In the past week, American immigration agents have dragged a US citizen from his home in his underwear and executed a protester in her vehicle on a public street at gunpoint. They have wrestled press photographers to the ground. They have pushed and shoved violently. They have sprayed chemical agents on the faces of bystanders. They have stormed into hospitals and churches in search of immigrants. They have taken breastfeeding mothers from their babies at routine meetings. They gleefully named a program to capture immigrants on the New England seacost “Catch of the Day,” as if these people and their families were animals to be netted.
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In spite of some recent (and surprising!) political resistance to bike lanes, Cambridge, Massachusetts has made enormous strides improving bike commuting infrastructure over the last few years. Bike lanes are terrific, but they’re an incomplete solution to the problem of preventable cyclist deaths.
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While we were hiking in the Middlesex Fells, we came upon this 133-year-old intake tower in a reservoir.
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Verizon enabled IPv6 on my Fios home Internet connection today, only 9 years after Comcast rolled out IPv6 on their network! Better late than never I guess. Here’s how to make it work with the OPNsense firewall.
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It’s been a while.
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Yesterday one of Russia’s most aggressive Ransomware hacking groups abruptly vanished from the Internet. This is probably the result of secretive work from the Biden administration, and it’s great news.
The Times article offers this potential downside to the development: “it left some of the group’s targets in the lurch, unable to pay the ransom to get their data back and get their businesses running again.”
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Biobot changed their measurement methods after my November 15 post and was kind enough to reprocess historic samples with their new method. As a result, the graph of Boston-area COVID infections has changed:
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In belatedly authorizing the federal government to provide assistance to the incoming Biden administration, the GSA Administrator Emily Murphy writes:
I strongly believe that the statute requires that the GSA Administrator ascertain, not impose, the apparent president-elect. Unfortunately, the statute provides no procedures or standards for this process… I do not think that an agency charged with improving federal procurement and property management should place itself above the constitutionally based election process. I strongly urge Congress to consider amendments to the act.
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November 29, 2020: The source data cited here has changed since this post was written due to revised measurement techniques. Please see my newer post for details.
Here in Boston, the agency in charge of sewage treatment has contracted with a fellow Greentown Labs startup (Biobot) to monitor COVID-19 viral RNA levels in sewage. This is a brilliant new technique that provides an excellent early warning sign for public health events.
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I’m sure you’ve all heard the good news about Election 2020: the amended Massachusetts Right to Repair law passed decisively. Automakers will be required to provide consumers with access to “telematics” data stored and transmitted by their cars.
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