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.

See original here:
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.

Read more here:
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.

See more here:
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.

See the rest here:
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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Continued here:
Microsoft rolls out its Chromium-based Edge to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users - 9to5Google

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

NBA teams looking to fill out their roster for the season restart will reportedly be allowed to begin signing free agents orconvert two-way and/or 10-day contracts into standard deals beginning June 23.

Per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, the league has set the transaction window for all 30 teams for June 23 at noon ET through June 30 at 11:59 p.m.

Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press noted the league will look to lock rosters on approximately Aug. 14:

According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, the NBA has also pushed the 2020 draft back one day to Oct. 16, with the early entry deadline falling on Aug. 17. Per Wojnarowski, free agency will still open Oct. 18.

PerReynolds, teams in Orlando, Florida, will be allowed "toreplace players who opt out of playing at Disney or are otherwise excused, on a limited basis."

He added: "If a player tests positive for coronavirus during the playoffs, teams have been told that he can be replacedby a substitute player who has three or fewer years of service, per source."

According to Marc Stein of theNew York Times, players eligible to sign "must have held an NBA or G- League contract this season ... or were NOT under contract this season with a professional team outside of the United States."

The 22 teams that will be in Orlando for the season restart can carry up to 17 players on their roster, perCharania.

The additional roster spots will provide teams with insurance in case a player gets injured or tests positive for COVID-19.

In the NBA's health and safety manual provided to players and obtained byCharania, phase two of the return-to-play plan runs from June 23 to 30, and teams will conduct mandatory COVID-19 testing for all players and staff members.

Training camps will run from July 9 to 29, followed by eight regular-season "seeding" games, starting July 30, leading into the playoffs.

Link:
Report: NBA Transaction Window for Season Restart to Open on June 23 - Bleacher Report

Apple wants the iPhone to replace your car keys. On Monday, the tech company announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, a new feature that uses the smartphone to unlock and start a car.

While Apple's years-long ambition to build its own vehicle hasn't materialized, its CarPlay infotainment system is available in 97 per cent of new cars, according to the company.

And it thinks that the humble car key, which on new cars can take the shape of your vehicle, or even feature a screen of its own, can still be improved further.

"They've been around for over 100 years but they've become big, bulky and ripe for reimagining," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering.

Apple will first roll out the feature on the 2021 BMW 5 Series, but wants to expand it to other car models.

Emily Schubert, Apple senior manager of car experience engineering, demonstrated how a driver can tap the door handle with their iPhone to unlock the sedan. Then drivers place the iPhone on the car's charging pad and push the ignition button to start the car. The Apple technology relies on what's known as Near Field Communication, which allows devices within a few centimeters of each other to exchange data wirelessly.

Apple plans to transition to using a different technology, ultra wideband, which will allow for unlocking from greater distances. An iPhone could remain in a driver's pocket or bag.

BMW owners will also be able to share the virtual car key with friends through iMessage. Volvo offers a similar service in which keys can be shared with smartphones.

Apple is working with standards groups to pave the way for expanding the technology to more cars. Federighi said it expects to see support for the new ultra wideband standard in new vehicles next year.

In May, an industry group, the Car Connectivity Consortium, announced a standardized way to store digital keys. Its members include major automakers and tech companies such as Apple, BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Samsung and Volkswagen.

See the article here:
Apple's newest iPhone feature aims to replace the car key - CTV News