, they claim that it’s possible to spend excessive amounts of cash on the game. While not getting any decent players in return for what they’ve spent.

It can be argued that you can become addicted to opening backs and the randomness of what you get in them, combined with the fact you buy them with real money, makes it gambling.

So, is it a form of gambling? Should loot boxes style mechanics be banned?

(CNN)

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Driverless Taxi’s?

Autonomous Taxi’s which don’t require a human as back up are one step closer to becoming reality after a test programme was announced which would trial these “on demand, driverless services” on public roads from next year.

Delphi and Transdev are looking to launch 2 Renault “Zoe” autonomous taxi’s in Rouen, Normandy and a shuttle van between a rail station and a campus in the University district of Paris-Saclay to trial this super cool scheme. During the scheme there’ll be drivers behind the wheel to take over if any problems arise, but the plan is to phase out behind the wheel drivers for employees at a central dispatch location to watch over journey’s and take over from there, manually if required.

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