[Plura-list] Trump wants a US-only vaccine, Covid at Home, tips for laid-off techies, Tiktok's secret moderation guidelines, Corona Bar Mitzvah, Shmoocon 2020 videos

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Mon Mar 16 11:07:35 EDT 2020


Today's links

* Covid At Home: A guide for isolation, illness and recovery

* Trump wants a US-only vaccine: Reality has a well-known
globalist/collectivist bias.

* Folding at Home to beat covid: 23 distcomp projects to give your CPU to.

* Italian hospitals fix their ventilators with 3D printed parts: Fablabs
to the rescue.

* How to prepare for coming layoffs: A guide for techies junior, senior
and prickly.

* Leaked Tiktok moderation guidelines are a censoring mess: No poors or
ugly people welcome.

* Canceled Bar Mitzvah is still a mitzvah: Today I am a mensch.

* Shmoocon 2020 videos online: Hours of entertainment and infosec funnies.

* This day in history:

* Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming
appearances, current reading

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🧯 Covid At Home

Dutch hacker and XS4ALL cofounder Rop Gonggrijp and artist Vera Wilde
have produced Covid At Home, an open-access guide to staying healthy,
treating illness, and general pandemic preparedness.

https://covid-at-home.info/
It's an excellent, sober, accessible guide, produced with help from
medical professionals.

They're seeking help to translate it into other languages as well.
German edition coming next.

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🧯 Trump wants a US-only vaccine

The Trump administration has offered "large sums" to a German
manufacturer for US-only access to a potential covid-19 vaccine

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/trump-offers-large-sums-for-exclusive-access-to-coronavirus-vaccine

According to Die Welt, Curevac has made progress on the vaccine, and the
Trump admin is seeking access "but for the US only."

The company's recently departed CEO, Daniel Menichella, is a US citizen
who recently visited the White House.

The Trump administration's failure to understand our shared collective
microbial destiny is emblematic. Trump epitomizes the neoliberal
sociopathy of "enlightened self-interest" and "meritocracy" and the
belief that "there is no such thing as society." It's a pathology as
dangerous as any virus, and could yet kill us all. Immunizing America
against coronavirus only works if

1. The vaccine is perfect (they never are) and

2. The US blocks all entry into the country by unvaccinated people
(which it cannot do).

Instead of figuring out how to orient 100% of US capacity to producing
enough vaccine to eliminate the virus worldwide, Trump is engaged in
isolationist, superstitious fantasies.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1238180609899429889

Within hours, Curvac had told Trump to go fuck himself and announced
that any vaccine they produce will be available worldwide.

https://twitter.com/SWRAktuellBW/status/1239225432739844097

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🧯 Folding at Home to beat covid

Since the year 2000 (!), Folding at Home has been harnessing the power of
idle personal computers to do scientific work on protein folding, using
donated cycles to improve science. Now they're running 23 (!!) projects
to help improve our scientific understanding of covid-19.

"We're simulating the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins to hunt for new
therapeutic opportunities."

They've already used this to locate sites in the Ebola protein that can
be targeted by therapeutics.

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/15/coronavirus-what-were-doing-and-how-you-can-help-in-simple-terms/

Download your Folding at Home client here (Mac/Win/Lin)

https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

Then choose your simulation from here. Be prepared to wait for your
computer to be given work – they're overwhelmed with cycles at the moment.

https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary

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🧯 Italian hospitals fix their ventilators with 3D printed parts

A Brescia hospital urgenty needed valves for their ventilators. A
journalist contacted the local Fablab, who contacted a local 3D printing
expert who came to the hospital, redesigned the part, and printed a
replacement on the spot.

https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/covid-19-3d-printed-valve-for-reanimation-device/

Within a day, 10 patients were breathing with respirators incorporating
3D printed parts.

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🧯 How to prepare for coming layoffs

It's not outlandish to prepare for a recession (and hence layoffs) as a
result of Covid-19. And while techies have a robust labor-market
relative to other sectors, tech-workers are not immune from mass layoffs
when their employers contract sharply or shut down altogether.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss has been here before and has some tips for techies to
prepare for unemployment. He points out that the highest layoff risk
comes to juniors (unprotected and easy to jettison), seniors (highest
paid), and prickly people (politically easier to lay off) and
underperformers (obvs).

https://jacobian.org/2020/mar/13/layoffs-are-coming/

How do you prep for layoffs? First, try to have 1 year's savings in the
bank (advice from the 2000 dotcom crash). You probably can't do this,
but start saving now. Cancel all nonessential expenses.

Next, update your resume. When layoffs start cascading, being ready to
start applying for jobs can give you a head-start over your competition.

Kaplan-Moss suggests setting aside an hour every quarter to update your
CV – this is good advice generally, as you never know when someone will
ask for your resume (periodically I have to produce one for a visa or a
grant, for example).

Practice interviews, using online resources, like this one:

https://eng-hiring.18f.gov/

In addition, contact your "professional network" and start feeling them
out;Tb and brush up on your tech skills.

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🧯 Leaked Tiktok moderation guidelines are a censoring mess

There's a lot going on in The Intercept's deep dive into two leaked set
of moderation guidelines from Bytedance, parent company of Tiktok, ably
reported (as ever) by Sam Biddle.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/

First is a confirmaton of Tiktok's policy of telling moderators to
downrank videos from unattractive, fat, old or poor people, and signs of
poverty. Homes need to have "no obvious slummy charactor" (sic), without
a "crack on the wall" or "old and disreputable decorations."

The reasoning is clear "This kind of environment is not that suitable
for new users for being less fancy and appealing" (overweight, poor, old
or unattractive users lower the tone). Tiktok spox Josh Gartner said
these were to prevent bullying, (but they don't mention bullying).

The leaks are pretty frank about their ableism and lookism, banning "low
quality" traits including "abnormal body shape," "ugly facial looks,"
dwarfism, "obvious beer belly," "too many wrinkles," and "eye disorders."

They also ban "slums, rural fields" and "dilapidated housing."

The flipside of this is that Tiktok mods secretly contacting influencers
to clue them in on secret moderation criteria that might get them
downranked or banned, creating a group of insiders who are protected
from the arbitrary, shadow regulation regime other Tiktokers never see.

That shadow regime is documented in a second set of leaks, which details
the subjects and views that can get you kicked, suspended or downranked
from the platform. Anything that embarrasses or upsets China is
obviously out, like Falun Gong or Tiananmen.

Beyond that, livestreams of encounters with cops, videos that criticize
the military, or criticism Tiktok itself are all lifetime bannable
offenses – while racism and hate speech get you a one-month suspension.

Also revealed: Tiktok has a bunch of fake accounts maintained by its own
staff, who gank influencer videos from Instagram that look classy and
fun, as a way of shifting the content mix on the platform.

But even as these accounts were focusing on tags like "#BeachGirl,"
actual Tiktok users who posted pictures of themselves in swimwear faced
temporary or permanent bans.

(You can get a permanent ban for wearing a garment that reveals "outline
of female nipples").

There's also a "voice vulgarity" category of guidelines, including bans
for "Singing or playing music pornography contents, sexual cues, etc,"
or "discussing the topic of sexual reproduction." You can also get
banned for flipping the bird – but only if you do it more than twice.

Tiktok's appeal is that they use secret sauce to elevate accounts with
few followers and share them with millions of viewers. The legend is
that this is a way to rocket the humble but meretricious to fame, but
the leaks reveal that no olds, fats, or poors need apply.

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🧯 Canceled Bar Mitzvah is still a mitzvah

A heartwarming story of "Covered Dish" behavior in the time of
coronavirus! "Friends canceled their son's Bar Mitzvah this weekend but
decided to keep the contract with their caterer, a tiny Hmong-owned
business. They delivered the food to friends in quarantine & sent pans
home with others."

https://twitter.com/mrotzie/status/1239249970458484736

(Image: Eli, CC BY)

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🧯 Shmoocon 2020 videos online

It's been years since I last attended a Shmoocon, but holy moly, is it
ever a great annual infosec con. They've just put the 2020 videos
online, which affords you plenty of viewing for your lockdown pleasure.

You might have already heard about Samantha Mosely's presentation about
how she and her teen friends defeat Instagram's privacy invasions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCBEimhXMM

Here's some gnarly stuff: securing satellites and space-base comms,
presented by three researchers styling themselves Yakko, Wakko and Dot
(swoon!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR_H9_pnyDc

Feed your inner technothriller writer with this one, on "anti-forensics"
("the practice of modifying or removing data so that others cannot find
it later during an investigation").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSmsiSvvAQs

How NGOs – and you at home – can use "open source intelligence" to help
support human rights and survivors of human rights abuses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRzGiR4DS7w

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure guide to surviving ransomware attacks, using
data gleaned from real attacks and recoveries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNFUQrg_GA

Analyzing the effects of 200 data-breaches on public companies' share
prices (shareholder capitalism won't save us from overcollection,
overretention and bad security).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxiwpACwYc

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🧯 This day in history

#15yrsago Apple steals iTunes customers' paid-for rights to stream
https://web.archive.org/web/20050405225837/http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21866

#15yrago My talk from ETECH: All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites
https://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

#15yrsago ETECH Notes: Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Mess (Schachter, Wales, Shirky and Butterfield)
https://craphound.com/etech2005-folksonomy.txt

#15yrsago ETECH Notes: Feral Robotics and Some Other Quacking, Shaking,
Bubbling Robots (Natalie Jeremijenko)
https://craphound.com/etech05-feral.txt

#10yrsago Downloadable 3D cover for MAKERS is now also an article of
commerce
https://www.shapeways.com/product/Z55YYHW5P/cory-doctorow-makers-cover-3d-print

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🧯 Colophon

Today's top sources: Geoff MacDougall (https://twitter.com/taliesan),
Bleeping Computer (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com), Javier Candiera
(https://twitter.com/candeira), Four Short Links
(https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Naked Capitalism
(https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The
Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of
my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of
design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British
think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland:
it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs.
Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a
magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they
cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into
Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt
Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to
it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/when-sysadmins-ruled-the-earth-2/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies
and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the
monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

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