#Facebook’s role in the spread of information about protests against government orders to stay at home. “Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on #$Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “For this same reason, events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook.”
Have I Been Pwned?
BreachAlarm
DeHashed
You can now receive 3 free credit reports each week for the next year.
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are now offering free credit reports to all Americans on a weekly basis for the next year so you can protect your financial health during hardships from the coronavirus.
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
“The virus is reminding us that the purpose of scholarly communication is not to allocate credit for career advancement, and neither is it to keep publishers afloat.”For research-policy manager Elizabeth Gadd, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of open science.
https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-purpose-of-publications-in-a-pandemic-and-beyond/
UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government-using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response
The Dangerous History of Immunoprivilege
We’ve seen what happens when people with immunity to a deadly disease are given special treatment. It isn’t pretty.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/opinion/coronavirus-immunity-passports.html
New CDC Study Shows Coronavirus Can Survive For Hours On Floors, Walls, Shoes
A preview of a new study: <https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article> by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the CDC, for short – released last night offers some distressing news for health-care workers, as well as their families, partners and friends: New research suggests that nurses, doctors and others can track the virus out of the ward and into another – perhaps a more public, or less well-protected – environment, helping to spread the disease in a new way that public health officials haven’t really considered.
The study, entitled “Aerosol and Surface Distribution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Hospital Wards, Wuhan, China, 2020”, was conducted in two wards at Wuhan’s Huoshenshan Hospital by large team of Chinese researchers back in February and March. Though the team insisted that “respiratory droplets and close contact” remain the primary vectors for the disease, the possibility for hospital workers to transmit the virus on their shoes and clothes wasn’t really well understood, until now.
And unfortunately, if the data are confirmed, it would suggest that wards where coronavirus patients are treated are literally crawling with the virus, placing these health-care workers at extremely high risk for infection.
According to the research, “94% of swabs taken from the ICU floor and 100% of swabs taken from one of the general wards used to treat patients with severe symptoms tested positive for coronavirus.” Here’s a summary of the research that describes how the GW and ICU were found to have the highest levels of the virus present on the floors and walls, as well as in the air. The rate of positivity was higher for the ICU than the GW, which makes sense. Even samples taken from the floor in the nearby hospital pharmacy showed ‘weak positive’ for the virus. Patients are not allowed in the pharmacy, meaning there’s only one way the samples could have gotten there.
From February 19 through March 2, 2020, we collected swab samples from potentially contaminated objects in the ICU and GW as described previously. The ICU housed 15 patients with severe disease and the GW housed 24 patients with milder disease. We also sampled indoor air and the air outlets to detect aerosol exposure. Air samples were collected by using a SASS 2300 Wetted Wall Cyclone Sampler at 300 L/min for of 30 min. We used sterile premoistened swabs to sample the floors, computer mice, trash cans, sickbed handrails, patient masks, personal protective equipment, and air outlets. We tested air and surface samples for the open reading frame (ORF) 1ab and nucleoprotein (N) genes of SARS-CoV-2 by quantitative real-time PCR.
Almost all positive results were concentrated in the contaminated areas (ICU 54/57, 94.7%; GW 9/9, 100%); the rate of positivity was much higher for the ICU (54/124, 43.5%) than for the GW (9/114, 7.9%) (Tables 1, 2). The rate of positivity was relatively high for floor swab samples (ICU 7/10, 70%; GW 2/13, 15.4%), perhaps because of gravity and air flow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground. In addition, as medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients. Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive. Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers. The 3 weak positive results from the floor of dressing room 4 might also arise from these carriers. We highly recommend that persons disinfect shoe soles before walking out of wards containing COVID-19 patients. The authors suggested that “air flow” and the forces of gravity might be responsible for moving the samples to the floors and the walls.But this certainly doesn’t bode well for anybody arguing that the subway and restaurants will be able to go quickly back to normal, since an asymptomatic diner can leave the virus at their table for the next customer to pick up even if the table sits empty for hours – or even overnight.
The cost to test everybody (in the U.S. at least)
There is a valuable discussion about testing and its outcomes
in this analysis by Dr. Taal Levi (Oregon State, copied):
https://twitter.com/taaltree/status/12484677315459112
EXCERPT:
<div”>Just a few decades ago, getting into hobby radio meant lots of specialty hardware, and making changes to your setup to work on various frequencies wasn’t particularly easy. Since software-defined radio (SDR) came onto the scene in an accessible way for most of us, this barrier to entry was reduced significantly and made the process of getting on the air a lot easier. It goes without saying that it does require some software, but [Aaron]’s latest project makes even getting that software extremely simple.
What he has done is created a custom Linux distribution based on Debian, called DragonOS, with the entire suite of SDR programs needed to get up and running. Out of the box, it supports RTL-SDR, HackRF and LimeSDR packages and even includes other fun tools you’ll need like Kismet. There are several video demonstrations of his distribution, including using RTL-SDR for ADS-B reception, and also shows off several custom implementations of the OS in various scenarios on his YouTube channel. The video linked below also shows how to set up the distribution in a virtual machine, so you can run this even if you don’t have a computer to dedicate to SDR.
Getting into SDR has never been easier, and the odds of having something floating around in the junk drawer that you can use to get started are pretty high. The process is exceptionally streamlined with [Aaron]’s software suite. If you’re a little short on hardware, though, there’s no better place to get started than with the classic TV-tuner-to-SDR hack from a few years back…[…]
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/11/software-defined-radio-made-easy/
South American nations open fire on ICANN for ‘illegal and unjust’ sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos
Letter to ICANN from California AG on PIR Sale
“Becerra’s letter opens by citing his authority to regulate California-based charitable trusts and public benefits organizations, then cites elements of ICANN’s charter to warn the org that it “must exercise its authority to withhold approval”
Becerra concluded. “… This office will continue to evaluate this matter, and will take whatever action necessary to protect Californians and the nonprofit community.”
Article:
https://gizmodo.com/sale-of-org-registry-to-private-equity-vampires-stalle-1842921935
The actual letter:
https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/becerra-to-botterman-marby-15apr20-en.pdf
ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the Internet’s domain name system, has given itself another two weeks to decide whether to allow control of the .org domain to be sold to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The decision comes after ICANN received a blizzard of letters from people opposed to the transaction, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Becerra’s letter was significant because ICANN is incorporated in California. That means it’s Becerra’s job to make sure that ICANN is living up to the commitments in its articles of incorporation, which promise that ICANN will operate “for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole.”
Becerra questioned whether ICANN was really doing that. “There is mounting concern that ICANN is no longer responsive to the needs of its stakeholders,” he wrote.
A secretive buyer and a lot of debt
California’s attorney general pointed to several specific concerns about the transaction. One was the shadowy nature of the proposed buyer, Ethos Capital. “Little is known about Ethos Capital and its multiple proposed subsidiaries,” Becerra writes. Ethos Capital, he said, has “refused to produce responses to many critical questions posted by the public and Internet community.”
Ethos Capital’s plan is to buy the Public Interest Registry (PIR) from its current parent organization, the nonprofit Internet Society. To help finance the sale, Ethos will saddle PIR with $300 million in debt—a common tactic in the world of leveraged buyouts. Becerra warns that this tactic could endanger the financial viability of the PIR—especially in light of the economic uncertainty created by the coronavirus.
“If the sale goes through and PIR’s business model fails to meet expectations, it may have to make significant cuts in operations,” Becerra warns. “Such cuts would undoubtedly affect the stability of the .org registry.”
Becerra also blasts the Internet Society for considering the sale in the first place. “ISOC purports to support the Internet, yet its actions, from the secretive nature of the transaction, to actively seeking to transfer the .org registry to an unknown entity, are contrary to its mission and potentially disruptive to the same system it claims to champion and support,” he writes.
Becerra ends his letter with a warning: “This office will continue to evaluate this matter, and will take whatever action necessary to protect Californians and the nonprofit community.”
“Totally inappropriate”
Becerra is far from the only critic of the .org deal. On Monday, ICANN’s first CEO, Michael Roberts, and original board chair Esther Dyson penned a letter blasting the transaction and their successors at ICANN…
[…]
Another disaster is ready to catch the US unprepared: Drought
Like COVID-19, water insecurity is set to hit the most vulnerable the hardest.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/another-disaster-is-ready-to-catch-the-us-unprepared-drought/
Google’s auto-complete for speech can cover up glitches in video calls