Linked List: April 1, 2020

Wednesday, 1 April 2020

Ragmask: ‘Ultra-Simple, Fast-to-Make, Great-Fitting Masks’ 

From our old friend Loren Brichter: detailed instructions for do-it-yourself masks made from whatever materials you have available.

‘Unmasking Twitter’ 

Ben Thompson, Stratechery:

This is where masks come in. Much of the discussion of their efficacy has been focused on whether they keep you safe from the virus, and the evidence suggests that the answer is probably. SlateStarCodex has a comprehensive overview of the evidence here.

Everyone agrees, though, that those who are sick should wear masks; as the Taiwan CDC puts it, “Masks are mainly used for preventing the spread of disease and protecting people around you.” This, though, highlights the shortcomings of the “Don’t wear masks if you’re not sick” recommendations:

  • First, people are terrible in general at estimating if they are sick, particularly if their symptoms are mild.

  • Second, as Zeynep Tufekci argued in the New York Times, saying that only sick people should wear them stigmatizes the sick and makes them less likely to wear them.

  • Third, and most importantly, asymptomatic transmission means you don’t even know if you are sick in the first place.

Best estimates at this point suggest that up to 1 in 4 people infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic — a staggering number.

Trust me, I was fully on board with the WHO/CDC recommendation not to wear a mask unless you’re feeling sick. I’m sure most of you reading this in the U.S. are still on board with that. It’s time to admit the WHO and CDC led us grossly astray on this.

Given what we now know about transmission — that it primarily spreads through large droplets — even homemade masks are more effective than no mask at all. I firmly believe we should all wear masks to help keep ourselves from contracting the virus. But even if after reading all of this you still think masks should only be worn by those who are sick, the fact that up to 25 percent of those infected are asymptomatic (but still contagious) means that without widespread testing we should all wear masks.

Japan to Give Cloth Face Masks to 50 Million Households to Fight Coronavirus 

Kyodo News:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday the government will distribute cloth face masks to roughly 50 million households in Japan as stocks of disposable masks have run out at drugstores and other shops amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The distribution, which will start later this month, is part of the economic package that the government will compile next week. Each household with a registered postal address will receive two washable cloth masks, Abe told a meeting of a government task force.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s mask story is… crickets chirping.

The Verge: ‘The Best Alternatives to Zoom for Videoconferencing’ 

Barbara Krasnoff, writing for The Verge:

We recently ran a roundup of some of the free videoconferencing apps available, including Zoom. Since so many questions have come up about Zoom’s security, we’ve decided to run the roundup again, this time excluding Zoom and adding other apps that you can use instead.

As before, it’s worth noting that while all of these have free versions, some are offering temporary access to additional features for those who are currently working from home or who want to check up on friends and relatives online.

There are a number of apps we have not included, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and FaceTime, that allow you to do video chats; they either require that all participants be members (Facebook, WhatsApp) or that you use a specific type of device (FaceTime, which is Apple-only). The following list includes more generalized applications that allow you to participate without having to actually register for the app (unless you’re the host).

Great resource for anyone looking for Zoom alternatives, which at this point should be everyone who’s using Zoom.

Makes you wonder about the alternate universe where Apple had followed through on Steve Jobs’s impetuous claim that Apple would make FaceTime an open standard.

The Talk Show: ‘A Kryptonian Baby’ 

Rene Ritchie returns to the show to talk about going independent after 11 years at iMore. Topics include the new MacBook Air and iPad Pros, and we answer questions sent by listeners.

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Quarantine Book Club 

Great idea from my pals at Mule Design: group video chats, every weekday, with a wide variety of talented writers. The next two: Cory Doctorow (later today) and Om Malik (tomorrow).

My iPad Stand: Anker’s $15 Multi-Angle Stand 

After I published a photo of my iPad writing setup in my iPad Pro review last week, a few people asked what stand I use to prop up the iPad. I use an Anker “Multi-Angle Stand” I bought back in 2018. I love it: it’s lightweight, small, sturdy, supports multiple angles, and folds flat when not in use. I haven’t even looked for another stand since getting this one. Order through this link and I’ll get an affiliate bounty from Amazon.

Anker still lists this item on their own website, and from that page links to the same product page at Amazon, and the product page at Amazon still says it’s “By Anker” — but, oddly, the photos are now branded “XINKSD”. Not sure what the deal is with that, but this looks exactly like the stand I own.

Files Installed by Zoom on MacOS 

A bunch of DF readers have asked about how to uninstall Zoom on MacOS. Alastair Houghton examined Zoom’s shoddy installer script and it appears that on modern systems (running 10.10 or later) Zoom only installs two items:

  • /Applications/zoom.us.app
  • ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ZoomUsPlugIn.plugin

Trash these two items and you should be done with Zoom. If there’s anything else Zoom installs, let me know.

Update: Houghton has updated his post with a few other items Zoom leaves behind, in ~/Library/Application Support/ and ~/Library/Preferences/.

‘The “S” in Zoom Stands for Security’ 

Security researcher Patrick Wardle uncovered two security flaws in the Mac version of Zoom today:

Though the new issues we’ll discuss today remain unpatched, they both are local security issues.

As such, to be successfully exploited they required that malware or an attacker already have a foothold on a macOS system.

In other words, these vulnerabilities aren’t catastrophic — they can’t be exploited remotely to give an attacker a foothold on your Mac. But software that’s already running on your Mac can exploit these vulnerabilities to gain root access (via Zoom’s egregiously sloppy installer) or to gain access to your webcam and microphone without prompting a permission alert from the system (presuming, quite reasonably, that the user has already granted camera and microphone access to Zoom itself).

(Zoom’s installer is so sloppy that when it prompts for administrator authentication, the dialog is written in broken English, and claims — falsely — to be the “System”: “System need your privilege to change.” That’s exactly what their installer’s authentication prompt says.

Even their helper tool’s name is misspelled: “zoomAutenticationTool”. Zoom has all the hallmarks of malware and scamware.)

We Should All Be Wearing Masks 

This story ran a few days ago in The New York Times under the headline “More Americans Should Probably Wear Masks for Protection”, but when you read halfway down the article, there’s no probably about it:

When researchers conducted systematic review of a variety of interventions used during the SARS outbreak in 2003, they found that washing hands more than 10 times daily was 55 percent effective in stopping virus transmission, while wearing a mask was actually more effective — at about 68 percent.

The masks in that study were N95 medical-grade masks, but the evidence seems clear that wearing a mask of any sort helps prevent transmission.

There is a lot of blame to go around regarding this entire pandemic — both globally and here in the U.S. — but the way that both the WHO and CDC have drummed into our heads the notion that we should not wear masks unless we’re sick is outrageously negligent. It’s not just wrong, it’s a lie. It’s nonsense to argue about the fact that wearing a mask — even a homemade one — is less than 100 percent effective. Nothing is 100 percent effective, and all evidence suggests that masks are, at the very least, quite effective.

We in the U.S. and Europe need to follow the longstanding norm in Asian countries and get past our stigmatizing of mask-wearing in public.

Bill Gates: ‘Here’s How to Make Up for Lost Time on COVID-19’ 

Bill Gates, in an op-ed for The Washington Post:

There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus. But the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed. The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of Covid-19.

Through my work with the Gates Foundation, I’ve spoken with experts and leaders in Washington and across the country. It’s become clear to me that we must take three steps.

Cogent, clear, and actionable advice.

‘I Basically Want to Address the Idiots Out There — You Know Who You Are, You’re Going Out’ 

Larry David:

“The problem is you’re passing up a fantastic opportunity — a once in a lifetime opportunity — to stay in the house, sit on the couch, and watch TV! I don’t know how you’re passing that up.”

Hobby Lobby Reopened Stores in States With Coronavirus Lockdowns 

Bethany Biron, reporting for Business Insider:

On Monday, the company resumed business in several states where it had been forced to temporarily close. A March 28 memo obtained by Business Insider equipped managers with talking points for “how to respond and communicate if visited by a local authority that asks why we are open.”

In a separate leaked note sent last week, executives wrote that the company “is going to make every effort to continue working the employees.”

The reopenings include stores in Ohio and Wisconsin — which both enacted strict shelter-in-place orders on March 24 — where nearly all Hobby Lobby locations have been reopened after shuttering for only one week. During calls Business Insider made to each location, employees confirmed that all 19 Hobby Lobby locations in Ohio were open as of Monday afternoon, as were 17 out of 20 stores in Wisconsin that were still listed as “temporarily closed” on Google.

Of the three stores closed in Wisconsin, at least one was forcibly shuttered by police officers after briefly opening on Monday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. An employee at that store told Business Insider on Monday it was closed but that employees were there “working on projects.” A similar incident was reported in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where local authorities forced a store to close after it was open for one hour on Monday morning, the CBS-affiliated news outlet WLKY reported.

“Working the employees”. What a phrase. This defiance of state orders is outrageous, but unsurprising from a company owned by rightwing nutbags. The police should shutter every one of these stores.

Mossberg on Chrome on Mac 

Walt Mossberg, on Twitter:

If you use a Mac, and you insist on using Chrome, stop complaining about speed, fan noise, or battery life. It’s well known that Chrome is a resource and battery hog, especially on Macs. Safari is fully capable, quite fast and very privacy & security focused. Just use Safari.

If you’re a Firefox fan, that’s good too. My point is just that Chrome, which years ago worked great on Macs, is now a big problem, and that Chrome users with degraded Mac performance or weaker battery life should look to their browser choice, and not blame the hardware.

There’s no question that this is a tradeoff — Chrome is, in terms of web technologies, more featureful than Safari. There are web apps that work in Chrome that don’t work in Safari, or work better in Chrome than they do in Safari. But the tradeoff in resource consumption is significant.

It’s funny reading the replies to Mossberg’s tweet. A bunch of people suggest using Brave or Edge or Opera — all of which use Chrome’s Chromium HTML/JavaScript engine. In terms of resource consumption, none of these browsers are any better than Chrome. The difference is in the browser interface — an important difference, but irrelevant to what Mossberg is addressing.

It’s also funny how angry some Chrome fans are about this, particularly web developers. They argue that the problem is that Safari is slow to adopt Chrome-first web technologies without acknowledging that the reason Safari has better performance and stronger privacy goes hand-in-hand with the fact that these technologies Safari hasn’t adopted are resource-heavy and potentially privacy-invasive.

Personally, I use Chrome solely for logging into Google services. Otherwise I avoid it for privacy reasons. (No reason to worry about Google and privacy while I’m logged in, using a Google service.) For anything non-Google that doesn’t work in Safari, I flit between Firefox, Brave, and Edge.

Wimbledon Canceled for First Time Since WWII 

Simon Cambers, ESPN:

The Wimbledon Championships have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the All England Club confirmed in a statement Wednesday. It is the first time Wimbledon has been canceled since World War II in 1945. It is also the first time since the tournament began in 1877 that the event will not be played during peacetime.

July.