skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am surprised there isn’t a discussion on the effectiveness of lockdowns.

For instance there is a surprising result coming from large serology studies in Spain and Italy, that outside of health workers, people who were locked down have been infected at the same rate than essential workers who were not locked down. Also the shape and timing of the Swedish infections is very similar to other european countries, suggesting the peak was due to the natural evolution of the epidemic rather than lockdowns.

I don’t think this data is compatible with lockdowns being effective, which should be a key issue given all the consequences of lockdowns.
I specifically said "regions" and not "countries". Yes, when you look at a country holistically then there is a second wave, but when you look at where the infections are happening this time round then it is absolutely true what I said. Viruses don't think of countries, so looking at arbitrary borders to get an understanding is extremely unhelpful at best.
> If you even take a few Uber trips a month, you're probably better off owning an affordable car.

My wife and I live in the city and downsized from two cars to zero after doing the math last year. Granted your definition of "a few" might be different from mine, but it takes way more than my definition of a few rides to break even.

If you ask someone to itemize the costs of car ownership, they tend to miss or underestimate a few. The big ones are insurance and depreciation. I am confident that my total rideshare costs over the past year are less than just the difference between my city insurance premium and my suburb premium on the same used car, and my record is spotless. The math is surprising. (Any cost of ownership estimate or calculator I share here can be reasonably challenged, so try it with your own numbers.)

This isn't to speak of the other costs and risks of non-ownership. Every situation is different. We are lucky to have subsidized public transportation passes, corporate discounts on rentals, walkable commutes, grocery stores in every direction, etc.
Regulations are inherently a system that incentivizes good behavior. That's their entire purpose!
Armory (YC W17) Welcomes Margaret Francis as Chief Operating Officer
Apparently upon reading further down I might have been wooshed by this article, if so then that was pretty subtle.
It's what, 13 years since Scott McNealy donned a penguin costume, after a decade of trying to first compete and then migrate a developer base? How'd that work out for Sun?
How to test push notifications in simulator and production iOS apps
Another way to say this is that Microsoft loves Linux the same way a spider loves a fly.
You can't shutdown hospital ER rooms, etc, though. You can't totally turn off all military bases, 911 dispatchers, fire fighters, etc.

The rest of us schmoes, yes.
If the spikes somehow lock the garage closed, that's security. If they're instead designed to impale people who force it open that's going to be illegal in most places even if trespassing is also a criminal offence there. Not least because the law may authorise people to force that garage open, and it doesn't want authorised people getting hurt, regardless of how you feel about that.
ATF has a terrible track record with this type of stuff (and other things too).
Well kudos to them for finally seeing reason, but I'm not willing to give them much of a break. They pushed for lockdowns full well knowing all these consequences before hand. Everyone (including myself) who mentioned a few months ago that lockdowns will make the poor poorer and will push large portions of the population into destitution were accused of being anti-science shills who cared more about property than human life. Now the chickens have come home to roost and the WHO has once again demonstrated its lack of understanding of topics beyond the realm of health. In and of itself of course, the WHO not being competent in running a society is not a bad thing -- doctors are not politicians after all -- but what is scary is how much influence they have had making societal decisions extending well beyond medicine.
> in fact all regions in the world which had a very severe outbreak in March and April haven’t had a second wave at all yet whilst the rest of such countries are currently in the middle of a steep second spike again.

You should probably investigate Madrid before making such strong statements.
Forced telemetry, advertisements, and upgrades say otherwise.
It would seem you are perhaps not giving them credit for their "better protecting those who are at highest risk" statement. Without knowing the specifics of their plan, perhaps it would cost less to simply give all high risks populations a stipend and highly controlled housing and months of prepackaged food supplies / shelf stable foods than to continue to keep large sectors of the economy closed.

In essence, "here are all the essentials for life, please sequester. if you cannot sequester and require assistance, contact _____".
When I was growing up in NYC, first task of spring cleaning was washing the soot from cars off the side of the house.

It’s not hyperbole. Clean air is something we have because of regulatory action.
"(particularly since lives saved keeping the highways closed alone meets or exceeds lives saved from COVID)"

Where are you getting that figure? Wikipedia lists 40k US deaths from all traffic-related causes in 2018 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...), but 200k+ from 8 months of COVID?
The first wave of lockdowns had a clear goal: "flatten the curve" to prevent hospital capacity shortages, thereby preventing extra deaths that would be entirely attributable to resource shortages. In terms of meeting this goal, lockdown 1.0 was successful.
I've had 2 panic attacks (literally couldn't move my fingers and arms thought I was dying - went to the ER for this), and probably 20 mild to severe anxiety attacks since April. Before Covid, I have never experienced anxiety or panic, in my life, ever.

The anxiety attacks are pretty much: My nose is clogged, I might have covid, can I breath, oh my god, my breathing is constricted a little. Are my fingers turning blue? Can you look at my face and tell me if my face is drooping? Can I still smell things? (pulls out super strength Oregano Oil - OMG it's not as strong any more - am I losing my smell).

I'm a man. I'm 40 years old (soon 41). All my life I've been super healthy - no problems. I would never have predicted I would be this scared of something in my life.

My wife and I are planning on trying to go back to normal soon. We're going to start getting take-out food to start, still washing hands. I don't want to live the rest of my life like this, and I think now is the time to go closer to how life was before - just with some modifications. Just not as many modifications as we're under now.

If I don't change, the anxiety may kill me.
> The list of official boxes is generally on the local board of elections’ official website

> If anyone catches you tampering with the very obviously marked box, you risk jail time

> The boxes are locked

These are all true of any public mail drop box. Mail tampering is a felony with prison time, the list of official mail drop boxes is public, and they are all locked. I remain unconvinced. A centralized box with marginally better security is still easier to attack than thousands of distributed mailboxes.
In the case of COVID, why can't individuals choose goals for themselves? It seems possible to allow those who want to take their chances with COVID in order to maintain personal liberties and/or economic viability to function as usual, while assisting those who want to prioritize virus avoidance (e.g. subsidized food delivery services for the elderly, a modest stipend for those who want to avoid the workplace for a while, etc.).

Is this too complicated to implement?

I would think this more nuanced approach has way more upside than going 100% one way or the other.
I just struggle to get on board with the premise of medicalizing all of society. Can the harms from social isolation, poor quality education, economic damage, etc. really be reduced to medical factors for doctors to weigh against disease risk? I think these are inherently political decisions; or rather, politics is the process by which a society decides how to make such challenging tradeoffs.
Speculating: They have a very impressive YoY % growth rate in their AWS business and likely chew through a /10 per year for IP addresses within that.
Of course. And there are a lot more than these four who have been questioning lockdowns from the beginning.

The point is: there isn't consensus. There is debate.
IMO even with those goals stated it is not clear what course of actions should be taken. Because they could be all linked together, a crumble economy might kill more people you are trying to save [1].

A right balance needs to be found.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-do...
You’ve misunderstood.

Measuring serum levels is sufficient to detect and work around genetic absorption defects. No one needs to get separate genetic testing if their serum levels are within range.
> Perhaps software devs are either more outgoing,

No, I think we've got a larger proportion of introverts in SW development than compared to many other fields.

> can manage distractions easier,

Definitely no. When you're developing code you're essentially loading up that code into your brain. Every interruption causes it to fall out of your head and you need to start that process over. It can take a good half hour or more to get into the programming "zone", so each interruption costs a significant amount of time.

Interruptions are really bad for software development productivity.

> or have some other secret method to flourish in open plan.

Nope. A very good pair of noise cancelling earphones maybe help some, but mostly we just have to put up with it because that's what management decided to do to save a little money without realizing that it's detrimental to productivity.
I've had all the same problems with my recently bought DisplayPort Monitor (previous ones were all HDMI and worked flawlessly).

The fix for me was switching from Xorg to Wayland. Haven't had a problem since, apart from Steam not liking it all that much.
If one can afford a Ferrari, one can afford a satellite phone/communicator. If one can afford a Ferrari, one also knows that it is far more likely the thing will break the old-fashioned way rather than lock you out via software. Hell, I don't care who made it, cars still get flat tires.
Sort of. Nabarro criticized the notion of lockdowns as the primary mechanism. His essay on the subject is here:
https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/reflections-about-t...

In his first point, he notes:

"People are encouraged to adopt all precautions all the time. As Tedros of WHO says: ‘Do it All’: physical distancing, proper face-masking, hand/cough/surface hygiene, self-isolating when ill and shielding those most at risk. There should be no exceptions anywhere. This is best achieved through engaging people and trusting them rather than coercion if at all possible."

While he encourages voluntary measures rather than coercive ones, he is also clear: there should be no exceptions to mask-wearing and social distancing. That's politically hard to achieve in many countries. Hence, economic lockdowns instead.
I'd argue that Economics is not a science because it has no models that can predict anything. Economists today are just modern day Oracles/Seers that use their equations/models in a similar manner to how a Seer would throw chicken bones to foretell the future. Because of these Economists seem to break up into factions making it more similar to religious belief IMO. You even see many Economists ignore evidence that contradicts their pet theory.

I think it's dangerous to take their ideas too seriously.
I recommend updating the install instructions to point to the binaries in the Release section, and not bundling the Windows ones in tar.gz.
If it's permissable/legal, why describe it as shenanigans. Is rounding people up in vans and driving them to the polls also shenanigans?
Zheap – Reinvented PostgreSQL Storage
Remember that "fallacy" means "argument form not guaranteed to produce true results given true inputs."

Outside the context of rigorous mathematical proofs, many fallacies are legitimate, helpful tools.

See for instance "post hoc ergo propter hoc": https://xkcd.com/552/
> If the goal is maximum human freedom, again, the choices are obvious.

Really, do explain please. First I'd like to know what you mean by freedom. I assume you're also considering that a) the dead have no freedom, and b) those incapacitated in some/many ways (economic, physical etc.) are definitely going to have less freedom in the long term.I think it is anything but obvious how to maximize freedom in general, let alone with respect to a pandemic.
> We would absolutely screw this up and kill way more people if we didn't have these training wheels on.

Who is this "we" you speak of? Do you include yourself in this group of people that need training wheels? Or do you think you yourself are perfectly capable of doing it right but those other deplorables are not?

I don't need training wheels, and I don't expect any adult citizen of a free country to need them either. I think the majority of people have far more common sense and desire not to hurt others than they are being given credit for. Unfortunately, the media focuses on the outliers that don't have those qualities and makes everyone think everyone else is like that. That is doing our society a serious disservice.
> I can't quote the specific rule,

"Avoid snark" is my first guess.
I really like the concept and would take that any day over the California homes built with toothpicks and cart board by a random crew (I'm sitting on one right now and there aren't two straight lines).

The bone system even looks like something I might be able to put together myself (besides stuff like foundation, pluming, and electrical).
This statement might be applicable to so many things in today's tumultuous world (e.g. politics). Goals are just not defined anywhere. Maybe this is the reason we argue so much. Some people want guns, others want to ban them. The reason we can't get to a consensus is that we likely all have different goals.
I think Microsoft realizes that there is very little profit in consumer grade stuff. Apple makes a profit on phones. Android is just a backdoor that provides access for google's spying operation.
26,830 when you consider rotations and reflections. This is the important metric for your software design.
You're correct, but I meant - lives saved due to lock-down. If the lock-down meant 0 people died from COVID, then you're totally correct. Was slightly hyperbolic I suppose :)
Ballmer missed mobile as well, despite having a decade head start. Remember his predictions about the iphone?
Auction theory and applied mechanism design are two of the most real-world useful corners of theoretical economics. Multiunit and combinatorial mechanisms are core to ad markets and sponsored search, smart power grids, logistics, commerce, manufacturing, telecommunication - the list goes on. The economic gains that they drive every year are in the hundreds of billions. It's worth noting that Preston McAfee, Paul Milgrom, and Robert Wilson shared the 2014 Golden Goose Award [1] for one of the earliest and most impactful commercial applications of applied auction theory: wireless spectrum licensing.

Milgrom's Putting Auction Theory to Work [2] is an excellent introduction to this world.

PS: OneChronos (YC 16) [3] is working on bringing these mechanisms to capital markets. It's an incredibly challenging but rewarding problem that spans deeply theoretical and applied problems. We're always hiring top academic and engineering talent regardless of your background.

[1] https://www.goldengooseaward.org/01awardees/auction-design

[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Putting_Auction_Theory_...

[3] https://www.onechronos.com
I think we should identify that there's two separate main concerns people have over WFH:

(1) the loss of fidelity of moving business information. Informal and unscheduled discussions contributed a lot to movement of information within a business, triggered innovation in unexpected places, and losing these conversations had a big impact. In addition I think it's fair to say talking to someone in person is almost always more effective than talking over the internet (body language, no delay, etc etc)

(2) the loss of the the social connection that all humans crave in some amount (even extreme introverts like myself). Scheduled online meetings might be effective for keeping in touch with people you knew before the pandemic, but it's not as effective as office chitchat for building a connection with people you haven't already met. I can't even imagine how lonely it must feel starting a new job when the entirety of your relationships are built over zoom and slack.

I don't know the answer for (1), but (2) is something that I'm confident we could find an answer to in a more remote world. For all of history, humanity has been able to build communities and fulfill the social itch, long before the industrial revolution (i.e. before most workers commuted to a shared workplace), so I'm confident we could do it again if the world continues moving work remote post-pandemic. Actually, I'm hopeful we could do it better than in a commuting world: in a non-commuting world, individuals should be much more invested in their community, their neighborhood and their neighbors, something that from my understanding has been on the decline for the past century or so (coinciding with the rise of the automobile, the rise of the 2 working parent household, and the fall of the multi-generation household).
Exactly. That is why we have politicians - they are (or could be) our representatives to propose compromises that try to consider everybody's goals. Scientific or technical inputs should be inputs to these proposals, to identify causal effects, but they should never be directly dictating the political choices that get made. Technocracy doesn't work, precisely because the technician focuses most on their area of expertise, and not on how it interacts with our society. We need strong politicians to navigate compromises.
>Numerous times I've missed my day's targets because something came up or one of the task was more difficult than I expected is too high to count, remote and in office.

There are so many days where I've uttered the phrase "So this is what I'm doing today" destroying what ever you originally had planned. Whether that's from some emergency/important email, a newly found bug that is critical, or just one of those comment/requests from a senior manager that sounds like it's made on the whim but comes with the un-said "by end of day".
I am, without question, an introvert. But I also miss some of the things you describe in your comment.

If you very generically categorize introversion/extroversion as (I realize this is an oversimplification and doesn't take all factors into account):

- Interacting with people consumes energy

- Interacting with people is fuel

Missing that interaction as an introvert doesn't seem to make sense at first.

But for myself, I've realized that it's a bit more nuanced than that. It's not so much that all interaction saps energy. Certain types of interaction does.

Put me in a conference room all day with a group of colleagues to plan the next release, and I'll be utterly exhausted by the end.

Put me in a crowded street festival, and I'll feel energized and alive.

Make me talk with people at the crowded street festival, and I'll be exhausted by the end.

All of this to say, not all interactions are created equal, and I think it's fair to say that even introverts like/need to be around people, but the kinds of interactions an introvert is asked to participate in will mean the difference between energy/exhaustion.
I didn't read their comment that way. The article isn't about doctors with years of experience advocating for lockdown, so this conversation is framed around people disagreeing with how deadly the virus is and the lockdown procedures.

I'm sure that poster, like me, also doesn't want politicians making inaccurate claims the other way about how the virus is the deadliest thing imaginable, or to prioritize saving every single life possible by orders of house arrest.
Lockdowns don't guarantee safety either; the virus is still out there. And the consequences of lockdowns are material, with a lot of hard-to-quantify downside risk - the black swan case could be "second great depression leading to WW3".

It's not obvious which position is the responsible one.
Oh, good catch that's a big oof. I wonder if they were just unaware of this feature or what...

I am excited for this feature though, naming aside.
He also likely has a private bathroom. For those of us whose bowels like to make their move late morning, and whose offices were light on bathrooms relative to the number of employees in the building, WFH has been a godsend.

I am sure there are another dozen in-office perks that CEO has that the average employee does not.
They're not good-faith scientists. Bhattacharya is a co-author of the widely debunked Stanford seroprevalence study. Kulldorff doesn't believe in child-to-adult transmission. I think this is an appropriate response.
I think this is deeply unfair to the GB signees. The issue here is not that they have a different "scientific model". They are suggesing giving a different weight to the competing costs of various approaches to covid19. I'm not sure I agree with them, but they're not disputing everybody else's science. They're saying "look, given what we know now, we think that if you rate the impact of the lockdown approach on poor people, and consider that to be a very important factor, you wouldn't see lockdowns as such a good idea".

None of that means that they are denying what lockdowns do, or the problems of a no-lockdown approach. They are saying that given a certain set of weights for each component of the consequences of a policy, we should try to avoid lockdowns.

You're free (as we all are) to disagree about the weight they choose for each consequence.
If customers pay differently depending on the location of the employees, then yes.
I've been working from home for five years now, at remote only companies. One thing we do is start every all hands meeting with a personal update. Everyone gets a chance, if they want, to talk about something personal. A movie they saw, a kid's accomplishment, etc.

But these updates are limited to the weekly all hands meeting. Other meetings just get right into it.

It seems to be a good balance of getting to know your coworkers and not wasting too much time. In the grand scheme of things, it probably takes up less time than all the random water cooler chitchat that takes place in an office.
You can't prove God didn't create the world in 7 days any more than you can't prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster did that 15 minutes ago.

That the Earth is not flat is easily and conclusively provable.
Buildings that have been built or remodeled in the past three years no longer have solo or pair offices. Some examples off the top of my head, though there are more: 82-84, 30-32, 42-44, a couple of the Studios.

Most of the central campus is a large hole in the ground because it is being rebuilt and the buildings constructed there will not have solo or pair offices.
auction theory is regularly tested by people running auctions with billions of dollars at stake.

of course the assumptions of the theory are never perfectly met in the real world, and things can get quite messy. but for instance, the theory predicts that certain kinds of auctions should fail quite badly, which has happened; and it gives prescriptions for better types of auctions, which have resulted in more revenue.