skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This reminds me of the Doodle Art posters our family used to gather around when I was a kid in the 70's. Good times.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=doodle+art+posters+1970s&t=osx&iar...
Try 63/37 tin/lead instead of 60/40. 63/37 alloy is eutectic, meaning its melting and solidifying temperature is the same (183C). 60/40 has a semisolid state around its melting point (~=190C).
Were the high numbers from early 2018 caused by bad winter weather?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9318_North_American...

edit: Or the flu season.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_State...
Jamie Zawinski aka JWZ is a well known for his contributions to Mozilla and XEmacs.[1]

He is also known for Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment :

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

1. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
> The only thing I hear is "this won't work" "but what can we do?" "don't you understand that this won't work"....

I find it doubly frustrating because the majority of these are asserted as fact, typically based on flawed reasoning, when what they really are, are estimations/predictions.

If this lack of concern (if not outright disdain) for correctness becomes too prevalent within a society, I worry that it may affect the quality of our decision making.
not op, but the API does not feel coherently designed, with the same sort of complete-but-hard-to-learn vibe as php's standard library.

there are no mypy module stubs so ide autocomplete generally just doesn't work (and likely never will properly as the API is often inconsistent in its return types based on what you pass to it)

The docs are detailed but most is the meat is in great long module-level manual pages, which are difficult to use as a quick reference.
basically I have been using pandas for about a year now and I still hit around one multi-hour long 'how do I do this seemingly basic operation' dive into stack overflow/GitHub/etc per week.

pandas code itself is very difficult to understand, due to being based around weird python metaprogramming mixin patterns and needing to do a fair amount of optimised stuff in cython anyway.

with that said I still have been using Pandas for a year and it lets me do my job, so hey it's not all bad. designing a general purpose api like this correctly the first time is probably impossible, and I'm really grateful for the work the pandas devs have achieved.
I wish there was something meaningful I could say or do to help you.

I've read your posts over the years and always found them interesting and well written. It has changed the way I look at homelessness, even though I'm not from, or live in, the US.

Just know that, for what it's worth, you have at least made one person change their mind.

I know it's not much and it won't solve any of the issues you have, but I really hope things work out for you. I won't say "everything will be ok" because I don't know if they will be... but I hope I can at least warm your heart or make you smile for a few seconds while reading this.

I really wish for you to find the strength, luck, light at the end of the tunnel, or however you wanna call it, to pull through this situation.

You have obviously poured a lot of energy and well articulated and informative thoughts into this forum and I'd like to at least thank you for what I've learned from them.

Godspeed Doreen.
FDA issues emergency authorization of anti-malaria drug for coronavirus care
I liked the "Mother Night" movie with Nick Nolte. I'll have to finally get around to reading the book this year.
His HIV experience is nonsense.

> - another thread mentioned corona virus being temperature-sensitive. Can that be correlated with deaths by city?

Nope.

> - are there different strains of covid-19 with different strengths?

Nope.

> - what stats do we have that are reliable?

Very few, but we've got lower bounds.

> - H5N1 and H1N1 were also corona viruses. what can we learn from them?

Those are influenza strains, not corona viruses. Did he actually say that? If so I missed that bit of stupidity. We use the same epidemiological models for flu. I don't know where he got the idea that we don't.

> - The reason we shut down the economy is because there's not enough ventilators, so it's worthwhile to look at the numbers, while making more ventilators.

Uh...no.

> - has anybody survived corona virus and being on a respirator? If not, the lockdown may not be helping since we aren't developing herd immunity to it.

Yes. And herd immunity is not the goal here. Herd immunity involves a nontrivial percentage of the population dead and 20% of the population in intensive care for weeks. That will destroy the economy much more than any lockdown measure we could take.
I have seen meso American ball courts as far north as 10 miles or so south of Phoenix. ??? It's called Ulama and it's still played in the area around Mazatlan, Mexico. There is even a league.
Most of the us think that we know "things". We belittle other people's point of view. Doctors and politicians kept emphasizing flaw statistics, while they did not actually understand the whole problem. There's a saying "pride comes before the fall". We're not immune to this, lots of manufacturers and engineers also say "what's so difficult to make a ventilator?". We talk before we think - Tesla guy changed his mind from making ventilators to importing them.

We also have to be cautious to only listening to tech influencer. Past history does not mean future success. Trust your own smart judgement and survival instinct.
I'm slightly surprised (this being HN) that no one has noted that the Jamie Zawinski quoted in the article is the Jamie Zawinski (jwz, known for Xemacs and Xscreensaver) . Or is it just too obvious to mention?

Regardless, his comments seem very much in character.
Ask HN: Best Office Chair?
My home desk-chair is nearly ten years old at this point, and wasn't anything special even when it was new. This is starting to become pretty noticeable now that I'm using it for eight hours every day.

Anybody have recommendations for their favorite office/desk chair? I don't want anything huge or ungainly, and ideally not one of those garish "gamer chairs". Something minimalist but comfy, and durable, and good for your back. I've really enjoyed those mesh-based chairs in the past, though I don't remember any specific brands.
Good Manners Coronavirus
There are people who have been using lead solder for years who swear by it and refuse to use lead-free because it produces crappy joints. I tend to be on their side. What you need is proper filtering for air and you'll be fine.
Yes, the dynamics remind me of all the proposals for "orphaned works" where some agency collects royalties on stuff without a contract and creators are then forced to go beg from them and accept their terms without negotiation, or get nothing. In reality most creators never figure out or are aware of the system and the "facilitating agency" aka den of thieves is raking in billions that are never claimed.
Staying home is one of those three ships. The other ones are to wash your hands and to self-isolate if you think you've been infected.
20 Covid-19 treatments you may already have around your house
People have nowhere to go, so much less driving. Perverse.
Another commenter mentioned it's more energy efficient to grow tomatoes in Spain - where less heat is needed - and fly them to the UK. That may be true, but an even better way is to just grow crops that are suitable for that season.

In the UK you can grow crops all year round outdoors [0], and the growing seasons could easily be extended with a passive greenhouse (polycarbonate is more insulating than glass). You can also use tried and tested preservation techniques like canning and fermenting to keep food for other seasons.

[0] https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/vegetables-all-year-round
What yelp is doing is kind of analogous to what brave browser is doing where people can give donations to any publisher website even if the publisher is not signed up with brave, and then brave will reach out to them to claim their donations.
Sorry about that. It cut on the cut/paste. Here is the full link:

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2016/10/27/14-dns-nerds-dont-con...

Edit: If any other links fail here is the original https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684048
Inverse relationship between antimalarials (chloroquinine et al) and COVID-19
Virulent here means "how bad it is to the host species". A virus with high morbidity and mortality, and high contagiousness, is a pretty virulent virus. Now, if it is too virulent, the virus might die off -- become extinct. If it is very contagious but does not sicken or kill the host, then the host won't even notice, and the virus will flourish. If continuing to exist were the virus' goal -it can't exactly have a goal, now can it?-, then being less virulent would be in its best interests. But viruses don't have goals, and this just amounts to an observation: that highly virulent viruses are rare, and that those that survive tend to be the less virulent strains.
OneWeb, a satellite internet startup, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Leak: An Apple AR Headset with Controllers Is in the Works
Masks are not complex. It does not need to be an N95 certified mask to significantly reduce respirated droplets. You would be surprised by the ingenuity of entrepreneurs, but of course, this thread is not about logic but instead about jealousy of others' abilities to profit in a way that some people think is unethical, despite the fact that it would undeniably result in more masks to combat this crisis. In reality, most of the people with your viewpoint cannot envision themselves scrapping together something and pivoting their entire business on such a short time frame, and they share the relatively common personality trait in which they then don't want others to succeed where they do not.

> factories can't be retooled overnight, and people die in the meantime.

Of course the masks aren't hitting shelves the next day, perhaps two weeks before meaningful production increases. What a pointless statement -- the crisis won't be over in two weeks, and this same principle would have held two weeks ago, or eight. And then you would blame people dying on the entrepreneurs retooling to create masks? Another pointless statement if that is not your intent.
The World After Coronavirus
I think what doesn't make sense to me is the fact that assembly is required for democracy to work, and the people have to accept their loss of assembly with an accelerated pace of facts before there's any time to digest.

The people must simply trust that forfeiting a necessary aspect of democratic health will be correct in hindsight.
I figured the fume extractor is for flux fumes. Do the fumes also contain lead?
Game show regulations would not allow that behavior. The problem assumes a typical game show in western media so the reader should assume the player knows all the rules governing the host’s behavior, which you can see in the other discussions.
The risk free interest rate is zero. Heck, by the time you read this, it could go negative!
Depending on the traffic loads of the roads i'd be wary of eating them for 'organic' reasons. The same goes for the embankments of railroads which are sprayed with herbicides, at least where i am.
I agree it could have been rolled out better but people generally don't like surprises especially things like the donation page that probably signal that their businesses are on financial life support even if it's not the case.
This is concise in a sort of code golf way, but not substantially faster to write than equivalent R code -- I chose R because math operations are natively vectorized and the basic data type is a vector, and because the language has a user-friendly REPL -- would be, and certainly less readable. I read the linked K documentation and it seems like much of K's syntax was motivated by wanting to get away from "the programmer way of doing things", but the lack of readability would seem to get in the way of that.

Still neat as a toy exercise using what seems like a fun little micro-language.
Data Structures: Heaps in Code
That's what I always figured. I do so little soldering that I doubt it wouldn't make any difference for my health. And lead based solder saves a lot of time and frustration.
Yelp has consistently behaved in an exceptionally sociopathic manner for many many years. I don't see any reason why that should have changed. Does a leopard change its spots?
I believe there is a third possible outcome that you overlooked.
Coronavirus vaccine: When will it be ready?
Always a pleasant surprise to find niche or mundane uses of array languages. I really appreciate the explication because it made it possible for me to follow along in J - there's vanishingly little material to patiently explain bits like the "grade-up grade-down to return rank" that permeates so much APL-style code.

I'm similarly pleased to have found a correspondence from K's ' (also present in Klong) to J, where it ends up being "0 in this instance.

r=. v&%"0 (0.5+i. s)
+/s>($r)$/:\:,/r
Covid-19:The decision-making strategy designed for uncertainty is Minimax Regret
A key thing I realized at one point is that as a human being, thinking isn't free. I have finite energy resources both emotionally and physically, and when I'm thinking, I'm expending those resources. Then, with that in mind, I can turn my analytical mind to the meta-problem of using my mental energy effectively.

When you shift this way - when you think of your energy as a finite resource that has to be budgeted and recharged - you see how wasteful all of that extra thinking really is. Look at every train of thought as a cost/value proposition, and it becomes really easy to decline most of the really pointless ones.

Mindfulness also really helps. What it really is, is teasing apart ideas from the emotional expenditure that normally comes with them. This attacks the problem from a different angle: making thoughts "cheaper", so that your (still finite) energy goes further.

What I've also found, is that relentless overthinking often stems from stress/anxiety (which is of course circularly caused by it, when you're bottoming-out your energy all the time). What this ends up meaning is, if you can free up some of your energy and gain some room to breathe, you'll probably naturally do a lot less overthinking, and have an easier time getting out of your analytical mindset.
What’s a 5x legger?
Steelcase Leap. I've had mine for maybe 17 years and it still works perfectly and looks good. I find it far more comfortable that those mesh chars like the Aeron (its main competitor back when I bought it).

They also have fantastic warranties, I had it maybe 12 years when the gas strut failed, the tech drove up from 2 towns away to replace it the next day in my home office.
>The fact that it has not chosen your favorite approach on that unrelated axis does not make it bad.

It is not possible to implement a general purpose OS on a monolithic architecture. Try as you might you'll always fall short, because it's not possible to do hard realtime on a monolith no matter how much some pretend otherwise (no WCET means no hard realtime. Must have proof of not missing those deadline), nor is it possible to have security (huge TCB, no security. No amount of mitigation can do away with this fundamental problem). And thus, you'll always fall short of general purpose.

That's the point I'm making. Linux and all these other systems we use aren't general purpose operating systems. They're just stopgaps. They're due to be replaced. The question isn't if but when and by what exactly.
accidents probably. mass shootings? not significant enough to register.
Okay, I'm seriously stuck on the 8th core. Hint please...
> The need for action doesn't mean acting foolish. Irrational behavior in the name of "just doing something" will needlessly deplete more resources.

I am genuinely interested in what your suggestion would be though. This is me asking. What would you do to address in the hypothetical I proposed?
You may know this already, but "mass shootings" account for a small number of deaths per year compared to what the media portrays.

[1] In comparison, you're about 3x more likely to be killed by choking on your food, 7x more likely to die in a fire, 91x more likely to die because of fall, and 397x more likely to die in an accident of some kind.

[2]Overall, violence is becoming less common over time despite the [3]increase in privately owned firearms in the US.

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-death-murder-risk-sta...

[2]https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/30/new-fbi-data-v...

[3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/there...
Sanderson - Mistborn series, not only is an extremely entertaining author, but the end of the series really changes your mind forever, I'm not really sure how to portray this without spoilers.
Is that a good or bad thing? Symptoms go away but are you actually virus free?
Yeah, his books were my favorite in junior high. It's so rare for him to get mentioned anymore.
Have you heard about the small child with cancer? He is dying and wants to see his favorite baseball team before he dies.

We are (I am) collecting funds to help him achieve his dream before his tiny life is extinguished. Won't you give what you can today?* Blessings, dear fellow kind human.

* Please note I have no connection to him or authorization to hold this fundraiser and if he doesn't contact me to claim the money I guess I'll have to keep it for myself but I'm not going to mention that in my appeal.
I would recommend short stories by Anton Chekhov, any "Selected Stories" collection is fine. His characters are just normal people from >100 years ago but they feel very real and relatable. He makes you feel as if you're inside their head, the topics are generally very tragic though and it can get a bit depressing.
Has such a survey of doctors actually been performed, that also includes a range of scenarios under which the doctor might have to make such a decision?
I think you (and others who downvoted me) missed the point of my comment. It is absolutely legal for the government to restrict religious freedom in certain limited ways when there is a compelling reason to do so.
The Mote in God's Eye (sci-fi, first contact story) helped me accept sudden and drastic changes in my life and the impermanence of the world around me.
Can confirm (or back up sels statement).
Best Bottle Shooting games for Android users in 2020
There's a lot of different ways that species can be classified:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)

The six-kingdom system you're thinking of is probably one which divided the eukaryokes into subcategories of protists, plants, fungi, and animals. There are other systems which make even finer distinctions.
Sure, that's why I put that last remark. But you might already know before hitting this block that the message is perfectly formed.
There's a more detailed article at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)
Good but < OP on the site design front.
No, lead vaporizes at much higher temperatures than ones used for soldering. But the flux/rosin fumes are major lung irritants and can exasperate or even cause asthma.
I think the point is that if you let prices rise people wouldn't hoard as much. Prices go up demand goes down. High prices also encourage hoarders to sell or other suppliers to come on line, eventually lowering the price for everyone. Government atempts to keep prices low with ill defined and vague "price gouging" laws is a form of price control which while popular never work and result in shortages. This is clearly seen in U.S. gasoline prices. In the 70s when the oil supply was threatened the answer was price controls that led to rationing and shortages. In the 2000s in the U.S. prices quickly climbed from about a $1 a gallon to $4 a gallon or more because of overseas political turmoil and war. Unlike the 70s, prices were allowed to rise, resulting in no shortages, reduced demand as people switched to more efficient cars and other conservation methods, and eventually much more supply as producers were empowered and encouraged by high prices to spend money to explore fracking and other methods leading to the glut of oil and lower prices we have now. Price controls even in a crisis never work and lead to shortages and inefficient behaviors like hoarding or waste.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-there-is-...
Helping Zoom
The Wikipedia article on Rule 30 is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30
What was the most overrated or disappointing book you've ever read?
What was the most overrated or disappointing book you've ever read? Someone just asked about the most influential, so I'm curious about the other end.
For me, "The Dune" was an absolute bore. I wanted to like it because of all the great reviews I've read. Just not my cup of tea.
From the twitter thread, it seems like it’s a data error: https://mobile.twitter.com/mersenneary/status/12444399368766...

At first it seems plausible, due to decreased traffic fatalities and so on. But traffic fatalities are about ~3000 a month, this effect is 15-20x greater than that. So it seems like there should be a high burden of proof here.
Same here. Learned on Pb last century, but have not touched it much since the industry made the shift (2006). It is so much easier to make bad joints that look good with leaded solder. Bad joint with SAC305 or SN100C looks like a bad joint.

What has evolved a lot since the pre-RoHS lead-free panic (2002..2006) is synthetic flux. Hardly see rosin based fluxed in industry nowadays (where performance matters).

For DIY stuff I mostly use SAC305 solder with synthetic mild flux (REL0) like LF4300 (water soluble, in theory no clean, but you do not want to leave this working in very humid environment) or SMD291NL (true no clean). In production different ones depending on the end product and components. Activity and cleaning requirements are main characteristics to choose by.
The travel ban bought us valuable time. Or it would have. Remind me what Trump did during the following weeks?
If a director becomes personally bankrupt (such as trying to be the good guy and using personal guarantees to take on company debts in an effort to scrape through) then they're banned from running a company until it clears. If they're the director of a company that goes bankrupt, I believe they get 2 chances (companies) before there's a chance of being banned from running more for a time.

Either way it might be nice to keep your options open, depending on your plans.
An aquarium water pump https://www.ntotank.com/20gallon-duracast-rv-water-tank-x348..., a liquid holding container https://www.ntotank.com/20gallon-duracast-rv-water-tank-x348..., one or more large Tupperware (or whatever you find) tray(s) draining back into the liquid holder, Rockwell bricks (or another grow medium) in the trays, a cheap timer for the pump and you have your own ebb and flow system for a couple hundred bucks.

I've build several of these over the years. There's no need to spend extra money. But the soil and the sun are free if you can get it and imo better.
Once again, guns don't kill people, Republicans kill people.
I think it must have been made by a glider colliding with something created out there by the collision of two other gliders earlier.
The administration made numerous statements early on that insinuated the virus wasn’t serious. Trump himself called it a hoax, said it was like the regular flu, etc.

HEB, a Texas-based grocer, was talking to partners, running disaster scenarios, and preparing their supply chain as far back as January[0]. A private company was a month ahead of the administration despite all of the preliminary reporting and intelligence communications around the virus. There’s absolutely no excuse for the way the government bungled this.

While Trump was calling the virus a hoax, companies were already preparing for what was to come.

0: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-p...