Thursday Thoughts, August 26, 2021

The Department of Tech:

• Good (and overdue) move by the NHTSA: the agency is going to investigate the safety of Tesla's Autopilot feature , with a focus on the danger to persons on or near roadways.
• Wired asks a great question (and one that may be more relevant/pressing with the EU's proposed AI legislation): can we make machines or models 'unlearn' what they've learned?
• Is Facebook's approach to misinformation on their platform ... to spread misinformation about their platform ? Rather than fostering trust through transparency and potentially leading to a discussion about the difficulty of classifying misinformation, Facebook own-goaled by withholding a transparency report because of perceived reception by outside audiences .
• Ironically--and perhaps not surprisingly--the chip shortage has spun into a negative feedback loop: the lack of chips makes it harder to make more chips .
• Here's a good article on ReadWrite about how GPT-3, if misused, could effectively ruin the internet by drowning everyone in garbage content.
• Harper's Magazine dives deep into the topic of disinformation .
• Just like there are master keys for locks, there are apparently "master faces " for biometric systems.
• The SEC is going to require that Chinese tech companies with U.S. listings provide more transparency about investment risks (given all the recent regulatory action coming out of Beijing).

Privacy and Security Matter:

• China's new data protection/privacy law got lots of headlines late last week. Imagine going from basically zero to GDPR -- it'll be a compliance challenge for many firms to comply in time. Here's more on the topic .
• The UK is planning to develop their own independent data protection adequacy determinations for third countries .
• Changes Apple Mail is making as part of iOS 15 (known as Mail Privacy Protection) may severely impact email marketers' metrics .
• Wouldn't this be an interesting solution to advertising privacy: AI-driven online advertising which could, conceivably, become very good at contextual or behavioral advertising (or both).
• Tech CEOs (and CEOs from other large industries) met with the White House this week to discuss cybersecurity (which led to the companies promising billions of dollars to improve cybersecurity ).
• Why CAPTCHA images are terrible .

Sports are awesome:

• The Toyko Paralympic Games started this week -- they're worth a watch, and have sports you may not have seen before.
• It's UTMB week and, sadly, the races started off with a tragedy as a Czech runner fell and died on the TDS course on Wednesday . Watch the remaining races (OCC, CCC, and UTMB) live here .
• Anton Krupicka, the outdoor explorer who hadn't run a trail race in half a decade, returned to finish third in Leadville .
• The Premier League is going to limit the ability of players to travel to 'red list' countries for international matches.
• Climate change is going to make it a lot hotter to run : great for sprints, bad for distance.

Covid is a battle we can win:

• The FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine , which still may not convince holdouts (but certainly makes mandates easier ). Even if vaccines are facing decreased effectiveness, they are still helping prevent hospitalizations and, when breakthrough cases occur, the patients are less infectious and clear covid quicker than unvaccinated patients .
• Unvaccinated Americans hospitalized with covid are costing billions of dollars .
• We're learning more and more about the importance of appropriately timing vaccine doses .
• Apparently, online groups for nurses are rife with misinformation . It's surprisingly effective. Speaking of misinformation, it turns out the latest misinformation in China blames the U.S. for the covid pandemic . Laughable.
• For people skipping out on shots, please don't use veterinary ivermectin . It's a bad idea (and even human doses of ivermectin may not be that helpful ).
• Um, India just approved a DNA-based covid vaccine ... without any official trial data ??
• Covid may be particularly risky for some children this fall. The WSJ digs into how to think about the risks .
• Llama antibodies may be a potential solution for fighting covid variants . Another antibody was also recently discovered to potentially fight all covid strains .
• United Airlines' CEO had a good reason behind his decision to mandate vaccines for employees: he was sick of seeing employees die from covid . Meanwhile, Delta Airlines is now going to penalize unvaccinated employees by requiring them to make larger contributions to their health care plan.
• Different year, same event: South Dakota's Sturgis motorcycle rally led to a huge increase in covid cases .
• Apparently, an Australian researcher wrote a great book in 2019 about the psychology of pandemics . Adding it to my queue.

Climate Change is a challenge we must meet:

• Lawyers often act as if there should be no moral assessment in their choice of clients. Some law students (rightfully) disagree, and have rated the degree to which the Vault 100 firms support fossil fuel companies . (One firm I worked for received an A, the other, an F.)
• It turns out that the Thwaites Glacier (Antarctica's so-called "doomsday" glacier) is being warmed by underground heat as well . Not good.
• One Colorado congresswoman's husband was recently revealed to have earned nearly $1 million as a 'consultant' for fossil fuel interests (despite his limited experience in the field). Corruption is rarely this transparent.
• Sobering to think about (perhaps it'll change your habits, though): the average Westerner's eating habits lead to the loss of four trees every year .
• Not good news: the Arctic Circle is seeing its highest ever recorded temperatures , and it's raining in parts of Greenland that have never seen rain .
• People are thinking creatively about how the U.S. can create jobs for oil/gas workers: plugging and closing up abandoned wells across the country .
• Yikes: atmospheric CO2 levels are now nearing where they were 15 million years ago .
• Algeria is burning and the Middle East is running out of water .
• Just like the Pacific Northwest heat waves, the recent storm and flooding in Tennessee was climate-change 'enhanced.' Likewise, Zhengzhou (China) has experienced climate-change driven whiplash, going from heatwaves to devastating floods in a matter of days .
• More on how we can leverage AI to cut climate risks and, importantly, reduce wildfire risks (wildfire smoke, by the way, has a material impact on global warming ). AI is also being deployed to help the UK improve solar power production .
• A good argument that economics needs a sea change to appropriately address climate considerations .

California is a fascinating state:

• The recall election is underway, with ballots starting to arrive last week. Vote "no" (unless you want to gamble with California's future for the next year with some fringe candidates ). Hopefully there will be a ballot initiative in the next state election to do away with state-level recalls.
• The Dixie Fire has become the first fire identified as having crossed the Sierra crest (last year's Creek Fire came close, if I recall correctly). Unfortunately, as part of that burn across the mountains, native Maidu land (only recently returned to the tribes) burned .
• The Caldor Fire is threatening the Lake Tahoe region. It's shut down Route 50 (highlighting the challenges in evacuating the Tahoe Basin ), turned the air quality into the worst in the world , and the continued fire risk throughout the state led the Forest Service to close nine National Forests in Northern California .
• Speaking of fires, the Chron has a great dive into how fires in recent years have transformed the Golden State .
• La Ni?a may return this winter , which would be disastrous for hopes that we may see relief from the California-wide drought. The current situation is really bad , and this may compound it in horrible ways. Given that, it's amazing how strong the home sellers' market is in the Bay Area .
• Given the continual on-off droughts in California, the Atlantic's story about a well-fixer in the Central Valley is saddening/eye-opening . It blows my mind that we've added so many nut trees to the Central Valley in the past decade despite dwindling aquifers and increased droughts. Compare this against the water recycling efforts Healdsburg recently announced .
• Some good news! The elusive Sierra Bighorn Sheep have returned to Yosemite !

Everything Else:

• Wild and upsetting: the pricing decisions agreed to by hospitals and insurers are becoming public for the first time , and the system is, well, ridiculous and terrible for everyone who isn't a hospital or insurer.
• New Yorker dives into the saga of finding a vaccine for Lyme disease .
• As we leave Afghanistan, we should recognize that the ends of wars are often messy , and the post-WWII occupation model is not viable in most cases . In this case, the media's hawkish coverage should be questioned , as should the terrible dealings in 2019-20 that led to a more chaotic and dangerous exit .
• Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post writer, wrote a terrible, misinformed column about Indian food . Good thing the Washington Post has previously explained the wonders of Indian cuisine ("because...science").
• Speaking of food, the plant-based foods market will hit $162 billion in the next decade . We'll need it to keep growing to help mitigate somewhat against climate change.