skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People can still buy stuff, and moreover they need to -- even if you're staying home you still need to eat and pay rent and utilities. But now people are concerned with how long this will last, which makes them want to conserve. Naturally this is deflationary -- people place a higher value on holding currency than buying stuff because they're not sure if they'll need savings soon -- so you need an inflationary force to counteract it. Printing money and giving it to people does exactly that. You put more money in their pockets and they're less reserved about spending it, and then fewer people lose their jobs.

You don't even get the inflation until later, because all it's doing now is counteracting the deflation we would have otherwise. And later the inflation can be addressed by raising interest rates.
Because they want you to think the worst, i.e. 18% have lost jobs, because the title is clickbait.
Thanks for the links. I'm a big fan of the Internet Archive. I browse their content regularly for fun, and have even contributed one old (1990s!) piece of software.
Bill Gates has quietly left Microsoft’s Board of Directors
Actually, yes, we should. This is going to last literally months, and so we must find out how to operate under these conditions.

Shutting down literally everything but grocery stores for months will not only kill the economy, it will kill people.
Yes there is conspiracy here. We have changed the way we measure inflation over the years. It completely changed how we count housing costs and technology.

"if we calculated inflation today the same way we did during Carter’sadministration, CPI would be closer to 10% rather than the 1.5% calculated as of 12/31/10 by the government."

https://www.cornerstonewm.com/downloads/measuring-inflation....
I'm not disputing the fact about unknown people from the general public being in contact with the table. That's enough of a reason to not dine-in. I'm just pointing out that I have no trust at all that the cooks aren't infected, and they're coming into intimate contact with your food.
I can't say as I agree with pretty much anything this essay posits. But I do find it a bit ironic that many of the sins the author paints onto these controls are the same sins that have become very, very common in modern UI design.
Has there been any research done on the different economic effects of businesses putting their money in a bank account (indirectly creating more loanable funds) compared to other things they might do with it?

If banks aren't lending then having more loanable funds available means the money is effectively under a mattress. Unless it's being invested in equities or something instead of being loaned out.
Have it by default show the rightmost portion, so that people can scroll to the left if they want? This is how Yahoo Finance shows a stock chart.
I wonder if you could just spray paint them with metal particles.
COVID-19 is the disease. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus.
That was the same logic in 2008 yet we're there again. What's preventing hyperinflation at this point?
How to Clean Your Phone
You present it as if the poor country that allows foreign companies to exploit its cheap labor is somehow the one taking advantage of the rich countries. Just ask yourself: is that a likely way for the world to work? Do you think the rich countries just let themselves get walked over in that way by much weaker, poorer countries?

Point-by-point:

> We've had decades of letting China walk all over us.

It's hard to square your view with the fact that American companies have made massive sums of money by exploiting cheap Chinese labor, or with the fact that when you walk around any Chinese city, you see American brands everywhere (Apple, Starbucks, KfC, GM, Tesla, all the fashion brands whose names I don't know).

> They tariff our goods, we buy theirs up.

China has massively reduced tariffs since the early 1990s. Average Chinese tariffs are now around 3.4%, which is similar to tariff rates the US imposed in the mid-1990s.[1]

> They steal our IP, we respect theirs.

Your view of IP enforcement in China is behind the times. Back when China was a largely peasant society shut off from the outside world, it had virtually no IP law. That has changed quite dramatically in the last decades. China is the world's most active venue for IP litigation now. Specialist IP courts have been set up in major cities over the past several years, and the statistics show that foreign companies are quite successful in enforcing their IP.[2]

American companies also take in billions of dollars in revenue by licensing patents to Chinese companies.

> They manipulate their currency, we let ours float.

Many countries intervene in the foreign exchange markets. China does so too, and limits capital flows in and out of the country. I'm not enough of an expert to know whether or not this is a wise economic policy, but I suspect they have good reasons (e.g., financial stability) for doing so.

However, there's no doubt that the RMB floats to a far greater extent than it used to. You can see this pretty easily if you look at a CNY/USD chart showing the past 20 years. The RMB moved very smoothly until about 2012, and since then has fluctuated much more like a normal currency. Of course, like most central banks, the PBOC will pull the breaks when it feels that it's important.

1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?lo...

2. https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/05/07/rapid-changes-chinese-...
Same here in Austin!
If you shut down Jimmy's Bar and Grill for 1 month, it can be reopened 1 month later. The only thing you would need for that is some money (a loan, possibly) and food.

If you shut down a factory, this affects every single company that sells them parts down the production chain and everyone who buys factory's product up the production chain. You also affect every single business that services those factories, including equipment manufacturers, maintenance and delivery. You also affect other customers of all those companies if loss of part of their business forces them to shut down.

Meanwhile, you're not producing parts and you're not maintaining equipment. So when the virus is over, there is no clear path to restart the whole thing.
You should be talking about the credibility of the CCP state media then? I'd rather have WSJ with decades of history of reputation vs. CCP State Media which is by definition owned by the CCP.

Infuriating hypocrisy.
I really like this 'tl;dr, consider this, start with this rather than that until/unless you really need it' style, was left disappointed it didn't cover more services!
It was really helpful doing some first steps with rust.

One suggestion: add a warning for macOS users that psutil::host::uptime is not available on macOS. I had to figure that out myself and it was quite frustrating.

I figure you didn't know that, and it's not like the article claims otherwise, but it would be useful to add I think.
Projecting out, we'll be overrun in 15-30, but we'll still be overrun in 90-120.
> Can somebody clarify as to how this is a sensible move at all / what the intention is?

It's sensible because it's low risk. The intention is to alleviate pressure on the short-term lending markets, e.g. the repo and Fed Funds markets. This is about preventing a credit crisis moreso than juicing the taps.
The color palette they tend to stick to always reminds me of EGA graphics (1987) - although the color choices in The Simpsons (1989) are a bit more refined than what's available in the default EGA palette.

EGA allows for redefining the default 16 color palette from a choice of 64 colors. They look quite Simpson-ish to me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter#/med...

Related:

"Why did DOS games never use anything but the default EGA palette?"

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=31882
I think the Bay Area order mandates small and unchanging groups of kids.
For the free software crowd, fasthub-libre has been around on fdroid for a while
Just want to clarify - is this different from Monday.com? I saw a bunch of billboards on 101 advertising Monday as your new Work OS.
Saw a meme today: "TIL that my lifestyle is called quarantine"
Nice racism you got here
Interesting way to spin that: "CEO of a car company says cars are more likely to kill you than this pandemic."

I think he's wrong, and it's got to be hyperbole to say "not within the top 100 health risks" given the 15th place per the CDC was responsible for 20K deaths last year[0]. Actually, if you figure that the next 85 causes all split the rest of the deaths evenly (not reasonable, but puts an absolute upper bound on the 100th cause's mortality) they would clock in at ~6600 deaths each.

Soooo... I dunno. I'm not exactly surprised Elon seems straight up wrong about this, and that it sounds like he's prioritizing keeping SpaceX and Tesla at full operations over the health of so many people.

0: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf Table B
In SF it's actually a bit more nuanced, and in most situations nannies are not allowed:

https://sf.gov/stay-home-except-essential-needs
"Are nannies permitted to be used? What about other in-home child care?
In some instances. If the nanny provides medical/health care for the child, then yes. If the nanny lives with you, then yes. Otherwise, nannies not necessary for medical care are not permitted. Also, parents required to work away from home for essential services may need in-home child care, which is permitted."
Yeah, but it touches the part of the shirt sleave where people wipe their noses...
They previously had an app. It seems it was removed from app stores.

> At Universe [...]

What is universe?
Not an economist (just trying to understand all this) but wouldn’t this just be kicking the can down the road? I understand how loans and credit works in healthy markets/seasons but to me this feels like making a bet that these businesses would be able to take this infusion, weather out the storm, and then raise profits enough above what they were before to pay it all back.

It’s fundamentally different from me starting a small business and going to Chase saying, look here’s a healthy prospect and I’ll be able to pay it back within x years.
Facebook is hardly a firewall and certainly not aligned to the government much less the current administration.

RT is a full on naked propaganda machine and troll farm.

Al Jazeera is not carried by most US providers because they ran out of cash and mostly went online.
Reply All – We're Taking Your Calls
"Your first paragraph makes clear why freedom of the press is necessary."

All press isn't being banned, just specific press from China. Our Freedom of the press is still in place.

I also don't really consider the press from China as the press when everything is filtered through the Chinese government.
I think targeted redistribution will work better. If you want to protect the economy, take the people with excess wealth — providing no utility right now — and give some of their wealth to those who cannot earn income during this crisis. It avoids the inflationary effects of printing money. You could accomplish this by raising taxes on the wealthy and sending the revenues directly to those who will lose their livelihoods and the small businesses which need to make rent to stay afloat. Obviously the political appetite to do this doesn't exist in the US, but I think it is easily the best solution.
Yes, it's just like that and it's ugly. There is also plenty has been done on the other side of Pacific Ocean. And now, reading through the thread it's clear how much we hate each other. Or fear?

At the beginning of the trade war, one of my fav NYT columnist remarked Trump was the opponent Chinese deserved, despite being pretty anti-Trump in all other regards, and had being promoted globalization for decades.

Last week, there has been a surge of articles on the Chinese websphere, describing how impotent the western authorities were when dealing with COVID-19, implied superiority of the system/culture. However, in spite of the height of nationalism, there were articles in Chinese mainstream called for respect and understanding, and they would probably never be reported anywhere in the west, after all, not news-worthy.

I thought COVID-19 would have brought us closer to deal with the unknown in front of all of us. We blew it. welcome to the era of 2nd cold war, if we are lucky enough.
...and it was true then
When a share buyback occurs the seller creates a taxable event for themselves through capital gains.

It's just buybacks are considered 'better' because the event is the choice of the seller, and occurs when it is for them. A dividend is 'thrust' upon a shareholder whether they want it or not. (And not investing in dividend-paying companies can be a non-starter: the company in question may be quality one that is worth owning (regardless of dividends, or buybacks)).

The problem is not buybacks or dividends: it is (a) possible executive chicanery, and (b) a lot of the general public not having the means / spare cash to get their foot in the door in investing.
This year, over 20% of Americans have suffered death or tooth decay. Click here to find out how to protect your family.
I think it would be clearer if you'd stop trying to use math terms entirely. Your point isn't that there's a horizontal asymptote, because a virus that kills everyone on Earth could still have one or two of those. Your point is that you think the growth rate is going to slow quickly and you are basing that on intuition rather than math,right?
> In 2018 alone, even with after-tax profits at record levels because of the Republican tax cuts, buybacks by S&P 500 companies reached an astounding 68% of net income, with dividends absorbing another 41%.

Uhh... well, that math doesn't check out.
Weekly Robotics #82
I'm not all that interested in being able to use Git itself on my phone or even tablet. It's not practical, and there already exists several decent apps for doing so.

I'd much rather have Github provide an app that shows me trends and analytics that only they have access to. There are (or were) a few sites and apps that provided a way to see most starred repos by various criteria like all-time vs last week, language, company, search term, etc., but they're hit or miss, and often die when Github changes their API.

Not only is it very helpful for my career, but I also personally enjoy seeing what is becoming very popular out there, and what I might be able to use on future projects.

I think Github is missing out on some money if they don't end up monetizing their knowledge of what projects are most popular (beyond just stars and forks) - any project lead or architect who is still using sales teams, marketing, etc. to decide on what tools and frameworks to use is going to be left in the dust by the ones who keep up to date on what's trending at Github, especially for higher level projects related to Kubernetes, clustering, DB scaling, etc.
Same here in NYC since this morning.
Companies exist to create value for shareholders. That is done via dividends or buybacks. If companies do neither and aren't in a growth stage like amazon was investors would get pissed and there would probably be a hostile takeover. Shareholders prefer buybacks because of the tax advantage.
Since no one else is saying it: Drinking more.

Yeah, not really good, but this might not be the week to stop sniffing glue...
VW is a much bigger company which can afford the slack. Tesla is a small upstart that's never turned a profit.

From cold calculus it might be worth risking a few more lives to keep the concern going.
The latter doesn’t put the entire population at risk.
U.S. government, tech industry discussing ways to use location data for COVID19
I was looking for a device to serve as my paper replacement in 2018 and came across the ReMarkable 1 tablet. Shortly after, Apple had announced a new iPad 9.7", now with Pencil support. This put both devices in the same price bracket.

After reading an in-depth review from GoodEReader [1], I concluded that an iPad, although not with an ePaper display, could also function as a regular tablet with access to a ton of apps. This was something that the ReMarkable was not able to do. The ReMarkable tablet does allow you to have SSH access though, as noted by other comments here.

Just my 2c, if you are also looking at this for a paper replacement.

[1] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-rev...
Can one ventilation machine tube be split to two patients at the same time?
Seems like the biggest problem would be the lack of ventilation machines.

Is there anyone with some knowledge that can provide some information? Can we invent a "split" tube that will serve 2 patients at the same time?

I admit I have no knowledge but from very quick research it seems plausible..

Keep safe!
Universe is GitHub's annual developer conference. https://githubuniverse.com/
Watch the Footprint of Coronavirus Spread Across Countries
Will the mobile web view be improved I noticed that switch to desktop link was broken a few hours ago, perhaps a deployment glitch?
It's not odd, that's pretty standard practice in dire situations like this. The company doesn't have the money to pay your wife or her colleagues, and since the government hasn't done anything special (yet) to help out businesses the only way they can guarantee she gets a portion of her salary is through layoffs.

If they furloughed your wife instead, she would not get paid anything by anyone until the government decides what the relief effort looks like.
The claims are useless for teaching, but for a well written patent the other sections document the actually useful information, explaining what's wrong with existing methods, and the preferred ways to implement theirs. The claims are there for lawyers to argue about what does or doesn't count as that invention.
Sure. So you give the customers a one time bailout and in exchange, thousands are out of jobs.

Great plan!
They've created a funnel from a jobs site they control, through an operating system and hardware they control, with development tools they control, and source (etc.) on a web platform they control, onto a cloud they control.

Assume the best all you like. Microsoft are spying on you and can lock you out of their ecosystem for any reason. When that ecosystem includes critical public infrastructure, there is a problem.

The only "sane" response to this is to smile at the MS employees who tell you how much they love Open Source and to use absolutely any other platform.
I’m not a fan of Microsoft the corporation, nor of Mr. Gates’ business tactics, but I cannot deny feeling a lump in my throat. This departure really does represent a changing of the guard, at least as much as him ceding the CEO’s chair to Ballmer.

This feels like the end of one of the most important eras in the information revolution.
Hyper inflation here we come!
from your username I wonder are you on the Chinese side as well? I understand HN needs to do business with China, which it tried a while ago and failed.

If github can be used as a discussion platform it will be nice, as so far CCP dares not to close github.com, as it will impact its software industry badly.
Food delivery to homes will probably boom. That's going to be the replacement for visiting a restaurant in the coming weeks or months.

But every luxury industry that involves going outside and meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in the mean time. But it's going to be a harsh year for a lot of people.

It's unbelievable how lucky I am that I can do my work from home.
Aren't you also eligible for unemployment if you're laid off?
The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
Is it just me or does every single TC article read like an ad?
Anyone actually tried this update?

1. It deletes your favorites folder

2. An obnoxious blinking icon in the main page and a label while the stream is being prepared is trying to nudge you into buying a VPN service

3. The option to load subtitles is botched

Here if you want the old(0.3.x) version:
https://get.popcorntime.app/repo/build/
If this means the authentic copies are in better hands, then this is good news.
I don't get the interest in analog. Whatever the secret sauce that makes Real Intelligence (TM), analog is not it.
>This one likely came from one bat contacting one human in Wuhan.

AFAIK, most researchers believe that there is an intermediate between the virus-carrying bat and patient zero.

Also, this is not the first time the wild animal market is suspected being the place the crossover happened. This one sounds strikingly similar to the 2003 SARS.

>Did someone in China attempt a cover-up? Maybe. Is that all of China's fault, as a nation? Only insofar as China's government, like many other governments with worldwide political influence, has a secrecy culture within it that punishes uncontrolled release of information that is damaging, or even just embarrassing, to the state.

In western societies, there is the concept of free press, which may alleviate this issue.

Cheers.
Nothing, i think it's impossible to avoid it anymore.
The answer seems to be that it doesn't make any sense, and was in fact fake news. As always, go to the source (when available).
The point of nationalization isn't oversight, the point is that if the public is an investor into a business, the public should receive a share of the profits generated by the business.
In SF it's actually a bit more nuanced than that:

https://sf.gov/stay-home-except-essential-needs
"Are nannies permitted to be used? What about other in-home child care?
In some instances. If the nanny provides medical/health care for the child, then yes. If the nanny lives with you, then yes. Otherwise, nannies not necessary for medical care are not permitted. Also, parents required to work away from home for essential services may need in-home child care, which is permitted."
Changed above. Thanks!
You can consistently use reference counting if you want to avoid thinking too much about memory management.

Haskell vs Rust is probably a question of much more than a GC or not though.
I think the timeline of when different countries started seeing it pop up (after China) has been driven by how commonly those places are travelled to by people from outside of them. Global urban centers. Africa, for example, (I think) still has very few cases.

Even within the U.S., the map very clearly highlights frequently-travelled urban centers (California and New York first, followed by Washington/Oregon, then Texas, Florida, etc.). It looks like the map of the Democrat/Republican leaning for different states.
The Hunt for Narco Subs (2015)
Good data here. I would love to see Square publish something.
I just wonder to what extent an emergency would change that situation. Let’s say I had a really nicely working design that some medical professionals helped test. Let’s say I was able to fabricate hundreds of them. I feel like some emergency exemptions could be offered if the alternative is people dying due to lack of ventilators.