MASON CITY, Iowa - The former St. John Baptist Church has quite the history.

In 1919, a group of African-American Baptists formed the church, with members meeting in various homes for services, and then a labor hall, before buying a house on 6th Street SW, which would be moved for a basement to be dug to house a chapel. In 1937, church members bought recycled stone, flooring, windows, even wiring and pipe from the demolished Grant School that was only a few blocks away to build a permanent house of worship.

The church was located in a once ethnically diverse section of Mason City, which went under the "Brickyard" and "Powder Street" names, and the congregation held lively events and programs, including Saturday morning breakfasts.

"They gave to the whole neighborhood, whether you were white or black or Asian, it didn't matter. It helped everybody in the neighborhood, all kids, all people."

Since services stopped in 1996, the church has largely sat empty, though the pews, carpet and other materials inside have been preserved. Over the last few years, there have been plans to bring new life to the building, but none have been successful. Now, a group is looking to restore the former church, with the upstairs planned to be converted into a chapel and community center, with historical items related to the congregation on display. The basement would also be renovated, and would house the offices of Al-Yad, an organization that provides help to children in foster care.

However, Corinne Sills, who got involved with the project a few years ago, predicts that renovations would cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and despite applying for grants and other financial assistance, they have been unable to receive them. Sills, who is also with Al-Yad, says the only way to make the restoration possible is by donations and volunteers.

"I think it's important to preserve any kind of history for our children to view. Anything positive that we can put in today's society is extremely important."

While the building has largely remained intact, the bell tower is in desperate need of repair, as well a new roof, window replacement, new exterior wood, and modernizing the plumbing and electricity.

"If we don't get some of the outside done, it will start falling."

For those who want to donate to the efforts, you can drop a check off at NSB Bank, 451 S. Illinois Avenue in Mason City, with checks being written to Al-Yad.

For more information about the project, you can contact Sills at 641-425-9333, or Marcia Boster at 641-420-2879.

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Group working to restore historic Mason City church - KIMT 3

India Stoughton lived and covered the arts and culture scene in Beirut for eight years. She's currently based in London due to the pandemic.

At the moment that one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history blasted outwards from Beirut's port and swept across the city, Zeina Arida, the director of Sursock Museum, was standing outside her office with two colleagues. The force of the explosion, less than a mile away, threw them into the museum's stairwell, as all around them windows shattered and glass and debris rained down. "We have escaped by a miracle," Arida said over the phone three days later. "The museum is blown away, very simply... There is no door, no window, no glass left in the building."

The force of the explosion also brought down parts of the ceilings and internal walls in the museum, housed in an ornate white mansion dating from 1912. Less than five years after it reopened in October 2015 -- following a seven-year renovation costing more than $10 million -- the museum is a wreck.

Beirut's architectural heritage: What the city stands to lose Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

It had displayed a significant collection of Lebanese art from the late 1800s onwards and was known to host regular temporary exhibitions by both Lebanese and international artists.

Many works from the institution's permanent collection were damaged but, according to Arida, the stained-glass windows that decorate the faade saved many more from destruction. "The tinted glass is so thin that when we first went to look at the damage we were walking on a ground of colored powder," she said.

Painted glass is seen in Beirut's Sursock Museum in the Lebanese capital on October 5, 2015. Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

Stained glass windows in the Sursock Museum were completely destroyed in the musuem due to the explosion. Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

Streets filled with artists

Beirut's tight-knit cultural sector is still in the throes of this crisis but it's clear that the explosion has had a devastating effect. Many of the city's art spaces were located in the cosmopolitan neighborhoods of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh and in the industrial area of Karantina, all close to the epicenter of the blast. "These streets were a hub for artists from many walks of life. [They] are filled with our friends, our colleagues," said playwright and filmmaker Lucien Bourjeily.

A view from the roof of an apartment building overlooking the ravaged port of Lebanon's capital Beirut in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood. Credit: Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

Three days after the explosion, he and others on the theater scene had set up an online group to offer help and support to those who had lost their homes and studios. Bourjeily, who helped organize protests in 2015 when rubbish was left to rot on the streets of Beirut, says artists play a crucial role in leading a call for change after the blast because they are often freelancers who are not as embedded in Lebanon's system of sectarian political patronage.

Galerie Tanit, located less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) from the explosion, was completely gutted by the blast, which destroyed all the windows and walls, leaving just concrete pillars behind. One employee was seriously injured and Jean-Marc Bonfils, the architect who designed the gallery and lived above it, was killed in the blast.

Gaia Fodoulian, the young director of Letitia Gallery, which closed in February after months of economic hardship, was also killed. Firas Dahwish, who worked at Agial Art Gallery and Saleh Barakat Gallery in the west of the city, was severely injured. He died in hospital five days later.

The Arab Image Foundation, which safeguards a significant collection of photographs documenting a century of life in the Middle East, was also badly damaged. Three staff and board members were injured.

As they mourn the dead, the city's gallerists, artists and creatives are struggling to process the damage to many of the city's most important cultural spaces. "The city is destroyed. It's beyond description... There is not a single person in Beirut who has not been damaged... It's an unbelievable apocalypse," said gallerist Saleh Barakat, who opened Agial Art Gallery, one of the oldest art spaces in the city, in 1990, just after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Lebanese volunteers clear the rubble in the devastated Gemmayzeh neighbourhood, on August 7. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

The explosion is widely perceived to have occurred as a direct result of entrenched corruption and dysfunction among leaders who have clung onto power for more than three decades. "Maybe we needed this for a wake up call. We are very, very angry. We are burying our dead and we are taking care of our injured but the anger is just growing and growing," he said.

A slow road back to reopening

The disaster comes at the end of a year of upheaval that had already taken a heavy toll on the local culture scene. Last September, the 10th edition of the Beirut Art Fair attracted 36,000 visitors, signaling a decade of successful growth for Lebanon's art scene. Over the past five years, new commercial and non-profit arts spaces have sprung up all across the city. Amid upheaval in the wake of the Arab Spring, artists from across the region moved to Beirut, and international curators and dealers regularly traveled to its most important exhibitions. But massive anti-government demonstrations, which began last October and continued for months, caused many of the city's art spaces to strike in solidarity with protesters, allowing staff to join the demonstrations.

"It is going to be very unlikely that things will go back to normal or the art scene can be functional again in less than six months," said Barakat. "How can I open up again? I have no windows, I have no doors. I have nothing... I have seen a lot of very bad situations but there was hope every time... Now we were already broke. How are you going to do anything if you don't have any money?"

According to the gallerist, without an independent investigation into the causes of the explosion, no one has any hope that insurance will pay out. Money aside, he cannot fathom reopening while the same leaders many hold responsible for the explosion remain in power. "We are not going to stop defending our cause, but there should be some changes before we can continue... We should dedicate our time and lives to changing the system, and then we'll see," he said.

The front of Marfa' Projects before the blast. Credit: Courtesy Joumana Asseily

The front of Marfa' Projects after the blast. Credit: Courtesy Joumana Asseily

Marfa' Projects, an exhibition space located next to the customs house in the Lebanese port, was completely destroyed by the explosion. "All that time we were working, exhibiting, 500 meters (0.3 miles) away from a kind of nuclear bomb," said owner Joumana Asseily.

She had closed the gallery for a week due to lockdown. Anyone inside would have been killed. She said she no longer cares about the loss of her gallery. "What is gone is gone. Even the artists don't care at this point. It's all material damages. What really enrages me is the people who lost their lives... The people who don't have houses, who don't have money to rebuild their houses."

But she is determined to reopen -- although only once it's possible to rebuild at the port. "The location was crucial for me," she said. "You feel it is the heart of Beirut because everything passes there."

For some, the challenge of rebuilding is simply too daunting. "I don't think we're going to be able to pick ourselves up and move on... I am 55. I have reconstructed my life so many times, and this time it's just the last straw," said Antoine Haddad, whose gallery, Artlab, suffered extensive damage. He plans to emigrate to Canada, but will continue to run Artlab online. "I owe the artists, morally. I'm engaged to provide for them."

Andre Sfeir-Semler, by contrast, is determined to reopen as soon as possible, even if she has to do it without any windows. "Of course we want to go on... You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls," she said. But Sfeir-Semler Gallery, located 1.7 kilometers (a little over a mile) from the explosion, is a wreck. "The walls all broke down. The cinema imploded. We have a hole in the roof," she detailed, adding that a staff member who was at the galley when the explosion occurred only survived because she was in the bathroom.

Beneath the anger and sadness, many are simply exhausted. "The culture scene relies so much on private initiatives and very often on specific individuals that have been fighting for the past 25 years, if not more, and what is frightening is that we are already so exhausted, so discouraged," said Sursock Museum director Zeina Arida.

A sad city

"We all have this feeling that what the state failed at building, they have just destroyed." What gives her hope, however, is the support from other institutions, both local and international, who have pledged to help with everything from restoring artworks to renovations.

An aerial view of Sursock Palace, damaged in the explosion on August 7. Credit: Haytham Al Achkar/Getty Images

Gregory Buchakjian, an art historian and artist who spent 10 years documenting Beirut's abandoned buildings, described a long-running "war" between those who want to preserve the city's architectural heritage and the government, whose lax zoning laws and lack of formal protection for structures built after the 17th century leave Ottoman and French-mandate era buildings vulnerable to developers who want to tear them down and replace them with more lucrative skyscrapers. "Many people were saying that the municipality will try to demolish buildings on the pretext that they are on the verge of collapsing," he said. "It's definitely going to be a battle to preserve what can be preserved."

He added: "What is heartbreaking is that some of the buildings that were abandoned when I did my study were renovated, and now they are completely ruined."

Sursock Palace, a private residence close to Sursock Museum, built in 1860, was painstakingly restored over 20 years after the civil war ended. The interior of the three-story mansion was torn apart by the blast. Ornate Ottoman painted wooden ceilings collapsed, leaving antique furnishings smashed and buried under wood, rubble and glass. Its owners say there is little point in trying to fix the damage while the same corrupt leaders remain in power.

Buchakjian believes it's too early to predict how the explosion will affect Beirut's culture scene in the long term. "People are still just cleaning the rubble, assessing the damage."

A crooked painting hangs on the wall of the Sursock Palace, heavily damaged after the explosion. Credit: Felipe Dana/AP

But some people are already looking ahead. "There is this sense of solidarity... We really have the sense that we are all in trouble together," he said.

Back at the Sursock Museum, Arida has gathered the shattered pieces of two ceramic sculptures by Lebanese artist Simone Fattal, part of the permanent collection, in case the artist wants to use them to create something new. She has also offered use of the museum's storage spaces to other institutions and artists.

"It's a very sad city now... It's going to take years and it's going to take a lot of work," Marfa' Projects' Joumana Asseily said, but "all these institutions are so essential, so important... It's going to be very difficult. A lot of them won't survive. But the ones that make it are more important than ever. They must go on. I can't imagine how, but we need them."

All interviews for this article were conducted over the phone. The top image is an interior shot of Sursock Palace.

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Beirut's once-thriving cultural community was already at breaking point. Then the blast hit - CNN

The vast majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs indoors, most of it from the inhalation of airborne particles that contain the coronavirus. The best way to prevent the virus from spreading in a home or business would be to simply keep infected people away. But this is hard to do when an estimated 40% of cases are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people can still spread the coronavirus to others.

Masks do a decent job at keeping the virus from spreading into the environment, but if an infected person is inside a building, inevitably some virus will escape into the air.

I am a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Much of my work has focused on how to control the transmission of airborne infectious diseases indoors, and Ive been asked by my own university, my kids schools and even the Alaska State Legislature for advice on how to make indoor spaces safe during this pandemic.

Once the virus escapes into the air inside a building, you have two options: bring in fresh air from outside or remove the virus from the air inside the building.

The safest indoor space is one that constantly has lots of outside air replacing the stale air inside.

In commercial buildings, outside air is usually pumped in through heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. In homes, outside air gets in through open windows and doors, in addition to seeping in through various nooks and crannies.

Simply put, the more fresh, outside air inside a building, the better. Bringing in this air dilutes any contaminant in a building, whether a virus or a something else, and reduces the exposure of anyone inside. Environmental engineers like me quantify how much outside air is getting into a building using a measure called the air exchange rate. This number quantifies the number of times the air inside a building gets replaced with air from outside in an hour.

While the exact rate depends on the number of people and size of the room, most experts consider roughly six air changes an hour to be good for a 10-foot-by-10-foot room with three to four people in it. In a pandemic this should be higher, with one study from 2016 suggesting that an exchange rate of nine times per hour reduced the spread of SARS, MERS and H1N1 in a Hong Kong hospital.

Many buildings in the U.S., especially schools, do not meet recommended ventilation rates. Thankfully, it can be pretty easy to get more outside air into a building. Keeping windows and doors open is a good start. Putting a box fan in a window blowing out can greatly increase air exchange too. In buildings that dont have operable windows, you can change the mechanical ventilation system to increase how much air it is pumping. But in any room, the more people inside, the faster the air should be replaced.

So how do you know if the room youre in has enough air exchange? Its actually a pretty hard number to calculate. But theres an easy-to-measure proxy that can help. Every time you exhale, you release CO2 into the air. Since the coronavirus is most often spread by breathing, coughing or talking, you can use CO2 levels to see if the room is filling up with potentially infectious exhalations. The CO2 level lets you estimate if enough fresh outside air is getting in.

Outdoors, CO2 levels are just above 400 parts per million (ppm). A well ventilated room will have around 800 ppm of CO2. Any higher than that and it is a sign the room might need more ventilation.

Last year, researchers in Taiwan reported on the effect of ventilation on a tuberculosis outbreak at Taipei University. Many of the rooms in the school were underventilated and had CO2 levels above 3,000 ppm. When engineers improved air circulation and got CO2 levels under 600 ppm, the outbreak completely stopped. According to the research, the increase in ventilation was responsible for 97% of the decrease in transmission.

Since the coronavirus is spread through the air, higher CO2 levels in a room likely mean there is a higher chance of transmission if an infected person is inside. Based on the study above, I recommend trying to keep the CO2 levels below 600 ppm. You can buy good CO2 meters for around $100 online; just make sure that they are accurate to within 50 ppm.

If you are in a room that cant get enough outside air for dilution, consider an air cleaner, also commonly called air purifiers. These machines remove particles from the air, usually using a filter made of tightly woven fibers. They can capture particles containing bacteria and viruses and can help reduce disease transmission.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that air cleaners can do this for the coronavirus, but not all air cleaners are equal. Before you go out and buy one, there are few things to keep in mind.

The first thing to consider is how effective an air cleaners filter is. Your best option is a cleaner that uses a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, as these remove more than 99.97% of all particle sizes.

The second thing to consider is how powerful the cleaner is. The bigger the room or the more people in it the more air needs to be cleaned. I worked with some colleagues at Harvard to put together a tool to help teachers and schools determine how powerful of an air cleaner you need for different classroom sizes.

The last thing to consider is the validity of the claims made by the company producing the air cleaner.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers certifies air cleaners, so the AHAM Verifide seal is a good place to start. Additionally, the California Air Resources Board has a list of air cleaners that are certified as safe and effective, though not all of them use HEPA filters.

Both the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that poor ventilation increases the risk of transmitting the coronavirus.

If you are in control of your indoor environment, make sure you are getting enough fresh air from outside circulating into the building. A CO2 monitor can help give you a clue if there is enough ventilation, and if CO2 levels start going up, open some windows and take a break outside. If you cant get enough fresh air into a room, an air cleaner might be a good idea. If you do get an air cleaner, be aware that they dont remove CO2, so even though the air might be safer, CO2 levels could still be high in the room.

If you walk into a building and it feels hot, stuffy and crowded, chances are that there is not enough ventilation. Turn around and leave.

By paying attention to air circulation and filtration, improving them where you can and staying away from places where you cant, you can add another powerful tool to your anti-coronavirus toolkit.

[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week. Subscribe to The Conversations science newsletter.]

Originally posted here:
How to use ventilation and air filtration to prevent the spread of coronavirus indoors - The Conversation US

Photo: ODHS

The Oliver museum has been struggling with drafts, hotand cold issuesyear-round and the outside wood has been degrading due to the building'sold windows. But after a conservationproject got underway, their problems were solved.

Thanks to a grant from Heritage BCs Heritage Legacy Fund and a donation from the late Carolyn Cope, the 1924-era windows were able to be carefully restored recently.

Gerry Plantes Carpentry Ltd stepped up to repair the old wood, sand and repaint it, and replace the cracked panes on the building.The project included new putty and weather stripping to help to regulate inside temperatures.

The building was Olivers former BC Police Station, and remains in the nationally-recognized conservation standards since the completed project preserved the original material on the building.

Oliver and District Heritage Society (ODHS) are looking forward to having abetter environment for both artifacts and people.

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Old windows replaced in the museum help the 96 year old building look good as new - Penticton News - Castanet.net

Helen Holmes (Instagram @TheOfficeMuse)

The Chinese were first with the transition from commodity money to paper money, from money that was atoms to money that was atoms about atoms. They had the necessary technologies (you cant have paper money without paper and you cant do it at scale without printing) and, more importantly, they had the governance. In 1260, Kublai Khan wisely decided that it was a burden on commerce and drag on taxation to have all sorts of currencies in use, ranging from copper coins to iron bars, to pearls to salt to gold and silver, so he decided to implement a new currency. The Khan decided to replace metal, commodities, precious jewels and specie with paper. A paper currency!Imagine how crazy that must have sounded!

Just as Marco Polo and other medieval travellers returned along the Silk Road breathless with astonishing tales of paper money and the end of commodity currencies, so modern commentators (e.g., me) came tumbling off of flights from Shanghai with equally astonishing tales of a land of mobile payments, where not only paper money but also payment cards are vanishing as consumers pay for everything with QR codes. That must have sounded pretty crazy in America too, or at least it did until PayPal PYPL announced they would be bringing mobile QR code payments to 8,000+ CVS stores.

Chinas thinking has been evolving for some time. Back in 2016, the Governor of thePeoples Bank of China(PBOC), Zhou Xiaochuan, set out the Bank's thinking aboutdigital currency, saying thatit is an irresistible trend that paper money will be replaced by new products and new technologies. He went on to say that as a legal tender, digital currency should be controlled by the central bank and after noting that he thought it would take a decade or so for digital currency to completely replace cash in China, he went to state clearly that the bank was working out how to gradually phase out paper money. Rather than simply let the cashless society happen, which may not led to the optimum implementation for society, they were developing a plan for a cashless society.

But how will they do it? I got a window into the likely way forward when I listened toKevin C. Desouza(Professor of Business, Technology and Strategy in the School of Management at the QUT Business School, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the China Institute for Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University). He is someone with a pretty informed perspective. I heard him in conversation with Bonnie S. Glaser (senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS) on theChinaPower PODCAST.

Kevin and Bonnie were discussing China's plan to develop a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). I have looked at Chinas CBDC system (the Digital Currency/Electronic Payment, DC/EP) in some detail and have speculated on its impact myself, so naturally I wanted to double-check my views (coming from a more technological background) against Kevin and Bonnie's informed strategic, foreign policy perspective.

One particularly interesting aspect of their discussion concerned Chinas ability to advance in digital currency deployment and use because of the co-ordinated plans of the technology providers, the institutions and the state. The technological possibilities are a spectrum and there are a wide variety of business models and many institutional arrangements to investigate, balance and optimise. Hence it needs some co-ordination to make something happen. This is where China can bring co-ordinated and effective governance to bear.

To take one example, consider the issue of the relationship between central bank money and commercial bank money. Yao Qian, from the PBOC technology departmentwrote on the subject in 2017, saying that to offset the shock to commercial banks that would come from introducing an independent digital currency system (and to protect the investment made by commercial banks on infrastructure), it would be possible to incorporate digital currency wallet attributes into the existing commercial bank account system" so that electronic currency and digital currency are managed under the same account.

This rationale is clear and, well, rational. The Chinese central bank wants the efficiencies that come from having a digital currency but also understands the implications of removing the privilege of money creation from the commercial banks. You can see why this is a potential problem for a digital currency created by the central bank, even if it is now technologically feasible for them to do so. If commercial banks lose both deposits and the privilege of creating money, then their functionality and role in the economy is much reduced. Whether you think that is a good idea or not, you must agreed its a big step to take.

This why I think that the PBOC position,reinforcedin 2018 by Fan Yifei, Deputy Governor of the Peoples Bank of China, that Chinese digital currency should adopt a double-tier delivery system whichallows commercial banks to distribute digital currency under central bank control make sense. I dont doubt that this will be the approach adopted by the Federal Reserve when the US eventually decides to issue a digital dollar, which is why we in the West should be studying it and learning from it.

A Chinese bank employee counts 100-yuan notes and US dollar bills at a bank counter in Nantong in ... [+] China's eastern Jiangsu province on August 6, 2019 (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images).

Im fascinated that Chinas long experiment with atoms about atoms is almost over and will soon be replaced by bits about bits. This will come about not because of Bitcoin or Libra, Unionpay or PayPal, but because the PBOC has beenstrategicin its thinking andtacticalin its governance. Their decisions on the topic for many years have been measured and consistent. Digital currency is coming, and China will take the lead in digital currency just as it did in paper currency.

Link:
The Great Chinese Money Experiment Is Over - Forbes

(Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)

Ever since the NBA announced that it would return, many have speculated that the Portland Trail Blazers could be a dark horse candidate in the Western Conference. Currently sitting in the 9-seed, the Blazers appeared ready to make a run at near full strength when the NBA resumes next month.

With the hiatus having provided time to let big men Zach Collins and Jusuf Nurkic heal back to full strength, Portland would add two stellar big men to their rotation. However, it appears that the team could be without Carmelo Anthony next month, and officially without Trevor Ariza after reports came out yesterday that he would sit out the remainder of the season.

While Anthony has not officially decided, it would be an absolutely detrimental blow to the teams contending chances if he sits out alongside Ariza. Whatever happens, the Blazers should look at the current free agent market during this transaction window to bolster their roster because, on paper, this team could make some noise.

With Ariza out, the Blazers will need to find a player to fill the void left behind. In 21 starts with the team, Ariza averaged 11.0 points per game on a stellar 49.1 percent shooting from the field and 40.0 percent 3-point shooting. The forward was a fantastic addition after coming over midseason through a trade with the Sacramento Kings and now find themselves in a predicament without him.

Standing pat with their current options at the small forward position appears not to be a legitimate option. The only other listed small forwards on the roster are Rodney Hood, who suffered a season-ending Achilles injury this year, and Jaylen Hoard, a rookie on a two-way contract. Those circumstances do not leave the Blazers with many options within the organization, but thankfully, they do not have to solely rely on that.

With their starting small forward and lethal offensive threat opting out of the remainder of the season, Portland can pick their poison when it comes to replacements on the free-agent market. The team needs a wing that can shoot the ball efficiently and preferably also defend well to help them stay afloat in the standings.

A few notable names that come to mind are J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Gerald Green. All three can shoot the ball at a high-rate while simultaneously provide some versatile defense. Each of the three finds themselves out of the league for various reasons, but still undoubtedly have something left to contribute to a team in need.

Whether any of these household names can match or outproduce that of Arizas stature is questionable, but at this time, the gamble is worth it for the Portland Trail Blazers.

As Damian Lillard recently toldLisa Robinson of Vanity Fair,this team believes they can upset the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in a potential playoff series. Losing Ariza hurts, but it does not have to be the nail in the coffin if the Blazers can find a worthy replacement.

The team has until June 30th before the transaction window closes, and should pursue the opportunity quickly before the current free agents find homes elsewhere. This team has proven that they can compete with the best of the best, and finding an Ariza replacement would only improve their chances of keeping their season alive.

Link:
Portland Trail Blazers: Team needs to be active during transaction window - Hoops Habit

The board of governors and the players recently voted to move ahead with the NBA's return to play proposal, and the wheels are now officially in motion for games to resume on July 30 at Disney World in Orlando. Twenty-two teams will be in attendance, and they'll play eight regular-season games each before proceeding to the playoffs.

Now that an official plan is in place and all sides have agreed on a format and schedule, the league has begun to iron out some of the surrounding details. Among them is what to do in case of injury or a positive COVID-19 test. Once in Orlando, players will be tested nightly, and the league has made it clear that things will move along even if one of them comes down with the coronavirus.

Any players testing positive will be quarantined for at least seven days, and possibly up to 14, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks. Because of that risk, and the potential competitive disadvantage, teams are expected to be allowed to sign replacement players. Once a player tests positive, the team has up to seven days to sign a replacement player.Via ESPN:

If COVID-19 or a serious injury strikes a team during training camps or the eight regular-season seeding games, there is expected to be no limitations on the number of players a team could sign to replace those lost, but there would be restrictions on those in the pool of eligible players, sources said.

Eligible replacement players will likely have had to be signed in the NBA or G League or be on training camp contracts this season, sources said. Under these restrictions, for example, no team could sign veteran Jamal Crawford -- who went unsigned all season -- or an international player.

The league office has discussed the possibility with its teams that there could be a requirement that those players replaced for COVID-19 or injury would become ineligible to return for the balance of this season, sources said.

The league has set its "transaction window," in which teams will be permitted to sign replacement players, from Tuesday, June 23 at 12 p.m. ET to Tuesday, June 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET., per Shams Charania of The Athletic. It will feature all 30 teams, not just the 22 that will be competing in Orlando. Once the period begins, teams will be able to sign eligible free agents, convert two-way players into full NBA contracts, and waive players during the given time frame.

While this is a necessary allowance, teams may not end up taking advantage of it. For one, the health and safety measures in place would mean a big delay between signing a free agent and them actually being able to help the team. They would need to be quarantined after arriving in Orlando, and then have to get up to speed with what the team is doing in very short order. Considering the pool of available players is going to be pretty shallow, it may just make more sense to wait for their player to return from injury and/or sickness.

That's not to say no teams will add players if necessary, but there's some real thought that will go into that decision, especially if replaced players are then ineligible to return for the rest of the season. Converting two-way players to full NBA contracts might be a better option, as two-way players offer a much simpler alternative for teams looking for roster flexibility than bringing in outside players. Plus, some two-way players have become key contributors for their respective teams.

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NBA teams will be able to sign replacement players in case of positive coronavirus tests, per report - CBS Sports

Apple's incoming ARM-based Macs wont let users run Windows 10 in Boot Camp mode.

Although Apple Silicon-powered machines will be able to run iPhone and iPad apps natively, it appears they won't be able to run Windows, with Microsoft confirming to that it won't make Windows 10 for ARM available for the new Apple Silicon-based machines.

In a statement given to The Verge, the company said that it "only licences Windows on ARM to OEMs".When asked whether it plans tochange this policy to allow Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs, and the company said "we have nothing further to share at this time".

macOS 11 Big Sur will ship with Boot Camp installed, but it appears the ability to run a Windows environment will be limited to Intel machines. ARM-based Macs will not be able to access this functionality, and Apple has not yet announced a Boot Camp replacement.

To make matters worse, it also remains unclear whether macOS will be able to support Windows virtualisation via third-party tools such as Parallels and VMware Fusion.

Though Big Sur will ship with Rosetta 2, an emulation tool that will allow users to run non-ARM optimized apps, Apple has confirmed that this wont be able to translate x86_64 apps.

In developer support documentation, Apple confirms: "Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesnt translate the following executables: kernel extensions, Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms."

While the transition to ARM-based processors could spell the end of Windows on Mac, Apple has already confirmed that Microsofts Office apps, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, will work natively on Apple Silicon machines.

It also hinted that it's working to support virtualisation software, as during its WWDC keynote this week Apple demoed a Mac equipped with an ARM-basedA12Z Bionic SoC running a Linux distribution in Parallels.

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Apple's Silicon could signal the end of Windows 10 through Boot Camp - TechRadar

The NBA is still laying the groundwork for the resumption of the 2019-20 season on July 30, but most of the broader strokes of the plan are already figured out. It's the smaller details that are still up in the air. There will be new information trickling in on a daily basis regarding all aspects of the league's restart, and it can be difficult to keep all the facts straight. One of the more important pieces the NBA needs to get figured out before heading to Orlando is roster size, and how teams will replace a player due to injuries or if someone tests positive for COVID-19.

There have been various reports on roster size and replacement players, and while nothing has been made official by the league yet, we can start to get a picture of what it will entail. So, here are some frequently asked questions on the matter to break down all the current info as clear as possible.

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association are expected to agree on allowing teams to carry 17-man rosters into Orlando. Previously, teams were able to have 15 players on their roster, but as concerns about injuries and the potential for a player testing positive for the coronavirus rise, franchises want the ability to bring extra players into the bubble as an insurance policy.

Medical experts areconcerned about increasing the number of people brought to Orlando, but giving teams the ability to have players already on site is far easier than trying to fly a player in at the drop of a hat. There isn't clarity yet on if players on two-way contracts will count against the 17 guys teams can bring to Disney World, but when The Athletic's Shams Charania first reported about the expanded roster size, he said that it would include two-way players.

There are several teams heading to Orlando who will already have key pieces missing from their rotations. The Utah Jazz will be without Bojan Bogdanovic, who underwent season-ending wrist surgery just a week after the season was postponed. LaMarcus Aldridge won't be suiting up for San Antonio after it was announced that he had shoulder surgery in April. The Nets will still be without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, while the Dallas Mavericks will be without Dwight Powell and Jalen Brunson, the latter of which had shoulder surgery in late March.

All of these teams will have extra roster spots to fill before the season restarts on July 30. As long as the number of players heading to Orlando for each team is 17 or below, there shouldn't be an issue. It's unclear if players like Irving and Durant would be able to join their respective teams in Orlando to support them, as the league wants to keep the number of people inside the bubble low. The traveling party for each team is expected to remain under 35 people each, so if a player wants to go to Orlando, it would count against that number.

It was previously reported that only players who were signed to an NBA or G League contract this season were in the pool of eligible players. However, that's since changed to potentially including players who have been on an NBA or G League contract either this season or last. Players who are deemed ineligible to be signed at this time are international players.

This significantly changes who teams will be able to bring to Orlando, outside of just two-way players. Guys like Jamal Crawford, Joe Johnson and JR Smith, who haven't been signed to a team all season, are now top targets for contending squads. On the flip side of that, if a team decides they want to just bring their two-way players to Orlando, the expanded roster sizes give them the ability to skip the hurdle of having to convert their G League contract into an NBA one and save the contract negotiations until after the season is over.

For someone like Oklahoma City rookie Luguentz Dort, who was starting consistently before the league was shut down, it allows him to have time to negotiate a longer-term contract as a restricted free agent this summer, instead of rushing to get a deal done to play for the remainder of the season.

If a player tests positive and is asymptomatic, they will likely be quarantined for an unspecified amount of time before they are able to rejoin the team. If a player is showing symptoms, they would have to remain out of action until they are symptom-free. In either case, there are two avenues a team could take. The team can either decide to continue on without that player and hope they can return symptom-free in a short amount of time or, a team can decide to bring on a replacement player. According to a league memo to teams, replacing a player with COVID-19 must be done from the moment a player is confirmed positive up until seven days after he returns to practice, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports.

The pool of eligible replacements would be the same as the players teams could sign to extra roster spots, which would include players who were signed to a G League or NBA contract either this season or last. However, the time it would take to fly in a player from outside the bubble and quarantine them before they can join the team may not even be worth it for some franchises. It's also expected that if a team brings in a replacement player during the season, the person who they are filling in for would not be able to return for the remainder of the season, per Wojnarowski.

The transaction window opens June 22 at noon ET and ends in early July after the NBA and NBPA finalized terms of the new CBA for the season restart, Wojnarowski reports. Allowing teams to sign players before heading to Orlando will give them the opportunity to get some practice in before the games are expected to start on July 30. If a team suffers an injury during the resumed season, though, or has a player test positive for coronavirus it is expected that franchises will be allowed to sign replacement players until the postseason starts.

Until last week, the decision to add two extra roster spots to teams didn't seem like it would make much impact for the remainder of the season. Most teams carry roster sizes of 17, which includes two-way players, so many teams heading to Orlando wouldn't need to make major changes. However, after a call last Friday night, where about 80 NBA and WNBA players led by Kyrie Irving discussed the idea of potentially sitting out the season to focus more on the current racial injustice and police brutality in this country, teams might have legitimate holes to fill in their rotations.

No one has officially announced that they will sit out the NBA restart, however, two Lakers players, Avery Bradley and Dwight Howardhave considered it. Both Bradley and Howard play key roles in the Lakers rotation. Howard was having a rejuvenated season in Los Angeles, while Avery Bradley is one of the Lakers' best perimeter defenders. If either of them were to sit out, the Lakers would have the ability to sign a free agent during the transaction window to fill their shoes. Any player who decides to sit out this season, though, whether it is due to safety concerns because of COVID-19, or because they want to focus on racial injustice, have to let their teams know by June 24.

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Everything to know about roster expansion and replacement players for NBA's restart in Orlando bubble - CBS Sports

Since its debut as a Chromium-based browser, Microsoft Edge has become much more popular and, on top of that, has started rolling out to many more users. Now, Microsoft is starting to deliver the new Microsoft Edge as a part of the latest Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 updates.

Microsoft Edge rolled out as a part of the latest Windows 10 updates earlier this year, potentially delivering the browser to millions of users. Now, millions of other users are about to get the browser installed on their laptops and desktops.

As noted in an update changelog directly from Microsoft, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are both about to get the Chromium-based Edge through Windows Update. This latest update actually started rolling out on June 17th, so it should be available for many at this point.

Microsoft explains that the new, Chromium-based Edge will be automatically pinned to the taskbar and will have a shortcut added to the desktop too. Users of the previous version of Edge, too, will see their shortcuts replaced. This wont happen for Internet Explorer, though. The new Microsoft Edge wont automatically become the default browser either.

Microsoft has released a new Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge. This new version provides best in class compatibility with extensions and websites. Additionally, this new version provides great support for the latest rendering capabilities, modern web applications, and powerful developer tools across all supported OS platforms. The new Microsoft Edge will be pinned to the taskbar and add a shortcut to the desktop. If your current version of Microsoft Edge already has a shortcut, it will be replaced.

Microsoft explains that Windows 8.1 users will get this update automatically, but there are a couple of prerequisites to get it on Windows 7. Users will need to be on Service Pack 1 with the SHA-2 update (KB4474419) update installed as well as the servicing stack update (SSU) (KB4490628). Both of those were released in 2019.

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Microsoft rolls out its Chromium-based Edge to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users - 9to5Google