At the start of the pandemic, remembers MIT Technology Review's senior editor for AI, the community "rushed to develop software that many believed would allow hospitals to diagnose or triage patients faster, bringing much-needed support to the front lines — in theory. "In the end, many hundreds of predictive tools were developed. None of them made a real difference, and some were potentially harmful." That's the damning conclusion of multiple studies published in the last few months. In June, the Turing Institute, the UK's national center for data science and AI, put out a report summing up discussions at a series of workshops it held in late 2020. The clear consensus was that AI tools had made little, if any, impact in the fight against covid. This echoes the results of two major studies that assessed hundreds of predictive tools developed last year. Laure Wynants, an epidemiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who studies predictive tools, is lead author of one of them, a review in the British Medical Journal that is still being updated as new tools are released and existing ones tested. She and her colleagues have looked at 232 algorithms for diagnosing patients or predicting how sick those with the disease might get. They found that none of them were fit for clinical use. Just two have been singled out as being promising enough for future testing. "It's shocking," says Wynants. "I went into it with some worries, but this exceeded my fears." Wynants's study is backed up by another large review carried out by Derek Driggs, a machine-learning researcher at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues, and published in Nature Machine Intelligence. This team zoomed in on deep-learning models for diagnosing covid and predicting patient risk from medical images, such as chest x-rays and chest computer tomography (CT) scans. They looked at 415 published tools and, like Wynants and her colleagues, concluded that none were fit for clinical use. "This pandemic was a big test for AI and medicine," says Driggs, who is himself working on a machine-learning tool to help doctors during the pandemic. "It would have gone a long way to getting the public on our side," he says. "But I don't think we passed that test...." If there's an upside, it is that the pandemic has made it clear to many researchers that the way AI tools are built needs to change. "The pandemic has put problems in the spotlight that we've been dragging along for some time," says Wynants. The article suggests researchers collaborate on creating high-quality (and shared) data sets — possibly by creating a common data standard — and also disclose their ultimate models and training protocols for review and extension. "In a sense, this is an old problem with research. Academic researchers have few career incentives to share work or validate existing results. "To address this issue, the World Health Organization is considering an emergency data-sharing contract that would kick in during international health crises."

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Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes the New York Times: Two red things are hiding in a part of the solar system where they shouldn't be. The space rocks may have come from beyond Neptune, and potentially offer hints at the chaos of the early solar system. Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 26, 2021 that two objects, called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system. "If true it would be a huge deal," says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who was not involved in the research. Not everyone is convinced just yet. Dr. Levison, who was also not involved in the paper, says objects should become less red as they approach the sun. "It seems to be inconsistent with our models," said Dr. Levison, who is the head of NASA's Lucy mission, which is scheduled to launch in October to study Jupiter's Trojans. Dr. Marsset agrees that it's not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but haven't been found yet. To truly confirm the origin of 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, a spacecraft would likely need to visit them.

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"It was pretty strange when Russia decided to announce last week that it had successfully run tests between June 15 and July 15 to show it could disconnect itself from the internet," writes an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The tests seem to have gone largely unnoticed both in and outside of Russia, indicating that whatever entailed did not involve Russia actually disconnecting from the global internet... since that would be impossible to hide. Instead, the tests — and, most of all, the announcement about their success — seem to be intended as some kind of signal that Russia is no longer dependent on the rest of the world for its internet access. But it's not at all clear what that would even mean since Russia is clearly still dependent on people and companies in other countries for access to the online content and services they create and host — just as we all are... For the past two years, ever since implementing its "sovereign internet law" in 2019, Russia has been talking about establishing its own domestic internet that does not rely on any infrastructure or resources located outside the country. Presumably, the tests completed this summer are related to that goal of being able to operate a local internet within Russia that does not rely on the global Domain Name System to map websites to specific IP addresses. This is not actually a particularly ambitious goal — any country could operate its own domestic internet with its own local addressing system if it wanted to do so instead of connecting to the larger global internet... The Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis at the University of California San Diego maintains an Internet Outage Detection and Analysis tool that combines three data sets to identify internet outages around the world... The data sets for Russia from June 15 through July 15, the period of the supposed disconnection tests, shows few indications of any actual disconnection other than a period around July 5 when unsolicited traffic from Russia appears to have dropped off. Whatever Russia did this summer, it did not physically disconnect from the global internet. It doesn't even appear to have virtually disconnected from the global internet in any meaningful sense. Perhaps it shifted some of its critical infrastructure systems to rely more on domestic service providers and resources. Perhaps it created more local copies of the addressing system used to navigate the internet and tested its ability to rely on those. Perhaps it tested its ability to route online traffic within the country through certain chokepoints for purposes of better surveillance and monitoring. None of those are activities that would be immediately visible from outside the country and all of them would be in line with Russia's stated goals of relying less on internet infrastructure outside its borders and strengthening its ability to monitor online activity. But the goal of being completely independent of the rest of the world's internet infrastructure while still being able to access the global internet is a nonsensical and impossible one. Russia cannot both disconnect from the internet and still be able to use all of the online services and access all of the websites hosted and maintained by people in other parts of the world, as appears to have been the case during the monthlong period of testing... Being able to disconnect your country from the internet is not all that difficult — and certainly nothing to brag about. But announcing that you've successfully disconnected from the internet when it's patently clear that you haven't suggests both profound technical incompetence and a deep-seated uncertainty about what a domestic Russian internet would actually mean.

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Something about tagging has been bugging me and I think I just figured it out. Suppose you have a topic that's starting to develop, and you want to hijack its links to redirect to a page that includes more information than just a scrolling list of references. Well I have the glossary for that, I just realized. I can override what double-square brackets means for a certain term, have it link to a page which also has a list of the references. Boom and bing. Do they have these overrides at LogSeq and other tools for thought products?

I usually do my bike rides in the afternoon, but today I knew the park would be really crowded, I live in a place where people go to get away in the summer, so I went first thing in the morning. What they say is true, the exercise powers you through the day. It's now mid-afternoon and I'm still feeling the strength in my body from the workout. I think I may reorient my day.

Drummer is coming along nicely. There's a small test group, that includes a couple of old friends who are experienced software developers. The focus in the first part of this process is Drummer as a programming environment. I don't want distractions from that at first, because I remember how important it is to review and re-review everything about a platform like this before trying to make it work for users. Programmers at this stage will understand breakage more than others. I'm doing what I've been doing for the last four--plus years. Developing for myself, following my wants and intuition, not letting it be driven by others. Ouija boards yield a certain kind of software, the world is filled with it. You can only get so far if you have to reach consensus. I'm driving towards a place I've been before. And I know I'm doing it.

"YouTube has barred Sky News Australia from uploading new content for a week, saying it had breached rules on spreading Covid-19 misinformation," writes the BBC. Long-time Slashdot reader Hope Thelps shares their report: YouTube issued a "strike" under its three-strike policy, the last of which means permanent removal. It did not point to specific items but said it opposed material that "could cause real-world harm". The TV channel's digital editor said the decision was a disturbing attack on the ability to think freely. Sky News Australia is owned by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and has 1.85 million YouTube subscribers. The ban could affect its revenue stream from Google. A YouTube statement said it had "clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance". A spokesperson told the Guardian it "did not allow content that denies the existence of Covid-19" or which encouraged people "to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus". Neither has been proven to be effective against Covid.

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A number of years ago I wrote about the importance of submission. No point fighting some things. I also was learning at the time that there is nothing you think of, that has to do with values, that isn't projection. Science is different, using your senses and intellect to draw inferences. But opinions and values, is just you broadcasting everything you feel to everyone in the world. But really it's an audience of one, you. Combine the two, and years later I realize that submission to yourself must come before submission to another. Give up the struggles are between who we feel we should be and who we actually are. If you submit to yourself, you stop worrying about that.

I watched The Color Purple on HBO last night. I'm looking for ways to learn what black people say about the black experience in America through history. It was a weird choice, because, even though the actors are black, it was a Steven Spielberg movie, like ET or Jaws. Always upbeat, even when a husband is raping his sister-in-law. The weirdest thing to have Indiana Jones type music playing while Oprah Winfrey is being beaten by a mob of white men. So bizarre. But I loved all the actors, esp of course Whoopi Goldberg, and there was at times a bit of suspension of disbelief, but the Spielbergishness of the movie was very awkard.

"Amazon now employs almost 1 million people in the U.S. — or 1 in every 169 workers," reports NBC News: Amazon has revealed for the first time the number of people it employs in the U.S., putting the figure at 950,000, according to the e-commerce giant's quarterly earnings call on Thursday. While the headcount was boosted by an additional 64,000 people hired in the second quarter, it does not include the thousands of contractors such as drivers whom Amazon depends on to run its Amazon Prime delivery operations... Globally, the company employs 1.3 million people. It is the second largest employer in the U.S., behind Walmart, which currently employees nearly 1.6 million people in the U.S. As of June, the national private sector workforce is roughly 161 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means about 1 out of every 169 people in the country's workforce works for Amazon, while about 1 out of every 100 people in the U.S. workforce is employed by Walmart. The article also notes that since 2018 Amazon has been paying a $15-an-hour minimum for all employees — more than double the current U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 an hour

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Slashdot reader storagedude quotes eSecurityPlanet : The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) joined counterparts in the UK and Australia Wednesday to announce the top 30 vulnerabilities exploited since the start of the pandemic. The list, a joint effort with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), details vulnerabilities — primarily Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) — "routinely exploited by malicious cyber actors in 2020 and those being widely exploited thus far in 2021." Many of the vulnerabilities are known ones for which patches exist, so they can typically be easily fixed. The agencies also recommended a centralized patch management system to prevent such oversights going forward. Most of the vulnerabilities targeted in 2020 were disclosed during the last two years. "Cyber actor exploitation of more recently disclosed software flaws in 2020 probably stems, in part, from the expansion of remote work options amid the COVID-19 pandemic," said a CISA statement. "The rapid shift and increased use of remote work options, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and cloud-based environments, likely placed additional burden on cyber defenders struggling to maintain and keep pace with routine software patching." The vulnerabilities include a number of well publicized ones from major vendors like Citrix, Microsoft, Fortinet, VMware and others, so a good portion of the blame can be placed on those who just aren't being vigilant with patching.

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The monthly ritual is complete. Here's the OPML for July 2021. And just for fun, I zipped up an archive going back to May 2017, when I deployed my "new" content management system. It's all a matter of perspective I guess. 2017 seems to me like a short time ago, but then a lot has happened in the interim. Some of it is in the contents of the blog. I think some interesting apps could be built using this archive as a seed. So far there haven't been any takers that I know of, but I think we may be getting close with all the tools for thought activity.

The E-ZPass for News idea is out there.

Someone should write a book about the lost software ideas of the 70s and 80s. There's a lot of reinventing going on. Layers of reinvention. It'd be great if there was one book earnest devs could read, ones who want to build on what was learned in the past.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott quotes the BBC's Doctor Who site: Having been in charge of the TARDIS since filming for the Thirteenth Doctor began in 2017, Showrunner Chris Chibnall and the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, have confirmed they will be moving on from the most famous police box on Earth. With a six-part Event Serial announced for the autumn, and two Specials already planned for 2022, BBC One has now asked for an additional final feature length adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor, to form a trio of Specials for 2022, before the Doctor regenerates once more.

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