Linked List: April 19, 2021

Monday, 19 April 2021

‘A Very Good Weird’: Israel Drops Outdoor COVID Mask Order ★

Dan Williams, reporting for Reuters:

Israelis went about barefaced on Sunday after the order to wear masks outdoors was rescinded in another step towards relative normality thanks to the country’s mass-vaccination against COVID-19. With about 81% of citizens or residents over 16 - the age group eligible for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Israel - having received both doses, contagions and hospitalisations are down sharply. […]

“Being without a mask for the first time in a long time feels weird. But it’s a very good weird,” Amitai Hallgarten, 19, said while sunning himself at a park. “If I need to be masked indoors to finish with this - I’ll do everything I can.”

A good weird, indeed.

More on Eliminating Outdoor Mask Mandates ★

Dr. Paul E. Sax, writing for the New England Journal of Medicine’s Journal Watch:

But what about the community solidarity engendered by wearing a mask outside in public? Isn’t this worth something? A way of showing that I’m 100% part of Team Mask? Maybe — certainly there’s a strong component of this messaging among the highly adherent mask wearers here in Boston. But this performative aspect of outdoor mask-wearing has a downside, too.

You might think you need to wear a mask while walking me in the morning to set a good example for others, said Louie the other day. But really you might be misleading people about how the virus is transmitted. […]

Here’s a bold proposal — let’s make public policy based on our best understanding of the science of SARS-CoV-2 transmission:

Dangerous — crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, in particular with unmasked individuals talking, shouting, singing. Wear a well-fitted mask until case numbers are down and more people are vaccinated.

Safe — outdoors, especially while distanced. Masks only needed for lengthy interactions with others at close distance.

Apple TV+ Original Content Quality ★

José Adorno, writing for 9to5Mac:

A new study reveals that Apple TV+ has the highest-quality content when compared to Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Disney+, and Hulu. The analysis from Self Financial uses IMDb scores with US customer data.

The study found that although Apple TV+ had the highest average IMDb score for its titles (7.24), it has fewer than 70 titles to choose from. In terms of their libraries of content, Apple TV+ has the highest percentage of “good” and “excellent” at almost 86%. But, again, it has the smallest offering at just 65 titles.

This fits with my theory (which I stole from M.G. Siegler) that Apple TV+ is the new HBO: the streaming service with an emphasis on quality not quantity.

Speaking of which — I very much liked season 1 of For All Mankind, but season 2 is even better. Last week’s episode — my god, that ending. Just a terrific show.

Irrational COVID Fears ★

Good column by David Leonhardt for The New York Times today:

“We’re not going to get to a place of zero risk,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, told me during a virtual Times event last week. “I don’t think that’s the right metric for feeling like things are normal.”

After Nuzzo made that point, Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University told us about his own struggle to return to normal. He has been fully vaccinated for almost two months, he said, and only recently decided to meet a vaccinated friend for a drink, unmasked. “It was hard — psychologically hard — for me,” Jha said.

“There are going to be some challenges to re-acclimating and re-entering,” he added. “But we’ve got to do it.”

And how did it feel in the end, I asked, to get together with his friend?

“It was awesome,” Jha said.

Get vaccinated and get back to normal life. It’s that simple.

Apple Is Allowing Parler Back on the App Store ★

Brian Fung, reporting for CNN:

The letter — addressed to Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Ken Buck and obtained by CNN — explained that since the app was removed from Apple’s platform in January for violations of its policies, Parler “has proposed updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices.”

On April 14, Apple’s app review team told Parler that its proposed changes were sufficient, the letter continued. Now, all Parler needs to do is to flip the switch. “Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it,” Apple’s letter said.

Derek Thompson on Wearing Face Masks Outdoors ★

Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic:

But as more and more of the population is vaccinated, governments need to give Americans an off-ramp to the post-pandemic world. Ending outdoor mask mandates — or at the very least telling people when they can expect outdoor mask mandates to lift — is a good place to start, for a few reasons.

Requiring that people always wear masks when they leave home, and especially in places with low levels of viral transmission, is overkill. As mentioned, the coronavirus disperses outside, posing little risk to people who are walking alone or even swiftly passing by strangers. In fact, almost all of the documented cases of outdoor transmission have involved long conversations, or face-to-face yelling. The risk calculation changes if you’re standing in a crowd: Some uneven evidence suggests that the Black Lives Matter protests last summer increased local infections. But that’s an easy carve-out. States can end blanket mandates and still recommend outdoor masking by anyone experiencing symptoms, or in crowds. (Extended conversations pose their own risk, but when people are vaccinated, the odds of viral transmission are probably somewhere between microscopic and nonexistent.)

His closing:

We can reduce unnecessary private anxiety and unhelpful public shame by thinking for a few seconds about how the coronavirus actually works and how to finally end the pandemic. Let’s tell people the truth and trust that they can take it. Let’s plan for the end of outdoor mask mandates.

Fauci: GOP’s Refusal to Get Vaccinated Hurts Efforts to Lift Restrictions ★

Jackie Salo, reporting for The New York Post:

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday said Republicans who want to lift COVID-19 restrictions but don’t want to get vaccinated don’t “make any sense.”

“It’s almost paradoxical that on the one hand, they want to be relieved of the restrictions, but on the other hand, they don’t want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesn’t make any sense,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

It’s almost as though the Republican Party is chockablock with ignoramuses.

Adults in All U.S. States Are Now Eligible for Vaccination; Half Have Had at Least One Dose ★

The New York Times:

All adults in every U.S. state, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are now eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine, meeting the April 19 deadline that President Biden set two weeks ago.

“For months I’ve been telling Americans to get vaccinated when it’s your turn. Well, it’s your turn, now,” Mr. Biden said Sunday on a program called “Roll Up Your Sleeves” on NBC. “It’s free. It’s convenient and it’s the most important thing you can do to protect yourself from Covid-19.”

Just over 50 percent of U.S. adults have at least one dose: a great milestone.

Protecting Reputations ★

Nick Heer, quoting from and commenting upon a line from the aforelinked Washington Post story on how the FBI cracked the San Bernardino iPhone in 2016:

Apple has a tense relationship with security research firms. Wilder said the company believes researchers should disclose all vulnerabilities to Apple so that the company can more quickly fix them. Doing so would help preserve its reputation as having secure devices.

What a bizarre turn of phrase. It would help it “preserve its reputation as having secure devices” because it really would help improve the security of its devices for all users, in much the same way that telling a fire department that there is a fire nearby would help a building’s reputation as a fire-free zone.

It’s a little thing, but this hyper-cynical slant is pervasive in a lot of recent mainstream coverage of the big tech companies. It’s hard to find a Reed Albergotti-bylined story in the Post without it.

How the FBI Cracked the San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone 5C in 2016 ★

Ellen Nakashima and Reed Albergotti, reporting last week for The Washington Post:

Azimuth specialized in finding significant vulnerabilities. Dowd, a former IBM X-Force researcher whom one peer called “the Mozart of exploit design,” had found one in open-source code from Mozilla that Apple used to permit accessories to be plugged into an iPhone’s lightning port, according to the person. […]

Using the flaw Dowd found, Wang, based in Portland, Ore., created an exploit that enabled initial access to the phone — a foot in the door. Then he hitched it to another exploit that permitted greater maneuverability, according to the people. And then he linked that to a final exploit that another Azimuth researcher had already created for iPhones, giving him full control over the phone’s core processor the brains of the device. From there, he wrote software that rapidly tried all combinations of the passcode, bypassing other features, such as the one that erased data after 10 incorrect tries. […]

From the “Where Are They Now?” department:

Apple sought to recruit Wang to work on security research, according to the people. Instead, in 2017 he co-founded Corellium, a company based in South Florida whose tools help security researchers. The tools allow researchers to run tests on Apple’s mobile operating system using “virtual” iPhones. The virtual phones run on a server and display on a desktop computer.

In 2019, Apple sued Corellium for copyright violation. As part of the lawsuit, Apple pressed Corellium and Wang to divulge information about hacking techniques that may have aided governments and agencies such as the FBI.