Tag: Panic

In Fast-Moving Pandemic, Sources of Falsehoods Spread by Text, Email, WhatsApp and TikTok Elude Authorities

Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how rapidly false claims are spreading — and how often it is happening beyond the familiar misinformation vehicles of Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The false texts spread so widely that on Sunday night the White…

Coronavirus: Concerns as UK delays release of new case locations

The UK’s Department of Health and Social Care’s plan to report the locations of new cases of covid-19 only once a week may lead to more panic Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236409-coronavirus-concerns-as-uk-delays-release-of-new-case-locations/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

How China Is Hunting Down Coronavirus Critics

“As China ramps up efforts to control the narrative around the coronavirus outbreak, it is also expanding its efforts to leverage online platforms to track down people who dare to speak out,” reports Vice. “From tracking down Twitter users using their mobile numbers to hacking WeChat accounts to find out someone’s location, Beijing is eager to stop any negative news from…

Shoddy Coronavirus Studies Are Going Viral And Stoking Panic

Scientists are rapidly posting findings about the new coronavirus outbreak online, accelerating the speed of scientific discoveries — and of misinformation. From a report: Last Friday morning, after a week in which the coronavirus outbreak had been declared a global public health emergency, a group of scientists from India posted a paper online. A handful of genetic sequences in the new…

Chinese Criminal Gangs Spreading African Swine Fever To Force Farmers To Sell Pigs Cheaply So They Can Profit

Chinese criminals have been exploiting the country’s African swine fever crisis by intentionally spreading the disease to force farmers to sell their pigs for a low price before smuggling the meat and selling it on as healthy stock, state media has reported. From a report: Sometimes the gangs spread rumours about the virus, which is fatal to pigs, but in more…

Ohio Neighborhood Temporarily Evacuated Over Misplaced Fears of a Homemade Nuclear Reactor

“A 911 call Thursday led to a precautionary evacuation of an entire street in a Northwest Side neighborhood in Columbus over concerns about a possible small nuclear reactor and alpha waves reported by a resident who said he sustained burns in his garage on the device,” acocrding to the Columbus Dispatch. Slashdot reader k6mfw shared their report: In the end, authorities…

Who knew? Plants ‘panic’ when it rains

Using a spray bottle to simulate rain, researchers found a “panic-like” response in plants. Complex chemical warning signals were passed from leaf to leaf and even communicated to other plants. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/plants-panic-when-wet-how-plants-communicate…

A Widespread BlueKeep ‘Exploit’ Is Targetting Unpatched Windows 7/XP Computers

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes:
When Microsoft issued the first patch in years for Windows XP in May 2019, you knew that something big was brewing. That something was a wormable Windows vulnerability that security experts warned could have a similar impact as the WannaCry worm from 2017. The BlueKeep vulnerability exists in unpatched versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows…

Today in science: Launch of Sputnik

Sputnik’s unassuming beep ushered in the Space Age. Hear it here. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/this-date-in-science-launch-of-sputnik-october-4-1957…