Why the World Needs a Software Bill Of Materials Now

For 250 years of American history, politicians have held the peacetime budget deficit in check because of fears of either inflation or higher interest rates (or perhaps a loss of confidence in the gold standard.) What would happen if they begin to sniff out that the actual risk is not inflation or much higher interest rates next year, rather the risk is higher taxes in 20 years, after they’ve safely retired? How would they respond to this information?

But the net effect recalls the old joke about the firing squad that stands in a circle.

Major flaws found in machine learning for COVID-19 diagnosis

Data and Models

Court says Northern Virginia restaurant defying mask mandate can remain open

Disease and demographic development: the legacy of the plague

Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2020 Preliminary Data

How a Personal-Photo Curator Separates the Is-This-a-Rash Selfies from the Keepers

National U.S. publications and TV networks cover Covid news much more negatively than foreign media, scientific journals or regional media within the U.S.

TSMC: how a Taiwanese chipmaker became a linchpin of the global economy

Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Dr. Fauci has said that we don’t have good data on natural immunity. That is largely because his own National Institutes of Health has done little to answer this and other important clinical questions. The NIH and CDC, which together receive more than $40 billion a year from taxpayers, should have focused on answering the most basic Covid-19 clinical questions that affect Americans. If we say we’re going to follow the science, then we need to be willing to consider all the data.

How a container ship blocked the Suez canal – visual guide

20 Minute Neighborhoods.

On Apple’s Privacy Practices

US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez

The decision to block an “expert” level cyberattack has caused controversy inside Google after it emerged that the hackers in question were working for a US ally.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo got special treatment from New York, confirming worst suspicions about media elites

Much of the press no longer has a com­mit­ment to truth, fair­ness or hon­esty. Its com­mit­ment is to De­mo­c­ra­tic power.

Annie’s Mac and Cheese is based in the Bay Area, but Annie is not. Here’s her story.

Hollywood Executive Reveals How China’s Politics Have Shaped Movie Industry

Ten Questions the Press Should Have Asked President Biden

Biden falsely claims the new Georgia law ‘ends voting hours early

William Grimes:

Benjamin Yount:

There are new numbers to go along with claims that online classes are leaving school kids in Wisconsin behind.

Milwaukee Public Schools on Wednesday said just over 30% of high school students failed the fall semester.

Data from Milwaukee schools showed 30.3% of MPS high schoolers failed last fall, compared to 18.8% in the fall of 2019.

The difference, besides the huge increase, is that Milwaukee Public Schools were online only in the fall of 2020.

The revelation comes as Milwaukee schools prepare to welcome some students back to class next month. MPS’ board this week approved a return to in-person classes for kids in elementary school and junior high. MPS will bring high school seniors back, but freshmen, sophomores, and juniors will continue to learn from home.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Fort Meade:

The National Security Agency published a cybersecurity product, “Embracing a Zero Trust Security Model,” on Thursday. This product shows how deploying Zero Trust security principles can better position cybersecurity professionals to secure enterprise networks and sensitive data. To provide NSA’s customers with a foundational understanding of Zero Trust, this product discusses its benefits along with potential challenges, and makes recommendations for implementing Zero Trust within their networks.

The Zero Trust model eliminates trust in any one element, node, or service by assuming that a breach is inevitable or has already occurred. The data-centric security model constantly limits access while also looking for anomalous or malicious activity.

Adopting the Zero Trust mindset and leveraging Zero Trust principles will enable systems administrators to control how users, processes, and devices engage with data. These principles can prevent the abuse of compromised user credentials, remote exploitation, or insider threats, and even mitigate effects of supply chain malicious activity.

Jon Marcus:

 A Yale-educated evolutionary biologist and a member of the faculty at Catholic, liberal arts-focused Sacred Heart University, Geffrey Stopper also oversees one of its newest courses: Advanced Craft Beverage Brewing.

Sacred Heart is launching career-focused programs like this to give its students vocational credentials that can speed them into their first jobs while expanding the university’s market to older adults who are hoping to get new ones.

After all, there are 115 breweries in Connecticut, according to the Connecticut Brewers Guild, employing about 6,000 people. But there are no other formal training programs in the state to cover such things as brewery management and brewing theory.

“You need to know how enzymes work and how acids work and apply equations to what you’re doing,” Stopper said of the program, standing on a catwalk overlooking fermentation tanks and repurposed wine and whiskey barrels filled with beer in the cavernous warehouse of Two Roads Brewery, where the course is taught.

We were all told contact tracing is a proven strategy for containing pandemics. Now, @JulieZauzmer reports that DC’s contact tracing program may have been exacerbating it.

Gun Sales Rise In Past Year, Especially Among Women And African Americans

Liberals and Conservatives Are Both Totally Wrong about Platform Immunity

Tuna’s Last Stand

In 2018, Diplomats Warned of Risky Coronavirus Experiments in a Wuhan Lab. No One Listened.

It’s human nature to spot patterns in data. But we should be careful about finding causal links where none may exist

The executive says the indictment highlights the “vilification” of anyone “who takes a stance against unwarranted surveillance.”

The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption and Tell Congress About All the Encrypted Phones It’s Already Hacking Into

Daily Telegraph plans to link journalists’ pay with article popularity

What South Dakota Can Teach America

Under Closson’s leadership, the paper garnered national attention for a 2019 editorial apologizing to student activists who criticized its efforts to report the news.

These are powerful tools, and we ought to be cautious in their application.

The instruction to change the program came on the telephone from the Chinese regime’s international radio arm, China Radio International (CRI), not more than 48 hours before the Chinese prime minister’s arrival. Later, they sent over a prepared footage about China’s history and the greatness of Sino-Hungarian relations, which Klasszik Radio had to broadcast at the appropriate time.

How Do Big Media Outlets So Often “Independently Confirm” Each Other’s Falsehoods?

Facebook’s long-awaited content ‘supreme court’ has arrived. It’s a clever sham

They paid a secret group of writers to make newsletter authorship seem lucrative

The latter point, of course, is exactly what has happened. The EU halt has increased vaccine hesitancy rather than alleviating it.

D.C. Circuit Judge Silberman just released a truly wild dissent calling on the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, claiming NYT and WaPo are “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” and accusing “big tech” of censoring conservatives.

A Pioneer of Digital Design Looks Back on a Defining Era

In other words, everything that marketing communication people are doing should be analyzed through a hard-nosed assessment of real world consumer behavior, not the rosy lens of traditional brand and marketing thinking.

Linda Xie:

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a group organized around a mission that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain.

One of the main benefits of a DAO is that they are more transparent than traditional companies since all actions and funding in the DAO are viewable by anyone. This significantly reduces the risk of corruption and censorship. Publicly traded companies must provide independently audited financial statements, but shareholders only get to see the financial health of the organization at a snapshot in time. Since a DAO’s balance sheet exists on a public blockchain, it is completely transparent at all times, down to every single transaction.

DAOs typically are more globally accessible and have lower barriers to entry than companies. Given the transparency and lower barriers to entry, there will likely be lower switching costs for DAO members who don’t agree with the rules and actions. DAOs sharing a similar mission might need to compete for members and are incentivized to be as transparent as possible and not extract too much rent from the group so that they are able to attract top members. DAOs might also need to quickly evolve to meet the members’ needs.

Consumers Deserve a Data Dividend

Digital identity scheme shot down by voters over data privacy concerns

The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

Three east London boroughs were already at breaking point. Then the pandemic struck 

Saudi Arabia’s Bold Plan to Rule the $700 Billion Hydrogen Market

Gig workers would pay higher taxes under Democrat Party coronavirus aid bill

However you cut it, what we’re talking about when we say “science” just isn’t close to the thing it was seventy years ago.

All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

The New ‘End of History’

‘your problem, Dad, is that you’re bored by the present’.

Google UX commentary

“O’Brien and Pottinger recommended that Trump immediately ban travelers from China or anyone who had recently been there. Every Trump official opposed the move, even the health experts such as Fauci”.

$38B+ Taxpayer Electronic Medical Record subsidy waste, part X

Complaint Publicization in Social Media

Does Competition Improve Service Quality? The Case of Nursing Homes Where Public and Private Payers Coexist

T-Mobile Is Taking All of Your Sweet, Sweet Data… Unless You Tell It to Stop

Inventor of cassette tape Lou Ottens passed away

Bats and the origin of outbreaks: As the World Health Organization reaches its findings on the zoonotic origins of the novel coronavirus, we explain why bats make such ideal hosts for disease-causing viruses.

Retracing a Donner Party Path, Nearly Two Centuries Later

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin recall campaign approved

Toyota Chief Says Apple Should Steel for Long Haul if It Enters Auto Industry

Covid-19: NHS Test and Trace ‘no clear impact‘ despite £37bn budget

Apple Tilts to iPhone Playbook for Car as Automaker Talks Stall

Green Bay, Democrats dispute report that private group took over city’s election administration

Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

Keep Calm & Defend Work

Wheels to Meals: Measuring the Economic Impact of Micromobility on the Local Economy

What a TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) provides

That they are angry and upset is irrelevant.

Grocery store workers are working, meat packers are working, hell bars and restaurants are open in many parts of the country but FDA inspectors aren’t inspecting. It boggles the mind.

If Big Tech has our data, why are targeted ads so terrible?

MacArthur fellow and Stanford professor Heidi Williams ’03 explores the forces that impede advances in healthcare.

It would be helpful if China released Phase III trial data on its vaccines before demanding that people take them

Fortunately the US then had judicial restraints. Judge William Morrow ruled that the San Francisco Board of Health’s actions were “boldly directed against the Asiatic or Mongolian race as a class, without regard to the previous condition, habits, exposure or disease, or residence of the individual” — and were therefore unconstitutional.

Robert N. Charette:

A core issue, he states, is that most EHRs are not universally interoperable, meaning health and other relevant patient information they contain is not easily shared either with other EHRs or government public health IT systems

Notes and links on our back door electronic medical record subsidy disaster. We were promised interoperability….

Singapore develops new standard for cross-border verification of COVID-19 test results

Epic systems employee climate

I chased the American dream. It brought me back to my father’s deathbed in China.

Xinjiang investigation

Facebook & Privacy

Notes On the Slate Star Codex Controversy

Their goal is to become entrepreneurs. But instead of building products, they create content. Or even worse, they do research and take courses on how to create content.

The Whole Web Pays For Google And Facebook To Be “Free”

Toyota Develops Packaged Fuel Cell System Module to Promote the Hydrogen Utilization toward the Achievement of Carbon Neutrality

TSMC at the head of history’s tide: two high walls and one sharp knife

EVs Could Make Dealerships a Thing of the Past, Too

The Brown M&M’s Principle: How Small Details Can Help Discover Big Issues

India’s new intermediary liability and digital media regulations will harm the open internet

Stupid lessons: It turns out that selecting all objects and changing storage class doesn’t change storage class on all objects. Instead, you have to create a lifecycle rule to transition objects, and tell the lifecycle rule to clear multipart uploads. Otherwise, many objects (in our case, most of them) won’t transition.

This tool lets you confuse Google’s ad network, and a test shows it works

How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you

The Factual: Best Covid-19 News Sources of 2020

Health Experts Are Telling Healthy People Not to Wear Face Masks for Coronavirus. So Why Are So Many Doing It?

‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Chaos Strikes Global Shipping

How Did Absentee Voting Affect the 2020 U.S. Election?

BMW CFO Brushes Off Apple Car Threat: ‘I Sleep Very Peacefully’

Imogen Heap: Decentralising the music industry with blockchain

First flight nears for Berlin Airlift Foundation’s replacement airplane