skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Serious question: Is this now a good time to refinance a home mortgage? Or should we wait until negative interest rates, which would surely set up the minimum positive mortgage rates. Or does it become irrelevant to mortgage rates at some point?
"No technologies detected."
> people touch their faces less often with gloves on

Is that true? I would assume people usually touch their faces because something itches or to adjust glasses/hair/a mask. I would expect gloves to have a minimal impact on this compared to just paying attention to never touching your face. I am open to seeing numbers on this, but don't know where to look for any.

> every time you change gloves the probability drops back to near zero

I think that's only true if you handle the gloves somewhat carefully (not that it's hard to do, but you do have to pay some attention). But washing your hands or using hand sanitizer also achieves the same. So the question comes back to "how often do people wash their hands/use hand sanitizer compared to how often they change gloves?", which is an empirical question I have no clear intuition for, but do expect for differences to not be that large.

> That's why health care professionals use gloves even when dealing with respiratory diseases like COVID-19.

I think healhcare professionals wear gloves for a number of reasons, chiefly because, if you're used to it, you can be more efficient when changing gloves than when washing your hands: medical professionals normally put on a new pair of gloves before touching you, then throw those away after they are done. Most people are not used to it, they do not constantly change gloves, and do not have to deal with moving from patient to patient. So just as I don't think it's useful to tell people to wear surgical overalls and change them every hour, I don't think we can tell them to use gloves the way they are used in a hospital.
Five Web Project Lessons
Own Cloud for Remote Work
That is a valid argument for neurological equipment, which has the highest liklihood of infection for prions, but during this pandemic, the likelihood of prion transmission is very remote, probably to the point that it approaches zero, and is probably zero for these valves.
After it’s over, we should investigate everyone at the CDC and related agencies, everyone in past administrations, investigate President Trump and his cabinet, investigate those tied to the corporations who outsourced our abilities to China, and determine why no one could anticipate this.

Why/how there weren’t tests for months. If only we could blame this on one person, then the solution would be easy — but this is a systemic problem.
>>What if a seller increased the price of a good or service because the seller’s costs of providing the good or service increased?

>If the seller can prove that the increased price is directly attributable to increases in the cost of labor or materials needed to provide the good or service, the seller may not be liable under the statute.

It's right there on the linked page. This basically prohibits large markups while allowing for passing of costs.
Easier for the Israeli government? They have issues with their voters trust as a lot of other countries right now. I doubt that will be very helpful.
And every ten years you replace the year ring?
The Netherlands closed all schools, cafes and restaurants yesterday (Sunday 15 March).

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/03/millions-stay-home-as-...
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Fair enough, but I wouldn't assume the difference goes from 72 hours to 3 between different inert surfaces.
True, but a 5 minute search for a competitor that'll save you $10 is effectively you working at $120/h in regards to your wallet.

Sure, I wish I could claim otherwise, but in my experience, it's almost never worth going for one-stop buys :/
But this company does research and development work. Getting exclusivity from them would not affect production capacity.
It is a bit pedantic but the truth is that you never really had it but nobody noticed before. If you invest in a ponzi scheme and your nominal value was $1M but you only put in $10K you didn't lose $1M you lost $10K plus opportunity costs.
It absolutely doesn't, in this case.

$ binwalk hanselman.img

DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13026788 0xC6C5E4 MySQL ISAM index file Version 6
13064186 0xC757FA MySQL ISAM index file Version 2
15513282 0xECB6C2 YAFFS filesystem, little endian
18368322 0x1184742 YAFFS filesystem, little endian
42678040 0x28B3718 MySQL ISAM compressed data file Version 6
59068786 0x3855172 YAFFS filesystem, little endian
60315328 0x39856C0 YAFFS filesystem, little endian
It's already illegal to practice medicine without a license. Banning information sharing is not a solution.
> debt snowball method

Dave Ramsey's "Snowball" method is nice for the hodunk folks who don't get finance, but really you should be paying off the highest interest rate first, since that will cost you the most.

Snowball is good from a psychological and (kind of) from an administrative sense, but it's mostly to help people take control of their financial situation, not make the most cost-effective long term choices.
Pokemon and Cowsay = Pokesay
It will turn around one day. It feels like that’s impossible but it will. If you’re holding anything the just keep holding them. If you have cash, start dollar cost averaging with it over a many, many months timeline.

We will be fine eventually. I don’t claim to know when - just that eventually better days will come.
Formal GDPR complaint against Google’s internal data free-for-all
US military dominates in expenses only and gear money can buy. When it comes to successful military actions recent conflicts don't show this dominance.

Does USA really prevented more wars since WWII than they caused?
Systems > words
Former fund manager here. A few thoughts:

- Trading halts are there to let people catch their breath, supposedly. More likely it's in order to be able to announce news, because without news what's gonna change?

- The news everyone wants now is fiscal stimulus. From what I can see, there's a lot of consumers whose personal finances will blow up if the economy shuts for a couple of months. So perhaps what needs to be announced needs to be aimed at those types of people. Certainly people will protest if fiscal stimulus means just handing money to people and companies who aren't in dire straights. How about a rent break or something drastic like that?

- The effect of systematic strategies should not be underestimated. By that I'm lumping passive index trading in with various forms of systematic rules based trading (my specialty actually). Things that hop on the momentum bandwagon will make the move more extreme. They will also tend to whipsaw on reversals. There's also risk parity funds, which now need to reposition based on risk being higher.

- Also you have to figure on short options players getting blown up on this kind of thing. (Vol trading was my other specialty). Basically what I mean is in recent years it's been quite enticing to simply sell options to pick up premium, which normally is a bit too expensive in relation to the expected volatility (ie it seems smart a lot of the time). Of course nothing is free, and when there's a blowout the short gamma guys are also pushing the market the wrong way.

- There's at least one major investment bank that thinks this will end soon, markets to recover in H2, and no systemic risk. (Got that from a friend chain so grain of salt.) Not sure what to think, since this is more a question of how politicians will respond than ordinary day-to-day reading tea leaves.

Interesting times.
Our grandfathers wanted to eat and drink with their families, but they ate k-rations with their fellow soldiers.

They got called to war. We are called to sit on our couches. We can do this.
Traders would be correct, in a rational market with perfect information. I'm not always a big fan of behavioral economics, but I think the relationship here is pretty intuitive. FUD is real and it causes (is?) volatility. We can't get rid of that, but we can at least smooth it out a bit.
If you are a publicly traded company it's impossible for all those things to not be tied to the stock market.
If the perceived value of the stock has fallen overnight and the futures market reflects that, won't the price instantly and automatically update to reflect that during the opening auction?
And yet he stopped flights from China before anyone else called for it and was called racist. Check your assumptions.

Testing was botched, a lot of his statements have been terrible, but the travel bans were in the “do something that seems premature” category and deserves recognition, since it will have saved lives.
Yet another guide about working remotely
Ask HN: What is your Covid-19 project and what help do you need?
There are lots of little projects taking off right now to address various aspects of the virus. I am sure some of us are already working on projects that could use an additional set of hands. If you have a project, please list it, what help you need, and hopefully, we can do a bit of matchmaking between projects & skill sets.
> Sounds a lot like a Universal Basic Income...

Completely different. Compensating people for an obvious widespread crisis is more like insurance targeted at a specific event.

If we had UBI, the government would still need to inject additional payments in to the economy on top of the regular UBI payments. The goal is to provide income that people haven't already budgeted for.
You make reference to a "weights" folder, but I'm not seeing it in the repo - am I looking in the wrong place?

EDIT: My mistake, you said it was in the library repo and there it was. For anyone who needs it - https://github.com/justadudewhohacks/face-api.js
I'm in the same boat. I discovered his channel about this time. Liked some of the in depth interviews. But then it quickly went weirdly political.
All: partisan flamewar is not welcome on this site, so please don't.

Pouring fuel on flames is an understandable but not a helpful stress response. The idea here is to do better for as long as we can.
Personality Changes as You Age
I thought it was sweet and helpful. More like a mom telling her hacker daughter what to expect, though. Maybe the culture has changed since you started?
>Monetary policy doesn't cure coronavirus, and until we see the end of the health crisis I don't think we'll see the floor of this ongoing crash.

There's a Planet Money that talks about the virus and the economic response to it. The main takeaway is that it's completely misguided to think about economics now. The underlying problem is a public health crisis. One of people interviewed in that episode likened the administration's response to wringing out your shirt as a storm is rolling in, when in fact we should be seeking shelter to stay dry.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815677688/episode-979-medicin...
I realize this is probably your point - but the statement is even WORSE with context!
China? China is why we're in this mess. They were unable to contain it, which is why it's now a pandemic. Their actions to shut down society (which the US is now taking, well before our hospitals are overrun) came way way way later.

Japan, I don't know about.

South Korea is doing a good job, however it only took one rogue patient (patient 31) to go from 'well-contained' to 'nation-wide' epidemic. This is why containment measures are doomed to fail if the goal is to prevent the spread entirely. It only takes one person to screw it up.
I didn't forget about you (well, us)—it's just that, even if they made it more affordable, they still couldn't increase attendance, since their space was pretty maxed out.
> It's not particularly obvious to me how gloves are all that different to hand-washing.

Only in the sense that hand-washing is more effective. In fact, most recommendations to use gloves also recommend hand-washing immediately after removal. However, it's not practical to wash hands every few minutes, literally hundreds of times a day. Gloves can provide protection between less frequent washings.
On the bright side, the virus might buy us a year or two before we hit climate change tipping points. Imho, climate change is the actual threat to future earnings.
At the edge, in some US states you don't need law degree for joining the bar, but you do need a Bachelors and apprentice work experience.
Mods: why is this flagged as a dupe? I clicked on "past" and this was the only one that showed up.
A Review of Magento PWA Studio
Not surprising this is happening a day after many states are in almost lockdown. Too many unknowns and lots of small business that lost their income. People are fearful and they have good reasons. Clearly this cannot continue for too long.

No one knows what will happen but I'm optimistic that like in South Korea and a couple of other places, next month things will get start looking better in Europa and US. FAANG companies should be fine too. They all have services that must be surging in demand. Amazon shopping, Netflix and FB usage, etc. Apple is likely to be the one most in trouble but they have so much cash they will survive. Ad spending will take a hit as companies wide down on spending, but should be only temporarily.

Currently no one knows what will happen. But long term investors should sleep well at night.
Top VMware Tools to Simplify Daily Administrative Tasks
Temporary loss of taste, smell reported in majority of “typical” Corona patients
I'll repost my comment from another thread:

"Unfortunately the CDC's existence, purpose, and funding is controlled by the government. Thus any discussion of their actions becomes embroiled in the political tribalism that dominates comments.

The staunch defenders of the current administration are often successful at shutting down criticism of their leader and their party's actions. Which is doing this country a huge disservice because right now we need to be fixing these issues, not continually arguing about blame."

People responding to this comment, please stop jumping to the defense of Trump. Stop whatabouting and trying to stop people from voicing their concerns. We've got a once-in-a-century problem facing the USA and the world, and we need to put aside knee-jerk circling-of-the-wagons to protect your party/team/tribe/side.
France fines Apple $1.2B for anti-competitive acts
There are other ways to smooth volatility.

For example, you could agree to buy or sell at the average price over the next 30 days.
"Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine."

That makes a lot of sense for a vaccine against, say, chickenpox, or anything else that kills a hundred or a thousand people a year. For something that, at a 3% fatality rate, is about to kill nine million people in this country alone, it's suicidally slow.
Strangely sending an autographed chart to a news organization celebrating a quick pump of the stock market 30 minutes before close has not fixed all of our problems.

There is no leadership on this issue. Health leaders are urging isolation while at the same time elected leaders from a certain party are going on TV and twitter and urging people to go out to restaurants and bars. The president has been telling his supporters that there is no problem in the US while thousands are dying in Europe. With no captain is anyone surprised the ship appears to be drifting? Pence appears to be doing his best but he is clearly handcuffed.

As the situations at airports are proving there is literally zero true planning going on. No one figured out that if you announce a major travel ban that people will come flooding home from virus hot spots. Thousands of people jammed together before being released back into the US.

Soon companies are going to be forced to start massive layoffs just to survive, especially the travel and retail industries. We are then going to have tens of thousands of our lowest paid and least resource secure people suddenly without jobs. The bills will continue though. The government though appears to show no regard for individuals and is instead focused only on stock market numbers. Not to mention many of these same people suddenly have kids at home with the schools closed.

We need to a massive stimulus for individuals, put a moratorium on mortgage and car payments, put cash in peoples hands or this is going to get out of hand fast. Due to our so called "rugged individualism" in the US, we have lines around the corner at gun stores as people fantasize about gunning down those rendered desperate from what is going on while our European neighbors are pitching in to help each other.
I have a older model of Neato, it uses a lidar to map out the floor. First it traces the boundraries of the room or 10ftx10ft if it can't find a wall within that distance and then follows a rectangular path adjusting for any obstacles it finds in its path.
The money actually comes from the employer. Employers are obliged to keep paying until the sickness is over. (The details are complicated, but this guarantee generally lasts two years from onset.) Employers have insurance against longer episodes but short-term they usually eat the cost directly. It's in the budget.

When employers suspect employees of fraud they will investigate. They can ask for a sick note but most do so only after a few days. Three days is customary. When a case is handed over to insurance, the insurance company will tend to involve its own doctors to assess the claim.

I don't understand the meaning of your story.
One would think the case for further public investment in such R&D is now made.
It is, but it still "sounds a lot like." Not exactly like, but a lot like.
The problem is precisely that no one knows what to expect.
Simple thought experiment: you're about to be in a situation where, despite any efforts to the contrary, you expect to be in contact with a hundred other people. It's not that uncommon e.g. in retail. Would you prefer that to be skin to skin, or glove to glove? Would you literally bet your own life and others' on that "entirely useless" claim, or would you take that cheap and basic precaution?
We have a virus problem, not a credit problem. The Fed is whipping out all the financial tools and it's totally ineffectual at best, and disastrous at worst as now those tools are used up (as it were).

Trying to address this pandemic with financial tools geared towards the market feels like trying to address a house fire by rebuilding parts that are still on fire without actually putting out the fire.

With no one at the wheel addressing the actual problem, the outlook feels grim. RIP my retirement account.
Why do you need video? Most video conferences are about watching someone's lips move - so you can drop to audio (you still need to deal with the deaf though). With a little work you can turn most video calls into audio only calls and make this greatly easier.

Sometimes writing on a blackboard while talking seems to be the best way to teach. However if you can encourage those who can teach other ways to do so it would be a great help.
That sort of talk from regular folk is often given as being the sign markets are too high.

But indeed every day is a week or a month now.
> Does USA really prevented more wars since WWII than they caused?

Absolutely. This is not just my opinion, it's also the opinion of historians and geopolitical experts. And moreover, it has historical precedent. The Roman Empire's dominance also ushered in a period of peace and prosperity, coining the original term Pax Romana.

It might be a hard view to accept while having background knowledge of the suffering caused by US armed forces, and the stupidity and crimes committed. But that's just a lack of imagination of how much worse it could have been, and how much worse it was before WWII ended.
You do have the real possibility of receiving a counterfeit item from Amazon though, which you do not have directly from the manufacturer.
I guess you should read kaskavalci's comment for a good reason to still buy from Amazon.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592661
> We've got a long way to go down, IMO.

By definition, the market will bottom out when everyone's pessimism peaks.

Earnings season will be interesting. Seeing the world governments' fiscal stimulus plans will be interesting.
Which will be good for industries that depend on large loans for development and construction. Like commercial real estate.
If you’re removing Himalayan blackberries you have to dig the rhizome out. It’s not enough to cut it down. Basically you take an adze or similar and cut in where the shoots are coming out of the ground. Then pull up on the shoots and a little ball will come up with them.

Here in Washington State the Himalayan blackberries are an invasive species which grows all over the place. There are no natural predators here. If they become established then they kill everything around them including some trees. The only reliable way to remove them is by digging out the rhizome after cutting them to the ground. It can take several years to completely eliminate them from an area
None of this really matters. What matters is when people (non-shareholders, non <1%ers) pass that tipping point which they already live so close to.

They won't get paid because they'll be home sick, or told not to come in; so they won't have "hours" on their timesheets. They don't have any safety net.

They will miss rent payments en masse. Small business property companies (landlords) will suddenly have a cash flow problem and won't be able to make their mortgage payments.

Enough little people will stop having any money and spending any money, and all that will be left is the imaginary money in the stock market and the quantitatively-eased-up banks - none of which does anything useful for the little people.

This will create a very interesting situation that truly will threaten the current way of things in certain skewed capitalist countries. What will come out of this will surely be a lot more socialist (or rather, gains being distributed more equally amongst the population instead of going to the top 0.1%). The top 0.1% will not suffer, because honestly what is the difference between 100M net worth and 1B net worth.
Fed Response to Coronavirus Likely to Exceed Its Response to Financial Crisis
Don't look further:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

> The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton.

> The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security. Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-t...

> The U.S. government’s slow and inadequate response to the new coronavirus underscores the need for organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.

The administration has essentially decided to kick the driver out and steer blind since 2018.

"These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly this plane?"

https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/rebelling-fake-expert...

Yep.