skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Which is more dangerous, shutting down the world economy or the virus?
There is a lot of hardships due to the economic shutdown to be sure, but these hardships could also cause an increase in death rates because of shortages and people losing their jobs and not having access to food and medicine. Is it possible that the cure (shutting everything down) will actually cause more damage than the disease? Does anyone know of studies or research in this area ?
If it does very little damage, then mission accomplished.
Here in Sweden we have food delivery from most stores since a long time. Mostly meant for older people but becoming mainstream lately. But now private people started announcing free help with shopping on Facebook and similar. Just came home from helping a neighbour with shopping. We can manage just fine without amazon if we just help each other now and then.
"... in 90 to 120 days"
Great, we'll just have tens of millions of new homeless then.
I just tried to set up the same stack of ~7 services I had running on Microk8s locally, and a few things went wrong in the process. Couldn't get it running.

My kubectl-fu is not strong enough to fix it, so for me that was a dealbreaker.

Though I am super passionate about k3s and support the hell out of everything Rancher Labs does, so by no means did it leave a bad taste in my mouth.
An architect doesn't need to know how to tie rebar, though. That's more what the other commenter is suggesting.
"in a 90 to 120 day period", and "Ventec is a fairly small player". A five-fold increase in production of a company that's not making many ventilators to start with, in 3-4 months, isn't going to do a whole lot even before you get into the problem of finding the staff to actually run the things correctly and not kill the patients.
I've seen people mention putting some sort of "use it or lose it" time limit on the money, so that people are motivate to inject it directly into the economy instead of just sitting on it.

I'm not sure how feasible such a thing is or if it would hurt the cause of keeping the economy moving.
For what it is worth - on my surgery bill one tablet of ibuprofen was billed at $40+. Insurance accepted $20+. So I would guess it will heavily depends on provider as well.
Surprised, but not surprised, that Business Insider would run an ambiguous, panicky headline in a time like this. Imagine if web journalism wasn't funded by clicks and precision of headline/reporting was the metric that mattered.
How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations
Awesome, Moore's law is back on track
"Means testing is hard. [Sending a check] is easy." Don't add the overhead / cost / etc for the benefit - speed is key, just cut the check in my opinion.
There is an [UPDATED] on this now:

"Update: Facing an avalanche of bad publicity, Labrador announced on Tuesday that it would grant royalty-free licenses to companies developing COVID-19 tests. The company also claims it didn't know that BioFire was working on a coronavirus test when it filed its lawsuit last week. The company seems to be going forward with the lawsuit."
That was a brutal reading. Working at Google I had a feeling there's a feeling of moral superiority among most people. We are led to think we are there because we are the smartest and because we are the nicest people (googly). But as the company grows and internal conflict and competition sparks we see people's true face. Google is just not very well equipped to deal with that, not management, not HR and not even the other employees.

They don't know what to do to deal with a bully and without recourse the bully thrives, climb the ladder and cement their position.

It's a different company than it was 7 years ago. But it's also not that different from most other companies. But the employees still believe in that moral superiority and it will be painful to get everyone aclimated with how things are now.
> almost all albums and Youtubes are now done "in your room."

Hm, not exactly sure if you meant to qualify this somehow but this isnt broadly true in a literal sense.
Sure, with 1-2 musicians or DAW-heavy productions you can put together a whole album in your room (ideally with more professional mixing and/or mastering), but tracking a full band or a group of instrumentalists still generally requires studio work.
You have no idea how unemployment works, do you?

Unemployment requires that you're actively seeking work. You're no longer eligible for unemployment if you turn down an offer.
From the article:

> I checked iOS setting/cellular and saw an uninstalled app used 700-800MB. I closed the settings and reopened it and it was 900MB. The uninstalled app[s] used 1.2GB data in less than 5-6 minutes…

It sounds like a reporting bug rather than a data consumption bug. I guess I'd like to know if they saw those same #s from their cellular company?
I never used Discord, and I assumed that a "server" meant a server. Now I'm definitely not interested.
> But CEO Elon Musk says workers should 'not feel obligated to come to work'

Were I an employee in that factory, I would have a hard time taking that comment at face value.
> Chrome was preinstalled on a bunch of devices (namely Android)

Linux comes with Firefox pre-installed (or some variant of it, depending on distro).

Windows comes with Edge pre-installed.

MacOS comes with Safari pre-installed.

OSX comes with Safari Mobile pre-installed.

Android devices appear to have a decent choice of browsers, and the default is chosen by the manufacturer. For a lot of them that's Chrome, but not all.

I don't think there's actually any large group of devices that has Chrome pre-installed.

Also, pure Android users are free to install any browser and set it as the default.

Chrome is so popular because it has been the best browser for years. Whether that's still true is open for debate. But I remember when it came out, finally an answer to the godawful shite that was IE. We may dislike it now, but it saved us from Microsoft's disaster. It's fascinating that you're now claiming that "even IE is having an uphill battle fighting that kind of power". How the tables have turned.

The problem is not so much with marketing power, but with coding investment. Writing a browser is a mammoth undertaking, with all the strange edge cases and standards. Even Microsoft has decided it doesn't see the point in writing one. We're going to be left with two browser choices not because of corporate power, but because it's just too much effort for not enough reward to write a third.

I see where TFA is coming from: if we could agree that browsers don't need to be this complex, then there would be more of them. But that would mean less flexible web pages, and we'd end up with something Flash-like being an attractive alternative.
I knew what the title meant the moment I saw it. Being good at giving talks is not completely unimportant for people who want to make money in a venue similar to that of Steve Jobs or so.
This is what bothers me most about arguments against UBI. They seem to have baked into them an assumption that any reduction of inequality will be eaten by rents. Then it follows that the only thing is to balance concentrated private economic power with concentrated public economic power. But what I want to see is more people with more control for themselves not planned for them by a program or economic happenstance.

So if it’s hopeless then what’s to be done?
139 Countries in 9 months with $0 in Marketing
Just attach it to a physical clipboard as you'd do with real paper (joke attempt)
Giving money != printing money. If I give you $20 that doesn't mean I fabricated the bill myself. The money could come from any numbers of places in the vast Federal budget.
Did it specify that there is a contagious deadly virus going around and people should be going no contact ?
I Bet, it didn't.
This is incorrect. Per https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...:

> ...DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
I happily pay for Spotify.

I've done for years.

I also, less happily, pay for Netflix. I refuse to pay monthly fees for the rest of them but I'll pay to rent a movie online sometimes.

My issues with this whole thing:

- things I buy (i.e. not rent) aren't really mine and can disappear at any time if the publisher decides so (or just fail to keep their DRM servers alive.)

- massive abuse of copyright for something it wasn't meant for.

- the idea that it is OK to keep Europeans away from huge parts of the collection for no good reason.

As I've said multiple times: I'll happily pay more for media, but there is one rule

- no more subscriptions: anything subscription-based must replace one of my existing subscriptions.

- reasonable prices
Do you have a background in corporate finance? If not, weird to form an opinion that the article seems like outrage porn without also holding the stance that buyback strategy was the way to go...
I think working more hours as a software developer is way less taxing on your health than overtime on the warehouse floor, and physical exhaustion brings additional risks for those infected.

Overtime should be optional, so that people can decide if they're capable or willing to push themselves during this period.
Sly Besos, he knows how to hussle and make a buck!
Paywall-free http://archive.md/xOKiu
The states have effectively been going it alone this whole time.
We're starting to see the mass layoffs begin. I wonder how much effort it would be for a company like Amazon to employ them as Temps. There is going to be a massive increase in availability of skilled workers looking for something to fill the gap.
Will an 'Internet of Places' Serve as AR's Framework?
Ask HN: How can I help with the crisis?
Hey everybody,

I am a software developer who is currently unemployed. I look forward to a freelancing career in the near future, so I try to hone my skills from home.
As there is currently Covid-19 health crisis going on, most businesses in my country (germany) are closed anyways (or at least go for home office) so I don't see much potential in applying for contract work right now.
However, I am sure that there are ways one could help with the crisis. Do you have any suggestions? Maybe some projects that need developers or any ideas for a project I could start on my own?
Any recommendations welcome, thank you!
no, we should just give it to everyone.
Yes Trump said in one of the press conferences that he gave states permission to bypass the federal gov to buy what they need directly from manufacturers.
It will solve one part of the equation. We can figure out the other parts in the 90-120 timeframe.
[removed in lieu of FireBeyond's superior sibling comment]
Let's talk that through a bit more.

I wonder if it could be used to create one-off cryptographic notes - that, when used (scanned), are somehow deleted and can never be used again.

Can't think of a way off the top of my head, but I wonder.
a paper pad does not weigh 400g
The reading experience for PDFs on most devices is really poor, and most sites aren't designed with printing in mind to begin with, making it even worse. Standard ebook formats tend to work a lot better.

This post seems specifically to be about rendering your documentation both as html and also as an ebook, which is something I can definitely get behind. The experience of having a structured ebook instead of HTML is really valuable especially when doing things like learning programming languages, where precise formatting tends to really be important for legibility. I recently encountered this when perusing Rust's online books, some of which did not seem to have ebook equivalents.
My friends are building a real Moon home
I know a rhetorical question when I see one :)
I'm tired of arguing over semantics with people. Call it copyright infringement then. Either way, it is generally illegal.

Just pay the $3 to rent the movie.
I am inclined to agree with this comment indeed.
Having had to learn a lot about these things recently (and trying to stay away from frameworks), it is quite difficult to not feel 'boxed in' by the rules imposed by React, Vue, etc.
I feel as though one is encouraged to learn a framework instead of the basics. Having learned the basics, I can now see why there are frameworks, and what their uses are, but often I wonder whether people decide to do something in [x] framework to make their work sound cool, before even knowing what it is they are building.
> The upper half will just eat into their savings some but won’t suffer like those living paycheck to paycheck.

What makes you think the upper half does not also contain people living paycheck to paycheck?
It's a failure of their marketing that they didn't make this clear. The device is capable of working 100% offline. Notes are stored on the device, with cloud sync being optional. File transfer is possible with SSH, or the (poor) app or the equally poor web interface when connecting via USB. You don't have to create an account for the rM cloud, you can use the thing without ever connecting it to the Internet.
Yes, a lot of times you'll hear $100,000 as a cutoff for aid. I made $100,000 in the Bay Area. It doesn't go as far as people might think.
Those poor middle classes, haven't they been through enough? They can't even lift themselves up through their bootstraps like those deplorable "low income earners".
Without meaning any reflection on you personally

>This is, I think, good for humanity.

I think it's valuable to note it's good for the bits of humanity that live in the first-world parts of America, et al. Not so much the people who will get ground into dust getting Prime delivery times down while exposing themselves to disease all so I can get some book about teaching my kid in 2 days or less and then put it on a shelf.
This, centum percentum! If 'papery' was my need of the hour I'd go back to physical paper straight. This is lame marketing of an expensive lifeless product that aims to copy the dead tree. That's not what our new mediums are about.
Amazon Prioritizing Essentials, Medical Goods in Virus Response
"Customization." It retains the older, Firefox ~25-ish UI. They've since upgraded the backend to Firefox 52, which is still Really Old. And they've got a lot of culty behavior around their community, if that's your bag.

If you absolutely must have an XUL-based Firefox derivative: 1) you don't, 2) stop, and 3) don't use this one if you don't listen to #1 or #2.
You want a source for Quebec's borken health care system ? Get sick in Quebec and experience it for yourself.
Applications welcome from startups with innovative solutions to tackle Covid-19
Why isn't it a direct credit towards rent and free food/water/meds instead of cash? Wouldn't that be a way to ensure it isn't stowed away?
Because some people live in very high cost of living areas - high income alone is not sufficient. Ultimately if you don't hand out the benefit equally you're making some kind of value judgement: you ought to live this way, and not this way, to be worthy of support from the government. This is a _hard_ problem to even quantify. The real goal here is to keep the economic engine running (even on idle). Adding a political dimension will only slow down or block this, which will hurt everyone.
I agree in the sense that money will go further when pooled, than if you just give it UBI's style. But, this is a societal crisis, not an individual one. It is not fair to ask people to pull themselves out of a situation that they did not create, but that our unaccountable government did create.

An example: restaurant are struggling and some people need food. Give money to Town gov, so they can buy food from restaurants and serve that in community center. Adjust volume as needed.

Plus the whole financial easing they are trying is dumb. It would be useful if the intention was not to control what is happening with the public markets. We just do not really control those, not on a daily basis anyway. Algorithms heavily relying on market volatility control those, and that is what they are doing right now. So, seeing an administration believing that humans are in control of a mostly automated trading system is dumb.

While the evolution of new virus with pandemic property is not something we control. Its propagation to pandemic level is something we have absolute control on. We are failing as a society, because we allow those things to happen.
In the future, I see a robust economy built around communicable disease prevention. This was a wake up call for the world. The free ride is over. But this virus can’t overcome humans making a concerted effort to beat it. Worldwide we see the need for increased sanitization and emergency treatment and having lived though this we will all be properly motivated. There’s a lot of jobs to be created and money to be made in our new health oriented economy.
No. When I worked there we would do a week of pager duty that frequently required 70-80 hours and received no overtime or compensation of any kind.
According to the article, this came from the top: the national medical authorities were directly telling the labs to destroy the samples and keep it a secret.
While that's good in the short term, I feel like when things reset we'll find that people never stop being temps - the status quo, once set, is hard to change. A lot of the jobs that disappear now may never reappear as companies realize they don't really need that extra staff.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22575745
I just don't know how you would enforce this and even if this money "only" helps a family with some means have a cushion to worry a bit less so they can continue as they were it would be productive for markets.

Say you send a prepaid Visa card (this would be terrible because of fees but go with it) to everyone with an expiration date, it'd be easy to parlay that into vehicles that were not "spending" (gift cards, other pre-paid cards, etc) and regulating that is a nightmare.

Once you get into qualifiers and enforcement regimes you're slowing things down and adding percent costs to each dollar provided. I'd say keep it simple.
Ah, but in Capitalism, they can choose not to work.
Just curious: will this help the economy recover, when for large parts of it (entertainment, dining, travel, etc) the reason it's closed is due to the virus and not due to lack of money?
Ask HN: How's Your Business Doing?
Thinking about all of the past HN posts on one-person businesses, or small-team SaaS apps, has made me wonder about how things are going for everyone here. Has the COVID-19 quarantines and the recent economic downturn had an effect on your business? If so, how, and what are you doing to try and reverse it (assuming it's a negative effect)?

I'll start - I run a few sites/apps, with two earning the majority of my income. One is a B2C SaaS app and the other is a content site for web developers. Both have had less traffic the last 10 days or so, more churned users, and lower RPMs for the content site. Not entirely sure how to reverse the trend, but I'm thinking about discounting our yearly plans to raise some more cash, or maybe even offer a lifetime plan.

I'm interested to hear how things are going for everyone else. Good luck!
It looks like they fixed the issue.
Counterpoint:
Global geopolitics and Military Logistical Strategy 101: sometimes you can't trust who you're buying that widget from when the widget in question has a significant contribution to maintaining National Security.

There are also risks to having someone else manufacture a widget that incorporates technology you'd rather not spread around.

This is why there will always be at least one domestic chip foundry, and most of the critical components of ICBM's /nuclear weapons are manufactured domestically as I understand it. Medical equipment also falls under that umbrella. Hell, even taps and dies do. God bless Admiral Rickover in that regard.
Nothing is stopping all of the people who feel that wealth redistribution is required to be "a decent human being" from contributing voluntarily to charity. You're not being magnanimous by demanding that somebody else do something.

EDIT: and further, you're adopting the air of moral superiority while happily hurting people who haven't even been born yet.
Their headline, which was probably too long for HN, is entirely accurate.

It would be useful if people stopped blaming the media without verifying first.
Thanks for clearing that up. Sounds a bit awkward to use offline but that's acceptable, at least to me.
it redirects via a domain on common blocklists
COVID19: Basecamp will pay full salaries regardless of hours worked
If you have hundreds of thousands more people infected than you have ventilators, every ventilator you add is a potential life saved.

As for adding staff, now is also the time to be thinking about how to ramp that up.
I don't really get the question of "if" for anyone close to this size. It goes back to the old adage, "If you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem". A corporation as large as McDonalds can dictate terms to whoever holds their debt.
> Workers at Amazon's UK warehouses are being told to work overtime to tackle huge demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, despite government calls to restrict social contact.

Amazon should be held responsible for all the damage that they do to their employees.

> She pointed out that under Working Time Regulations in the UK, overtime is limited to a maximum of 48 hours per week, averaged over a 17-week period. Workers can "opt out" of the maximum weekly limit, however, and some are required to do so as a condition of employment.

Any right that you can opt-out it is not a right at all.

This is why the survival rate for the poor and the right is going to be different. In our modern society we have the resources for taking care of everybody, it is just greed and malice that allow for this situations.
Video Conferencing with Etherpad – by developers who can't work due to Corona
COVID-19: Truck Border Crossing Times
Serverless has to be the dumbest term in the tech industry.
It would be a good choice to replace tablets that are used outside conference rooms to show the schedule and/or book the room.
In my humble opinion wake up calls were in 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1, but we decided to ignore those, now we get the real thing, that has improved and evolved.
I am sorry but how is this a reasonable idea, instead of you know making paternal/maternal leave state, health care system and salary insurance program government funded?

Temporary economic injections will not transform peoples lifes nor save them from an unsustainable lifestyle.
That's good to know. Thank you.
Hehe. I actually avoided it because I thought it was "entrepreneurial" advice on giving talks, the sort of article I hate.

Instead, this was a bunch of amusing anecdotes from an oldschool CS guy, no practical advice for startups whatsoever. The kind of article I enjoy! ;)
> I think it's valuable to note it's good for the bits of humanity that live in the first-world parts of America, et al. Not so much the people who will get ground into dust getting Prime delivery times down while exposing themselves to disease all so I can get some book about teaching my kid in 2 days or less and then put it on a shelf.

Eh, this is the same as poor people eating fast food and rich people eating healthy organic foods. It is also the same as how rich people can afford to live close to work and poor people cannot so they spend more time commuting.

This theme isn't unique to Amazon or one facet of the world, its everywhere if you open your eyes. Financially affluent people have benefits that lower class people don't and that is how our world currently works.
It's funny that the author mentions IPv6 as an argument when IPFire itself does not support it.