skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So with NixOS your process would look like this. Open up your editor on one of your devices thats already running. Write up a nix config that sets up i3 and firefox, could be just a couple of lines. Save it on a usb drive along with nix itself. Boot your new pc off the USB drive and your set.

And thats just the first time you use nix. Next time you just reuse that thumbdrive, or redownload it, and get your config from a git repo you are tracking your config in.

I have a git repo that has configuration for three types of devices I run in my personal setup (desktop, nas, webserver). They all inherit from my base configuration which has stuff like the user configuration and maybe my vim how I like it. The server adds docker and runs the docker containers that it should. The nas mounts the raid array etc.

If I want to know how I configured my nas three years ago, all I have to do is read the nix file I checked onto github. Thats powerful.
" Virologists experimented with chimeric coronaviruses long before that. "

So, it worked ? :(
I think Nix/NixOS is a great idea.

But unfortunately *nix programs are not written to support this, so you see lots of hacks in Nix to get things to work.

Since GCC isn't really meant to work with headers spread across a varying set of directories, you end up with this wrapper for every GCC invocation: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/build-supp...

And this just doesn't sit well with me: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/...
> COVID-19 antibody testing - FREE

How did that email manage to get through any spam filter?
While I'm with you on the Greek, bra/ket notation is one of the best anywhere in physics. Here [0] are some examples of why it generally looks simpler, and here's [1] a derivation which would be a nightmare to write without it.

0: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488903/advantage...
1: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/533523/confusion...
There were no significant threats in the West before corona to justify high level of hygiene. How many people does the average person know who died of something preventable with good hygiene?

Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.
American tried this a few years ago with "more legroom throughout coach" back in 2005-ish and it nearly bankrupted them. People flatly and absolutely refuse to pay more than the bare minimum to fly places. This will not change once the pandemic panic dies down.

I'd pay a bit more for transcontinental flying but, like, I'm very much in the minority and I fly enough to get free upgrades most of the time anyways.
VC Charles Hudson on ‘the conversation no one has during an upmarket’
There is a learning curve to NixOS, but it has saved me huge amounts of time over the last 6+ years. I wrote a configuration.nix file describing my ideal Linux install once and I've been using it largely unchanged for years. Upgrading and migrating to a new machine has been painless. I can also easily change any part of my setup with minimal effort (e.g. to switch from connman to network manager is a one-line change).

The NixOS configuration language is a unifying layer of abstraction and allows people to more easily re-use the work of others (compare with pasting commands from a how-to blog post).
A lot of that is more a failing of the US financial system than financial systems in general, of course.

In my country (Australia), our Government could deposit money into the bank account that paid their last tax return with in less than a day... We have no transfer fees and real-time transfers (you can link a phone number to your account too). For international, things like TransferWise are pretty compelling and have crazy low fees...
> If you are counting fingers and toes you would not be surprised if all 96 participants had 10 of each.

It is absolutely possible to find people with an abnormal number of fingers or toes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodactyly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly

If 100% of the studied humans have 10 fingers and 10 toes, something's wrong with the study. In this case, the problem is the extremely small sample size: it simply doesn't represent the general human population. In the article author's case, a programming error caused these results.

0% and 100% are always suspect no matter the context they appear in.
I use Authy. It has backups. You can switch between android and iOS or browser. Multiple devices is also possible.
Thanks! No witch hunts yet, but I don't think a lot of people saw the comment.

At the outset of the infection surge and subsequent lockdowns I was saying stuff like this and being crucified for it. We should have followed the Korean model from day one and in the US its existence was almost totally ignored. I have continued to say all these things and over time the lynch mobs seem to be dissipating. Hopefully we will see more level-headed critical thinking as the next step, which will lead to solutions.
Writing proper/decent software specification is what, IMO, missing from most modern day software development. The idea is that, someone knowing deep enough what AND how to build, penning down vague ideas as concrete as needed, and hand off the rest to the team. In fact, every engineer need a plan, either for themselves or for the team, either implicit or explicit. Having an explicit plan for a project's development is what I find resulting in a coherent and high fidelity product.

Agile software development is used by many as a disguise of not knowing what to build. Countless hours have been wasted on "iteration". I'm not saying agile is bad. Just that many are adopting agile without knowing why they should
Context: demonstrations in Germany do not require permission [0] but they can be forbidden in case that they endanger the public safety or order. Such a ban has happened here on the advice of the health office. The protesters ignored it and gathered anyways. (There were no objections by the health office to distributing flyers instead but it seems that wasn't enough for them). They even did not seem to keep distance either.

Dissolving this protest feels actually warranted, in my opinion.

[0] They need to be announced in advance to authorities though, so preparations like securing the course of the march against traffic or providing a police escort can be made.
They are correct: there is no evidence specifically of COVID immunity after infection. There's a very (very) high likelihood based on everything we know about humans and viruses (corona flavored or otherwise), but it's fair to expect a study confirming as much before making a global public health policy decision of that magnitude.

This article references the WHO statement [1].

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/warns-coronavirus-imm...
Seems like it would only be positive if more housing became available for locals?

For myself, I'm hoping Airbnb go bankrupt. In my mind, they're similar to Uber in that their only true innovation is a willingness to disregard local laws.
This will not change once
the pandemic panic dies down

Once the pandemic dies down, they can put the seats back in.
So there goes my productivity!
I think it's self-selecting: the ones who fear flying won't fly no matter how many seats are aboard, and the ones who don't, don't care so much about the social distancing. Consider United's new aspirational social distancing program [1] where they don't do anything but block seat selection until check-in, so you can see who's next to you when you do, I think. It's such a non-policy it's kind of unclear.

[1] https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-social-distancing...
Duolingo – Migrating Android app to 100% Kotlin
Luna project received an additional million in funding recently. still cranking away in Poland on that project. It is a very challenging project, they are trying to make a hybrid text and graphical form language, where you can switch between them. That's a very complicated thing to build. Wish them luck, they will need it.
I agree there’s a lot of hacks and maybe the current model of Nix as it is today won’t survive.

However, I think several aspects of the Nix concept are highly novel and worth pursuing, and there’s no way to get there without large intermediary steps.

NixOS and GuixSD represent, to me, some of the most exciting OS research not aimed squarely at security. It’s difficult to fully appreciate until you’ve really exploited it well.

The hacks that are needed today, indeed, are a bit of a turn off, but I do still find a remarkable amount of stuff ends up working well in the model. As a personal example, NixOS not managing dotfiles feels like it would be a huge deal, but actually it isn’t as big of a deal because you can just manage system level configs; for example, my SwayWM config is stored at /etc/sway/config and so forth, and I can neatly provide Nix store paths in my config files through substitution, allowing me to keep my global namespace cleaner. (Various approaches for per user config can then be applied as needed, such as referencing global configs from dotfiles, or wrapper scripts that have logic.)

My opinion is that it’s unlikely NixOS or Nix are the stable, hermetic utopia we’re looking for, but they or a successor may very well become it, and the exploration done today is an important part of the necessary research. I’m already excited by things you can do today that are not well documented, like cross compiling to other platforms almost seamlessly (for example, MinGW has worked quite well in my experience.)
This is ridiculous man, the size of Australia, how can you sum it up to one number and compare it to the rest of the world. Just ends up saying a binary system of drinkable <> gives you the run.
I know someone who does that too, it is totally bonkers to me that she flies twice a week just to get to an office in a different country. She also told me (before the virus already) that she really doesn't need to be there, she could just as well do a conference call once a week.
As a user of NixOS I have not been bitten by any such hacks.

As a contributor to NixOS, I have barely noticed this. That said, I mostly apply contributions to applications, not to toolchains.
> there’s no evidence the pool of available work for humans will even _decrease_ in a highly automated economy

That depends on how you define "available work". Historically automation has replaced the jobs requiring the least skill with fewer jobs that required more skill. As the skill cutoff rises, the eligible labor pool shrinks. Assuming the trend continues (in fact it appears to be accelerating) at some point the vast majority of humans won't be capable of any work that might still be available.
Smoking commonly harms other people too, of course.
Database Marketing
I don't know whether it's vogue or not, I think it's just a bad idea, because you can't restrict HOW MUCH is is modifying the software, and then people needs to know the nuisances of your programming language. What if I need some configuration to be user (not admin) configurable? What if I don't want to learn programming language X just to use a software?

> If there aren't limits imposed in your example (json) you're still going to get unexpected results.

It's very unlikely for a JSON string to be parsed as a class, or to execute any code, unless you do eval() or do unsafe deserialization. A Python config could do anything.

> You'll have to limit what's accepted.

This is much, MUCH easier said than done. How would you do that in Python? Google App Engine had a sort of "restricted python" idea, and it was hard to implement AFAIK. Same thing for Zope/Plone (there was some templating with restrictions, don't remember the precise system). Then, you'd need do document such "restricted python".

> Also, what if I allow a config.py file then translate that to .json then back to python?

I suppose the first config.py is under the control of the user, and the second is under control of a software author. This is ok, because the "second python version" can perform validation and object construction.

Python configs can be OK (but can get messy) if the software you're building is mostly internal, and few people modify it and they all know what they're doing. As soon as you've got a large enough team and or userbase, IMHO executable configurations are painful.
Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixteen times per hour.

You can forgive broadcast TV - someone had money to spend and wanted to hawk floor wax to the ethos excessively. But lets look at YouTube for example - their algorithms are supposed to be so sophisticated but I’m outside every desirable demographic except maybe not dead, I don’t impulse buy, I don’t have any wax able floors, if I did I would switch apartments before waxing them, and I downvote, skip, or just kill the youtube app every time I see a commercial. I should be number one in the lost cause file, but instead they keep showing me the same stuff that I’ve already downloaded, skipped, stopped transferring countless times. How do you explain that in the era of machine learning and no holds barred privacy invasion?
It makes total sense to me seeing as I know people who commute to London twice a week, use Airbnb from Monday to Friday and they have or rent a house elsewhere. It's still a lot cheaper than acually renting a place full time in London
I would pay to fly in a completely enclosed pod. I would enter it in my hazmat suit, seal the door, flood it with disinfectant, wait 5 min, remove hazmat suit then enjoy the flight. Put a fresh suit on before exiting.

I bet a lot of other people would too, now that it's becoming acceptable walking around in masks, goggles and hazmat suits.
Every time I read news like this, I wonder where all that money is coming from? As far as I know, Japan is one of the most indebted countries out there. Look at the USA too, they've printed like 2 trillion dollars during this crisis, my own country has a dept of around 50% of its GDP.

I feel like most countries have not intention of paying their debt ever, the politicians are just kicking the can down the road until one day all this explodes and all this debt is forgotten, maybe?

There's probably something I'm missing since I am not an economist.
Here’s what I don’t get

Everyone is paying downstream until you hit the lenders.

What are the lenders’ costs? What if they pause repayment for 3 months and tack it on to the end of their loans?

Presumably if all the lenders downstream did this, we could really hit pause.
I’ve tried to reach out to you.
That's what I've always done my entire life even before the virus - the outside is gross (basic things like knowing people use the washroom and don't wash their hands and then touch knobs you do, etc). How did you not?
Yep, hence "mostly". And car heavy culture of course has other death effects besides GW, like local pollution caused deaths, rainforest destruction from biofuels production, accidents, sedentary lifestyle, car suburbia environments, disposessed status of the carless (weighted toward women and children), etc.
Everyone wants a child to be a responsible grown up adult.

Stolen childhood.
SELECT wat FROM sql
...and you didn't do that already? I'm not being funny, but since I was a little kid I was always taught that as soon as you get home you take off your shoes and go wash your hands. I actually do the same at work where the first thing I do is go wash my hands after arriving at the office. I think I assumed everyone did the same already.
I can give some perspective on that. Ignoring the increase in academic pressure and hungry sharks in education (those shady coaching institutes everywhere making you grind 5 hours after school for a single exam).

Parents haven't caught up with how their kids interact with the world. Social media is huge for teens and internet which only now some parents are catching up to but they are on Facebook and Facebook is cancer and no one I know in younger generation uses it. I think they are exposed to a lot more information and their parents or schools are unable to help them process it.

Kids are uncertain, worried about things their parents can't relate with. Imagine feeling down because your online account got bullied by other adults on reddit because you expressed a perfectly normal but dumb opinion. People don't think about age when they are typing a response online, they just think the other person ought to have "common sense".

Few are forced into linkedin/other cancer and build online presence because they think it will lead them to more opportunities and they are probably not wrong. Various recruitment agencies seems to have gone fully online with social media/email spam.

Twitter is not healthy for a teenager. Linkedin may not be either (I saw some insane CEO posts). I mean, to give you something to compare. Have you seen marketing posts with misleading titles such as $100 and 6 months for a 3000% return on customer acquisition? (Which turned out to be fraud and fabricated). Huge amount of fabrication in their idols now. They cling to youtubers, Elon Musk, and all the exceptions. Their feed is full of them while seemingly their irl interaction is less than ideal.

Some will have a distorted view due to huge differences in the life they live online and people they interact with. Previously, it was less visible as people tend to live in the same economic class neighborhoods.

They will know about all the countries with things they can't have in their own. They will be more aware of it but they lack any political power and position to change things affecting them.

Surveillance is pushed on them involuntarily which tends to change their behaviour and normalize a specific corporate personality over time. Compare that to being in open office or public speaking 24/7 of your life.

Misinformation is pushed from top to bottom instead. I think it was always like that but now kids are more aware, they will feel remorseful and insignificant if they can't do anything. Imagine having parents believing insane rumours on Facebook and stopping you from getting vaccinated. I haven't seen many kids who are anti vaxxers but I have seen enough adults.
> Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board.

Isn't that the only thing you'd need? Then the seating arrangement wouldn't be relevant. Seems unnecessary to require both.
> People flatly and absolutely refuse to pay more than the bare minimum to fly places

This is too facile a take, given the existence of Business and Premium Economy.

I think the Asian low-cost carriers probably have it right with very very cheap basic seats, and then the ability to eke out the consumer surplus with reasonably priced “upgrades”. Air Asia’s “hot seats” have a tiny bit more leg room and are charged accordingly. I paid VietJet $6 for premium check-in, and it felt like the future.

Anyway, I suspect the very blunt approach of flight aggregators showing you cheapest first without clearly surfacing comfort factors cause what you describe, rather than an inherent unwillingness to pay among consumers.
Same in France and currently most European Union countries.
You cant compare a country already mostly isolated (like sweden) with one heavily infected (like italy) and say it was meaningless to shutdown. Thats BS
I agree, that’s why it’s free to use through the GitHub student developer pack :)
Reminds me of my first analysis professor. He managed to explain the proofs while writing them with chalk on the blackboard, all equations nice an clean like the Latex in our scripts - while we struggled to keep up with his pace, was impossible for us to copy it all. He came across a bit dry, overstructured, exact, but also kind and humble - maybe like you imagine a German mathematician.
> The cumulative excess deaths for all Europe in the last two months matches the COVID-19 reported deaths (around 100000).

Where's the noticeable spike for Ireland? Where's the spike for Portugal? Where's the spike for Luxembourg? Where's the data for the rest of Germany outside of Hesse and Berlin? Where's the spike for Austria? (And this is not a criticism of them, but they only track Western Europe by the looks of things.)

Don't know where Euromomo is getting its data from but I suggest to you that it's incomplete.

This NYT article[0] (other publications like The Economist[1] have arrived at similar numbers) show that the cumulative excess deaths for France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and England & Wales sometimes far exceeds reported Covid-19 deaths.

Of the countries you mention only Belgium is actually reporting accurately. (As is Sweden btw, a country you do not mention.) Note that both are smallish countries.

As of 14 hours ago Chris Giles (FT economics editor) tweeted[2] "A cautious estimate of the total number of UK excess deaths linked to coronavirus stands today at 42,700" (He updates this most days.) Worldometer[3] currently has the UK on 20,319 deaths. Quite a difference.

In fact, the numbers show that in Europe actual deaths are between 1.4 [Swiss] and 2.1 [British] times higher than the reported numbers for countries that are under-reporting.

Btw, you say that there are 100,000 deaths? EU 27 has 96,533 deaths as of this moment. EU+UK has 116,852 deaths as of this moment. And Europe in its entirety[4][5] has 122,568. (Am tracking these figures using a spreadsheet.)

Let's say that the adjustment we have to make is between 1.4 and 2.1 and let's ignore population size and pick 1.75 and then lower that to take into account that some countries are accurately reporting and let's err on the conservative side so let's choose 1.66… repeating as our adjustment rate, agreed? This gives us an estimated excess # of deaths for Europe of 204,280. Twice the figure you've given.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...

[2] https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1254105061745098752?s...

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/new/

(Europe is generally taken to extend from the Atlantic states of Ireland, Portugal, and Iceland in the West to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to Italy and Greece in the south.)
That’s true if you’re flying on budget airlines like Ryanair or Easyjet, but nearly all the legacy carriers offer a business class “cabin” where the seats are usually the same as in economy but middle seats are kept free. That’s a 33% reduction in density, not 50%, but it’s not far off.
> It's great that she did the right thing and had the paper retracted

I'm sorry but you seem to have skipped reading the main part of the article. The paper was not retracted:

"The editor and publisher were understanding and ultimately opted not to retract the paper but to instead publish a revised version of the article, linked to from the original paper, with the results section updated to reflect the true (opposite) results."
Exactly, I am(or well, have been) flying very regularly and I've never been on a plane with a business class, much less first class. The best upgrade is an extra legroom seat.
As long as websites continue letting you access them on mobile without the app…