skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/f19uc8/debunking...
System Shock 3 Team 'No Longer Employed' Following Reports of Development Woes
Surprisingly to me, they include details on the organ that use to be in the Melody Inn in Los Altos, my dad's favorite place to take us for pizza when I was a kid.

http://www.theatreorgans.com/florida/ellenton/
I remember in 2001 (could be 2002) having a discussion with a flat mate, in which he argued that ultimately, Bill Gates would be a force for good through his foundation.

I was unconvinced, given the Microsoft of the 1990s, but I think that ultimately he was right.

The more interesting question is: Would the world be a better place had MS not been so successful?

A back of the envelope analysis would suggest that, given how Bill Gates has behaved with his fortune, who is likely to benefit from his foundation work and who suffered from MS practices, overall the world is a better place.
Unless the philanthropy is run like a business with you as the investor/stakeholder.
> I'm curious where you live and what the signals are like there

In the UK. Where I am if there is a light for a pedestrian to cross that guarantees no car will be trying to cross your path. I feel like you shouldn’t show a pedestrian a light if cars are still allowed to cross their path! Seems dangerous and misleading and it scares me every time.

In most cases what happens here is that the whole intersection gets stopped for pedestrians periodically, so you can cross diagonally as well.

Why isn’t that popular in North America? Trying to interleave cars and pedestrians and let cars edge towards you menacingly as they try to turn across your path is absolute madness to me.
"Even"? China has never been a space exploration powerhouse.
Deep sea diving: undersea telecommunication cables
Lean is better for proper maths than all the other theorem provers
I have a different question -- why is philanthropy on this scale such a predominantly American phenomenon? And even on smaller, less mega-wealthy scales? Why is European wealth not associated with charitable foundations and such kinds of global funding?

Is it because the role of the state is supposed to be so much greater in Europe? Whereas in the US, personal / family charity takes the place of a less encompassing social role of government?

Just doing some random searching, I find reports that US charitable giving is 2 to 5x greater than in European countries (as share of GDP).

Maybe it's also tied up in the US tendency to give donations to political causes, etc? Or the idea that the newness of American cities, towns led to a culture of people contributing to civic works (whereas in Europe, most things already "existed")? Like how in the US, universities had to be founded and funded by benefactors in an ongoing way, whereas in Europe, they're so old and "set for life" that they don't need alumni to support them (or are more fully funded by the state)?
I use an RSS based podcast player for my drive to work and back. If a show doesn't have an RSS, I can't listen to it.

I'm not going to jump to someone's website or switch between player apps while I'm driving along the M1. If you want to listen to your show, I'd need to switch player apps entirely and listen to all my shows on that other player.
> Isn’t it possible to become a billionaire without anyone knowing?

Yes, it's possible to do it quasi-quietly. This optometrist did exactly that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/02/19/the-great...

https://outline.com/9H4YAb

"Optometrist Herb Wertheim may be the greatest individual investor the world has never heard of, and he has the Fidelity statements to prove it. Leafing through printouts he has brought to a meeting, you can see hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks like Apple and Microsoft, purchased decades ago during their IPOs. An $800 million-plus position in Heico, a $1.8 billion (revenue) airplane-parts manufacturer, dates to 1992. There are dozens of other holdings, ranging from GE and Google to BP and Bank of America."

"The Microsoft shares he bought during the IPO, which have been paying dividends since 2003, are now worth more than $160 million. His 1.25 million shares of Apple, some purchased during its 1980 IPO and some when the stock was languishing at $10 in the 1990s, are worth $195 million."
Good points, but the commonly stated objective of philanthropy is to solve entire categories of problems. You could go on giving billions of dollars to the poor just so they can get by, and eventually that money would run out, and if the people you were helping weren’t worse off, they likely wouldn’t be much better off by then. But money spent on attempting to eradicate malaria for example doesn’t have the same dynamics.

There are also other forms of just regular old charity that have a similar ROI. Money spent on educating children had a tremendous ROI, so does investment in infrastructure.
As a left hander, writing is difficult. Western writing favours right handers; from the direction of flow, down to the formation of letters.

That coupled with mild dyspraxia, meant that I have a death grip on a pen - I grip it so hard the ends of my fingers turn white, all the while trying to control my movement as if an invisible force is constantly tugging the nib in random directions.

And don't get me started on fountain pens - they are explicitly designed to be 'dragged' across the page. As a left hander you mostly 'push' - I broke so many fountain pen nibs, until I eventually gave up using them.

Changing my grip on a pen now, would probably make all my issues worse, not better!
I would take in to account the hard stop.

A modern car have deformation zones and angles for you to basically slide along - you will never get the impact of that full mass.

A bike, well, you will come to a hard stop and it’s got metal rods sticking out here and there.

Getting hit by a bicycle at high speed is worse than what you’d expect, at least according to my personal experiences.
The intersection on 4th and Howard works mostly the way you describe, but still doesn't have lights to indicate that it is safe to cross diagonally. Most people I've walked through the area with were shocked when I cut across that way, including one who straight up refused to cross.
That, and extending the scope of search: with mobile their search (and in particular their map search) is far more relevant to brick and mortar advertisers than desktop search alone could ever be. That's a huge market and on top of it on mobile a search user is less picky with the result/suggestion/ad continuum because of the constrained UI. And while most desktop searches are entirely unrelated to monetary transactions and those that are tend to be about spending less or getting more, many mobile searches come quite close to "where can I spend my money". This is where you want to be as an ad medium. The end-game for this is voice UI while driving, where the search provider can basically send physical traffic to the highest bidder.
You mean by creating an economy where everyone is paid sanely, instead of an economy geared to moving wealth from people who don't have it to people who do?
Maybe instead, we just freaking shouldn’t allow applications of this sort of research at all. This is stuff that would have been a scandal if the CIA did it, just because it makes money doesn’t mean it’s okay.
... in which case you're conceptually dealing with a structure, not a string.
could be related to higher taxes in Europe
>almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper

... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apollo astronatus bringing back half a ton of moon rocks whereas Mars probes can only sample tiny amounts of soil. Also one of the Mars rovers (Opportunity? I can't remember the names) in its years of service only covering a few kilometers, something a human could do within a day.

EDIT: It was Opportunity and its mission lasted 15 years. Impressive nonetheless, but boy is it slow ;)
2019-nCoV patients may be mildly ill for more than a week before it turns severe
Building a permanent settlement for 2-10 people is a really good exercise if you eventually want a permanent settlement for 100 people.
The issue is not with atomic but with all non atomic accesses. The standard guarantees that two concurrent writes to contiguous but distinct char-sized memory location to be legal and data-race-free.
Overview of Pantos (Pan) & Token Atomic Swap Technology (TAST)
I've heard of services where you call, and someone cycles (on a folding bicycle) to your location. They then put their bicycle in your car, and drive you home.

There are some American equivalents, using folding mini-motorcycles: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/business/smallbusiness/27...
It's not a staple in China either. Chicken and pigs are.
Actually, some of the problems he's tackling will unshackle certain parts of the world. It's hard for societies to lift themselves when they are encumbered by diseases. If they can free themselves from that situation, they'll do a lot better in future.
Yes, and on top of that there's not cooperating and there's not cooperating. He still has to walk that tightrope even if he knows China will never fully cooperate.
Linus was a big fan of alpha.
That's just being pedantic. I installed Spotify only for podcasts. It's also the only app that seems to work with weak networks. Rest are terrible.
Why is European wealth not associated with charitable foundations and such kinds of global funding?

European tax law doesn't let wealthy people write off donations to the same extent as American tax law.
Organisation would imply to me that the knowledge was held by the organisation as a whole though. Tribal implies small groups of individuals, which is probably closer to the truth.
Nothing on that page is conditional on the sender's intentions. And the relevant law is pretty straightforward: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/3009
Ask HN: Coronavirus in Africa. Should we expect an outbreak?
Like many other people I constantly follow the evolution of the spread of the new Coronavirus in the world.

This is the map that I often consult: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

What I have noticed is the zero presence of the virus on the African continent. Can this be realistic? Considering the massive presence of Chinese citizens in Africa and the strong interests of China in Africa, is it possible that there are no known cases?

Or, as I think, the poor quality of monitoring in some African regions has not yet brought to light the cases that actually exist?

Should we expect an epidemic bomb from Africa? what do you think?
Calling a well-researched and crafted, long thoughtpiece clickbait rattles my nettles.

I feel a lot of people mentioning individual podcasts in this thread is missing the point -- if the masses see Spotify as the place to find podcasts in, that's where they'll find podcasts in. If ad money moves there, content creators will move there, and draw a lot of people with them.

Of course podcasters aren't going to be locked-in, neither will advertisers or listeners, but there will be a significant lure to just going on Spotify.

What's your first reaction when you want to find a video? You go on YouTube. What's your first reaction when you want to find a solution to a silly problem you're sure a solution exists? You go to Google. What's your first reaction when you want to watch someone stream a computer game? You go to Twitch.

THAT is what Spotify wants here. They want to be the first or at least be in contention to being the first whenever anyone wants to find something audio-related. Music, new albums, and apparently now podcasts. They're already a household name so when a normal person hears that there are good podcasts on Spotify they'll just go "oh huh, that makes sense" and if they get interested they might check one out.

I'd like to say I'll keep an eye out for this but honestly who has the energy? A year from now someone will make a nice graphic showing how many podcasters have transitioned to Spotify and how it's affected the field. I find the clarion call to lawmakers both optimistic and naïve, blocking a merger because Spotify MIGHT cause platform stagnation in 15 years is just never going to happen.
Any particular reason not to use hashtags? (except habit)
China defined what the meaning for each of the reported stats. Infected means it's tested positive under a RNA ptpcrt test. I don't think at this point, china is fudging the number. But because of this definition a lot of cases are not being tested because of a lack of medical resources especially in wuhan. So the real cases in the public is far greater than 40000. They also released information on what they learned medically about the virus and the real situation in wuhan. I seen the videos posted on FB and Twitter and I think the government is not hiding the "the bad news" so just following these source already paints a virus that is highly contagious and difficult to diagnose. Their actions are formed based on a lot of information not captured by the reported numbers and actions are more forward looking as they are trying to anticipate how the virus will develop. The numbers are laggards. So I believe we should all look at the actions instead of the number. If the situation does not warrent lock down on travel and public gathering in many cities, which destroys the economy, why would they do it? Now the situational assessment is two parts, one is the dangerous of the virus, second the societal conditions in China that encourage the virus spreading. It might be that for the same virus it might not be as transmittable in other countries. So other countries shouldnt copy Chinese response directly.
>>Dr. Tedros has faced a lot of criticism for strongly praising China's handling of the epidemic over the past few months.

What doesn't work for day to day life (dictatorship), works great in such cases. Complain about quarantines if you dare.

China is the one really affected so whatever they're doing, so they have every incentive to do it right. I see falsifying as a possible way not to spread panic but that's white /gray lie, all countries should prepare for the worst.
Ah, my point with the internet example wasn't the missing internet itself.

In an office, someone will fix it if the internet is down. That's why you have an office: to outsource infra to people so you can focus on your own job: writing, coding, whatever it is.

If you're remote, your internet being down is _your_ problem and you're expected to figure it out. You have more responsibility—and that was an unexpected part of working remotely for some people.
> prices would just be very high for the scarse goods

I believe that's getting close to the description of profiteering - depending on what exactly is not available and gets expensive. This could cause poor people to rebel, which again, results in empty shelves.
Unfortunately, in economics not only we cannot perform randomized, controlled, double-blind studies, but also reproducibility is impossible.
I don't know how common each system is worldwide, but the UK system (no traffic against a "green man") is different to the system in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and California ("green man" but turning traffic must give way to pedestrians).

I do prefer the UK way, but the downside in a car-centric place like most of Britain is there's much less time for pedestrians to cross. You often wait over a minute for the pedestrian light to go green.
Wuhan Province Cremating Hundreds per Day While China Reports Dozens
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#High_positive_void_coef...

These analysts say that Soviet authorities appear to recognize that operator errors at the Chernobyl plant on the night of April 25-26 were not the sole cause of the accident, and that technical flaws in the reactor’s design contributed to the worst accident in the 44-year history of nuclear energy.

In particular, they said, a distinctive feature of the Chernobyl design, which sets it apart from conventional nuclear power plants in most of the world, is its tendency to generate a sudden and uncontrollable burst of power if large steam bubbles, or “voids,” are allowed to form in the reactor core, as they did before the accident.

This peculiarity of the Chernobyl type of graphite reactor, called a positive void effect, is now seen as a decisive factor in the accident, one that transformed successive blunders on the part of Soviet operators over a period of hours into a catastrophe.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-23-mn-15781-...
Yeah, so at places in Sweden we have the most stupid buss stops.

You have main road, then a curb followed by a bicycle lane followed by a buss stop with a pedestrian sidewalk behind it.

If you want to get to the buss you need to cross the cycle-lane.

If the cyclist is careless and speeding, and you maybe are not paying enough attention, bad stuff can and do happen.
Thanks for mentioning the origin! As a Debian user I've only ever heard it told along with "In a world without walls who needs Windows".
I am starting to get somewhat disenchanted with the whole “the Mac just works” thing. I suppose their recent dip in QA effort is to blame to some extent. But also, whenever something doesn’t work, and Apple doesn’t care enough to fix it —- tough luck. On Linux you at least have options if you’re a technical person and are not afraid of the command line.

I just wish I could pay a company that would have engineers and designers building an actual user-friendly, stable OS on top of Linux. Mac OS, with all its faults, is still miles ahead in terms of usability and polish.
Sure, once you’ve unpacked it into a structure. It’s used for sending stuff over the wire, but also for storing on disk etc.

Conceptually it was dealt with as one string, which happened to contain nulls.
If this virus is like sars, it doesn't seem to transmit well in hot environments (which is why sars just went away during summer) at least it will not transmit as well in Africa.
> a competent leader (which Gates is beyond a doubt) is going to be more efficient at executing on a goal ...

Bill Gates was perhaps a competent businessman, exploiting his powerful network, intellectual property laws, destroying the competition, lobbying. He was ruthless. It doesn't make him competent at everything. Especially something like climate change that requires a global policy of reduction in energy use (anyone who tells you climate change will be solved by innovation, energy efficiency, solar panels and fusion alone is lying to you.)

Bill Gates invested billions on nuclear energy innovation for a decade now.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/12/bill.gates.clean.ener...

What are the results? The world's energy use kept piling up, instead of being replaced by clean energy sources. Any decrease in GHG emissions in the developed world is a consequence of globalization and automation. It's just accounting. The GHG emissions have increased elsewhere.

Climate change is a governmental problem that requires investing in energy use reduction, insulation, public transportation, and the like. The solutions are there and have been for decades, but won't be implemented because we keep listening to tech evangelists.
Hasn't this been solved by using SSH certificates instead of keys?
Allow me to pick a nit. You're argument still stands but he hasn't been consistently at number 1. He has been surpassed by Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim and now Jeff Bezos. What he has done is manage to stay at top three, and always recover the top position after a fall - that is, until Bezos came along.
"Hey Xi, what's going on, this latest batch of infected is enormous! Is there something going on? We need to get on this now!"

"Oh whoops, we accidentally sent you next week's numbers."

Oh my WTF, they plonked the numbers into a quadratic and have so far predicted 5 days of deaths accurately.
China's still not cooperating. It didn't work.
The entire Last Podcast Network is going Spotify Exclusive. Last Podcast on the Left, Wizard and the Bruiser, the Story Must Be Told, Page 7, The Brighter Side, others I haven't listened to.
They are somehow taking their entire back catalog with them as well.
Don't know why you're getting downed for this, sample size of two:

My dad's response to "smart TVs send back everything you watch and Samsung are the worst" was "I expected as much..." <— he owns a Samsung smart tv

Person who works for civil service who is not yet even 30
"our government is crazy inefficient, each service and their data are siloed and cannot talk to each other, so we can't know that Joe Bloggs in HMRC is the Joe Bloggs in the NHS and Joe Bloggs on this council tax register... Why can't everything be connected like it is with Google/Facebook. I find myself connecting things up so I get better suggestions"

In my opinion the surveillance economy is one bad leader away from a 1984 hell on earth but that opinion isn't nearly as prevalent as people in tech would hope. But it's also not constructive to patronize people with the opinion "oh it's because they don't know how bad it is..." etc

I think some people don't care. Some people see some of the value the metrics driven approaches can bring. Some people don't agree that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.

After all I find it hard to believe that all those devs at Facebook and Google are categorically amoral - life isn't black and white like that
I think each day the infected count increases 2000 to 3000. It indicates a capacity limits at the health care system to diagnose and confirm an infected case.
I do the same, except I tend to buy vinyl records if they're available rather than downloads.
Applied Thinking for Intelligence Analysis [pdf]
That's legalistic though.

If you're withholding the fruits of labor from workers because "too bad, bro; you signed the paper" then you're not really trying to be kind to anyone. You just want to be rich and appear to be kind.
am i correct in my understanding: in their attempt to intentionally leak voter PII to their canvassers they inadvertently leaked it to the whole internet?

EDIT: "Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Likud supporters to download the application in order to help draft more supporters and voters."
this twitter thread was also about getting WHO feet on the ground as he literally waved them off a couple posts earlier. it's a win in my book.
That's by design. You wouldn't want a NUL in the middle of a string in any modern system. It's such an esoteric use case that there's no point in even supporting it. There are plenty of binary data interfaces to do what you want in situations where it actually makes sense.

PHP supports NUL, and the result is a HUGE amount of extra support code to handle it, spread all through the PHP codebase (introducing TONS of bugs over the years), all for the 0.00001% use case. Not a good trade.

Complaining about lack of NUL support would be like complaining that most text editors don't display the DC1 control character. It's just not useful in 99.999% of use cases, so there's no point in supporting it. You'd use a specialized tool instead.