Benedict Evans: I suspect part of the answer to this is actually that a lot of physical events will come back in some form as we emerge from lockdown. But this also makes me think that there will be new tools with much more radically new approaches, and some new behaviours and habits. Hence, it's often struck me that networking events are pretty inefficient and random. If you're going to spend an hour or two in a room with 50 or 500 people, then you could take that as a purely social occasion and enjoy yourself. But if your purpose is to have professionally useful conversations, then what proportion of the people in the room can you talk to in an hour and how likely is it that they'll be the right ones? Who's there? I sometimes suggest it would be helpful if we all wore banners, as in the image at the top, so that you could look across the room and see who to talk to. (First Tuesday did something like this in 1999, with different coloured badges.)

This might just be that I'm an introvert asking for a machine to manage human connections for me (and I am), but there is also clearly an opportunity to scale the networking that happens around events in ways that don't rely on random chance and alcohol tolerance. A long time ago Twitter took some of that role, and the explosion of online dating also shows how changing the way you think about pools and sample sets changes outcomes. In 2017, 40% of new relationships in the USA started online. Next, before lockdown, you would often have planned to schedule a non-urgent meeting with a partner or client or connection 'when we're in the same city.' That might be at some specific event, but it might also just be for some ad hoc trip -- 'next time I'm in the Bay Area' or 'next time you're in New York.' In January most people would never actually have thought of making a video call, but today every meeting is a video call, so all of those meetings can be a video call too, and can happen this week rather than 'next time I fly to that city' -- or 'at CES/NAB/MIPCOM.' In the last few months video calls have broke through that habit. I wonder what happens if we accelerate all of those meetings in that way. To argue against some of this, James Turrell has said that part of the value of Roden Crater's remoteness is that you have to really care to go there. Getting a plane and a hotel and a ticket, and taking days of time, has some of the same effect for a conference -- it gives a selection filter for people who care. There is value in aggregating people around a professional interest graph, and in doing that in a focused way, perhaps even around a particular time. (There are also, of course, exclusionary effects to this.)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Tuesday that the search giant is targeting July 6 to reopen offices for workers that want to come back to in person. The return will be gradual, starting at about 10% building capacity, he said. The company aims to ramp up to 30% capacity by September. From a report: For people who want to continue working from home, the company will allow employees to expense up to $1,000 for equipment and furniture, including things such as standing desks and monitors. Google has been more vocal about employees returning to the workplace while other tech giants have touted permanent work from home options. Pichai's remarks to staff come days after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social networking giant will allow some employees to work from home permanently. He said about half of Facebook's workforce could be remote over the next five to 10 years. Twitter made a similar announcement earlier this month. CEO Jack Dorsey also extended the policy to his other company, mobile-payments firm Square, last week.

Peter Chou, the man who led HTC through its most prosperous years as an Android phone maker, is returning to consumer electronics with the unveiling of a new virtual reality headset, platform and company. From a report: Called XRSpace, the project has been in the works for three years and its centerpiece is a mobile VR headset equipped with fifth-generation wireless networking and over three hours of battery life. Partnering with Deutsche Telekom and Chunghwa Telecom, XRSpace is also building the VR platform on which services, games and social activities can be accessed and experienced. Priced at $599, the XRSpace headset has a high cost of entry, but the company envisions bundling it with carriers' 5G service packages or in other forms for educational institutions. After its home market of Taiwan, it'll look to expand to the U.S. and Europe, Chou said in an interview with Bloomberg News, with the rest of Asia to follow.

The official COVID-19 contact-tracing app for the state of North Dakota, designed to detect whether people have potentially been exposed to the coronavirus, sends location data and a unique user identifier to Foursquare -- and other data to Google and a bug-tracking company -- according to a new report from smartphone privacy company Jumbo Privacy. From a report: The app, called Care19, and produced by a company called ProudCrowd that also makes a location-based social networking app for North Dakota State sports fans, generates a random ID number for each person who uses it. Then, it can "anonymously cache the individual's locations throughout the day," storing information about where people spent at least 10 minutes at a time, according to the state website. If users test positive for the coronavirus, they can provide that information to the North Dakota Department of Health for contact-tracing purposes so that other people who spent time near virus patients can potentially be notified. According to the app's privacy policy, "location data is private to you and is stored securely on ProudCrowd, LLC servers" and won't be shared with third parties "unless you consent or ProudCrowd is compelled under federal regulations."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Paul Thurrott: With the new build of Windows 10 [19628], Microsoft is starting to test DNS over HTTPS. The new build comes with Microsoft's initial support for DNS over HTTPS on Windows, and Insiders will have to manually enable the new feature. If you would like to enable DNS over HTTPS in Windows 10, you will have to first install the latest Insider build. After that, you will have to go into the registry and tweak an entry to first enable the new DNS over HTTPS client, and then update the DNS servers your computer is using. It's not as easy as ticking a checkbox, but Microsoft has shared the instructions to enable the feature in detail, so make sure to check it out here. What is DNS over HTTPS and why is it important? "DNS, to put simply, is the process where an easy-to-read and write domain address is translated into an actual IP address for where a web resource is located," writes Thurrott. "Although most websites already use HTTPS for added privacy, your computer is still making DNS requests and resolving addresses without any encryption. With DNS over HTTPS, your device will perform all the required DNS requests over a secured HTTPS connection, which improves security thanks to the encrypted connection."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook's Oculus division is building a new version of its Quest standalone virtual reality headset, but the device is facing potential delays due to the impact of Covid-19 on product development and the global supply chain. The social-networking giant is working on multiple potential successors to the Quest. Some models in advanced testing are smaller, lighter, and have a faster image refresh rate for more realistic content, according to people familiar with the matter. These headsets also have redesigned controllers, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced products.

The company hasn't finalized which new version of the Quest it will release, and the final product may have different features. Facebook originally planned to launch the new model at the end of 2020, around its annual Oculus Connect conference, but the coronavirus pandemic could delay the headset from shipping until 2021, the people said. Some versions in testing are 10% to 15% smaller than the current Quest. That, in addition to being lighter, makes them more comfortable to wear, one of the people said. The existing model weighs about 1.25 pounds, which is too heavy for some users wearing the device for extended periods. The models in testing are closer to a pound, the person said. The company could sell the new model alongside the current Quest, or choose to fully replace it.

coondoggie writes: A glimpse into what that future means for IT networking professionals can be found in Cisco's 2020 Global Networking Trends Report. It was completed before COVID-19 changed the way company's do business, but the predicted impacts have been hastened by the pandemic's impact. From the networking study, Cisco put forward a number of new or developing roles it expects to see in the future, including:

Business translator: The business translator works to better turn the needs of business into service-level, security and compliance requirements that can be applied and monitored across the network. The translator also works to use network and network data for business value and innovation, and their knowledge of networking and application APIs will help them glue the business to the IT landscape.
Network guardian: A network guardian works to bridge network and security architectures. They build the distributed intelligence of the network into security architecture and the SecOps process. This is where networking and security meet, and the guardian is at the center of it all, pulling in and pushing out vast amounts of data, distilling it and then taking action to identify faults or adapt to shutdown attackers.
Network commander: Intent-based networking builds on controller-based automation and orchestration processes. The network commander takes charge of these processes and practices that ensure the health and continuous operation of the network controller and underlying network.
Network orchestrator: This position translates business needs into network policy. It focuses on policy translation and automation, and policy alignment across network and IT domains.
Network detective: A network detective uses and tunes network assurance tools that employadvanced analytics and AI to ensure that the network delivers on business intent. They work with IT service-management processes and SecOps teams to identify network anomalies and close potential security holes. Like the network guardian, they use data proactively to identify faults and attacks.

Free software evangelist Jeremy Allison - Sam (Slashdot reader #8,157) is a co-creator on the Samba project, a re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, and he also works in Google's Open Source Programs Office. Now he shares his presentation at the Software Freedom Conservancy's "International Copyleft Conference." He writes: The Samba project has traditionally been one of the strongest proponents of Copyleft licensing and Free Software. However, in the Corporate Cloud-first world we find ourselves, traditional enforcement mechanisms have not been effective. How do we achieve the goals of the Free Software movement in this new world and how do we need to change what we're doing to be successful ?

Traditional license enforcement doesn't seem to work well in the Cloud and for the modern software environment we find ourselves. In order to achieve the world of Free Software available for all I think we need to change our approach. Both GPLv3 and the AGPL have been rejected soundly by most developers. I would argue that we need a new way to inspire developers to adopt Free Software goals and principles, as depending on licensing has failed as licensing itself has fractured.

Communication and collaboration are key to this. Stand-alone software is essentially useless. Software interoperability and published protocol and communication definitions are essential to build a freedom valuing software industry for the future
The talk's title? "Copyleft and the Cloud: Where do we go from here?"

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge in sales for consumer technology in the U.S., even as spending declines overall, an NPD analyst is reporting. The Verge reports: For the week ending April 18th, NPD's Stephen Baker notes that consumer tech sales increased by 23 percent year-over-year. In contrast, the group tracked an overall decline in spending of 23 percent across the industries it tracks. NPD's data also suggests that people are buying more tech to keep themselves entertained, not just to work or learn remotely.

TV sales are up by a massive 86 percent and are selling at the highest volume ever outside a holiday, according to Baker. People are also buying accessories like soundbars (up by 69 percent) and streaming players (42 percent). DVD and Blu-ray players were also up by 27 percent, showing that even physical media is getting a boost. That's not surprising given that last week the NPD reported that nearly a third of US households are without broadband access, which could limit their ability to stream video. Sales of monitors increased by 73 percent compared to last year, PCs were up 53 percent, printers were up by 61 percent, and microphones were up by a massive 147 percent. Chromebook sales are also reportedly seeing triple-digit sales increases, which makes sense given how popular they are in classrooms. Underpinning all this tech is a 70 percent increase in the sale of networking equipment.

U.S. chipmaker Broadcom has offered to scrap its exclusivity deals with TV and modem makers to end an EU antitrust investigation and stave off a possible hefty fine. Reuters reports: Broadcom, which makes chips to power smartphones, computers and networking equipment and is a major supplier to Apple, found itself in EU competition enforcers' crosshairs over its deals with six companies to buy chips exclusively or almost exclusively from it. That triggered an investigation in June last year and an order to stop such deals until the end of the probe on whether such practices were aimed at squeezing out rivals.

Broadcom has now pledged not to offer incentives to TV and modem makers to encourage them to acquire more than 50% of their chips and modems from the company for their worldwide or European production. Broadcom said its offer addressed the Commission's concerns and it expected the investigation to close before the end of the year. "In these uncertain times, we welcome the opportunity to avoid protracted litigation and to resolve the investigation without recognition of liability or the imposition of a fine," the company said in a statement. The European Commission said it would now seek feedback before deciding whether to accept the offer which would be valid for five years and without a finding of infringement by the company.

Instant messaging service Telegram has amassed 400 million monthly active users, it said today, up from 300 million active users the seven-year-old service disclosed to the SEC last October. From a report: The service -- founded by Pavel Durov, who also created Russian social networking site VK -- said it adds about 1.5 million users each day and is the most downloaded social media app in over 20 nations. Telegram is working on bringing a secure video call feature to its users this year in response to the growing popularity of Zoom and Houseparty, it said. The company, headquartered in Dubai, however, did not talk about the future of its Gram cryptocurrency wallet and TON Blockchain that it had revealed in 2018 but put on hold early this year. "As the gap in popularity between Telegram and its older competitors narrows, we find more and more validity in that original assumption," the firm said in a blog post.

EU-based Internet governance body RIPE is opposing a proposal to remodel core internet protocols, a proposal backed by the Chinese government, Chinese telecoms, and Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei. From a report: Named "New IP," this proposal consists of a revamped version of the TCP/IP standards to accommodate new technologies, a "shutoff protocol" to cut off misbehaving parts of the internet, and a new "top-to-bottom" governance model that decentralizes the internet and puts it into the hands of a few crucial node operators. The New IP proposal was submitted last year to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and brought to the public's attention following a Financial Times report last month. The proposal received immediate criticism from the general public and privacy advocates due to its obvious attempt to hide internet censorship features behind a technical redesign of the TCP/IP protocol stack.

The New IP proposal was described as the Chinese government's attempt to export and impose its autocratic views onto the rest of the internet and its infrastructure. Millions of eyebrows were raised when authoritarian countries like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia expressed support for the proposal. In a blog post this week, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, formally expressed a public opinion against China New IP proposal. "Do we need New IP? I don't think we do," said Marco Hogewoning, the current acting Manager Public Policy and Internet Governance at the RIPE NCC. "Although certain technical challenges exist with the current Internet model, I do not believe that we need a whole new architecture to address them."

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said it will invest $28 billion in its cloud infrastructure over three years -- "a plan that follows a boom in demand for business software as the coronavirus outbreak peaked in China," reports Reuters. From the report: The company said in a statement it will spend the funds on semiconductor and operating system development as well as building out its data centre infrastructure. While most of China's white collar employees were working from home throughout February, the country's dominant cloud player saw usage surge for its software, most notably DingTalk, a workplace chat app used by both businesses and schools. At one point, users complained of lags on the app due to the high volume of activity. The company acknowledged the issues on Weibo, the Chinese social networking site. Alibaba Cloud Intelligence president Jeff Zhang said in the statement that the COVID-19 pandemic "has posed additional stress on the overall economy across sectors" and the company hoped the investment would help businesses "speed up the recovery process."

In a video interview over Google Hangouts this week, 76-year-old Vint Cerf explained to the Washington Post why the internet's 50-year-old architecture is still holding up, "with a mix of triumph and wonder in his voice." "Resiliency and redundancy are very much a part of the Internet design," explained Cerf, whose passion for touting the wonders of computer networking prompted Google in 2005 to name him its "Chief Internet Evangelist," a title he still holds...

Cerf, along with fellow computer scientist Robert E. Kahn, was a driving force in developing key Internet protocols in the 1970s for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which provided early research funding but ultimately relinquished control of the network it spawned. Cerf also was among a gang of self-described "Netheads" who led an insurgency against the dominant forces in telecommunications at the time, dubbed the "Bellheads" for their loyalty to the Bell Telephone Company and its legacy technologies.

Bell, which dominated U.S. telephone service until it was broken up in the 1980s, and similar monopolies in other countries wanted to connect computers through a system much like their lucrative telephone systems, with fixed networks of connections run by central entities that could make all of the major technological decisions, control access and charge whatever the market -- or government regulators -- would allow. The vision of the Netheads was comparatively anarchic, relying on technological insights and a lot of faith in collaboration. The result was a network -- or really, a network of networks -- with no chief executive, no police, no taxman and no laws. In their place were technical protocols, arrived at through a process for developing expert consensus, that offered anyone access to the digital world from any properly configured device. Their numbers, once measured in the dozens, now rank in the tens of billions, including phones, televisions, cars, dams, drones, satellites, thermometers, garbage cans, refrigerators, watches and so much more...

Such a system carries a notable cost in terms of security and privacy, a fact the world rediscovers every time there's a major data breach, ransomware attack or controversy over the amount of information governments and private companies collect about anyone who's online -- a category that includes more than half of the world's almost 8 billion people. But the lack of a central authority is key to why the Internet works as well as it does, especially at times of unforeseen demands. Some of the early Internet architects -- Cerf among them, from his position at the Pentagon -- were determined to design a system that could continue operating through almost anything, including a nuclear attack from the Soviets...

Several [Netheads] acknowledged they celebrated just a bit when the telephone companies gradually abandoned old-fashioned circuit-switching for what was called "Voice Over IP" or VoIP. It was essentially transmitting voice calls over the Internet -- using the same technical protocols that Cerf and others had developed decades earlier.
"They're deservedly taking a bit of a moment for a high five right now," added one Comcast vice president (who "has briefed some members of the Internet's founding generation about how the company has been handling increased demands.")

And last week Vint Cerf reported good news about his own recent COVID-19 infection -- that he is no longer contagious -- and briefly summed up the experience for the Washington Post.

"I don't recommend it... It's very debilitating."

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..."

Thursday an Opinion piece in the Washington Post touted what the paper's own health policy reporter has described as "a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts." That conspiracy theory argues that instead of originating in the wild, the COVID-19 virus somehow escaped from a research lab.

Now the fact-checking web site Snopes has also weighed in this week, pointing out that the lab nearest the Wuhan market hadn't even published any coronavirus-related research prior to the outbreak. Instead the nearest coronavirus-researching lab was about 7 miles away, a maximum security "biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory certified to handle the world's most deadly pathogens." A February 2020 document erroneously described by several media outlets as a "scientific study" provides the supposedly science-based evidence of a virus escaping from a lab. This paper, such as it is, merely highlights the close distance between the seafood market and the labs and falsely claimed to have identified instances in which viral agents had escaped from Wuhan biological laboratories in the past... While SARS viruses have escaped from a Beijing lab on at least four occasions, no such event has been documented in Wuhan.

The purported instances of pathogens leaking from Wuhan laboratories, according to this "study," came from a Chinese news report (that we believe, based on the similarity of the research described and people involved, to be reproduced here) that profiled a Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention researcher named Tian Junhua. In 2012 and 2013, he captured and sampled nearly 10,000 bats in an effort to decode the evolutionary history of the hantavirus. In two instances, this researcher properly self-quarantined either after being bitten or urinated on by a potentially infected bat, he told reporters. These events, according to the 2013 study his research produced, occurred in the field and have nothing to do with either lab's ability to contain infective agents...

In sum, this paper -- which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate -- adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study.
In February the Washington Post had quoted Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying that it's "highly unlikely" the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab. "We don't have any evidence for that," said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering.

UPDATE: On Twitter Snopes' reporter has identified what he sees as major errors in the Post's recently-published op-ed.

The story of how the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, has produced a nasty propaganda battle between the United States and China. Columnist David Ignatius writes in an opinion piece for The Washington Post: The two sides have traded some of the sharpest charges made between two nations since the Soviet Union in 1985 falsely accused the CIA of manufacturing AIDS. U.S. intelligence officials don't think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing. The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences: The prime suspect is "natural" transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets.

But scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study. "Good science, bad safety" is how Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) put this theory in a Feb. 16 tweet. He ranked such a breach (or natural transmission) as more likely than two extreme possibilities: an accidental leak of an "engineered bioweapon" or a "deliberate release." Cotton's earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor, back when he first raised it in late January and called the outbreak "worse than Chernobyl." Important note: "U.S. intelligence officials think there's no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn't engineered by humans and that it originated in bats."

In February the Post also quoted Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying that it's "highly unlikely" the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab. "We don't have any evidence for that," said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering. That article also noted that even Senator Cotton "acknowledged there is no evidence that the disease originated at the lab."

"Instead, he suggested it's necessary to ask Chinese authorities about the possibility, fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts."

UPDATE (4/4/2020): While the op-ed cites a "study" (which they acknowledge was withdrawn as "not supported" by direct proof), the fact-checking site Snopes calls it instead a "document erroneously described by several media outlets as a 'scientific study'," and notes several factual errors in the document. "In sum, this paper -- which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate -- adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study."

Social networking giant Twitter today disclosed a bug on its platform that impacted users who accessed their platform using Firefox browsers. From a report: According to Twitter, its platform stored private files inside the Firefox browser's cache -- a folder where websites store information and files temporarily. Twitter said that once users left their platform or logged off, the files would remain in the browser cache, allowing anyone to retrieve it. The company is now warning users who share workstations or used a public computer that some of their private files may still be present in the Firefox cache. Malware present on a system could also scrape and steal this data, if ever configured to do so.

Long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely writes: IT — Information Technology — grew out of something we called MIS — Management Information Systems — but both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke. Well, the kid is now gone, sent home with everyone else, and that kid isn't coming back... ever. IT is near death, fading by the day. But don't blame COVID-19 because the death of IT was inevitable. This novel coronavirus just made it happen a little quicker...

Amazon has been replacing all of our keyboards for some time now, along with our mice and our failed cables, and even entire PCs. IT has been changing steadily from kids taking elevators up from the sub-basement to Amazon Prime trucks rolling-up to your mailbox. At the same time, our network providers have been working to limit their truck rolls entirely. Stop by the Comcast storefront to get your cable modem, because nobody is going to come to install it if you aren't the first person living there to have cable...

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) extends both the network and a security model end-to-end over any network including 4G or 5G wireless. Some folks will run their applications in their end device, whether it is a PC, phone, tablet, whatever, and some will run their applications in the same cloud as SASE, in which case everything will be that much faster and more secure. That's end end-game if there is one — everything in the cloud with your device strictly for input and output, painting screens compressed with HTML5. It's the end of IT because your device will no longer contain anything so it can be simply replaced via Amazon if it is damaged or lost, with the IT kid in the white shirt becoming an Uber driver.

Since COVID-19 is trapping us in our homes it is forcing this transition to happen faster than it might have. But it was always going to happen.

An anonymous reader writes: We keep seeing stories about how providers are slowing down their streaming speed to reduce bandwidth usage during this period when many are being asked to stay at home... But it seems that many are totally ignoring a very obvious way to reduce usage significantly, and that is by disabling autoplay on their web sites and in their apps.

To give an example, a couple of days ago I was watching a show on Hulu, and either I was more sleepy than I thought or the show was more boring than I had expected (probably some combination of both), but I drifted off to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and realize that Hulu had streamed two additional episodes that no one was watching. I searched in vain for a way to disable autoplay of the next episode, but if there is some way to do it I could not find it.

What I wonder is how many people even want autoplay? I believe Netflix finally gave their users a way to disable it, but they need to affirmatively do so via a setting somewhere. But many other platforms give their users no option to disable autoplay. That is also true of many individual apps that can be used on a Roku or similar device. If conserving bandwidth is really that important, then my contention is that autoplaying of the next episode should be something you need to opt in for, not something enabled by default that either cannot be disabled or that forces the user to search for a setting to disable.
"Firefox will disable autoplay," writes long-time Slashdot user bobs666 (adding "That's it use Firefox.") And there are ways to disable autoplay in the user settings on Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

But wouldn't it make more sense to disable autoplay by default -- at least for the duration of this unusual instance of peak worldwide demand?

I'd be interested in hearing from Slashdot's readers. Do you use autoplay -- or have you disabled it? And do you think streaming companies should turn it off by default?