skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like the effort and project. I tried looking at it and the techcrunch articles and was disappointed by this and the open source mask efforts. This is going to sound horrible but I think there is something that needs to be said. We shouldn't have to hack/make our way out of this shortage. I say this as a diehard hacker/maker. A factory can put together high quality and high volume versions of these two items. It is a national shame (I'm in Canada but lived in the US for years) that we don't have domestic capacity and ability to surge on these items. We can still surge. This is not bloody rocket science. If we start today, we can have factories in a month. We should be surging on this today. We should have been surging on this since January and not have to deal with a shortage of bloody test swabs. I know raw materials and equipment are in short supply. But if our economies are truly unable to find the necessary parts in our just-in-time inventory or storage, we as a generation should hold our heads in shame and leaders accountable.
Has anyone found independent verification of what’s claimed in the title? “FDA just cleared a $20 Covid-19 antibody test” does not appear on the linked website. In fact, the website indicates that “This test has not been reviewed by the FDA.” and I cannot find a notice from FDA’s official website regarding an antibody test.

If the claim cannot be verified, could OP or a moderator please correct the title?
If that's true, it seems to me that it would imply that this whole thing is a mass hysteria, at least as applied to the U.S. population, since Seattle would have looked like Italy a month ago.
There are many mispelingz on there cite. It duz nut look gud 4 them atall.
What does this random minor github discussion have to do with the submitted title? I'm on mobile, does 'foldl' appear on the page on desktop?
Having antibodies and waiting 14 days to be safe will be good enough to be whitelisted.

Right now the only way to be whitelisted is having had a test done while being ill, but asymptomatic cases are unlikely to ever get tested.
We are looking just at the trend. And the testing methodology that different states take is just a multiplicative constant of the confirmed cases. And exponentially growing function will make it negligible.
Humans dismembering other trapped humans for fun and bragging rights. Mine as well go back to crucifixes that the Romans used 2000 years ago.
Adoptees have IQs in line with their biological parents, not their adoptive ones. It’s heritable like every other psychological variable I’m aware of.

Speed of cognition is absolutely correlated with IQ but the difference in speed doesn’t cause the differences in results. Both are downstream of being more intelligent.

> Speed of information processing and general intelligence

> One hundred university students were given five tests of speed-of-processing, measuring their speed of encoding, short-term memory scanning, long-term memory retrieval, efficiency of short-term memory storage and processing, and simple and choice reaction time or decision-making speed. They were also given the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Raven Advanced Progression Matrices. A number of multiple regression analyses show that the cognitive processing measures are significantly related to IQ scores. Other analyses indicate that this relationship cannot be attributed to the common content shared by the reaction time and the intelligence tests, nor to the fact that parts of the WAIS are timed. It is concluded that the reaction time tests measure basic cognitive operations which are involved in many forms of intellectual behavior, and that individual differences in intelligence can be attributed, to a moderate extent, to variance in the speed or efficiency with which individuals can execute these operations

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016028...
Perhaps requiring people to sew a red-colored letter to their clothing?
"there is still another two weeks" lol get back to reality
GPUs can take in way more than just triangles as input. There are particle simulation and even Ray tracing implemented on GPUs nowadays. Support for parametric curves was one of the more recent additions.
Ask HN: How can ML help in the fight against coronavirus?
Im interested in your opinion on how ML can become a tool against coronavirus? Can epidimiology benefit from the use of it?
There already is a milk-based vodka, here's a great video on it, includes a traditional home still and the high-end versions: https://youtu.be/1BBzjbVw6Q4
Lessons from Magic the Gathering
I'm all in for it but it unfortunately is not ready yet. The day I'll be able to play multiplayer FPS games with <90ms ping running in the cloud, I'll ditch the console.
It’s hard to take you seriously when you just dodge the question.

Also, the idea the economy will just keep rolling along somehow if we don’t do anything to slow the virus is wrong. When people are dying in the streets due to lack of health care capacity you’ll see what a real panic looks like. The economy is going to hard stop, probably including the food supply chain.
rhesus monkeys do - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1....
Are you ok with killing all such people? These people are all around you in your community. They don't wear a badge to let you know they are vulnerable?
> Luckily, a niche field of researchers and an eager group of craft creameries are taking an unexpected approach: turning all that whey into “vodka.”

Is this a joke? Milk vodka is very far from new. Americans claiming simultaneous invention on something they read online?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...
What, you never dug under a blocker to release her from her duties? As soon as they fall they turn back into normal lemmings.
The very opposite actually. The computer crashes, but all car functions work perfectly, including autopilot (read the article update) and all safety features.

So you take out the computer here and it's still a perfectly safe and drive-able car.
Well, never, but we have 20 ventilators per 100k people, "flattening the curve" so strongly that we can treat everybody was always a bit of a pipe dream. You need to flatten the curve almost to zero to get to a "sustainable" level of disease. They are nearly the same goal. Any non-trivial level of disease that is not controlled will rapidly push you past the "flatten the curve" threshold. And we will certainly be here for longer than 2-3 weeks.

It is a little white lie that is important to tell the public to help build compliance, the lower you can push it the fewer people will die, but hospitals simply are going to be overloaded regardless. The choice we can make is one between "very overwhelmed" and "overwhelmed to the point of non-functionality".

"shelter for 12-18 months" is a little bit of an exaggeration but not much. Simulations suggest that after an initial harsh quarantine period (up to several months) to get transmission under control, we will need to shelter for about 2/3rds of the time (2 months on, 1 month off) for 12-18 months, and other measures for 100% of the time. The vaccine will be what finally terminates the situation. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

Even then that may be optimistic (especially if the population is not fully compliant). Italy is not just working from home and social distancing, they are straight up quarantining everyone, and they still have overloaded hospitals and bodies piling up faster than they can cremate them. Presumably the quarantine will slow things down on the order of weeks to months, but right now things are brutal.

https://vimeo.com/398334975

https://mobile.twitter.com/foxmulder22791/status/12404540564...

The Chinese strategy of requiring everyone to get a phone app, to track them via GPS, doing widespread testing and then quarantining the people who have been in contact appears to be a much more effective strategy than blind quarantine or social distancing. No app, no uber, no groceries, no public transit, etc. The US citizenry absolutely will not stand for the mark of the beast though.

The Korean thing about masks and gloves probably helps too. Too bad the hospitals are down to about 11 days of masks let alone for the citizenry.

I'm not trying to be a downer but if chloroquine works that's a really fucking big deal, because that would give us a fairly straightforward alternative to treat cases or even prophylactically treat vulnerable populations. Unless you have a tool in your toolbox we are mostly just moving the deck chairs here and choosing between "really bad" and "oh shit".
FDA is working on treatment of coronavirus with blood from recovered patients
I'm interested in the frontline response here as if you already have immunity that person can serve in "risky" positions like working at airports, etc.
>What numbers are you assuming for the economic collapse you've predicted? What rational basis is there for believing that the cure is literally worse than the disease? Can you debate with facts instead of "avoid bad things" and emotion?

You won't get an answer because they realize that putting an actual dollar amount on the lives of those who will die isn't quite acceptable yet, even on a libertarian paradise site like HN.
I don't think a complete solution is expected. An incomplete but scaffolded solution would be very well received. A clear statement that we expect infections to level off by date X and we can relax restrictions after condition Y would be very nice - especially since people could start making Y happen as fast as possible.

What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.
Potentially.

If true, we might rush to get everyone cold and then be immune to coronavirus.
GPU aren't based on anything. They are turing complete, you can run Linux on it if you wanted to.

What you are saying is outdated by maybe a couple of decades.
blot.im has blown me away! Thank you!
Counter example: John Scully
String Processing Algorithms (2003)
For the record, I'm not hating companies that live day to day, the race to the bottom forces them to. I'm mocking the idea that if you struggle financially, it's always your fault and you should have known better. There are always factors out of our control, company or individual, even if bigger entities have more factors under their control.
Very effective at their jobs. One could only hope that US Army snipers are as well trained.
Wine or vodka?
Clearly the vast majority of cops will protect other cops against the law, including dirty cops.

Is that ethical ?
Best Health Gadgets Under $100 – 2020
AirBnB is not rent seeking though I’m dubious of its value to society. People buying property in RESIDENTIAL areas to be used exclusively as short term rental units are rent seekers.
No immunity. but they develop antibodies. More info here:

"FDA is working on treatment of coronavirus with blood from recovered patients"

"The method — essentially harvesting virus-fighting antibodies from the blood of previously infected patients — dates back more than a century"

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-working-treat...
It's so disappointing to see a country and people founded in the ashes of a holocaust committing war crimes, doubly so against a relatively disenfranchised population (as opposed to some external antagonist in a more traditional interstate conflict).
Don't cut yourself on all that edge.
Ghana legalizes cannabis for health and industrial purposes
I like https://covid19info.live the best so far.

Unfortunately it doesn't show per 100K or # tested (which I would love to find, but haven't seen anywhere). The former should be quite easy to do, the latter appears to not be as easy to get good data for.

Also: made by one hacker!
I wish more people who fall into the kneejerk "we must emphasize only objective testing" group were aware of things like these. Standardized tests are incredibly game-able, particularly at the upper tail of the distribution. Because of the nature of that distribution, that means that if you selected students only by "objective" measures like standardized test scores, you will be disproportionately selecting for students who are experts at test-taking, not experts at being good students.

The more we can reduce the overdependence on standardized tests, the better we can be at selecting for well-rounded students and not just test-gamers.
I had to cancel a ~$3,000 booking, and they made it incredibly easy through the app. The host was also very gracious and understanding in her reply to the optional message I sent with the cancelation.

Very impressive customer-centric approach. I’m now much more likely to book with them again in the future.
Exhaustive testing and selective isolation would be better than lockdowns, even if the virus is endemic. Testing is the bottleneck.
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the
computer, a Rolls- Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles
per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."

– Robert Cringely.
The overwhelming majority of the high IQ are not Mensa members. They are academics, doctors, lawyers, successful businesspeople, the kinds of people for whom it is more common in their friends group to have a Master’s degree than to be a high school dropout.
I've got a really naive/dumb question for you.

Could you use a CPAP machine as a poor man's ventilator? Would it be better than nothing?

There's definitely a ton of CPAP machines out there.
F1 teams working to answer call for more ventilators amid coronavirus crisis
That’s nuts, I got a 1590 on my second try with a calculator that turned out to be missing batteries, the day after going to a friends house and drinking with my only prep being reading a few paragraphs from some big book.

I had a lackluster performance on the new writing section the first time around or I wouldn’t have spent any time upping the original 1520 or whatever.

The point is to brag a little yes because I really never get to tell that story now that I’m 30.

The point is that rewarding me for skipping class to smoke weed with my friends because I aced some test turned out to produce a university student who spent a lot of time partying.

I’ve changed a lot since then, and I do also have the blessing of being a rather natural and amiable person to talk too, but there was a long time where by sheer luck I was getting glided along because I ace tests like those and AP tests, but it certainly not indicative of someone who was going to spend a lot of time producing some great research paper in college or anything.

So I always thought it was kind of bullshit and I nailed the shit out of that test.

Probably just an imperfect science all in all. Much like hiring tech workers.

Edit: small grammatical errors, on a phone
Show HN: Easy placeholders for SQL queries when using psycopg2 in Python
Go ahead and say that quiet part louder: You hope that US Army snipers are trained to shoot protestors.
It is a direct link to a comment on the code of the PR.

Here it is for your convenience: https://paste.rs/SWO
A simile is like a metaphor.
There are plenty of kids in the US who can't afford to bring lunch to school, let alone pay $20 for a SAT prep book. Many of these kids don't have a computer or Internet access at home for that matter, so Khan Academy isn't much good to them either. When we talk about rich vs poor kids, there's a HUGE gap that many people don't realize.
Isn't a specificity of 92% unacceptable for a test like this?
Do we know anything about the manufacturability/scalability of this test? They say that they're about to ship 15000 test, but I'm curious how well they'll be able to match demand.
In these circumstances, the only reasonable procedure for a government to take is to warn pharmaceutical manufacturers that "if you do that then we'll instantly nationalize you without compensation."

Moreover, this ought to be enshrined in law.
Besides the Mac keyboards, what was there to criticize about Apple hardware?

He was never in the market for the trash can Mac Pro as a buyer or a reviewer.

He never liked the Apple Watch before the 5th gen watch. He’s a big fan of analog watches.

He buys the newest phones every year, but he doesn’t buy Macs or iPads that often.

If you want to see Apple fans who often criticize Mac hardware and software, check out the Accidental Tech Podcast. Marco and John criticize Apple hardware and software all the time.

Marco is famous for dropping money on Apple hardware
Should have shot them in the head, those people where part of an operation to invade Israel disguised under a "demonstration". The "protestors" where covering for actual armed militants who were trying to cut the fence and invade, any other army would have seen them as part of the invading operation but Israel is too kind and just shoot them in the knee.
Pomme de terre -- "apple of the earth" aka "potato"

Pomme frites -- "french fries"

Not all pomme are apples. Sometimes they're potatoes.

(Though this could be utterly irrelevant and have nothing whatsoever to do with what was intended by the GP.)
My understanding is that it is necessary to slow the progression to “flatten the curve” below hospital capacity, and that extra time for building increased hospital capacity is a nice side effect but not the primary goal. Basically, when more people get sick than the hospitals can take in, the mortality rate skyrockets, which is why Italy has more reported deaths than China right now.

Edit: Here’s the old paper from 2007 the CDC is using to inform some of the policy around “flattening the curve” below hospital capacity.
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425
People are mad, because that happiness comes at their expense. Not because rich people prep their kids per se, but because society is a zero-sum game in many ways, and the end result is a de facto caste system. People are often willing to endure unfair hardships, if their children get a better chance. But if they know that not even their great-grandchildren are likely to be significantly better off, the focus shifts back to here and now.
> Now, in this case, this is a silly operation, since foldr (:) [] is just a complicated identity function on lists, but we could imagine a slightly more complicated function, such as one that doubles each element in a list.

This whole post is great, but this part would be less awkward and easier to understand with a simpler example of more practical use like:

and = foldr (&&) True

or

all f = foldr (&&) True . map f

x && y doesn't evaluate y if x is False.
Very cool. But, seems like a lot of work to order to conclude that tables are rectangular flat surfaces and cups have handles and hold liquids.
Since the dawn of humankind at least, seeing that other apes can be as cruel within their resources. The difference is that we are way smarter, we can be evil on top of being cruel.
In psycopg2, variables can be inserted into queries using %s placeholders and supplying arguments to cursor.execute, but this does not allow for identifier arguments such as table or columns names. The alternative is to use psycopg2.sql.SQL.format, but this requires arguments to be converted into Composable objects such as Literal or Identifier.

With TemplateQuery, instead of wrapping arguments with psycopg2.sql classes (e.g. Literal, Identifier) the expected class can be written inside the query:

>>> TemplateQuery('SELECT * FROM {table@Q} WHERE {@I} {@S} {value@L}').format(
... 'column_name', '>=', table='public.my_table', value=100
... ).as_string(conn)

'SELECT * FROM "public"."my_table" WHERE "column_name" >= 100'

The character after the at sign @ in the placeholder key is the transformation that is applied to the argument before inserting it into the placeholder (S for raw SQL, I for Identifiers and L for literals, among others).

I wrote this small library while working on my master's thesis to help run similar analysis queries on different tables and schema configurations, without the mental overhead of wrapping arguments in the proper classes. I'm not sure if it will be useful to anyone, but I thought it was worth releasing. Would appreciate any feedback at all!
From the last paragraph before conclusion of their article:

"Certainly, this test cannot confirm virus presence, only provide evidence of recent infection, but it provides an important immunological evidence for physicians to make the correct diagnosis along with other tests and to start treatment of patients. In addition, possible cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses and flu viruses were not studied, and the change level of antibody was not compared in the different stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection."
The Hacker guide to Covid-19
This website is an initiative of Rop Gonggrijp, one of the founders of the Dutch ISP XS4ALL.

I suspect that the way the information is structured and the writing style that is used is a useful match for what people in our community need.
What Is Next?
My problem with "surprise phone calls" is that they don't fit in my schedule. With a full time job and two going kids, I am always busy with something. The chance of the call coming when I have 5 free minutes is very unlikely. I am either busy with work, making dinner, putting the kids to bed, etc. I can't just stop those things to talk to someone. This is especially true for calls about something I need to think about... I can't context switch that easily.
Isn't that a case of having multiple strains of the virus, where recovering from one strain still provides immunity to that strain? The gimmick here is that it decreases resistance to the other strain, possibly after some time.
a perfectly safe and drive-able car

...with absolutely no instrumentation? Sure, the wheel and pedals still work, but everything else is not controllable.

I've done some custom car stuff so I've had short drives without a dashboard, and while you could argue it's drivable, I wouldn't say safe.
Ok, maybe not yet. But once you start the lockdown, exponential growth continues for a couple of weeks (at least). If it grows at the same rate as in Europe, at the end of those two weeks Santa Clara county will need to hospitalize more than 15000 people.
www.covidauthority.com

Unconventional, but very useful.
Serious question: can an employer discriminate based on immunity status?

My personal opinion is absolutely. But I'm 99% certain a vocal minority will spoil it for us.
Looks like they got a CE seal on Feb 20, per their website. That's something at least.
MIT has an obvious incentive to admit rich, well-connected people, and an obvious incentive to maintain a reputation for admitting the most intelligent on merit. We should be sceptical of any changes they make that purport to be about getting more meritorious students, especially if those changes result in the admission of more rich, well-connected people.
Newspipe, a web news aggregator written in Python, version 9.2.0 is out
Might need to check for G6PD genetic deficiency before taking it though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogen...
I’m surprised no one mentioned canvg: https://canvg.github.io/canvg/demo/index.html

If using CSS with SVG is important then it’s actually better to use a backend with a library like librsvg (e.g. Cairo) then run node-canvas on top of it like automattic does. Even Inkscape has problems with CSS in SVG files. CSS in browsers is subjective because nowadays they might be using an style that doesn’t have a straightforward approach that can be rasterized. I haven’t had much luck with rasterizing SVG styles past CSS2 spec.