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Comment All China's Lies (Score 3, Interesting) 411

Maybe if China hadn't lied so extensively about everything related to the Wuhan Coronavirus in the first place, we might believe them.

Comment "No one will be admitted during the big..." (Score 4, Insightful) 96

by Nova Express (#59959826) Attached to: Tech Startups Ask Workers To Trade In Salary for Stock

"...CEO 'We're One Quarter/Big Deal Close/Liquidity Event Away From Profitability' speech!"

I've worked for startups with good products and actual revenue streams that it didn't work out for. Shit happens.

With a nasty (hopefully brief) Wuhan Cornavirus recession upon us, cash is king. Take the money, leave the stock options. And update your resume for the almost-inevitable layoff.
Books

'Abolish Silicon Valley' Author Urges 'Expropriating' Platforms, Making them Open-Source Public Services (siliconvalley.com) 250

Posted by EditorDavid from the pitchforks dept.
The Bay Area Newsgroup just interviewed the author of "Abolish Silicon Valley: How to liberate technology from capitalism". Q: How do you fix this broken system?

A: Overall the goal that I'm thinking about is that you have the private sector so overfunded and glorified that it seems like the only way to do things, but things could be much better serviced by the public sector without the profit motive that the private sector demands. Reclaim the wealth from capital, push back capital and fund public innovation... Right now the way it works is all these tech companies are predicated on a very particular way of regulating work and will hire people short-time and pay them nothing and not provide them with safety nets.

There are also companies that shouldn't necessarily exist. A lot of companies are being funded to do something the public sector could've provided. Instead of good public transit, we have Uber. Instead of a good social mobility system, we get paid scooters. What people want is to streamline a centralized system that is run in a way that is accountable and actually serves the public...

My Utopian view is to put tech companies in full public view. Expropriate platforms and turn them into municipal services, public services and make them open-source.
Republicans

Trump Threatens To Withhold Funding For World Health Organization (nytimes.com) 641

Posted by BeauHD from the Trump-threats dept.
What better way to celebrate World Health Day than by threatening to withhold funding for the World Health Organization. That's exactly what President Trump said he was considering today at Tuesday's coronavirus press briefing. The New York Times reports: "We're going to put a hold on money spent to the W.H.O.; we're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see," Mr. Trump said, accusing the organization of having not been aggressive enough in confronting the dangers from the virus. "They called it wrong. They call it wrong. They really they missed the call." Mr. Trump appeared to be particularly angry at the W.H.O. for issuing a statement saying it did not support his decision on Jan. 31 to restrict some travel from China because of the virus. At the time, the group issued a statement saying that "restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions."

"Don't close your borders to China, don't do this," Mr. Trump said, paraphrasing the group and accusing the organization of "not seeing" the outbreak when it started in Wuhan, China. "They didn't see it, how do you not see it? They didn't see it. They didn't report it. If they did see it, they must have seen it, but they didn't report." In fact, the W.H.O. repeatedly issued statements about the emergence of the virus in China and its movement around the world. The budget for the W.H.O. is about $5 billion and comes from member countries around the world. "In 2017, the last year for which figures were available, the United States was required to spend $111 million based on the organization's rules, but sent an additional $401 million in voluntary contributions," reports The New York Times.

Trump said his government will investigate the organization and that "we will look at ending funding." It's unclear if he's planning to eliminate all funding, or only some.
Earth

How To Get To Net Zero Carbon Emissions: Cut Short-Lived Superpollutants (thebulletin.org) 184

Posted by EditorDavid from the or-else dept.
Dan Drollette writes: We absolutely, positively, must tackle climate change speedily. Or as the authors of this article put it: 'By 'speed,' we mean measures — including regulatory ones — that can begin within two-to-three years, be substantially implemented in five-to-10 years, and produce a climate response within the next decade or two.' (Quick aside: one of the authors, Mario Molina, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995, for his work on holes in the ozone layer.)
From the article: Rapid warming over the near term threatens to accelerate self-reinforcing feedbacks in which the planet starts to warm itself in a Hothouse Earth scenario — vicious cycles which could lead to uncontrollable warming as these feedback mechanisms become the dominant force regulating the climate system. These feedbacks would then set off a domino-like cascade that triggers tipping points in the Arctic and elsewhere, many of them irreversible and potentially catastrophic.

Comment Chinese Researchers Sell Lab Animals (Score 1, Interesting) 238

This little tidbit is what makes me think the virus could have escaped that way:

Some Chinese researchers are in the habit of selling their laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.

You heard me right.

Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made a million dollars selling his monkeys and rats on the live animal market, where they eventually wound up in someone’s stomach.

That's a nice recipe for disaster, isn't it?

The question is: What hasn't China lied about during the outbreak?
Robotics

Bay Area Group Pushes $1,000 Universal Basic Income For Everyone (eastbaytimes.com) 352

Posted by EditorDavid from the trials-with-teens dept.
"Gisele Huff is convinced universal basic income is finally having its moment," reports the Bay Area newsgroup, describing the 84-year-old president of a nonprofit promoting universal basic incomes to honor their recently-deceased son, a Tesla software engineer: While Huff's organization is only a few years old, it has already made its mark in the Bay Area. Santa Clara County's Board of Supervisors is considering a pilot program that would provide youth exiting foster care with a basic $1,000 monthly income. If approved later this year, the program would likely be the first of its kind in the nation...

Q: Different people have different ideas about what exactly UBI should look like. What's yours?

A: It would be $1,000 a month and it runs like social security. It's an automatic system. All you need is a bank account. So UBI is a direct payment to your bank account on a monthly basis. It has no requirements. When you're 18 it starts and it goes on until you die.

Q: And everyone would get the same amount? Including the wealthiest households?

A: Yes. For the people who are wealthy, it will disappear because $1,000 doesn't mean anything. But it will mean the world for the people who are so marginalized now, like foster kids or abused women who can't leave a situation because they don't have a dime to their name. It is a huge incentive for people to move on, to do things, take risks that they would not do before.

Q: Some critics of UBI say that it could incentivize people not to work, because no matter what they do they will get a monthly paycheck. What is your response?

A: If you have a job, you're not going to stop working for $1,000 a month. What you're going to do is you're going to tell your boss: "No, I'm not doing this because it's not acceptable and I have $1,000 dollars that I can use for the next two months until I find a better job." So if you want that job done as a boss, you're going to have to improve the conditions or the pay...."

Q: And your son was concerned about those same issues? How did he come to his perspective on UBI?

A: Gerald was the software engineer for the Model 3 Tesla. So he has been a techie all of his life and what really spurred him on to look into this in a deeper way was his fear of technological unemployment. The robots are coming. And the potential of that technology is what Gerald was aware of — it's immense.

Comment No, Bad Security/Programming Is (Score 4, Insightful) 66

by Nova Express (#59755342) Attached to: Are APIs Putting Financial Data At Risk?

Use best practices, require certs/two factor authentication for all calls, don't allow expired certs, don't allow universal passwords, etc.

If you use bad security practices because you're too busy to implement good ones, or you'll fix it in release, or because your customer complains that it's too hard to use good practices, or because you have too high privileges than the API call actually needs, etc., then sooner or later that will come back to bite you on the ass.

Nine times out of ten, it's not the fault of the APIs, it's the way you've implemented them.

Comment SILENCE HERETIC! (Score 1) 129

by Nova Express (#59754754) Attached to: A Quarter of All Tweets About Climate Crisis Produced By Bots

callRefute10Count
10. The Science is Settled!
20. The Science is Settled!
30. The Science is Settled!
40. The Science is Settled!
50. The Science is Settled!
60. The Science is Settled!
70. The Science is Settled!
80. The Science is Settled!
90. The Science is Settled!
100. The Science is Settled! /EndcallRefute10Count

#Line counters for debugging only. Remove before production...

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