your link shows where it was approved, those aren't usage numbers,
> ... there should be a preference for an alternative to the AstraZeneca [1]
> Canada’s largest province says it will stop giving out first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine due to concerns over its link to rare blood clots [2]
> More nations halt use of AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine citing clots [3]
> your link shows where it was approved, those aren't usage numbers.
False. Here's the note on the image showing vaccine usage:
"Note: The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is known as Covishield in India. Only countries that report doses administered are shown. Other countries may have approved vaccines but have not administered them yet."
> Portland City Council stands with the people who may one day face difficult decisions about pregnancy, and we respect their right to make the best decision for themselves.
Also Portland, "Portland to city employees: Get COVID-19 vaccine or lose your job" [1]
Women making their own reproductive choices is not the same as a global pandemic that will not end until we vaccinate nearly everyone. And people not trusting a corrupt media and government is but one of many problems. The need to produce vaccines globally running into desire for billions comes to mind here.
I am not defending the anti vaxxers. Not at all. They do us all harm due to how covid will mutate, potentially requiring a do over and or consuming health systems to the point of real risk for everyone when they face lack of availability. However, we also need to take a really hard look at what drives their lack of trust and I will point right to corruption as cause one. Again, not making excuses here, just stating hard observations. Anti vax behavior is strongly correlated to education level. How are poorly educated people going to develop trust and understanding in a sea of poor clarity media and government they see failing to represent them?
Hard question, I know. But, everything costs something. We are seeing some of those costs play out now and with high costs and severe risks.
I also understand the strong desire to get more people on board, and conflating these two things is unlikely to further that goal. They are two different matters.
Not true for companies protected under Section 230, in order to maintain their liability shield they are supposed to remain platform neutral [1].
A company should not be able to act like a publisher and determine what stays on their service and when someone sues them for libel they claim they're not a publisher and hide behind the shield.
> At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Thanks for the stereotypical reply to this issue. The linked article is condescending and smug, and nobody with anything better to do will read past the first few sentences with the author's "unique" opinion on Section 230.
Do you have anything reasonable that describes the position that Section 230 somehow doesn't mean what it plainly says?
The entire purpose for Section 230 existing is to allow sites to moderate their content. That’s why it was written. So a site moderating it’s content doesn’t cause it to lose any section 230 protection. I’m not sure where you got your opinion about it, but it is clearly false. Please stop repeating such falsehoods.
And you should understand the law, techdirt bases is "What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.", which is only true as long as you "do not exercise significant editorial control" from Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy [1].
> the court held that because Prodigy was exercising editorial control over the messages that appeared on its bulletin boards through its content guidelines and software screening program, Prodigy was more like a "publisher" than a "distributor" and therefore fully liable for all of the content on its site.
I’m really confused where you’re coming from, in that you’re aware of that case enough to cite it, and yet not aware that it is (and this is a direct quote from one of the first lines on Wikipedia about it)
> The result of the case is central to the rationale behind passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, aimed to allow internet service providers to avoid liability for user content on their services while still giving them the means for removing illegal content.
On a side note, can anyone explain why covid mandates are fine but abortion laws are evil? Those groups have heavy overlap of supporters and both are about bodily autonomy.
abortion is a personal matter and covid is a public health matter, pretty hard line distinction. Also it's a matter of degree: banning abortions is forcing women to undergo childbirth, while covid mandates are a matter of paper masks and a couple shots of prophylactic.
“Couple shots of prophylactic” would be true if there was an inactive virus vaccine option.
These shots are the first that use a custom RNA sequence to program your cells to produce proteins. Like I’ve said before - the attack surface is too great to be an acceptable health measure mandated by hostile state actors. (all governments are hostile state actors IMO)
I’d rather be a bubble boy for the rest of my life than take an RNA shot.
They use DNA printers to produce the RNA. Just like electronic voting machines without a paper trail I do not trust the RNA sequence is the same as what clinical researchers developed.
Can I say what type would be used to do something nefarious? TBH I have no idea, but the possibilities seem limitless. That’s why there’s so much funding around RNA vaccines now - they could potentially cure almost anything.
Compare that with inactive virus vaccines like China’s Sinovac. The ingredients are well-known, you can’t change a dead virus to do anything crazy like alter gene expression, if they added something harmful to the vaccine it would be very obvious. Also China even open-sources their inactive virus vaccine and exports raw materials to other nations to manufacture them: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-01/12/c_139661608.htm
A plot to add some "secret sauce" to a vaccine wouldn't work in that scenario. So I can trust open-source inactive virus vaccines. I can never trust an RNA vaccine until I can verify the RNA code in it. (equivalent of a checksum in software). So until we have DNA printers at home I’m not taking it.
> Just like electronic voting machines without a paper trail I do not trust the RNA sequence is the same as what clinical researchers developed.
And yet you trust the makers of an "inactive" virus vaccine to actually make that virus inactive and not, say, an active vector for some undocumented gene therapy?
> RNA can do more than just produce proteins
mRNA, specifically, cannot. If you had actually read that "reverse engineering" article you linked, you would already know that mRNA has a specific "format" that's different from the other dozen or so kinds of RNA.
> you can’t change a dead virus to do anything crazy like alter gene expression
You assume that it's actually dead. How do you verify that?
> if they added something harmful to the vaccine it would be very obvious
As it would be for an mRNA vaccine.
> I can never trust an RNA vaccine until I can verify the RNA code in it.
> one of my past employers would be happy to send you a quote
Ah - once again most of my problems would be solved if only I was super-rich.
I agree, I should focus on my SaaS company rather than get downvoted on the internet for being antivax. My employer has a vaxx mandate and I'm still acting as if I'm not going to be fired from my dayjob next month. Time to block HN/reddit in my hosts file and get back to work.
If you're that worried about it, the J&J vax isn't mRNA-based. It's a live attenuated (non-replicating) adenovirus that's been genetically modified to express spike protein. Personally I think it's less safe and less effective than the mRNA vaccines, for the same reasons sinovac, sputnik and the AstraZeneca vaccines:
When you have a whole attenuated or dead virus, your immune system will generate a slew of different antibodies against various parts of it, many of which will not prove effective at neutralizing it. Whole virus vaccines have a higher risk of generating antibody-dependent enhancement should you encounter the live virus, and higher risks of generating antibodies that may end up attacking your own cells. This is the reason the AZ and J&J vaccines have, in some cases, caused myocarditis as well as damage to platelets. It's a crapshoot what antibodies you'll develop because the target surface is so large. At least by targeting one protein you know you'll develop antibodies that are likely to neutralize the virus, and you won't develop random ones that don't and could be harmful.
As to the idea that Moderna and Pfizer would intentionally add some RNA sequence to generate nefarious proteins, first of all there's no evidence that unwanted proteins are being generated, and secondly, why? I mean, do you think they're out to get you? Why would a company the size of Pfizer, for whom the entire covid vax rollout represents only about 10% of their annual gross, risk destroying their company to try to put some harmful protein into a third of Americans? Surely both companies couldn't be doing the same thing, since they developed their mRNA independently of one another. Wouldn't we see some drastic uptick in some weird thing just in people who got one mRNA vaccine or the other? When a tiny fraction of a percentage of people who got the J&J vax started getting blood clots, the vaccine was temporarily halted. Surely some country in the world would be banning the Pfizer or Moderna shots now if there were any such side effects.
It's not immediately obvious that the excess deaths are lockdown related deaths. There's also a growing overdose epidemic among that age group, for example.
It's well supported that the combination of lock down isolation[1] in addition to the free CERB money resulted in the spike of drug abuse / suicide deaths[2].
That's not what it says at all. This is preliminary and no conclusions have been made. It could be that 4155 COVID deaths were not properly tested and incorrectly categorized.
I disagree. The paper goes into some details explaining how many deaths are due to alcohol abuse vs. poisoning etc. They also have a list of conditions that they associate with the various causes of death. For example, if somebody dies of alcoholic gastritis, they classify the death as alcohol-related.
Now, like all estimates, I am sure there are errors, but it's not like they haven't done their homework.
There isn't enough data in the paper to blame the lockdown per se, however. E.g., it could be that the media fear-mongering is driving people crazy more than usual. There is no way to tell.
Interesting, illegal under HIPAA rules but possible precedent under the Affordable Care Act?
With Obamacare:
> Although insurers can’t charge more for health status, they can charge up to 50% more for smoking status [1].
Under HIPAA:
> What are HIPAA's protections from discrimination?
> ... you may not be charged more than similarly situated individuals based on any health factors. [2]
Vaccines are a health status, I would think this move by Delta is illegal, but Covid Emergency Powers has given the green light for all types of discrimination and broken laws.
If he was specifically going after famous women's accounts, I don't think it was so random, given that he went after hundreds of people and didn't cover his tracks at all. He was after celebrity photos, he was sloppy, people who try to defend against such attacks were going to catch him.
We've seen more decentralized and sophisticated attacks of the same type against iCloud ("the fappening" etc.) which were kept mostly private for years before being made public.
The fact that those hacks quickly were flushed from the news cycle without a bunch of public lawsuits etc. makes me suspect Apple very proactively went out and made settlements with the more high profile victims of those hacks. Of course, I have no proof of this at all, so it's purely speculation, but it was odd to see almost nothing come out of those hacks.
> Not very sophisticated, but very effective, glad they shut him down but we really need to teach basic internet security in schools.
They could start by following basic security. My kid's school sets everyone's passwords to various forms of "temp123" (same password for every kid) and often talks about them in cleartext. It sets a very bad example, and it occasionally gives me hives just thinking about it.
A friend worked at a UK government site that one week complained about an increase in "Russian" attempted intrusions and literally the next week issued an instruction in an unsigned email to all staff to change their password to a new password given in plaintext in the email.
The instruction, they thought, had to be a poor phishing attempt - but no, it was a genuine email from the IT department and the friend was punished (!!) for questioning the instruction and not immediately complying.
It may not have been the same password across the organisation but their's was reportedly word based and quite short.
I worked at an ed tech company that provided services for schools and this was very common in my experience.
Schools wanted to store the students' passwords in clear text in an excel basically to get less complaints from parents.
Students didn't store their password after logging in. If they needed to log in again they did not know (or did not care) how to reset their passwords. Then the problem would fall unto the parents which would then complain to the school.
I agree that better education around Internet security is needed, especially for basic phishing attacks like this.
OTOH, I believe Apple could be doing more to deter and/or detect this type of broad access, especially with the lack of sophistication behind this scheme! I feel like even Netflix does a better job at alerting me to access from a new device, and they aren't storing any of my personal photos.
If you have two factor enabled, which is required for many iCloud features, every single Apple device you own will receive an alert with the location of login before you can reveal the 2FA code, even for iCloud logins. What more would you like to see?
They would just get an email saying that icloudbackupsupport@gmail.com (his phony address) accessed the account immediately after giving their info to icloudbackupsupport@gmail.com. He could even have told them to expect and ignore such an email.
There should be a request for approving the login attempt, and if you say yes, you get a six digit code to enter on the device trying to connect. Then when that succeeds, you get another push notification about it succeeding.
Perhaps something in that 2FA request saying "Apple will only ask for your password in-person in a store or other authorized repair provider. Only allow this request if you know who requested it"?
You need to spend more time around non technologists. Many folks just dismiss computer prompts without reading, ignore emails, or any number of other similar behaviors that would likely drive you and I crazy by their lack of attention to detail.
> Investigators soon discovered that a log-in to the victim’s iCloud account had come from an internet address at Chi’s house
If the attacker was really not covering his tracks, perhaps Apple may have flagged hundreds of different iCloud account logins originating from the same location as something to look into?
> my previous employer had like 20,000 employees NATed behind a single IP.
If so, it’s incredibly unlikely that all 20k were online simultaneously. If they were, each person could only open ~3 TCP sockets to the internet (even if via a proxy if dealing with individual login sessions) at a time before you’ve run out of ports.
even though you're probably right on the first part, the second part is false. while most NAT implementations operate as you describe, called "port-restricted cone NAT", some implementations allocate the external port only for a specific destination address, called "symmetric NAT".
It’s better than nothing but still not great because the login area they present is too broad. For example, if you live in a large city and the phisher is somebody you know, seeing “New login from Your City” is not going to make you think twice.
If you refuse to think, even when prompted, that's on you. You should think about whether you logged in from the city and device/OS named in the alert.
Not just better education around security practices, but better understanding around control of your content, where it's stored, what happens to content when you press that button in an app. I don't want to victim blame here, and this guy is a total creep, but the victims uploaded their nudes to the Internet. At that point, the cat was out of the bag.
Part safely using the Internet is having the knowledge and being aware of where (in your apps) the boundary is between your local device and the global network that everyone has access to. People need to understand: When you sync to a cloud service, you're sending your content to someone's computer unknown to you. Yes, in this case, it's Apple's computer, but that didn't stop this guy. Once you sync something online, it's out of your hands, and on the Internet now.
I personally treat all cloud services as if they were accessible publicly and anonymously, and will inevitably be printed in my local newspaper, and only upload content to those services where I am comfortable with that level of exposure.
EDIT: To clarify, I wish applications would stop blurring the line between "on my device" and "on the Internet". I've used applications where, to an unsophisticated user, the save dialog looks like it's saving to their computer but it's actually in the cloud. Add to it all these apps that try to be helpful by seamlessly (and invisibly) keeping local content in sync with the cloud versions and you have a recipe for disasters like this. Have an explicit "upload this thing to the Internet" button, please!
It boggles my mind that people have nudes of themselves on any digital medium. I say if you want to dabble in that, get a film camera and develop the pictures in your own basement.
Or get a non-wifi digital camera and manage your photos on a non cloudy computer. Maybe even take it a step further and use tools to remove EXIF data that has your camera's serial number and other metadata in the images. Photos taken from cell phones often give away GPS coordinates.
Yeah, Netflix is actually annoying with it - I was using my "ultra low security" password which is in... probably every public password dump around for years, got dozens of logins, just ignored them til someone finally tried to change it and I had to reset it.
I can't believe Facebook haven't stopped the "your mother's maiden name and your first pets name is your pornstar name, post yours below" posts on Facebook. These companies clearly don't care their platforms are used to enable scammers so long as they're getting their cut of the money.
> The report also showed that a Facebook page for The Epoch Times, an anti-China newspaper that spreads right-wing conspiracy theories, was the 19th-most-popular page on the platform for the first three months of 2021.
Domestic vaccines passports, the weapons lab theory and yearly booster shots ... not conspiracy theories anymore.
This is why people are losing trust in classical institutions like NYT and turning to places like Epoch Times.
The internet has pulled the curtain back and showed people the amount of lies and propaganda coming from all sides. You can't keep censoring information and expecting people to accept it.
Isn’t the hallmark of “good” misinformation/conspiracy theory that it’s ever so slightly rooted in truth and is, on occasion, kinda-sorta right? Or at least “right” enough for the conspiracy theorists’ confirmation bias to kick in?
That the Epoch Times has reported on some things that weren’t complete and total bullshit does not at all mean none of their reporting is bullshit.
That describes a New York Times story. Slightly rooted in the truth and occasionally right. Not that I would describe that paper conspiracy theory, misinformation yes.
No, those are still very much conspiracy myths; the lab leak story may or may not be true, but calling it a “weapons lab” just shows why people were reluctant to promote speculation that is so easily turned into accusations of intentional malfeasance.
“Vaccination passports”, just by using that term, imply (and often say) that they are/will be used for something sinister.
…and I don’t remember anyone calling booster shots a conspiracy theory.
Also the New York Times is breaking subscriber records month-after-month, so I’m guessing you got the idea about people losing confidence in it from the Epoch Times?
If you need an example of why, just look at this story, publishing something that Facebook PR tried to hide. I don’t recall the Epoch Times being first with any actual news.
"vaccine producers are immune from liability", is not false but is anti-vaccine ... its taken down.
When reports about problems with AstraZeneca were coming out, those were tagged as misinformation, today most countries no longer give out AZ vaccine.
Theyre suppressing truthful info, why should you trust anything they say?