Monday, May 24, 2021

Wild Wuhan

Sounds fair to me

Fauci Must Be Held to Account for His Role in Funding Wuhan Lab Research.


 Just Use Email is a site dedicated to the various ways people and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) should just use email to manage their digital life, their business, and their productivity, all without the use of third-party tools, SaaS subscriptions, two dozen logins, and twenty different interfaces. The premise of this site is that often just using email allows us to be more efficient, effective, and focused, even when offline…


BREAKING! The regime landed plane, which was flying from Athens to Vilnius,in order to arrest the famous Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich. In Belarus, he faces the death penalty. Belarus has seized a plane,put passengers in danger, in order to repress an opponent

Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.

Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin



China's chilling warning: Australia will be the 'first hit' if the 'insignificant' nation meddles in Chinese conflicts - as Beijing boasts of ballistic missiles which can reach Down Under


Scientists find ‘missing link’ behind first human languages Live Science


Why the Bitcoin Crash Was a Big Win for Cryptocurrencies Bloomberg


Bitcoin Miners Are Giving New Life to Old Fossil-Fuel Power Plants WSJ


Climate change is becoming less a battle of nations than rich vs poor FT


Air quality and future pandemics KUSA. Interview with Shelly Miller of the University of Colorado.



Neuroscientists Have Followed a Thought as It Moves Through The Human Brain ScienceAlert 


AUTONOMOUS TAXI GOES ROGUE, ESCAPES FROM RESCUE CREW The Byte


Federal agency probes if Tesla driver killed in crash may have been on AUTOPILOT: Motorist had posted videos of himself riding in the vehicle without his hands on the wheel or foot on pedalDaily Mail


Wild Horses Adopted Under a Federal Program Are Going to Slaughter NYT


       Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist 

       They've announced the twelve-title strong longlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, a leading Australian novel prize; it includes titles by Aravind Adiga and Gail Jones.
       The shortlist will be announced 16 June, and the winner on 15 July. 



Berkeley MIMS Final Project 2021 – “PrivacyBot is a free and open-source way to delete your data from an exhaustive list of data brokers and people search sites. The largest statewide privacy law change in a generation, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect in January 2020. However, exercising these privacy rights is a tricky business even for privacy experts. A survey we conducted within a few privacy-related subreddits showed that tracking down data brokers is “a huge pain in the [neck]”.

We introduce “PrivacyBot”, a simple way to start exercising your privacy rights. Our deliverables include:

  • A fully open-source local-only system that automatically routes data delete requests to data brokers and people search sites
  • User experience research reports about current CCPA processes and feedback
  • Shareable insights and data visualizations about the request process…”

In May 2021 AD President Biden signed an Executive Order to improve the nation’s cybersecurity and protect federal government networks. Recent cybersecurity incidents such as SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, and the Colonial Pipeline incident are a sobering reminder that U.S. public and private sector entities increasingly face sophisticated malicious cyber activity from both nation-state actors and cyber criminals. These incidents share commonalities, including insufficient cybersecurity defenses that leave public and private sector entities more vulnerable to incidents. This Executive Order makes a significant contribution toward modernizing cybersecurity defenses by protecting federal networks, improving information-sharing between the U.S. government and the private sector on cyber issues, and strengthening the United States’ ability to respond to incidents when they occur. It is the first of many ambitious steps the Administration is taking to modernize national cyber defenses. However, the Colonial Pipeline incident is a reminder that federal action alone is not enough. Much of our domestic critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and those private sector companies make their own determination regarding cybersecurity investments. We encourage private sector companies to follow the Federal government’s lead and take ambitious measures to augment and align cybersecurity investments with the goal of minimizing future incidents…”


Apple’s Security Compromises in China Outlined in New Report.

Apple has been making concessions on privacy and security in order to continue building and selling its devices in China, according to an in-depth report from The New York Times.

The focal point of the report is Apple’s decision to comply with a 2016 law that requires all personal information and data collected in China to be kept in China, which has led Apple to build a China data center and relocate Chinese customers’ iCloud data to China, managed by a Chinese company.

Apple fought against China’s efforts to gain more control over customer data, but given China’s leverage over Apple, Apple had no choice but to comply. There were initially disagreements over the digital keys that can unlock iCloud encryption. Apple wanted to keep them in the United States, while Chinese officials wanted them in China.

Ultimately, the encryption keys ended up in China, a decision that “surprised” two unnamed Apple executives who worked on the negotiations and who said that the decision could potentially endanger customer data. There is no evidence that the Chinese government has access to the data, but security experts have said that China could demand data or simply take it without asking Apple, especially given compromises in encryption key storage and the fact that a third-party company manages customer data on Apple’s behalf.

“The Chinese are serial iPhonebreakers,” said Ross J. Anderson, a University of Cambridge cybersecurity researcher who reviewed the documents. “I’m convinced that they will have the ability to break into the servers