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Laptop

Bad coding: Code review of Neil Ferguson's model

Sue Denim
Lockdown Sceptics
Thu, 07 May 2020 12:47 UTC
Neil Ferguson
© Wikipedia/Marshaj2020 102"Professor Lockdown" Neil Ferguson
Imperial finally released a derivative of Ferguson's code. I figured I'd do a review of it and send you some of the things I noticed. I don't know your background so apologies if some of this is pitched at the wrong level.

My background
I wrote software for 30 years. I worked at Google between 2006 and 2014, where I was a senior software engineer working on Maps, Gmail and account security. I spent the last five years at a US/UK firm where I designed the company's database product, amongst other jobs and projects. I was also an independent consultant for a couple of years. Obviously I'm giving only my own professional opinion and not speaking for my current employer.

The code
It isn't the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What's been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was "a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade" (this is considered extremely poor practice). A request for the original code was made 8 days ago but ignored, and it will probably take some kind of legal compulsion to make them release it. Clearly, Imperial are too embarrassed by the state of it ever to release it of their own free will, which is unacceptable given that it was paid for by the taxpayer and belongs to them.

Comment: So the computer code that generated the model used to justify the lockdown is so flawed it's beyond salvageable. Let that sink in. One wonders if Ferguson's ousting, blamed on his breaking quarantine for a tryst, is actually due to the fact that his incompetence is coming to light. This has the potential to make a lot of people in the general public very angry.

See also:

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Bug

Peer Review Vs Trial By Twitter


Tim Hayword Wordpress
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Trail By Twitter
© Unknown
This past week has seen some unedifying academic-on-academic hostility on Twitter, with a storm of haughty criticism being whipped up in response to publication in the journal Alternatives of a paper by Dr David A. Hughes. Perhaps because I know first hand what it feels like to be publicly smeared for touching on inconvenient questions, I have felt impelled to speak out against this intimidatory conduct.

Hughes' paper tackles a taboo subject, one which has been at the centre of a great deal of conspiracy theorizing, much of it preposterous. What he nevertheless aims to show is that there are also reasonable questions to be asked about the subject; and he wants to understand why these have been lumped together with the foolish ones in a blanket dismissal by other scholars in the field of International Relations (IR).

Comment: WTC 7 NOT destroyed by fire on 9/11, concludes final University of Alaska Fairbanks report, formal "request for correction" will be made of Gov't

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Attention

Best of the Web: COVID19: Are ventilators killing people?

Kit Knightly
offGuardian
Wed, 06 May 2020 04:57 UTC
doctor with ventilator
Since the coronavirus first jumped so dramatically from China to Italy, most of the talk in the Western world has been about whether or not our healthcare services will be able to cope with the predicted tidal wave of patients.

A tsunami of human suffering was predicted which, weeks later, is yet to materialise. The NHS built a new 4000-bed emergency hospital, the Nightingale Centre...which was barely used and is now being shut down. In the US field hospitals were erected, left standing empty for a few days, and then taken down.

Most specifically, in the early days, almost all the talk was about ventilators. Did we have enough? Could we get more? Should we 3D print our own? Do we need car companies and arms dealers re-tool their factories to make more?

This media narrative never fit with the real science of the situation.

Many doctors have since come forward to say that mechanical ventilation is not only inappropriate for those with respiratory infections, but that it is being seriously over-used for Covid patients, and that it may be doing more harm than good.

Comment: See also:

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Pyramid

Best of the Web: Authoritarianism in The Age of Pseudoscience

Colin Todhunter
OffGuardian
Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00 UTC
Big Agra
Following the court decision in the US to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson (exposure to Monsanto's Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, caused Johnson to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma), attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said at the post-trial press conference:
"The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers... Monsanto... has used those strategies..."



Comment: Actually, as this 'pandemic' has accidentally revealed, the science on tobacco was corrupted the other way, but the general point stands. Official science is corrupt beyond recognition as science.


Johnson's lawyers argued over the course of the month-long trial in 2018 that Monsanto had "fought science" for years and targeted academics who spoke up about possible health risks of the herbicide product.

Long before the Johnson case, critics of Monsanto were already aware of the practices the company had engaged in for decades to undermine science. At the same time, Monsanto and its lobbyists had called anyone who questioned the company's 'science' as engaging in pseudoscience and labelled them 'anti-science'.
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Yoda

Texas hair salon owner sentenced for violating coronavirus lockdown order - UPDATE: Texas Supreme Court intervenes, Governor modifies guidelines

Bob Price
Breitbart
Thu, 07 May 2020 17:01 UTC
Shelley Luther salon lockdown texas trial
© CBS DFWMoyé found Luther in criminal and civil contempt of court on Tuesday. In addition to jail time, he ordered her to pay $500 to the court for every day she opened her salon. Luther pictured in court Tuesday
A Dallas hair salon owner who defied a Coronavirus lockdown order will spend seven days in jail, according to a local news report. The salon owner refused to keep her business closed and defied a direct cease and desist order from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins in April.

"Shelley Luther, a Dallas hair salon owner who opened in violation of the governor's executive order, sentenced to 7 days in jail for civil / criminal contempt of court and fined $7,000," CBSDFW reported Andrea Lucia tweeted on Tuesday.

Comment: Ms. Luther is fighting for more than just the right to earn a living:


More from the Daily Mail:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has called for a salon owner to be released from jail as he slams the judge who locked her up for violating the state's stay-at-home order.

Shelley Luther, the owner of Salon a la Mode in Dallas, appeared in court on Tuesday where she was sentenced to seven days behind bars and $3,500 - $500 for each day she opened her business' doors.

Gov Greg Abbott's started phase one of Texas reopenings last week, which did not allow salons to resume business - but that didn't stop Luther from opening up.

On Wednesday, Paxton released a statement, claiming the salon owner was 'unjustly jailed'.
Eric Moyé Ken Paxton texas salon opening lockdown
© Ballotpedia.Org;Associated PressDallas County Judge Eric Moyé (left) sentenced her to seven days. On Wednesday, Attorney General Ken Paxton released a statement, claiming the salon owner was 'unjustly jailed' and demanded that she be freed 'immediately'
According to a statement from the attorney general's office, Paxton sent a letter to Moyé stating that he 'abused his authority' by putting Luther in jail for trying to feed her family.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moyé (left) sentenced her to seven days. On Wednesday, Attorney General Ken Paxton released a statement, claiming the salon owner was 'unjustly jailed' and demanded that she be freed 'immediately'

Moyé found Luther in criminal and civil contempt of court on Tuesday. In addition to jail time, he ordered her to pay $500 to the court for every day she opened her salon. Luther pictured in court Tuesday

'I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family's table,' Paxton said.

Paxton continued: 'The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther. His order is a shameful abuse of judicial discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms Luther immediately.'
UPDATE 07/05/2020: The Supreme Court of Texas has ordered the release of Dallas salon owner, Shelly Luther, who was jailed for violating executive stay at home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.


UPDATE: Governor Greg Abbott announced changes to his stay-at-home orders to prevent more mothers from being jailed for opening their businesses in order to feed their children.

He will no longer allow Texans to be jailed for wanting to save their businesses and feed their children.



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Attention

Health workers call for caution over 5G roll-out in Brussels in open letter to government

Alan Hope
Brussels Times
Sat, 02 May 2020 00:00 UTC
5G tower Belgium
Some 400 doctors and 900 health care workers have signed an open letter to the government, urging them to exercise caution regarding the roll-out by Proximus of a forerunner of the next generation of mobile data, known as 5G.

The six-page letter goes out under the name of the Hippocrates Electrosmog Appeal.

Last week, Proximus began to test its "5G Light" version of the new generation in 30 communes around Belgium, the timing of which the organisation criticises.

"Even though it could be a simple coincidence, this seems indecent to us at a time when the people are fighting to overcome a human drama which concerns us all. At the same time, consumer organisations have been quick to publish articles claiming that the technology is not dangerous," the authors write.

Comment: And here we thought that Belgium would not be inflicting 5g on its people.

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Alarm Clock

CDC: Average age of COVID-19 deaths in US is 75 years old

Michael Patrick Leahy
Breitbart
Wed, 06 May 2020 20:26 UTC
emergency responders
© AP File Photo: Beth Bennett via South Florida Sun-Sentinel
The average age of Americans who died from COVID-19 between February 1 and May 2 is 75, according to an analysis of a provisional data set published by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on Wednesday.

The data set published by NCHS, Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and State, include key demographic information for the 44,016 COVID-19 deaths for which information has been "received and coded" as of May 6, the date of publication.

The NCHS notes that "Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more."

According to Worldometer, 74,190 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States as of Wednesday, so information on at least 30,000 of these deaths has not yet been received and coded by NCHS.
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Attention

US facing significant meat shortages caused by the lockdown while it's increasing pork exports to China

Karen Braun
Yahoo
Tue, 05 May 2020 12:00 UTC
food dumping
© Twitter/IceAgeFarmerEuthanized cattle in US being dumped as reported by IceAgeFarmer on Twitter
Meatpackers and livestock producers in the United States have spent at least a year adjusting to the surge in business to China, which has faced a severe pork shortage in the wake of its battle against African swine fever.

But now, as the United States is on the brink of its own meat crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, American pork supplies are being shipped off to China at a breakneck pace, creating the perfect recipe for additional U.S.-China tensions.

For some American consumers, the optics of this situation might be poor given how the virus originated in China late last year. But record U.S. meat exports to China have been the plan all along, to satisfy both China's needs and to lift U.S. business.


Comment: Actually, the virus probably originated in the US: CDC suddenly shuts down US Army's Fort Detrick bioweapons lab due to 'lapses in safety'


Comment: The food shortages have led to Costco limiting meat purchases to 3 items per person, and Wendy's fast food restaurants have taken burgers off the menu.


You can hear more up to date information on the food shortages on Ice Age Farmers podcast:


See also:

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Pistol

Georgia family demands arrest after vigilantes shoot, kill son 'while jogging'

Russ Bynum
Associated Press
Thu, 07 May 2020 19:16 UTC
Shooting of Ahmaud Arbery
© Daily Mail
The parents of a black man slain in a pursuit by two white men armed with guns called for immediate arrests Wednesday as they faced the prospect of waiting a month or longer before a Georgia grand jury could consider bringing charges.

A swelling outcry over the Feb. 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery intensified after a cellphone video that lawyers for his family say shows the killing surfaced online Tuesday. Following the video's release, a large crowd of demonstrators marched in the neighborhood where Arbery was killed, and the state opened its own investigation, which the governor and attorney general pledged to support. The men who pursued Arbery told police they suspected he had committed a recent burglary.


Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, told reporters Wednesday she believes her 25-year-old son "was just out for his daily jog" in a neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. She hasn't watched the video.

"I saw my son come into the world," Jones said. "And seeing him leave the world, it's not something that I'll want to see ever."
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Key

Individual choice - the key to economic recovery

Jonathan Turley
The Hill
Wed, 06 May 2020 12:00 UTC
ManMask
© Getty ImagesThe Absurdity
As pressure builds on states to open, many governors are starting to ease lockdown orders. That decision is not purely a public health matter but a public policy matter with interlaced issues of law, finance, and medicine. Congress and states must decide how legally to restart an economy in a world saturated by the coronavirus. With expensive recovery measures and a federal deficit projected at more than $30 trillion by the summer, we face a real possibility of a lost generation due to crippling debt and chronic unemployment. So this means businesses and institutions will need to operate in a way that is sustainable instead of just symbolic.

The legal challenge here is to open up the country fully when we cannot reasonably expect any vaccination program until next year, according to most experts. Thus, in the interim, our best hope may be an ancient legal doctrine that extends back to Roman law in the sixth century. "Volenti non fit injuria" means "no wrong is done to one who consents," and it became the solid foundation for what we know today as "assumption of risk." The doctrine encapsulates the concept of personal responsibility and choice. Thus, any economic opening precisely requires not liability but choice.
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