To anyone unfamiliar with Myers-Briggs personality types: buckle up, you’re in for a treat. A website called 16personalities.com has developed a personality type assessment that uses decades worth of research to provide people with a way to understand human personalities on a deep level. After taking their personality assessment, your result will be one of 16 possible combinations of letters (such as ESTJ, ISFJ, or ENFP) in which each letter indicates degrees of a trait that offers insight into how you process information, interact with the world, and more.

It really is a remarkable way of coming to understand the people around you and gain insight into why they behave the way they do, and how you can get along and communicate with them more effectively. Not only is it a great tool to help you understand others, but it’s a great tool to help you understand yourself and why you think and behave the way you do. The test itself only takes about ten minutes, but figuring out your personality type and what it means can change your life. Take the test here.

I love Apple Pay, and you will too. Let me tell you why.

First things first, it’s important to make the distinction between Apple Pay, the payment facilitation service, and Apple Card, Apple’s recently launched credit card offering. This article is about the payment facilitation service, bu you can click here to see my thoughts on Apple Card, if you’re interested.

There are two primary reasons that I love Apple Pay: financial security/privacy protections and convenience. In both areas, Apple Pay is truly top of class.

Convenience

When it comes to convenience, Apple Pay is hard to beat because it’s lightning fast and can be used in a variety of contexts.

Primarily, Apple Pay was designed to replace your physical card when you need to pay for something in a brick and mortar store. It works a lot faster than the chip cards, and it doesn’t require any physical contact between your device and the payment terminal (this is obviously a plus, given that we’re in the middle of a pandemic). After you’ve added your card to Apple Pay, the Wallet app will offer more detailed transaction lists than most bank accounts provide (whether you used the version of your card in Apple Pay or the physical card), which are easy to read and even include location data so you know exactly where that transaction took place. It really comes in handy if you need to purchase something and find you’ve forgotten your wallet or purse. Most retailers accept Apple Pay these days, and I personally prefer to shop at places that do because it’s so much faster than swiping or inserting a physical card. You can use Apple Pay anywhere you see one of these two symbols:

However, Apple Pay isn’t limited to in-store use: you can also use Apple Pay in apps and on websites on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to quickly pay for things with just one step. It’s great when you want to order something from a merchant you don’t frequently purchase from because it keeps your payment information private and doesn’t require you to create an account with that retailer.

Most recently, Apple Pay has expanded to allow individuals to send money to other Apple Pay users directly through the built in Messages apps from their iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad. This expansion challenges popular services like Venmo and the Cash App, and it gives Apple users another, more convenient option to send money to their friends without needing to install separate apps that have their own security and privacy baggage. To facilitate payments between individuals, Apple has also created a digital Apple Cash card, which works just like your other credit and debit cards. Whenever you receive money from someone, this card is essentially the debit card account where that money lives, until you either spend it using Apple Pay (which you can do in stores or online), send it to someone else, or transfer the funds to your bank account.

Security & Privacy

A common misconception is that Apple Pay is not very safe because it’s digital, but in fact, the opposite is true. Apple Pay is so secure that it’s actually safer than using your real credit or debit card in brick and mortar stores, online, or in apps. Let me elaborate.

When you add your card to Apple Pay, your device will create a new 16-digit card number (called a device account number) which will be given to merchants when you use Apple Pay for a transaction. This number is unique to your device, and it cannot be unscrambled or put through any sort of algorithm to spit out your real card number. This means that if someone were to get their hands on your device account number, they wouldn’t be able to use it to steal your money. For example, when a merchant’s payment system gets hacked and bad actors get ahold of a bunch of people’s credit card numbers (like what happened with Target in 2013), had you been using Apple Pay, they would’ve only gotten your device account number, not your real credit or debit card number (because your device never gave Target your real number). They wouldn’t have been able to steal any money, and you wouldn’t need to get a new card from your bank. In fact, you wouldn’t have had to do anything at all.

The reason for that is that each Apple Pay transaction you initiate requires a unique token code that is specific to the time and date, the amount of money you’re trying to spend, and the merchant trying to process the transaction. This works in concert with the Device Account Number, and if all of those elements don’t check out, the transaction won’t be authorized.

Even still, cards you add to Apple Pay are never stored in iCloud or Apple servers, and are protected by your device’s passcode and biometric authentication systems, meaning that even if a bad actor somehow got around the protections offered by the device account number and the token code, they would still have to have physical possession of your device, AND know your passcode.

There is really no imaginable way in which this system could be thwarted.

Adding Your Card in Wallet

So, you’re interested, but how do you set it up and try it out? I’ll help you get started.

The process for setting up Apple Pay is largely the same across devices. You’ll scan your card with your device’s camera or just type in the numbers manually, and in some cases you’ll need to verify your identity with your bank, usually through a text message authentication code. If your device doesn’t already have a passcode (which it absolutely should, even Apple Watches*)

To set up Apple Pay on your iPhone, go to the Wallet app and tap the + button in the top right corner, then choose “Credit or Debit Card”, and follow the steps to add your card.

To set up Apple Pay on your Apple Watch, start off by going to the Watch app on your iPhone, tap Wallet & Apple Pay → Add A New Card.

To set up Apple Pay on your iPad, go to Settings → Wallet & Apple Pay → Add A New Card.

To set up Apple Pay on your Mac, go to System Preferences → Wallet & Apple Pay, and click the + button.

If you have any trouble along the way, check out Apple’s “Set Up Apple Pay” support page, or get help from CopyrightBro by selecting “Tech Help” from the menu and filing a support request.

Using Apple Pay

Actually using Apple Pay couldn’t be any easier.

To use Apple Pay in stores:

With an iPhone:

If your iPhone has Face ID:

Open the Wallet app, or double click the side button to quickly open the Wallet app with your default payment card ready to go. If you want to use a different card, just slide your default card down and your other cards will pop up. Choose the one you’d like to use, authenticate with Face ID, and hold your device near the payment terminal when the merchant is ready. You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve done your part to complete the transaction.

If your iPhone has Touch ID:

Open the Wallet app, or double click the home button from the lock screen to quickly open the Wallet app with your default payment card ready to go. If you want to use a different card, just slide your default card down and your other cards will pop up. Choose the one you’d like to use, authenticate with Touch ID, and hold your device near the payment terminal when the merchant is ready. You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve done your part to complete the transaction.

With an Apple Watch:

Open the Wallet app, or double click the side button (the flat one that doesn’t turn) to quickly open the Wallet app with your default payment card ready to go. If you want to use a different card, just slide your default card to the left to access the next card in your wallet. Hold your Watch near the payment terminal. You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve done your part to complete the transaction.

To use Apple Pay in apps and online:

With an iPhone, iPad, or Mac:

Click or tap on the button that says “Pay with  Pay”, confirm all of the details that appear, select the card you want to use and the appropriate billing/shipping addresses, and then authenticate with Touch ID or Face ID. You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve done your part to complete the transaction.

To use Apple Pay to send money to friends:

With an iPhone or iPad:

Go to the Messages app and open a conversation with the person you’d like to send money to. Choose the Pay button from the app drawer that shows up at the bottom of the screen when the keyboard is dismissed. Select the amount you want using the +/- buttons or the keypad, and then tap “Request” or “Pay” depending on whether you want to send or ask for money. You can also type a message to send with the request or payment denoting what it’s for. If requesting, you can send the request by tapping the send button. If sending money, an Apple Pay screen will pop up when you tap the send button, prompting you to review the details of your payment and then authenticate with Touch ID or Face ID to complete it. You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve completed the payment.

With an Apple Watch:

Open Messages and chose a conversation with the person you want to send money to. Tap the Pay button, adjust the amount you want to send, and then double tap the side button to confirm the payment.You should feel a little pulse, hear a chime, and see a checkmark appear on screen: these cues are just letting you know you’ve completed the payment.

Next time you go to the store, you’ll be delighted by how much faster it is to pay for your items. Next time a retailer you frequent has their payment systems compromised, you won’t have to freak out because some stranger might have your debit card number. Apple Pay solves a lot of problems, and it’s also delightful to use. Try it out for a few weeks: you won’t want to go back.

*If you don’t have an Apple Watch, or you already have a passcode on your Watch, you can skip this paragraph. If you do have one but you haven’t set up a passcode, read on. Since the Apple Watch doesn’t have a biometric authentication system yet (like Touch ID or Face ID), you do have to set up a passcode on your watch to use Apple Pay — but that’s a smart idea anyway, because it protects your data and makes your device less appealing to thieves through a sort of digital herd immunity — I know it sounds cumbersome, and a lot of people think that having a passcode on their watch means typing in a number on a tiny screen every time you want to reply to a quick text or check the time, but that’s not the case. You actually only have to put the passcode in one time after you put the watch on, and it will recognize that it’s still on your wrist and not require it again until you’ve taken the watch off and put it back on again. You can set up Apple Pay on your Apple Watch through the Watch app.

Stephen Sorace, writing for Fox News:

The United States recorded 1 million coronavirus cases Tuesday, the first nation in the world to reach the grim milestone […]

The mounting infections across the U.S. come as the death toll exceeded 57,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Lucy Bayly, for NBC News:

The coronavirus pandemic has slammed into the economy so hard the nation's GDP has fallen by 4.8 percent, bringing the longest economic expansion on record to an abrupt halt. […]

It's the steepest decline since the Great Recession, which ended in 2009.

None of this is surprising, given how well our federal government has handled this. Can you even imagine what people would be saying about Obama if Swine Flu, Ebola, or Zika had infected and killed so many Americans, or had caused the economy to fall into a tailspin like the one we’re experiencing now? Especially given that the president didn’t take the steps recommended to him by health officials in the early days, forced all of the hard decisions on to the governors, and still hasn’t been able to produce results when it comes to significantly boosting our capacity to test for the virus; there would’ve been legitimate calls for impeachment.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 11



Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Just watch it, and know that the person we elected to be the leader of our country actually said all of this stuff about killing a virus by putting ultraviolet light inside people’s bodies and injecting them with disinfectant.

"The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs" -- Trump seems to suggests that injecting disinfectant inside people could be a treatment for the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/amis9Rphsm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2020

Honestly, if you’re stupid enough to listen to him, I feel sorry for you, but you aren’t going to be naturally selected.

That said, next round of Clorox shots is on me for anyone who wants em.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 10



Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Julie Pace and Hannah Fingerhut, reporting for The Associated Press:

Just 28% of Americans say they’re regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21% trust him a moderate amount. 

Confidence in Trump is higher among his supporters, though only about half of Republicans say they have a lot of trust in Trump’s information on the pandemic — and 22% say they have little or no trust in what he says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

This is not a good look for a president during an election year, but it’s also not encouraging for our prospects winning the fight against Coronavirus without a lot more death and economic pain, given that our leader inspires so little trust.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 9



Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

A header from one of McConnell’s recent press releases on was titled “On Stopping Blue State Bailouts”; the section went on the detail how Mitch McConnell was taking a “you made your bed, lie in it” approach to dealing with states with Democratic leaders, even though blue states are no more responsible for this pandemic than red states. In reality, what happened was our Commander in Cheeto lied to us at bedtime and tucked us in while assuring us everything was okay, despite the fact that many of us smelled the smoke issuing from the blaze in the other room (a blaze Trump was briefed on months ahead of time). McConnell’s notion that Democrats are responsible for dealing with this on their own in the states they lead is absurd. If the house burns down, we all go with it.

As things often do with Moscow Mitch, this boils down to shameless partisanship. This particular instance further illustrates how dangerously greedy McConnell is, and shows, yet again, that he is far more concerned with protecting the powerful elites of the Republican party than he is with protecting the citizens of this country, and he’s not above holding political grudges and using policy disagreements as a basis to sabotage relief efforts for states with Democratic leaders.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 8

Here’s the thing though, just because a state has a Democratic governor doesn’t mean they have Democratic senators, and the Republican Party only holds control of the senate by three seats. If Mitch isn’t careful, he could cost some of his buddies their jobs, and ultimately lose his position as Majority Leader in the process, if not lose his own seat.

Fortunately, if you’re tired of Moscow Mitch, you can do something about it. There’s never been a better time, so I would encourage everyone to donate to Vote Save America’s “Get Mitch or Die Trying” fund, which funnels donations to the campaigns most well positioned to win seats away from the Republican Party and take away their Senate majority.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Here’s the thing:

Starting soon, employees of churches and other faith based, tax exempt organizations who have experienced lay offs and hour reductions as a result of COVID-19 will be eligible to receive unemployment benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program included in the CARES Act (Congress’s $2T bill that included the $1,200 stimulus check and small business paycheck protection loans).

From The U.S. Department of Labor:

Depending on state law, covered individuals may also include clergy and those working for religious organizations who are not covered by regular unemployment compensation.

I’m not going to beat around the bush, this is unfair.

If someone were to theoretically refuse to pay in to social security for their whole life, and then expect the government to fund their retirement when they reach age 65, everyone would agree that’s unfair. People often label social security as a socialist program in the first place with massive solvency issues (technically true statements), but in a scenario such as the one described above, it’s not socialism, it’s a perversion of socialism and an outright slap in the face to free market capitalism. There is no individual scenario nor economic system where it’s fair to refuse to contribute to society and then demand that society gives you or the people who work for you a handout when times get tough, even exceptionally and unforeseeably so, as they have as a result of COVID-19. And make no mistake: this is a perverted socialist handout.

To employees of these organizations, I say this:

A hallmark of free market capitalism is that employers and employees negotiate their own contracts for pay and benefits. If you chose, whether out of ignorance and apathy or via an informed decision, to work for an organization who refuses to pay in to a social safety net program that could help you personally in the event that you come upon hard times, that’s your problem. In our current system (whether you agree with it or not) it’s your prerogative to negotiate for the benefits you may need, whether that’s unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement packages, or otherwise.

To the employers, I say this:

Separation of church and state is a two way street; if you want to register your faith based organization as a nonprofit so that you can play by a different set of rules and avoid taxes, so be it, but don’t expect to reap the benefits of the tax dollars that every other small business has to contribute. I don’t care if your organization’s income is based on tithing and therefore allegedly unpredictable, nor do I care about any of the other excuses that may be offered. If your organization wants to operate in this economy and not pay taxes, your management had better be good enough to keep the organization afloat when hard times hit, because when you scream about separation of church and state, you cut the safety net out from under yourself.

Looking Forward

At the end of the day, do I think we ought to just leave the people who will benefit from the PUA program to suffer? No, I don’t, because that’s not the right thing to do. Even though, if we didn’t bail them out, they’d blame Nancy Pelosi until the end of time and blabber on incessantly about the “persecution” of Christians.*

Politics is often a tit for tat game these days, and kicking people while they’re down as opposed to offering them a hand will do a lot less to bring our country back together. However, I think people who are going to receive these benefits owe it to the rest of society to accept them with a bit of humility, understand why special rules had to be put in place to accommodate them, and be a little more careful to vet the organizations they go to work for in the future. I’ll be far less sympathetic the next time something like this happens if they do nothing this time to show their appreciation or prevent themselves from ending up in this predicament again.

*Christians obviously make up the largest faith community in the United States, but let’s be clear, my opinions apply to faith based organizations of any creed, whether they fall under the umbrella of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or anything else.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

A fun compilation by CBS News that includes such hits as:

• “We've taken the most aggressive actions to confront the coronavirus. They are the most aggressive taken by any country.”

• “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"

• “Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.”

• “And, so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery, one is — one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover, but the others are in great shape. But think of that: 25,000 to 69,000. ... "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done.”

• “I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

• "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. ... The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?”

•  "Well, this was unexpected.“

• "This could be a hell of a bad two weeks."

•  “It's not the flu. It's vicious.”

And my personal favorite:

• “It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear.”

This roundup on covers until the very beginning of April, so hopefully CBS News will update it again soon so as to include the rest of the month: after all, we don’t want any Americans to miss all of the valuable insight and sage advice flowing bountifully from our very effective wartime president. Lol.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 7



Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Niall Horan’s first solo album, ”Flicker”, is probably one of my favorite albums, so I was really excited for his second to drop.

Said second album, titled “Heartbreak Weather”, was released a few weeks ago, and I’m not at all disappointed. The whole album is really solid, with a few tracks that really stand out (my favorites are “Black And White”, “Dear Patience”, and “San Francisco”).

Give it a listen.

From the Apple Newsroom:

Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. Given the urgent need, the plan is to implement this solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy.

As I noted in a piece titled “The New Patriot Act” a few weeks ago, I am staunchly opposed to the implementation of any sort of mandated contact tracing surveillance system.

As a general rule, I trust Apple implicitly when it comes to privacy matters, so this piece of news about Apple partnering with Google to build contact tracing technologies was startling to me upon first glance. However, after reading their Newsroom briefing, it seems to me that Apple is doing this for the sake of consumer privacy rather than in spite of it: by announcing the development of a contact tracing system before one could be created by the government, they’re making it much more likely that a mandatory surveillance system from the government will never come to fruition, allowing citizens the privacy of an opt-in system provided by the free market.

First, in May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. These official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores.

Second, in the coming months, Apple and Google will work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms. This is a more robust solution than an API and would allow more individuals to participate, if they choose to opt in, as well as enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities.

The approaches they’re taking do seem to respect user privacy, in that they’re requiring users to explicitly opt-in and that they're creating these systems in a way that they can function without any GPS data (though I’m concerned about the ease with which nearly all of this anonymous proximity location could be associated with real world locations).

There are other instances of contact tracing happening in the United States already (not to mention the outright surveillance systems being used by Iran, China, and Israel). For instance, Massachusetts is implementing an old school contact tracing system to slow the spread of COVID-19 that involves employees calling infected patients and all of their contacts to create social maps of potential infections among contact networks, very similar to the (frankly offensive and regressive) programs utilized by public health departments when a new case of a sexually transmitted infection is reported to them (a legally mandated practice, even if you are diagnosed with an STI at a private practice), whereby the health department takes it upon themselves to contact the patient and demand they tell them who all they’ve been bedding down with so they can stir shit up and make the patient and anyone else they contact feel bad about themselves because our society is fundamentally built upon the puritanical notion that sexuality is an inherently shameful aspect of the human condition; I digress, the point is that contact tracing is not a process that respects privacy and I have little confidence that the government will get it right this time around, whether its done digitally or the old fashioned way.

I still believe our best options for combating COVID-19 are frequent hand washing and sanitizing, maintaining distance in public spaces, wearing masks when around crowds, and expanded testing for people who currently may have the virus, as well as antibody tests to determine who has acquired immunity.

I am not likely to opt in to any sort of tracking, and I would encourage you to strongly consider the long term consequences of allowing systems like this to get a foothold in our society.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

As if I needed a reason to hate either of them more than I already do.

Carole Baskin donating to @SenatorBurr's re-election campaign is the most "this week" development of this week.

Per a new @FEC filing: pic.twitter.com/LuKY4Lsoz6

— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) April 14, 2020

A massive upset. Reid Epstein, reporting for The New York Times:

The victory, by upward of 120,000 votes as of Monday night, came as a shock to Republicans and Democrats alike in Wisconsin, where the most recent contests for president, governor and the state’s high court have each been decided by about 30,000 votes or less.

We could spend a lot of time analyzing the politics of this outcome and what it may mean for the general election in November, as well as who the more deserving candidate was based on personal ideology. But if we take the political parties out of it, one thing we should be able to agree on is this: any true American patriot ought to love seeing an underdog story in which the will of the people triumphs over attempted voter suppression by corrupt, powerful elites.

The writing has been on the wall that Bernie’s campaign was coming to an end for about a month now; since the COVID-19 pandemic began ramping up in the United States, the primary season was more or less over. And today, Bernie Sanders ended his campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Now, Joe Biden is the only Democrat still running for the party’s nomination, so it’s all but guaranteed that he will be the candidate facing off against Trump in November.

I think this is for the best. As it stands, I’m not much of a Biden fan, but I think he represents less of a harm to our democracy than a Sanders presidency would. I don’t say this because Bernie branded himself as a Democratic Socialist — I actually think some of his ideas that have been branded as “socialist” are deeply American — this is a good opportunity to put preconceptions aside and evaluate someone based on their ideas rather than their labels. I felt like his candidacy was a threat to democracy because of he followers. His followers hailed him as a political diety who could do no wrong, they had a tendency to behave like outright fascists in their unrelenting defense of Sanders and unprovoked attacks on anyone who asked innocent questions about the logistics of their platform, and they maintained an aggressive intolerance for opinions that didn’t align perfectly with theirs (see: Deontologists vs. Consequentialists). Fascism does not belong to the far right, and the Bernie Bros were proof of that.

Distrubingly, many of Bernie’s supporters placed Bernie on such a high platform that they were not necessarily willing to vote for another democratic candidate should Bernie not secure the nomination. Given this, Biden will have to move a little more to the left to bring some of Bernie’s followers into his campaign (though he’ll have to be careful as to not alienate some of his most moderate supporters by moving too far to the left too quickly), and lot of people have said that combatting climate change is an issue where Biden could afford to adopt some more progressive policies to help encourage the Bernie Bros to join his campaign. I digress: there will be plenty more punditry to come in the following months.

All in all, Bernie has done a lot over the course of his career to move the political conversation in the United States to the left, and he should be proud of the way he has been able to bring some elements of his platform that were once considered radical into the mainstream. Even if he won’t be the president to enact the changes he’s fought for, he has still been instrumental in bringing them to fruition.

Ashley Carman, writing for The Verge:

[The app] connects to Spotify for music sharing, and a couple can send each other photos, notes, cards, and voice memos. They can also use custom stickers and reactions. It’s free to use and seemingly doesn’t require a Facebook account, although users are subject to Facebook’s data rules, meaning the data people provide can be used for ad targeting.

Of course it can, Facebook is not in the business of giving anything away for free: any time you use a Facebook product, you are paying for it with as much data as Facebook is able to lap up.

Despite the fact that Tuned’s App Store page uses the word “private” four times, nothing about this app is private. Every time they use this word in the context of a product or service governed by the Facebook Data Policy, they are lying to you.

Last year, we learned Facebook was setting up a dating service, so this new project obviously seems related. Not only does Facebook want to try its hand at setting people up for intimate relationships, but they also want to analyze they behavior of couples who are already together. All of this makes Facebook better at manipulating people, and it sets them up to make more money through increasingly effective targeted advertising.

If you use this app, you’re nuts.

#deletefacebook

I’m a few days ahead of the news cycle on this one, but this might be the most predictable story of the year.

If you’re not sure what’s going on, let me tell you. Today, Wisconsin held an election (on the ballot were candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination as well as candidates for Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court), despite the fact that voting involves large crowds of people in close proximity and touching the same items, at a time when the CDC is urging citizens to do the exact opposite. Note that most poll workers are old, and therefore at greater risk of serious illness if they were to become infected with COVID-19. Additionally, many polling places in Wisconsin were closed due to the Coronavirus, forcing hoards of Wisconsinites to wait in hourslong lines at the few polling places that remained open (for example, Milwaukee had five polling locations open, while they were supposed to have had 180). It is a dangerous convergence of poor decisions, human vulnerabilities, and unyielding circumstances; or as Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes called it, a shit show.

The Governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, tried to postpone the election until June to give the pandemic time to subside a bit, but the Republican-held Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled his executive action unconstitutional. Efforts to pivot from in-person voting to vote-by-mail were also unsuccessful, halted by Republicans who feared that more people voting would result in them losing more races (if that’s the position your party is in, it may be time to reevaluate your platform). Voter suppression is alive and well. For more details on the Wisconsin Republicans’ motivation for suppressing voter turnout in this election, check out this article from The New York Times.

Forcing Americans to chose between their health and voting is an insult to Democracy, and the unpatriotic Republicans who put Wisconsinites in that predicament should be ashamed.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 6

UPDATED: 7/30/20, 15:50

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Well, it didn’t take long for another round of headlines to pop up exposing Zoom for a host of newly discovered privacy and security problems. Indeed, the closer you look, the worse they appear: these new issues were discovered so quickly once people started looking into Zoom that it leads one to believe that their leadership is not only unconcerned with actually making their platform private and secure, but that they’re either too stupid or too apathetic to even hide the evidence when they cut corners.

The most recent news:

• The Washington Post reported yesterday that Zoom calls are susceptible to eavesdropping by virtually anyone in the Internet, having verified that they were able to spy on business meetings, school children during classes, personal therapy sessions, and others types of calls.

• The Citizen Lab reported yesterday that some Zoom calls were being routed through servers located in China, and so were the encryption keys for those calls. This is a problem because the Chinese government is operating a surveillance state, and could force Zoom to hand over any data stored within Chinese borders, encryption keys included. So not only does Zoom itself have the ability to snoop on your calls, but so does the Chinese government. They claimed this was an accident spurred by increased strain on domestic servers that resulted in calls being handed off to overflow servers in China. Okay.

• Additionally, The Citizen Lab uncovered that Zoom was actually using a significantly weaker type of encryption than they told users, opting for AES-128 encryption instead of AES-256 encryption they advertised.

• Before you blindly trust Zoom’s Chinese CEO Eric Yuan, note that The Citizen Lab also reported that Zoom has over 700 employees in China and operates three subsidiary companies there. But it was totally an accident that they tossed the Chinese government their encryption keyring. Sure.

Just what you like to hear when you’re relying on Zoom to connect with others in the age of social distancing. Again, if your organization uses Zoom, I implore you to pressure them to find an alternative.

Wisely, some organizations, including the New York City Department of Education, are now banning the use of Zoom. Hopefully other institutions will follow their lead.

The CDC is now changing course and recommending that Americans use face masks while in public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

It never made much sense to me that our government would tell citizens NOT to use face masks as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19: it just isn’t logical to think that wearing a mask wouldn’t be at least slightly more effective than not wearing a mask. We may never get a clear answer for why they told us not to wear masks, but at this point, one thing is clear: they have utterly failed us.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 5

Yes, face masks look kinda funny, and yes, it feels a bit uncomfortable, but the virus is still spreading at an alarming rate in the United States (special thanks to the Trump administration for their superb handling of this issue before it could become a full blown crisis 🙄) and wearing a mask WILL help protect you. If you can get your hands on N95 masks, those are the most effective, but standard surgical masks work too, and even homemade cloth masks can go a long way towards preventing you from catching COVID-19. In addition to being a physical barrier against aerosols and small liquid particles that can carry the virus, masks also serve as a physical reminder not to touch your face while you’re in public, so it does double duty to protect you.

If you’re going out in public, wear a mask and maintain at least six feet of space between yourself and others. Clean the groceries and other items you’re bringing into your home. When you do have to go out and buy things, at least try to support your local businesses. And for god’s sake, wash your hands often.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Christopher Weaver, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

All lab tests have some margin of error, measured in terms of sensitivity— the percent of positive cases a test accurately detects—and specificity, the percent of negative cases it accurately detects. […]

[Experts estimate] that the sensitivity of the tests is in the neighborhood of 70%, meaning nearly one in three positive patients walks away with a reassuring negative result.

It doesn’t take an epidemiologist to see why 30% of COVID-19 positive patients being told it’s safe for them to return to business as normal is a huge problem. On top of that, NPR reports that experts believe up to 25% of COVID-19 positive patients could be asymptomatic but still infectious.

One of the [pieces of] information that we have pretty much confirmed now is that a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic. That may be as many as 25%.

These statistics are alarming by themselves, but combined… absolutely harrowing. As of today, the United States has 275,586 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 7,087 Americans have died from it.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 4



Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Until this month, the official FDA guidelines for who should be deferred when trying to donate blood instructed healthcare providers to defer any man who had had sexual contact with another man in the past 12 months (in the healthcare industry, the acronym “MSM“ is used as shorthand for “men who have sex with men”).

The FDA has now changed the MSM deferral from 12 months to 3 months in an effort to increase the supply of blood during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is this a positive change? Yes. But it feels as if this change only coming about because a few powerful, bigoted people realized that this pandemic is really leaving them up the creek without a paddle. They need help (to save lives, but also to save their reputations), so they’re turning to a group they had illogically deferred in bad faith.

Of course, men who have sex with men have always been able to lie and donate blood anyway, but that isn’t the point. The point is that these guidelines are archaic, discriminatory, scientifically unfounded, and stigmatizing, and simply reducing the timeline that determines who should be deferred doesn’t make it better when the underlying reason for the deferral remains the same.

If you are a same sex attracted man (whether you identify as gay, bisexual, or otherwise), I encourage you not to donate blood as a matter of principle — regardless of whether you’ve had sex in the last three months, the past year, the past hour, or ever in your life — until these absurd guidelines are completely done away with. If the people making these rules want our help, they should have to earn it.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

I don't write articles on subjects where I feel like I wouldn’t truly be adding something to the conversation, and this is a case where I considered not writing this piece. It has already been covered more thoroughly than I am capable of doing here, but I felt it was still worthwhile to reiterate what others have exposed and warn the public of the dangers Zoom presents.

Most people didn’t know too much about Zoom before the pandemic started and hoards of people were suddenly tasked with finding a way to perform their jobs from home. Now, Zoom is a household name, and millions of people are being herded into their user base like swine into a slaughterhouse. Personally, I’ve never used Zoom: I rarely have the need to video conference with more than one person, and in instances where I have needed to, Group FaceTime was more than sufficient. Based on Zoom’s reputation and their habit of completely abusing their users, I would never use their services, and in fact, I think they’re such a malignant company that I’m taking the time to warn CopyrightBro readers.

Last summer, news broke that quickly turned into a scandal, when it was revealed that Zoom was flagrantly abusing users’ trust by having their app automatically reinstall itself after it had been deleted by the user, and then go on to start a Zoom call (with the webcam and microphone enabled) to any website that knew this “feature” existed and wanted to take advantage of it. This was the instance that made me distrust Zoom, and again, this was nearly a year ago.

Now, even more evidence has come out illustrating just how low user security and privacy rank on Zoom’s list of priorities.

• Last week, Motherboard reported that Zoom was using software development kits (SDKs) created by Facebook that sends Zoom users’ personal data to Facebook, regardless of whether those Zoom users also had Facebook accounts. They have since removed this SDK, but the fact that it was used in the first place is cause for concern.

• A few days later, The Intercept reported that Zoom was flat out lying about how Zoom meetings are encrypted and trying to pass it off as a marketing miscommunication. As John Gruber notes on Daring Fireball, the phrase "end-to-end encryption” is not open to interpretation. What Zoom was actually using is called transport encryption, and it is not as secure. Lying about how secure your platform is will certainly lead to trouble for users. It’s unethical and gross to use false claims of strong encryption for marketing.

• Yesterday, Motherboard reported another issue that allowed Zoom users’ personal email addresses and photos to be leaked to complete strangers.

This is a staggering list of major privacy and security concerns for one company to deal with in a year, much less in a week. If your organization is asking you to use Zoom, you should forcefully object and tell them that you don’t agree with their privacy policy (which is a joke). If video conferencing is a must for you, suggest an alternative like Group FaceTime (check out this list from The Verge for some more options). If you absolutely cannot refuse to use Zoom, follow John Gruber’s advice and only use it on an iOS device, where Apple’s sandboxing will protect you more than any other platform is capable of doing. If you don’t use an Apple device, here’s another reason to consider switching.

#deletefacebook

UPDATED: 04/02/20, 13:00