"Abrasive, hard, but never gratuitously unpleasant."

Tom Colicchio is a really thoughtful guy, and he's been very busy working on behalf of small restaurants and the people who work there.

A simple and effective facemask design by Loren Brickter

An estimated 65,000 doctors trained in other countries are ineligible to practice here because they haven’t met U.S. requirements that they have a year of resident training stateside.

Nationwide, an estimated 30,000 so-called Dreamers work in health care. Yet along with their brothers, sisters and cousins, all are poised to lose their status in June, when the virus may still be raging

"With about 200,000 people flowing into and out of jails every week, there are great risks not only for the detained, but also for jail workers and surrounding communities."

"We’d like to help," said the Rev. George Nicholas, chairman of the African American Health Equity Task Force. Yet he says no one has contacted the task force, which formed in 2014 to address health disparities. So the group, along with the Buffalo Center for Health Equity and others, is preparing a news release to put the issue on the table.

That’s par for the course. It’s routine around here for policymakers and elected leaders to hatch plans to address community concerns without involving the ground-level experts within those communities.

So far, Zoom has secretly installed web servers on users' systems, leaked email addresses and photos to other users, falsely claimed to support end-to-end encryption, and leaked data to Facebook.

And that's just the stuff we know about.

"With our company roots in sending large files, sharing is deeply ingrained in our culture. As such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we publish a number of internal tools and libraries as open source. We used to publish this software under the MIT License; a short and readable license that permits anyone to use our technology freely, in whatever way they see fit. As of last week, we have begun switching projects over to the Hippocratic License. The Hippocratic license is based on the MIT license, but extends it to restrict the freedom to use to only those applications that do not harm others."

Software is considered Ethical Open Source (EOS) when it meets all of these criteria:

• It benefits the commons. The license under which the software is released must not prohibit modification, derivative works, and linking or compiling with other software (unless under a copyleft provision), in the general spirit of open source distribution. It is created in the open. The source code must be publicly available, developed and maintained in public view, and welcoming of public contributions (subject to review and approval by the software project’s maintainers.)

• Its community is welcoming and just. The software project’s community of maintainers and contributors must be governed by a comprehensive code of conduct that is consistently and fairly enforced.

• It puts accessibility first. If the software has a user interface, it must be designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring all software functionality is available to all users, including users who may rely on assistive devices.

• It prioritizes user safety. The software must be designed with features and safeguards that minimize the risk of abuse or harm to others through the use of the software.

• It protects user privacy. If the software collects end-user data, the entity running the software must, upon request, delete or provide to the end-user any and all data generated and stored from the end-user’s usage of the software. All such data provided to the end-user must be in either a human-readable or widely interoperable open format.

• It encourages fair compensation. The software project’s maintainers may, at their discretion, request remuneration in the form of code contributions, financial consideration, or other forms of voluntary support from organizations that derive commercial value from the software.

Here's massive list of open source projects used directly or indirectly to help harm and kill immigrants, along with ideas to disrupt their use.

Maybe you'll read this and feel better about things. Maybe you'll fee worse. You'll definitely feel better equipped to wade through the less informed novel coronavirus/COVID-19 coverage out there.

"There are few people I’ve learned more from over the years–especially about viruses–than Peter Piot." - Bill Gates

Joseph G. Allen is an assistant professor of exposure and assessment science and director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

He explains the reality of transferring the virus via surfaces.

Fortunately, [EHS] is not as dangerous as it sounds.     But it is a real condition, and researchers are finally beginning to seriously investigate the rare and little-understood sleep disorder.    

[the return of linkfilter.net makes *my* head explode]

Genesis P-Orridge is talking about the day he was asked to rescue a series of radical movies made by William Burroughs, artist Brion Gysin and film-maker Anthony Balch from a skip. It was 1980 and P-Orridge was living on the dole in Hackney, east London, fronting art-punk band Throbbing Gristle. "Brion called me from Paris," recalls P-Orridge. "Anthony had died, and all the films they had made in the 1950s and 1960s were about to be destroyed. 'Here's the address,' he said. 'Do what you can to save them. Go and get them, and they're yours. You'll know what to do with them.'"    

• more about the films  
• download a 4 minute real media clip from one of thee films from this site.  
• more lf linkage on burroughs  
• more lf linkage on gysin  

Animals are wonderful companions and helpers, but sometimes they're the ones who need help. 3D printing to the rescue!