TagCOVID-19
China’s Health Code App: One More Way to Track Citizens
For the Chinese Communist Party, SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus) has provided an opportunity to expand its massive surveillance system. The current extensive network of facial recognition cameras has left some gaps. People could avoid recognition, for example, by wearing a face covering to curb the spread of a respiratory illness. Now, China is looking to fill those gaps by keeping the Alipay Health Code app, launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a mainstay for its citizens: Compared to omnipresent facial recognition software and other surveillance systems in China, the health code mechanism covers more people and collects a broader range of personal information. The state can also impose stricter control as people now have to use health codes Read More ›
The Age of the Wolf Warrior: China’s Post-Pandemic Strategy
The younger diplomats take their cue from a Chinese Rambo-style movie and the rewritten history they learned at schoolWhile countries around the world have been dealing with the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), China has claimed disputed areas in the South China Sea, taken over the Hong Kong government, and flown planes over Taiwan. One result was a standoff between warships from the U.S., Australia, and China. A 2016 international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China has no legal sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. China, saying that the ruling was void, claims areas that are also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Japan. The Chinese Liberation Army has also increased the number of troops at its border with India (the Line of Actual Control) disputed since the Sino-Indian war in 1962 (below Read More ›
Twenty Years on, Aliens Still Cause Global Warming
Over the years, the Jurassic Park creator observed, science has drifted from its foundation as an objective search for truth toward political power gamesIn 2003, author and filmmaker Michael Crichton (1942–2008), best known for Jurassic Park, made a now-famous speech at Caltech, titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” The title was humorous but the content was serious. He was not addressing some strange theory of global warming; he was warning about the politicization of science. Crichton (left, in 2002, courtesy Jon Chase, Harvard CC 3.0), noted that, over the years, science has drifted away from its foundation as an objective search for truth and given itself over to political power games. The first time that he witnessed that was with the famous Drake Equation, used to turn SETI speculations about space aliens into a science. The Drake equation was a series of probabilities multiplied Read More ›
Does COVID-19 Lead Women to Cheat?
The “subpersonal” approach to human psychology is popular but is it valid?It's an open question whether the mind evolved at all and therefore whether evolutionary psychology is any help in understanding it.
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The Birds Aren’t Real. But Maybe the Spying Is.
A defense of our fundamental right to privacyTechnology frees us from drudgery but also enable surveillance that enslaves us. Then, far from computers becoming more like humans, we may become more like computers.
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COVID-19: Atheism Went Viral As Well
Atheists are uniquely unsuited to accuse others of devaluing human lifeProfessor Steven Pinker’s quickly deleted tweet provides a window into anti-religious hate. In health and medicine, he is entirely mistaken.
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Ten Ways COVID-19 Will Change Your Next Air Trip
You’ll still get there but it definitely won’t be half the funOn board, the plane will be cleaner but also leaner. Expect to wear a mask and snack before you go.
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Making Sense of the Numbers Behind COVID-19
Media and politicians put statistics before us to sway our opinions. But what do they really mean?Numbers can frighten or enlighten. The secret is making them explain themselves. Here’s a quick primer.
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The New Cyber Cold War with China
Cybersecurity strategist Peter Singer told Wired that there has never been a better time than the COVID-19 pandemic to be a government hackerThe United States has formally accused China of both funding and operating cells of hackers who infiltrate research labs working on responses to COVID-19.
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Vitamin D and COVID-19: Is It Data or Noise?
Because random clusters occur naturally in large numbers, only randomized, controlled trials can tell usRandom data shows geographic clusters. Thus some locations will inevitably have higher COVID-19 rates than others. As my example shows, associating these clusters with personal characteristics after the fact is not convincing scientific evidence. That’s where randomized, controlled trials are needed.
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Is Contact Tracing a Simple Answer to COVID Lockdowns?
An engineering professor at the University of Austin asks us to look at the costs and benefitsThe conventional science fiction fear of a superintelligent AI taking over the planet and ridding it of pesky humans distracts our attention from a much more realistic threat: Artificial intelligence (AI) makes both government and corporate surveillance much easier, cheaper, and more useful—whether it is in average citizens’ interests or not. If we are lucky, this will be the decade when we address the implications of that fact.
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Can AI Save Us from COVID-19? An Expert Is Skeptical
To use AI more successfully next time, we need a clear understanding of its limitations as well as its capabilitiesExperts list various problems, including the fact that AI is vulnerable to failure due to unforeseen problems, including problems with data (too sparse, too noisy, too many outliers, etc.). It also doesn’t learn as well from experience as humans do.
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Coronavirus: Is Data Mining Failing Its First Really Big Test?
Computers scanning thousands of paper don’t seem to be providing answers for COVID-19If Alphabet’s Deep Mind or Microsoft had successfully data mined the 29,000 papers and found useful coronavirus information, that would be pretty impressive. But they appear to be giving others a chance to try instead, raising issues once again about the value of data mining in medicine.
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Five Ways COVID-19 Is Changing Education for Good
Parents, students, and teachers worldwide have been finding ways to use the internet in creative ways they would never have considered beforeRecently, a Harvard prof chose to launch an attack on homeschoolers, portraying them as driven by narrow religious concerns. Given how many parents COVID-19 has forced to homeschool, the attack was, at best, poorly timed. But it usefully focused attention on the ways education needs to change in an online world.
Why Does COVID-19 Target the Northern Hemisphere?
A graph of death rates by latitude is revealingFirst of all, COVID-19 clearly does not attack the globe uniformly by latitude. The second standout feature is that it targets the northern hemisphere. How can a disease’s spread be affected by hemisphere, let alone latitude? Let’s look a little deeper for some clues.
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COVID-19: When 900 Bytes Shut Down the World
A great physicist warned us, information precedes matter and energy: Bit before itThe COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón explore a dreadful truth: “Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information can stop the world.”
Five Possibly Unexpected Ways the Post-COVID Office Will Change
We’ll all know more about remote working than we ever thought we wouldSome managers worry that remote employees will not be productive. They don’t always consider that the remote worker is the person in charge if something affects her work. For example, in an office building, if the water is shut off due to a street repair, a manager would likely co-ordinate. But at home, the worker must decide for herself how best to deal with it, while remaining productive. A level playing field would recognize overall long-term output vs. costs in either case.
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COVID-19: Getting to the Bottom of What Happened in China
China knowingly violated the terms of a World Health Organization (WHO) disclosure agreementIt is widely recognized that medical professionals and journalists in China are being silenced if they publish any information about COVID-19 that contradicts the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official narrative. But now mainland Chinese scientists must ensure that their research publications also toe the CCP party line. If we sift carefully, however, we can uncover real information.
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COVID-19: How 900 Bytes Changed the World
Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information can stop the world. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón discuss COVID-19, DNA, and information. Show Notes 01:09 | Introducing Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón, Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Miami and Senior Researcher at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab Read More ›