Ireland has released a contact-tracing app that people there have adopted.

The basic approach seems to be ethical. My tentative judgment is that I would be willing to participate in a contact-tracing system which worked that way, if I could do so without running a nonfree app or a portable phone.

For instance, if it were a stand-alone device with no network connection except bluetooth and doing nothing except this job, and I could examine and understand all the data it gives me to send in, and no software would ever be installed into it, I could treat it like my microwave oven — meaning that I don't care how it works inside. I could envision that the user gets the data out via USB, in a well-documented trasparent format, then sends it to the health department through a web site that does not send Javascript code to the browser.

The design principle here should be to infringe people's privacy in the minimal possible way that can succeed in stopping transmission of Covid-19.

It is our duty to cooperate with that vital goal — just as it is our duty to protect others by wearing masks — and society's duty to avoid asking us to make any additional, avoidable sacrifices of privacy.

Two British Uber drivers have sued to see the algorithm Uber uses to assign rides to drivers. They suspect Uber is manipulating them.

*Australia's environment in unsustainable state of decline, major review finds.* The country's environmental laws need big changes.

This is no coincidence. The governments have been extractivist for many years.

*Polar bears in much of Alaska and Russia will be in serious trouble by 2080.*

Global heating keeps surprising us by going faster than predicted. I'd take that as an underestimate.

Last February, the world had insufficient production of Covid-19 protection equipment. The British NHS could not get equipment because the French manufacturer it had a contract with for emergency supplies gave priority to another client.

Rather than fume over which client the manufacturer chose, and which client couldn't get urgently needed masks, the crucial point is that the world could not produce enough to meet the needs of a pandemic.

Each country needs to maintain a sufficient production capacity to supply its own needs in a pandemic.