skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article could make one more concerned about that problem just by making them aware of it. But if you were previously concerned about it, this news should reassure you, since now you know that there is a solution available even in crisis conditions.
If we do a "full lockdown" like this, there needs to be a suspension of basically all bills (mortgage, rent, etc.) for the period of the shutdown +20%.
Well then we're screwed :(

But wait, haven't there been quarantines during past epidemics?
Yep, like we're seeing now with insulin.
Maybe of interest is our entry for Graphistry. Agree that a lot of the impact right now, and for weeks to come, is the behavior change needed to prevent and slow down the coming shortages and enable containment to get back up. Social media has failed to live up to its promise, and instead is empowering misinformation to translate into deadly behavior.

We're ramping up on a misinformation detection & notification project specialized on COVID right where the misinformation happens. We're putting together an open effort around data scientists, data engineers, & developers on one side (GPU graph neural nets, collaborative investigation stack, and TBD for anti-misinfo response bots + platform abuse filings), and analysts on the other (guiding the systems, identifying categories of abuse, identify underlying coordinated activity). This builds on existing collaborative efforts & tech here.

More info in days to come. Volunteers welcome from above specialties! We're gathering additional resources to help ramp up, a lot happening fast.
We, as a society, are entirely able to produce this stuff. It's just not instantaneous to do so, nor to ship it.
South Korea has kept their infection rate low enough that it doesn't overwhelm their hospitals. The fatality rate is more like 5% if you can't get treated because the hospital is full.
Some of the bottles were going for $70. It wasn't a marginal mark up. He also probably bought the entire supply in a store, so he wasn't correcting inefficiency.

And the AG too the supply and donated it, not him.
Are you suggesting that the CDC didn't consider the impact to the healthcare system when doing their epidemiological projections? I think you are severely underestimating the CDC's competence.
her husband did all the work and when he died from the radiation she toke the credit...and died as well. sure, let's celebrate that.
I wonder if it has to do with the spread of e-commerce more generally. L. L. Bean is a mail-order company. Returns are one way to reassure customers who can't even look at the clothes before buying them. (And Amazon has a pretty generous return policy on clothes now for that reason.)

But people are used to buying things sight unseen now; maybe the ironclad return policy doesn't have the value -- to the company -- that it once did.
not necessarily, more like arbitrage. people in the city cannot get it because the population bought it up, but they can Amazon it. in the rural areas a case of it may be a normal month's supply. so if you didn't buy everything on the shelf in the rural store then the store could potentially be fine. of course there is still profiteering issue but again a decent markup, not an exorbitant one would be fine.
> As I see it, you have a choice between three options.

You left out a fourth option:

4. People exercise common sense and take precautions on their own initiative to minimize their risk.

You don't have to wait for the government to tell you what to do.
As a current Startup School, Europe-based participant [1], this raises an interesting question: if the whole program can be run virtually in a remote-only fashion, then perhaps it can be open for startups from anywhere in the world?

[1] - https://www.startupschool.org/companies/scanrepeat
I'm trying to agree that, in the near future, we probably need to do something to give people financial relief because of coronavirus. Hopefully most people can agree on that whether they are believers in UBI or not.

I don't really like arguing about UBI. If I had realized you were pro UBI and basically looking for an excuse to tell me I'm wrong, I wouldn't have bothered to answer you.
I don't think it's extreme. He's quoting someone demanding that people ignore all public health information and engage in insurrection. We should stop listening to people who are actively and willfully undermining public health.
I used a similar algorithm when developing a Chrome extension a few years ago:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-highlight/dnk...

Longer sentences had an inherent advantage, so I controlled for that by reducing sentence scores as a function of the sentence length.
> Create a crud app where you can "trade grandmas" - I help bring groceries to your relatives nearby me, you help to bring some to my relatives near you.

There could be unforeseen consequences of this, such as criminals using it to find vulnerable people to rob. If you were a grandmother living alone, would you be comfortable opening your door to a random person who found you on a web site? Or would you rather trust a neighbor who lived in your own apartment building?
> "He's speculating on a commodity, it's just not corn or potash."

Lives are not at stake because of corn or potash speculation.
AI and the Insurance Industry – Winners and Losers of the Coming Revolution
That makes sense - I'd assume restricting movement to just ast-based edits would be too constrained and would ultimately just limit the types of transformations users could perform (especially important when the syntax is wrong, or when making the AST temporarily invalid).

Have you had a look at the various Emacs plugins for editing lisp? Given the simplicity of the syntax, it would be fairly simple to make a lisp editor only performs AST-based transformations, however most lisp plugins support a mixture of both AST and line-based transformations. I find this approach to be very natural, allowing me to rely on the AST when I need it, and then being able to ignore it when I don't need it. My main motivation for gopcaml-mode was just to achieve a similar editing experience for OCaml code.
Unfortunately, such a company would be a lightning rod for the mob's ire as the downvotes to this comment so clearly illustrates.
Ahem: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-confirms-that-donald...

According to [Die Welt], Trump was trying to get the Tübingen-based
CureVac company — which also has sites in Frankfurt and Boston — to
move its research wing to the United States and develop the vaccine “for the
U.S. only.” ... On Sunday afternoon, Germany’s Health Ministry told
Reuters that its spokesperson had been quoted correctly in the newspaper
article, confirming that Washington had attempted to take over the
biopharmaceutical company. Government sources indicated that Berlin
was now offering CureVac financial incentives to remain in Germany.
Why not buy it directly from the supplier? Why pay tax and a mark-up when it can be obtained for a similar price the department store got it for??
They really shouldn’t. The example he’s setting is to buy up essentials before those in need can, maximize profits, then give puppy dog eyes once people rightfully call you out on taking advantage of people and getting praise for showing false remorse.

I doubt he really wanted to give it away. Knowing the internet, he probably got some death threats or he just realized he was facing actual penalties and decided it was time to finally throw in the towel. If he didn’t make the news, he’d still be finding ways to hustle.
Already seeing a lot of intergenerational hostility with this including the nickname "Boomer Remover" for the virus. Requiring Millennials to sacrifice their wellbeing for the sake of generations that they already harbor ill towards will exacerbate that generational conflict further. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, just that there will be lasting social consequences.
>And on April 7th it’s not like COVID will cease to exist...

This is the most important part.

Its not clear whats being done to prep for the end of lockdowns. Once everything resumes so will the spread (all) viruses
How do you think profiteers operate?

They buy large quantities of product, hoarding it until they can sell it for artificially inflated costs.

People buying toilet paper to use it are not harming the market. They are the market. Yes, if they collectively buy more of it prices will eventually go up. But it happens a lot slower and equilibrium is reached at a much lower price than when profiteers are involved.
Remote Collaboration Is More Than Just Communication
Demonstrating that revocation checking is pointless
The practice has existed forever. But the quantity and the product rule out "this is just what he does" as an explanation. He bought tens of thousands of sanitation items from states across the midwest in one road trip! He knew what he was doing, and why.
This made me think id need to do something on the DB server which I cannot:

“On your database server, run the following to install autossh”
I do bag my own stuff, pay with a card and use self-checkout whenever possible. It's not always an option.

Delivery in no way protects against the problem of an employee with poor hygiene doing awful stuff to your groceries. If anything, it makes it worse because a lot of the handling of it will be out of view for you and people are known to behave worse when no one is watching.
Continuing to adopt such a hostile tone still doesn't further the discussion. I am happy to debate this subject, but I will not reply further if you continue to make unnecessary personal attacks in your comments.

Is it your contention that the countries you mentioned do have sufficient tests and treatment facilities available to successfully implement the "third strategy" advocated by knzhou in the comment I first replied to? I can see little evidence that would support such a claim so far, in this discussion or otherwise.

China's recent official statistics may not be entirely trustworthy: they showed the expected exponential growth curve earlier on, but then levelled off remarkably quickly. In any case, its strategy has so far been primarily one of containment, with resources focussed on one specific area, Hubei, where the outbreak was also concentrated at the start. It is not known whether China has an effective testing or tracking regime in operation at this point, nor whether it has sufficient resources to treat large numbers of people if they became seriously ill in the absence of that containment, as may yet happen when the heavy quarantine measures are eventually lifted.

Japan's official statistics have also attracted scepticism, with the suspicion that they aren't testing widely enough to get an accurate picture of how the virus is spreading.

South Korea has had possibly the most successful response so far in terms of credible raw numbers and as such it is certainly worth looking at, but the strategy there has also been primarily one of containment. Again, that doesn't tell us anything about whether SK has the resources to look after much higher volumes of intensive care patients than usual if those containment efforts fail, or if heavy lockdown measures were not attempted and instead that "third strategy" of test, track and treat were used.

The UK isn't just "slightly larger" than Taiwan, it has almost 3x the population and almost 7x the land area. As I already acknowledged in the other thread long before you replied to me, I may have chosen too strong a word when I described three countries including Taiwan as having populations that were tiny compared to the UK, but my fundamental point stands in that we should not assume a strategy that could work at the scale of Taiwan would necessarily also work at the scale of the UK.

You argue for fact-based rebuttals, but where is the evidence that your examples are countries that do have sufficient testing and treatment facilities available to employ that test, track and treat strategy rather than the stronger quarantine measures that most countries are attempting?
Yeah, this doesn't really pass the sniff test. Can we get details regarding the fare basis codes before/after?
Team up with others and swamp them in paperwork. There are probably people organizing rent strikes right now; Italy has frozen many financial transfers so you'll find many takers. Good luck.
nope. My org could miss this for weeks. We would need alerting to tell us. We run a small data center on premises.
I’ve wondered if productions throughout history have used live actors in real deathmatches for shows. I know Apocalypse Now had real corpses procured for some of the scenes accidentally until someone made a correction.
This meme about people just not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps seems attractive based on anecdotes we all have had with slackers, but it lacks evidence. Millennials are increasingly saving when they can[0], increasingly staying home[1] and _not_ going out every other night. Clearly the younger generation understands saving is important. Yet 78% of American households are living paycheck to paycheck [2].

For an example - Say you rent a one bedroom in Boston for 2k, nearly half the average[3], and you share this one bedroom with a roommate making rent 1k/month. Minimum wage in MA is 12.75/hour - if you work part time, 30 hour weeks 50 weeks out of the year, you take home 1530 a month, leaving 530 a month for food, transportation, and student loans, while they continue your studies or interview for jobs. If they managed to spend just 430 on all those costs, and saved $100/month, it would take them 10 months to cover rent alone for just one month, forget about 3-6 months. Should this person be priced out of Boston schools and interviewing in the job market because they can’t save for a global pandemic shutting down all service jobs?

[0]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/02/07/millennials-...

[1]

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30003-5

[2]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-i...

[3] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ma/bo...

Edit: fixed numbers, minimum wage in MA is actually 12.75, not 12
Well, that's what they are doing: they are effectively only refunding the now lower price of the cancelled ticket. They are just pretending it's still the old price.
I think that popular figures trying to exacerbate a pandemic by sowing public distrust deserve a bit of vitriol in response. It's not a subject that's really amenable to polite argument; Sherrif Clarke is killing people, as surely as if he walked up and shot them in the head.
Pervasive. Metal swords give a nice * ting * when they clash, and there is a whole discipline called stage combat precisely around dealing with how to fight safely using these weapons.

There are steps you're meant to go through before and during each move. We were taught "CRAP": you Communicate your move, the opponent Retreats, you Advance / Attack into the now empty space, the opponent Parries "into" the attack, but their body is out of the way. The idea being here that if you forget the choreography at any point, you're still safe, because you can't attack anything before the receiver has retreated out of the place you're attacking. However, the trick is to do this as smoothly and fluidly as possible, because that sells. It takes practice and maintenance not to let the emotion and adrenaline of the scene take over, and stick to the process, while ignoring the muscle memory of the choreo. It's often not considered an important skill during an audition by casting directors or directors, relative to credits and actual acting, and therefore not by actors themselves. Result: dangerous fights.

But cardboard or foam swords? No way. You want the audience to be on the edge of their seats, and that requires metal.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-can-...

GiveWell, their source, actually has a spreadsheet which if I'm reading correctly says it's $1690 to save someone under 5.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zLmPuddUmKsy3v55AfG_...
He kind of did, they just took advantage of the governments late response.
why would you need / how would you get

childcare when we're all quarantined at home?
Well if they do drop them before the custom ship arrives, what's the evidence for the destruction of evidence, and the trafficking for that matter ?
That’s far from the most inhumane post I’ve seen on HN
Every year we hear this could be the end of Bay Area dominance. Hasn't happened yet. No reason it will now.
I suggest reading the original article:

> But what about the morality of hoarding products that can prevent the spread of the virus, just to turn a profit?

> Mr. Colvin said he was simply fixing “inefficiencies in the marketplace.” Some areas of the country need these products more than others, and he’s helping send the supply toward the demand.

> “There’s a crushing overwhelming demand in certain cities right now,” he said. “The Dollar General in the middle of nowhere outside of Lexington, Ky., doesn’t have that.”

> He thought about it more. “I honestly feel like it’s a public service,” he added. “I’m being paid for my public service.”
I canceled an airplane trip I had planned for later this week precisely for this reason. I don't know that all flying should be stopped--I'm sure there are people whose reason for having to fly is urgent enough to outweigh the risk, and they should be able to make that decision for themselves. But I'm not one of them, so I'm not taking the risk.
A) It wasn't bootleg hand sanitizer. It was hand sanitizer purchased from retail outlets.

B) He wasn't hoarding it. He was explicitly reselling it.

"Colvin sold 300 bottles of the hand sanitizer at a markup on Amazon, The Times reported."

So the law 100% applies to this situation.
He only made a public apology because he was in the spotlight. Also he donnated his stock before the investigation begun.
This CDC article [1] Estimates worst case at 1.7 million deaths. Let's dig into that.

They say it could be up to 214 million infected ( which is 64.8% of the population, so my number differs from theirs by 5.2%), but they say only 1.7 million deaths. That's a CDC projected death rate of 0.8% .... which is extremely optimistic.

The WHO says 3.4% [2]

China 3.6% - 6.1% [2]

Italy 3-4% [2]

So I have no idea why the CDC would make their estimates based on a 0.8% death rate. That doesn't seem realistic to me, especially when we know the US has less hospital beds per capita than for example Italy.

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coro...

[2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
Wow, that's a cynical view. Is this the backdrop for another push to end Obama-care? As in claiming there's going to be death-councils deciding to lives and who dies?

But, I guess this question is just begging for all of us arm-chair quarterbacks, fear mongers and un-informed to jump in with anecdotes and opinions knowing full well that only time will tell which it is.

Personally, I think only a few things are clear.

1) Our society and government is totally unprepared.

2) This is going to be a bad year financially for most of us and a terrible year for many of the poorer among us. I just hope that we don't end up pushed yet another group into homelessness.

3) It seems like most of us don't know some really basic information about disease - like:

Q: How many died in the 2017-2018 flu season?

A: 61,000 in the US.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html.
And, nope, that's not 61 people, not 610 or not 6100. That's right, the CDC estimates 61,000 people who died in the US alone in 1 year from the flu.

Which left me wondering why hasn't more been done to stop the spread of the flu?

How many have died from Coronavirus? A: 68 as of today in the US. 3,199 in China. 6,515 WorldWide. 3,213 in China, 1,809 in Italy. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Time for an anecdote. My wife had a medical emergency about a month ago - before Coronavirus. The emergency room was swamped. Sick people everywhere. Some not too sick. A bunch who were really sick. The nurses were handling out masks to everyone asking them to wear them to avoid making others sick. It was crazy. I had no idea.

Why now?
Well, I mean it seems like profiteering to me.
I am curious, why were onions specifically banned? I imagine they had some reason to believe onions were uniquely susceptible to this kind of marker manipulation in a way that potatoes, garlic, cucumber, etc. aren't. But I cannot think of how onions are unique in this respect.
We have an explosion of cases in New Orleans. I don’t think we’re off the hook
That’s for a judge or jury to decide, not an internet mob.
Is a blanket ban on re-hires legal? It does not sound legitimate/legal.

Surely a hiring decision should be based on employee skills/performance, and not punish general life choices?
No, it's not foolish. We need to keep markets liquid to avoid a lending crisis. That's why the fed announced asset purchases. They don't do them all at once. They buy steadily over a period of time to help keep prices stable. That's very important.

They had to do rate cuts now because it takes a long, long time for them to work (measured in years rather than months). That was a preventative measure, not a band-aid.

Look, guys, I promise you the fed knows wtf they're doing. These guys live and breath to be ready to respond to these type of emergencies.

We should be far more worried about (the lack of) policy responses from DC. DC has no idea wtf they're doing, and it shows.
Ohio governor said that most likely schools will be closed for the calendar year.
Well, I counter this with "Just do it anyways".

When the SHTF, we individuals, clinics, and local areas won't give a shit what DC and their lackeys say or do. We're on our own, in a local collective way.

If the 3d printed part is good for 1 person, then I'll print 10. And my buddy will print 10, and they'll print 10.
Author here...

Might be misunderstanding, but United is letting you change the route (X to Y) and dates between flights-- that's not the problem. What's messed up here is that United is not showing you the best prices available on the market when you're actually changing your flight, and that's regardless of what route or type of flight you're changing to.

To summarize, one of our users bought a flight and when they went to change it, United showed us the "new flight's price" as something almost twice the actual online rate if you search on United.com or GFlights.
Panic is turning out to be extremely expensive for all of us.

Mitigating panic at this point seems more important than the virus.
Ask HN: How can I help towards Covid-19?
Hi,

What can a software/tech person do to contribute/help towards Covid-19?

Thanks.
someone who stockpiles 17000 bottles is not just a “random guy hoarding”
Great resource

>> <list>.append(<el>) # Or: <list> += [<el>]

Not a fan of the += syntax in this instance - seeing .append instantly lets me know I'm dealing with a list whereas += can be used on almost anything
Since it comes up so often now, reformat the drive and then do what to verify that it's a legit drive, and not one that advertises as being larger than it actually is?

Put a bunch of large media files on it and verify that they still play properly?
You don't even need an extension if you don't want. Safari has 'Disable Javascript' as an option in the Develop menu. Firefox and Chrome have the option in the Developer Tools settings.
I know what the guidelines are. I'm questioning the guidelines.
Stopping production for a significant period of time was the first gut punch covid is throwing. The second one seems to be landing on Europe and third will be North America.

This means China will have a head start on getting supply up and running.

If the ROW is at a standstill in production, China will fill that gap which could further displace a lot of production in the west.

China getting containment in order didn’t bounce back but also bounce ahead in many places.