Wuhan Coronavirus: Megathread - Got too big

[Spoonge]

News that I haven't seen posted yet. Australian governments wants you to sign up for an app to track your ass and if you do it we might be allowed to go outside again, but people with common sense are pointing out why this is a fucking retarded idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/15/coronavirus-tracking-app-to-be-rolled-out-in-australia-only-with-privacy-safeguards-minister

Coronavirus tracking app to be rolled out in Australia only with priv…

archived 15 Apr 2020 12:57:13 UTC

archive.vn

Spoiler: Full Story

The federal government has promised a systematic assessment of the privacy impacts of a controversial app identifying contacts with victims of the coronavirus, which could delay the prime minister’s preferred two-week deadline for its rollout in Australia.

The government believes the app could be useful in tracing the source of a Covid-19 infection by tracking the contacts of its victims.

The app uses Bluetooth smart phone connections to record who has been near a person for 15 minutes or more, the period defined as a contact.

But privacy law monitors including the Human Rights Law Centre early this month told the health minister, Greg Hunt, in a letter they were worried about the types of data collected by the app.

“The concern is once you roll out technology like this it is very, very difficult to roll it back,” senior lawyer at the centre Alice Drury told Guardian Australia on Wednesday.

“And with this technology human rights really have to be in the design of the technology. You can’t retro-fit human rights.”

The attorney general, Christian Porter, is looking at those matters, a spokesman for the minister told Guardian Australia on Wednesday.

“Progress of the app will be subject to the attorney general’s advice and a systematic assessment of the privacy impacts,” said the spokesman.

The communications minister Paul Fletcher, on Tuesday indicated the installation of “clear safeguards” would be extensive.

Bottom of Form​

Fletcher said the app could be a “very effective tool” if a significant portion of the population signed up for it.

Prime minister Scott Morrison has let it be known he is hoping for a 40% take-up. In Singapore the figure was 20%.

Fletcher told reporters in Sydney on Wednesday: “It is something that is a potential tool open to the Australian government and the Australian people.

“But a decision would only be taken if the government was satisfied as to the privacy safeguards and as to there being community understanding and support as to the benefits this tool could provide and the basis upon which people could use it.”

The list of precautions could be extensive based on demands summarised by Lizzie O’Shea of Digital Rights Watch.

The technology had the capacity to “entrench invasive surveillance if there are not proper limits placed upon it”, O’Shea told Guardian Australia.

She said: “And that requires things like that it remain voluntary, that data be stored in a decentralised way, that we think very carefully about who can access information about people who test positive.

“And also that data that is produced in years to come is carefully restricted as to who it’s available to.”

O’Shea said it could be easy for the government to remove concerns and “give the community confidence in an app like this, which would increase the chances of it being effective”.

“And that is to offer some pretty basic guarantees around privacy and security,” she said.

“I think that means any technology is time-limited in its use, that the data will be protected in a secure way that is decentralised.

“And that we have resourced the health system to have the capacity to complement any advantages that might be gained by the use of this technology.”

Other groups to have raised concerns in the joint letter to Hunt were the Centre for Responsible Technologies, and Access Now.

The federal government hopes to pave its “exit road” from the tough restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus infections.

Central to the strategy is a boost to testing and tracing programs, upgrades to the capacity to respond to localised outbreaks, and introduction of the tracker app.

The Australian government has been pushing to create the ultimate surveillance state since 9/11 and this is just another step in that direction. And they're dangling the freedom we all want in our faces to get it. It's disgusting. We shouldn't have let them take our fucking guns. But that's down under for you, the government does what it wants and pretends it gives a damn while the opposition party applauds because both parties want the exact same thing regardless of who is in power at the moment. Control.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

I looked up the letter from Congress to the WHO

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL_Letter-to-WHO-re-China-Pressure-.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20200414085019/https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL_Letter-to-WHO-re-China-Pressure-.pdf

 

[EmuWarsVeteran]

I forgot to mention 3 things:

1-contagion is supposedly up but that's because we just implemented a ton more tests, and more importantly, antibody tests which don't discriminate between immunized and infected. Hospitalizations, ICUs and Deaths are all still lowering, so it's probably ok.

2-our PPE situation is getting fucking weird. I think I'm the only one not in full coat, mask, goggles, etc. ('Cause I'm not officially an employee), still no P95s and PPE situation for like real antiviral shit is crap. But we got surgical masks and coats for ages and apparently we're gonna use them.even on the unions. Even I gotta go with mask and gloves just because I'm outside.

3-WHO is now pushing for europe not to lower lockdowns and has tried to force spain to close everything again. And both right and left have been quick to ask how they'd prefer us to kill them if they plan on actually doing that. (Politely.) Yeah with Trump defunding them that was a very stupid moment to push us. Our hatred for the Chinese, French, German and specially Netherlanders is the only thing that joins us all together.

Is it like in American Dad where the spies are upbeat and blatantly wanting to talk to you about your work all the time? Im sure honeypots work really fucking well in science fields too.

Scientists will sperg on about their work if you just stand in front of them and don’t run away, to be honest. They’re compulsively chatty about it and assume everyone is as interested as they are.

It’s more that researchers themselves will be feeding info back, so the danger is people planted in organisations. Hence visa restrictions needed.
Most stuff is really regulated. You’ve got private companies where everyone signs NDAs as a default. Medical as in clinical working directly with patients you’ll have an NDA for the commercial side and whatever equivalent to medical ethics / HIPPAA you have where you are. Patient confidentiality is sacrosanct (or should be.) Anything military will be locked down by them, I’m sure they have similar procedures.
The wild card is university type labs and institutes where out of the blue someone does something that has scary implications In a low security environment . The guy who cycled flu through an animal model until it turned into Turbo Flu for example - journals wouldn’t publish and it sparked a big debate on freedom of scientific publishing. Should you be allowed to publish how you made something that could wipe out half of humanity? Maybe not.
When you see funding pulled suddenly for interesting stuff or no further mention of it you can assume that it’s either not worked out (most of the time) , or been snapped up by commercial or defence, depending on what it is. The Predict program for example, ‘came to the end of its funding cycle’ (aye right) and bits got taken up by the pentagon’s DTRA and other bits went to the NIH.

You do sometimes see things that In some lights are really odd. There are two deaths in particular of scientists in the UK I think need more investigation, but I doubt that will ever happen, and I won’t PL any more about them.

Frankly, I think there are some areas where I would rather the US/a few select non insane countries’ military should be the only ones running work, under proper oversight. Civilian and commercial aren’t secure enough for some stuff, either physically or in terms of lost IP/information leaks. Think about how much economic damage corona is doing, then think of how much a flu that killed say 20% of the infected would do, and how you’d be unable to trace or prove it wasn’t natural. This is more disruption than a fairly major war, less controllable and with wider spread and lethality.

Anyway...

I demand to be honey trapped now, and I feel quite aggrieved that this has never happened to me during my career. Maybe they go for the guys more?

So. From what I heard in burgerland they are more hostile. And let's just say I got it from a good source. Oh fuck it, I know a professor that worked in USA for years. Apparently they're a LOT more cutthroat. But here in spain? You may think I overshare (I do) but you have not met the people I studied and worked with. Like, even the USA migrant talked for ages with the least provocation to the point where his students started to get worried because he forgot to focus on what he was actually trying to teach them, scientists are almost universally incapable of keeping a secret. We even got a story here on spain about when German scientists found a fermenting organism that was more efficient than the one used by everyone else. German gov planned to keep it under wraps 'cause this was back when people tried to compete with that shit, a group of spanish scientists just officially asked for a tour, had a nice chat over some beer and came back with the fucking organism, and soon enough all of europe had examined it. You know how when I want intel I drop by kitchen with beer? Scientists are the same. Just ask for a chat and ask some questions and you'll fucking know. If anything from what I heard the chink spies are weird for being LESS friendly than most. Probably because chinks in general are substantially less friendly than most, probably because of all the secrets the CCP keeps. And yes btw that means even the germans, who have the serious disadvantage of having a language which makes it sound like they're insulting your ancestors even when they try to be friendly, and also being german, are more affable than the chinks... jfc.

 

[Crunchy Chick]

China concealed the early coronavirus outbreak, former MI6 spymaster says

What we all knew is practically confirmed fact.

 

[evrae]

Scientists will sperg on about their work if you just stand in front of them and don’t run away, to be honest. They’re compulsively chatty about it and assume everyone is as interested as they are.

It’s more that researchers themselves will be feeding info back, so the danger is people planted in organisations. Hence visa restrictions needed.
Most stuff is really regulated. You’ve got private companies where everyone signs NDAs as a default. Medical as in clinical working directly with patients you’ll have an NDA for the commercial side and whatever equivalent to medical ethics / HIPPAA you have where you are. Patient confidentiality is sacrosanct (or should be.) Anything military will be locked down by them, I’m sure they have similar procedures.
The wild card is university type labs and institutes where out of the blue someone does something that has scary implications In a low security environment . The guy who cycled flu through an animal model until it turned into Turbo Flu for example - journals wouldn’t publish and it sparked a big debate on freedom of scientific publishing. Should you be allowed to publish how you made something that could wipe out half of humanity? Maybe not.
When you see funding pulled suddenly for interesting stuff or no further mention of it you can assume that it’s either not worked out (most of the time) , or been snapped up by commercial or defence, depending on what it is. The Predict program for example, ‘came to the end of its funding cycle’ (aye right) and bits got taken up by the pentagon’s DTRA and other bits went to the NIH.

You do sometimes see things that In some lights are really odd. There are two deaths in particular of scientists in the UK I think need more investigation, but I doubt that will ever happen, and I won’t PL any more about them.

Frankly, I think there are some areas where I would rather the US/a few select non insane countries’ military should be the only ones running work, under proper oversight. Civilian and commercial aren’t secure enough for some stuff, either physically or in terms of lost IP/information leaks. Think about how much economic damage corona is doing, then think of how much a flu that killed say 20% of the infected would do, and how you’d be unable to trace or prove it wasn’t natural. This is more disruption than a fairly major war, less controllable and with wider spread and lethality.

Anyway...

I demand to be honey trapped now, and I feel quite aggrieved that this has never happened to me during my career. Maybe they go for the guys more?

I too can confirm the chattiness of scientists, the only time they won't talk about their research is if you show no interest, talking about it would actually land them in shit, or they were antsy about data being stolen.
I remember there was some supposed incident during my degree of someone reportedly chatting up researchers to try and steal their data and pass it off as their own but once that started spreading around everyone would only talk in non-specifics about anything they did.
I do agree with the stuff about the risks of people being planted in organizations and I think in more recent years researchers in private labs/unis/institutes are getting told to generally be more aware of what they're discussing to others for that reason.

 

[Safir]

Putin started a massive infection campaign today. Massive crowds of future superspreaders (doctors, pharmacists, grocery store and delivery workers) in the Moscow subway waiting to be manually id'd by cops. Russia is so unbelievably fucked.

 

[DNA_JACKED]

WAAAH YOU DONT WANT TO STAY QUARANTINED FOR A YEAR YOU ARE CALLING FOR LITERAL GENOCIDE WAAAH

Please show me where I said "fuck your loved ones" you exceptional individual. People die from pandemics. It happens. Shutting down the economy to protect a few of them for months on end approaching a year is killing a housefly with a meteorite strike, and if your loved ones are, say, retirees, then a massive economic depression that wipes out retirement savings is going to cause years of suffering, possibly destroying their ability to stay retired for the remainder of their lives. Remember 2008? I remember 2008.

I do want that. A voucher system would give parents the choice of state schools to send their kids to, and a choice of paid schools. Right now in the UK, most people don't have a choice of which school they send their kids to unless they can afford to pay for a 'public school', which is the UK's term for a school with usually pretty steep fees. If you're in a rich area, the local school is good. If you're rich and your local school isn't good you can afford to send your kids to a paid school. If you're in a poor area the local school will be terrible and you have no alternative. A voucher system makes all schools compete and gives choice to everyone, not just the rich. I don't really know enough about the Spanish system to comment but Sweden has a voucher system and it seems like it works well. No offense, but it seems like you're mixing up a voucher system with a completely privatized education system, picking the worst example of a privatized system you can find and saying 'vouchers will inevitably lead to this'. Also, we're way off-topic here.

So, that sounds peachy. Here's the problem, here in the US.

Any student that uses a voucher to attend a school that isnt part of the public school system takes money away from the school. Schools are paid by the government based on attendance and test scores. So what will happen, and this happened with charter schools, is the students will go to these alternative schools, then after the October head count and payout, the alternatives kick out any students they dont want. All the ones with bad grades, behavioral issues, ece get thrown back into the public system. The alternative school gets to keep the money, and the public school is now on the hook to teach these extra kids with 0 $ from the government to pay for it.

The end result? Well, all the poor kids are still stuck in their shitty community schools because the charters dont want poor kids with behavioral problems. The poor kids that behave fine? Well, they're still poor, so the charters pull things like requiring expensive uniforms that they dont tell anyone is required, then after a month since the poor kids dont wear them they all get kicked our for "repeated infractions". The good kids in those neighborhoods already go to catholic schools. The good kids' families will use the vouchers to pay for their catholic schooling (at the expense of the public system) and the bad kids will still end up in the same public school, months behind (many of these charters dont have TEXTBOOKS FFS) and the public system will have to bring them up to speed and get them to pass tests with no funding, and when these kids inevitably fail the tests, more money is taken away.

Then, after 5 years, the charters all mysteriously close (because at that point they have to start passing testing in my state at least) and all the students get dumped back into the public system, which thanks to cuts due to budget restrictions, cant handle the load. This brings educational quality down further. Then a few days later the charters all open under new companies and the whole process begins again of the good parents getting their kids in, the bad parents doing the same, and then all the bad kids and poor kids getting kicked out in a months time, the week after money is doled out. As this cycle continues,t he public system continues to cut budgets to make ends meet, and the good public schools start to decline as they can no longer afford to do things they used to. This leads to lower education quality, and more families leaving, perpetuating the cycle.

The voucher system funnels public money into private educational "schools" that do a worse job then the public in many cases, makes it harder for the public system to function, and fucks over the poor communities that vote for these things because they sound nice. It's the old charter system under a new name, and it will work just as terribly here. But, you know, enriching private companies (including the large charter school company owned by.....DeVos. :thoughtful: )is a very noble goal for the department of education.

I agree that alternatives are good. I'm not against the charters, but the charter system the way it is now fucks over the public system. If the charters only got money for students if they kept them it would be a completely different story, the charters would have to actually give a shit then. Also, the public system has to bus the kids to charters, again forcing the public system to pay for a private institution's cost. Charters are corrupt money mills, a genuine alternative to the public system, like our arts school or trade schools, are fine, but the charters pushing for these vouchers are leeches that have gotten laws passed that protect them and their businesses practices while not having to meet the same requirements as public schools.

 

[EmuWarsVeteran]

Putin started a massive infection campaign today. Massive crowds of future superspreaders (doctors, pharmacists, grocery store and delivery workers) in the Moscow subway waiting to be manually id'd by cops. Russia is so unbelievably fucked.

Explain.

 

[TitoBurrito]

Mike Graham, who I concede is a bit of a cunt, on Trump defunding the WHO with Christopher Snowdon of the IEA.

Was Donald Trump right to blame the UN for coronavirus 'failures'?

Mike Graham speaks to Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, about President Trump's decision to cut US fundi...

www.youtube.com

https://archive.vn/U3ohd

View attachment 1232106

Turns out the US is #1 funder, the UK is #2. Most countries are free riders. Snowden points out that US Congress has written a letter demanding its correspondence with China, rather like a Freedom Of Information request. Trump's defunding is linked to that. If the WHO releases the info then the funding will come back, though I bet Tedros would need to step down if it comes out he's been covering up for China.

Snowden also points out that the WHO spends its time pushing for bans on vaping and sugary food, ie first world problems. A cynic would say that calling out this sort of stuff is politically much safer than calling out third world tyrannies for mishandling epidemics, particularly when one of those third world tyrannies got you the job. Snowden also compares the WHO to FIFA, another dodgy supernational organization.

At the end, Graham goes full-on batshit and demands WHO people be investigated and locked up. This is why I don't like the guy to be honest. He gives honest gammon a bad name.

Why does this dude have james bond music playing in the background?

 

[northstar747]

Please show me where I said "fuck your loved ones" you exceptional individual. People die from pandemics. It happens. Shutting down the economy to protect a few of them for months on end approaching a year is killing a housefly with a meteorite strike, and if your loved ones are, say, retirees, then a massive economic depression that wipes out retirement savings is going to cause years of suffering, possibly destroying their ability to stay retired for the remainder of their lives. Remember 2008? I remember 2008.

So, that sounds peachy. Here's the problem, here in the US.

Any student that uses a voucher to attend a school that isnt part of the public school system takes money away from the school. Schools are paid by the government based on attendance and test scores. So what will happen, and this happened with charter schools, is the students will go to these alternative schools, then after the October head count and payout, the alternatives kick out any students they dont want. All the ones with bad grades, behavioral issues, ece get thrown back into the public system. The alternative school gets to keep the money, and the public school is now on the hook to teach these extra kids with 0 $ from the government to pay for it.

The end result? Well, all the poor kids are still stuck in their shitty community schools because the charters dont want poor kids with behavioral problems. The poor kids that behave fine? Well, they're still poor, so the charters pull things like requiring expensive uniforms that they dont tell anyone is required, then after a month since the poor kids dont wear them they all get kicked our for "repeated infractions". The good kids in those neighborhoods already go to catholic schools. The good kids' families will use the vouchers to pay for their catholic schooling (at the expense of the public system) and the bad kids will still end up in the same public school, months behind (many of these charters dont have TEXTBOOKS FFS) and the public system will have to bring them up to speed and get them to pass tests with no funding, and when these kids inevitably fail the tests, more money is taken away.

Then, after 5 years, the charters all mysteriously close (because at that point they have to start passing testing in my state at least) and all the students get dumped back into the public system, which thanks to cuts due to budget restrictions, cant handle the load. This brings educational quality down further. Then a few days later the charters all open under new companies and the whole process begins again of the good parents getting their kids in, the bad parents doing the same, and then all the bad kids and poor kids getting kicked out in a months time, the week after money is doled out. As this cycle continues,t he public system continues to cut budgets to make ends meet, and the good public schools start to decline as they can no longer afford to do things they used to. This leads to lower education quality, and more families leaving, perpetuating the cycle.

The voucher system funnels public money into private educational "schools" that do a worse job then the public in many cases, makes it harder for the public system to function, and fucks over the poor communities that vote for these things because they sound nice. It's the old charter system under a new name, and it will work just as terribly here. But, you know, enriching private companies (including the large charter school company owned by.....DeVos. :thoughtful: )is a very noble goal for the department of education.

I agree that alternatives are good. I'm not against the charters, but the charter system the way it is now fucks over the public system. If the charters only got money for students if they kept them it would be a completely different story, the charters would have to actually give a shit then. Also, the public system has to bus the kids to charters, again forcing the public system to pay for a private institution's cost. Charters are corrupt money mills, a genuine alternative to the public system, like our arts school or trade schools, are fine, but the charters pushing for these vouchers are leeches that have gotten laws passed that protect them and their businesses practices while not having to meet the same requirements as public schools.

This is way off topic and a slight power level

I often have to explain to non burger landers that in the states there are 2 types of "private schools" one is basically for the wealthy and provide both status and education. The other is in service to religious groups that wish to insure their members are pure and uncorrupted by the world. I spent 5 years with 6 days a week of religious instruction...it part of what made me the maladjusted misanthrope I am.

To steer this back on topic I ll offer this, a very educated friend of mine who is/was an aspiring buracrate had a conversation with me back in march. Thanks to this thread I told him I was concerned and that schools should be closed. He told me one school district did close but they were doing it wrong.

He said basically they were doing "spring break early" and that they were fucking up some sports play off and pissing parents off. and that they were shooting their wad "too soon" that the J curve need to ramp up more before they closed, and lamented how people dont understand geometric progressing blah blah blah.

So then everything clossed and our 2nd conversation he was kinda mater of factly talking about how all of thise was gonna happen and sceintist have been predicting this for years. I kindly brought up our last conversation and how he believed that school district was going to open up while others closed he just laughted.

 

[Coleslaw]

View attachment 1232222

You tried.

Not so free speech now is it?

 

[Unog]

Please show me where I said "fuck your loved ones" you exceptional individual.

Holy blinders batman. You think there is anything realistic about shutting down all of society for 18 months because a coof might kill your grandma?

Seems pretty dismissive of anyone who's worried more for the people in their lives than the economy to me. Besides, it wasn't an exact quote.

Since we're playing this game though, could you point out where I disagreed with the idea that we can't shut down the entirety of society over this? Or did you literally not read a word of the post you quoted other than "fuck your loved ones"?

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I forgot to mention 3 things:

1-contagion is supposedly up but that's because we just implemented a ton more tests, and more importantly, antibody tests which don't discriminate between immunized and infected. Hospitalizations, ICUs and Deaths are all still lowering, so it's probably ok.

2-our PPE situation is getting fucking weird. I think I'm the only one not in full coat, mask, goggles, etc. ('Cause I'm not officially an employee), still no P95s and PPE situation for like real antiviral shit is crap. But we got surgical masks and coats for ages and apparently we're gonna use them.even on the unions. Even I gotta go with mask and gloves just because I'm outside.

3-WHO is now pushing for europe not to lower lockdowns and has tried to force spain to close everything again. And both right and left have been quick to ask how they'd prefer us to kill them if they plan on actually doing that. (Politely.) Yeah with Trump defunding them that was a very stupid moment to push us. Our hatred for the Chinese, French, German and specially Netherlanders is the only thing that joins us all together.




So. From what I heard in burgerland they are more hostile. And let's just say I got it from a good source. Oh fuck it, I know a professor that worked in USA for years. Apparently they're a LOT more cutthroat. But here in spain? You may think I overshare (I do) but you have not met the people I studied and worked with. Like, even the USA migrant talked for ages with the least provocation to the point where his students started to get worried because he forgot to focus on what he was actually trying to teach them, scientists are almost universally incapable of keeping a secret. We even got a story here on spain about when German scientists found a fermenting organism that was more efficient than the one used by everyone else. German gov planned to keep it under wraps 'cause this was back when people tried to compete with that shit, a group of spanish scientists just officially asked for a tour, had a nice chat over some beer and came back with the fucking organism, and soon enough all of europe had examined it. You know how when I want intel I drop by kitchen with beer? Scientists are the same. Just ask for a chat and ask some questions and you'll fucking know. If anything from what I heard the chink spies are weird for being LESS friendly than most. Probably because chinks in general are substantially less friendly than most, probably because of all the secrets the CCP keeps. And yes btw that means even the germans, who have the serious disadvantage of having a language which makes it sound like they're insulting your ancestors even when they try to be friendly, and also being german, are more affable than the chinks... jfc.

The funniest story to me in this vein is when British industrialists allowed American Francis Cabot Lowell to come look at their textile mills, but exporting the machines was illegal, so he memorized the designs and went home and built a replica. Birth of the American mechanized textile industry.

 

[Safir]

Explain.

Starting from today, people in Moscow need a daily QR code to use any sort of transportation. These codes, along with people's paper government IDs, are to be checked manually, by regular cops (on public transport), traffic cops (cars), and taxi drivers (taxi passengers).
(The taxi driver app is broken and there are no cops on aboveground public transport yet. But aboveground transport can't take the average worker to work: unskilled workers live in ghettoes and work wherever, and skilled workers live in residential districts in their legacy Soviet apartments and work in the office district. Only the people who don't need to work can afford to rent an apartment near their workplace.)
This predictably created massive crowds in the subway and massive traffic jams at the city limits (with passengers leaving taxis and buses in the jam and walking to the nearest subway station), as people exempt from quarantine "self-isolation"* were trying to get to work.

Which reminds me, when I worked at Roskomnadzor, my immediate boss told me to make a simulation for the following problem:
"The capacity of Collect-Analyze (the HIT-powered web crawler that looks for naughty words in the news) is 1M articles per day. What will be the average queue length if we queue up 1.1M articles per day?" Dude was too libarts to realize there won't be an `average` length because it'll keep growing.
Same here. If the cops are supposed to ID a person in 20 seconds (the actual time is about 2 minutes) but the flux is 1 person per 10 seconds, where did they think those extra people would go?

* It is important to note that, aside from public school teachers (who teach on Skype and Zoom now) and retirees (who get their standard $200/month in Moscow and vastly less elsewhere), no one is being paid to stay at home. (I am working but I didn't get to renew my contract for April; if the customer refuses to pay, there's fuck all I can do.)
Putin sits on a massive untouched "National Prosperity" (disaster recovery) fund that he refuses to disburse, there's only talk that they won't be able to top it up this year as planned. Relief for businesses, to pay out salaries, is supposed to be disbursed through banks as interest-free loans, which the banks don't approve (why should they?) while keeping taxpayer money. Gas is a monopoly and gas prices are high as usual. I was hoping that as things "stabilize" (general hospitals are converted to corona hospices (cos no equipment) and the death rate from corona and untreated unrelated illnesses flattens out), businesses would be allowed to return to work. This is increasingly unlikely now. Moscow is the hub of the economy and of infection.
(The Bashkir capital of Ufa, where local administration runs a survival horror larp, is proportionally worse off.)

They also made a gwynethpaltrowesque "it's just the flu" tv quack the head of the national corona hq.

tl;dr sorry Null, I can't afford a shirt. (I paid my monthly $20 tho.)

 

[737 MAX Stan Account]

Any updates on the whole 'operation gridlock' thing in Michigan?

 

[Not Really Here]

Starting from today, people in Moscow need a daily QR code to use any sort of transportation. These codes, along with people's paper government IDs, are to be checked manually, by regular cops (on public transport), traffic cops (cars), and taxi drivers (taxi passengers).
(The taxi driver app is broken and there are no cops on aboveground public transport yet. But aboveground transport can't take the average worker to work: unskilled workers live in ghettoes and work wherever, and skilled workers live in residential districts in their legacy Soviet apartments and work in the office district. Only the people who don't need to work can afford to rent an apartment near their workplace.)
This predictably created massive crowds in the subway and massive traffic jams at the city limits (with passengers leaving taxis and buses in the jam and walking to the nearest subway station), as people exempt from quarantine "self-isolation"* were trying to get to work.

Which reminds me, when I worked at Roskomnadzor, my immediate boss told me to make a simulation for the following problem:
"The capacity of Collect-Analyze (the HIT-powered web crawler that looks for naughty words in the news) is 1M articles per day. What will be the average queue length if we queue up 1.1M articles per day?" Dude was too libarts to realize there won't be an `average` length because it'll keep growing.
Same here. If the cops are supposed to ID a person in 20 seconds (the actual time is about 2 minutes) but the flux is 1 person per 10 seconds, where did they think those extra people would go?

* It is important to note that, aside from public school teachers (who teach on Skype and Zoom now) and retirees (who get their standard $200/month in Moscow and vastly less elsewhere), no one is being paid to stay at home. (I am working but I didn't get to renew my contract for April; if the customer refuses to pay, there's fuck all I can do.)
Putin sits on a massive untouched "National Prosperity" (disaster recovery) fund that he refuses to disburse, there's only talk that they won't be able to top it up this year as planned. Relief for businesses, to pay out salaries, is supposed to be disbursed through banks as interest-free loans, which the banks don't approve (why should they?) while keeping taxpayer money. Gas is a monopoly and gas prices are high as usual. I was hoping that as things "stabilize" (general hospitals are converted to corona hospices (cos no equipment) and the death rate from corona and untreated unrelated illnesses flattens out), businesses would be allowed to return to work. This is increasingly unlikely now. Moscow is the hub of the economy and of infection.
(The Bashkir capital of Ufa, where local administration runs a survival horror larp, is proportionally worse off.)

They also made a gwynethpaltrowesque "it's just the flu" tv quack the head of the national corona hq.

tl;dr sorry Null, I can't afford a shirt. (I paid my monthly $20 tho.)

If there's one thing I've learned from watching 'Stop A Douchebag' it's that Russian traffic cops seem to be useless.

 

[Crunchy Chick]

Putin started a massive infection campaign today. Massive crowds of future superspreaders (doctors, pharmacists, grocery store and delivery workers) in the Moscow subway waiting to be manually id'd by cops. Russia is so unbelievably fucked.

China tightens Russia border checks, approves coronavirus vaccine trials

Speaking of Russia. . . Chinese are already prepping for influx of new cases originating with their northern neighbor.

 

[EmuWarsVeteran]

Hey, hey people. Afternoon news here. So it seems alongside the OMS the EU has also tried to regulate how countries are ALLOWED to stop lockdown. They did this AFTER spain already lifted the economic part and then tried to force spain to lockdown again. Thank you, EU, thank you dearly for unifying us like this. Because I can assure you we're not gonna let you buttfuck us again. The gov's practically ignoring that happened and trucking on and the opposition's speaking out against it so it seems as they try to fuck us over it just pushes the PP to realize it NEEDS to unify with the left and get a good Pacto de la Moncloa if it wishes to look like anything other than TRAITORS. Seems every time I start to doubt wether or not we'll manage to agree enough the central powers push us together. Funny, it's like they don't realize the one thing gluing spain together is the need to survive their stabs.

 

[Flaming Carrot]

Any updates on the whole 'operation gridlock' thing in Michigan?

Here's a picture I found on Twitter. This is an hour before it's supposed to kick off.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

The funniest story to me in this vein is when British industrialists allowed American Francis Cabot Lowell to come look at their textile mills, but exporting the machines was illegal, so he memorized the designs and went home and built a replica. Birth of the American mechanized textile industry.

Funnily enough, it worked both ways. After WWII the US cut off nuclear cooperating with the UK until the UK could demonstrate it could build its own hydrogen bombs. Allegedly the UK scientists reverse-engineered which explosives set up needed for an implosion device from high-speed photographs of shockwaves refracting they had back from the time when they were working in Los Alamos. The UK bombs were never as svelte as the US ones, but they worked and the US restarted cooperation.