CD Projekt Red is taking some quick steps to stop the spread of its games’ source code, particularly via social media. The company had game code stolen and allegedly sold off as part of a hack earlier this month, and the company is doing everything in its power to prevent the code for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 from spreading online. One strategy it’s using is serving DMCA notices to those trying to share the code online. It remains to be seen how effective this strategy will be.
According to Vice, on Thursday, February 18, two different Twitter users were notified of a DMCA takedown related to sharing code for the card game Gwent. At least one of the tweets in question contained a link to the game’s source code.
The hackers left a ransom note after committing the attack against CD Projekt, but the company said it wasn’t going to give in to these demands when it initially shared the news, knowing the data could be released if it didn’t agree.
The note itself said four different projects’ source code was stolen, including the aforementioned three games as well as an unreleased version of The Witcher 3. Other administrative data was stolen, as well. Plenty were quick to jump in with jokes about how the interface for hacking in Cyberpunk 2077 made this all possible.
CD Projekt Red continues working on updates to improve Cyberpunk 2077, as its public image took a huge hit in December when the game released in a borderline-broken state. The game was even pulled from sale on PlayStation Store, and refund programs were enacted for unhappy customers. True next-gen versions are planned for later this year, and there is also a multiplayer experience on the way.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the Covid-19 vaccine can slow the spread of the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.
Whether vaccination can prevent transmission of the virus is “the looming question,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House coronavirus response team briefing. “If a person gets infected despite being vaccinated — we refer to that as a ‘breakthrough’ infection — does that person have the capability of transmitting to another person?”
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“There have been some studies that are pointing in a very favorable direction,” he said, adding that these studies will have to be corroborated by additional research.
Fauci highlighted two recent studies that looked at a person’s viral load — that is, how much virus he or she has in the body — and transmissibility.
One study from Spain, published Feb. 2 in The Lancet, found a direct correlation between viral load and transmissibility. The higher the viral load, the greater the transmissibility of the virus.
That’s in line with what years of research on HIV have shown: there’s a direct link between the viral load in someone’s blood and the likelihood that individual will transmit HIV to a sexual partner, Fauci said.
For SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, researchers are focused on how much virus is found the nasopharynx, the upper part of the throat behind the nose that’s reached with a long, skinny swab.
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The second study Fauci described — a paper that has not undergone peer review that was posted last week to the preprint server medRvix — looked at coronavirus infections in Israel, a country with very high rates of vaccination.
That paper found that individuals who were infected after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination had a “markedly diminished” viral load compared with unvaccinated people.
It’s another example of “scientific data starting to point to the fact that [the vaccine] … has very important implications from a public health standpoint for interfering and diminishing the dynamics of the outbreak,” Fauci said.
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Dr. John Anthony Vanchiere, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport in Louisiana, said that the two studies “go nicely together hand in hand.”
“We know that it is the case for flu and other respiratory viruses that higher viral loads are associated with increased transmission,” he said. “The fact that the vaccine reduces the viral load, even shortly after getting your first dose, it’s very important data to have.”
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are currently studying how vaccination affects transmissibility, Fauci said.
“The bottom line message,” he said, is “when your turn to get vaccinated comes up, get vaccinated. It’s not only good for you and your family and community, it will have a very important impact on the dynamics of the outbreak in our country.”
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Sara G. Miller
Sara G. Miller is the health editor for NBC News, Health & Medical Unit.
A 90-year-old California man frustrated with his slow AT&T internet service took out two newspaper ads totaling $10,000 to tell the company’s CEO that he needs to do a better job of providing his north Hollywood neighborhood with faster speed.
Aaron M. Epstein said he’s been an AT&T customer since 1960 and only started having issues with his internet speed in the last five years when internet streaming became widely available.
He said he was paying for 3.5 Mbps, but it couldn’t handle streaming.
“When I would watch a movie on Netflix or some other streaming service, it was like a slideshow. It would start and stop, start and stop, very frustrating,” he said in a phone interview Friday.
Epstein said he started calling the company to ask for faster service but was told that it wasn’t available in his area.
A 90-year-old California man took out two ads in the Wall Street Journal to let AT&T’s CEO know about his abysmal internet service speed.Courtesy Dow Jones
Epstein said he didn’t want to change to another internet provider because he was concerned about having to change his phone number and email address, so he decided to take out two ads in The Wall Street Journal to vent his frustration.
A spokesperson for The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the ads ran in the Feb. 3 edition of the newspaper; one in New York and the other in Texas where AT&T has a headquarters in Dallas. The spokesperson declined to comment on how much Epstein paid for the ads.
Epstein titled the ads, “Open Letter to Mr. John T. Stankey CEO AT&T.”
“Many of our neighbors are the creative technical workers in the Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney studios in the adjacent city of Burbank and our city. We need to keep up with current technology and have looked to AT&T to supply us with fast internet service,” it reads.
“Yet, although AT&T is advertising speeds up to 100 MBS for other neighborhoods, the fastest now available to us from ATT is only 3 MBS. Your competitors now have speeds of over 200 MBS. Why is AT&T a leading communications company, treating us so shabbily in North Hollywood?”
The day the ads ran, Epstein said he received a call from Stankey’s office asking him how they could resolve the situation. Earlier this week, he received a surprise: two AT&T technicians who arrived at his home to set up a faster internet speed.
“It’s definitely a lot faster and it’s everything I expect of it,” he said of his new service.
Epstein said that some people have praised him for what he did while others criticized him over the hefty price for the ads.
“I’m not a frivolous spender of money and $10,000 means a lot to me, but in this particular instance it was money well spent,” he said, explaining that he and his wife have been passing the time during the coronavirus pandemic by streaming TV shows and movies.
“People are not going to expensive restaurants. People are not going on fancy vacations. My wife and I are at home and watch Netflix and streaming services more. So, I have no complaints whatsoever about spending this kind of money,” he said.
Epstein said he received a phone call from Stankey and he thanked the CEO for the upgraded service. He also asked that his neighbors receive faster internet speed.
An AT&T spokesperson said Friday that the company has completed its planned expansion of AT&T Fiber, a faster internet speed, in Epstein’s neighborhood.
“This neighborhood was already planned to receive fiber and is part of our ongoing fiber expansion in the larger Los Angeles area. Nationally, we recently announced that we will bring AT&T Fiber to an additional 2 million residential locations this year,” the spokesperson said.
Minyvonne Burke
Minyvonne Burke is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
PONTOISE, France — In the town of Pontoise, which gently slopes upward from the Oise River about 15 miles northeast of Paris, Mayor Stéphanie Von Euw is laser-focused on her new vaccination center — a blocky, sand-colored recreational facility where up to 450 shots are administered daily to those over 75 or otherwise at high risk.
Ms. Von Euw was energetic on a recent visit, chatting with doctors and vaccine recipients. But here in Pontoise, as in many other parts of France, there is no hiding that a winter of pandemic doldrums has set in.
“To keep my chin up, I try to follow this rule: I take one day at a time,” Ms. Von Euw said across a table covered with chocolate boxes left by recent vaccine recipients. “If I look to the future, I lose myself.”
Caught between infection rates that remain stubbornly high despite months of economically damaging restrictions and a slow-moving vaccine rollout, there is a growing and glum sense in France that the country’s battle against the pandemic has stalled.
Last month, the country was bracing for a third nationwide lockdown when President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly decided against it. He made a calculated gamble that he could tighten restrictions just enough to stave off a new surge of virus cases while avoiding the heavier economic and social toll of more drastic measures like those currently in force in Germany or Britain.
Weeks later, it is still unclear whether that bet will pay off or if, as some health experts have warned, there is little chance of containing the spread without a strict lockdown.
The average number of daily infections, at about 20,000, has neither spiked nor fallen much over the past month. But more contagious variants from other parts of the world are spreading.
Arnaud Fontanet, an epidemiologist at the Institut Pasteur who is also a member of the government’s Covid-19 advisory council, said on Sunday that the chances of containing the epidemic without a tight lockdown are thin.
“Everything will depend on our ability to control the spread of the British variant,” Mr. Fontanet told the Journal du Dimanche. “If we wait too long, we could be taken by surprise by the epidemic’s acceleration.”
Hospitalizations are stable but still at high levels, with about 28,000 Covid-19 patients across the country, including about 3,300 taking up more than half of the capacity in intensive care units.
Some experts said they worry that a plateau in infection numbers at these higher levels leaves little room to maneuver if hospitals face a new spike in cases.
The government is projecting optimism, and the health minister even told Franceinfo radio on Tuesday that the country might not have to go under lockdown ever again. But the public’s mood is one of uncertainty.
“There is a lot of wavering,” said Odile Essombé-Missé, 79, who was standing in line at the vaccination center in Pontoise for her 85-year-old husband’s injection. Asked about a new lockdown, she just shrugged.
“We put up with it,” she said finally, with her eyeglasses, perched atop a colorful blue and orange face mask, fogged over.
Mr. Macron has vowed that all adults who want to get vaccines would be offered them by summer’s end.
More than 2.2 million out of France’s population of 67 million have received at least one dose so far, and nearly 250,000 have been fully vaccinated. But with 3.1 doses administered per 100 people, according to a New York Times database, France still trails neighbors like Italy or Spain.
“We could double, even triple the rhythm,” Ms. Von Euw said, if her center were allocated more supply of vaccines.
But the European Union has struggled in recent weeks to secure a steady supply of doses. The French government has managed to open up a promising 1.7 million new appointment slots in the coming weeks as deliveries roll in.
“I’m not yet immune, but I’m still reassured,” said Eliane Coudert, an 80-year-old retiree who had come from the neighboring town of Éragny to Pontoise for her shot. She was sitting patiently with a handful of newly inoculated companions in a small waiting area, where doctors monitor for adverse side-effects.
Ms. Coudert, who is diabetic, said she was determined to get vaccinated so she could see her great-granddaughters again.
“I see them a bit outside,” she said. “But we can’t kiss each other.”
France has been under a night curfew since mid-January and restaurants, cafes, museums or movie theaters are closed, turning even the liveliest of French cities into ghost towns after 6 p.m.
So in some ways, the vaccination center — where the local Rotary Club sometimes brings croissants and other pastries — represented a much-needed social outing for seniors who have spent weeks or months in near-isolation.
“The restrictions imposed by social distancing are starting to exasperate everyone,” said Dr. Edouard Devaud, an infectious diseases specialist at the Centre Hospitalier René-Dubos, the main hospital in Pontoise. “There isn’t any speck of light at the end of the tunnel.”
Variants of the virus, mainly the British one, now account for one in seven of every new infection. Some areas, like the Paris region, have reported even higher proportions. But the country’s infection numbers have otherwise remained frustratingly stable.
Dr. Devaud said the average number of Covid-19 patients in his unit — about five to 10, plus another dozen in intensive care — was completely manageable so far thanks to better understanding and treatment of the disease.
But the prospect of a new lockdown worries him.
After the first lockdown last spring canceled all non-urgent care, doctors were alarmed to see the consequences of deferred treatment, like deteriorating cancers.
Health professionals have also seen an increased incidence of young people with severe mental health issues.
“So we need to get out of this pandemic,” Dr. Devaud said.
By now, Jeff Flake thought this would all be over.
Flake, the former Arizona Republican senator and outspoken critic of Donald Trump, concedes that he expected the ripple effects in the Republican party Trump’s loss of the White House to have been bigger by now.
Instead, Flake has had to watch as Trump departed office but Trumpism refused to fade around the country. That includes in Flake’s home state, where the Republican party recently censured him alongside the two other most prominent Republicans – Cindy McCain, the widow of the late senator John McCain, and Doug Ducey, the Arizona governor.
“I do think this fever will break, but it’s been slow,” Flake said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s been really slow.”
For much of the Trump administration Flake was something of a solitary voice within his party, opposing him first as a rare anti-Trump statewide elected official and then as a member of the club of Republicans who stood up to the 45th president only to face blowback.
Throughout all of that Flake hoped Trump would leave office one way or another, other Republicans would see the same light he did, and the opposition to the 45th president would grow. Flake calls it a “migration” of Republicans away from their fealty to Trump.
“This migration will start,” Flake said chuckling. “It’s just slow to get going.”
These days the outlook for anti-Trump Republicans can feel both bright and dark. Trump is out of office and there are elected Republican officials actively working to move on from Trump under the specter of blowback from activists within the GOP.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois has set up a political action committee to fight against the QAnon movement saturating the Republican party. The House Republican conference chairwoman, Liz Cheney, and almost a dozen other Republicans voted to move forward with impeaching Trump again.
Other Republicans stood up to Trump as he was peddling unfounded claims about voter fraud after Joe Biden won the presidential election but before he took office.
Former Arizona senator Jeff Flake and his wife, Cheryl, after the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters
But those forces are more a small rebellion or insurgency and less an army involved in an inter-party civil war. The anti-Trumpists are growing but very slowly, Flake concedes. Flake thinks successfully convicting Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial would help speed things along.
“I think if there’s enough elected officials who say ‘we’re done’ then that is the threshold, we cross that rubicon that we need to cross, and then Trump fades quickly,” Flake said.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Flake, a libertarian leaning conservative with soap opera-star good looks. He served in the House of Representatives for over a decade before winning the Senate seat once held by conservative icon Barry Goldwater in then-reliably red state Arizona. But as Trump’s unlikely presidential bid took off, Flake refused to go along with most of his Republican colleagues and fall in line. In October 2017 he delivered a speech in which he said he wouldn’t seek another term.
“I didn’t want to leave the Senate. I wanted to do another term at least,” Flake said. “But the thought of standing on a campaign stage with Donald Trump and laughing at his jokes and staring at my feet while he ridiculed my colleagues – I just could not do it. There’s nothing worth that. But I look and think going off and leaving the party or starting a third party that just doesn’t – we need two strong parties in this country. I think that we’ll be back, I hope that we will. I want to be part of that.”
Since then Flake hasn’t shied away from speaking out against Trump and he plans to continue to do so, in addition to some teaching work he’s doing at Arizona State University. Flake is also a familiar face on cable news and in political reporting.
Flake is optimistic as well. He predicted in his interview with the Guardian on Tuesday that extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a QAnon conspiracy theory supporter, would be stripped of her committee assignments, an effective legislative neutering for any member of Congress. She was – though it was Democrats, not Republicans who did it.
He also doesn’t think Cheney is doomed to lose re-election as Trumpists seek her ouster. On Wednesday, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy opted to support Cheney in the face of an uproar over her move to help impeach Trump.
“You’re having some defining moments here soon with Marjorie Taylor Greene and what they’re going to have to do with her and that will – maybe expedite this departure, I guess,” Flake said. “I wouldn’t count Liz Cheney out here. She has some benefits and ties that’s just so high profile now that she might be able to survive it. Maybe Adam Kinzinger too. I’m sure hoping and praying so.”
Asked if he’s been in touch with either Cheney or Kinzinger, Flake said he hadn’t but he said he’s talking with some similarly minded Republicans.
“Trumpism requires a certain amount of swagger that you lose when you lose. And he lost,” Flake said. “In Georgia he couldn’t pull those two senators across the finish line. So yeah, I very much believe that would be the case and that would come a lot faster if more elected officials would say ‘yeah, we gotta move on.’ I think they’ll get to that point but boy it’s been slow.”
He also has seen shoots of promise at home. His neighbors in the Pheonix suburbs where he lives once ran up Trump flags on their properties. Not anymore.
“There were actually two neighbors, one on either side, had Trump flags, they’re both down,” Flake said, cautioning that elsewhere in his neighborhood Trump fans are still flying their support.
Recently Flake and his wife took a long leisurely bike ride through his neighborhood and counted the Trump signs still up. They cringed when they saw signs at houses they knew. They then went by one house with three cars in his driveway. As they passed he yelled ‘thanks for doing what you did. We gotta get past this.’”
That surprised Flake, he recalled. He didn’t know the man and he assumed of all the houses he passed this would be home of a Trump fan.
“We engaged in a very enlightened conversation about the future of the party and how he wanted to stay but it was difficult,” Flake said.
As he so often has this season, Joel Embiid led the way for the Sixers on Friday night in Minnesota. By late in the third quarter, the team didn’t need him to do any more work.
Embiid was able to watch comfortably from the bench for the final 14:04 after recording 37 points, 11 rebounds and three assists in the Sixers’ 118-94 win over the Timberwolves at Target Center.
The 14-6 Sixers will next play Sunday night against the Pacers.
Sixers head coach Doc Rivers began his pregame media availability by sharing his admiration for Hall of Fame coach and Philadelphia basketball icon John Chaney, who died Friday at 89 years old.
“I just loved him as a man,” Rivers said. “I loved how he carried himself, I loved how he fought for his team, his players but also just the institution in a lot of ways. He was so much more than a basketball coach. He really was a teacher, and a teacher of life. We don’t have a lot like that anymore. He’ll be missed.”
Here are observations on the Sixers’ win Friday:
Weathering early shooting struggles
Embiid’s status was in question throughout the day because of back tightness, but he was in the Sixers’ starting lineup. It was an appealing matchup for him on paper against veteran Ed Davis as Minnesota was without big men Karl-Anthony Towns (health and safety protocols) and Naz Reid (right wrist sprain).
However, Embiid misfired early on the mid-range jumpers he’s been sinking so frequently this season. He missed his first five shots and the Sixers were 2 for 14 as a team on mid-range attempts in the first period, according to Cleaning the Glass. Ben Simmons started 0 for 5, too.
The Sixers managed to score at something resembling a normal rate by drawing plenty of free throws, though, and Embiid was the standout as usual in that category. With his 16-for-18 night at the foul line, Embiid has now made 152 free throws.
That’s second in the league behind Trae Young despite Embiid having sat out four games, and one factor that bolsters the notion of the Sixers being capable of beating the Eastern Conference’s elite in the postseason. He’s seemingly a lock for double-digit free throw attempts every game at this point.
While it’s likely necessary for players like Seth Curry, Danny Green and Shake Milton to make open jumpers for the Sixers to excel in the postseason, Embiid’s foul drawing and general 1-on-1 brilliance mitigates the harm of any shooting problems, as we saw Friday. His sharp early-season work against double teams is also a positive sign when considering the big picture for the Sixers.
“It’s just dominance on his part,” Tobias Harris said. “I think he’s figured it out, and he’s done such a great job of creating plays for other guys out of the post. Tonight they had to guard him straight up. He’s continuing to figure that out, continuing to be dominant out there and it’s a pleasure to be able to be on the floor with him when he has that demeanor and he’s going like that. It makes us a really great team.”
Tyrese Maxey chipped in six key second-quarter points at a stage when the team’s second unit also wasn’t experiencing much offensive success or rhythm.
Avoiding a bad pattern from last season
A troubling trend for the 2019-20 Sixers on the road was the team’s frustration with its offensive woes leaking into shoddy defense.
“You just can’t live on your offense,” Rivers said during training camp. “And that’s not just our team, but teams that don’t do well. Your offense will let you down. … That’s being human; that happens. But you can still win the game. If we can get that type of confidence that we’re going to win whether we make shots or not, it would make us a heck of a force.”
Friday night’s game was an excellent example of Rivers’ point. It would’ve been easy (and understandable) for the Sixers to lose focus and intensity defensively. Logic suggested their superior talent would win out at some point, but no team is good enough to survive a ghastly shooting stretch simply by hoping it’ll start hitting jumpers eventually. The Sixers needed to compete on defense, and they deserve credit for doing so.
Matisse Thybulle had an especially strong defensive evening, picking up three of the Sixers’ 11 steals. Rivers said the Sixers have been asking Thybulle to focus on being “solid” defensively, since he doesn’t need to gamble much in order to get deflections and steals.
“He had 12 deflections by himself in the one quarter,” Rivers said. “And Joel was amazing, but if I was giving a game ball out it would probably be Matisse, or we would split it with those two, because I thought he was a difference-maker.
“I thought he frustrated (Ricky) Rubio, and then I thought he was phenomenal on (D’Angelo) Russell. He’s just a hell of a defender. He’s got his legs under him now, he knows what we expect of him and he’s been terrific.”
With this win, the Sixers are 4-5 on the road, meaning they need eight more victories to match last season’s total.
Waiting on Scott’s return
Mike Scott missed his seventh consecutive game with right knee swelling. Though that might not appear very significant in isolation, Rivers has mentioned several times that Scott’s absence narrows the Sixers’ options and increases the importance of Simmons and Harris staying out of foul trouble.
When Scott is available, how might Rivers’ rotation change? Perhaps Furkan Korkmaz’s minutes will be trimmed, although the Sixers seem determined to help him find a rhythm.
There should be a little less of a burden on players like Harris, who played a team-high 34 minutes Friday.
“I like one of the three — Joel, Tobias or Ben — on the floor at all times,” Rivers said. “I don’t like how we’re doing it right now, because we’re extending one of their minutes every night. I don’t like that. Without a four, we literally don’t have a choice in doing it.
“We played Furk — or whoever wants to claim the four … I think Matisse called himself the four tonight at one stretch. You play the right team, a bigger team, that’s really difficult. So I do like one of those three on the floor at all times. I think it’s good for us. We’re deep enough not to, but most games I’ll have one on the floor.”
One also wonders how Dwight Howard will be impacted. Rivers used Simmons as a small-ball center in the first half of Wednesday’s win over the Lakers and acknowledged before Friday’s game that Howard has had a subpar run recently. The veteran had three points, 10 rebounds and four fouls in 17 minutes against Minnesota.
“I’m not that concerned by it,” Rivers said. “He hasn’t played great. That happens in life, it just does, and he’ll get through it. He’s been around long enough. I thought the Lakers adjusted and went small for a second on him, which affects him. Detroit did the same thing. You can either stay big, which I do often, or sometimes you can have an adjustment. Our problem, obviously, is with Mike Scott out, we don’t have a lot of adjustments we can go to right now and that has absolutely limited us, for sure.”
Simmons at center surely won’t become the norm, although Rivers said, “it’s a look that I like.” He’s looking forward to working on it, noting the Sixers should have a rare opportunity to practice early next week.
