Monthly Archives: March 2020

Following private coronavirus briefing, GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler dumped millions in stock

Source: The Week: Most Recent Home Page Posts

Article note: Not only did a second senator (Richard Burr is already in the news for this bullshit) sell off millions in stock holdings while spreading deceitful platitudes to the public after getting their private COVID-19 briefing in February, which would be hard enough to excuse as "not intentionally criminal" since she's married to the chairman of the NYSE, this bitch bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of Citrix stock in anticipation of the quarantine.

On Jan. 24, the same day she attended a private briefing hosted by the Senate Health Committee on the coronavirus outbreak, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sold between $50,001 and $100,000 worth of stock from Resideo Technologies, The Daily Beast reports. Since then, Resideo's stock price has fallen by more than half.

Records show that between Jan. 24 and Feb. 14, Loeffler and her husband, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Jeff Sprecher, sold stock worth between $1.3 million and $3.1 million. Loeffler, who is worth an estimated $500 million, also made two purchases of stock in technology companies. One of those companies, Citrix, offers teleworking software, and she bought stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000.

The 15 stocks Loeffler reported selling during that time period have since lost, on average, more than a third of their value, The Daily Beast reports. As late as March 10, Loeffler was tweeting that "the consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe."

Loeffler wasn't the only senator to sell off large stock holdings while learning about the magnitude of the global coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, unloaded between $628,000 and $1.7 million of his stocks on Feb. 13, during a time when he received daily classified briefings on the coronavirus.

Update 12:50 a.m.: Loeffler claimed in response to the Daily Beast article that she doesn't trade her own stocks and was unaware of what her investment advisers had done until Feb. 16.

As confirmed in the periodic transaction report to Senate Ethics, I was informed of these purchases and sales on 02/16/2020 – three weeks after they were made.

— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) March 20, 2020

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The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers

Source: Hacker News

Article note: The tragedy of computing. Simple systems become complex systems because they haphazardly accrete until the sunk cost is an unassailable pit.
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Company threatens to sue volunteers who 3D-printed valves for coronavirus aid

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: So, not only are they being douches about the patent situation in the face of life-saving measures that aren't a threat to their business, it has in the process been revealed they are charging $11,000 for a piece of plastic that can be produced quickly for $1 on low-end manufacturing equipment, and _just might_ be basically running a con in general, which is a threat to their business. I understand everything costs more than manufacturing cost because of development overhead, medical stuff costs more because of testing and compliance, and medical stuff costs way more because of inherently opaque pricing and an extremely captive market, but that is some ethically indefensible markup.
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Kentucky orders theaters, gyms, salons closed amid outbreak

Source: Kentucky.com -- State

Article note: Looks like I have a new hobby "Explaining why LockDown Browser is futile snake-oil, will be overall harmful to attempt, and generally how young people communicate in the modern era".

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday ordered the closure of theaters, gyms, hair salons and many other businesses where people gather, taking new action in a bid to contain the … Click to Continue »

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Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test [Updated]

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: How to get caught being a patent-trolling scumbag: Use the remnants of a discredited biotech huckster to threaten firms working on a public health crisis.
Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test [Updated]

Enlarge (credit: BioFire)

Back in 2018, the disgraced biotech company Theranos sold its patent portfolio to Fortress Investment Group, a division of Softbank. Now two of those patents have wound up in the hands of a little-known firm called Labrador Diagnostics—and Labrador is suing a company called BioFire Diagnostics that makes medical testing equipment.

And not just any medical testing equipment: BioFire recently announced it had developed three tests for COVID-19 using its hardware—tests that are due out later this month. But Labrador is asking a Delaware federal court to block the company from using its technology—presumably including the new coronavirus tests.

As Stanford patent scholar Mark Lemley puts it, "this could be the most tone-deaf IP suit in history."

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University of Kentucky students to move out; classes shift online for rest of semester

Source: Kentucky.com -- Education

Article note: This is going to be a fuckin' adventure. I expect to be giving the "Lockdown browser is harmful snake-oil" lecture a lot in the next few weeks.

A move out date has not been announced, said University of Kentucky spokesman Jay Blanton. But students will get more information on that point Thursday. … Click to Continue »

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TSA Admits Liquid Ban Is Security Theater

Source: Schneier on Security

Article note: The source Slate piece is "America is a Sham" and yes, the best likely side-effect of this shitshow is laying bare swaths of authoritarian, profiteering, bullshit that we've allowed to fester in our society. I'm not all that optimistic that we'll get any kind of long-term fixes, particularly since a lot of it was instituted during the last course-changing national disaster, but at least the point is being made.

The TSA is allowing people to bring larger bottles of hand sanitizer with them on airplanes:

Passengers will now be allowed to travel with containers of liquid hand sanitizer up to 12 ounces. However, the agency cautioned that the shift could mean slightly longer waits at checkpoint because the containers may have to be screened separately when going through security.

Won't airplanes blow up as a result? Of course not.

Would they have blown up last week were the restrictions lifted back then? Of course not.

It's always been security theater.

Interesting context:

The TSA can declare this rule change because the limit was always arbitrary, just one of the countless rituals of security theater to which air passengers are subjected every day. Flights are no more dangerous today, with the hand sanitizer, than yesterday, and if the TSA allowed you to bring 12 ounces of shampoo on a flight tomorrow, flights would be no more dangerous then. The limit was bullshit. The ease with which the TSA can toss it aside makes that clear.

All over America, the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest. Whenever the government or a corporation benevolently withdraws some punitive threat because of the coronavirus, it's a signal that there was never any good reason for that threat to exist in the first place.

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Dining spots stunned as Beshear orders Ky. bars, restaurants to close dine-in service

Source: Kentucky.com -- State

Article note: Our next round of "Shit's getting real," as we realize how not-under-control the situation already is.

Lexington paywall drop note Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday announced that he plans to order all restaurants in the state to close to dining in, beginning at 5 p.m. … Click to Continue »

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University of Kentucky shifting to online classes for two weeks amid coronavirus worry

Source: Kentucky.com -- Education

Article note: Here we go! Time to find out if I can run our Verilog-based EE282 labs remotely. I think we can roll with online Verilog toolchains (I hate EDAPlayground, but it'll do... or maybe Hank's Icarus-backed webform..), canvas submit prelab, canvas submit code, and online help sessions via Canvas and/or Zoom.

The University of Kentucky will transition to online instruction for two weeks after its scheduled spring break next week in an effort to curb the spread of novel coronavirus, officials … Click to Continue »

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Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

Source: Hacker News

Article note: I like it, it's basically removing redundant vregs and wiring the way machines are composed now. Will be a shame to lose the +5, but everywhere you use it might as well have an inexpensive separated vreg. The connector (10 pins, [PS_ON,Com,Com,Com,Reserved,Pwr_OK,+12SB,+12,+12,+12 sense] looks appropriate, though it looks in the spec like there is no marker (green stripe?) on the +12sense line to distinguish it from the ones that are supposed to carry current.
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