And when it comes to remdesivir, experts say Gilead might not have been inclined, or even had the time, to make the process as efficient as it could be. Gilead developed the compound during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa and sped it along with the goal of testing it before the outbreak waned. The process likely reflects the anticipated demand for an Ebola treatment: the 2014 Ebola outbreak saw 29,000 cases over 2.5 years; the current coronavirus pandemic is approaching 2.5 million cases in under 5 months.
Category Archives: Technology
Time to regulate Facebook, Twitter like the publishers they are
Here is my column that ran in the Washington County Daily News this week.
The New York Post, the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton, broke a story last week about Joe Biden’s family. The story was supported by credible evidence and implicated Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in a long-term scheme to shake down foreign entities for money in exchange for favorable American government action. It is the kind of story that, if true, is the most serious kind of government corruption imaginable — the selling of American foreign policy for cash.
The bombshell story was instantly quashed and hidden by Twitter and Facebook. Both companies actively censored the story, blocked accounts that attempted to share the story, and disabled links under the faux-truistic cover that they were upholding journalistic standards by insisting on stronger sourcing. This is despite a lengthy history of allowing every conspiracy theory and liberal fake news story to propagate unmolested. In choosing to put their digital thumbs on the Biden story, both companies crossed the line from internet platforms to publishers and require a different regulatory treatment.
Twitter and Facebook both benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is credited with providing the legal umbrella that allowed the internet to flourish into what it is today. Section 230 simply states, in its entirety, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
While simple, the distinction has massive implications in law. By not being deemed a publisher, internet companies are protected against liability for libel or defamation for what appears on their platforms. Section 230 is an evolution of an ancient English common law practice of “common carriage” or common carrier. The crux of common carriage is that private enterprises who are engaged in something imperative to the common good are granted some special protections by the government in exchange for certain obligations. In the case of internet companies, the free exchange of ideas these platforms facilitate is considered the lifeblood of a free, self-governing society and a common good worthy of such protections.
In the 20th century the common carrier that dominated technology for the better part of 70 years was AT&T. In exchange for a monopoly on long-distance lines and the ability to use eminent domain, AT&T agreed to let the government regulate their rates and, what was critical, to not discriminate against what was said on those lines. This was a stark contrast to the great monopoly of the telegraph, Western Union, which might have helped sway the presidential election of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes by secretly providing the Hayes campaign the Democrats’ telegrams and suppressing others. AT&T’s great bargain was to agree to be regulated in exchange for a monopoly.
Section 230 took the grand bargain a step further by providing all of the benefits of legal absolution in exchange for nothing. Under this law, companies like Twitter and Facebook grew up into dominant natural monopolies because their users provided petabytes of content for other users to consume without having to police the content for accuracy or even sanity.
Make no mistake, if you are not paying for it, you are what is being sold. In the case of Twitter and Facebook, their business model is to collect incredible amounts of personal data about their users and sell that data for the purpose of target marketing, research, and whatever other moneymaking purpose they can divine. Their algorithms target people for specialized content and might have already broken the common carrier trust that the public bestowed on them.
In purposefully, actively, and personally deciding to stomp on a negative story about Joe Biden that was published by a reputable newspaper in the midst of a political campaign, Facebook and Twitter have definitively and unmistakably crossed the line from being internet platforms to publishers. As such, the legal protections granted to them under Section 230 must be withdrawn so that they can be regulated like The New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, and all of the other publishers that filter, edit, and curate the information they provide to their subscribers.
Facebook and Twitter can’t have it both ways. If they want the legal protections provided under Section 230, then they must allow all information to flow freely. If they want to be information gatekeepers, then those protections must be withdrawn so that people have legal remedies against abuse.
Posted by Owen at 1022 hours
Time to regulate Facebook, Twitter like the publishers they are
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. I know what you’re thinking… what the heck did President Hayes do to make the news this week? You’ll have to read and see.
In the 20th century the common carrier that dominated technology for the better part of 70 years was AT& T. In exchange for a monopoly on long-distance lines and the ability to use eminent domain, AT&T agreed to let the government regulate their rates and, what was critical, to not discriminate against what was said on those lines. This was a stark contrast to the great monopoly of the telegraph, Western Union, which might have helped sway the presidential election of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes by secretly providing the Hayes campaign the Democrats’ telegrams and suppressing others. AT& T’s great bargain was to agree to be regulated in exchange for a monopoly.
Posted by Owen at 0814 hours
Disney Reorganizes Around Streaming Content
Seemingly absorbing some growing advice from industry pros, Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) is announcing a major reorganization where it will be making streaming its “primary focus” for entertainment.
Shares are up 3.1% after hours.
The company will rearrange its media and entertainment divisions into a single organization responsible for content distribution, ad sales, and Disney Plus.
[…]
“Under the new structure, Disney’s world-class creative engines will focus on developing and producing original content for the Company’s streaming services, as well as for legacy platforms, while distribution and commercialization activities will be centralized into a single, global Media and Entertainment Distribution organization,” the company says.
Posted by Owen at 2038 hours
Justice Department Builds Antitrust Case Against Google
This could have far-reaching implications.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is expected to bring an antitrust action against Google in coming weeks, focusing on its dominance in online search and whether it was used to stifle competition and hurt consumers, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Thursday.
The department also is examining Google’s online advertising practices, said the person, who could not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Antitrust officials at the department briefed state attorneys general Thursday on the planned action against Google, seeking support from states across the country that share concerns about Google’s conduct.
The anticipated lawsuit against Google could be the government’s biggest legal offensive to protect competition since the groundbreaking case against Microsoft almost 20 years ago.
Lawmakers and consumer advocates accuse Google of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost its profits.
Posted by Owen at 2121 hours
Xbox Financing Options
If you are financing your game console, you suck at personal finance. You are paying $840 for a $500 piece of technology for purely entertainment purposes. The fact that this option will be so popular is a window into America’s inability and unwillingness to control government spending and debt.
The high-end Xbox Series X will cost $499 while the entry-level Xbox Series S will cost $299. Microsoft will also offer a financing plan that allows customers to pay for either console over 24 months.The Xbox Series S costs $24.99 per month on that plan while the Xbox Series X will cost $34.99 per month.
Microsoft said the financing plans also include access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play, which allows you to download or stream more than 100 games to Xbox or PC. It will also include Microsoft’s new mobile streaming services that lets you stream from the cloud to an Android phone. You’ll have to buy a Game Pass subscription plan separately, which starts at $9.99 per month, if you don’t finance.
Posted by Owen at 0758 hours
Twitter and Facebook Are Actively Campaigning
They have been for some time, but now they aren’t even pretending. Since these platforms have taken ownership of the content submitted by their users by actively curating it, I’m all in favor of removing their legal protections.
For the first time, Facebook has taken down a post from Donald Trump’s personal page on Wednesday for making false claims about the coronavirus.
Trump had uploaded a video of an interview he gave to Fox News earlier Wednesday, in which he falsely stated that children are ‘almost immune’ from COVID-19.
‘They have much stronger immune system than [adults],’ Trump said in the video, which the official account for his presidential campaign also tweeted.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook said the president’s post was removed for violating the social media platform’s ‘policies around harmful COVID misinformation.’
Twitter followed suit a short while after, ordering Trump’s campaign account, @TeamTrump, to remove its ‘misleading’ post featuring the same video and banning it from tweeting again until it agreed to do so.
Posted by Owen at 2237 hours
Government Asks Tech Companies to Forbid Advocating Crime
This whole censorship thing gets a bit slippery, eh?
As protests against police brutality and racism stretch into their fourth week across the US, the Trump administration is pressuring tech companies to take action against posts that encourage the toppling of statues, describing them as “criminal activity.”
Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sent letters to companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Snapchat Friday. They claim that social media sites have enabled “burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property,” according to copies of the letters obtained by Business Insider.
Posted by Owen at 1326 hours
Evers’ record(ings)
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News on Tuesday. Since I wrote this, there have been some very serious developments and it looks more and more like Evers might be covering up for a felon. I wonder… the Dane County DA and AG won’t investigate, but couldn’t the Jefferson or Racine County DAs (or wherever Vos and Fitzgerald were when they took the call)?
After the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor Tony Evers’ unconstitutional lockdown order, our state government leaders needed to figure out what, if anything, the state should do in its continuing effort to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Dutifully, Governor Evers and the two leaders of the Legislature, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, got on a phone call to discuss the path forward. What the legislative leaders did not know what that Governor Evers’ staff secretly recorded the conversation for dubious reasons and then released the recording to the media. Such a breach of trust, and his reaction to it, tells us a lot about our governor.
The rough details of the transgression are known. There were five participants in the call: Governor Evers, Speaker Vos, Majority Leader Fitzgerald, Evers’ Chief of Staff Maggie Gau, and Evers’ attorney Ryan Nilsestuen. The call was recorded and given to the media. Vos and Fitzgerald were shocked to learn that it was recorded. Evers claimed that he did not know it was being recorded, but wouldn’t say who did it. Gau and Nilsestuen have not admitted to anything.
Wisconsin law allows a call to be legally recorded if one participant of the call knows. The law does not require that all participants be notified that the call is being recorded, but it is considered both impolite and unethical to not make such a disclosure. However, if one of Evers’ other non-participant staffers recorded the call, it would be a crime. Since Evers will not disclose who recorded the call, he is either covering up for a staffer’s unethical behavior, crime, or both. What does all of this tell us about Governor Evers? Quite a bit. If we believe that Evers is telling the truth that he was ignorant of the recording, then he does not have any control over his staff. Whether a CEO, general, governor, or any other person of great responsibility, it would be unthinkable for a staff member to record the boss’ phone call with other leaders without the boss’ knowledge and consent. If Evers truly did not know, then he is not managing his staff. They are managing him.
Further, Evers’ refusal to disclose or discipline the perpetrator tells us more about him. It tells us that he is either afraid to hold his staff accountable for bad behavior, or he condones it. Recall that we do not yet know if the perpetrator committed a crime or merely violated ethical boundaries. Either way, Evers is allowing staff members to run rogue with no consequences.
Whether Evers knew or just condoned his staff’s recording of the call, it also shows that his administration is willing to use slimy tactics for political gain – even on an official call that was supposed to be about working together to respond to a pandemic. They recorded the call and released it to the media in an effort to embarrass political opponents. Despite the Evers administration’s claims of innocent motives, the results speak for themselves. Look at what they do — not what they say.
Finally, since the disclosure of the recording, Governor Evers has not seen fit to apologize to Vos and Fitzgerald for recording their conversation. He may have not known that the call was being recorded at the time, but he knows it now. His stubborn refusal to even do the simple mannerly thing and apologize for the breach of trust shows his inability, or unwillingness, to build relationships with people with whom he disagrees politically. His lifetime as a bureaucrat has not equipped him with the skills and he lacks the natural acumen to develop personal relationships outside his rigid ideological sphere.
After almost a year-and-a-half in office, Governor Evers has not made any progress in learning how to govern in a divided government. He has lurched from insults to partisan attacks to cursing to violating trusts. Is it any wonder why he resorts to unconstitutional dictatorial actions instead of working with the Legislature on behalf of the people of Wisconsin?
Posted by Owen at 1157 hours
Major Breakthrough in Coronavirus Treatment
A cheap and widely available drug called dexamethasone can help save the lives of patients who are seriously ill with coronavirus.
UK experts say the low-dose steroid treatment is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus.
It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.
The drug is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.
Researchers estimate that if the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the coronavirus pandemic up to 5,000 lives could have been saved. Because it is cheap, it could also be of huge benefit in poorer countries struggling with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.
Posted by Owen at 0802 hours
Astronaut Dives to 7 Miles
NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan made history this weekend by becoming not only the first woman to reach the deepest point in the world’s oceans, but also the first human to have been in space and at full ocean depth of about 7 miles. Sullivan marked the occasion by making a phone call from the submersible’s mothership, DSSV Pressure Drop, to speak with the NASA astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).
“As a hybrid oceanographer and astronaut, this was an extraordinary day–a once-in-a-lifetime day–seeing the moonscape of the Challenger Deep and then making the call between the ISS and DSSV Pressure Drop,” said Sullivan.
Posted by Owen at 0946 hours
Zuckerberg Breaks with Dorsey
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has criticized competitor Twitter for its decision to fact-check tweets from President Donald Trump.
In an interview with Fox News due to be broadcast on Thursday, Zuckerberg claims that it is not the place of private companies to interfere in what people say online.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey immediately fired back saying that the site would continue to call out ‘incorrect or disputed information’ about elections shared by users.
The spat between Zuckerberg and Dorsey came after Trump said he will sign some sort of ‘social media’-focused executive order on Thursday amid the rift with Twitter over the fact-checks on his tweets.
Posted by Owen at 2123 hours
Trump To Issue Executive Order to Clarify Rules Around Liability for Internet Platforms
I’m very wary of things like this.
The order would push the Federal Communications Commission to write rules on when and how platforms can remove content from their platform and still maintain liability protection granted them under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law as it stands largely exempts those publications from being held liable for much of the content on their websites.
The working order, which cites Twitter by name, would encourage the Federal Trade Commission to take action against companies that engage in “deceptive” acts of communication.
Outside of the current kerfuffle between Trump and Twitter, this debate has a deep history with huge implications. The debate revolves around the legal responsibility of people and companies who provide information platforms, carry/transport information, and perhaps operate a monopoly. Let’s take this blog, for example. Am I legally liable for what a commentator writes? In general, no. Part of what bolsters that relative protection is the fact that we don’t censor comments here. With rare exception – direct threat, spam, etc. – commentators can write whatever they want. If we got in the business of curating or filtering comments, then that liability potential increases. If I am curating the content, do I then own it? Someone might argue “yes.”
The discussion has roots back to medieval common carriage laws and norms. Here’s a great paper on some of the history and modern implications. It was written as part of the net neutrality debate, but has application here. Here’s a part:
Looking at the matter from a fresh perspective, it seems important to look at the entire regime of common carriage, not simply interconnection and non-discrimination—or even rate regulation and liability. And what emerges is a bargain that gives special legal liability in return for the carrier refraining from using some market power to further some public good. On one hand, the carrier gives away the right to discriminate on the basis of sender or content and in return receives immunity for liability for the content therein. On the other hand, the carrier agrees to moderate monopoly power against competitors, perhaps provides access to competitors in return for immunity from antitrust suit. Similarly, the increased standard of care reflects the market power of dominant communication and transportation firms enjoy vis à vis individual customers—and can be seen as a return for the privileges common carriers enjoy such as right of access etc.
In this regard, common carriage is a deal. The regulated industry has something the government wants—a universal communications platform that provides a valuable public good, notably free speech to further democratic deliberation. But, in return, the regulated industry receives preferential treatment from the government.
In the case of Twitter and Facebook, Trump is arguing, in his clumsy way, that those companies have surrendered their liability for content when they got into the business of regulating speech. If Twitter, for example, is going to curate, edit, and regulate content, do they also get to continue to enjoy liability protections for that content? If that’s the case, then shouldn’t such liability protections be extended to anyone to generates content?
Twitter, Facebook, and the like are going to have to make a choice. Either they can be agnostic platforms that carry content created by other people, in which case they enjoy certain legal liability protections for that content, or they can be content creators that create, modify, and curate content for consumption based on achieving their political or business objectives, in which case they are liable for the content. They can’t have it both ways.
Posted by Owen at 1219 hours
U.S. Restarts Manned Space Program
Elon Musk’s SpaceX company hopes to make history on Wednesday by launching the first astronauts into space from US soil in nine years, as the billionaire takes the next step in his dream to commercialise space travel.
Donald Trump will be among the spectators at Kennedy space centre in Florida to witness the launch, which has been given the green light despite the coronavirus lockdown.
At 4.33pm (2033 GMT) on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is due to take off from launchpad 39A – the same one the Apollo astronauts used to get to the moon – with the Crew Dragon space capsule on top of it. It is a demonstration of the new “taxi” service Nasa has agreed to buy from Musk’s firm.
Posted by Owen at 1354 hours
States Are Combining Test Results
It is certainly concerning when we make broad, sweeping policy decisions based on suspect data. At the very least, this makes comparisons between states difficult.
(CNN)At least four states combined data from two different test results, potentially providing a misleading picture of when and where coronavirus spread as the nation eases restrictions.
More than 1.5 million people in the United States have tested positive for coronavirus and over 93,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.Virginia, Texas, Georgia, and Vermont have said they’ve been adding two numbers to their totals: viral test results and antibody test results.Viral tests are taken by nose swab or saliva sample, and look for direct evidence someone currently has Covid-19. By contrast, antibody tests use blood samples to look for biological signals that a person has been exposed to the virus in the past.
Posted by Owen at 0904 hours
Potential COVID Treatment Found in Remdesivir
Scientists on Wednesday announced the first effective treatment against the coronavirus — an experimental drug that can speed the recovery of COVID-19 patients — in a major medical advance that came as the economic gloom caused by the scourge deepened in the U.S. and Europe.
The U.S. government said it is working to make the antiviral medication remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible. Stocks surged around the world on the news, with the Dow Jones Industrial average climbing more than 550 points, or over 2%, in the afternoon.
“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert. “This will be the standard of care.”
It looks like it would take some ingenuity to ramp up production if this proves to be effective on a wide scale.
As the scope of the pandemic widens, Gilead has been open about the challenges of manufacturing the drug. The firm says it typically takes 9 to 12 months to make an antiviral like remdesivir, but that since January it has shrunk the timeline to 6 to 8 months. “We continue to work on optimizing the chemical synthesis processes,” the company states.
In a public communication in early April, CEO Daniel O’Day outlined a series of measures Gilead was taking to increase access to remdesivir. At the time, the company said it had on hand enough active ingredient to create about 1.5 million doses, enough for roughly 140,000 treatment courses, based on a 10-day regimen. The company has been working to increase both internal capacity and external partnerships to generate an additional 500,000 courses by October, 1 million courses by the end of the year, and, if needed, several million courses in 2021.
Posted by Owen at 1505 hours
Milwaukee Election Commission Abruptly Closes Virtual Meeting
These are the people you trust with ballot security and election integrity?
A city Election Commission meeting using the videoconferencing software Zoom was abruptly halted on Sunday afternoon shortly after it was hacked in a practice called Zoombombing.
Neil Albrecht, executive director of the commission, shut down the videoconference after radical Muslim and crude pornographic images and racial slurs began appearing on the computer screens of all those participating in the meeting.
It took Albrecht and the three commissioners a couple of minutes to realize that the meeting had been hijacked by anonymous outsiders. He then engaged in a brief conversation with an individual claiming to be a Zoom tech.
Assistant City Attorney Patrick McClain eventually ordered Albrecht to halt the videoconference. There were a couple of dozen people participating in or watching the meeting.
“It was an outrageous hack,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who is running for re-election, said just minutes after the meeting was Zoombombed.
[…]
Participants in the election commission meeting on Sunday did not have to enter a password to participate .
This was not some sort of sophisticated hack by technical geniuses. THEY DIDN’T SET A PASSWORD! smh
Posted by Owen at 0726 hours
WalMart Sees Sales Surge for Tops, but Not Bottoms
There are a lot of teleworkers sitting in their underwear.
(CNN)With more and more people working from home, Walmart has picked up on an interesting trend: Tops have seen an increase in sales, while bottoms haven’t.
The reason? Teleworking.That’s what Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs Dan Bartlett told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. Later, a spokesman for the company told CNN the same thing.As officials try to control the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of white collar workers — normally bound by dress codes and expectations in the office — are trading business trousers for sweat pants, and stiff blazers for that hoodie they would only ever allow their family, roommates or dog to see.
Posted by Owen at 1441 hours
A View of Virtual Learning
The Washington County Insider has asked students from local schools to describe their virtual learning experiences. Here’s a fascinating and detailed “day in the life” view from a student at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School in Jackson.
Our day starts at 7:40 a.m. with a live stream of our chapel service. This is the same time our normal day began. There is a Google form we must submit before 8 a.m. to show our attendance. Our normal eight period, 43-minute class schedule has been switched to a block schedule, where we have four periods each day, lasting 86 minutes.
For my classes, each teacher has posted what we will be doing that day in Google Classroom. This post also includes a link to Zoom, which is a video-conferencing App that allows us to meet. The teacher can interact with all the students and we can interact with each other by talking or using the chat feature. In some classes, the teacher has taught the entire lesson while on Zoom, and in other classes, the teacher uses Zoom just to see our faces and see if we have any questions before we complete the assignment posted on Google Classroom.
Teachers are able to share their screen with us, so we can still go through PowerPoint presentations. Student presentations are still possible through the same process. Zoom has a feature allowing the teacher to mute or unmute everyone, and each individual can control their video and audio as well. This feature has been effective for class discussions.
At times the video and audio quality are not the clearest, and some people have frozen on the screen for a small amount of time. Finding a place to have a Zoom meeting is also a challenge for some. For me personally, I have an eighth-grade brother who is doing online school, and my mother is working from home as well. Her job involves many phone meetings so it is difficult for us to work on the same floor. To alleviate the problem, I have decided to make my room my main working area. I cleared off my desk and that is where I do the majority of my work.
Posted by Owen at 1005 hours
Intelligence Agencies Used Front Company for Technical Surveillance
The Swiss government has ordered an inquiry into a global encryption company based in Zug following revelations it was owned and controlled for decades by US and German intelligence.
Encryption weaknesses added to products sold by Crypto AG allowed the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND, to eavesdrop on adversaries and allies alike while earning million of dollars from the sales, according the Washington Post and the German public broadcaster ZDF, based on the agencies’ internal histories of the intelligence operation.
“It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concluded. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”
[…]
The operation, codenamed Thesaurus and then renamed Rubicon in 1980s, demonstrated the overwhelming intelligence value of being able to insert flaws into widely sold communications equipment. The CIA’s success over many years is likely to reinforce current US suspicions of equipment made by the Chinese company Huawei.
Neither China or the Soviet Union bought Crypto encryption devices, suspicious of the company’s origins, but it was sold to more than 100 other countries.
Posted by Owen at 2127 hours
Chinese Military Accused of Hacking Equifax
Four members of the Chinese military have been charged with breaking into the networks of the Equifax credit reporting agency and stealing the personal information of tens of millions of Americans.
The 2017 breach affected roughly 145 million people, with the hackers successfully stealing names, Social Security numbers and other personal information stored in the company’s databases.
The Justice Department on Monday blamed China for one of the largest hacks in history.
The four – Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei – are members of the People’s Liberation Army, which is an arm of the Chinese military.
Posted by Owen at 1028 hours
