skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that the radiation exposure from living in Pripyat is comparable to that of living somewhere near coal plants.

Yes and no, in a way it's worse because Pripyat was evacuated, so people were moved to low radiation areas. Coal plants, people don't realize just how much radiation is generated by them. Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. [1]

"Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas."

Honestly it sounds much risker to live anywhere near a coal plant than anywhere near a nuclear plant (which for the record have had 30 years of safety upgrades since Chernobyl). Not to mention, the last RBMK reactor at the Chernobyl power plant was left operating until the year 2000.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
Do you have a specific policy you're trying to advocate for?

You want to release lockdowns at the very moment where we are at peak outbreak size? How is that not the worst possible time to do it? The very definition of "releasing lockdown" is that the rate of spread will increase. Since the exponent now seems to be very close to zero, that means it will rapidly become higher than zero, and we will be growing exponentially again.

And we will start not from a dozen cases, but from hundreds of thousands. How does the math work on that?

Also, to pick on some of your postulates:

> (3) The vast majority of the globe will be exposed to this. Avoiding that is not possible, so it's just a matter of when

The fact that we're peaking now, way under universal infection, proves this wrong. We've beaten it, the war just isn't over. We didn't all get Ebola or HIV, which were similarly novel. The world never acquired universal herd immunity to polio either.

Some pandemics, like the 2009 H1N1 ("swine flu") outbreak, do work like that and spread effectively uncontained. And it's bad when they do. Swine flu killed a quarter million people, and COVID-19 is about an order of magnitude more dangerous. So it maybe made sense to let one spread where we want to contain the other.

Details matter, basically.
Just noticed the username. Feel free to shoot me an email, would be keen to hear what kind of work you do in nz.
I hope we can get actual studies soon because the anecdata is scary to me. I hope these stories only make news because they are rare not just because it happens to be a celebrity:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/...
Most of the people who safely use anhydrous ammonia on a regular basis are farmhands, not experienced hazmat workers. The training and equipment that allows them to do that would also be available to e.g. municipal bus lines or delivery companies. Any firm that hires people to refuel its vehicles could afford this. Eventually more fool-proof nozzles and storage tanks might be developed so that regular people with personal cars could safely handle this fuel, but it will be practical for other uses long before then.
While I've had thoughts along these lines as the "pragmatic" thing to do - given that the population level health effects of a busted economy and the fact that we're probably not changing the system anytime soon - we should still acknowledge that there's a lot we don't know about covid and that this would be a huge experiment. There are follow on health effects from both chicken pox (shingles) and polio viruses, for example, that often happen decades after their first onset - so we could have a "bonus" surprise from covid down the line. This would be to gain an immunity that is not assured as of yet - because we still don't know enough.
The rhetoric isn't we're all gonna die. Its that societal tensions and polarization will flare up. It might be helpful to read beyond the admittedly clickbaity headline to look at the meat of the article. I will concede the headline is needlessly pessimistic and clickbaity, and that I also initially thought it was about the spread of the virus - the article can definitely be clearer about what its talking about upfront and be more proactive about offering solutions. But it's not the kind of rhetoric it seems it is.
First off, I'm so sorry to hear that you've been diagnosed with this condition. I haven't read through any of the replies to your question aside from a quick read through, so I'm sorry if any of my advice is redundant, helpful or not.

My immediate advice to you as an engineer is to remember that your most powerful and valuable tool is your mind. The ability to solve software engineering problems starts with the cognitive aspects of your knowledge, intuition, experience and who you are. An engineer's cognitive ability to solve problems and guide outcomes is the most valuable thing that we bring to any project we join or undertake.

Look for a team or project that values critical thinking to drive execution over just banging out code. Don't sweat being hands on in the long run, i.e. writing code and pushing features. Make the most of the work you're doing now to start honing your skills to be able to drive things like architecture, implementation choices, etc. based on experience, lessons learned, people you enjoy working with etc.

Also, keep in mind that you have a unique albeit unfortunate set of circumstances that can bring a perspective as you're going through this to what works and doesn't for others in similar circumstances that want to have careers in software technology. Be open to an awareness for areas where you can help solve problems and be involved in building solutions for others in a similar circumstance as you're in. Look for ways to develop products, tools, advisory groups, training, etc. that can help engineers with similar disabilities.

I wish you the best and again, I'm very sorry you're facing this. I hope that my thoughts help in some way.
The part of Northern Ontario where I grew up is part of the Ojibwe nation.

The most impressive thing about the nation to me is how inhospitable the region is. The winter where I'm from typically lasts about 8 months, it snowed a few days ago. The area wasn't really permanently inhabited by white people until well after industrialization.

I couldn't imagine living there without shipping or heating infrastructure.

It's unfortunate that we've lost so much of the history and traditions that enabled the Ojibwe to thrive there. Public school definitely didn't help, we learned absolutely nothing about their culture despite maybe a quarter of my class being native kids.
I only have a little to offer:

First, in college I knew a guy with RP. He was hands-down the most brilliant coder I knew at the time. Aside from blowing up the screen (screenreaders did not yet exist), he ended up simply memorizing his code. He held the whole thing in his head.

I also knew -- internet-only -- a woman with the more severe form of Usher's (born deaf, go blind) -- who was quite techy even in the early 1990s and now works doing tech stuff for libraries, last I checked. She, also, had it going on.

In short, I can tell you this: other people have done it, so you also have a shot at it.
Also because OrbitDB runs in browser JavaScript, it's great for building local-first distributed applications.
There was an article[0] on HN a couple of days ago about 'accelerated' education for gifted students, and how 'nonaccelerands' appears to have significantly worse outcomes. I suspect that students who are the best in their class can reliably put less effort for the same result as their peers, and then learn to 'coast' their way through life. Until they reach college-level, or the 'real world', where the workload often doesn't permit this.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901962
why goats?

why not silkworms?
Do you have examples of how that might work with other languages or tools?
> Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way.

How do you feel about the citizens united ruling, which (I am paraphrasing, perhaps poorly) found that by disallowing one to spend money on poltiical speech, that freedom of speech was impacted?

I think it's actually quite a sensible point. Speech costs money. Therefore limits on the money an organization can spend is necessarily a limit on speech.

("Overturn citizens united" is the classic liberal/democrat view, but I really question how many have thought deeply about the implications of what they are proposing).

--

BTW, as you probably know, regulations quickly get co-opted by corporations/lobbyists for their own ends. So, if there is a true desire to funnel money to politicians, they will find a way. Now, that does not mean that we shouldn't try to make that harder, if that's what we think is the right move (I think Citizens United was a great ruling. I assume you disagree based off of the above)
I was not questioning the financial part. Just the severity of issues.
> so a total plug to wheels efficiency of less than 40%. In the real world, it will be far less efficient than that (probably 25% at best).

> That vs the typical plug to wheels efficiency of around 60% in today's electric vehicles.

1) Just to add a point of comparison, current ICE engines have an efficiency of around 25-35%, so while 25% sounds bad, that's the technology we've been putting up with for a century. But obviously, new technologies ought to be more efficient.

2) Speaking of efficiency, here we are talking about plug-to-wheel efficiencies. The true useful efficiency of a car is the ability to move you to your destination.

So adding in the "weight efficiency" of 5-10%, given a 1-2t car and a 100kg charge (based on average 1.5 people occupancy in a car), the efficiency drops to ~1% for ICE/hydrogen cars and ~3% for electric cars.

Please consider using lighter cars, a lot more gains can be achieved that way.
As again with political analysis, I am seeing downright inconsistencies and biases in judging responses to this pandemic, based on what side one is on. Do you apply the same remarks to the POTUS as well?
If it was just health insurance and similarly "risky" industries that required the 6000 pages, it wouldn't be so bad.

Earlier this year Lambda School (an online school where you watch videos and learn things) got fined $75k by a California regulator for the crime of teaching without a license. One single state license application required "2177 pages and weighed 25 pounds," and they're having to do this for many states.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20555351
[2] https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1153450365712388096
The highlight reel is just 12 minutes.

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/videos.html
What South Korea did was very impressive and that's the reason so few other nations have gotten their result. I don't believe there is any likely scenario where the US could have accomplished what they did.

There is one example of a nation that did what South Korea specifically did, and it's South Korea. They had several attributes unique in combination to South Korea that enabled the speed, cultural response, tech, testing, tracing and manufacturing to come together so well.

Nearly every country on the planet similarly failed to follow precisely what South Korea did. For good reason: they couldn't under any circumstances, realistically, because there are few countries like South Korea.

There are only about a handful of nations that can, for example, rapidly do the testing (tech, scale, manufacturing, distribution, results, reaction) that South Korea pulled off and so quickly. A mere ~4-6 out of 195 nations can do that on the timeline they did it (and that's in a good scenario).

It would have been an extraordinary accomplishment indeed to have such amazing forward-sight to know exactly what was going to happen and to pick the one country to copy the behavior of - and then to move at a lightning speed of manufacturing and cultural behavior the US hasn't seen since the 1940s, based on 20k-40k cases of an infection in China that we didn't know much about.

South Korea has a far more nimble system and society than the US does, for all sorts of reasons. The US is a lumbering goliath, South Korea is a faster start-up. It would be impossible for the US to do what they did, on their timeline, at scale. The best you were likely to get out of the US, is much higher scale testing earlier on, we could have done that.
Looking for something out of place requires learned technique (which is taught to pilots - it's awfully hard to see an aircraft on collision course because it does not move in your field of vision at all! By the time you notice it with peripheral vision it's too late). So the idea is to split the field of view in 5-10 degree sectors and look only within the sector for a second or two, using strictly central vision (with best acuity) and then move to the next sector until the full field of vision is covered, rinse and repeat.
H1N1 doesn't seem like a good comparison without spending a lot of time contextualizing the differences here. They are just such different magnitudes of mortality, and to a much lesser extent, transmissibility.

--

I guess, my question is, can you point to some actions that the Obama administration took, relative to the timeline of when the WHO issued the warning, and compare that to the Trump administration's coronavirus response?

(BTW, it's not relevant, but I will say that I do agree that Trump is a total idiot and will put his ego before...well, everything. He has completely mischaracterized our testing capacity, along with tons of other issues. But I'm suspicious of blanket claims that administration X did a better job without a little more substance than you provided)
The problem is that you can fail if you try. And failing at anything is a scary thing. So its easier not to try. And there's comfort in mediocrity. And your brain will reward it.

The trick is that you should accept failure as part of the process, a necessity.

Most people will get catch a cold or flue during the year, and so is with mental health. Don't expect not get down at some points.

But you should always treat yourself as someone you want to help. To that end, take a meta view of yourself.

Here are some tips:

1) Look into personality types, and figure out which one you score high at. Use it as guide. Nothing is definitive, but could provide you some insight into why you behave the way you do.

2) Fresh air and exercise is important. Spend at least an hour outside every day, walk or whatever. How long you can walk, is actually a very good indicator of your health, and life expectancy.

3) Try Yoga, the really good programs, combine movement with breath, and even a bit of meditation. It will improve mental clarity, and help with flexibility.
Like this one.
http://katepotteryoga.ca/namaste-tv-show/

4) Good dental hygiene. Bad Gums can cause serious inflammation, and health issues. Make sure you fix any teeth problems quickly. And don't smoke.

5) Good sleep hygiene. Black out windows a night, and make sure you are get fresh air into the room. C02 levels can build up in your room during the night. And make sure if you snore, to get medical help with it.

6) Realize that you soon will be dead. And many greater, smarter people than us, have lived this life before. Read or Listen to books they wrote. It will often contain their best insights summarized.

Like for example some stoic philosophy, which is great at helping visualize the worse case scenario, and accept it. Marcus Aurelius is great.
This is a fun series.

"The philosopher's guide to happiness"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVA8jX9KQcE&list=PL785793324...

7) Make Future plans, and daily to do lists. The process of writing things down, focuses you on what you need to get done. It really does help. Seize the day!

8) 25 minute timer, 5 minute breaks.
>In the long term the issue with this is that it pushes Google and Facebook into your politics.

Google is already the largest industry lobbyist stateside

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/09/google-is-techs-top-spender-...
Bitcoin stealer infected 700 libraries of major programming language
I’ve personally experienced a variation of the mouse one. For me it was network traffic would only pass if I moved the mouse. I have a screen recording of it somewhere, it was pretty wild. I remember switching from a Mac Pro to an iMac resolved it for me.
> I want to live in a world where none of these things are legally mandated, but everyone does them because they're good ideas. Apparently that world is impossible.

Helmet laws in the several US states are a good example, I grew up in SoCal, where its mandated for bikes/motorcycles, but more importantly spent a lot of time in 4 wheel motorsports and saw their efficacy on more occasions than I can count. I used to be the only one to wear one during canyon carving as well as track events.

I didn't ride a motorcycle until I got to CO, where helmets are optional, and despite that I would never swing a leg over a bike without one. The only people I ever see ignore helmets are harley riding guys with bare skin exposed all over, often way older, as most of the sport bike community understand that gear is everything in even a low speed, low side if they've been in one.

After a lowside myself with cheap gear, except my helmet as that was a $700 write off, due to a negligent driver and inexperience on my part (specifically: how not to panic towards that as it frequently occurs on the street) I learned the hard way how important 'dressing for the crash' really is and not just a helmet only priority.

The only time I ever rode without a helmet was riding my motorcycle from one end of the parking lot to my storage unit (maybe 1/2 mile, if that) during my first incoming snap frost/blizzard and it felt so incredibly stupid at 10MPH in 1st gear feathering the throttle I'd never do it again.

I'm not sure what serious lack of self preservation you must have to ever willingly ride at speed without one, but perhaps its not so bad to weed that out of the gene pool and not having it expedites the process?
I’m sorry but this is basically just flame baiting. Just tossing in a zealous attack against large cars in the middle of a discussion on fuel cells... What is the interest in rehashing that same old debate in this thread?
We don't give vaccines to people without subjecting them to comprehensive and time-consuming clinical trials. So why would we willingly subject half the population to a virus that we seem to know very little about? Are there long term health effects to an "otherwise healthy" person being infected with COVID-19? Are there potential long-term lung issues, even in a person who is symptomatic but does not require hospitalization?

I worry about these things based simply on reading the anecdotes of many younger, healthy people who have dealt with this virus. It's extremely clear in those anecdotes that this virus is nothing like the common cold or the flu. Yet so much of the rhetoric seems to make that assumption.

I'd hate to take the "this is silly, let's open things up for the healthy" approach only to be in a situation 20 years from now where we are dealing with the misery of mass-scale respiratory disease that gets linked back to these infections.
not pure speculation. There's historical precedence in the Spanish Flu for a resurgence of the disease after social distancing orders are ended too early.
Tech earnings preview: Weakness looms amid pandemic, but some companies thrive
Sure. Now show me the PDF that says what the government did in response to those findings.
The article actually mentions that goats may be on the outs as they are looking at producing spider silk from silkworms now
“Clearly for quantity the silkworms will always win but for material properties, we are very close or superior in most cases,” Dr Lewis writes.
As someone who grew up in a no-name mid-western town, I can't stop counting my lucky stars for becoming one of the first students ever in my high school's history to become accepted to a Top 10 university. Every job opportunity and connection I've made since graduating is directly attributable to my school's name. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that going there changed my life. I know for a fact that there would have been a lot more societal barriers had I gone to the nearby state school instead (my startup would not have been able to raise venture capital and my would-be resume would not have made it past the resume screening stage at FAANG companies because of all of the subtle social signaling involved; people from my school would not have even given me the time-of-day). Things wouldn't have just been a lot harder; they might have even been impossible.
I went to [Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_f...), which has a pretty incredible program on the STEM side of things- courses like Differential equations, Complex Analysis, Organic Chemistry II all taught within the high school itself. This is our [school profile](https://tjhsst.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/inline-fil...)
Installing != installed.

Circle-K seems to see what's on the horizon, I'm guessing the others have plans as well.

https://www.dinbedrift.no/forste-i-verden-circle-k-erstatter...
OMG right in the nostalgia!
There should be more follow-up articles like this. You could probably do a biannual roll-up for battery tech, to say nothing of more overtly political topics.
How does iCab compare to Classilla? Which itself is very out of date.

https://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/
> If its sunset date is never, cost of development proportional to roi approaches zero.

I am not sure that is good economics, because the discount rate for the future revenue approaches 100% over extended time.