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@WIRED

20 Dec

Billions of dollars were spent to produce the Covid-19 vaccines that will (hopefully) help bring an end to the pandemic, but prepping the US population for their side effects is getting much less attention.

That could be a big mistake 1/ wired.trib.al/vV0Q2zb

In a November survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 71% of people said they will likely take the vaccine. For the hesitant, the leading worry was fear of side effects.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have side effects. They’re real, but we need to contextualize them 2/

Trial participants have described experiencing “a severe hangover” and “fever ... fatigue and chills.” One participant said he shook so hard with chills that he cracked a tooth. A few more serious reactions have been reported, but most are minor and fade after roughly two days 3/

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@WIRED

14 Dec

By compromising the IT management platform SolarWinds, Russian hackers have hit departments in the United States government and the security firm FireEye.

We’ll be lucky if that's the end of it. The situation could get so much worse 1/ wired.trib.al/QcCaWFV

As far back as March, the hackers compromised a network monitoring tool called Orion, distributing tainted software potentially to thousands of organizations and giving them a backdoor into the victim’s networks 2/

From there, the hackers fanned out within target systems, often by stealing administrative access tokens. Finally, with the keys to the kingdom—or large portions of each kingdom—they were free to conduct reconnaissance and exfiltrate data 3/

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@WIRED

8 Nov

In April 2017, a hiker going by the name “Mostly Harmless” started hiking south from New York. He carried no ID and no phone.

He made it to Florida, where, in 2018, he was found dead in his tent. No one’s been able to figure out who he was. 1/ wired.trib.al/4s2CpNg

Mostly Harmless’ fingerprints didn’t show up in any law enforcement database; his DNA didn’t match any in the Department of Justice’s missing person database; a picture of his face didn’t turn up anything in a facial recognition database. Investigators couldn’t find a thing. 2/

They don’t even understand how or why he died. There were no indications of foul play and, despite the fact that he had food nearby, he weighed just 83 pounds at the time of his death. The only substances Mostly Harmless tested positive for were ibuprofen and an antihistamine. 3/

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@WIRED

3 Nov

While high turnout is a good thing for democracy, long lines at polling places lines are not. They’re a cunning form of voter suppression, with election-changing consequences. Why do they still exist?

Math. And racism. 1/ wired.trib.al/n1FINrM

Long lines at a polling place are the same as long lines anywhere else. Fundamentally, the movement of the line is limited by how many resources are available to process the elements in the queue. Those include poll workers, voting machines, polling stations, and voters 2/

Several variables go into the velocity of the processing and therefore the length of the line of voters waiting to get processed. How many people show up at once? How many agents are there to process them? How long does processing take? 3/

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@WIRED

28 Oct

Keyboard shortcuts can shave seconds off each task, but throughout the course of a workday, it can add up to minutes or even hours. Here are some of the best ones you should know: wired.trib.al/bGkmqDK 1/

The Windows key: If you need to launch a new app, don't go clicking through your Start menu or Applications folder. Just press the Windows key—or hit Command+Space on a Mac—and start typing the name of the app in question. When its icon appears, just press Enter. 2/

Ctrl+F: Ever needed to search for a specific phrase in a 5,000-word article? It's hell. But press Ctrl+F and you'll get a search bar in the corner of your screen that helps you find any word or phrase on a page. (Apple Tip: Use the Command key instead of Control) 3/

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@WIRED

22 Oct

Back in March, a study on how long the coronavirus lasts on surfaces fueled what one author called “the great fomite freakout.” People scrubbed everything from mail to groceries.

It's time to reassess. Here’s what we now know about surface spread 1/ wired.trib.al/mDdeApF

The March study found the virus was present after a few hours on cardboard, and after several days on plastic and steel. But researchers were careful to say that they only tested how quickly the virus decayed in a laboratory setting, not whether it could still infect a person 2/

Since then, additional studies have painted a picture that is much more subtle and less scary. One clear takeaway is that, given an adequate initial dose, the virus can linger for days or even weeks on some surfaces—like glass and plastic—in controlled lab conditions 3/

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