onfocus

"As more and more of our lives start to be run and dictated by the technology we use, it's a human right to be able to see how that technology works and modify it. It’s as key to freedom as freedom of speech or freedom of religion. So that is what I plan to spend the rest of my life fighting for."

Nice profile of Matt Mullenweg and WordPress—which is still a force on the Web.

"There is no one who could meaningfully tell him no, both because he owns 58 percent of the company’s voting shares and is also the chairman of its board, but also because Facebook is organized such that he effectively has the final say on every decision the company makes; no other company this size invests so much formal or informal power in one person. It’s a terrible thing to say about someone, but Mark Zuckerberg really is Facebook. It shows."

Excellent Zuckerant.

"Last week, Pfizer released updated results that showed the treatment cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% if given to high-risk adults within a few days of their first symptoms. If given within the first five days of symptoms, the efficacy was similar: 88%."

A pill is a lot easier for people to swallow (so to speak) so I hope this ramps up quickly as an option.

“If your job does not require you to be in the office in order to do it, please work from elsewhere,” Mr. Zucker said in the memo.

Getting March 2020 vibes from the news.

"Reporters feared for their lives because of authoritarianism from Republicans. But to cover the legislative process, they now must interact with and quote the same people who helped unleash forces that put them — and the country’s democracy — in danger."

How should journalists cover politics when Republicans want to do away with democracy?

"I’ve tried to consider how my actions cascade to affect those with less privilege, immune or otherwise. Instead of asking “What’s my risk?,” I’ve tried to ask “What’s my contribution to everyone’s risk?” I’ve done things that personally inconvenience me to avoid contributing to the much greater societal inconvenience of, say, a collapsed health-care system."

Ed Yong on being thoughtful about risk in a pandemic.

"In my “free time”, I write this blog. It started in March 2020 when my Dean asked me to update students, faculty, and staff on the developments of the pandemic. In 19 months, it’s grown to an audience of 350,000 people and reached over 106,000,000 people in 166 countries."

I don’t think I’ve mentioned YLE here before but you should subscribe! She translates the latest covid science for a general audience. It’s always extremely helpful.

"For now, in this moment, my job is to make lists of the many highlights of the year of 2021 before it ends forever. This is a job I take extremely seriously. Is it because I am the best at this job — this job of making lists? Yes."

Always enjoy these lists that make us think, ah yes, these are things from the past year.

"Detected in an extensively used utility called Log4j, the flaw lets internet-based attackers easily seize control of everything from industrial control systems to web servers and consumer electronics. Simply identifying which systems use the utility is a prodigious challenge; it is often hidden under layers of other software."

Good overview of the log4shell nightmare.

"The various measures that controlled the spread of other variants—masks, better ventilation, contact tracing, quarantine, and restrictions on gatherings—should all theoretically work for Omicron too. But the U.S. has either failed to invest in these tools or has actively made it harder to use them."

Bracing for Omicron. Friendly reminder to schedule a booster shot if you haven’t already.

“For small and medium companies, I generally recommend cloud services, because they don't have the people or the skills to run their own systems as securely,” Bellovin said. “But there are real but imponderable risks to one company controlling so much of the net.”

Nope, worth pondering!

"Matt Masterson, a former senior U.S. cybersecurity official who tracked 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security, said Powell’s fundraising success demonstrates one reason so many people continue to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election: It can bring in cash."

The Big Lie is so profitable that fines won’t even make a dent in it. Only criminal charges will slow it down. I’m not holding my breath.

"The U.S. Constitution protects free speech; however, it does not necessarily protect deceptive speech coupled with harmful action. This distinction potentially removes barriers to accountability for social media platforms that fail to address misinformation. Laws could require procedural safeguards and reporting about misinformation without censoring speech or treating Facebook or Google like a publisher."

More questions than answers here but this article has some useful distinctions to think about including this idea that harmful action that includes speech is not protected.

"The main reason for the big increase in total wage and salary income is that 5,675,000 Americans who were unemployed when this year began had found new jobs by November. With support from the rounds of pandemic stimulus enacted in December 2000 and January 2021, the jobless rate fell from 6.3 percent last January to 4.2 percent in November, or by one-third over 11 months. Following the Great Recession, it took six years for the jobless rate to fall by one-third."

Democrats can't get a message out. Even if all mass media outlets are owned by Republicans (they are) there should be a way to interrupt the media cycle with this kind of news. Instead we just hear about how terrible the economy is over and over.

"It's a remarkable foreign policy reform, but also a remarkable failure of both government communication and media coverage. A hugely significant change in foreign policy has happened — and almost nobody is paying attention."

This was news to me.

"But for much of the arguments, Justice Barrett did seem ready to reverse Roe. For instance, she repeatedly suggested that pregnant people had no need for abortion because they could simply put their children up for adoption."

The supreme court is taking away health rights and personal autonomy and framing it as neutrality. This stolen majority is doing the job it was put there to do. Where are Democrats?

Update: oh, here they are. Tweeting.