Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 16, 2020

5G wireless is driving up the cost of smartphones; Doctors in Israel removed an entire lung from a patient, eliminated all cancerous cells, then reattached the lung; Whisper app for secret sharing revealed individuals' locations, ages, and other details; Advice for people who are working from home because of the coronavirus; and a Steem post describing a youtube video where chickens were hatched from store-bought eggs

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Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

Straight from my RSS feed

Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak^*, StemGeeks.

1. 5G is making the smartphones we love more expensive than ever - In 2020, all high-end android phones are expected to include 5G mobile. To see how that effects prices, the article compares top-end phones from Samsung and finds that the 5G Galaxy S20 will start at about $1,000, a 33% increase over the 4G Galaxy S10e, which started at $750. The article goes on to say that OnePlus is known for offering the best value in premier cell phones, but even that company says that 5G is going to make its product line more expensive. As with other emerging technologies, the author expects the cost of 5G to come down as time passes.


2. Medical Breakthrough In Israel: A Lung Was Removed From The Body Of A Cancer Patient, Cleaned And Returned - A patient in his mid-40s had a cancerous tumor in one lung. In a first of its kind procedure, doctors removed the entire lung while the patient continued breathing through the other, healthy one. With the lung removed, doctors were able to eliminate all of the tumor, and then attach the lung back inside the body. -h/t Daniel Lemire


3. Secret-sharing app Whisper left users’ locations, fetishes exposed on the Web - The secret-sharing app, Whisper is supposed to be a place where people can safely confess intimate secrets about themselves. However, independent researchers uncovered the fact that the app was leaving a trail of information including age, location, and other details that could have been used to unmask and blackmail the app's users. The researchers shared their observations with the Washington Post and law enforcement. In turn, the newspaper contacted the company, who took down the database. The database had apparently been accessible for several years, and may have been downloaded by countless people. A search of the database revealed almost 900 million records with 1.5 million of them listing an age of 15 years old. The researchers who discovered the leak were Matthew Porter and Dan Ehrlich from Twelve Security. Records also contained submissions from US military bases, and a blog article by Ehrlich claims that

   Military members across the US are being blackmailed by being lured into honeypot sexual blackmail groups.

   Parents, if you never teach your kids anything else, teach them this: "Never put anything on the Internet that you don't want your mother to see on the front page of the NY Times." -h/t Bruce Schneier


4. Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice - (i) Your office should have a view that you find appealing when you look away from your keyboard; (ii) You should work from a dedicated and separate area of your home; (iii) Move your "water-cooler conversation" to Slack; (iv) Pets are a great outlet for short breaks during the day; and (v) Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, cook at least one "effortful" meal per day.


5. Steem @ashwinpremnath: Can store bought eggs be hatched? - In this post, the author draws our attention to an embedded youtube video claiming to demonstrate that the answer is "yes". It seems that the youtuber accomplished the feat over the course of 20 days through use of a water bottle, resistors, a fan, and store bought eggs. The water bottle, fan and resistors were all combined into a DIY incubator, and the eggs were placed inside. Then, every three to six hours, the youtuber would shift the position of the eggs by 45 minutes. After 20 days, the chicks started emerging.
   
   Here is the video: (but please click through to upvote the original post.)
   

   (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @ashwinpremnath.)

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