skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Is Neil Ferguson's Pandemic Simulation code open source?
I guess the question is: Is Neil Ferguson's code any good?

Per his Twitter:

"I wrote the code (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13+ years ago to model flu pandemics..."

Is the code tested? How was validation performed? Results published where?

Is it peer reviewed?

I ask because my state is applying even harder lockdown measures beginning tonight based largely on Mr. Ferguson's "2 Million US deaths" claim. If his code is buggy or outright wrong, I would like to know. I would also like to come to understand his liability for producing such software in the first place. A lot of people are out of jobs, emotionally shattered, and so on. If much of the decision making has been based on faulty models, we need to know right away.
> You can set up a backup Github?

I can put a cloned backup of a git repository anywhere I want. (I do this with all my git repos; I certainly don't depend on Github--or Gitlab, or anyone else--to keep the only copies that aren't on my local machine.) I can't back up the other data that Github stores (issues, wiki, etc.), but that's because Github gives no way to download it, not because Github is "centralized". Github could provide the capability to download this data if it wanted to, without changing its underlying storage model at all. It just doesn't want to.

> when there is an issue with Github your team and deployment methods (CI/etc) would automatically switch to that backup

If what you are providing is "better failover performance than Github", that's fine (although I would want to see your actual uptime numbers before I'd believe any such claim), but that's not what "decentralized" means.

> I feel like I'm repeating myself, but the advantage is being distributed. Distributed systems usually aim to be resistant to these types of issues.

Sure, but unless you think Github literally stores all of their data on one single server machine, then Github itself is "distributed" in the same sense.

> I'm a bit confused at your question. Are you asking why being distributed is good?

No, I'm asking why you keep on saying "decentralized" when it turns out that what you mean is "distributed" (and when even "distributed" isn't the real issue--see below). They're not the same thing. You keep saying "decentralized is better than Github", but benefits like better failover performance come from being distributed, and Github is distributed, as I just pointed out above.

> you're asking why someone might not want centralization for the rest of the non-Git components[1]?

If your argument is "the rest of the non-Git components shouldn't be locked up in Github's data centers where nobody else can download them", that's fine, but it has nothing whatever to do with "decentralized" or even "distributed". You're just saying that all those other things should be in a freely accessible data store that can be cloned and replicated and accessed just like the git repo for the code itself. Sure, that's fine, I agree. But all this talk about "decentralized" has nothing to do with that point; it just obfuscates it.
The highest uptime I've ever seen was a 11yr and change on a Cisco switch on a state university campus. We made up some little commemorative plaques with a CNC router and affixed one to the case before eBaying it. Hopefully it delivered reliable service to the second owner.
Building a Comprehensive Backup Strategy for Your Organization
Show HN: Bored Being Quarantined? Talk to Trump
Because it's the right thing to do.
Anybody know about data indicating age? It's always "confirmed", "dead", "recovered" but no info about age of patients.
I found a VIDBOX on eBay that shipped in 2 days and got it yesterday to hook up my 2012 HD camcorder as a webcam in Linux. It is an amazing upgrade and was indeed hard to find. Luckily I already had a few HDMI mini adapters.

Last night I got a v4l2loopback working from Open Broadcast Studio with it and now can have "pro" transitions and compositing of my camera, my screen, text, images, etc. in Teams and WebEx or whatever. Pretty neat.

Keep trying, it's worth it.
Race is real, but it is not genetic
So before I duplicate any effort, has anyone found a tracker that takes this dataset's death counts and updates a Pueyo/Khan Academy-style graph [1], at different granular levels (world, nation, province/state)? Pueyo's analysis technique uses deaths each day to impute a back-looking inferred actual infected count instead of relying upon reported testing numbers, and that in turn can be used to infer a two-week forward-looking infected and death count based upon currently-known stats on average time to hospitalization and mortality. After two weeks, it gets increasingly more speculative, but by the time you have number of known deaths today, you almost have a baked-in outcome two weeks from now.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk
Hundreds of hours in eu4 and wikipedia will do the trick too haha
All countries which the rest of the World relies on production of masks, gloves, plastic items, electronics, medical equipment have done well.

The rest of World which includes once capable nations (who have now outsourced everything and now don't have capacity to produce even bandages for their population) is now screwed.

Lesson learnt: Self reliance is key.
While I think that's a valid point to make. My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response in the total state space. Hindsight and all that.

I think a much more powerful complaint is pointing out that, despite numerous warnings, studies, SARS, and having successfully isolated the root cause of the SARS outbreak (Civets). Only four months later these animals were back on the menu. The government made a rational choice to allow the conditions for the current situation to exist. The whole world is paying the price for this rational, prolonged and often pointed out mistake. That, I think, is a complaint we can lay wholly on the government.
The headline of the article should be a hint. "3 steps to add tests on existing code when you have short deadlines"

So, if you're on a short deadline and maybe you didn't write the code the first place, so you might not be familiar with the internals, snapshot testing is the quickest way to get confidence that you aren't causing further regressions.

These aren't meant to be used forever more. Just to stop things from sliding backwards.

After all, the title of the site is understandlegacycode.com. It's all about getting to a point where you can refactor and do things properly when you do get time.

If that doesn't make sense, what would you suggest to do?
Podcast with audio version of PG essays
I made a podcast with PG's essays in audio. I want to post it here but need PG's "ok". PG can I post the URL?
I'm surprised the 2 trillion dollar bill did nothing to cover uninsured people.
Github has an API, so downloading issues of your repos isn't that difficult either, although they could for sure make it easier.
Show HN: Composing a responsive newsletter email in markup language
But if "choose the right tool" includes "use the right libraries", how does it differ from "write good code"? At that point arguing that you should use the right tool is arguing about being disciplined?
Is Zoom the best though? Google Hangouts seems to be just as good.
You wrote:

> Why should the video bitrate be dropped because some second rate ISPs are oversubscribing super badly? Isn't all of this totally against the principles of net neutrality?

No. This is entirely separate from net neutrality. That principle says, "No ISP should discriminate on the basis of content."

In the case of an oversubscribed ISP, the "magic of the markets" that so many lobbyists talk about is that you can simply switch to a new provider. Oh, you only have one provider? Tough cookies.
"I can tell you that marketing and sales are _the_ core reason tech (maybe also non-tech) businesses fail."

Could not agree more, especially underestimated by the vast majority of devs turned entrepreneur. But you don't have to be that statistic - get a complimentary cofounder/partner/outsource if it's not your passion.
I have a need for Zoom, virus or no, but the point of the article is why I don't give them money. Give them money, while the company is apparently still going to worry about milking advertising dollars out of me? That's just going to be a strong "no". As the final paragraph of TFA says, either charge more or give away less for free. But if you're selling me out to advertisers after I've given you money, then you're one of "those" companies that I avoid if at all possible. Because they're skeezy. You don't want to appear skeezy, do you, Zoom?

So for now Skype and MS Teams works fine, or at least fine enough that I don't bother with Zoom. Which brings me to a side question: what is the value proposition for Zoom? What does their product do so much better than the others that I'd put up with this shit? Why am I hearing the hell out of it lately? Outstanding PR department?

EDIT: thanks for your answers to “why use it, then?” Because “it just works” seems to be the summary, which hoo boy, one cannot say about a lot of the competition.
"the best of those, Zoom, is doing very well"

Is Zoom really the best? No other comparable platform out there?

Anyone know how difficult it would be to build something like it on top of aws or a similar cloud?
I dont think list comprehensions are used to improve performance. One reason to use them is to improve readability, as the execution doesnt jump around with continue/break etc.
You didn't address anything. It is absolutely infuriating with people like yourself that say they addressed a complaint and they clearly haven't (I've re-read the thread several times) and then tell me to go and read some marxist pamphlet.

This is ridiculous. Goodbye.
IIRC MiniDisc was big in Japan when it came out, and a lot of artists draw on that 90s-era Japanese aesthetic projected into the future. A lot of cyberpunk art features devices that look and function like MiniDisc devices + discs.
usafacts.org has daily county data from 1/23 forward.
Show HN: Coronamaison
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the US I'd be surprised if this compilation met the threshold of originality needed.

See Feist v. Rural for the Supreme Court decision on copyrights over compilations of data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
Probably not. To the extent that the numbers simply reflect facts about the world and don't involve any creativity on the part of the New York Time they aren't subject to copyright.

EDIT: Some more details https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...
Urgent care is also great for somewhat more serious things like minor lacerations—they can put in stitches. If you go to an emergency room (especially right now) you might be waiting for many hours.

The copay is lower at urgent care too.
Yeah, good questions. I'd say if you already have a car, probably reasonably safe to make your way to it and drive somewhere. But renting, hmm not so sure.

Also, staying with family has its risks. Maybe someone is infected but asymptomatic.

Sorry man, I don't have much advice for you. Best of luck.

Whatever you decide to do, think it through, preferably with some other brains involved. Don't rush. As others have said, you're reasonably safe inside where you are now.
3 Days of Inpatient Care in New York
Right, but they are a US corporation in California. The "right thing to do" is pretty much at the end of their priorities list.
Silly me, I'd assumed it came through the Mac App store.
Came here to say this. Excellent interface.
I mostly had the same thought as you, but one thing I imagine some people might want is access to Apple's own command line tools, particularly those who prefer using Linux but need to work with Apple formats for some reason.

There's osascript for executing Applescript code, plutil for working with plists, and diskutil for making DMGs. Those are just off the top of my head, there's probably others too.
Hey HN!

Here's my second covid19 related project: #coronamaison

I got really impressed by all the art drawings of the #coronamaison project where, starting with a blank template, you then draw your ideal #staythefuckhome place.

It all started with a tweet from Pénélope Bagieu (https://twitter.com/PenelopeB/status/1239186251833630720), a French artist, and then a lot of artists started to send their own drawing on both Twitter and Instagram.

Very soon I wanted to create a website to organize all those magnificent drawings. Because I felt otherwise they would be lost in the social media noise. This is what I have done this week and the result is here.

Enjoy browsing them all and let me know what you think!
relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/
Because the EU is on lockdown, lots of EU citizens now using Zoom, and all of those users are potential liabilities due to GDPR issues.
So to summarize, you acknowledge that Trump is a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, pathological liar, etc, but for you, that doesn't disqualify him in your mind.

Yet you strongly disqualify Biden and hate him much worse than Trump, but even when directly asked, you can't specifically name anything in particular about him that's worse than or even anywhere approaching the magnitude and mendacity of Trump's flaws.

Are you at all conscious and self-aware of that glaring internal contradiction of yours, or do you just vaguely sense that something is off about your believe system that you just can't quite put your finger on?

If say your goal in life is "I would like to maximize happiness for all humans beings on earth", yet you don't consider sexism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, pathological lying, science denial, white supremacy, etc, totally unacceptable and absolutely disqualifying, then you don't really mean what you say. That's a perfectly valid and justifiable reason for decent people to be angry with you.

You can't sealion your way out of that contradiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

I think you should stop "pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity" (the very definition of sealioning) while projecting your own problems onto them, and look deeply inwards to figure out why you condone and support someone with all of those undeniable and fatal character flaws (literally fatal to millions of other people who his words and deeds and science denial and narcissism are making miserable and killing) -- and face the fact that by supporting him, you're partly responsible for enabling and attempting to justify his systematic abuse, and all the misery and death he is causing. Is it because you lack any form of empathy for your fellow human beings, just like he does? Or do you just enjoy seeing all the people he hates punished, like so many other people in his base?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...

>“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud. A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown reveals the real reason the president attracts hardcore supporters.

>“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

>He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.

>Think about that line for a second. Roll it over in your head. In essence, Minton is declaring that one aim of the Trump administration is to hurt people — the right people. Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain.
What a great idea. Would love to see this in Zoom or Hangouts
How is this form of license valid for what's essentially just numbers?

Are you saying that the NYT has added no value over just an unformatted stream of raw numbers?
Yes. Check for bufferbloat using http://DSLReports.com/speedtest

If you get a grade below "B", then your home router is likely bufferbloated. Then read "What can I do about Bufferbloat?" at https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/What_can_I_d...

Please report back to the list so we can refine our knowledge. (It's like Covid-19 testing. We cannot know the incidence of infection if we don't test lots and lots of people to find a true rate...) Thanks.
As a lay person, I currently get the distinct impression that polymer-digesting microbes are not currently considered dangerous, with the current impacts being negligible.

What kind of dangers and impacts would you like to see studied?
A good start is this article by Jay Kreps (Apache Kafka co-creator and Confluent co-founder) :

The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction : https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-wha...
Contributor License Agreement Assistant
Web RTC pretty much handles peer to peer video chat. I think you just need a server to organize the call’s, provide chat, and login from
TLC Diet Transformation( Lose Weight,Lower Your Cholesterol&Transform Your Life
I don't think geography really changes the incentives.
Not only are businesses open in Taiwan, it is one of the few countries where the schools are still open. Taiwan immediately began targeted testing, then contact tracing and quarantining suspected cases. The government distributed disposable surgical masks and people commonly wear masks in any public area. Some supply chains from China are disrupted, and the Computex trade show may yet be cancelled or disabled. Otherwise the economy in Taiwan is in motion.

These steps are more drastic than the "do nothing" approach we saw from some Western governments in the early days, but far less drastic that what those governments have had to resort to because they dropped the ball at the outset.
I have a $15 USB headset with a mic that comes out in front. It the sound quality is absolutely awesome. I don't personally mind the look of a little mic like that.

I also have my house wired with raspberry pis on WiFi hooked up to stereos on different floors linked using snapcast. It's cool because I can pipe the audio from a long meeting that I'm listening in on to it and then walk around the house.

Since I can get my phone to play the snapcast feed too, even the hottub Bluetooth speakers can now be playing the all-hands meeting ;)
How to Be Unproductive
Well, there are huge differences (in the MS world) between 9x and NT.

DOS (before) was very, very stable (but of course was not multitasking) and widely used in industrial setups.

Windows NT (before Win9x) and Windows 2000 (right after) were both, very, very stable, I had machines running 24/7/365 that were rebooted once a year or so and for other reasons (maintenance/update, hardware replacement, black outs longer than UPS capability, etc.).
>What does git.io for?

>@Hitton Don't show your ignorance please.

Sorry, your first sentence doesn't make any sense. And why don't you try to explain what exactly I'm ignorant of, you surely don't suffer from such defects yourself, so it should be easy for you.
I made a similar objection the last time this came up (might have been on another site.) Someone pointed out that they can still be useful for confirming that refactoring for readability/testability has not changed behavior, at least for the paths the snapshots exercise. That could be valuable when dealing with a hairy code base. Still, you wouldn't want to keep such tests around for long.
I can still hear the sound that ventrillo would make when using push-to-talk while playing World of Warcraft.
I am always very hesitant to say anything personal over any video chat medium unless I know it's end to end encrypted. I know that they're not actively watching my video meetings, but it's still causing a chilling effect in how I conduct myself with their service.
Do you have any friend that is confirmed negative (spent at least 10 days stationary as far as interactions go) and has a car? They can scoop you up and take you somewhere. Whether that's home to your parents or whatever. Otherwise you need to stay inside for at least the next 3 weeks or go outside with a mask and stay way away from people (just to get sun).
Zoom has this available to turn on in options (on the Windows client at least).
This is just it. In a 2 Trillion dollar bill, there's no payment for those with Covid directly? It's inhumane but also irrational. During a pandemic, you need those with no insurance or scary-high co-pay to get tested and get help, otherwise, they become vectors for spread. It's literally probably cheaper to pay for their coverage.

It's weird that they were fighting for a few billion here and there in this bill for special projects, I thought some would be saying: "no bailouts without everyone covered for covid" or something like that.

But to see American leaders and press basically spend all day fighting each other on cable news, just another day of bickering, contrasted to almost every other nation where it's mostly muted and they talk about things they are doing, what you should do for Covid, updates etc.. It's really embarrassing.
In the US at least the standard for copyright is originality. Value add or "sweat of the brow" doesn't come into it.
I use both at work, and Hangouts has less features and struggles more noticeably with bad connections. I consider Hangouts worse
Avoid Mutation in JavaScript
...and what's wrong with a commercial for a proven successful saas in a world of fail+noise...suggesting you can't learn something from it?

Or are we to assume you commercial efforts are well exceeding $76k mrr?
For me, zoom consistently has far better A/V quality than hangouts.

So we have two anecdotes now I guess.
I’ve found Jitsi to be more than adequate with no need to download an app onto my computer. Just share the link with my friends!
To answer your last question - it works very well. I've used lots of virtual meeting software over the past 20 years, and zoom is by far the best.

I agree with your sentiment though - it makes me angry that they're selling my personal data. But sadly I don't think that any companies will voluntarily be non-skeezy...we really need laws and regulations in this space. I don't trust capitalism to take care of my privacy. If companies can get more money without breaking the law, they will absolutely do so.
Thanks for the feedback and heads up. Looks like someone beat us to it!
I tried Google Hangouts on Firefox on Linux but couldn't get it to work at all. It just errored out before starting the call.
This is great for science. Commercial trips like this and those to outerspace will no doubt lower cost over time which will benefit both tourists and scientists.
Hi! I am the author of dashmap. CHashMap is essentially a table behind an rwlock where each slot is also behind its own rwlock. This is great in theory since it allows decently concurrent operations providing they don't need to lock the whole table for resizing. In practice this falls short quickly because of the contention on the outer lock and the large amount of locks and unlocks when traversing the map.

dashmap works by splitting into an array of shards, each shard behind its own rwlock. The shard is decided from the keys hash. This will only lock and unlock once for any one shard and allows concurrent table locking operations provided they are on different shards. Further, there is no central rwlock each thread must go thru which improves performance significantly.
Works well as a learning tool, but fails miserably for translation. The underlying assumption "the mapping between words in a pair of languages is simple" starts falling apart beyond the most basic introductory course.
My take: Zoom is very approachable outside of enterprise. Skype (although historically has its roots with regular folks), is mostly used in a "Skype for Business" config. MS Teams is much the same way.

Good PR helps too, I suppose.