skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It really is highly ironic that by instituting a national lockdown and telling citizens to avoid the hospital across-the-board (instead of specifying high-impacted areas like New York), we destroyed tons of jobs in the medical industry.

I dislike citing news articles, I'd prefer to cite real research, but here's a crappy source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/02/corona...

--

When I first started hearing about the Coronavirus and figuring out the situation, my initial reaction was that we need to foster herd immunity, and avoiding exposure is near-impossible over the long run therefore we should just "get it over with" - not going out of our way to get infected but also not hiding.

Then as we heard about Italy, France, etc, my view shifted, and I viewed the lockdown as a necessary evil.

I've now swung back the other way. Time will tell, but I really think that subsequent research we'll show that we took a huge problem - a covid pandemic - and turned it into two huge problems - a pandemic along with significant swaths of our economy getting destroyed.

The argument to flatten the curve, beyond preventing exceeding hospital capacity, which is absolutely a critical goal, was also that those of us who are not at serious risk could spread to those who _are_ at risk, and therefore everyone needs to act in lockstep. Well, if you take a systems-level view, absolutely the best thing a non-at-risk person can do is get exposed to covid, fully quarantine themselves, and then return to daily life. Having a huge swath of the population with immunity is the best way to protect our at risk population. (In a perfect world, we could culture sars-cov-2 and voluntarily expose ourselves - basically a vaccine except you're exposing yourself to the real deal and not a virus rendered inert)

Also, back on the "exceeding hospital capacity" point, it is precisely those at-risk who are filling up hospitals and needing intubation or ventilation. So we can have a huge portion of the population who is not at risk still living their lives (with some adjustments), and the effect on hospitalizations would really not be that bad as a result.

I'll be closely following Sweden's data over the next months. I'm very curious how their strategy pans out.
You can always check out the 3Box docs site: https://docs.3box.io/
In the US, a lot of "HR tech companies" are in fact insurance brokers, selling both health benefits and workers comp. Those two lines are a massive source of revenues.

In most countries outside the US, healthcare is not privatized. Benefits brokers are virtually nonexistent outside the US.

"HR tech companies" provide free HR software and make money on selling benefits insurance and workers comp insurance mostly to other startups who are buying "nothing but the best" gold healthcare coverage (= more commissions).

Nothing new, the biggest companies are Paychex and ADP and they have been doing that for a long time.
Not a surprise if I tell you that their software is horrible...

So if startups start to do layoffs or shut down, or even start to control their expenses (lower benefits, co-pays), I would expect the "tech HR companies" to not do so well.
Oh dear. Please keep generational flamebait and gender flamebait off HN. We want NOR on those, not AND.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Most of the US "union-busting regional airlines" are as simple to start as described, since a major arranges the financing and marketing/ticket sales. Well, they existed until the "1,500 hour rule", and most ran out of pilots and are gone by now.

Or a one-plane vacation charter.

It becomes much more complicated as the number of bases and planes multiply.

And if you get sloppy or unlucky, one or two crashes is enough to end even national carriers like Malaysia Airlines, regardless of who is at fault.

There are clever airline founders who serially start multiple successful airlines, so there is some mgmt. talent involved.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
Leo by Feedly
A more readable version: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1251936242834563073.html
There ya go!
That's a very reasonable reaction.
Yes. And the "universal" part makes it UNCONDITIONAL on receive, which is the important part. It removes the necessity for a government institution to decide per individual how much they are eligible for. Much money is saved. Since the government already has an institution for checking taxes, the conditionality is merely moved to the end - they check not whether you get UBI, but just how much taxes you owe.
No question there was an epic failure of preparation on normal PPE gear. The US Government should have had a stockpile of N95 masks, as one example, numbering in the multiple hundreds of millions. For something like this, the US really needed a stockpile of a billion plus masks (even if you have massive domestic production capabilities, you obviously can't always rely on that when a pandemic hits).

The big failure was preparation rather than reaction with urgency to produce (that part is exceptionally difficult to do in such a short amount of time, it's setting yourself up for failure, as we've seen in most industrial nations).

Throw into the mix the fact that the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE gear was the center of the pandemic. Meaning they needed all of their own supply and would not be able to export properly so the rest of the world could build up their own supplies. So you're on your own to make your gear (something many nations around the world have had to suffer miserably through; most nations are screwed in this situation, they simply can't make such gear quickly under any scenario). This rapidly broke global supply chains, something never before experienced during the post 1970 high globalization era where supply chains became very complex, more fragile and global.

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have had more ventilators in stock - we should have. An extra tens of thousands of ventilators in our stockpile would not have been unreasonable. That's another preparation failure spanning decades into the past.
You wrote so much, it’s a shame you insist on claiming the models are not wrong.

The right answer is that, just like COVID models, of course the climate models will turn out to be completely wrong in the exact details, in the scale, in the timeframe, and possibly even in the endpoints.

COVID is actually supremely easier to predict than climate. The two fundamental problems with most COVID models are that 1) the positive test counts don’t mean what you think they do, and 2) because of that, everything that is based on positive test counts being relatively meaningful is therefore totally wrong.

The climate models, since they were created by humans and not God, will likewise have almost innumerable errors which will cause all sorts of problems both minor and major with their predictions. This is universally true with all models of complex systems, and therefore should be totally uncontroversial, unfortunately the models have become like sacred cows.

Personally, just like I was with COVID, I am confident that paradigm-shifting events will intercede that will totally invalidate the model one way or another.

For COVID the paradigm shift was that the majority of cases are asymptomatic. Most people are still coming to terms with this. I heard it recently best described to think of SARS-CoV-2 as actually two viruses. One, much less prevalent, is serious and deadly. The other, much more prevalent, is mild to the point of being unremarkable. Getting one confers immunity to both. This is, I stress, a mental model, not a scientific explanation of what’s actually happening (which does not presently exist).

The point is that the things that make models wrong are often “external” to the model, the unknowables. For Kelvin it was radioactivity. His model was total “sound” just like the climate models are “sound” in terms of everything that is presently knowable. But complex systems, particularly ones with humans in the loop, have a way of surfacing curveballs the model did not, and could not, anticipate which have outsized effects in the endpoints.

The lesson with climate, just as it is being shown with COVID, is that dramatic action to address the problem (“flatten the curve”) with almost incomprehensible direct costs does not pay off.

With climate, just like with COVID, a less blunt instrument will achieve a better outcome for orders of magnitude less cost.

The sad part is that the top 2% couldn’t give a fuck about the cost either way. It’s the bottom 75% which will suffer from terrible policy.
Agree. My reading was "They are still researching, but nothing happened yet."
Try TXR Lisp: https://www.nongnu.org/txr.

You will have a very useful companion going forward, no matter what you work with.

No Emacs required; there is a REPL with persistent history and a decent multi-line editing mode built in, and the project provides an pretty accurate Vim syntax highlighting file (two actually, for the two languages).

It's conveniently documented in a single man page, like another Unix tool. That man page is also available as a hyperlinked HTML document, also all in one page.
> Mr. Kim said Samsung fired him in 1995 for doing what many others, before and since, have tried to do: organize an independent labor union.

No he was not. He was fired because he tried to sexually assult a women co-worker.

> The woman said in a notarized statement that Mr. Kim had not assaulted her, and he sued Samsung, demanding his job back.

Although he 'claims' that he has a notarized paper that confirms he did not do it he never submitted it to the court and failed to show it to the public.

> In 1992, his wife was sexually assaulted, and an unsubstantiated newspaper report speculated that the attacker had a connection to Samsung.

The only proof of the incident was the newspaper article, which was an allegation by his wife of attempted sexual assult. No other proof exists.
France and Spain have both led in this already, the ideal scenario is other governments taking the opportunity to jump on board. Google is more powerful than any given government, and can simply withhold service. ...Unless enough countries band together and demand this and leave Google no choice but to comply.
On the question of tools:

1. Emacspeak, a text-to-speech system developed by T.V. Raman (a developer at Google) who was blind since childhood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacspeak & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman

2. How a completely blind dev/manager uses Emacs daily (talk at a recent Emacsconf) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dBvssptP0 & https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-pro...

3. Google has an app called "Lookout" which they suggest using while wearing your phone attached to a lanyard around your neck, that uses ML (not fully perfect) to identify objects in front of you.

To the extent that you stay within some homogeneous environment and avoid fragmentation in your tools, you might be able to get good text-to-speech. (The quality of AI solutions will hopefully continue improving drastically over the next few years)

Also, probably experiment with and invest into one of the software ecosystems (Google/Apple/Amazon/etc) so they get comfortable with understanding your voice.

You probably want to avoid the mouse, and get comfortable with a fully keyboard based workflow. To that end, check out browsers like Qute and Next.

----

Beyond software and tools, would you want to relocate to some place where there is dependable public transport (or cab service)? Once you move, it might take a while to get familiar with the surroundings.

Good luck, and hope you manage to stay ahead of the curve. I'm sure finding community would help. Try reaching out to some of the people mentioned in this and other comments -- I'm sure they would love to help.

----

PS, HN'ers: It would be great to find a few interviews with accessibility-oriented guidance on "Usesthis". To that end, I've opened a Github issue with this request. Feel free to comment there and add suggestions of people to interview, or other recommendations https://github.com/waferbaby/usesthis/issues/97
Thanks for sharing. I also recently started a TIL repo from the same inspiration and found it lame to write my first README entry. Will look at setting up what you described.
The Risks of Homeschooling
To prevent poverty and stress, it seems much safer and effective to just pause debt (not furlough) for a few months, than force everyone back into the mix and risk a new outbreak.
that explains the trouble I'm having. i have my local network resolving to 1.1.1.1. Or was it 9.9.9.9? Or 8.8.8.8?

i'll have to dig into this a bit more. thanks!

it's always dns :-)
This is an absurd comment because just a couple years earlier, the Obama administration did a very effective job handling H1N1 without the amount of forewarning the Trump administration had. And that's not meant to be a partisan view of it: The Obama admin clearly took it seriously quite quickly, and by all indications (e.g., memos by Peter Navarro and Alex Azar in January), the key players in the Trump admin did too. It's that Trump himself, and maybe Kushner, had their own ideas, and actively thwarted an effective U.S. reponse.

The damage here isn't about left/right. It's about a few people in a position to bungle it, doing so with grade B cinema effectiveness.
> PS: Hydro power is actually negative deaths per kWh if you include the lives saved from reduced flooding. But that gets into tricky definitions.

It's very positive if you count the Bangqiao Dam ;)
Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous.

Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.
Ask HN: Recommendations for online essay grading systems?
Which automated essay grading systems would you recommend? Are they open source?

How can we identify biases in these objective systems?

What are your experiences with these systems as authors and graders?
It's not a function of time but rather progress. Since there has been significant progress (mostly ignored by the tech community), the commonly used arguments against hydrogen are now wrong.

They haven't announced those numbers yet. We know BMW is building an X5 with 368hp using Toyota's fuel cell stack: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/bmws-hydrogen-x5-w...

So we should be reasonably sure the new Mirai is going to be much faster than the first. It's also going to have around 400 miles of range and will be much bigger and more luxurious. We haven't heard about pricing yet, but from a production standpoint Toyota has talked extensively about how much cheaper it is to make.
Ah, didn't know that. I feel like Covid has me, personally, thinking a lot about how age never mattered more, so that's why it stood out, or seemed off to have 'missed' or whatever. (Futurist world of micro-cities of only young people, old people in rural areas in sterilized cubes and what not)
Apparently it switched to Webkit a while back.
I personally use iCab for using the internet on classic Mac OS machines. Very useful, as it’s the most recent browser supporting them.

Other than that, I’m not usre if this is worth the effort on usual machines... I would recommend Safari instead.
Amusing. Although it’s probably not as gibberish as you’d think. I would bet people tend to type very similar strings of letters when mashing the keyboard.
Sorry for the delay. I don't keep track of the moderation comments that way but I guarantee you that there have been hundreds of such cases. Since we moderate posts that break the site guidelines, and both sides break the site guidelines a lot, we end up moderating both sides. The irony is how much they have in common. Mask one or two bits and they come out pretty interchangeable.

What I do collect are denunciations of how ideologically biased the mods and/or community are. I'm fascinated by the conviction with which people spout them, and (like I just said) how interchangeable they are with their opposites.

Here's a goodie—"Hope you’re a San Francisco liberal or your opinions are banned": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487

"The mods here are radical liberals": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682

"Dang is an SJW cunt": https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave

A bit less eloquent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335

"Nah, HN isn't biased to the left at all, dang": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122

"Socalist-leaning mods": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533

..."publishing left-wing propaganda": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19912334

...for our "far-left social justice agenda": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742578

There are a lot of these. A few more:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803541

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22256458

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588105

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21907232

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189135

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780

All: if you're finding yourself agreeing with these comments, please don't miss the point: there's another passionate litany of complaints in the opposite direction. Elsewhere I have posted opposite lists of links.

What's actually going on here is cognitive bias: people place tremendous weight on the cases they run across and dislike, and skip over the cases that go the other way (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Since HN gets millions of comments a year, and thousands of posts by mods, both sides have lots of material to select from.
I thought fintech companies had fluff until I worked at a HR tech company - boy it was overdue.
Far too low for what, exactly? Buying real estate, cars, expensive clothing, huge TVs and investments?

If you suddenly lose a well-paying job, food and housing still cost the same for everyone, which you can afford on UBI, by design.

You'll have to give up the expensive lifestyle afforded by the lost job, of course. Maybe move to cheaper housing. So what?
Same. I open my favorite moleskin A4 5mm graph notebook (graph paper is the only correct paper for notebooks btw), which is a treat to write on, I grab my favorite pen and start listing the tiniest, smallest steps I can make towards the solution.

Like "Open IDE and two terminals and point terminals to correct branch".

First, I enjoy the process - moleskin + favorite pen. Second, my brain started to think about the task. Third, I starting to get into flow state". Usually I jot down like a dozen of those steps or so and I'm pretty deep in the flow by then.
Given all the dangers to an outdoor cat, not to mention all the dangers from an outdoor cat (there was a recent story on HN about how domestic cats decimate local wildlife), there's really no reason for a cat to live anywhere but safely indoors. Keep your cats inside.
That team has created something with a dangerously low bus factor (especially the poor docs), and is lucky to be getting a warning early enough to resolve it. Turnover does happen sooner or later.
This fizzled because bulk producing the protein is pointless when it still needs to be spun. I remember being amazed at their bizarre hubris in expecting that just pressing the goop through a small hole would create a silk strand
Just wanted to add 2 cents to this comments and the rest of the comments in this thread. Lots of good stuff here on ADHD, trauma-orientation, and emotional management.

To build on this thread, I think it's important to feel what is happening when you procrastinate. What is it like in your body when you think about your task. Is it because you think you are going to fail? Because the task involves interpersonal conflict? Is it because you just don't want to do it (not interesting).

If you can start w/ your body + emotions, you'll get a felt sense of what is standing in the way. From there you can start to ask the question "why", is there a reason that those types of emotions happen when faced with this type of task?

As someone with ADHD, anticipatory anxiety has stopped me in my tracks countless times. I try to use this method to be aware there is anxiety, the feelings, and the story I'm telling around that anxiety. For me the anxiety is often a way of not starting, and if I don't start I can't mess up. In recognizing that, I can be a little bit more supportive of myself and be more willing to try.
Possibly yes, but society will probably need to figure out and take some additional steps if it wants to protect the vulnerable groups. There will need to be both environmental and legal changes.

Environmental: More researched and standardized procedures for interacting with those at risk. For example, we should determine if/how items need to be sanitized when an at-risk person receives them (such a grocery/food deliveries, etc...). Environmental changes could also include physical requirements, such as meeting such persons through plexiglass panels or mandating protective gear.

Legal: Labor and welfare/disability laws need to adapt to the situation so those at risk are not forced to re-enter society in order to support themselves and their families. Not everyone at risk is elderly and already in retirement; many people in their prime working years have underlying conditions that affect their health, but were still able to work with few or no limitations (until COVID-19). Not every job can be completed at home, and not everyone has savings to stay home indefinitely. Without support from the government or their employers, they'll be between a proverbial rock and hard place.

Another issue is low-risk people who live with high-risk people. Should a low-risk partner stay home if the other is high-risk? How will society support those situations?
I actually think it has nothing to do with them being old and realizing they're at risk. I would wager that, panic was at such absurd levels (and still is, and unfortunately this has become a partisan issue which is absolutely insane), that politicians did some napkin math and basically said "I'd rather be the one that shut the country down instead of the politician who was in office while millions of Americans died".

That's just speculation, of course. But if you look at someone like Trump, I don't claim to understand his thinking super well but he seems like the type of person that would be extremely opposed to a lockdown, not because of the economic impacts themselves but because the impact on the stock market. So, the fact that he accepted the recommendation to lockdown basically implies to me that he saw the level of panic and saw that, if he shutdown, very few would blame him for following advice of medical professionals, whereas if he didn't shutdown and we really did have 2 million deaths, that would absolutely be held against him. So really just some basic game theory.

--

Also, I totally agree that the cure is absolutely worse than the disease. (Or more accurately, I am not sure but am highly confident, and will be following the data over the next months)
Ask HN: Systems for supporting Evidence-Based Policy?
What tools and services would you recommend for evidence-based policy tasks like meta-analysis, solution criteria development, and planned evaluations according to the given criteria?

Are they open source? Do they work with linked open data?