John Oliver’s revealing (and scathing) look at India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the latest Last Week Tonight is now a bit harder to watch if you’re in India, thanks to — in an unexpected twist — Disney.

Hotstar, the Disney-owned streaming platform that carries HBO programming in India, didn’t make the latest episode of John Oliver’s weekly series available, according to a report from Bloomberg. The company’s local representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment. (Mashable reached out to Disney in the U.S., but no response there yet, either.)

In the latest episode, which aired on Sunday evening in the U.S. and should have arrived on the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 25 in India, Oliver devoted the main segment of the 30-minute program to an up-close look at Modi’s tenure as prime minister. It’s strongly critical of Modi’s record, making (admittedly apt) comparisons between the Indian prime minister’s nativist policies and those of Donald Trump. Read more…

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With on-demand rides available at the click of a button, it’s all too easy to get into a carbon-spewing vehicle without batting an eye.

But as a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) study released Tuesday shows, all those rides are catching up to us. Instead of walking, biking, scooting, catching the bus, and even carpooling, too many of us are calling up our own private Uber and Lyft vehicles (and taxis, even though there are fewer of those compared to ride-hailing app options). The environmental advocacy group discovered this alarming number: Ride-hailing generates 47 percent more emissions than a private car trip. Then there’s this: Ride-hailing trips are 69 percent more polluting as the trips they displace.  Read more…

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The images streaming out of China as the country struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak depict  masses donning protective medical face masks. As Wired has pointed out, these masks have become a symbol of the pandemic. And Americans are taking notice.

As the disease spreads around the world and experts warn that the virus, known as Covid-19, will likely come to U.S. shores soon, Americans have apparently been wondering how to protect themselves — and whether they should take a cue from Chinese citizens’ facial attire.

That worry is reflected in our Google searches. According to Google Trends, searches for “face mask” reached an all-time high in February. Read more…

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The design of Cat Flat reflects 10 necessities for a cat’s mental and physical health.  Read more…

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Why should you opt for a camping hammock? Is it really better than sleeping on the ground in a tent? The short answer is an unequivocal yes. A hammock slashes the amount of bedding-related space you need to lug with you when compared to an air mattress, and it also allows for much less time spent trying to pump up and maintain firmness throughout the night. (Because let’s be honest, most entry level air mattresses aren’t exactly the most reliable.)

The term “hammock” can be traced back nearly 1,000 years to an Arawak word that translates into “fish net.” These early hammocks were not designed for leisure but for serving as protection from dangerous Caribbean creatures and insects. Read more…

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IMAGE: Amazon

BEST CAMPING HAMMOCK OVERALL

MalloMe Hammock

Super comfortable and extra roomy, plus it’s a breeze to set up.

$22.09 from Amazon

IMAGE: Amazon

BEST BUDGET-FRIENDLY HAMMOCK

Honest Outfitters camping hammock

Comfortable, lightweight, and about the same price as a few cases of campsite beers.

$29.99 from Amazon

IMAGE: Amazon

BEST HAMMOCK FOR TWO PEOPLE

Wise Owl Outfitters camping hammock

Super lightweight but strong, it packs down to about the size of a grapefruit.

$37.95 from Amazon

IMAGE: Amazon

BEST HAMMOCK FOR MOSQUITO-HEAVY AREAS

Grand Trunk Skeeter Beeter Pro

If the only thing holding you back from experiencing the wilderness is the idea of bugs, get this.

$49.99 from Amazon

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EASIEST TO SET UP

Gold Armour Camping Hammock

Ideal for novice users, its assembly kit is extremely straightforward and intuitive.

$26.99 from Amazon

IMAGE: Amazon

BEST HAMMOCK FOR HIKING

Bear Butt Camping Hammock

It’s soft, lightweight, and packs down to a super small size.

$69.99 from Amazon

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BEST HAMMOCK FOR COLD TEMPERATURES

Snugpak Hammock Cocoon

This ultra warm (and super heavy) hammock is ideally suited for colder climates.

$79 from Amazon

It’s not every day a person captures footage of a javelina sprinting down a civilian street, so when someone does it rightfully creates quite the stir online.

A video recently shared to Facebook by Damion Alexander shows a javelina running at high speeds in Tucson, Arizona, and it’s the perfect combination of mesmerizing, hilarious, and utterly terrifying.

For those who aren’t familiar with javelina, though the beasts resemble pigs and boars they’re technically neither. Per the Arizona Game and Fish Department, javelina are collared peccary and reside in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. 

The javelina in the video can be heard grunting and seen absolutely darting along the side of the road, jumping and dodging obstacles like he’s a character in a video game. The footage is so unreal that it’s going viral and getting quite the meme treatment. Read more…

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Being taken for a ride by scammers isn’t fun, but getting money from the government is.

The FTC announced its latest refund program for scam victims on Tuesday. Anyone who got swindled by an outfit best known as Click4Support should get a check from the government as part of a $1.7 million settlement. The refunds will average about $30 and go out to a little less than 58,000 people.

Click4Support’s scam operation was devious, but not especially complicated. The original FTC lawsuit from 2015 accused the group of running pop-up ads that looked like they were from established tech brands designed to make credulous viewers call them for tech support. Anyone who called was routed to a call center controlled by the scammers.  Read more…

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The downside of milk is getting harder to ignore as dairy and meat industry cattle use 83 percent of the world’s farmland.  Read more…

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When it comes to securing the vote, officials keep pushing for the latest and supposedly greatest in election technology. According to cryptography experts at the annual RSA conference in San Francisco, that approach might just do more harm than good. 

In fact, one warned, when it comes to elections, depending on technology can be “dangerous.” Thankfully, ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we already have a good (if not perfect) toolset to secure the vote — we just have to choose to use it.  

Speaking to a crowd of security industry professionals in the main hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center Tuesday morning, RSA Data Security founder and current MIT professor Ronald Rivest criticized voting tech like the now infamous Iowa Caucus app.  Read more…

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TL;DR: You’ll get eight courses on project and quality management on sale for just $45.99 with this limited time offer.

Unless you’ve seriously never had a job, you’ve probably dipped your toes in project management. After all, pretty much every industry is dependent on managing set projects to completion, and you’ve no doubt had some small role in making that happen. Congratulations. 

Yet even if the person two desks over from you is a project manager, it can be tricky to figure out what it is they actually do; and infuriating to find out how much they do it for. Thanks to a somewhat elusive mix of people skills, technical know-how, and psychology, project management is hard and project managers are in-demand. Read more…

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