Month: May 2020

Enlarge / An Uber car in 2019. (credit: nycshooter / Getty)

Uber will lay off 3,700 people from its customer support and recruiting teams, the company announced in a Wednesday regulatory filing. That figure represents 14 percent of Uber's 26,900 employees, CNBC reports.

Uber has already frozen hiring, and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forego his salary for the remainder of the year, the company says.

The Information reported last week that Uber's ride bookings have fallen 80 percent from the same period a year earlier. Uber has tried to compensate by expanding its delivery business, launching two new services called Uber Connect and Uber Direct. But rides have historically been the largest part of Uber's business, making an 80 percent drop difficult to stomach.

Enlarge / YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA - MAY 06: An Indonesian health official wearing protective suit prepare test kits during a mass rapid test for COVID-19 amid the coronavirus pandemic on May 6, 2020 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. (credit: Ulet Ifansasti | Getty Images)

When SARS-CoV-2 made the jump into humans late last year, it was remarkably well adapted to spread among us. But that doesn't mean things couldn't get worse, as the virus will undoubtedly pick up new mutations as its population expands, some of which might make it more dangerous to humans. In fact, a draft paper recently posted online claimed to have evidence that a more infectious strain of SARS-CoV-2 had already evolved.

But the evidence for this is far from conclusive, and scientists have been taking both the paper and the associated press coverage to task.

The press coverage

The Los Angeles Times had coverage that was typical of the early response to the draft paper, headlining it "Scientists say a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus appears to be more contagious than original." But, by Tuesday, the coverage had been roundly criticized by scientists, and awareness of the problems with the paper was gradually increasing. This ranged from sites dedicated to health news analysis, as well as general circulation newspapers. Yet, even after these criticisms had been published, new articles were still trumpeting an enhanced infectivity.

Enlarge / Artist's concept of initial configuration of the Lunar Gateway. (credit: NASA)

Last week NASA announced awards to three companies to develop Lunar Landers as part of the Artemis Program. But the space agency did not say much about its "other" major program near the Moon, a Lunar Gateway that will serve as a small space station that will be used to conduct scientific experiments. It will also function as a stop for potentially stashing fuel and a temporary habitat for humans.

NASA's primary mandate from the White House is to land humans on the Moon by 2024, and for now the space agency is working through the details of how that will happen. One aspect of the lunar lander awards worth noting is that NASA and its contractors will spend the next 10 months finalizing their plans, and from this process they will collectively determine the fastest, best path to the Moon by 2024.

That may involve staging the first human landing from the Gateway, in high lunar orbit, or it may not. But in an interview with Ars, both NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the space agency's chief of human spaceflight, Doug Loverro, said the Gateway was an essential part of NASA's long-term plans to not only to return humans to the Moon but to do so in a sustainable manner.