Alexander @av@oval.cc

Just got another e-mail survey, and how do you like this:
THIS JOB SATISFACTION SURVEY LINK IS UNIQUELY YOURS. TO PROTECT YOUR ANONYMITY AND CONFIDENTIALITY, IT SHOULD NOT BE SHARED.

Received an unsolicited e-mail with confidentiality notice? Just ignore it. (1) By sending an open unsolicited e-mail to your mailbox the sender already violates any confidentiality, and disclaimers would not help. (2) You have never agreed to hold the correspondence confidential. (3) Open, unencrypted e-mail can be treated as public by your organization.

#SolarWinds #backdoor Microsoft, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the list of hacked government agencies and companies extends to 18,000. I wonder how long any "Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act" would stay "lawful"?

@natalia Congratulations to Natalia, a newly elected signature member of the American Impressionist Society https://www.americanimpressionistsociety.org/Sys/PublicProfile/34082300/4128936

Tutanota is fighting in court to protect end-to-end encryption
https://www.cyberscoop.com/germany-court-ruling-tutanota-email-monitoring/

Little pygmy possums found again in Australia. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-australia-55240839

Last week Florida State University tested 1875 people for covid and 52 were found to be positive. The official positivity rate is quoted as p=2.77%. What do you think the 95% confidence interval for the positivity rate is?

Online messaging platforms may soon be subject to data collection in Estonia https://news.postimees.ee/7100007/bill-to-obligate-data-collection-and-personalize-prepaid-sim-cards

#righttorepair #climatechange
Right to repair is something that we urgently need to combat climate change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/climate/right-to-repair.html

#climatechange Want to stop climate change? Embrace the nuclear power!

Estonia is about to start requiring identification for purchasing SIM cards. Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, U.S. and Canada are the countries that do not currently require identification verification for pre-paid SIM cards.
https://news.err.ee/1149511/ministry-wants-to-tighten-identification-regulations-on-pre-paid-sim-cards

A study has found that as a result of evolution more people are being born without wisdom teeth and with an extra artery in their arm.
https://youtu.be/zIb9mymN80o

Demographers find that
a hypothetical 1 million US deaths in the COVID-19 epidemic would mean a drop in life expectancy for 2020 by 2.9 years, equivalent of U.S. mortality levels in 1995.

The scenario of 1 million COVID-19 deaths is similar in scale to that of the decades-long HIV/AIDS and opioid-overdose epidemics but considerably smaller than that of the Spanish flu of 1918.

See https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/08/25/demographers-put-covid-19-death-toll-into-perspective/

Investigation of competition in digital markets:
US Government vs Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple:
Subcommittee staff found evidence of monopolization and monopoly power....
https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf