Login
NYC Firefighters, Teachers Ask Supreme Court to Pause COVID Mandate That Cost Them Their Jobs
New York City firefighters, teachers, police officers, sanitation workers and others who lost their jobs after the city rejected their request for a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine mandate are appealing to the Supreme Court, and saying the city discriminated against them while letting unvaccinated strippers and athletes keep their jobs.
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a civil rights law firm representing the workers, said in their filing that while they await a decision from the Second Circuit, their clients “are suffering the loss of First Amendment rights, are facing deadlines to move out of homes in foreclosure or with past-due rents, are suffering health problems due to loss of their city health insurance and the stress of having no regular income and are resorting to food stamps and Medicaid just to keep their families afloat.”
ADF said those dire conditions warrant an emergency decision by the Supreme Court to pause the decision to fire the workers. The workers asked the court to pause enforcement of the city’s mandate while their lawsuit makes its way through the Second Circuit, a process that could take months. Their request was sent directly to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who presides over the Second Circuit.
The Supreme Court has so far declined prior requests for emergency action in cases connected with COVID vaccine mandates, but this case appears to be the first that has been already fully adjudicated on the merits in lower courts, which could help the NYC workers.
Lawmakers Press Apple and Google Over TikTok’s Keystroke Tracking Ability
Two members of Congress have sent letters to the chief executives of Apple and Google accusing them of failing to act on security weaknesses and surveillance threats posed by apps on their app stores: most notably, TikTok’s ability to monitor keystrokes on outside websites through its in-app browser.
The letters, viewed by Forbes ahead of being sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and his counterpart at Google Sundar Pichai, asked whether or not Apple and Google, as gatekeepers of their app markets, would either ban or take other punitive actions against apps like TikTok that have been accused of infringing on users’ privacy with such features.
In August, Forbes was the first to report on TikTok’s potential keystroke monitoring through the web portal built into its app, based on findings from researcher Felix Krause. He found that the company could track keystrokes by injecting lines of code into outside websites that could alert TikTok to what people were doing on those pages.
The tracking, if the data were collected or stored, would make it possible for TikTok to capture a user’s credit card information or password, Krause said. While the code could be used for those data collection purposes, there is no evidence TikTok is actually doing so. But the capability has worried security and privacy experts concerned about the potential for abuse.
Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List of Companies Pausing Ads on Twitter
America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mind-numbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive.
According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social media platform last week.
Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.
Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question about what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.
Data Shows COVID Restrictions Were Ineffective and Based on Wrong Assumptions: Data Analyst
Severe measures imposed on society in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were based on wrong assumptions and, as it turned out later, were ineffective in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, said Justin Hart, chief data analyst and founder of RationalGround.com.
During the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially after Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated a high COVID-19 mortality rate in his testimony before Congress, Hart was looking at the pandemic statistics and did not find the data as alarming as it was officially presented.
Hart saw an article by John Ioannidis, a professor of medical sciences at Stanford University and one of the most-cited scientists worldwide. Hart learned from Ioannidis’s study that the risk of dying from COVID-19 for people under the age of 65 is about the same as dying on their commute to work, and the risk for anyone over the age of 65 is about the risk that a professional truck driver faces.
A recent paper co-authored by Ioannidis assessed that during the pre-vaccination era, the median infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was 0.035 percent for people under 60 years old and 0.095 percent among people under 70. When those estimates are taken into consideration, Hart said, “people pause and say, ‘well, why did we do a one-size-fits-all quarantine, social distancing, school closures, business closures, lockdowns?’ It made no sense.”
The Checkup With Dr. Wen: Should the Unvaccinated Be Excluded From Family Gatherings?
Over the past several months, many readers have asked a version of this question: Should they continue to ask that everyone gathering with them be vaccinated and perhaps even up-to-date with their booster shots?
Circumstances have changed. We now know that while being up-to-date with boosters continues to protect against severe disease, immunity against infection wanes in a matter of weeks. In addition, the Omicron subvariants are partially immune-evasive, and the effectiveness against symptomatic infection is not high even during the period of optimal vaccine protection.
One study, published in JAMA in May, found that during the time of Omicron predominance, vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection after two months was only 29% in children ages 5 to 11. It was just 17% in adolescents.
Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in July, reported that there was essentially no difference in protection against infection between unvaccinated adults and people who received two vaccine doses six or more months prior. A third dose restored effectiveness to 52%, but, as other studies have demonstrated, this protection is likely short-lived.
There’s another reason the likelihood of infection is no longer so different between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated: A large majority of both groups have had COVID.
Humans May Have Abnormalities in the Future Due to Excessive Use of Technology, Research Claims
According to a study commissioned by TollFreeForwarding, excessive use of technology can lead to abnormalities. Researchers worked with a 3D designer to produce images of a “future human” with physical problems brought on by regular technological use. Scientists gave the 3D model the moniker “Mindy.”
As reported first by Interesting Engineering, the team examined scientific studies and professional viewpoints on the subject, focusing on the detrimental impacts technology can have on the human body, particularly over an extended length of time.
According to the researchers, Mindy would eventually develop a bent back. This resulted from people using modern technology devices excessively, which changed the way they stood and sat. They claim that looking down at a smartphone or up at a computer screen all the time could cause tension on various body components, causing an arched back and spinal misalignment.
The study further claimed that future humans would have stronger skulls to shield their brains from radiation from smartphones and second eyelids to protect their eyes from strain and an excess of blue light from screen exposure.
Amazon’s Worker Surveillance ‘Leads to Extreme Stress and Anxiety’
At its best technological advancement can free workers from mundane, repetitive tasks and allow them to concentrate on more cognitively challenging and creative ones. Concerns remain, however, around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and connected products to monitor people in the workplace.
Major concerns include unethical data collection and privacy intrusion; constant surveillance and the resulting impact on mental health; and how the advancement of this tech might displace people from their jobs.
Amazon’s patented design for a connected wristband that can track warehouse workers’ locations and “nudge” them in the direction of their next assignment was highlighted in the committee session. An Amazon spokesperson told Spotlight the company has since “abandoned” this patent.
Dr. Matthew Cole, a postdoctoral researcher at the Fairwork Project, an initiative within the Oxford Internet Institute that researches working conditions at digital platforms, said that constant surveillance and reduced autonomy were detrimental to employees’ health. “Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows that the technologies that Amazon uses are not empowering,” he said. “They lead to overwork, extreme stress and anxiety and health problems such as joint problems. Amazon is not the leader to see how tech can benefit workers.”
Democrats Press YouTube Over Spanish-Language Disinformation
YouTube is facing renewed pressure to crack down on Spanish-language disinformation in a letter sent to the tech giant Friday by Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).
The Democrats told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki they have “serious concern with the continued lack of action and transparency” from the company in regard to the spread of false narratives, especially in Spanish, as it related to the upcoming midterm election, according to a copy of the letter exclusively shared with The Hill.
The lawmakers asked YouTube to provide them with details about the steps the company is taking to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation in non-English languages, including how many content moderators the company has designated to review non-English language content.
YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Hill in a statement that the company has more than 20,000 people globally, “including many with Spanish language expertise,” who work to review and remove content that violates YouTube’s misinformation policies.
The NYPD Has Joined Amazon’s Ring Neighbors Surveillance Network
The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon’s Ring security cameras. The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people’s posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public health on “active police matters.”
Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring’s security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as post footage from their cameras. While many law enforcement departments have joined Neighbors in recent years, this marks its adoption by America’s largest police force. (Police could separately request Ring footage for criminal investigations without the app.) It’s part of an increasingly tight integration between Amazon and police — one that’s raised both concerns about privacy and questions about its crime-solving value.
Amazon’s capacity for widespread monitoring has alarmed civil liberties advocates — especially because citizen reports can reflect racial biases about “suspicious” residents. The NYPD, meanwhile, remains shadowed by an invasive decade-long surveillance campaign against Muslim residents. The collaboration between the two will begin in the coming week.
Elon Musk Has Fired Twitter’s ‘Ethical AI’ Team
Not long after Elon Musk announced plans to acquire Twitter last March, he mused about open-sourcing “the algorithm” that determines how tweets are surfaced in user feeds so that it could be inspected for bias.
But today, as part of an aggressive plan to trim costs that involves firing thousands of Twitter employees, Musk’s management team cut a team of artificial intelligence researchers who were working toward making Twitter’s algorithms more transparent and fair.
Rumman Chowdhury, director of the ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META — no, not that one) team at Twitter, tweeted that she had been let go as part of mass layoffs implemented by new management — although it hardly seemed that she was relishing the idea of working under Musk.
As more and more problems with AI have surfaced, including biases around race, gender and age, many tech companies have installed “ethical AI” teams ostensibly dedicated to identifying and mitigating such issues.
