[continued from previous message]

voice assistant that is installed in cars across the country.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 23:48:40 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: 90-Day Security Plan Progress Report: May 20 (Zoom Blog)

https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/05/20/90-day-security-plan-progress-report-may-20/

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 21 May 2020 14:12:10 -1000
From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: How the CDC is misreporting COVID-19 testing data (The Atlantic)

*The government's disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and
antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on
to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states
are doing the same.*

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of
two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important
metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state
of the pandemic. We've learned that the CDC is making, at best, a
debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current
coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has
ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government's disease-fighting
agency is overstating the country's ability to test people who are sick
with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to *The Atlantic* on Wednesday that it
is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two
tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons.

This is not merely a technical error. States have set quantitative
guidelines for reopening their economies based on these flawed data points.

Several states -- including Pennsylvania, the site of one of the country's largest outbreaks, as well as Texas, Georgia, and Vermont -- are blending the data in the same way. Virginia likewise mixed viral and antibody test
results until last week, but it reversed course and the governor apologized
for the practice after it was covered by the *Richmond Times-Dispatch* <https://www.richmond.com/special-report/coronavirus/virginia-misses-key-marks-on-virus-testing-as-leaders-eye-reopening/article_021e12c6-6d20-5030-9068-4caaeda495f7.html>
and *The Atlantic* <https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/covid-19-tests-combine-virginia/611620/>.
Maine similarly separated its data on Wednesday; Vermont authorities claimed they didn't even know <https://twitter.com/EPetenko/status/1263138001879797762?s=3D20> they were doing this.

The widespread use of the practice means that it remains difficult to know exactly how much the country's ability to test people who are
actively sick with COVID-19 has improved. [...]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 10:44:12 -0500
From: dmaziuk <dmitri.maziuk@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: COVID codebase [RISKS-31.84]

In 2005 "Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial
College London, told Guardian Unlimited that up to 200 million people could
be killed" by the bird flu: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke

450 died: https://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/H5N1_cumulative_table_archives/en/

Four years later, "In 2009, one of Ferguson's models predicted 65,000 people could die from the Swine Flu outbreak in the UK — the final figure
was below 500." https://www.businessinsider.com/neil-ferguson-transformed-uk-covid-response-oxford-challenge-imperial-model-2020-4

And apparently during the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak "Ferguson warned the government that 150,000 people could die. Six million animals were
slaughtered as a precaution, costing the country billions in farming
revenue. In the end, 200 people died." -- ibid

Whether the code is a steaming Pile Of Software is immaterial, really (after
20 years dealing with "academic software" I'm pretty sure it is), when it
has a proven track record of being wrong.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 11:16:55 -0500
From: Arthur Flatau <flataua@acm.org>
Subject: Re: The ultimate Turing test (Henry Baker, RISKS-31.84)

I am currently hiring someone who I have only talked to on the phone, she starts in a few weeks. She has previously worked at my company and with
most of the people she will be working with, so she is not an unknown
quantity. I know of someone else being hired here, who not only has not had
an in person interview, but has not even been to the state where she will be working. The situation with working in the office is changing rapidly, but
it is likely that both people will initially be solely working from home and will almost certainly work from home quite a bit, even when the offices
open.

I doubt that Zoom virtual backgrounds, real-time animations help much with
an interview. A candidate still must answer the interview questions on whatever subject well enough to be consider good enough to hire. A Zoom animation is unlikely to be helpful for this in the vast majority of situations.

Although working at home would make it a bit easier to have 2 or more
full-time jobs, I doubt this would work, for at least the type of jobs I
have had. I doubt Zoom makes it any significantly easier to pull off this fraud. Although the current work at home situation for most people would
make it easier.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 23:54:58 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Re: Teen Hacker and Crew of Evil Geniuses Accused of $24 Million
Crypto Theft (Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- A 15-year-old hacker and his crew of *evil computer geniuses* stole nearly $24 million in cryptocurrency from an adviser to blockchain companies, according to a lawsuit filed in New York.

Michael Terpin claims his phone was hacked and his money stolen in 2018 by a ring led by Westchester County, New York, teen Ellis Pinksy as part of a `sophisticated cybercrime spree'. Terpin, the founder and chief executive officer of blockchain advisory firm Transform Group, is suing Pinsky, now
18, for $71 million under a federal racketeering law that allows for triple damages.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/teen-hacker-and-evil-geniuses-accused-of-24-million-theft

...stolen from an adviser to blockchain companies. Who says there's no such thing as bad publicity?

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 23:24:04 -0600
From: "Keith Medcalf" <kmedcalf@dessus.com>
Subject: Re: The FBI Just Unlocked an iPhone Without Apple's Help (Lifewire)

Is this not as it should be?

When the government gets a "search warrant" to search someones safe, do they (can they) compel the safe manufacturer to open the safe, or do they hire
their own "safecracker" to open it?

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 12:00:18 +0800
From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org>
Subject: Re: AI gets the attention, but biotechnology is poised to change
the world (Axios)

<https://link.axios.com/click/20337583.60839/aHR0cHM6...

Wow, 300 byte links. Using base64 --decode reveals what they are...

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:11:11 -0800
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Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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