• Cable and satellite TV companies had their worst quarter on record in Q1 2020.
• In addition to all of the US households that are cutting the cord, many businesses, such as restaurants, bars, and hotels, are canceling their subscriptions because they aren’t open.
• Furthermore, without live sports, many businesses don’t see the point in paying for TV.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

As streaming video and over-the-top internet TV services continue to flood the market, traditional cable companies have struggled to keep their subscribers from cutting the cord. Subscriptions have been dropping at a steady clip for years now, and despite the fact that the novel coronavirus pandemic is forcing everyone to stay inside, the top cable and satellite TV companies just recorded their sharpest quarterly decline ever.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the biggest companies in the industry lost more than two million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020. AT&T and Dish Network have been hit especially hard, while Comcast and Charter suffered more modest losses. There are a number of factors contributing to this phenomenon, but the lack of live sports has perhaps been the single most influential driving force behind many of the cancellations.

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You won’t believe how many people cut the cord during the coronavirus pandemic originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 19:36:30 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Tesla filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over the weekend so that it can resume operations at its Fremont factory in California.
• Meanwhile, Tesla reportedly started manufacturing Tesla vehicles over the weekend.
• Frustrated with the imposed lockdown, Elon Musk recently threatened to move Tesla out of California.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

In a move that should surprise no one, The Verge is reporting that Tesla started manufacturing cars once again at its factory in Fremont, California.

“The company called back some of its workers and has completed around 200 cars Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, according to two current employees,” the report reads.

The legality of Tesla’s decision here remains up in the air and comes in the wake of a lawsuit the company filed against Alameda County for refusing to let it reopen its Fremont factory. Tesla’s lawsuit was filed shortly after California started loosening up restrictions regarding which type of businesses can resume operations. Note that Tesla’s Fremont factory has been closed since mid-March and Elon Musk isn’t happy about it. Hardly a surprise, Musk has long maintained that efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic have been too heavy-handed. In an internal memo sent out to Tesla employees a few weeks ago, Musk opined that “the harm from the coronavirus panic far exceeds that of the virus itself.”

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Tesla resumes Model 3 manufacturing as legal battle looms overhead originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 19:05:29 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• A coronavirus patient named Gregg Garfield recently left a California hospital after spending more than two months battling the virus.
• Garfield’s symptoms were particularly severe as the virus attacked all of his vital organs.
• Work on a coronavirus vaccine is ongoing but there’s no telling when a vaccine will be available.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

With the coronavirus pandemic still raging, we’re constantly being bombarded by a seemingly endless stream of discouraging and heartbreaking news. People are dying, families and individuals are struggling to make ends meet, and there’s no telling when we’ll return to a sense of normalcy. And while scientists and researchers continue to work diligently on a vaccine or effective treatment, the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States is still rising and recently eclipsed 80,000.

In light of that, there are some coronavirus stories, however rare, that don’t center on disaster or heartbreak. Recently, 54-year-old Gregg Garfield was discharged from a California hospital after spending more than two months there with coronavirus symptoms. Originally brought to light by CBS Los Angeles, Garfield contracted the virus during a ski trip in Italy this past February and ultimately started exhibiting severe complications.

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‘Miracle patient’ leaves hospital after 64-day fight with coronavirus originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 18:34:35 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Samsung has been working for more than a year to bring foldable handsets to market that revolutionize the idea of how people use their smartphones.
• Following the less-than-ideal launch in 2019 of the original Galaxy Fold, new rumors have emerged suggesting a more affordable successor to the Galaxy Fold could be coming soon, along with additional foldable models.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

Not even a global pandemic can apparently dim Samsung’s fascination with foldability as a smartphone form factor — nor the South Korean tech giant’s ambition to make such foldable phones, if not a mainstream product, at least a more familiar sight in the world.

We’d already heard, for example, that the successor to the Galaxy Fold will include a base model with 256GB of internal storage at a lower price point than any of the original Fold models. That should, at least theoretically, make these phones with novel designs unfamiliar to most consumers perhaps a more attractive buy. Meanwhile, a tipster is reporting that Samsung may actually be planning to release three new foldable smartphones, two of which would feature plastic panels like last year’s OG Galaxy Fold while the third would come with the Galaxy Z Flip’s ultra-thin foldable glass.

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New Galaxy Fold rumors hint at a more affordable model originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 18:03:31 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Researchers have said that a coronavirus vaccine could be reached sooner if human challenge trials were allowed. Doing so would help speed up vaccine efforts by a few months.
• The FDA, however, has never allowed human challenge trials to take place without a cure or adequate treatment available.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

Without a coronavirus vaccine, there’s a good chance that we won’t be able to return to a pre-coronavirus lifestyle for quite some time. Even if the coronavirus subsides in the coming weeks and months, there’s a very real fear that a second and more dangerous wave will spring up later this year. Earlier this month, a report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota said that the coronavirus pandemic could last for as long as two years without a proper vaccine.

Coming up with a coronavirus vaccine is certainly challenging, but developing a vaccine in a compressed time frame adds an entirely new layer of complexity. As a result, there has been talk — mostly theoretical — about accelerating the testing process and introducing human trials of a potential vaccine sooner than what would ordinarily be allowed.

Typically, a potential vaccine is tested on animals first which is then followed by testing on a small group of humans. If that test proves promising, testing on a larger group of humans begins. That is then followed by Phase 3, which takes the longest amount of time.

1DaySooner explains:

This normally evaluates the effectiveness of the vaccine in a study involving thousands of participants, and is the final step before a vaccine is deemed safe enough for regulators to allow widespread use. To show that it is both effective and safe, researchers look at differences in infection risks and side effects between those who receive the vaccine and those given a placebo. The hope is to find a vaccine that both reduces the chances of infection, and causes no (severe) side-effects.

Because this can be quite a long process, a March paper from the National Center for Biotechnology Information argues that we can speed up the process by a few months by infecting volunteers with potential vaccines in a controlled setting:

Controlled human challenge trials of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates could accelerate the testing and potential rollout of efficacious vaccines. By replacing conventional Phase 3 testing of vaccine candidates, such trials may subtract many months from the licensure process, making efficacious vaccines available more quickly.

This strategy, of course, would be risky:

Obviously, challenging volunteers with this live virus risks inducing severe disease and possibly even death. However, we argue that such studies, by accelerating vaccine evaluation, could reduce the global burden of coronavirus-related mortality and morbidity. Volunteers in such studies could autonomously authorize the risks to themselves, and their net risk could be acceptable if participants comprise healthy young adults, who are at relatively low risk of serious disease following natural infection, they have a high baseline risk of natural infection, and during the trial they receive frequent monitoring and, following any infection, the best available care.

This all begs the question: would a sufficient number of humans even volunteer for such testing? The answer to that question, perhaps surprisingly, is a resounding yes. Per 1DaySooner, more than 16,000 people have already expressed interest in signing up for a “human challenge trial for COVID-19 if one were to occur.”

All that said, it’s unclear how many people who indicated an interest in volunteering themselves would actually follow through. What’s more, the FDA has never authorized “human challenge trials especially if there is no immediate cure available.”

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Thousands would infect themselves with coronavirus to speed up vaccine testing originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 17:42:24 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Google and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York have teamed up amid the coronavirus pandemic for a partnership that involves using Nest Cams to remotely monitor patients.
• The benefit is that this frees up health care workers from having to be in close contact with the patients as much, which also will save on the use of protective equipment.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

Doctors and nurses are being rightfully recognized as the heroes of the coronavirus pandemic for being on the front lines of the crisis and potentially putting themselves in harm’s way, risking their health whenever they come into close contact with the COVID-19 patients they have to check up on and provide urgent care for.

Multiply that by some multiple that encompasses the numerous patient interactions that occur each day at hospitals around the country, not to mention the much-in-demand protective equipment they have to wear to do so, and you begin to see the cost associated with this risk. This is why Google has teamed up with one New York hospital on a system that uses technology to make remote monitoring of coronavirus patients possible, curbing the risk to health workers and preserving their valuable protective gear in the process.

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Google Nest Cams monitor coronavirus patients to ease the burden on health workers originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 17:21:29 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Major League Baseball owners approved a proposal that will be presented to players that outlines the 2020 season in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
• The proposed season would have about 82 games and an expanded postseason with 14 teams.
• No fans will be allowed to attend baseball games if and when the season begins.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

One of the first signs that the novel coronavirus pandemic was going to be more than a passing fad in the United States was when the NBA season was indefinitely suspended on March 11th — two months ago today. In the weeks that followed, all live sports were either canceled or suspended, and before long, most of the country had shut down. Discussions about bringing sports back have been ongoing ever since they disappeared, and now, two months later, Major League Baseball has taken the first tangible step to playing games on American soil again.

According to the Associated Press, MLB owners have approved a proposal that will be presented to players for the 2020 season. ESPN reports that MLB plans to meet with the players union on Tuesday to discuss the plan and start negotiations that could lead to the season kicking off during the Fourth of July weekend.

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We’re one step closer to MLB coming back for the 2020 season originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 17:00:12 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• NASA is well aware of the risks of bringing samples back from Mars, and is taking precautions to ensure no microbial life gets loose.
• Samples from the Red Planet will be treated “as though they are the Ebola virus” while being handled by scientists.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

We’re in the middle of a global health crisis due to a virus that seemingly came out of nowhere. At this point, the last thing we need is to have to worry about an alien virus invading Earth after laying dormant for millions or billions of years. Believe it or not, it’s a real concern for scientists that are eager to study rocks and material brought back to Earth from Mars.

NASA doesn’t currently have a concrete data for a manned mission to Mars, but it’s already working on the sample-gathering network that will bring the first fresh Martian soil to our plant. The Perseverance rover is capable of collecting and sealing samples that will one day be sent back to Earth.

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Could Mars missions bring alien viruses back to Earth? originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 16:37:49 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Earlier this month, the FDA approved the drug remdesivir to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
• Shipments of remdesivir began going out last week, but only 607,000 of the 1,500,000 vials that drugmaker Gilead is donating are being distributed in the US.
• There are over 300,000 patients eligible to receive remdesivir in the US, but the 607,000 vials are only enough to treat 78,000 hospitalized patients.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

Ever since the coronavirus reached the United States, there hasn’t been much good news to speak of. The national response was distressingly slow, the messaging was muddled, and as a result, the US was hit harder by SARS-CoV-2 than any other country. There was a faint ray of light earlier this month when the FDA authorized emergency use of a drug called remdesivir to treat COVID-19, but even that news now comes with a caveat.

Gilead Sciences Inc., the maker of the drug, has announced that it will donate 1.5 million vials of remdesivir over the next six weeks, but of those 1.5 million vials, 607,000 will stay in the United States. The US Department of Health and Human Services says that will be enough to treat 78,000 hospitalized patients. That sounds like a lot, but according to Bloomberg, there are more than 300,000 patients eligible to receive the drug in the US.

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Coronavirus drug remdesivir is going to be hard to find in the US originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 16:14:40 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• A new Sony patent reveals innovations for a PlayStation virtual assistant that could help with gameplay in real-time.
• The documentation details technology that will allow a digital assistant to present information about game progress, level duration, and direct feedback on the user’s gameplay.
• The feature might come to the PS5, but it’s unclear if Sony will deploy it this year.
• Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.

Launching this fall, the PS5 and Xbox Series X will have similar capabilities, based on what we know so far. The hardware is nearly identical on the two consoles, with the new Xbox promising better CPU and GPU performance than the new PlayStation, and the PS5 sporting a faster custom SSD. But it’s on the software side that Sony and Microsoft will try to outdo each other, and the PS5 might have a crucial advantage over the Series X.

The PS5 might have a game-centric virtual assistant similar to Siri or Google Assistant, according to a series of new Sony patents that have described aspects of the technology. The official announcement of the DualSense controller confirmed the device will have a microphone that could be used for voice commands. In the reveal post, Sony explained that the microphone could be a quick way to talk to friends. But we have one more piece of evidence that suggests Sony has bigger things in mind for voice computing in the gaming landscape.

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Your PS5 might let you know when you suck at a game originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 11 May 2020 at 15:51:55 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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