Inkscape, the free and open-source vector graphics editor, has released version 1.0 for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It comes after three years in development and over 16 years after Inkscape's initial release. BetaNews reports: "Built with the power of a team of volunteers, this open source vector editor represents the work of many hearts and hands from around the world, ensuring that Inkscape remains available free for everyone to download and enjoy. In fact, translations for over 20 languages were updated for version 1.0, making the software more accessible to people from all over the world. A major milestone was achieved in enabling Inkscape to use a more recent version of the software used to build the editor's user interface (namely GTK+3). Users with HiDPI (high resolution) screens can thank teamwork that took place during the 2018 Boston Hackfest for setting the updated-GTK wheels in motion," explains the developers.

The devs further explain, "The extensions system has undergone some fundamental changes in version 1.0. Over the years, Inkscape users have become used to working with third-party extensions, such as various ones used for laser cutting and exporting to file formats which are not a native part of Inkscape. While outreach to extension developers was undertaken as Inkscape migrates towards Python 3 and a more logical and fully tested extensions API (now hosted in a separate repository), not all third-party extensions have been brought forward to be compatible yet. This will mean that 1.0 may not allow some users to continue with their normal extensions workflow." The blog post, official release notes, and download page are available at their respective links.

Slashdot reader thereitis shares a report from Ars Technica that "delves into the reversing community's efforts to produce usable C source code from N64 game binaries." Here's an excerpt: Early this week, with little warning, the Internet was graced with a Windows executable containing a fully playable PC port of Super Mario 64. Far from being just a usual emulated ROM, this self-contained program enables features like automatic scaling to any screen resolution, and players are already experimenting with adding simple graphics-card-level reshaders, including ray-tracing, as well. The PC port -- which was released with little buildup and almost no promotion -- wasn't built from scratch in a modern game engine, in the manner of some other now-defunct Super Mario 64 porting projects. And its release has nothing to do with a recent leak of internal Nintendo files dating back to the Gamecube days. Instead, the port seems to be a direct result of a years-long effort to decompile the Super Mario 64 ROM into parsable C code. This kind of reverse-engineering from raw binary to easy-to-read code isn't a simple process, but it's an effort that a growing community of hobbyist decompilers is undertaking to unlock the secrets behind some of their favorite games.

Ammalgam shares a report from Redmond Pie: Microsoft has officially announced the Surface Book 3. Not much has changed for the device in terms of external design, but internal circuitry is where it's at. This newest addition to the Surface family was formally unveiled alongside the Surface Go 2 today. And the detachable PC finally got the long overdue refresh. Microsoft decided to go with the latest Intel 10th generation CPUs, codenamed Ice Lake. There was talk that the company might opt for the Comet Lake processors. Both are 10th generation chips, but Ice Lake is made on a 10nm process, while Comet Lake is 14nm. [...] As for the CPU options, we have the Core i5-1035G7 and Core i7-1065G7 available. The Core i5 models don't offer dedicated graphics, while the 15-inch variant of the Surface Book 3 only comes in the Core i7 flavor. GPU got a real look, too. The 13.5-inch Surface Book 3 gets you the 4GB Max-Q variant of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, while the 15-inch one comes with a GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q with 6GB.

On the display side, we have a 3000 x 2000 screen on the 13.5-inch model, while the 15-inch one offers a resolution of 3240 x 2160. Microsoft also claims that the Surface Book 3 has the best battery life of any device it has made up until now. It's rated at 17.5 hours on the 15-inch model and 15.5 hours on the 13.5-inch variant. Some neat improvements when it comes to port selection, with both the USB Type-A and Type-C ports now being USB 3.1 Gen 2, meaning you get 10Gbps instead of 5Gbps. There is also a Surface Connect port on both the base and the tablet, to go with the 3.5mm audio jack in the tablet. All these enhancements mean that the starting price of the Surface Book 3 is a bit higher at $1,599. It will be available on May 21.

Sooner than expected, Apple has announced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Magic Keyboard. It features optional Intel 10th Gen processors and starts at $1,299. In one sense, it is a minor spec-bump upgrade for the existing lineup of 13-inch MacBook Pros. But it also represents the end of an era: Apple no longer sells any new laptops with the much-maligned butterfly keyboard mechanism. From a report: Apple has moved relatively quickly to cycle out the butterfly keyboard from its lineup. The 16-inch MacBook Pro was announced in November 2019, followed by a refreshed MacBook Air with Magic Keyboard this past March. In the span of six months, Apple has completely swapped out its entire laptop lineup with models that use better scissor-switch keyboards. Compare that to the five years it spent trying to make the butterfly keyboard mechanism work since the 2015 MacBook (now discontinued). As with the last MacBook Pro, Apple is sticking with Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C connectors, two or four of them in total (plus a headphone jack). The Touch Bar also remains for better or worse, alongside a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and -- praise be -- a real, physical Esc key. The RAM can be upgraded to 32GB and the storage can be specced all the way up to 4TB. Apple says that 10th Gen Intel processors have a turbo boost up to 4.1Ghz and that the new Intel Iris graphics support the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution.

Motherboard reports on a new open source program "that superimposes someone else's face onto yours in real-time, during video meetings." Programmer Ali Aliev used the open-source code from the "First Order Motion Model for Image Animation," published on the arxiv preprint server earlier this year [and developed by researchers at the University of Trento in Italy as well as Snap]... With other face-swap technologies, like deepfakes, the algorithm is trained on the face you want to swap, usually requiring several images of the person's face you're trying to animate. This model can do it in real-time, by training the algorithm on similar categories of the target (like faces)...

Aliev made a video of himself as Elon Musk, pretending to join the wrong meeting, to demonstrate the tech. It's pretty clear that it's a fake, but the eyes and head move around well enough that it'd be a neat trick for a few seconds, before the rest of the call looks any closer.
He's released his program on GitHub, naming it "Avatarify". But Motherboard warns it requires "a bit of programming knowledge" plus a powerful gaming PC.

"You have to run Zoom or Skype, as well as streaming software and Avatarify at the same time, which takes a decent amount of computing power."

SecurityWeek editor wiredmikey shares new that Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk (past founders of Netscape, Silicon Graphics and @Home Network) "have launched a phone-resident personal certificate-based authentication and authorization solution that eliminates all passwords."

Security Week reports: The technology used is not new, being based on X.509 certificates and SSL (invented by Netscape some 25 years ago and still the bedrock of secure internet communications). It is the opportunity provided by the modern smartphone with biometric user access, enough memory and power, and a secure enclave to store the private keys of a self-certificate that never leaves the device that is new. The biometric access ties the phone to its user, and the Beyond Identity certificate authenticates the device/user to the service provider, whether that's a bank or a corporate network...

"When this technology was created at Netscape during the beginning of the World Wide Web, it was conceived as a mechanism for websites to securely communicate, but the tools didn't yet exist to extend the chain all the way to the end user," commented Jermoluk. "Beyond Identity includes the user in the same chain of certificates bound together with the secure encrypted transport (TLS) used by millions of websites in secure communications today...."

With no passwords, the primary cause of data breaches (either to steal passwords or by using stolen passwords) is gone. It removes all friction from the access process, takes the password reset load off the help desk, and can form the basis of a zero-trust model where identity is the perimeter.
Though they're first focusing on the corporate market, their solution should be available to consumers by the end of 2020, the article reports, which speculates that the possibility of pre-also installing the solution on devices "is not out of the question."

Microsoft and Nvidia are releasing Minecraft with RTX in beta for everyone April 16. This update adds ray-tracing effects like lighting, reflections, shadows, and more. And this is potentially the next generation for Minecraft visuals. VentureBeat reports: Nvidia and Microsoft developed the game together, and they are finally ready to let everyone see it for themselves. You can get the game by opting into the beta for the Minecraft for Windows 10 version. Of course, you might ask if it "just works," then what took so long? And that's a fair question. But for Minecraft, Nvidia and Microsoft couldn't flip a switch. They needed to update the game with physically based materials. This enables the RTX light rays to correctly bounce off objects. A green block will add a green tint to any reflected light, for example. And water will bend light and reflect the world behind you in its surface. These sort of visuals are often too complicated for traditional lighting techniques.

Nvidia and Microsoft had to update Minecraft with physically based materials. The two companies also spent some time improving performance. Nvidia turned to its DLSS technology to achieve "playable framerates." DLSS is deep-learning super-sampling. It uses machine learning to determine what a game should look like at an ultra-high resolution. DLSS can then take that data and rebuild an image from significantly less visual information. This enables a game to run at 1080p while generating an image that looks nearly indistinguishable from native 4K. To ensure that Minecraft with RTX is actually playable, Nvidia is bundling the update with DLSS. This gets you 40-to-60 frames per second in most circumstances. That's up from about 25-to-35 frames per second without DLSS.

MojoKid writes: Intel unveiled its NUC 9 Ghost Canyon platform back at CES earlier this year, but the company has just announced general availability and lifted the embargo on full product reviews. An array of NUC 9 systems are launching today, with the top-end Intel NUC9i9QNX featuring a Core i9-9980HK Comet Lake-H 8-core CPU. The NUC 9 is built around Intel's NUC Compute Element, which essentially places the CPU, chipset, IO, and cooler onto a removable add-in card in a chassis that measures only 9.37 x 8.5 x 3.78 (WxDxH) inches. The Intel NUC 9 Extreme is a different sort of animal than traditional small form factor PCs though, and the version of the system that was tested at HotHardware is quite powerful, thanks to the inclusion of 16GB of RAM, an Intel Optane 905P boot drive, a secondary Kingston SSD, and an ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 discrete GPU, though the NUC 9 does have integrated graphics as well. A barebones Intel NUC 9 Extreme (model NUC9i9QNX), without any components or accessories will sell for about $1,639, but fully configured like the one in the review will retail north of $2000. It's not cheap, but Intel's NUC 9 Extreme is a very compact, robust, reasonably quiet and capable little machine.

Linux 5.6 "has a bit more changes than I'd like," Linus Torvalds posted on the kernel mailing list, "but they are mostly from davem's networking fixes pulls, and David feels comfy with them. And I looked over the diff, and none of it looks scary..." TechRadar reports that the new changes include support for USB4 and GeForce RTX 2000 series graphics cards with the Nouveau driver: Yes, Turing GPU support has arrived with the open source Nouveau driver, along with the proprietary firmware images, as Phoronix.com reports. However, don't get too excited, as re-clocking doesn't work yet (getting the GPU to operate at stock clocks), and other important pieces of the puzzle are missing (like no Vulkan support with Nouveau). For the unfamiliar, Nouveau is an alternative to Nvidia's proprietary drivers on Linux, and although it remains in a relatively rough state in comparison, it's still good to see things progressing for Linux gamers with one of Nvidia's latest cards in their PC.

Linux 5.6 also introduces fresh elements on the AMD front, with better reset support for Navi and Renoir graphics cards (which helps the GPU recover if it hits a problem)... Another notable move is the introduction of WireGuard support, a newcomer VPN protocol which makes a potentially nifty alternative to OpenVPN.

Linux 5.6 also supports the Amazon Echo speaker, and naturally comes with a raft of other minor improvements...
Linus's post also notes that for the next release's timing they'll "play it by ear... It's not like the merge window is more important than your health, or the health of people around you." But he says he hasn't seen signs that the pandemic could affect its development (other than the possibility of distraction by the news).

"I suspect a lot of us work from home even normally, and my daughter laughed at me and called me a 'social distancing champ' the other day..."

Just like Intel said at CES, it's crossed the 5GHz barrier with its new H-series 10th generation notebook CPUs. And you won't need to shell out for the top-of-the-line Core i9 to do it: The new six and eight-core i7 processors reach up to 5.1Ghz (boost speed) on a single core. From a report: But if you want to go all out, the octa-core i9-10980HK hits 5.3GHz -- and it's fully unlocked for overclocking, to boot. As usual, these H-series chips are meant for gaming and workhorse machines, not laptops where battery efficiency is key. You can expect around 44 percent better performance in Assassin's Creed Odyssey in 1080p with high settings, compared to the three-year-old Core i7-7700HQ.

And the new top-of-the-line Core i9 is 54 percent faster in Red Dead Redemption 2, compared to the i7-7820HK (there weren't any mobile Core i9 chips three years ago). Reaching beyond 5GHz is a notable achievement, and it's a nice deflect away from Intel's reliance on its 14nm "Comet Lake" architecture, just like its last batch of powerful ultraportable CPUs. Intel is competing directly with AMD's new 4000 series Ryzen mobile processors, which also offer up to eight cores, but with a lower 4.4GHz maximum clock speed. AMD is using a refined 7nm architecture, which makes them more efficient power-wise. And AMD's new chips also include up to 8 cores of Radeon Vega graphics, which can easily trounce Intel's aging UHD graphics. But really, all of these processors are best suited for notebooks with dedicated GPUs, so it makes sense for Intel to skimp on that for now.

The Singer Laren museum in Laren, east of Amsterdam, says thieves have made off with a prize Vincent van Gogh painting while the institution was closed to the public. artnet News reports: The break-in at the museum happened in the early hours of Monday morning, at around 3:15 a.m. The thieves smashed a large glass door at the front of the museum to access the building. Police reached the scene after the museum's alarm was triggered, but the perpetrators had vanished by the time they arrived, according to a statement from the local authorities. To add insult to injury, [the Dutch master's The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) painting] does not even belong to the museum -- it was on loan from the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Netherlands, according to the police. The 1884 work was the only painting by Van Gogh in the Groninger Museum's collection. It was painted when Van Gogh was living in Neunen, where his father was a pastor, between 1883 and 1885, and depicts the ruins of the village church, which the artist could see from his father's house. (The date of the theft also happens to be the artist's birthday: he was born on March 30, 1853.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: AMD has been having a particularly rough few months, apparently. The chip designer has revealed that a hacker stole test files for a "subset" of current and upcoming graphics hardware, some of which had been posted online before they were taken down. While AMD was shy on details, the claimed intruder told TorrentFreak that the material included source code for Navi 10 (think Radeon RX 5700 series), the future Navi 21 and the Arden GPU inside the Xbox Series X.

The self-proclaimed hacker added that she wanted $100 million for the source code and threatened to "leak everything" if there was no buyer. She reportedly found the GPU data in a "hacked computer" in November, although AMD said it hadn't been approached until December. AMD doesn't appear to be bowing under pressure. It believed the stolen code was "not core to the competitiveness or security" of its products, and said there was an "ongoing criminal investigation."

As if there weren't enough doom in the world right now, this week sees the release of not one but two new Doom games. Doom Eternal is the flashy AAA sequel with incredible graphics and accurately modeled viscera, of course, but you shouldn't sleep on the other: the first rerelease of Doom 64, an underappreciated entry in the series's history. From a report: Doom 64, as the name suggests, was originally designed for the Nintendo 64. It came out in 1997 and, unlike id Software's previous two Doom titles, it was developed by Midway Games. It was the first Doom game to offer any sort of significant graphical upgrade on the original, had all-new levels, and -- depending on your perspective -- could easily have been considered a "Doom 3" had id not released its own game with that name in 2004. Given its original platform, Doom 64 is also a pretty unusual game. Nintendo strongly promoted "real" 3D titles on its 64-bit console, and Doom 64 is only kind of-sort of one of those. The environments are constructed of polygons, and the textures are filtered. But just like the original Doom, you're still limited to movement on a flat plane without the ability to look around you. Next to something like GoldenEye 007, you could have been forgiven for considering Doom 64 a little archaic at the time.

A new DirectX badge is going to start showing up on graphics hardware: It's called DirectX 12 Ultimate, and it denotes support for "ALL next generation graphics hardware features," Microsoft announced today. From a report: DirectX is a collection of application programming languages (APIs) that developers use to communicate with your hardware. You can think of it like a conduit between software (especially games) and hardware. Up until now, DX12 was the latest version, supported in Windows 10 (and also in Windows 7 for some games). Now that distinction belongs to DX12 Ultimate. It's not an overhaul of the API, but a culmination of the latest technologies bundled into one. This notably includes DirectX Raytracing (DXR), variable rate shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.

One of the reasons Microsoft is doing this is to unify experiences across the PC and its upcoming Xbox Series X, which will launch November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving Day). "These features represent many years of innovation from Microsoft and our partners in the hardware industry. DX12 Ultimate brings them all together in one common bundle, providing developers with a single key to unlock next generation graphics on PC and Xbox Series X," Microsoft explains. The main benefit for gamers is knowing, at a glance, if the graphics card they are about to buy supports all the latest features. Spotting the DX12 Ultimate badge is the key, and I suspect hardware makers will be quick to promote it. Related to that, Microsoft is pitching this as a way of ensuring "future-proof" feature support. There's no such thing as future proofing, of course, but DX12 Ultimate should remain relevant for at least the next couple of years.

Now that Microsoft and Sony have published the technical specifications of their respective next-gen gaming consoles, we can compare them head-to-head to see which one has the edge. While Sony appears to lag behind Microsoft when it comes to specs, the PS5's speedy custom SSD may be its secret weapon. Engadget reports: Sony's lead PlayStation architect, Mark Cerny, finally gave us an in-depth look at the PS5 in a livestream event, in lieu of a major GDC keynote. [...] Cerny confirms that the PlayStation 5's graphics processor will feature 36 compute units and up to 10.28 teraflops worth of compute performance. That's a bit less than the Xbox Series X's 12-teraflop GPU, but realistically you might not see many differences in performance. There are plenty of other system optimizations, like the company's focus on a custom 825GB SSD, that'll be a huge leap over the PlayStation 4. That SSD will push 5.5 gigabytes per second compared to a mere 50 to 100 MB/s, meaning it can fill the system's 16GB of GDDR6 RAM in two seconds. And on the plus side, Sony will let you plug in a standard NVMe SSD to expand storage while Microsoft will rely on specialized 1TB SSD expansion cards.

Cerny was quick to point out that teraflop numbers are a "dangerous" way to measure absolute levels of performance. A teraflop from the PlayStation 5 translates to much more gaming performance than a teraflop from the PlayStation 4, thanks to the new console's more-efficient architecture. Still, it's not exactly unfair to compare the PS5 to the Xbox Series X, since both systems will be based on AMD's CPUs and GPUs. It's interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft devices take advantage of AMD's hardware. The PS5's eight-core Zen 2 CPU will run up to 3.5GHz with variable frequencies, so it can slow down when necessary. The Xbox Series X, meanwhile, will lock its Zen 2 processor at 3.8GHz, and devs can also choose to run their games at 3.6GHz with hyper threading. Sony also chose to use 36 RDNA 2 compute units running at up to 2.23GHz with a variable frequency while Microsoft stuffed its system with 52 compute units running at 1.825GHz. Cerny argues that running fewer cores at a higher frequency rate is more beneficial than running more cores at a lower rate, since it will lead to a speed bump across many GPU tasks.

Sony definitely has the lead with its custom SSD with 5GB/s of raw bandwidth and 8 to 9GB/s of compressed throughput. The Xbox Series X's SSD will be limited to 2.4GB/s of raw data and 4.8GB/s compressed. Again, while the numbers are significantly different, it's unclear how the performance will vary in real-world use. Microsoft also has a slightly higher GDDR6 memory bandwidth -- 10GB at 560GB/s and 6GB at 336GB/s -- than Sony's 448GB/s, which could make up for the slower storage. As for backwards compatibility, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will support PS4 and PS4 Pro games, but the company made no mention of retro PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles. Microsoft, on the other hand, stated that the Xbox Series X will support all games playable on the Xbox One, including those Xbox 360 and original Xbox console titles currently supported through backwards compatibility on the Xbox One.

The 2019 Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computing, was today awarded to Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull, founding members of Pixar who helped shape the future of computer graphics. From a report: The two will share a $1M prize and, of course, the satisfaction of receiving this prestigious award for doing something they clearly love. The award has recently been given to such luminaries as Tim Berners-Lee, cryptographer Martin Hellman, and last year AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun. Catmull was at Pixar for more than 30 years, appointed its president from the very beginning as a LucasFilm animation studio bought and repurposed by Steve Jobs. Hanrahan was an early hire, and between them the two would have had enormous effects on the world of CG, even if they hadn't built the poster child for the technology. TechCrunch spoke with Catmull and Hanrahan about the origins of the field and their early work in it that the Association for Computing Machinery chose to recognize this year. "When I started out, graphics didn't really exist," Hanrahan recalled. "I sort of discovered graphics in grad school, but there were no professors, no classes, it wasn't even in the computer sciences, really."

MojoKid writes: Though Ryzen 4000 Series laptop processors aren't available just yet, some of AMD's partners are going to begin taking pre-orders for notebooks soon. As such, AMD is lifting the veil on additional details and the architectural enhancements that make Ryzen 4000 Series AMD's strongest mobile processor line-up to date. AMD Ryzen 4000 series CPUs are based on the Zen 2 architecture, similar to the current Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors. AMD is touting an approximate 25% IPC increase versus Zen 1-based mobile parts, but there are additional benefits that boost performance and efficiency throughout the chips as well. These are monolithic SoCs, with up to 8-cores / 16-threads, that are manufactured on TSMC's 7nm node. AMD is claiming 20% lower SoC power, 2X the perf-per-watt, 5X faster state switching, and an approximate 3.4X improvement in relative power efficiency, in comparison to its mobile platform from 2015. AMD is claiming superior single-thread CPU performance versus current-generation Intel mobile processors and significantly better multi-threaded and graphics performance versus Intel, thanks to the increased core / thread counts and integrated Vega-based GPU of its Ryzen 4000 series. Battery life performance is claimed be strong as well, due to architectural enhancements for power optimization throughout the Ryzen 4000 design. AMD Ryzen 4000 Series laptops should be shipping in market sometime in the next month or so.

"Iranian authorities began digging a pair of trenches for victims just days after the government disclosed the initial outbreak," writes Slashdot reader schwit1. "Together, their lengths are that of a football field." The Washington Post reports: Two days after Iran declared its first cases of the novel coronavirus -- in what would become one of the largest outbreaks of the illness outside of China -- evidence of unusual activity appeared at a cemetery near where the infections emerged. At the Behesht-e Masoumeh complex in Qom, about 80 miles south of Tehran, the excavation of a new section of the graveyard began as early as Feb. 21, satellite images show, and then rapidly expanded as the virus spread. By the end of the month, two large trenches -- their lengths totaling 100 yards -- were visible at the site from space (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). According to expert analysis, video testimony and official statements, the graves were dug to accommodate the rising number of virus victims in Qom.

A senior imagery analyst at Maxar Technologies in Colorado said the size of the trenches and the speed with which they were excavated together mark a clear departure from past burial practices involving individual and family plots at the site. In addition to satellite imagery, videos posted on social media from the cemetery show the extended rows of graves at Behesht-e Masoumeh and say they are meant for coronavirus victims. The imagery analyst, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work, also pointed to an image showing what appears to be a large white pile of lime, which can be used to manage decay and odor in mass graves. Iranian health officials have in recent weeks confirmed the use of lime when burying coronavirus victims.

"At its Financial Analyst Day, AMD disclosed additional details regarding its next generation CPU and GPU architectures," writes Slashdot reader MojoKid: - While the company isn't ready to disclose concrete details yet, AMD is promising that Navi 2X will arrive this year and deliver "enthusiast-class" performance, excellent power efficiency, and "top-of-stack" GPUs with "uncompromising 4K gaming".

- While AMD has RDNA for its gaming-centric consumer GPUs, the company is shifting to a new GPU compute architecture, dubbed CDNA, for its High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Machine Learning (ML) accelerators. CDNA has been designed from the ground-up for ML/HPC applications, and will leverage what AMD calls its second-generation Infinity Architecture interconnects.

- AMD also reiterated that its first Zen 3-based products will be rolling out later this year. On the server side, this means EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors, but the company also revealed that Zen 3 client processors would also arrive by the end of 2020.

Twitter user Scott Bell is reporting that his uncle from Venice, California, has tested positive for the coronavirus. According to Bell, "he was skiing in the Italian alps with 6 other guys," 4 of which, including his uncle, now have the coronavirus. One is reportedly in a coma and two others are sick. Bell says his uncle "has not present any symptoms as of yet," but has chosen to self-quarantine himself. From the thread: A few days later they tested him and yesterday he found out he's positive. Meanwhile, they've told my aunt to wear a mask, stay 10 feet away from my uncle, and otherwise she is free to move about the community. And, she has -- to grocery stores, the hair salon, etc. [...] Believe me, I'm upset to hear that she did this. The crazier part is that they have not tested her, and will not, and again - advised her she is free to move at-will. This is how our health dept. is leading this effort. In an updated tweet, Bell says his aunt is now quarantined and the guy in the coma "is starting to improve."

Update: Patch is confirming the report.

Here's a screenshot of the thread:


UPDATE: A nurse from a northern California Kaiser facility issued a statement criticizing the CDC for delays in testing, and reporting that she is "currently sick and in quarantine after caring for a patient who tested positive."