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Many of our dear western democracies have had to issue some form of curfew to slow the spread of COVID-19. Fortunately at this point many are taking the threat seriously but there's a fair few that don't seem to care about suggestions, or even orders, to not leave home unless necessary.

The threat is so serious, that many of the countries are considering, or have already implemented, policies that might violate some of our rights. One can ask, where do we draw the line?

European governments are working with mobile carriers to gather data about crowd movements, Reuters reports. Operators in Europe are sharing anonymous location data to guide in efforts to stop the spread.

The aggregate data can help local governments to see where people are gathering and determine hot spots without sharing individual data. In Germany Deutsche Telekom has donated data and in Italy three different carriers (Telecom Italia, Vodafone and WindTre) are working with the authorities.

A1 Telekom Austria has developed a tracking app with Invenium to guide the efforts in Austria, and others are likely to join in other countries.

Smartphones have made many of the world's leading technology companies what they are. Without a doubt Apple wouldn't be today's Apple without the iPhone.

Many of the leading manufacturers and their partners have been on the smartphone hype train for a decade or more. For most of it, in fact until very recently, it has provided them with immense growth and great profits.

However, it seems that the smartphone industry is now in a crucial spot of reckoning. The past year or two have been much tougher on them than what they are used to, and last month with Chinese factories closing meant a decline that no one expected.

According to Strategy Analytics, smartphone shipments declined a massive 38 percent in February. A total of 61.8 million units were shipped last month compared to 99.2 million previous February.

This is by far the largest decline ever in smartphone history.

March is likely not going to be much better, even though factories in China are pumping out again much more product, as people in the west are stuck at home, and uncertain about their financial situation.

Strategy Analystics expect a lot of the products to be sold on a discount soon as manufacturers and retailers are stuck with products that aren't selling fast enough, and are getting obsolete every second they spend on the shelves.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has tweeted that the carmaker can make ventilators at its factories if there is a shortage.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss has tweeted a bit recently about the COVID-19 pandemic and seems to have taken some flack for suggesting the panic over the virus will do more damage than the virus.

Whether true or not, Elon responded to a tweet asking him if Tesla's factories could make ventilators.

"We will make ventilators if there is a shortage," Musk responded. Later he was told there was a shortage now and he replied by asking for the details of hospitals currently experiencing a shortage.

Tesla makes cars with sophisticated hvac systems. SpaceX makes spacecraft with life support systems. Ventilators are not difficult, but cannot be produced instantly. Which hospitals have these shortages you speak of right now?

-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020

Tesla's main Fremont factory has been impacted by a "shelter in place" order in the Bay Area that seeks to slow the spread of the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Internet Service Providers note an increase in Internet usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU is suggesting you lower your resolution.

European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton is urging streaming providers to act to keep the Internet working smoothly as more people depend on it to work or learn from home.

The Frenchman has already reportedly spoken to Netflix chief Reed Hastings about the concerns of high demand on Europe's Internet infrastructure. Breton also is urging Europeans to #SwitchToStandard - to watch videos in standard definition and not high definition or UltraHD 4K.

In comments to the Financial Times, Hastings pointed out that Netflix has adaptive streaming technology that automatically adjusts the resolution of streaming video depending on the available bandwidth in a local area.

Important phone conversation with @ReedHastings, CEO of @Netflix

To beat #COVID19, we #StayAtHome

Teleworking & streaming help a lot but infrastructures might be in strain.

To secure Internet access for all, let's #SwitchToStandard definition when HD is not necessary.

-- Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) March 18, 2020

Microsoft's Teams service has seen its daily users skyrocket as more employees take their work home.

Teams is a group chat and conference app that is suited to an online work environment. In November, Microsoft revealed that it had 20 million users. Businesses are charged for full-featured access to Teams, but it is also available for free for consumers.

Rival Slack had reached 12 million active users by October. COVID-19 pandemic is sending a lot of workers home and services like Slack and Teams are indispensable tools.

Discord also saw a surge in use over the past month and increased its live streaming limits to address it.

Microsoft also said Teams is helping in the medical field too.

It cited St. Luke's University Health Network in Pennsylvania which will start using Teams for videoconferencing with patients, including those in high-risk groups with regard to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Apple has decided to extend the closing of their brick-and-mortar stores. Previously Apple intended to open the stores outside China to the public again after March 27.

Coronavirus has gotten more intense in the past around the world, and most governments have decided to close schools, ban gatherings, and discourage needless contact. This is as good a reason as any to extend close closing further.

At this point Apple doesn't know how long Apple Stores are going to stay closed. It wholly depends on the spread of the virus, and likely stores will open at different points in different regions.

Apple's online store will function as expected, and you can get all the products shipped to you if needed. In repair or warranty issues, Apple asks customers to contact them by email or phone.

Some of the third-party retailers are still open so you can get products from the likes of Best Buy, at least for now.

In China, Apple Stores are already open. Number of new cases has rapidly dropped in the recent weeks, and in many ways China is back to regular business.

We now know the final specs of what's under the hood of Sony's PlayStation 5 (PS5) console, which will launch later this year.

Sony wants the specs of the PlayStation 5 to enable a step up worthy of being called next-generation, though it stresses that something like the total TFLOPs figure won't necessarily tell the full story in terms of performance. However, it is still worth taking a look at the raw hardware specs to see what they are packing into this new system.

Mark Cerny is demonstrating PS5 system architecture as I type, but the raw details of the hardware are already online thanks to Digital Foundry. In a nutshell, here is what the PS5 will pack under the hood:

• CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2
• Memory/Interface: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit
• Memory Bandwidth: 448GB/s
• Internal Storage: Custom 825GB SSD
• IO Throughput: 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
• Expandable Storage: NVMe SSD Slot
• External Storage: USB HDD Support
• Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive

PlayStation 5, like Xbox Series X, will support ray-tracing which makes the propogation of light and its interaction with objects in-game more realistic. For example, water becomes transparent and light sources will be distorted under way. Also, light passing through a colored semi-transparent object will cast a colored shadow.

The streaming giant is being sued for defamation by a prosecutor involved in the infamous 1989 case.

A four-part mini-series about an infamous criminal case in 1989 is the subject of a defamation lawsuit targeting Netflix. The 'Central Park jogger case' emerged from the sexual and physical assault of a 28-year-old lady who was jogging in central park, and numerous other assaults, on April 19, 1989.

The case resulted in the conviction of five youths - the "Central Park Five" - who received sentences ranging from 5-15 years in prison. Prosecution of the teens relied on confessions made by the boys to police, which were later withdrawn.

In 2001, serial rapist and convicted murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the attack on the woman in the case. His DNA matched with samples taken from the scene and he also provided additional confirmatory evidence. The convictions of the Central Park Five were vacated in 2002.

Now a former prosecutor in the case is suing Netflix over a miniseries - When They See Us - based on the case. Linda Fairstein filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. It alleges that the Netflix series depicts her as a mastermind of a racist plot. The victim in the case was white, while four of the convicted teenagers were black and one was Hispanic.

A demo for the remake of 1999 hit Resident Evil 3 will be available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One from tomorrow, March 19.

The remake has been in development for three years and will follow the remake of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 which both rolled out in the past couple of years. The return of the critically acclaimed survival horror series has been a success and Resident Evil 3 is eagerly anticipated.

In Resident Evil 3, players will follow Jill Valentine's escape from Racoon City, which was overcome by zombifying viruses produced by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation.]

The game will be released in full on April 3 and will also include multiplayer Resident Evil Resistance, which lets players join a group of survivors or as a mastermind who sets traps to kill other players.

An open beta for Resident Evil Resistance will be available from March 27.

Fox buys ad-supported movie and TV show streaming service and funds it by selling its stake in Roku.

Fox Corp has announced that it sold its five percent stake in Roku, which it first invested in back in 2013, and has acquired Tubi TV for $440 million. It may also pay up to an additional $50 million in deferred considerations and unvested options.

Tubi TV is an ad-supported streaming service. According to Tubi, its users spend 160 million hours per month watching content on the service, which features movies and television shows.

In swapping its investment in Roku for the Tubi TV acquisition, Fox said it was "essentially exchanging a passively held minority investment for full ownership and control of a leadership position in the free ad-supported streaming market."

Tubi TV will continue operations as an independent subsidiary of Fox, retaining founder Farhad Massoudi in the role of CEO.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Authorities say that Tesla cannot continue normal operations at its primary production plant in the United States.

The all-electric car maker employs more than 10,000 at its plant in Fremont, Alemada County. The plant has produced more than 415,000 electric vehicles as of the end of December 2019.

Alameda is under order to "shelter in place" along with eight other counties to limit activity as COVID-19 cases increase in California. Only essential businesses can continue normal operations during the lockdown.

"Tesla is not an essential business as defined in the Alameda County Health Order. Tesla can maintain minimum basic operations per the Alameda County Health Order," a county sheriff's office spokesman said, reports Reuters.

Under the order, non-essential businesses can only maintain basic operations which including things like maintaining the value of inventory or processing payroll.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had already urged employees who felt unwell in any way to stay at home, but Tesla had planned to continue production.

If you were around six years ago and actively seeking for BitTorrent enabled movie services, you are probably familiar with Popcorn Time. The controversial service with a fairly unstable history has now come back to life, Motherboard reports.

The original service was buried in early 2014 but it came back just hours later by another group. Even the one died mere year and a half later.

There's no story behind the resurfacing of an old familiar face, not that we know anyways, but one could construct a plausible reasoning on top of coronavirus and people searching for content online. Especially since the latest version of Popcorn Time has been named Corona.

However, what we do know is that people are using VPN way more than they were before the outbreak. In fact, Popcorn Time suggests that you use VPN when using the service for reasons that will become obvious if they aren't already.

World has in many ways stopped and people have definitely isolated due to coronavirus spreading around the world. Conferences have been cancelled, school's out, movie theaters are suffering, and people are spending time at home.

For some very specific businesses this means a boost. Amazon is hiring 100,000 new employees and Netflix is likely more crowded than ever. The latter also means that VPN connections are on the rise.

As people are using their internet and region-restricted streaming services, they are seeking new content from abroad, according to Atlas VPN blog post. Another reason, probably as important, is to access work networks from home as more and more people are working from home.

The company reveals that VPN usage has indeed increased tremendously in coronavirus affected countries. In the US, usage is up 53% but in Italy, the western country that has been affected the worst, is up 112%.

Even Russia, that has officially had only a few cases of coronavirus, has gone up 36%.

There are also services that are provided to Italians for free due to the harsh impact coronavirus has had in the country. VPN might make it possible for people from other countries to share those benefits.

As soon as Microsoft decided to reveal most of the mighty specs of their upcoming Xbox Series X console, Sony is ready to unveil something of their own.

PlayStation 5 has so far been under covers, and there's not a lot we know about the next-gen gaming console. This is going to change tomorrow, as the Japanese company is set to reveal the console.

PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny will "provide a deep dive into PS5's system architecture." What exactly this means is unclear, and whether we see the actual console, and perhaps the controllers is unclear.

It is likely that at this point Sony is still just going to talk about the technical specifications, and leave the console unveiling itself for a later event.

Xbox Series X specs (see them here) are likely going to be challenged today, and Sony wants to express exactly how they are going to be outcompeting their rival.

Sony might have intended to share this information at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which would've been organized right now if coronavirus didn't happen. Both GDC as well as E3 in June were cancelled due to the outbreak.

NBCUniversal announced that Universal Pictures will make movies available for digital rental on the same day as a theatrical release.

The news comes as coronavirus fears have shut theaters in countries around the world. The Hunt, The Invisible Man and Emma, will be available on a wide variety of the most popular on-demand services for a 48-hour rental period at a suggested retail price of $19.99 in the U.S., from this Friday, March 20.

DreamWorks Animation's Trolls World Tour has its opening on April 10 and will be available for digital rental the same day.

"Universal Pictures has a broad and diverse range of movies with 2020 being no exception. Rather than delaying these films or releasing them into a challenged distribution landscape, we wanted to provide an option for people to view these titles in the home that is both accessible and affordable," said Jeff Shell, CEO, NBCUniversal

"We hope and believe that people will still go to the movies in theaters where available, but we understand that for people in different areas of the world that is increasingly becoming less possible."

Movie studios have considered releasing movies online during their theatrical run for years, only to be pushed back by theater chains who see it as an obvious threat to their revenues.