Our picksEarthquakes & Cellphone Outages | Running Out of Air | What It Means to Evacuate, and more

Published 6 November 2019

·  California Suffered Widespread Cellphone Outages During Fires. A Big Earthquake Would Be Much Worse

·  Free Tools Boost 2020 Election Security, But Not Enough

·  We Are Running Out of Air

·  The First BlueKeep Mass Hacking Is Finally Here—but Don’t Panic

·  What It Means to Evacuate

·  Why Are So Many Countries Witnessing Mass Protests?

·  SecDef: China Is Exporting Killer Robots to the Mideast

·  Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to Shrink Emergency Planning Zone 

California Suffered Widespread Cellphone Outages During Fires. A Big Earthquake Would Be Much Worse (Leila Miller, Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times)
At one point, 57% of Marin County’s 280 cellphone tower sites were out of service Sonoma, Lake, Santa Cruz, Humboldt and Calaveras counties all encountered days in which more than 20% of cellphone towers were out.

Free Tools Boost 2020 Election Security, But Not Enough (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
More companies than ever are offering low-cost security services for election bureaus and campaigns. It’s still not clear how much they’ll actually help.

We Are Running Out of Air (James Hamblin, The Atlantic)
One suffocating city is a harbinger of health crises around the world.

The First BlueKeep Mass Hacking Is Finally Here—but Don’t Panic (Andy Greeneberg, Wired)
After months of warnings, the first successful attack using Microsoft’s BlueKeep vulnerability has arrived—but isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

What It Means to Evacuate (Lili Loofbourow, Slate)
How do you pack a go bag when you might be leaving everything behind for good?

Why Are So Many Countries Witnessing Mass Protests? (The Economist)
Blame economics, demography, a sense of powerlessness…and social media

SecDef: China Is Exporting Killer Robots to the Mideast (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
For the first time, a senior Defense official has called out Beijing for selling lethal autonomy.

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to Shrink Emergency Planning Zone (Christine Legere, Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.)
FEMA and some states dispute the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s premise that “all hazards planning” would be enough to address a nuclear accident. Planning experts recommend the planning zone remain in place.