skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Two million was at the very high end of only a very few models (one?).

That said, Italy is at the top of their curve (hopefully, apparently) with 16,000 deaths. However, their excess deaths this past month (compared to baseline for March) are extremely high, and equal almost as many deaths as the official Covid-19 death toll. According to at least some Italian demographers and epidemiologists, it's likely most of those deaths are due to Covid-19 and were uncounted. But let's say that only half of those deaths were Covid-19, and that the curve turns out to be relatively balanced, as with most epidemics that don't come in waves. If that's the case, Italy will see around 50,000 deaths from Covid-19. Spain will likely see around the same proportion of Covid deaths.

If the US were to experience a similar proportion of deaths, we'd be at around 500,000 deaths. I don't think we'll see nearly so many deaths from Covid-19 now but in early March, it just wasn't clear. It's not 2 million, but my point here is that this was a model that likely turned out high, but it was within the same order of magnitude. And again, I'm using the actual deaths that have occurred in Italy at the top of the curve to make that estimate. It's possible that both the curve will suddenly drop precipitously, and that most of those excess deaths were caused by some other phenomenon, but it's highly unlikely based on behavior of past respiratory pandemics.

Many more models people have discussed have predicted anywhere from 48,000 to (most commonly) around 200,000 deaths in the US from Covid-19. I think we'll probably end up around the 50,000 death figure, and that's with us shutting down our economy. I think it could have easily been much, much more (although probably nowhere near 2 million) if we had carried on business as usual (and could still end up like that if we're not careful).

So complain that the media latched on to the most dire model, that's OK. I agree the media sensationalizes. "If it bleeds, it leads".

But don't complain about the model itself. Those papers are always very clear about the degree of uncertainty.

I don't know of any serious scientist who is predicting global collapse by 2030 from global warming. Do you have someone specific in mind?
Which, in itself, is probably a valuable take-away.
Eric is describing an emergent phenomenon in a particular system of politics that is often invisible to an outsider.

It upgrades one's cognitive toolkit by allowing someone reason in the second order (Assuming Kayfabe) vs. the first order (Taking things at face value).

If you can spot Kayfabe and realize that certain rivalries exist for the sole purpose of propping each other up, you realize that the degrees of freedom are far greater than it seems.
FWIW I saw the Imprint link at the bottom, but I didn't know that's where I could find company info. However, there was a link to their mission statement in the middle of the page which includes the same info.
What are you doing to combat the risks of attacks like SIM-swapping?

Personally I find using phone numbers for this purpose as a cop-out, and like you said it's just a Twilio account away from being defeated. Like captchas it's only a matter of time before that is the baseline capability for bots and you're in no better place than before, except now your users have worsened security.

IMHO the true business incentive for requiring numbers is just getting identity-coupled phone numbers which add significant value to their collection of PII.
Yeah, I don't know what's the point of these studies that don't look at HCQ+zinc when the hypothesis is that HCQ promotes zinc absorption.
By the time it's severe, it's often too late:
https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1244717172871409666?s=20
Since there's no vaccine...what you're suggesting is a perpetual game of Covid whack-a-mole.

We come out of quarantine it blows up again, we go back into quarantine.

That's as infeasable solution as this current lockdown quarantine.
I actually followed the coverage the first time, and where the ban was criticized it was almost entirely for being too late for that response to be useful, not unwarranted by the severity of the disease. Of course, if there really are “countless” examples supporting your characterization, it will be easy for you to cite some.
I am also just like you!

It is indeed irritating and confusing at times. I like to do many things and explore new ideas. Curiosity takes me in different direction. At times, I question my personality and character. Perhaps the feeling of "curiosity killed the cat" is applicable when we are feeling this way.

But let's reframe this!

What if we start to accept this trait, not as a flaw, but as a part of who we are? Once you come to the realization, you start holding yourself accountable.

I have been working on a side project (www.wisecharlie.com) for almost 3 years and continue to do so for many years to come. To give you a background, I am a developer and I enjoy the creative side of code and design. So, it is natural for me to keep exploring new ideas, but I also know the importance of execution. Following are the ways I have held myself accountable to this particular project:

1. No expectations (goals) other than a form of exploration.

I have a revenue generating product, but that does not mean, my goal is to sell the most I can, get as many people to come visit my project and get the most sign-ups. I care about the topic, constant work-in-progress and iterate over it periodically. The process itself brings me joy.

2. Sticking to one project at a time removes a cognitive load of finding new ideas.

For some, creative block is a real thing. From the creative standpoint, I have built the website using plain JS/HTML/CSS, then built the blog using Gatsby. I wanted to learn about webflow so I re-built it during Christmas. I don't have to think about new ideas every time I want to learn something new.

3. Incremental steps as opposed to a giant leap.

I assign myself one task at a time on a monthly basis. That is it. I don't set ambitious goals of 100k users or any of that. This has allowed me to work on this project for over 36 months without feeling burnt-out. It is a turtle race so take incremental steps and make frequent progress as opposed to a giant leap. If I complete my assigned tasks, I allow myself to jump on to other ideas. This allows me to stay accountable and execute consistently.

4. Pick a hobby that has nothing to do with side project.

With lack of human interaction amid global stay-at-home orders, I find myself to be draining my productivity (rarely, but it does happen). To fix this, I picked up on sketching because I wanted to forget about everything that is happening around me. Sketching helped me with that because if I don't focus, my shapes don't follow the desired form. Here is the link to my sketch work https://twitter.com/mihirchronicles/status/12160752161594859....

I am sharing these resources so I can share real cases from my own life and inspire you to take steps that may work for you. Good luck! It is okay to feel how you feel, but I would suggest you to make incremental steps, define your process and take a long-term view.

The advice I share took many years of learning and doing. Curiosity brought the cat back and you can too! :)

Cheers and stay safe!
Wonder when the Indian Council of Medical Research will release more papers - there were a few patients who responded positively under their suggested treatment plan:

> “We used a combo of Lopinavir and Ritonavir drugs which are usually given as a second line of treatment for HIV with drugs meant for curing malaria and swine flu. We administered this line of treatment to a 70-year-old Italian woman, who had come as a tourist to Rajasthan, who tested positive and was being treated by us, as well as another Italian, who is 69-year-old,” said Dr Sudhir Bhandari.

> ... “The team of doctors under the leadership of Dr Sudhir Bhandari, Principal of SMS Medical College held consultations with the ICMR and tried a combination medicines given for malaria, swine flu (Tamiflu) along with drugs for HIV and it worked well. All three persons including the Italians were cured this way,” said Rohit Kumar Singh, additional chief secretary, health of Rajasthan government.

Source: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/three-coronavirus-...

> ... The three persons who tested positive were administered a combination of 200mg Lopinavir and 50 mg of Ritonavir twice a day besides Oseltamivir and Chloroquine that are given to the swine flu and malaria patients.

> However, the doctors at the SMS Hospital warned that this was only an emergency treatment and the HIV medicines were used only as an emergency measure that could help in regaining normalcy.

Source: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/covid-19-magic-med...
Any time someone gives the guy’s full name it’s a clear indicator of a certain agenda. Give it a rest. Dredge it up when he’s recovered or maybe, if he doesn’t survive this, after a respectful interval following his death.
Just a bit more information on this project: The core problem I am seeing in the coronavirus response is a lack of global logistics planning. My hope is that we can build tools to fill in those gaps. Lots of people want to help and there are lots of unused equipment and supplies sitting idle. Lots of hospitals and regions are in desperate need of help and not getting it. I hope to connect the two.
He happens to believe (or accepts) the IPCC findings, he just disagrees about the economic implications, which is his prerogative.
Take a look at VictoriaMetrics. It supports OHLC function (rollup_candlestick) via MetticsQL [1], which is backwards compatible with PromQL - query language used in Prometheus. PromQL is optimized for typical queries over time series data [2].

VictoriaMetrics works out of the box without the need to set up third-party systems or wroting complex configs. It is also very fast for both data ingestion and querying [3], [4].

[1] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/Metr...

[2] https://medium.com/@valyala/promql-tutorial-for-beginners-9a...

[3] https://medium.com/@valyala/measuring-vertical-scalability-f...

[4] https://medium.com/@valyala/billy-how-victoriametrics-deals-...
If average monthly salary is €1200, that would mean the Spanish Government would need to tax close to 41% of your income to give everyone a €500 distribution. Considering that not everyone works -- the percentage is probably closer to 55%+. But let's be optimistic...

Even if you plan on only taking income from the top 0.1%, that's not going to get you very far. You'd have to take 100% of that just to come up with 10% of the total UBI distributions. That means, you're pretty much back at square one. Everyone gets 36%+ their income taken in taxes, and then they roughly get it right back, with an extra €25 or so added on (best case, more realistically, you'd probably come out €50 behind).

I don't see how the average person benefits from this? I only see how this benefits people who don't work, and incentivizes more people to not work.

You can't say that you can pay for this with existing taxes. If you use all your existing tax revenue for UBI, how are you going to fund everything the government actually does?
I thought that was a joke. The name he proposed for it ('Pravda') was certainly a joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda
For covid-19 I've curated this list:

https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489

All the people on it are serious experts. I've also left out some people who are worth listening to, but have a political bias or express a lot of emotion (it's hard not to be angry).

I spend way too much time getting up to speed, but (a) there's a lot of stuff I find interesting (I studied molecular and cell bio a bit during my Masters), and (b) would rather err on the side of over-learning than being misinformed.

If you want secondary sources rather than primary, try STAT news. They've been excellent.

The quality of discussion in other fora (including HN) has been quite disappointing.
Bad flu years aren't baked into healthcare systems; hospitals have to set up tents in parking lots to handle the extra flux of patients, and tens to hundreds of thousands of people still die.
That's the interesting thing. I'm located in a major city with at least one enormous Amazon warehouse nearby. Before the pandemic started we would usually receive our orders the same day.
I understand how someone who was misinformed could have a false sense of security, but is there any evidence that a person who is informed can have a false sense of security? It sounds like something that you would need to show, as opposed to being an obviously correct assumption.
Imagine a treatment that would being people back to life. Surely if you saw that 11 times you would believe it worked. In fact, after n = 1, you would be so amazed you'd be thinking there is a trick. The point is that, while N is important, the N needed to uncover a signal differs wildly with the outcome you're trying to affect, specifically the outcome's variance. If one of these drug cocktails 'works' (which has many different definitions in clinical research), the signal may be obvious enough that n = 11 is enough to hone in on a promising treatment for further study. It's complicated.
This was (is?) also possible with Lyft. When I was interning in the US, my visa sponsor sent me a SIM card that they clearly reused several times a year. Opening the Lyft app with this SIM automatically logged me in to the attached account. I didn’t noticed this and took a 70$ trip from SF to SV. Next morning I realized it wasn’t my account and credit card details. Wrote to Lyft support but never heard back. It wasn’t even possible to log out of this account and create a new one.
This is a 20 year old game.
Best thing: You can play at work! I did that for some time when I was bored
A list of cherry picked quotes from a motivated contrarian is not evidence that they "got it so wrong."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22796906
Some restaurant suppliers have opened their online store to individuals. I can't speak for California, but in New York City we just shopped yesterday on baldor[1]. For most items the minimum quantity is way to high for a single family (e.g. for potatoes you can only order 50 lbs or so). But you can still find some stuff. It's not a very pleasant online shopping experience, but it'll do for now.

[1] https://www.baldorfood.com/
I already baked that in by starting with a low infection rate (2x per week instead of 2x every 3 days).
Probing the Effect of Atmospheric Pressure on the Candy–Cola Soda Geyser
Principles of least surprise (or astonishment), is one of cornerstones of Ruby. However, the language itself is dynamic, so take the end result with a pinch of salt: The language's OO syntax is beautifully simple, incredibly easy to structure into classes/mixins and have tons of useful libraries, to write code with. Not always so much for reading code, refactoring or discerning what REALLY goes on in a Rails application..
Carl Quinn ( Javaposse.com) Has Passed Away
How to Increase AWS EKS Availability While Using EC2 Spot
You definitely want to do both & ideally much more. But yet again, even even if mask provided zero protection, as long as it reduces spread from asymptomatic carriers, it is a big win. But for that everyone needs to wear them - which is happening here in Czech republic.

Just today a went for a walk through the second largest Czech city. The weather was nice and there were people in the streets, though a lot less than normally, with the usually crowded spots totally empty due to all the restaurants still being closed.

To cut things short, the number of people without mask I saw during this hour and a half walk that were not wearing a mask ?

1
> With any luck he will be right but no one really knows.

Even he doesn't know if he's right, but apparently that doesn't stop him from using his influence to push his hot take.

At this point, the only thing that can be claimed with confidence is our global ignorance of this pandemic, and how much more we have to learn about it.
• They collect sales tax now.

In 2018 in the case South Dakota v. Wayfair the Supreme Court overturned the 1992 case (Quill v. North Dakota) that had ruled that states could not force merchants with no physical presence in the state to collect sales tax on mail order sales to state residents. If a company is doing enough online business with customers in a state, that state can now force the merchant to collect tax.

If you get a B&H store credit card [1] and use it for your B&H orders (which is all you can use it for since it only works at B&H) they give you an instant reward at checkout equal to whatever your sales tax was. In effect then, if you get and use that card there B&H pays your sales tax transparently for you.

• With two exception for the most part online shoppers can ignore the Jewish holiday closings. The website still works so you can still shop. I think you can even still place items in your cart and maybe submit the order. Orders just are not processed until the holiday ends.

Most of the holidays are just a day, so if you hit one of those its not really a big delay.

The two exceptions are Passover and Sukkot. Those are each one week long. Passover is in March or April, and Sukkot is in September or October. That's long enough to be irritating.

[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/credit-cards
From experience internally (not at Costco, but other t20 retail), here's what happened, from most to least likely.

1. Your order type fell into an edge cast that an incomplete batch system -> system transfer job choked on. Naturally, it silently failed.

2. Inventory count mismatch.

3. Incomplete transportation handshake.

Logistics looks simple from a customer perspective: (1) order, (2) ship, (3) receive. From a vendor perspective it's (1+) bulk source, (2+) distribute, (3) maintain consistent inventory counts, (4) receive order, (5) source order items from stock most efficiently, (6) orchestrate multi-sourced items, (7+) provision & batch transportation, receiving and reshipping at multiple legs, (8+) fulfill last mile.

All while stitching together 30+ year old systems for each of those. And the +'d items are all semi-outside of the company's control. (Ever wonder why there are so many transportation-abstraction companies?)

Which is to say, no excuse for bad service. But it's a bear of a problem.

Incidentally, why most retail has excellent customer support phone centers (usually onshore): they know their systems break a non-zero amount of time, and want the best touch when you need to have things fixed.
There's 66% - 90% mortality after ventilator use by corona patients.
I commented on this earlier, and my karma is sinking due to all the crazy people downvoting each one of my comments in that thread.

To all of these people and anyone sincerely interested in the topic I'd like to post an interview with Dr John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University, that hopefully sheds the light on the true amount of fear-mongering and plain stupidity in the media right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw

Here are some of his thoughts in written form:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...

As you may see, he is much more reserved about the subject than many of the people in the comments to this submission.

What does this have to do with PG's blog post? Well, PG's post is blatant and dogmatic witch-blaming, while the people, that he is blaming, may actually be right. And they definitely have the right to express their opinion on the subject.
Airbnb raising $1B amid fallout from coronanvirus
Quite a good curation!
It's an s shaped curve, but we don't know the upper magnitude of that curve. A large percentage of the population would have to get infected in order to run the COVID out of new recruits. If it tops out at 50% of the population, that's a disaster.

Forcing the doubling rate to decrease short of hitting that point requires something else to happen. South Korea clearly did something other than running itself out of cannon fodder.
Exactly. Both the media and the anti-media/anti-expert crowd both have a poor understanding of probability and confidence intervals.

With the media, I think it's sometimes intentional and not ignorance, as a ploy to get clicks.

With the anti-media, anti-expert crowd, I have to believe it's usually simple ignorance.
I don’t believe it. Studying how to effectively treat coronavirus patients is literally the most important problem in the world right now, and I’m sure a lot more than 11 severe cases are being treated with hydrochloroquine.
Please prefer the much more straightforward `Number()` native constructor.

Also, not sure if the title was edited after submission, but the article is titled "I prefer", not "Prefer".
New app from U. of Cambridge collects the sounds of COVID-19
"Group captain, I'm afraid I can't follow your banter, sir"

"Bally Jerry...pranged his kite right in the how's yer father...hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie."
It's quite obvious to me that they were advocating against promoting Zoom by using it in any manner. That is, playing tabletop games or otherwise.

I had a similar reaction when I read this thread's title: "I can't believe the frontpage was flooded with articles about Zoom being controversial privacy-wise a couple of days ago and now this pops up".
Well don't hold back now. If you read the article, I can't because it's paywalled, then present the evidence here, in this forum.
Spore encoded the creature data in the alpha channel... which always struck me as odd since they managed the site that hosted the images and could guarantee metadata wasn't removed after upload. I think a few other games used metadata to share but the names aren't coming to mind.
A thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7247307

https://web.archive.org/web/20140301184841/http://www.inolen...
Generally speaking, a criticism of a study that focuses only on something like this is uninteresting -- while it _may_ be a valid criticism, it is not always (many valid studies have very small samples!), and so stating it unsupported is actually more like evidence that you don't know how to critically evaluate a study. As Zeynep Tufekci said: 'Anybody immediately responds to a correlation with “but correlation does not imply causation” probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Don’t have much to say, throw around smart sounding cocktail phrase.'
Why? Quake III was the best Quake.
So far most data I've seen shows that people who were infected have some immunity. However, it's not clear yet what the annual effect of immunity will be - for example, we haven't sampled enough people/viruses to know in detail whether that immunity persists when the virus mutates.

Epidemiologists are likely to know the answers to these sorts of questions in a few years.
"1.5. What does the name Sylpheed mean?

It means light weight, like air. This comes from the name of the wind spirits, the Sylphs."

https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/doc/faq/en/sylpheed-faq-1.html#d0...
Yup, FF in a private window. Thanks!
How is selling their stock when it is on the rise underhanded? It's not like the people who bought it didn't believe they stood to profit from it, and many did.
Is it really in the age of ubiquitous Internet access?

A bit of self-promotion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22787162

In fact, I am impressed, this is not a thing yet.