"In one recent survey, 54 percent of respondents said they cook more than before the pandemic," writes a clinical associate professor at NYU's business school: 75 percent said they have become more confident in the kitchen and 51 percent said they will continue to cook more after the crisis ends. Interest in online cooking tutorials, recipe websites and food blogs has surged. Dozens of recipe writers and cookbook authors such as Alison Roman, Jet Tila, and Julia Turshen are frenetically posting ideas and answering questions on Twitter and Instagram. "I feel like this virus is a conspiracy to make me learn how to cook," Eliza Bayne, a television producer tweeted... The search term "online cooking classes" saw a fivefold increase on Google over the past four weeks, and the search title "cook with me" saw a 100 percent increase in average daily views on YouTube in the second half of March.

This surge in cooking is meaningful, as people who frequently cook meals at home eat more healthfully and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to multiple studies.

One of the biggest barriers to cooking frequently is that it takes practice and time to gain proficiency and ease. That initial training time has simply not been available to most Americans, as the pace of life has intensified over the decades. Nor has there been a perceived need to cook because prepared and fast foods were readily available. The pandemic has put everything on pause, and almost every "nonessential" worker, employed or unemployed, is now enrolled in a de facto home economics course... [W]e are acquiring an ancient skill that has been shown to help people live better and longer. If we apply that skill with greater frequency over the long run, it could reduce our risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke...

Once life rebounds, we may go back to our previous ways, but our palates will have experienced a reset and our hands would have acquired an artful skill... There will be many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, but we would be wise not to forget this one. This newfound proficiency could be lifesaving.
Of course, he also notes that sales are also up for Hamburger Helper (and other packaged good). But what's your experience been like.

Are any Slashdot readers doing more cooking?

"We don't think it's practical for us to continue waiting and hoping for the best," explains the official Burning Man site, adding "public health and the well-being of our participants, staff, and neighbors in Nevada are our highest priorities."

And thus, SFGate reports that the 2020 festival's communal creation of Black Rock City scheduled to begin August 30th "will now be built virtually after organizers decided Friday to cancel this year's Burning Man event due to the coronavirus pandemic." "After much listening, discussion, and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision..." the organizers said in a statement online. "Given the painful reality of COVID-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do." While building the physical city in the Nevada desert is off, the event itself is still on, with this year's "Multiverse" theme taking place online.

"On a virtual playa, there's no limit to who can participate," organizers said. "Like That Thing in The Desert, we will have costs and will need to create some kind of 'ticket.' We're working out those details and will share them as soon as we can."
The official Burning Man site seems energized by the uncertainty: We're not sure how it's going to come out; it will likely be messy and awkward with mistakes. It will also likely be engaging, connective, and fun.

Some of you who already purchased a ticket for the playa may need that money now more than ever. We're committed to providing refunds to those who need them, but we're also committed to keeping Burning Man culture alive and thriving, and to ensuring our organization stays operational into next year's event season — which will require substantial staff layoffs, pay reductions, and other belt-tightening measures. Burning Man Project's survival is going to depend on ingenuity and generosity. Luckily, our community is rich in both.

Whether you have already purchased a ticket, have been waiting for the Main Sale, or are simply supportive of our vision and mission — if you have the means, it is our sincerest hope that you will consider donating all or a portion of your ticket value, and/or making a tax-deductible donation to Burning Man Project. This is going to be a tough year for us, as we know it will be for you, but we will get through it together...

We will tackle this challenge the same way humans across the globe are doing right now — by drawing strength and inspiration from one another. We are all Burning Man."

What happens when no one shows up for a tech conference?

Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: From Apple to Microsoft to Google, major tech companies have responded to the coronavirus crisis by either canceling their 2020 conference or making them purely virtual. But one well-established event — Vancouver's CanSecWest — went ahead earlier this month, with streaming as an option but not mandatory. Only three attendees showed up in the flesh. But so did security reporter Seth Rosenblatt, who wrote about the eerie experience for Fast Company.
They were outnumbed by the six staffers at the event -- "there to run the online component" -- but the article notes that the conference's organizer and founder promised all attendees "infrared body temperature checks, on-site coronavirus testing, ample supplies of disposable face masks and hand sanitizer, and restrictions on physical contact and interaction..."

"Empty hallways and escalators echoed with every footstep, and it smelled empty, the ventilation system circulating unused air. At the conference registration desk, I was offered a disposable surgical face mask and gloves."

A Portuguese historian argues that Magellan's famous trip around the world in 1522 was much harder than sending humans to Mars: Tens of guys died making this crossing; of 250 crew, only 18 returned, Henrique Leitao, a historian at the University of Lisbon, told me... [O]nce NASA or other space agencies or private entities actually launch humans on a six month trajectory to the Red planet, they will likely have mitigated the lion's share of risks to the crew. In contrast, Magellan's crew realized that at least a third of them would likely never survive their journey, says Leitao...

Is there a comparison between the Age of Discovery and drivers for the exploration and commercialization of space? One could argue that minerals on asteroids could be seen as the present-day equivalent of the Age of Discovery's highly-prized Asian spices. And that actually getting these 16th century spices back to Europe was arguably just as arduous and seemingly difficult as any initiative to return exotic materials from a near-Earth asteroid... Risk is inherent in any off-world human voyage. But when it comes to safety, today's technology and current knowledge of in situ conditions on Mars itself will arguably give future explorers an inherent edge over Magellan's generation.
The article also summarizes Leitao observation that one of the crew members who died on the trip was Magellan. "For 40 days Magellan walked around The Philippines; gets involved in a completely absurd fight with locals on a beach and is killed."

An anonymous reader quotes Rock, Paper, Shotgun: For as long as there's been Minecraft, there's been people who want to re-create the world in Minecraft. For one modder, though, it's not enough to have a to-scale replica of our pale blue dot recreated in Mojang's block-builder. A new project named Build The Earth is looking for talented builders with too much time on their hands, bringing them together to fully recreate every last man-made structure on Earth in Minecraft.

YouTuber PippinFTS unveiled the project in a YouTube video earlier this week. It's awfully dramatic, but give the guy a break — he's only trying to go and build a planet.

PippenFTS' project is building from Terra 1 to 1, a project headed up by modders orangeadam3 and shejan0. Using a few extra mods to get around the game's strict world limitations, Terra 1 to 1 uses public terrain datasets, street maps and forest databases to accurately map the earth's terrain, roads and woodland areas in Minecraft... [H]e wants to build a community that can collectively recreate thousands of years of human history by filling out every single man-made structure on Earth. His "Build The Earth" project hopes to crowdsource player-recreated cities, towns, stadiums, bridges and otherwise. PippenFTS himself will contribute with his own hometown.

"Regardless," he writes, wistful in his obligation, "I will build Seattle. Super excited."
The project already has a Patreon account -- plus 5,500 members in its subreddit.

There's a Three Stooges movie where aliens try to attack the earthlings where it will hurt them the most -- Disneyland.

The Los Angeles Times points out that in fact the park has been closed just three times in the park's 65-year-history.

But now Business Insider reports: As the spread of the novel coronavirus impacts cities and communities around the world, Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, announced that it will close until the end of the month. It's the first time the park has closed since 9/11... On Friday, representatives for Disneyland announced that the park will donate all excess food inventory that would have otherwise gone to waste during the resort's temporary closure to an Orange County, California, food bank...

Disney World in Orlando, Florida, is also closing starting Sunday until the end of the month, and Disney is also closing its cruise line and international parks in France and Asia for the time being.
31,000 Disneyland employees will now get an 18-day paid vacation starting Saturday, reports the Orange Country Register. And they also described the scene on the last day that Disneyland was open: One young woman put on a black mask for a photo op in front of the Pixar Pal-A-Round Ferris wheel and immediately removed it after a series of selfies. She admitted the mask was little more than a fashion statement for social media purposes.

"I can't breathe in that thing," she said with a laugh.

DevNull127 writes: MIT has a long-standing tradition. High school seniors who've been accepted into next year's class at MIT are informed on Pi Day (March 14th — that is, 3/14). And each year there's also a slick video touting the URL where students can check whether they've been admitted. (Last year's video documented a massive project that involved 30 sacks of charcoal plus several hundred pounds of — no, that would be telling...)

But in 2018 Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill appeared in a Star Wars-themed video titled "The Last Dean." (The 2017 video had also paid homage to another Disney franchise...) So for 2020, MIT's video returned again to their version of Star Wars universe.

Congratulations to the class of 2024! Even America's National Security Agency got into the Pi Day fun this year, daring readers on Twitter to try to crack the code hidden in this sentence:

"Now, I make a tasty delicious or hidden treat and share messages decrypted through numbering..."

"America is approaching one of its most contentious hours," writes the Phildadelphia Inquirer, "and officially, it's one that doesn't exist." According to the National Conference of State Legislators, lawmakers in 32 states are considering bills that would change the current system of splitting the year into about eight months of daylight time and the rest, standard. "It's been a hot issue," said Jim Reed, an NCSL official. And it's getting hotter, he added. Every year more state lawmakers are considering changing the system.

The preponderance are pushing for year-round daylight time, although Congress has forbidden states from doing so. Pennsylvania has four different proposed time-change bills, and three of those essentially endorse year-round daylight time. Yet, if the issue were put to a national primary, all-standard, all-the-time would win decisively, according to a poll conducted last year. More than 70% of those surveyed said, Please, stop with the changes, period...

DST critics have pointed to studies pointing to possible connections to an increase in heart disease when the clocks go up, and the impacts of disrupted body rhythms resulting from disrupted sleep patterns. Proponents say later sunsets mean more Vitamin D and more opportunities to luxuriate in the later twilights.

At a Chicago coffee shop, "the cashier wouldn't take my order until I took off my AirPod!" complained a patron named Kevin. "And it was only in one ear! Am I the asshole here?"

ZDNet's "Technically Incorrect" column shares the answer he got from the "Salty Waitress" etiquette columnist at a foodie site called The Takeout: She replied, in part: "I am trying hard here to give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you were in the middle of a very important phone call/podcast/guitar riff that could not be paused for the 30 or so seconds it takes to order a cup of coffee. In which case, you very politely step aside to conclude your business and then order your coffee...."

The Salty Waitress was undeterred in her resistance. She explained that if Kevin wanted to embrace technology, he could push off to Starbucks or Dunkin', order via an app and pick up his coffee without the burden of any human interaction. She then warmed to her theme, mustering a fine froth: "Because that's the thing, sweetie pie. THE CASHIER IS A HUMAN BEING! JUST LIKE YOU! Their role in your life may be temporary and functional, but they've got feelings and hopes and dreams and aspirations. And like you (probably) they would like your full and undivided attention while you ask them to perform a service for you."

She explained that this is true for all service workers and should, indeed, work both ways.

I was glad she said that, as I've had two visits to AT&T stores where the salespeople were wearing a single AirPod and listening to their own music.

Lasrick quotes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Scientists with only the pursuit of truth in mind have proven — through meticulous radio-carbon dating and no tasting at all — that half the bottles of expensive aged Scotch whisky they tested weren't as old and valuable as purported.

Researchers from the Radiocarbon Lab at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, Scotland used the amounts of radioactive carbon-14 in various Scotches that they absolutely did not sample to determine whether the whiskies were made before or after large-scale above-ground testing of nuclear devices began in the 1950s and 1960s.
LiveScience explains: Nuclear bombs that were detonated decades ago spewed the radioactive isotope carbon-14 into the atmosphere; from there, the isotope was absorbed by plants and other living organisms, and began to decay after the organisms died. Traces of this excess carbon-14 can therefore be found in barley that was harvested and distilled to make whisky.

Carbon-14 decays at a known rate; by calculating the amount of the isotope in a given whisky batch, scientists can then determine if a bottle's contents were produced after the start of the nuclear age — and if that age matches the date written on the bottle's label.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Today is a very special occasion -- the date is a palindrome, meaning it is the same when read forwards and backwards.

It is February 2, 2020, or 02/02/2020, in both the MM/DD/YYYY format and the DD/MM/YYYY format. At just after 2 a.m., it was 02:02:20 on 02/02/2020.

This is the only time such a date will occur this century.

The previous palindrome date in all formats came 909 years ago on 11/11/1111. The next will come in 101 years on 12/12/2121 and after that there will not be another until 03/03/3030.

"No, the luxurious Borgata Hotel, Casino and Spa isn't located in a central New Jersey wildlife preserve," reports a local news team in New York. But an ad for the casino in Waze was apparently tagged with the wrong geographical coordinates, CNN reports, and.... The Jackson township Police Department's public information officer Lt. Christopher Parise said the police department found out about the error when one his officers was out assisting a stranded car. The driver told the officer they were headed for the Borgata but wound up at the 12,000 acre wildlife area through unpaved roads after using Waze for directions...

"My department towed 10 cars in 5 days that were stuck," Parise said. "A Waze response to the error report stated 249 others reported the same location error in the past couple days, so hundreds have been misled back there."
Police complained of a "tremendous increase" in disabled motor vehicles -- one driver found themselves at least 10 minutes away from any paved roads. Long-time Slashdot reader Newer Guy tipped us off to the story, though Waze told CNN that after being made aware of it, they'd fixed the issue "within hours".

But the casino is still urging future visitors "to check the route before they begin driving" to make sure they're actually being routed to Atlantic City. And the folks in Jackson Township (population 54,856) had a real good laugh, posting over 100 comments on the police department's Facebook page.

• "You can take the people out of the city but you can't take the city out of the people..."

• "who the hell is going on unpaved roads thinking it'll lead them to a casino?"

• "You would think when they go down a dirt road common sense would kick in..."

• "This must be a short cut to Atlantic City, just keep going. Ha ha ha..."

• "This is why you need to learn how to read a map!"

• "I keep picturing in my head these people driving into the woods thinking its Atlantic City..."

• "We could just put a couple of slot machines and poker tables out there.... "

• "I knew people were stupid but this is ridiculous."

• "Don't blame the app, Blame the morons driving."

• "How stupid do you have to be to not realize that you are nowhere near the ocean??!!"

• "So natural selection is going high tech?"

• "I was wondering how this lovely couple ended up way back by the lake when I was hunting there last week. They flagged me down and pleaded with me to show them the way out.
  
  "They must've thought they were in the middle of Deliverance."

USA Today wondered how this decade's new construction would look from space. "With the help of Maxar, a provider of advanced, space-based technology solutions, Google and NASA, we've taken many more steps back -- more than 300 miles above Earth to be exact." As Apple stormed toward becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet, its campus in Cupertino, California, took the shape of a dial on the original iPods -- the product that marked Apple's reemergence as tech leader at the turn of the century.

Apple's 175-acre, space-age architectural marvel stands out as a monument to tech. The same might be said for tourism, trade and energy about the ostentatious structures and engineering feats that emerged from the sands of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the largest buildings in the world were completed in Dubai -- the most in any city -- during the past decade, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Their article also includes before-and-after pictures of disaster sites like Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors and the California regions devasated by 2018's Camp Fire.

"A Michigan woman got the Secret Santa gift of a lifetime this Christmas -- an 81-pound package from Bill Gates," reports CNN: The gifts included an original manuscript of "The Great Gatsby," signed by Gates; books; toys for her cat and Harry Potter and "Twin Peaks" memorabilia, according to her post on RedditGifts.com. It arrived in a box lit up inside by Christmas lights...

"It's well documented that Bill Gates has been participating for years, but I never, ever thought he would be my Secret Santa," Shelby said. "It's really surprising." A spokesperson for Reddit confirmed that Gates sent the package. The billionaire has participated in the exchange since 2013...

When she showed up at the FedEx office the next day to pick up the package, she said the employees were excited, shouting "You're the Bill Gates package!" according to her post.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: A North Carolina couple was watching a movie in their bedroom when they suddenly heard loud noises coming from downstairs. Worried that it was an intruder, the two called 911.

The couple waited for police to arrive, hoping their 2-year-old daughter sleeping in her room wouldn't get up to check on the noise, said Thomas Milam, the husband, in his Facebook post shared to Forsyth County Sheriff's Office's page... Minutes after they called 911, police entered the home and began to search for an intruder. When the 911 operator told Milam to go downstairs to talk to the police, he said, the officers just had one question.

"Is this Roomba yours?"

Police had apprehended the suspect: the couple's brand new robotic vacuum. Milam said in the Facebook post that the vacuum had turned itself on in the night and gotten stuck in the hallway, where it had been repeatedly banging against the walls and making the sounds the Milams feared was an intruder.

An anonymous reader shares a remarkable story from Fortune's Data Sheet newsletter: The story begins on Dec. 3, when an artist going by @Hannahdouken on Twitter posted an image of hand-drawn text reading, "This site sells STOLEN Artwork, do NOT buy from them!" And asked followers to reply that they wanted the image on a shirt.

They were testing a theory. For years, artists posting their work online have found the art turned into t-shirts and other merch without permission or compensation. The theory was that this was being done by automated bots that combed Twitter for images with such enthusiastic replies, and then automatically created merch on sites such as Gearbubble, copthistee, and Teeshirtpublic...

Sure enough, automated bots picked up @Hannahdouken's image and placed it on t-shirts...
They report that other Twitter users then took the stunt even further, including one who "had a theory: See if he could bait the bots into copyright infringement, and just maybe, a pricey lawsuit." So they produced a drawing of a particularly sassy Mickey Mouse with the caption "This is NOT a parody. We committed copyright infringement and want to be sued by Disney."

His version of the stunt succeeded spectacularly. First, the bots came out of the woodwork, drawn by hundreds of tweets from people saying they wanted the image on a t-shirt. Then other artists repeated the trick with infringing images including Pikachu, Mario, and the Coca-Cola logo....

The nonprofit Open Source Technology Improvement Fund connects open-source security projects with funding and logistical support. (Launched in 2015, the Illinois-based group includes on its advisory council representatives from DuckDuckGo and the OpenVPN Project.)

To raise more money, they're now planning to offer "hacker-themed swag" and apparel created with a state-of-the art direct-to-garment printer -- and they're using Kickstarter to help pay for that printer: With the equipment fully paid for, we will add a crucial revenue stream to our project so that we can get more of our crucial work funded. OSTIF is kicking-in half of the funding for the new equipment from our own donated funds from previous projects, and we are raising the other half through this KickStarter. We have carefully selected commercial-grade equipment, high quality materials, and gathered volunteers to work on the production of the shirts and wallets.
Pledges of $15 or more will be rewarded with an RFID-blocking wallet that blocks "drive-by" readers from scanning cards in your pocket, engraved with the message of your choice. And donors pledging $18 or more get to choose from their "excellent gallery" of t-shirts. Dozens of artists have contributed more than 40 specially-commissioned "hacker-themed" designs, including "Resist Surveillance" and "Linux is Communism" (riffing on a 2000 remark by Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer).

There's also shirts commemorating Edward Snowden (including one with an actual NSA document leaked by Edward Snowden) as well as a mock concert t-shirt for the "world tour" of the EternalBlue exploit listing locations struck after it was weaponized by the NSA. One t-shirt even riffs on the new millennial catchphrase "OK boomer" -- replacing it with the phrase "OK Facebook" using fake Cyrillic text.

And one t-shirt design shows an actual critical flaw found by the OSTIF while reviewing OpenVPN 2.4.0.

So far they have 11 backers, earning $790 of their $45,000 goal.

"1983 had seen an explosion of home computer models of varying capabilities and at various price-points," remembers the vintage computing site Paleotronic, looking back at the historic tech battle between Commodore, Texas Instruments, and eventually Coleco.

Slashdot reader beaverdownunder shares the site's fond remembrance of the days when "The question on everyone's minds was not who was going to win, but who would survive." Commodore's Jack Tramiel saw an emerging market for low-cost home computers, releasing the VIC-20 in 1980. At a US$299 price point sales were initially modest, but rival Texas Instruments, making a play for the bottom of the market, would heavily discount its TI99/4A, and start a price war with Commodore that culminated with both computers selling as low as $US99. Only one company was going to walk away... [W]hile TI spokesperson Bill Cosby joked about how easy it was to sell a computer when you gave people US$100 to buy one, Jack Tramiel wasn't going to take this lying down, and he dropped the price of the VIC-20 to US$200 in order to match TI. However, unlike TI, who was selling the 4A at a loss in order to gain market share, Commodore wasn't losing any money at all, since it owned MOS Technology, the maker of many of the chips inside of the VIC-20, and as a result got all of those components at cost. Meanwhile TI was paying full price and haemorrhaging cash on every model sold.

You would think TI might have realised they were playing a fool's game and back off but instead after Tramiel dropped the wholesale price of the VIC-20 to US$130 they went all-in, dropping the 4A's retail price to $150. Commodore went to $100, and TI matched it, with many retailers selling both machines for $99. Inside TI, Cosby's joke stopped being funny, and many wondered whether management had dug them into a hole they could never climb out of...

After all the dust had settled, the only real winner was Commodore. It fended off all of its competitors and cemented the Commodore 64 as the low-budget 8-bit computer everyone wanted their parents to buy.

"They have done biohacking, clean sleeping and the keto diet, but now Silicon Valley types have coined a new health trend -- dopamine fasting," reports the Guardian: It is thought that depriving yourself of the neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that motivates us to do things, can help to reboot or rebalance the brain. Fasting might entail abstinence from technology, artificial light, food, drink, conversation, eye contact -- essentially anything that an individual finds stimulating.

But is there any sense to the fad? "Retreating from life probably makes life more interesting when you come back to it," says David Nutt, director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London. "Monks have been doing it for thousands of years. Whether that has anything to do with dopamine is unclear."
A professor at UCSF Medical School tells the New York Times that the name is a misnomer, since it's more of a stimulation fast. The Times writes that "A dopamine fast is simple because it is basically a fast of everything... The number of things to not do is potentially endless." Silicon Valley is not the first group to discover that moderating emotions or spending periods trying to feel less can lead to happiness. In their quest, they are moving toward two very old groups: those in silent meditation and the Amish.... Karen Donovan, who is developing a new Vipassana silent meditation center in Silicon Valley, said she sees this trend as moving closer to the ultimate dopamine fast: sitting on a dark floor with eyes closed for 10 days.

"There's a growing self-awareness of what in Vipassana terms we would call suffering," she said.

Gizmodo reports that Sony "will happily sell you make-believe virtual meals" for their robotic Aibo dog to unlock tricks, one of several new features added since its re-launch in 2017: The new feature that will appeal to most owners, however, is Aibo Food, which allows the robot to be virtually fed using augmented reality through the Aibo smartphone app. Meals can be purchased using coins, which are awarded to users through random actions like repeatedly using the Aibo app, or during special events. But once users runs out of coins, which is bound to quickly happen as they try out the new Aibo Food feature, they can either wait for more Sony handouts or purchase additional coins for a fee.

Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed -- it is, after all, just a robot. So hopefully the company won't change its mind down the line, making your pup act sluggish and distracted when you're not forking out for pretend food.... Of course, other complications arrive once you start feeding an animal, and the new software update also allows users to finally potty train their Aibos using a new mapping feature so the robot doesn't pretend-shit all over your house.

This appears to be a free feature, until Sony realises it can sell owners virtual poop bags.
There's also a new web-based API/developer program that lets you program the robot dog to perform custom actions -- and Aibo dogs now come equipped with some new patrol/security functionality.

"Using its facial recognition and room-mapping capabilities, Aibo will be able to patrol homes and locate various family members, providing reports on where everyone is, and helping owners track down specific people, according to Sony."