skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It looks like Zoom started in 2013. Google Hangouts was only released in March 2017. When trying to use Hangouts I've had to jump through different browsers because the one I was using wasn't supported.

I also think accounts are a friction. Even though we all used Google services, with Zoom if I needed to hop onto my phone so I could listen in while running an errand I would have needed to authenticate if I was using Meet. I also don't think I've ever been in a Google video chat with more than 2 people. With Zoom we did company meetings without issue.
The bigger issue is that there's a lot of customers where they have split cloud deployments, which means the customers hurt even if they are stable within the clouds themselves.
I'm confused by all the disclaimers regarding home ovens. WHY NOT a home oven, what is the scientific reason? I've been baking N95s on a tray in our kitchen oven at 170F for ~20-30 min and reusing. These articles seem to suggest that's a bad idea but do not say WHY. Would love to know WHY.
> The current pandemic is force majeure, the next one might be accidental, the one after that purposeful

Being honest, I don't think there is any need for such alarmism. If anything, this pandemic has demonstrated that a viral bioweapen could ensure MAD just as well as the nuclear variety.

> Advancement of science and technology in large parts means making more and more potentially destructive power available to individuals and small groups

You are implying that individuals could release a bioweapon upon the world - sorry, but again I think this is pure alarmism, and absolutely not what we need right now. I don't doubt that politicians will soon be making similar arguments in a grab for more power, but please, don't give them ideas!

> How do you propose...

I'm not in the medical field, so I don't have a proposal. But as a human being, I personally don't see how mass surveillance is the answer, especially so given we can't trust our governments with such tools.

I don't doubt that the WHO and experts from across the globe will be making plans to more rapidly contain future outbreaks. I'm certainly interested to learn more about such plans when they exist though.
Agreed, "download", to me, means that the computer on which I'm initiating the action will receive the data. If I'm clicking a "download" button on the PC, I expect the PC to receive data.
I have. I am just highlighting that the problem surely should be more complex than described. Or that their redundancy for these events was not adequately devised.
We are able to recognize, anticipate and avert ecological collapse. No other animal can do this. The rest of the animal kingdom can only adapt, at best.
It's a little bit different from the other resources I've linked, but "Elements of Programming" [0] is another excellent (though incredibly challenging) read. It's written by Alexander Stepanov, and basically walks through the way he built STL by decomposing algorithms and data structures into abstract mathematical structures.

> Elements of Programming provides a different understanding of programming than is presented elsewhere. Its major premise is that practical programming, like other areas of science and engineering,must be based on a solid mathematical foundation. The book shows that algorithms implemented in a real programming language, such as C++, can operate in the most general mathematical setting. For example, the fast exponentiation algorithm is defined to work with any associative operation. Using abstract algorithms leads to efficient, reliable, secure, and economical software.

I revisit it every few years and get a little bit further every time before I start to struggle with the exercises.

[0] http://elementsofprogramming.com/
People forget your first point way too often. I’ve had to deal with air handlers that were retrofitted with a UV systems that I’m sure sounded like a marvelous idea to my institution; however none of the insulation or wiring was rated for UV exposure. So after a few years it was a total mess.
A big one is marking comments as read, so one could resume reading a thread the next day and not see previous comments anymore. But I don't know how one would integrate that with a tree view, which, as such, also has some advantages.

Encouraging selective quoting with interspersed comments, but having seen the triumph of top quoting in e-mail discussions, this might be a lost art anyway.

Also, personal kill files. Bring back the PLONK! Thanks to the thread organization of HN, subject kill files are no longer really necessary, but being able to mute people for 30 days or permanently may still be useful (And it might contribute to downvotes being used less for subjective differences of opinion).

I also used to like the ability to easily take discussions to email, but Usenet was a smaller place back then and this may no longer scale.
$23.6 trillion plus whatever else this situation will cost. I would guess $5-7 trillion more, at a minimum, because it will cost $1.2 trillion a month for shelter-in-place UBI.. and then however much of many trillions in loans go into default or are forgiven.

https://usdebtclock.org
Insects and plankton cannot purposefully prevent collapse. Only humans can do this.
> Until ... life finds a way ...

In particular, a mutation that drops the need for catalyst turns out to be metabolically beneficial.
Note that this appears to require installation of xcode, I recommend reading its license terms which require being run on apple hardware. Only very old versions of the SDK lack those license terms.
Don’t like proprietary formats. So I’m using plain text with a markdown editor (Typora on Windows/Linux and iaWriter on Android iOS/Mac sync via Dropbox. One file for work and one for private notes. I store references in zotero. You even could use zotero alone. If I need to export to pdf, html or slides i can use pandoc. I’d love to use orgmode/emacs but i just can’t remember those shortcuts.
Once you have an identified case, you trace who they have been in close contact with recently and start contacting/testing/isolating them and trace it further from there

E.g. In Switzerland this was done manually (by medical staff mostly i think) in the very beginning, but they gave up very quickly on it because of lack of resources.
As far as I know the route of SARS-Cov-2 spreading in the human body isn't known beyond the change in locality of symptomatic expression with progression of Covid-19 (upper respiratory tract to lower respiratory tract.)

Research has shown (1) the distribution of ACE2 protein, the functional receptor for SARS-Cov and SARS-Cov-2 (2), to include various human organs (oral and nasal mucosa, nasopharynx, lung, stomach, small intestine, colon, skin, lymph nodes, thymus, bone marrow, spleen, liver, kidney, and brain) along with arterial and venous endothelial cells and arterial smooth muscle cells in all organs studied. And ACE2 mRNA has been found in virtually all organs. So there is definitely the potential for cells in the circulatory system binding viruses.

What may be significant here is the concentration of ACE2 protein in cell membranes. One Chinese analysis of a group of 170 Covid-19 fatalities(3) found half of the cases suffered from hypertension. ACE inhibitors are a class of medication prescribed for lowering blood pressure and according to models they increase the concentration of ACE2 protein in lower respiratory tract cells. Given that fatality results from respiratory distress originating in the lower respiratory tract and that not all cases progress to the lower respiratory tract it seems possible that the spread of the virus within the body may be related to concentration of ACE2 protein in cells. The disease progression would also support mucosal transport of the virus within individuals the same as between them.

(1) Tissue distribution of ACE2 protein, the functional receptor for SARS coronavirus. A first step in understanding SARS pathogenesis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15141377
(2) Structure, Function, and Antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
(3) Controversial Study Links COVID-19 Severity to ACEIs and ARBs (Newsweek, March 24, 2020)
So the visual/interaction layer is generated somehow based on the underlying spreadsheet? How are those interface decisions made and how does the UX/UI change from one spreadsheet to another?
Most people (non medical professionals) couldn't take off gloves properly without contaminating themselves. Same thing with putting on and taking off a face mask. It'd provide a false sense of security.
Then you also prefer not to have those options banned.
Mass Psychogenic Illness
First time I’ve heard of someone else with this experience - do your symptoms fluctuate with infections as well?
*since ~1796, in case anyone else went searching for the Punic Wars.
Fastai founders on why everyone should wear a mask
What we think of wild nature is nothing compared to what used to exist.

Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London.

I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World:

My video essays: https://youtu.be/ZLAvBiols2Y and https://youtu.be/U4NZdciDozI

The book: https://www.amazon.com/Once-Future-World-Nature-Could/dp/030...
I feel like VC software will just get more funding by pushing apps/downloads because it makes it easier to collect more data, serve unblocked ads, and nag with notifications for engagement. Not a startup but I'm convinced mobile Reddit is slow and missing features on purpose for just this reason. All they had to do for a perfect mobile experience was enhance .compact a little.
Thank you! Yea, it's hard to fully automate it. I have people helping me source and clean up the recommendations.
Isn't that the whole point of nominal type systems that you shouldn't be "comparing apples and oranges"
In what reality-distortioned world is that worse than 0%? Also, several of those Blink-based browsers include additional non-Google-approved features, like Mozilla's own Firefox Focus, Samsung Browser, Edge, and Brave. I'd hardly call that a monoculture just because they share the same lineage.
My friends and I played a card game in which the point was to write a short story. Our story was like so:

Planet Earth had been evacuated, and all that was left was little robots. All of different types, performing different jobs, but with one major function: to rid the world of a microbe that turned all organic matter into crude oil. Initially this microbe was developed for plastics, but it got out of hand really quickly.

Now, given the world was entirely covered, clean up was an impossible task, so most of the robots just gave up and "zenned out." They'd go into an infinite loop of impossibility and stay there. Our robots were a bit different and instead decided to just pretend to work.

Eventually a catastrophic change happened wherin a small comet hit the Earth. Then growing from that point, all of the sludge began to crystalize. These crystals grew like plague, so any robot that became even an little bit glinty was sure to be a goner soon.

The story ended with all our robots dying, having learned that humanity had sent the crystalizing thing, but also having seen greenery grow once again where the crystals had cleaned up.
Using a second account to upvote and add comments, even if it's a team member or friend, can back-fire. Voting circles already have an algorithmic ranking penality.
In no particular order:

Sunburst and Luminary: an Apollo Memoir
https://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html

The Brain Makers
https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Makers-HP-Newquist/dp/067230412...

Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence
https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Computing-Machine-Intellige...

The Soul of a New Machine
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine/dp/B01FCTJCR0

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-An...

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/B00AQU7...

Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...
Not a dedicated history book, but Hamming talks a lot about personal experiences and observations

UNIX: A History and a Memoir
https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-Kernighan-e...

Masters of Doom
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult... linking to audiobook because it is read by Wil Wheaton :)

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/...

It might be just me, but I really enjoy reading biographies of people important to the science, for example here is one for John Tukey https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.2003...
If this is commercially successful, SpaceX is gonna make a trillion dollars on Mars trips.
> lone coyotes are known to not be particularly dangerous to adult humans

This is an important qualifier; they are not always alone.
I used to be able to jump into a big discussion, read dozens of comments, log out, and the next day could go back and read the NEW comments in that discussion. With HN, I can do that for my own comments, but otherwise, I have to jump back into the whole thread and scroll past all the accumulated discussion to find new contributions.

And good newsreaders were also able to selectively skip a comment and everybody replying to it (e.g. if a discussion devolved into a tangent that was less interesting), instead of a whole subject.
can be, hopefully they will fix it
Use of methylene blue derivatives for Alzheimer's treatment has been definitively ruled out.[0]

[0] https://www.alzforum.org/news/conference-coverage/first-phas...
No, because it's such a narrow view on currency. Because governments have every incentive to keep currencies stable, so they will never become worthless.

Cryptocoins are not backed by anything, making them very volatile and thus unsuited as a foundational currency for any stable society.

This example only illustrates to me that cryptocoin proponents only have esotheric hypotheticals in mind.

Sure Venezuela happened, but those are exceptions. When the stock exchanges went down hard due to corona, the cryptocoins went down hard too. But regular money kept stable.

Yes fiat money is just a record in a database. And that's it for cryptocurrencies. But fiat money like a dollar or euro is so much more.
it always surprised me that “good guy” Tim Apple is down with having a bag of hot garbage like yelp on their maps. Then again when the end game is for companies, not people, to benefit, this is the stupid shit we get to deal with.
The establishment(God I hate that word) all pretty much agree that the majority of autoimmune diseases are a self misclassification.

The establishment also believes that gut dysbiosis and infections can trigger or play a role in this misclassification too.

The problem is that a lot of enthusiasts believe this insight is a lot more beneficial than it is.
Coronavirus: Lockdowns continue to suppress European pollution
Someone has a case of the grumpies.
Netflix: The Spoiler Billboard
You’re reading a lot of malice into “let’s call it what the CDC called it two years before all this”.

The timeline doesn’t work.
> "This chart shows the double-humped peaks of deaths during the 1918 flu in St. Louis. The city imposed strict restrictions early on but loosened them under pressure from its citizens, only to see deaths jump again."

Yeah, I don't know about that, that's pushing to imply that the second peak is due to lifting the restrictions, but it also coincides with winter and colder temperatures, and maybe more people freezing or hungering to death due to the consequences of the restrictions imposed that cascaded into the economy as well.

EDIT: Or is that actually statistically proven? The chart shows overmortality, not deaths from the flu, without additional information, it's all up to interpretation.
Seems like a reasonable fit for HN. If you are skeptical look at their collated list of papers on the effectiveness of homemade masks. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4p...
This use of the word security drives me insane; security is composed of availability, integrity, and confidentiality weighed against each other. Having 0 confidentiality controls (hypothetically, not that this is the case here) is not necessarily insecure.

Privacy is not a synonym for security. It's not even necessarily a requirement for good security.
I can't wait for a community-driven, open-source data model that we can take offline and plug into any software adapter. With a little version control and some voluntary data samples, a large enough community could get it going.
I walk a lot all over San Francisco, including at night. I’ve been seeing coyotes in the streets for at least a year now. Several times in North Beach, a couple times in the dogpatch/China basin area by the ballpark, etc. My phone doesn’t take great photos in low light, but I posted what photos I can on my Twitter [1] and Instagram and Facebook to try and get the word out. At this point I kind of just assumed everyone realized they are around.

[1] https://twitter.com/okgodoit/status/1082425011388829696
The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health;

In Paragraphs 4 to 6 of the Doha Declaration, governments agreed that:

"4. The TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health. Accordingly, while reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members' right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
In this connection, we reaffirm the right of WTO Members to use, to the full, the provisions in the TRIPS Agreement, which provide flexibility for this purpose.

5. Accordingly and in the light of paragraph 4 above, while maintaining our commitments in the TRIPS Agreement, we recognize that these flexibilities include:

(a) In applying the customary rules of interpretation of public international law, each provision of the TRIPS Agreement shall be read in the light of the object and purpose of the Agreement as expressed, in particular, in its objectives and principles.

(b) Each Member has the right to grant compulsory licenses and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licenses are granted.

(c) Each Member has the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency, it being understood that public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics, can represent a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency.
(d)
The effect of the provisions in the TRIPS Agreement that are relevant to the exhaustion of intellectual property rights is to leave each Member free to establish its own regime for such exhaustion without challenge, subject to the MFN and national treatment provisions of Articles 3 and
4.
6. We recognize that WTO Members with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector could face difficulties in making effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement. We instruct the Council for TRIPS to find an expeditious solution to this problem and to report to the General Council before the end of 2002."
These provisions in the Declaration ensure that governments may issue compulsory licenses on patents for medicines, or take other steps to protect public health.

/!\ All countries of weight signed this already, but not enough countries for the treaty to be in effect and the deadline is in sight. /!\

Pressure this information & save lifes.
At my previous company there was no official VC app. Zoom was used the most across multiple years even after trying every other app often. Personally, I didn't like Skype because it seemed heavy and they kept making the things in the UI I liked more difficult to use. Google Meet wouldn't work in my default browser. Both required accounts to sign into a meeting.

We were all over the world and using Mac/Win/Linux. So latency was high and bandwidth was often narrow. We also did company meetings every month or so. We pushed in a bunch of different directions. Often apps are only good at one or two of these scenarios, but Zoom was good enough at all of them.

I had no clue until this week there was a web version, but after using all of the others I'm glad it heavily prefers a standalone app. I do wish they had less scummy practices or there were better alternatives.
So many problems with this analysis. 1.) main paper cited is from 2006, 2.) article is from 2016 3.) much of the data is older, several plots go to 2014 4.) almost no analysis that looks at long term profile of companies that do this over and over
Just to share my experience.

1. We sucks at hiring, so we need to train juniors on how to hire early.
2. Programs live in the head of their creators. The code is just a draft left for computer to execute. Build a human culture where the aspiration is discussed.
3. We don’t replace people, we hand over the responsibility. Be ready to work differently.
4. I conduct interview by asking the candidates to explain me I piece of work she is is proud of. If I understand the what, how and why, she usually pass.
5. Remember: most issues are not technical but organizational. We can train people, but we can’t change them.
6. Set high quality standards for your team. Make them proud of their work. On boarding will be easier.

So, it is less about how to hire the shinning star and more about how to welcome and how to create a culture around your values.

My two cents.
I've switched to CotEditor for lightweight text editing.
Guessing you're in the group that makes these?

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/commercial-printers/specialty-prin...

There's no pricing on that page. :(

Any idea what kind of price (even range) they're in?
Maybe in Europe, but in the US there is a ridiculous amount of untouched space a <20 miles from almost every major city with the exception of California and the north east.
Don't the reagents for similar commercial lab rtPCR tests typically have to be kept hard frozen too?

CMIIAW: this doesn't seem like a readily DIY biohacking-possible project without some significant infrastructure, procedural knowledge, and expenses.

Also is there a low-volume, open source rtPCR procedure with cheaper equipment and consumables?
Google started developing it more for enterprise use in 2017 but Hangouts has been around since 2013.
> End of line inference algorithms are incredibly fragile

I am working on a language right now with optional semicolons (that is, newlines terminate statements unless there is a semicolon, which does the same early) and it’s not really that hard. The only change is that instead of looking for a newline character for statement termination I often also need to look for a semicolon.
Database generated IDs are a great example. We often use integers because it is convenient - but there's no reason you should be able to add two together.
What amazed me was after reading Unbroken (WWII novel set in the pacific) was the incredible amount of sharks in hawaii and the surrounding islands. A family member who was in the pacific theatre backed this up. Shark schools so dense that sailors would be attacked after they fell in. This was barely 70 years ago so alot has changed in terms of animal population.
I live near twin peaks and seem them A LOT, the first pic in the article is on TP on the road to the top. They are frequently out during the day, one almost got hit by the 37 I was on a few months back.