Monthly Archives: March 2020

Source: The Week: Most Recent Home Page Posts

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.

Source: Hacker News

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Source: Kentucky.com -- State

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 »

Source: Ars Technica

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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Source: Kentucky.com -- Education

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 »

Source: Schneier on Security

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.

Source: Kentucky.com -- State

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 »

Source: Kentucky.com -- Education

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 »

Source: Hacker News