What if social media users owned their data?

(Bloomberg) — Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users …

As we were going to say …

The Gettysburg Address speech that no one gives before it turns into a pie fight The best political speech in many years was not delivered. Instead, incoming Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid set it aside and reprimanded members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s departing coalition for their nonstop heckling of incoming Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which was …

The morphing pathogen defies planners

Authorities in Israel and Australia imposed new Covid-19 restrictions in response to the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus, while India warned of a worrying new mutation, emphasizing how the morphing pathogen continues to challenge a return to pre-pandemic life world-wide… “The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission …

“Indonesia’s Doctors Got Vaccinated With Sinovac, and Got Sick” — NYT

Other countries are discovering that certain vaccines may not be as effective as others in preventing infections caused by these variants. … Dr. Adib said that the association is now discussing the possibility of administering to medical workers a third shot of another vaccine, such as Oxford-AstraZeneca. Some countries are supporting a mix-and-match scheme to …

‘Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling’ — NYT opinion

It was only in 2004 that a prominent virologist, Peter Palese, wrote that Chi-Ming Chu, a respected virologist and a former member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told him that “the introduction of this 1977 H1N1 virus” was indeed thought to be due to vaccine trials involving “the challenge of several thousand military recruits …

Like it was designed to infect people

Surprisingly, the results showed that SARS-CoV-2 bound to ACE2 on human cells more tightly than any of the tested animal species, including bats and pangolins. If one of the animal species tested was the origin, it would normally be expected to show the highest binding to the virus. “Humans showed the strongest spike binding, consistent …

‘Unknown pneumonia’ at 2019 Military Olympics

U.S. lawmakers are demanding an investigation into the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China, where athletes complained of COVID-like symptoms and described the city as a ‘ghost town’ weeks before authorities admitted the spread of a new virus. Almost 10,000 international competitors from 100 countries took part in what is known as the ‘military …

Google Keeps Stopping on Android Phones As Users Report Issues

Users reported having issues with Google as they tried to access the search engine on their Android smartphones. According to the online outage tracker Downdetector, which gives users real-time information about the status of websites, people experienced issues accessing Google at 1:20 a.m. (ET) on June 22. Visitors to Google experienced problems accessing and using …