skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I propose a less effective, but easier to implement, way to optimise who to test. It relies upon a simple result from network/graph theory that I will outline here.

Assume, if you will, that typical social networks contain a small number of people who are highly connected (hubs) and a large number of people who are much less connected (spokes). The hubs could be e.g. your GP/physician, your teacher, or even just your popular friend. It would not be surprising if these people have a much high transmission rate for a virus than people who have a much smaller social circle - all other things being equal, and also crucially, they often connect mutliple sub-networks (GP is a good example here).

We would of course like to ensure that we test (perhaps regularly) the people who are at the center of these networks - the hubs. How do we find out who these people are? It turns out that you can do this probabilistically. First, I pick someone at random from the population. I then instruct them to pick a contact/friend at random. The person they pick is statistically much more likely to be a 'hub' than a 'spoke', even though we have no explicit knowledge of the network and carried out this process randomly. A good way to visualise this is to imagine a toy network of say one person in the middle, connected to everyone else, and 10 other people, all connected to the person in the middle but nobody else. You can see that in 10/11 cases, a 'spoke' is selected who then goes on to select the 'hub' (what we want) whereas in only 1/11 cases the hub is initially chosen, who then chooses one of the other 10 contacts at random.

A practical implementation of this could be to choose N people at random and send them a letter or text message instructing them to pick e.g. the (modulo) 5th person from their contacts list whose name begins with R. They would then contact this person and inform them that they should present themselves at a doctor and be tested should they develop any symptoms. There are obvious optimisations to be made here in terms of name distributions and other subtleties of course, and certainly providing a list of fallback randomiser instructions, if they can't find someone fitting that criteria.

Bottom line is, even if many people don't comply, you can increase the probability that you end up prioritising testing of people who are very connected, and thus likely to spread disease, which can be invaluable when your testing capacity is constrained.
This is spot on. My one and only gripe is with this part:

> So how do you keep this kind of monster running? First, you make sure you never allow it to use too much of the CPU, because empirically, it'll mean that you're getting distracted too much and are timing out some requests while chasing down others. You set your system to "elastically scale up" at some pitiful utilization level, like 25-30% of the entire machine.

Letting a Python web service, written in your framework of choice, perform CPU-bound work is just bad design. A Python web service should essentially be router for data, controlling authentication/authorization, I/O formatting, and not much else. CPU intensive tasks should be submitted to a worker queue and handled out of process. Since this is Python we don't have the luxury of using threads to perform CPU-bound work (because of the Global Interpreter Lock).
> What's a good alternative?

You don't necessarily need one; it depends on what kind of application you have and what its bottleneck is. If your application is network I/O bound, event-driven asynchronous I/O, which is what this article is describing, works fine, and a single process/thread even in a dynamic language like Python can handle a large volume of requests.

The specific issue this article is describing is due to a particular poor implementation of event-driven asynchronous I/O, not a general problem with the entire concept.

If your application is CPU bound, then yes, you need to use threads (or multiple processes), and you shouldn't be trying to mix event-driven asynchronous I/O with that.
Or maybe they support decreased military spending or other waste to pay for it.
I used to do this too. You know instead of cold-turkey with withdrawal symptoms you can just gradually lower your intake.

On the first day or of the break I'll just drink half the amount I normally drink. Then by day 2 I'll drink a third. Probably nicer to ease into it.
Yeah, that will never happen. Because we are immortal! All the civilizations before us weren't that smart and rich!
“FAANG types aren't going to be as affected as early stage startup types or freelancer types.”

I wouldn’t be so sure. Corporations use down cycles to shed employees. And often they will hire contractors.
What a fun experiment! Docker still sucks.
Makes sense, the point of an SLA is that you agree to pay back the customer's money if you don't meet it. What does it mean to have an SLA for a free product?
Fed May Need to Buy Other Assets to Replenish Tool Kit
Reader mode availability is no excuse for inaccessible web design.
Take a look at the most lasting, highly successful open source projects used by most companies today.

They have something in common:

- Full-time software engineering managers? 0%

- Full-time product managers? 0%

- Full-time project managers? 0%

- Committed engineers focusing in implementation working on flexible time schedules: 100%

The true inefficiencies that managers spend their careers looking for, are right there in front of the mirror.

https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=114
Yes, you're right, bad mental math

it's ~ 4%

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
“So powerful and ancient are viruses, that I would summarize their role in life as ‘Ex Virus Omnia’ (from virus everything).”

We have met the enemy and he is us. Viruses may be both the gravest threat to our species and mothers and fathers of it. They are also, to a first approximation, the Red Queen, who must be obeyed. If we can disobey her, and distribute an effective vaccine in time to dent her latest royal tour, it will be an epic level up: the power to not consent to impregnation by horizontal gene transfer.

It seems that we're not quite there yet.
I think a more relevant headline would be "Situations with a power differential have a sexual abuse problem". This applies to teacher/student, boss/employee, therapist/patient, parent/child and many other situations.
Not OP, but I researched scalable anomaly detection systems for power-generating assets. We collaborated with a large industrial engine manufacturer on this work. https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07500. The key challenge customers encountered was the prevalence of false alarms that led to unnecessary service.
I used the word relate as in the definition of the word: "to have or establish a relationship", "to have relationship or connection" and "to respond especially favorably". I say this because I have friends who became homeless, and I care for them deeply and feel terrible I can't help.

I didn't grow up in an English speaking country. I guess more appropriate would be to empathize. I'll use that one next time. Thanks. :)
2 problems:

1. The bottleneck in testing capacity in the US will likely be labor.

2. Testing asymptomatic people is probably not very effective because they are unlikely to have high viral loads.
Thought provoking and insightful analysis of online interactions today
You can replace SSH requirement with virtio-vsock (also supported by Qemu)

https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/blob/mast...
My most recent team ran a version of XP, and I found IPM (iteration planning meeting) to be one of the most effective and important things we did. We had a very good back and forth with our Product Manager, with conversations usually going something like this:

PM: Let's go through our prioritized features. First we would like Feature A.

Team: That's probably easy, we can do it in a day or so.

PM: Great. Next we need Feature B. I know this one looks a little more complicated.

Team: Yeah, that's more like a week.

PM: That probably isn't worth it to me. We can probably push this feature back a couple releases, and maybe take out part of it.

Team: Would it help if we just did Part X? That seems like it would give you most of the value and it would be much easier.

And so on. The constant cost-benefit analysis, reprioritization, and rescoping was a great lever and made the team very productive.

The other 4 things, all related I think, that made us effective were:

• Everyone sitting together. I could go ask the designer or PM a clarifying question at any time.

• TDD. I would constantly start to write a test and realize that something didn't make sense—some assumptions were conflicting, or we needed to do another story before the one I was working, etc.

• Pairing. Many times I'd have written the test, had cleared my plan with the PM, and my pairing partner would point out a different perspective or catch one of the things I described above.

• Frequent releases, about quarterly at first and down to bi-weekly at one point.

In all cases, what we were really doing is optimizing the value of NOT doing things. We were helping the PM understand her costs, but we were also helping her eliminate huge chunks of wasteful work, e.g. building things users didn't want, things that didn't integrate well, and so on. Estimating was a piece of it, but it was really the buy-in from the business to accept our estimates and more importantly to trust us as partners in the scoping and planning process, and doing that process fluidly, that made us successful.
Rachel's posts would be so much more useful if she would just say what she meant, instead of twisting everything into knots to find a way to say it backwards so she can be sarcastic and condescending while doing it.

I'm sure there's some useful information in here, but it's not worth digging through the patronization to find it.
If this spreads widely enough and quickly enough the numbers we have point to a death rate that isn't even in the same ballpark as traffic fatalities. There are 7 billion people on this planet and none of them have immunity to this.
See, item 11 of https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-...

I am not arguing that teams should work on their own ideas. I am arguing that there are many ways a team can deliver on the requests of senior management without using Scrum. Scrum is very dogmatic and this goes against the principles set out in the Agile manifesto.
I started in 2008. People weren't changing jobs very often. You didn't see signing bonuses, or having multiple offers from top companies. It was like having a normal job. There really wasn't bootcamps or a crazy startup culture at that time. Most people I worked with got into it because they loved computers or programming their whole lives. But in general, compared to the horror stories I hear about the dot com crash, it was nothing.
> It is not directly Google's fault, they are required by laws to provide the data.

It's Google's fault for collecting the data in the first place.

They could have collected it anonymously rather than tie it to a user but they chose not to do so.
I've always said, give someone the psychedelics and a safe place to be, but let them be on their own. Lots of travelling to do, no need to stay tethered to this realm by having to converse with a therapist.
It's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted. Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them?

We've also had countless posts talking negatively on the very merger that lead this iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas) with no regard for the administration that basically encouraged the merger.

It's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are corporate shills.
Of course bacteria have resistance. Bacteria mutate, some random mutation will be resistant to a given antibiotic, and that new strain will propagate and dominate.

Lots of people fall to understand that, which is why we have antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhea in the wild now.
I'd start with Python. With the exception of (3), all the other resources you've mentioned are - to me - about getting conceptually better at developing.
Mentioning your background does help, actually. I'd recommend 'Automate the Boring Stuff with Python'.
That way you'll learn while also seeing how tangible the benefits can be. https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

I'm also adding a link to an article I've written a while back for non-developers looking to get into coding:
https://code.likeagirl.io/making-coding-skills-useful-as-a-n...
FlightSensor: AI Insect Detector to reduce pesticide use
Can you explain plz. Max is 4mb and it can handle that.
> The homeless issue is so complex

Is it though? I'm an Australian so take my comments with a grain of salt. Seeing the US from an external viewpoint, it seems the mental gymnastics that people go through in the US to basically wreck the public spaces and infrastructure is fascinating. From a purely selfish point of view being surrounded by homeless unmedicated crazy people is a bad thing, the solution is fairly obvious - cheap medical for those that can't afford it, homeless shelters for the less fortunate, build more houses so that houses are cheaper, cheap education. Looking from the other side of the world, what started out as apparent greed some years ago has now become ideology - there is no solution. There are some with the same ideology here, they are trying to create the same situation, fortunately they are not winning, though it's a continual fight.

I've had the same argument with many people here - the argument seems to be dying though, which I find promising, why should I pay taxes? Well you should pay taxes for roads, you need roads? well yes. You want education for your children? well yes. Sewerage? Well yes, and so on. By enumerating the things that taxes pay for seems to make them acceptable.

Do you want to be surrounded by crazy people when you go out? No, well we should pay taxes to have cheap health etc. I was at our state library yesterday, it was crazy people free, there are always a couple of people sleeping in the library, but they seem to be looked after. There's a lot of support infrastructure that seems to keep them somewhere, I don't know really, but I know if the government spending is reduced they'll reappear so taxes are paid. Is there waste in my tax money? probably, the idea that private enterprise has no waste though is farcical - I've been a corporate consultant.
>The essential problem is that static credentials are transmitted and can be copied. If they used a randomly generated code to unlock the cars (needs to be generated offline) then that would solve this issue.

Not necessarily. Relay attacks are very hard to defeat, regardless of your crypto scheme:

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/just-pair-11-radio-gadgets-can...
Honestly the top-side omni-bar is what I dislike about a lot of mobile browsers. It's nice for seeing the web page but, imo, all frequently used controls should be at the bottom of the screen. Firefox Lite actually has a really strong gui with a few caveats! None of the mobile browsers, including Brave, are perfect in terms of layout. But if Brave could steal the bottom gui from Firefox Lite or if Firefox Lite had Brave's 'just works' factor, I'd be pretty happy.
Anyone you can think of that's not on this list: https://www.ffiec.gov/npw/StaticData/Y15SnapShot/20181231_20...
Can they do Honda, please?
"...lets use local products and not stuff from half way across the world."

That ship sailed 70 years ago. We could maybe go back to the brief era of limited international trade in the inter-war era, aka the Great Depression, but it won't be fast or easy.
I think it's important to understand that SnapChat is intentionally confusing.

The UI is designed to be opaque so that some amount of effort, or asking your friends, is required to figure it out.

Then, once you have, you feel invested in it, and are less likely to abandon it.
I had no idea IncrediMail was still around. I used it in the early 2000s before I discovered Thunderbird. The sound effects and animations were fun until they got annoying.
I think I misunderstood your comment - you are right, Brave's status quo is that they keep all of the revenue from by replacing publishers ads (minus they amount they give to users). My point was that in theory, if:

1) advertisers were willing to pay Brave the same amount as they do existing advertisers, and

2) Brave took a similar cut as existing advertisers (including user payouts), and

3) Publishers were actually taking BAT from Brave

Then there wouldn't be much of a financial difference in who was placing ads. #3 is obviously not the case currently, which seems to be the point you were making.

To be 100% clear: I don't support what Brave is doing, have never used their products, and think their entire business model and its associated crypto-nonsense is at best a waste of time.
OK, thanks. I am a bit of a broken record in regards to recommending the use of Reader mode. This is more fuel to my madness.
> In March 2016,Boeing sought,and the FAA approved,removal of references to MCAS from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM),ensuring 737 MAX pilots were unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the aircraft’s handling without pilot command.

Are the execs in jail?
I mean... you do have to parse text formats. HTTP parsing may be a solved problem, but that doesn't mean the overhead or complexity of doing so disappears.

Also, TLS is not really ideally lightweight for RPCs, but you should absolutely encrypt your RPC traffic (imo.) So I really think the whole stack is out.

(P.S.: If you are wondering what kinds of 'lightweight' replacements for TLS exist, I think my personal favorite attempt is CurveCP, although it is a bit dated nowadays. I wouldn't often recommend people roll their own, but you could certainly do something simple with NaCl/libsodium directly. Maybe QUIC also fits the bill?)
RPC systems come in many different levels like programming languages. While there are low level RPC systems which are just a simple layer around web requests, there are others that do a lot more. They can do retries, host selection, and stateful operations like the article mentions.

These systems tend to take care of a bunch of easy to mess up logic which tends to be accumulate around any system that wants to send something and not mess up. Any sufficiently old web request system tends to look identical to a high level RPC system designed badly.

So choosing an RPC system should give you all the features you’d eventually end up building around using web requests without spending your time rewriting it.
CDC 2019-NCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel Instructions for Use[PDF]
> Europe has a higher proportion of fortunes controlled by heirs, not innovators, than do the U.S. or Asia

I wonder what they consider to be heirs? The difference can be just one generation.
So how do independents interconnect their routes?

I think the Canadian issue is that incumbents aren't even peering with transit providers.
Ah, they are free now, so perhaps my impression is out of date.
You know what would the "middle ground" solution be? Government buying masks at those spike prices to give them away for free to people who need them. This way you get all the benefits: everyone gets a mask when they need one and producers get incentive to increase supply.

Now an interesting plot twist:
Those masks not only do not protect against coronavirus (because the virus is too small, and can get through), they actually increase the risk of infection (because they serve as virus incubators, especially when they become wet)
Yeah but that’s not as good of a headline /s
Citation needed. You can write anything you want in any language you want, but if your team is experienced with Python then they will continue to ship value quickly. Sure, maybe if they were all well versed in brainfuck they could ship things quicker.

Narrowing in on the rather specific point about shipping things with Python and ignoring the larger argument that it doesn't freaking matter if things are not as efficient as they could possibly be is quite odd to be honest. I'm sure some of the arguments in the blog post would apply to whatever language you had in mind while writing your reply.
It’s an interesting post to read. Have another go if you can, but I very much agree with you on the tone issue. Imagine if these were ones own notes that had to be read through the next time something like this happened. A more succinct operational — dare I say: positive! — way of writing would really be welcome.
1. You can't find it if you don't look for it. Italy did more tests than the rest of Europe combined. Source as of 2nd of March (a bit old by now, but hey): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/

2. Italy was the first country in Europe to ban direct flights with China.

3. Really took some hard, unpopular decisions regarding quarantine and containment. Lombardy and Veneto are the main engine of the country.

4. Together with Japan, has one of the oldest, age wise, populations on the planet, the most fragile in this moment (reason for the high mortality rate).

5. Schools and university closed until April. Entire provinces will be in quarantine (no entry/exit unless for urgent reasons) .etc.

I hope other countries in Europe won't be in a worse situation in a few weeks time due to the delayed start they had. I think Italy did the best by searching as wide as possible even if this wrongly painted them as the source of the spreading in Europe. But, in the long run, it was for the best.
>You get cultures of competence and good judgement when there is a real competitive market

This doesn't even happen in markets that are highly competitive. Only professional and strict engineering standards work.

Not voodoo economics.
Which is a very small percentage of people in tech. In my network Rust is still very new to unknown in some tech companies. I will say Go is more the language that emerged.
https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines is why airlines go bankrupt so often.
I agree with the make money part. Other than making money there is no other incentive.
Right, I forgot about the government tie-in. This part of free rides is definitely dysfunctional. Bus drivers aren't obligated to do anything, for their own safety, except notify the transit police.
Tell HN: My MD says that Europe is not preparing for containment but pandemic
I had doctor visit on Friday and naturally I cried about the situation and requested why not enough is being done to contain the virus in Europe.

It was explained to me that a lot is being done but nobody is preparing for containment but for pandemic.

I do not know how much of this is true but it would explain the delayed reaction. They have just given up and consider the containment (politically?) impossible.

It is also possible that a media campaign has started to condition people to accept this https://www.corriere.it/salute/malattie_infettive/20_marzo_05/chi-sono-morti-positivi-coronavirus-italia-787076ba-5f18-11ea-bf24-0daffe9dc780.shtml (if you know about more such articles then please reference in comments).

To my surprise, my doctor's personal opinion also aligns with this sentiment that it is OK when old people die.

I am sharing this because it has helped me to better cope with the situation mentally.

I am upset that the human life is not valued but I do not have to pull my hair out while seeing nothing meaningful being done.
I love this. Making videos for right to die organization. Wow! That’s making a difference until the end.

I’m gonna bookmark this.