I think we can say for certain that this is the most political viral outbreak in US history.

Most of the world has pretty much followed the same policies and gotten different results based on everything from weather to population patterns, to how many people were already infected when testing finally ramped up. And all we can see from both sides is criticism of the others side's handling.

The truth is that most of the world screwed this one up. South Korea is a bright example of doing things right. While it seems some smaller countries got lucky because they are small and not as densely populated. The rest are a real mixed bag.

The correct approach is a subscription alert based model with path data kept on the phone: http://safepaths.mit.edu/ Most smartphones are smart enough to run through a list of locations you have been and see if they match any of the alerted locations.

We need exposure alerts like we need tornado or other weather alerts. They don't need to track my every move to send out an alert to a geographic area. At a certain place at a certain time you need to be aware of the potential increased risk and take appropriate actions. We should have such alerts for all sorts of report-able contagious illnesses not just COVID-19. Your phone could auto subscribe to the local alerts based on where you have been. All they need to know is some anonymous user is subscribing to alerts in that area.

What we don't need is government or third-parties hoovering up public health data to add to their treasure troves of advertising data so along with the creepy Facebook recommendations about who you might like to be friends with based on your shared location history... you can also get a recommendation for a coronavirus test. No I don't I want Facebook and everyone else knowing my medical and location history. They already have too much data about me as it is. If I was tempted to turn off my phone before, I would absolutely turn off my phone if agreeing (or not agreeing) to universal surveillance was the only option.

We cannot allow a temporary danger to permanently set us back hundreds of years in Liberty.

At this point we have to start going by mathematical models. Which is how they get flu deaths per year in the first place because not everyone that dies of the flu is tested for the flu and the local/state/national reporting systems are shit.

Expecting governments (US, Italy, other governments) to ramp up an already crappy system in a few weeks was probably hubris to begin with, but I had hoped.

About the only place that appears to be doing a good job is South Korea. And I wouldn't trust the China numbers at all since it is state mandated that they level off and go down... so surprise that is what they report.

At this point I am hoping that reporters will start asking for total deaths and compare them over previous years. And then look at hospital capacity. Those are really the only two bottom line metrics I think we have a chance in the next few weeks of making useful right now.

All the other numbers are for complete shit and won't be reliable for at least weeks if ever.

And it is hard to pay for a lawsuit if the company is bankrupt.

Necessity in a real life or death emergency should always win out over the law. And if the law doesn't bend then it is the right of the people to make it bend.

The Federal Reserve has a literal infinite capacity to create money. The risk is inflation. We need to get out of the notion that we are ever going to pay back our Federal Debt with taxation or balance the budget under any circumstances while also servicing debt.

It would be downright unethical and undemocratic to try and force people to pay back decades of spending that they may not have been even alive to vote for. The best thing the Federal Reserve could start doing is to pay back debt from its accounts when debt is payed down rather than continue to maintain this false sense of indebtedness. Keeping a false set of books as a PR exercise is just eroding any sense that the debt is real or has any effect... because it isn't real and it doesn't have any effect.

It is time to unwind the debt. Put money directly from the Federal Reserve into people's hands through a universal basic income rather than through predatory trickle down lending. Make money and the economy ours again.

One thing that always strikes me in these arguments is that somehow people are oblivious to the fact that the US has already to a very large degree implemented communist and socialist policies. If I had to put a number on it, the US is 50% free market and 50% socialist/communist.

The free market is good at incentivizing people to produce an over abundance via the profit motive.

The government is sometimes good at forcing people to comply with rules and rationing fixed resources.

Seems like the primary purpose of creating new languages is so you can sell books and training and get rid of highly paid experienced software engineers because they have the same amount of experience in that new language as teenagers who took a 6 week course over the Summer.

+1

Although, if they don't do the same in China, and build back doors for the Chinese government, then that would invariably mean that US intelligence service would get access to the phones of Chinese citizens. So the US government shouldn't be making that argument.

This isn't just about privacy from our own US government, this is about security from bad actors including foreign intelligence services. It should be noted that the US government and their contractors use plenty of iPhones. If Apple built in back doors to iPhones for the US government, then it would mean foreign intelligence would ultimately get access too.

On balance that is a very bad deal for US government interests to better and more easily monitor a few bad actors (in this case after the fact and they are already in jail) in exchange for giving our adversaries the capability to hack and undermine our free society.

And I would think that China would eventually learn to be wary of having its citizens being made more vulnerable to US (and other) hacking too. Weakening privacy is a small win, but big loss kind of deal.

People are dying unnecessarily because medical records are so hard to share and patients don't have real access to their medical records... patients who, despite the managed care propaganda, are the ones who need to manage their own medical care.

I have held all along that the direct violation of the 4th amendment is/was against the telecoms themselves in the case of obtaining transaction records. The violation against customers is the interference by the government in a legal contract. Customers have a right to be able to specify privacy against sharing data in a contract, an NDA, in all cases except a legal and constitutionally valid warrant.

Completely different when the government hacks a phone and physically places software on that phone in someone's possession. In that case it is a clear 4th amendment violation if there is no constitutionally valid warrant.

Coincidentally I just ran the inflation calculator on a $2,638 Apple IIe from 1983 and it works out to $6,812 in today's dollars... and I am thinking you are getting somewhat more utility.

It would be more fair to say that the real setback happened when they decided to change the plan to fly this prototype. That shift must have happened because of some design review, inspection result or maybe some operational conflict.

The over-pressurization is just a set back in terms of them performing additional tests on this prototype besides the already cancelled flight test. But overall yes they have had at least a couple setbacks, just the more important setback was far less dramatic than this minor setback.

Right? "In 2010 a Chinese ISP momentarily hijacked the Internet"

But I am sure they can probably just encrypt the traffic to obscure it and since "The Internet of Things" is just a bunch of spyware enabled devices calling home with all sorts of marketing and service data then I think it would be relatively trivial to slip in a few relevant clips of video and GPS data here and there... you know for "diagnostic services" to "improve the service" like you agreed to in that terms of service.

And no reason to think it would go directly back to China, plenty of US or other third country subsidiaries or business partners to route to first.

The people and organizations running the ads should be responsible for the fraudulent claims. And the people harmed should be responsible for filing the lawsuits. That has always been the free speech line in America. Anything else is just government censorship by proxy.

And I think the attack ad against Biden that kicked this off... no more false than dozens of other political attack ads I have seen over the years. Pulls together facts and weaves them together with a possible narrative. If we are going to ban attack ads that are based on spinning the facts to fit a negative narrative against your opponent, then we are banning freedom of speech.