Your Environment Is Cleaner. Your Immune System Has Never Been So Unprepared - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/health/immune-system-allergies.html <comment><USER2> Amish families bring the baby into the barn at a very young age, to get exposed to the hay, animals and general dirt. They have astonishingly low levels of allergy among their community members, despite having similar genetics to their Swiss forebears who are typically allergy-ridden.

<comment><USER3> Yes obviously it's the hay and animals and dirt, not any other combination of diet or genetics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Citing a comment from the sidebar: [1]

> _As an immunologist for 30 years I can tell you the hygiene hypothesis is > not uniformly accepted among immunology researchers. The author cites > specific sources that support the hypothesis; however, it would have been a > much better article if the author cited publications that have been reported > in much higher impact journals that refute the hypothesis._

I assumed the ideas of the article to be common knowledge, so I was kind of surprised by this comment. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to provide any particular sources either. Does anyone have more information about the counterarguments?

(That being said, there are always articles showing up that warn about particulary unsanitary areas of everyday life that you wouldn't guess at first glance - such as phone surfaces. So if that's true, it seems we do still get a good amount of exposure to bacteria.)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/health/immune-system- alle...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/health/immune-system- allergies.html#commentsContainer&permid=31017794)

<comment><USER3> Bacteria and viruses are everywhere. In the air, on every surface, even all over our body. Our immune system does a fine job fighting them, clean environment or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So is this why I and others my age seem to have no allergies at all, yet my younger coworkers seem to have deadly allergies to so many common foods?

Honestly, I can't even imagine not being able to eat a banana, or being worried that some peanut might be in my food.

<comment><USER6> While I think the hygiene hypothesis makes a lot of sense, we need to be careful about assuming it's correct, because we're working from "this is how it is now, this is how we think it was then, what changed (and can we find examples of it not changing to control with)?" not "this is how it is now, if we do this, what do we think is going to happen?"

There's also the next logical followup of "well, if we think/assume/know this is the case, what should we do about it?", and while we're experimenting with a few avenues (deliberate helminth or similar mostly-harmless infection is a surprisingly promising avenue), we're definitely in Early Days of even testing different things, much less suggesting any concrete actions.

Growing up, I knew relatively few people with any kind of allergic response at all, minor or major - two of my three younger siblings (the closest 4 years my junior) developed mild (e.g. even if they got scratched they're not gonna need an epipen) cat allergies as they got older, and a couple of their friends have "no really there was a peanut in this room in the last 24 hours probably and That's A Problem" levels of allergic response.

That said, it's also a retrospective problem of estimating prevalence of something you didn't really note down the same way at the time as important if it wasn't critical (or if e.g. you didn't have common usage of allergen tests unless someone suspected something - for example, I've not had an observed/suspected allergic response to anything, nor had an allergen panel because it's just...not been an issue).

<comment><USER7> I believe there have been pretty conclusive studies that most, if not all, of the peanut smell reactions are psycosomatic. Which is not to say that can't be dangerous as well. But apparently, some have had such bad reactions to peanuts in the past, that the mere smell just causes them to freak out. When the smell is masked, they generally have no reaction. Similar to the many non-siliac gluten allergies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sure but shouldn't all the vaccinations count for something in training the immune system? These are some of the nastiest communicable diseases known to science.

<comment><USER6> Exposing everyone to the same ~25 cases is almost certainly noise levels compared to the diversity of things you'd find just from checking an adult human hand that hasn't been violently purged with antibacterial agents in the last 30 minutes.

Also, IIRC many of those aren't live viruses, so the fact that they grant learned immunity to a handful of highly risky diseases is not necessarily relevant to how helpful they are in training your immune system's friend-or- foe responses on a wide variety of inputs.</comment></comment>


Paul Rand and Steve Jobs (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.printmag.com/featured/paul-rand-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER2> Compare to this (Pepsi logo redesign booklet): [PDF] [http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell-...](http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell-021109.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Reading that document a few years ago lead to an epiphany for me in realizing that there may actually be value in some of the BSing you're forced to do in school. I think human nature leads people to seek deeper meaning and explanations, and the BS assignments force you to create convincing rationalizations that satiate that need. This is particularly true when you're trying to justify spending a lot of money on more abstract things like, say, a logo redesign. From what I remember, Pepsi paid the firm that put together that presentation about a million dollars for that logo. Granted, I think it's a good logo and certainly an improvement on the old, but I don't think that the artist(s) actually looked to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or the expanding rate of the universe for influence. That's just the BS rationalization that was added later to help them close the deal.

<comment><USER4> >in realizing that there may actually be value in some of the BSing

I don't know if this is the conclusion to take away. The OP of this topic is an example of where meaning and relevance does exist for design decisions, and can lead to a very thoughtful conclusion.

The Pepsi one, in contrast, is just applying as many functions/transforms on a problem, and hoping some of the results look OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading that design booklet was marvellous. I loved tracking the evolution of the idea.

However, I feel as if there's some risk taken in delivering an entire booklet that slowly tracks the germination of an idea. This risk seems to consist of two aspects:

1) the assumption is made that the entire booklet will actually be read, and that the reader doesn't become sidetracked by e.g. disagreeing with some statements early on

2) the idea proposed in the end has to be very good, a final proposition to merit the entire booklet. Booklet-style design probably doesn't lend itself to rapid, iterative generation of ideas.

<comment><USER6> Less of a risk when you are as established as he was by 1986. I think it was safe to assume that Steve Jobs would appreciate and digest the format. A standard 3 concepts on poster board presentation would have been much more risky, given the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paul Rand was different than many logo designers, in that he just presented a single solution, rather than letting the client pick from several. He worked out what he thought was right, and that's what you were going to get.

This is a pretty good book about Paul Rand, for the curious: [http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-Steven- Heller/dp/0714839949/](http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-Steven- Heller/dp/0714839949/)

<comment><USER8> And for a book by Paul Rand, I would recommend _A Designer 's Art_ if you can find it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-A- Designer%60s-Art/dp/030008...](http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-A- Designer%60s-Art/dp/0300082827)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can see Rand deliver the goods in this video [http://youtu.be/BNeXlJW70KQ?t=51s](http://youtu.be/BNeXlJW70KQ?t=51s)

</comment><comment><USER10> The genius in this is how Paul led the reader from one variation to the next (no pun intended), until ultimately arriving at his final proposal.

<comment><USER11> If you drop money on a brand from a real design firm, you get this same booklet. It's common practice. I've had to both design brands and the booklet's we gave to clients, as recently as a year ago. Of course a year of R&D, Market/Competitor Research and Design Studies cost our client $150,000.

Usually budget logo design; from freelancers etc, result in you getting an email with x number of Options and little to no reasoning.

<comment><USER12> _It 's common practice_

It's salesmanship! When you spend six figures on a logo, you are certainly going to enter the final presentation with a lot of skepticism. Presenting the final work this way alleviates that anxiety.

You have to wonder if some of that salesmanship rubbed off on Jobs and if he carried that into his later years at Apple.

<comment><USER13> You don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love Paul Rand but I've never loved this logo and I don't think any amount of explanation of it could ever cause me to. And I like even less the way it caused them to write the company name ("NeXT"). Complicated, ugly, a distraction. Un-Jobsian.

Hell, even the name "Next" has always struck me as indulgent and the opposite of product-focused: it was more evocative of the question everyone was asking ("What's Steve Jobs going to do next?") than of great products.

<comment><USER15> While I am no fan of this particular logo as a matter of personal preference, the "NeXT" character-casing is better than just "Next" or "next" since it creates identity.

Identity creates recognition and unlike "Pepsi" which is a unique word, "Next" is a fairly common word and without some sort of identity it would go easily unnoticed in regular writing.

On a related note, I always found that iPhone, iPad, iPod, i* is one of the best product naming schemes I have come across, not just because of the strong identity but also because of it's extensibility to new product lines.

<comment><USER16> Interestingly, the operating system name was written NEXTSTEP without the lower case "e"

<comment><USER14> Apparently it was at one time. According to this, "NextStep" and "OpenStep" were written a number of different ways. Strange times. [http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/...](http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/OpenstepConfusion.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is very important to make people fall in love with the idea before the reveal. Great example of that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Honestly one of my favorite computer logos ever.</comment>


Article 13: UK will not implement EU copyright law - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51240785 <comment><USER2> It would be wise to take any promises made by the current government with regard to the EU with a rather humongous pinch of salt at the moment.

The UK will shortly be trying to salvage as much of its trading and regulatory relationship with Europe as it can. I'd expect to see promises like this quietly dropped.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this lot actually care about the trading and regulatory relationship with Europe, at all. I can't figure out what is supposed to fill the place occupied by the EU. Which makes for an interesting decade, particularly if you have a business trading within the EU.

<comment><USER4> This lot does not even agree with itself about what it wants, or is deliberately making an effort to appear that way. One day the chancellor of the Exchequer (effectively n.2 in gov, the one with actual hands on the purse- string) says "screw alignment, we don't need the EU, the Americans are our best friend"; the next the Prime Minister says "screw Americans, they are bullies, the EU is still our best friend"; and the chancellor goes "he's right, I don't know what I was thinking the other day".

In the next 12 months, the public won't be able to believe a single word coming from government that might involve (even tangentially) trade negotiations.

<comment><USER3> Very true, they're all winging it. It all seems to be coming from the evil genius Cummings who tells everyone from Johnson down what to think.

It's too disturbing to contemplate what the state of the establishment, civil service, judiciary and all the other checks and balances will be at the end of five years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What the BBC fails to mention or tries to hide: memes will _not_ be safe: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200117/07301943748/germa...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200117/07301943748/germany- wants-to-limit-memes-mashups-derived-press-publishers-material- to-128-by-128-pixels-resolution-three-seconds-length.shtml)

<comment><USER6> ...in Germany. That's Germany's proposed implementation of the law

<comment><USER7> And we all know that the rest of the EU will be more reasonable in their implementation.

Except that Germany is one of the biggest political forces in the EU, and what they're doing a lot of the rest will be pressured to follow...

<comment><USER8> I fear that if I voiced the opinion I hold of my dear government, I shall be voted down into oblivion for gratuitous use of colourfully explicit language, and rightfully so. The only comfort that is given me, is that this stain on European politics stands out slightly less for being in some equally abysmal company, which unfortunately is another source of pain all by itself. I wish our politicians were the only paragons of stupidity and corruption, so that the European community as a whole would put them in their place. Alas, we're not the only flower in the bunch that stinks.

It seems the most prominent use the EU is regularly put to, is as a scapegoat to blame for bad laws. These are sponsored and promoted by cabals of national governments on the European level, in order to shirk their responsibility to their sovereigns, the national voters.

<comment><USER9> I've read your comment thrice and I can't make any sense of it and tell if you're arguing for or against the parent argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The current UK government's proposals for an "online harms" regulator will be far, far, far more harmful than Article 13 would ever be.

They're vague, undefined, create criminal penalties, don't understand what harms are, create an incentive to shut down speech on the basis of risk management and will be enforced entirely arbitrarily.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic. Go UK! Article 13 is antithetical to a free society.

<comment><USER12> I totally agree that Art. 13/17 is a farce

But as a reminder, a good amount of Labour (S&D) and Tories (ECR) voted for the directive [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/b6puyx/thats_how_ev...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/b6puyx/thats_how_every_mep_voted_on_the_copyright/) so it is possible something might be brought at the HoC level

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A good move, probably one of the more palatable EU laws that will if dropped, go down well politicaly with the people. Equally, it enables the UK to use it as a presedence to drift away from other EU rules, some maybe less politicaly palatable with the populus.

So on many levels, a very cunning move and certainly opens up EU trade negotiations to cater for divergance by grabbing a low hanging fruit.

But will this effect trade with the EU and trade deals - not that much, if at all.

Can anybody name a UK company that this law effects that solely or majority trades with the EU? Asking as this seems more about content and most/near all content providers are global and would be versed in regional variations on regulations.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm trying to find out about other EU countries' implementation, but so far it looks no one's doing much.

Germany has a proposal that I doubt will go anywhere, but who knows, maybe they will, judging by their ignorance of anything Internet related.

Other countries don't seem to have any information available.

I seriously hope Eastern European leaders aren't dumb enough to implement something that would send their online tech sectors to the grave... But again, who knows

Anyone from EU have some information about this?

</comment><comment><USER15> Does not apply to private or non-commercial use, which Facebook and peers could claim is all of the use on a private profile site.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thank you UK. I hope UK does a comprehensive review of all EU regulations have made it harder to do business in UK. Hope things like GDPR goes away too.

Other nations too should learn from UK here.

<comment><USER17> > made it harder to do business in UK

If you want to export/import out of the country then you're going to need to follow all EU guidelines anyway. So all the UK has done is remove itself from the decision making process of rules businesses still have to operate under.

<comment><USER5> > _If you want to export /import out of the country then you're going to need > to follow all EU guidelines anyway._

Nonsense, the EU is just one of many potential trade partners and it does business with plenty of exporters who aren't forced to operate under EU rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The UK was among 19 nations that initially supported the law."

That's quite rich, ain't it? It's OK, after Brexit UK will become a colony of US anyway since they will rapidly do bi trading deals and implement US style anyway. You know, the style that allowed stuff to halt for 20 years because Disney want it in 1999.

<comment><USER19> >UK will become a colony of US

What? No.

<comment><USER20> The idea kind of reminds me of Yahoo's Alibaba investment. It was successful. So successful that, in the end, it completely negated anything else that was going on at Yahoo.

You could make a fun argument that colonizing America had a similar kind of effect on Britain.</comment></comment></comment>


Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House with a Yard on Every Lot - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html <comment><USER2> Israel had some nice developments where every house shared a common park. The only way into the park was through one of the houses. All the kids played safely in the park, while overseen by dozens of mothers doing the dishes.

<comment><USER3> This happens informally in German housing blocks, where street facing apartments completely surround individual garden plots. When neighbors are friendly, the fencing comes down and the kids play freely in a larger space.

In Amsterdam, there are regular parks that provide shared "yards" for surrounding apartments. I love being able to have my kids play in a "shared backyard" with other kids. Instead of having small individual yards, people can pool resources to have better communal spaces.

It really works, it is really basic and it is really absent in the USA.

<comment><USER4> This is basically what neighborhoods do in the US except the houses aren't attached to each other. My backyard backs up to like 6 other houses and kids and constantly playing in my creek. Mothers sit on my street and watch everyone. Kids riding bikes in my street/driveway etc.

I don't really get how any of that is absent. Twice as many people live in the Suburbs va Urban cities in the US. My city doesn't have any water or natural boundaries preventing outward expansion. The only thing we are lacking is the wonderful German rail system.

I'm raising a family now and I much prefer the suburbs and working in a couple tech centers outside the urban center.

<comment><USER5> I was first raised in Europe, in an apartment block just like the one described above (loved it), then in a western state...

You are lucky to have a creek, and perhaps other factors that make your community socially healthy? In general, my impression of suburbs in Northern California is favorable. They're much smaller than the one I was familiar with (Rocky Mountain West state). Property here is expensive, so neighbors don't get the chance to isolate themselves behind quarter-acre lands and identical vinyl fences. But where I landed in the US, miles and miles of suburbs lay uninterrupted except for an Applebees or a Walmart. All had vinyl-fenced yards, no one sat outside. No one _walked_ outside - my relatives visiting and walking would be stared at suspiciously through cracks in the blinds. The crime is low, but paranoia so high that I wasn't surprised when I heard the story of an elderly Indian man struck to the ground and paralyzed when walking through a suburb [1].

For individuals like yourself, this quote applies, I think: "If you want to have the suburban American lifestyle, that will still be on offer," Mr. Furth said. "What we're really trying to change is that that has become so universal that there's not much space left for anything else."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/02/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/02/11/alabama-cops-leave-a-grandfather-partially-paralyzed-after- frisk-goes-awry/?utm_term=.229392125113)

<comment><USER4> Choose where you want to live there are plenty of cities with half way competent zoning. If everyone wants to live in SF, London, or Berlin then the city needs to expand up or out.

There has been a lot of recent redevelopment in the small suburban city downtowns around me. They are making everything walkable, bike lanes, and allowing people to walk with alcohol after 5. My area is trying to incorporate as a city so they can fund these projects and improve services.

I prefer areas with a mix of neighborhoods, condos, and apartments. Personally I gave up condo and apartment living because I hate it but I would never be against building them. My hobbies don't mesh well with tight spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in a single-family detached condo, one of several on a very small lot. Each unit has a very small (400 sqft) attached yard, and each unit is about 10 feet from it's neighbor. It's a type of urban infill development. A long time ago the whole lot was occupied by a gas station. It does a great job of providing us the "single family" feel while also achieving higher density.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's about the right of the current residents versus the right of the potential residents. The latter include their children, millennials and even younger generations.

</comment><comment><USER8> Detached homes are important - they provide noise isolation.

</comment><comment><USER9> the closest thing to a realistic dream I truly have is more dense housing</comment>


The Business End of ObamaCare - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/10/14/131014ta_talk_surowiecki

<comment><USER2> I find it distressing that in article after article the actual problem with the Affordable Care Act is never covered in plain language.

The Affordable care act will not lead to affordable care. Health costs will skyrocket because of mandated coverage.

As far back as I remember it has been illegal for me to buy simple catastrophic coverage. I must pay for things I don't want or forgo coverage altogether. With the ACA we are taking a big step in the wrong direction and costs can only go up due to the perverse financial incentives built into the law.</comment>


Microsoft Surface Laptop ($999) and Windows 10 S unveiled - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-02/apple-can-t-ignore-microsoft-s-slick-new-laptop <comment><USER2> I understand why they did the fabric. Microsoft can't release a laptop with an aluminum unibody and Windows 10 on it and call it a Macbook killer. They have to do something innovative with the design. But if aluminum is taken and you plastic doesn't scream "high end," what do you do? Apparently you put fabric on it? I often balance my coffee on my Macbook, so I can only see this ending in stains and sadness.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK that's a custom blend of alcantara which is also used in high-end sports and luxury vehicles for interior.

And honestly, I'd prefer fabric over slit wrist inducing metal Apple uses which also makes the laptop toasty underneath.

<comment><USER4> I find that with my MacBook, the areas next to the trackpad and my palms become sweaty and sticky pretty quickly. Do you think this would be worse or better with this 'fabric'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Pushing the education market theme...OS also runs only apps offered on Microsoft's app store.

Why do they do this?? Every flipping time.

Whatever. As long as they keep windows 10 open, I don't care if there are idiots out there who'll fall for this crap.

</comment><comment><USER6> Windows 10 S doesn't run Windows apps.

"Streamlined for security and superior performance. Windows 10 S works exclusively with apps from the Windows Store. Some accessories and apps compatible with Windows 10 may not work, and performance may vary. Certain default settings, features, and apps cannot be changed.Easily and affordably switch to Windows 10 Pro at any time."

<comment><USER3> Windows 10 S works with any Windows app available in the Store. Win32 apps have been available in the store since quite some time now and all 10 S users have a free upgrade to 10 Pro as long as their machine supports it till end of 2017 and for $50 thereafter.

<comment><USER7> Some Win32 apps, and it is doubtful that some apps will ever be offered in it. Steam, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does it really have _carpet_ on it?

<comment><USER9> I would like to be a fly on the wall during the meeting where they decided to add the "carpet."

Maybe they are trying to protect our hands from the cold metal, or mitigate the damage of coffee spills.

Regardless, that fabric will get dirty and smelly eventually (think dead skin cells). No matter how clean you are.

<comment><USER10> The fabric thing could actually be really nice _if_ you can replace the fabric and that replacement part is actually available at a reasonable price (and maybe also in some color variety).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fabric on a keyboard? These people are nuts. These will become grimy and gross in no time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lol, Microsoft + Hardware... I think we know how this story will end

<comment><USER13> Why? I always thought Microsoft was actually better at hardware than software. Although admittedly I'm mostly referring to mice and keyboards.

But they already have the Surface Book, and it's a very nice machine. Why would you think the Surface Laptop won't be good?</comment></comment>


2014 Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Sharing here more as a discussion piece, not necessarily due to its relevance in the market for M&A's etc. I thought this was an excellent example of a "letter from the CEO or Chairman" and love the transparency even on such a high level.

I came across this letter from Warren Buffet while doing some research, and I ended up reading through Shareholder Letters all the way back to the 70's:

[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html)</comment>


Americans are underestimating how long disruptions will last, health experts say - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/03/americans-are-underestimating-how-long-coronavirus-disruptions-will-last-health-experts-say/ <comment><USER4> Many Americans are underestimating how disruptive a mass uncontrolled pandemic is going to be to their lives. If hospitals are completely overflowing and most people who get serious symptoms die for lack of available treatment capacity, and everyone knows friends and family members who've already died form it, do you think life isn't going to be massively disrupted anyway? People will hunker down and go nowhere out of a sheer sense of self- preservation, without the government needing to tell them to.

The pandemic itself is what's causing all the disruption and economic hardship. The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.

<comment><USER5> Hospitals are not overflowing. We have 6,100 hospitals,989,000 hospital beds available. And my best friend is a Registered Nurse (California) and says they are not even close to capacity. She also stated what is presented on the news is 100% a lie.

<comment><USER6> Okay. I also have a friend. He is 35yo and has COVID and his blood oxygen saturation is at 80%. The UCLA hospitals refuse to admit him. They're already over capacity.

<comment><USER7> No hospital in the US is currently turning away patients who have acute hypoxemia. If your friend's blood oxygen is actually 80% then he is at immediate risk of death. Call an ambulance right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll see.

<comment><USER9> Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an agenda we're not aware of.

<comment><USER10> This is a lie. China now has another outbreak, and several country's intelligence agencies have suggested that their original numbers were completely made up.

<comment><USER9> Would you mind providing proof ?

<comment><USER10> Here is a good overview: [https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783](https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783)

Proof:

1\. China's numbers simply do not match models that take all their measures into account.

2\. China only tested syptomatic people, and did not classify pneumonia sufferers as COVID: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- china-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china- asymptomatic/china-to-focus-on-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-as-public-fears- grow-idUSKBN21I0VC)

3\. Wuhan crematoriums are seeing way more deaths than reported: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans- crematorium...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematoriums- are-filling-thousands-of-urns-with-coronavirus-remains-each-day) [http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for- ash...](http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of- coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html)

China's new outbreak: [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears- wave-covi...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave- covid-19-outbreak-200402143711728.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is just as likely that health experts are overestimating how long Americans can stop the economy. This happened so fast that most people really could not even wrap their head around the changes. I would love for us to keep working from home, reduce travel, and get this thing under control, but at least up until now, I have a salary, and am not being adversely impacted.

The number of Americans being adversely impacted is in excess of 10 million today, likely closer to 20 million, and pretty soon almost everyone is going to share some level of pain.

This is going to be a very tumultuous 2 years.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am reminded of the factoid about how airlines will often announce a extended delay by first announcing a shorter delay and then continuing to push it back several times. That is supposedly done to increase moral. Apparently several smaller disappointments are easier for people to process, accept, and forgive rather than one large disappointment. I wonder if this is the government's approach, because no one looking at the facts of the situation could have believed resuming things by Easter or anytime in the next few weeks was likely.

</comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't help that many of our leaders have tried to sweep the potential impacts of this under the rug.

We're constantly lied to. It's not the fault of the people in America. It's the fault of those in charge.

<comment><USER14> It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

<comment><USER15> > It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

Eh, not so much. Americans are forced to express their complex ideas and preferences through a system that consists of a handful of essentially binary choices. And most voters probably don't even strongly approve of _any_ of the choices they're given.

<comment><USER14> Speaking as an American, I'm aware. But the morons wrt this particular crisis...are universally from one of those two choices. You can certainly find fault with the other choice, but they don't nearly have the "ignore facts, ignore what anyone other than I tell you, ignore even the evidence of your own eyes" message.

<comment><USER15> I totally hear you, but elections aren't just about selecting leaders with competence and honesty. They're also about expressing preferences on moral issues, too. A lot of voters are willing to set aside the former and vote on the latter, because in their minds, they aren't given the choice to do both. I also think that lack of choice has a really corrosive effect on voters who find themselves in that situation.

<comment><USER14> Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to actually learn it.

<comment><USER15> > Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to > actually learn it.

For them, _and us_. Our agency contributes to this problem as well as theirs.

<comment><USER14> And us? What is this lesson teaching us that we didn't already know?

Yes, we have to deal with the consequences of their idiocy. I fail to see how our agency, given we aren't voting for these clowns, is contributing to the problem.

<comment><USER16> Bluntly, your "us or them", your (or at least your candidate's) "they're a basket of deplorables"... yeah, you're contributing to the problem.

What this _should_ be teaching you is to not write off people that you don't agree with. They're still human beings. They're still Americans. You think they're wrong, and that's fine, but regarding them with contempt does _not_ make it easier to persuade them to agree with you.

You may say that the contempt originated with them. You may be right. But be better than them, not just like them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I guess on an emotional level it makes sense for people to believe that if we do a good job of social distancing, we will be rewarded by finishing it sooner. That's usually how hard things work. But according to my understanding, there is no such thing as a local end to the coronavirus. Even if some locality (city, region, country) implements such effective measures that the virus stops spreading there, they will still be vulnerable to outbreaks so long as they have enough unexposed, non-immune people to sustain person-to-person spread. Unless you hermetically seal your borders a la Plague Inc., the way for a community to go back to normal life is for a critical percentage of people to be exposed so we get herd immunity _under the conditions of normal life_.

In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve. The better we do it, the longer it will take.

P.S. Since this is inevitably political: in my personal experience the misconception that "the better we do it the sooner we can stop" is being spread by liberal/lefty people who are in favor of strict social distancing for as long as it takes. I think they're trying to rally enthusiasm for compliance, but the fact that this optimistic spin coincides with the political rhetoric from certain conservative ideologues should give them pause. Some politicians are anticipating and subtly fomenting a loss of patience with social distancing, and anything that raises unrealistic expectations plays right into their hands.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how many people will die from the economic impact of a prolonged shutdown. I wonder how many lonely older folks will wish they were dead now that they can no longer receive the few visitors they had.

I'd be willing to bet it's more than the actual numbers affected by a virus and an overburdened hospital system.

<comment><USER19> Older folks? I have a mid 30's coworker who used to get most of social activity from the office and tech events and meetups (which is bad for a whole other set of reasons) but even from our fairly active work and friend group chats and you can tell he's really feeling the loneliness and depression.

He started drinking more during the week and has mentioned several times that he is very sad and can't wait for this to be all over. I know that there are thousands of people in the exact same scenario.

<comment><USER20> I come to observe suffering in people on the other end of the spectrum - <USER2> social butterflies that are like caged wild animals nowadays. Calling acquintances left and right was ok for the first two weeks or so, but as the quality of the discussed subjects dwindled and with it the frequency of social virtual interactions, there's a clear sign that the self-isolation feels more harsh for extroverted people.

<comment><USER21> Our company instituted a smart policy that only management need come to the office because they tend to be extroverts unlike the ordinary developers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I expect/aspire/hope to get to about 80% normal by October or so.

At this point I hope to but do not expect to be able to make my normal Christmastime holiday travel, and that's about my horizon.

<comment><USER23> What do you think 80% normal will look like? I'm currently planning a small (30-50 people) event in October and I'm trying to figure out if I need to postpone/reschedule.

<comment><USER24> I'd just assume it needs to be rescheduled into 2021. Should group gatherings resume before the end of the year, which seems unlikely, it seems a safe bet that turnout would be rather low just due to people not wanting to risk it. On top of that, we're most likely going to be neck-deep in a pretty painful recession (at least) by then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Part of this is due to many institutions, companies, governments, etc, just closing 'for the next month or so'. Then after a few weeks, they extend it another month, and so on.

It seems like many expect the pandemic to just magically disappear when you do a very low-effort quarantine and sit back and relax for a bit.

Remember, this entire pandemic started from one person being infected. As long as there exists one person with this virus, it can start back up and easily scale to millions of cases all over again. Victory is not easy, and some of the main reasons we are doing quarantine are to learn a lot more about treatments, cures, how to cope with these changes to our supply chain, and many other things; that is, to buy us time. The levels of quarantine most countries are doing obviously slow the spread down, but are not sufficient enough to completely stop it. This is a long-term event and will be with us for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the real question here is whether or not the disruption will continue?

If things continue as they are for months, there's simply going to be a change in mindset and we're going to realize that there is a new "normal". Full protective gear for a normal workday could easily become the norm.

Maybe they underestimate how long "this" will continue, because they expect "this" will drastically change normal life.

<comment><USER27> Wow, just imagining how much more waste we would generate if all of human population needed PPE every time we left our homes as the new normal.

<comment><USER26> Ironically, that could also be a huge boost to some real recycling programs, and not just with protective gear.

Once people are focused on recycling something they use every single day and there are easy mechanisms to do that, recycling other things becomes less of an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article doesn't say we are all going to be shut in for he next 12-18 months, it just says life is going to be different for a while. Once the number of cases is dropped down to a manageable level again, which for many states in the US is projected to be somewhere from the end of April to the end of June, we can open things up a bit provided we have a strategy for extensive testing, following exposures and isolating people that test positive. Yes that will still be significantly different than our previous lives, but for many people it will be much closer to how things were before. The key is we need to continue to ramp up testing and we need a system in place for authorities to randomly test healthy people so that they can monitor the extent of the outbreak before it turns into hundreds or thousands of deaths a day again. So the average person will be able to go to work, socialize and more or less return to life as normal but they may have to submit to a nasal swab once in a while on the way into the grocery store or something like that. It doesn't seem like a terrible trade-off.

</comment><comment><USER29> Serious question: how long does it take for humans to permanently adjust their sense of normalcy? There is a concept of `creeping normality`[0] that gets at this, but there isn't a lot of discussion about how to speed it up and make it permanent.

We know from South Korea that public mask-wearing is probably the most effective form of dropping the R0 quickly. If somehow 100% of Americans could get access to face shields (via 3d printing, for example), then the engineering and logistic problem is solved.

But the bigger problem is the social one. How do you socialize the acceptable use of masks or face shields in everyday public life? If enough people feel enough distress, I could see every person wearing masks, forever. If that happened, the talking points about this dragging on or immediately rebounding start to change.

Given enough technical choices in lifestyle design, there has to be some optimal solution that minimizes droplet emission while maximizing freedom of movement.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality)

</comment><comment><USER30> I think health experts are over estimating how long Americans are willing to have their lives disrupted.

<comment><USER31> Lives will be disrupted either way, lifting restrictions too early will result in more deaths, which is the ultimate disruption of life.

<comment><USER32> Like guns the virus is much more of a problem in urban places than rural places. Americans not in cities aren't going to take much more of this shutdown imo.

<comment><USER33> This is misguided. The capacity of the healthcare system in rural areas will be even easier to overwhelm.

<comment><USER34> Of course it's misguided. Which country handled this crisis worse than US? Misguided is an understatement.

<comment><USER32> Our death rate per capita is substantially lower than China and Italy for example.

<comment><USER33> Y'all need to understand what an exponential function looks like.

<comment><USER32> Y'all need to not compare absolute case numbers on an exponential curve between countries with vastly different populations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What do others think the right timeline to plan for is, and is there anything different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or longer? Personally, I'm assuming this will last until at least September. Better to be pleasantly surprised if it's earlier.

<comment><USER36> We've only got a few months in the tank economically and flattening the curve alone will keep us on lock-down for years.

They aren't talking too much about it but the plan is almost certainly to buy time to transition to a new strategy. The keys to this IMO will be squashing new cases, those 15 minute tests(billions of them), a health enforcement agency of some sort to conduct tracing and targeted quarantines, and increasing the capacity of the health system.

The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.

<comment><USER37> >The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.

I hope when all is said and done, people take their state governments more seriously. The federal government is just not equipped to handle this kind of issue. I've been impressed with California's level of response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem.

Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.

At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?

Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.

<comment><USER39> The economic restrictions can be lifted in a just couple of months since the curve is under control, but people will have to go to work wearing face masks while the pandemic runs its course through 2021.

<comment><USER38> I think, and hope, that this is the best case solution, and its what we pursue. As long as people take the core of the "social distancing" measures to heart, and practice them every day, we can control the spread without Stay-at- Home. Wash hands. Sanitize high-touch surfaces every few minutes. Wear a mask, maybe even gloves. If you feel sick, stay home.

If we are diligent, we can "have our cake and eat it too". But we have to be diligent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The problem is that public health officials are completely misusing terminology and sending contradictory messages, and it is 100% not the fault of Americans misunderstanding it (this is from the same article!):

> Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the > epidemic curve of new cases

vs

> "We let things get out of hand," said Mina, who is also associate medical > director of clinical microbiology at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. > "So now the place that we're left in is we have to absolutely beat this down > with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

Getting near zero cases is not flattening the curve -- that's suppression! Flattening the curve is an assumption that everyone will eventually get the disease, and trying to not overload the health system. THAT is what Americans have gotten onboard for, and what a 2-4 week lockdown would set us up to do (give us time to expand hospital capacity, etc)

But if on the other hand, past the propaganda, the public health plan is ACTUALLY to eliminate the disease entirely, that's a completely different plan, and it will take months or years. It's not the fault of Americans for not understanding the implications, when they are being actively lied to about what the plan IS.

<comment><USER41> Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan, and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated (e.g. couldn't recite essential statistics about mortality rate once one a ventilator off the top of their head) on the topic.

It's hard to say though, how much of it is raw political ignorance versus hiding bad news.

<comment><USER15> > Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan, > and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated

I disagree. No one _at the top_ has a real plan (probably including the political appointees at the agencies), but I'm pretty sure those agencies could put together a better one with leadership that would let them do it.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner- cor...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner- coronavirus.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Once there is a cheap and high reliability antibody test widely available, there are going to become two classes.

Those who move freely about and do what they want, and those that live in fear of the others because they can still get infected and don't know who is who.

Imagine a dystopian near future where you have to carry a government approved ID showing your immunities to get into establishments or to even move about the country.

<comment><USER4> This is the world I'm already living in. I got coronavirus in mid-March and have since recovered from it. Now I'm walking about with impunity. I still try to maintain social distancing to keep others at ease, but I'm not worried when people violate it.

If only there were restaurants for me to go to ...

(And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the blood antibody test because I want to know for sure; my symptoms were pretty textbook coronavirus, but not serious to warrant hospitalization, and hence no test was available for me.)

<comment><USER42> mid-March? Be aware that while some studies say you still virus-shed for two weeks after, some say as long as five weeks it can still be detected.

Just because your fever broke doesn't mean the virus is gone, just means your body is fighting it and "winning".

<comment><USER4> I strictly self-quarantined for the recommended 14 days, plus 3 days following the end of symptoms.

I doubt many people are going to be down for the ~7 weeks of strict quarantine you're suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whenever I read these health experts, I get the impression they feel the economy is just some superfluous activity to keep the masses engaged.

<comment><USER44> > I get the impression they feel the economy is just some superfluous activity > to keep the masses engaged.

I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to understand the concepts.

Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment... everything is part of solving the problem.

<comment><USER43> > I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers > and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to > understand the concepts.

> Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus > packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment... > everything is part of solving the problem.

The article I'm commenting on, which I also read prior to commenting, is not what you are describing.

From the article:

> Those resources do not current exist, said Konyndyk, who also noted that > hospital capacity across the country needs to be expanded and protective > equipment for health workers restocked. There are currently global > shortages.

> "If we want to be able to — as I think we need to — turn our economy back on > in a safe way, we need to be able to do that sort of thing at scale," > Konyndyk said. "And we do not have anywhere close to the public health > infrastructure that's needed to pull that off."

His statement suggests that he thinks the economy operates as a switch that is simply turned off and on at a whim, while also saying there do not exist enough resources to perform the needed tasks. Where does he presume these resources to come from? Printed money?

Also from the article:

> "We let things get out of hand," said Mina, who is also associate medical > director of clinical microbiology at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. > "So now the place that we're left in is we have to absolutely beat this down > with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

If they truly have nothing but the best intentions for keeping society healthy, they would understand that economics are more complex and more powerful than anyone can command or comprehend. If they keep the economy shut down all the way until there are "zero cases", there will be a lack of basic health care as resources rapidly dwindle.

I also think they are terrible at grasping stats. I have yet to see published average random sampling of the population. Undergrad stats for nearly every major teaches you don't have to sample very many people to estimate a population. And there doesn't seem to be any attempt to analyze overall mortality rates, which should at least on a monthly basis be up over past years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sweden is the country to watch as they are the policy outlier.

It appears that their infection, hospitalization, and death rates are not higher than other countries which implemented lockdowns.

It also appears that their economic activity has declined by a similar amount as did that of countries which implemented lockdowns.

So if staying at home is made voluntary, the economy won't reflate all of a sudden, and illness and mortality probably won't increase. Because even if staying at home is voluntary, many people will still stay at home, including potential patrons of reopened businesses.

We'll see how things progress in the months ahead, but our course seems set regardless of policy.

<comment><USER46> I don't understand why Sweden is being held up as a paragon. Their death rate is currently 9th worst worldwide and over 2x that of the United States':

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus- deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates- worldwide/)

Edit: Both are good replies. Thank you.

<comment><USER47> Sweden stopped testing people who don't get hospitalized about 3 weeks ago. Before that their death rate was extremely low, on par with Germany.

> However, that strategy has now changed. Authorities have shifted their focus > away from testing all possible cases, and instead on protecting the most > vulnerable groups. People with severe respiratory symptoms or who belong to > a risk group will still be tested.

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200320/fact-check-has-sweden- stopp...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200320/fact-check-has-sweden-stopped- testing-people-for-the-coronavirus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> We can and should reframe the economic disruption as an opportunity to build a new and more humane economy, even _before_ the virus is brought under control.

We should be able to flatten the curve _and_ tackle our economic issues at the same time: the resources required are orthogonal while the benefits are synergistic.

</comment><comment><USER49> Folks in the developing countries don't have any safety net(no $1200 IRS check; no unemployment tax; etc). Most of them are day laborers or small scale business people selling food on the street side. If this will continue, many in the developed world, esp in cities, will struggle for food.

</comment><comment><USER50> Something wrong with this website statnews.com--

At least for me using Safari browser. I was auto-redirected something like 40+ times to upgrade my Norton Anti-virus, to install Flash, and one or two other fracking things.

</comment><comment><USER51> Looks like HN killed this post. It's no longer showing on the homepage

</comment><comment><USER52> The number of people who die, on average, per day in the US (as of 2015) was roughly 7,500. We're less than 5 doubling periods from those being our daily numbers - i.e., for the death rate in the US to be doubled. At 3-5 days per doubling, that's less than a month away. Every day after that, until we either burn through 80% of the population or invent and distribute a vaccine, is going to be something we are unprepared for in our history as a nation. Approximately 8 doubling periods from then, or about two months away, and if we haven't gotten this under control, more people will die in one day than will die all year in a normal year. At least then, we will pretty much have hit the upper end of the curve, and at that point may well gain herd immunity. I give it about 4 more weeks until we consider hell to have officially broken loose. I expect human behavior to be less predictable at that point - <USER3> perhaps all too predictable...

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd like to see an economist stand on the podium next to the president and Dr. Fauci and talk about the other side of the trade-off the government has decided to make.

</comment><comment><USER54> Even if the current US shutdowns are effective, no more than 5 or 10 percent of the population will have gained immunity. We'll be nowhere near what's required for herd immunity.

The shutdowns will at best give us a "do over", a second chance. The only way to end the shutdowns and not have cases explode again will be to replace them with a smarter strategy: wide-scale testing, fast contact tracing, antibody tests, mask-wearing, temperature checks, social distancing. The federal and state governments need to be planning this now. The virus has an R0 over 3 and getting it below 1 will not be easy.

This all disappears if we find a vaccine or therapy, but hoping for that is not a plan.

</comment><comment><USER21> The 2008 crisis brought us extra half million cancer deaths, according to a study in Lancet. That's only cancer! It doesn't include poverty, other disease, less funds for charities, suicides and other forms of misery.

It seems we are setting ourselves up for countless millions deaths globally if we continue with the lockdown.

</comment><comment><USER55> The key to this is better testing and positive interventions. Right now we are just flattening the curve, but there are a couple things that could help speed up a return to normal life long before a vaccine:

1) Widespread, accurate testing: For example, if we could test everyone in a few minutes before they enter a workplace or home that could go a long way to enabling many activities to restart.

2) Improvements to treatment: If some relatively safe malaria drug or other intervention can reduce the severity of the disease such that treatment requires days instead of weeks and/or doesn't require ventilators/ICU this would be a huge boon. Less people would die, most importantly, but also the healthcare system would be able to handle many more cases, further reducing the need for extreme social disruption like we are doing now.

I'm personally optimistic that at least some material progress will be made on both fronts in the near future. A planet full of very smart people is working on this.

</comment><comment><USER56> Can you blame them? This is the US, we have no safety net for non-corporate persons. If people don't convince themselves the disruption will end sooner than later then they may as well start looting because we're going to die starving and cold in the streets.

</comment><comment><USER57> Locales that had the pandemic under control are seeing new flare-ups.

So either we lock down till a drug treatment is authorized (there are promising candidates), a vaccine is found or we accept that it's unstoppable short of the above and we go about knowing the risks but while minimizing the known risks.

</comment><comment><USER58> My guess we will be out of quarantine by memorial day.

</comment><comment><USER59> >Though vaccine development is proceeding at a historic pace, in a best-case scenario a product won't be available for the general public for at least 18 months, and likely longer.

Without a vaccine, the limiting factor are ICU beds. If 1% of sick people need an ICU bed, then the number of infections has to be limited to 100 times the number of ICU beds.

Now, if people need 30 days to heal, and you have 100,000 ICU beds, that means you can treat 1,200,000 people per year and let 120,000,000 people be infected. There are 300 million people in the USA, so it takes roughly 2 years to reach something like herd immunity.

</comment><comment><USER60> If done properly (i.e. everyone except law enforcement, medical, utility and delivery workers stays home, with military/police enforcement, then everyone who did not stay home is tested multiple times) eradication is possible in a month.

Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other incentives, so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return to normal life.

<comment><USER10> > Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible > exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other > incentives, so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return > to normal life.

'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious disease each year that nobody notices. I give it about 4 more weeks before we return to the normal way of acting and about 4 months until this is no longer a major news story so we can all forget about those who have died.

Not saying it's right, just my observations on how people behave.

<comment><USER44> > 'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious > disease each year that nobody notices.

I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the cause.

What makes you think that normal people just shrugs off the death of a loved one?

I am old enough to remember how many people used to die in traffic accidents and how much money, effort, and regulations where put in place to lower that numbers.

I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks, are doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support that in need.

Your divisive message is out of place and does not help.

<comment><USER10> > I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the > cause.

Oh I agree, but hundreds of thousands die from infectious disease every year, and while their family mourns (and ought to of course), life goes on.

> Your divisive message is out of place and does not help.

I simply said what I thought would happen, not what I think is right.

> I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks, > are doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support > that in need.

All governments worldwide have actually and intentionally neglected to help people suffering from depression, mental health, and suicidal thoughts, which are almost certainly also going to lead to more deaths quite soon. I give it a few weeks before suicide numbers come out and indicate these lockdowns as a direct cause. Again, I'm indifferent to whether or not these sanctions are warranted, but I'm just pointing out what I think will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Americans will prevail due to their uncanny ability to adapt to adverse/diverse conditions

<comment><USER62> What makes Americans in particular so much more special than other humans? This kind of American exceptionalism is ridiculous and should have been put to bed decades ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The effectiveness of the propaganda has been astounding - of course they are underestimating it, they were convinced that masks didn't work to avoid wasting them, just as they were convinced that a 15 day window would flatten the curve.

<comment><USER14> Who is 'they'?

And, no one thought masks didn't work; the guidance was "don't buy the masks that work because health professionals need them, and you can achieve the desired effect by keeping distance".

Now there is some thought that maybe, MAYBE the virus can stay airborne longer than thought (no proof of that; we have yet to see any infectious agent actually do that, even in a lab), and that maybe, MAYBE a non-medical mask can help a bit if that's the case, so sure, why the hell not, wear a mask, but not a medical grade one, please, we need those for our doctors and nurses.

<comment><USER64> There were actually several high profile experts around the world (WHO, US Surgeon General, most European authorities, even children's programmes) that said without any qualification:

"Don't wear a mask, there is no need to wear mask if you are not sick, in fact it may even be harmful and may create a false sense of safety.".

This was a harmful and factually false message that caused and will cause unnecessarily deaths and those who propagated it should be held accountable.

see e.g. [https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12447444277357813...](https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1244744427735781377)

<comment><USER14> Even that statement you know was qualified, since I'm assuming you aren't implying it was to practicing medical personnel.

"There is no need" \- there still isn't. There are zero instances, even in a lab, where we've seen the virus aerosolize. If you keep your distance, all indications are you should be fine.

The only thing that has changed (and remember, this is advice based on facts, and so as new facts are uncovered, the advice can change too; that's called "science", and is different than "propaganda", which is what I was directly responding to) is that we have seen some cases we can't explain...and so the guidance has become "just in case, sure, why not...just please not the medical ones because we need those for people who have to get within 6 feet of sick people".

<comment><USER64> I disagree that for the general public there is no need to wear masks. If you go to a supermarket and someone sneezes/coughs at you, even a scarf around the nose gives _some_ protection. Less than perfect, but more than nothing. A proper mask would give more protection. The fact that there are not enough masks is a different issue, but it doesn't mean they are not needed.

I don't need any evidence or data for this and I don't need to have a theory of aerosoles to understand this, as it is common sense, and there is zero downside to do it, so it is a no-brainer.

But if I still needed data, I could look at which countries have the most widespread mask-wearing among the general public: Japan, SK, Taiwan, China, HK, Singapore. Basically, all the countries that managed to contain the epidemic with reasonable success. When the top Chinese epidemics/virology expert was asked in an interview what Europe and US are doing wrong, he said if he had to mention one thing, it would be lack of masks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why C# is not a good choice for web development? - <AUTHOR> http://afshinm.name/why-c-sharp-is-not-a-good-choice-for-web-development <comment><USER2> The "one file to update whole up" is not really an issue (and you don't need to upload whole dll, if size's an issue, can always rsync (besides people appreciate getting a single artifact from e.g. Go, and of course they compile their JS into a single bundle with webwork etc).

Changing and touching "only one file" might be doable in Python or Node, but it's not the way it should be done there either.

You should have an automated process for deployments.

Plus, if there were interdepencies between files, you'd need to fix and upload them too, only Python wouldn't help you find which those are because the tooling is not that good as in a statically compiled language.

Not to mention: the tendency in dynamic languages is to lament for lack of typing and related toolsets when it comes to large scale programming. People go from Python/Node to Go for this, or add types to JS (Typescript, Facebook's Flow), or add type annotations to Python (see 3.5), or do the same to PHP, or create a PHP-derived language with types (Hack), etc.</comment>


Different OSes produced different results for Chemists using Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/15/bug_python_scripts/ <comment> sh-run The article references this line from the glob documentation: "The glob module finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern according to the rules used by the Unix shell, although results are returned in arbitrary order."

That wasn't added until Nov 4, 2018 (Edit: see below it was actually Nov 16, 2015 - still more than 6 years ago) so I'd be hesitant to put blame the scripts author. After all he wrote it ~6 years ago. Testing is obviously important and probably even more so in the scientific world, but the article makes it sound like this line of documentation has been in place since the library was first written.

[https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/52465e1b8bb7af23d64...](https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/52465e1b8bb7af23d642dbb43c8173d079b7ec30#diff- bbd32187ea3e8ff453ad5732dcee7750)

Edit: Correct commit from 2015 [https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/9f3c094e687898be24e...](https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/9f3c094e687898be24e70662e7d5c135914d89d8) and the related issue [https://bugs.python.org/issue25615](https://bugs.python.org/issue25615)</comment>


Adobe needs to kill Flash once and for all - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2015/04/adobe-needs-to-kill-flash-once-and-for.html

<comment><USER3> A bad programmer would find a way to write an unsafe, bug ridden program regardless of the programming language's safety features - even Haskell.

Kill flash, kill flash and your browser will still freeze with rouge JavaScript/html5 animations.

At least with flash, you can easily turn it off without losing 20% functionality on most sites. Turn off JavaScript and you would lose more than 80% usability on most sites including Facebook.

Btw, in early 2000's sites were going crazy with flash only sites. The same is happening right now - sites that won't work if JavaScript is turned off.

If Adobe kills flash, your browser will still crash, use 100% CPU. Hence won't change a thing. In fact would be worse because you can't turn it off.

<comment><USER4> The progressive degradation / enhancement trend has definitely faded away. Nowadays it's far too often all (js) or nothing.

<comment><USER3> Flash on mobile would have worked - even on iPhone but it didn't for a few simple business reasons.

Control - Jobs wanted every semblance of an "app" to go through the app store. Flash would have wrestled control of the iPhone from Apple. Summary - <USER2> this view, Jobs advocated HTML simply because it was crippled.

I couldn't pull out better arguments for the ffg: 1\. cost - using bigger batteries and cpu would have solved the problem. 2\. Reflow - flash apps written for desktop wouldn't look good on mobile.

At the end of the day, companies spin announcement to suit their own (unannounced) agendas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow you have to subscribe to their mailing list to view any page on that blog, that's pretty unpleasant.

<comment><USER6> Now if it was a blog post "Google needs to kill lightboxes once and for all" ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't have flash installed at all. I don't miss it, there are a few sites that require it for some stuff (Facebook I'm looking at you) but in general I haven't missed it. Good riddance.</comment>


Facebook 'blocks accounts' of Palestinian journalists - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/facebook-blocks-accounts-palestinian-journalists-160925095126952.html <comment><USER2> That's a nice site your have there Mr Zuckerberg it would be a shame if something were to happen to it... Block a few "trouble makers" or risk being being blocked nationwide.

Random guess. Facebook got put in a position where if they didn't allow Israeli to close down accounts due to "incitement" they ran the risk of being labelled as an "incitement website" and having access blocked completely. So they chose what was better for their business. I don't agree with it but it's facebooks garden and they can choose who plays in it and who acts as the gatekeepers to it. Same happens on other sites. reddit block access to certain pages from Russia (though they only filter on a country wide basis and not remove content for everyone else). If Twitter thinks you are a problem (or becoming one) they will boot you off.

<comment><USER3> > though they only filter on a country wide basis and not remove content for > everyone else)

And that is a very critical difference.

Censorship happens on many platforms, but when that censorship is being done to journalists the violations are particularly egregious.

<comment><USER2> And I completely agree. I don't agree with censoring journalists and when I find sites I use doing it I make a personal dicision if I want to keep using that site.

I would hate to be in this position. Do you comply and block accounts and those with a loud enough voice will shout loudly enough that they can get back in or run the risk of upsetting the people that hold the keys to your market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The new modes of censorship and propaganda that are well developed in America, Germany, Israel, the UK, etc and that are maturing in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco really scare me.

The reason is that unlike prior art in information warfare (altering versions of history textbooks, encyclopedias, newsprint, etc) where control for narrative and shading of facts was done on a very coarse level - the mode of surveilling social media and targetting individual news feeds and people with high connectivity and influence - is tailored and specific.

This combined with the new way that information is injested and the new ways that digital records have become an integral piece of regular thinking and problem solving make these elements of every country's information warfare programs uniquely dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER5> These "accidents" keep happening and it should really give one pause. Personally, censorship is censorship regardless if it is a state actor or a company.

</comment><comment><USER6> Important news, please don't flag it.

This could have been an honest mistake (IMHO highly unlikely), Israel- suggested (quite possibly), executed against policy by an internal employee with an agenda (IMHO possibly, but too easy a PR response), or is/was Facebook's official policy from management to support an Israeli agenda? (The scariest option) ... I guess we'll never know.

</comment><comment><USER7> An awful lot of what comes out of Palestinian journalists is incitement. Is it any surprise that something is being done about it?

<comment><USER8> Boy, that's quite a loaded statement considering many Israeli politicians have also repeatedly called for the genocide of Palestinians ([http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahu-palestinians- governm...](http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahu-palestinians- government/)). I'm quite surprised nothing is being done about that.

<comment><USER9> Shaked (an Israeli minister) posted (and thus endorsed) a text that calls for genocide.

While many Israeli politicians are terrible, I don't think that single endorsement substantiates your claim that "many Israeli politicans have repeatedly called ...". Even that single endorsement was deleted by Shaked.

<comment><USER10> If even politicians at the highest levels of government are doing it, let alone hate groups inside Israel, it doesn't help the case of Israeli objectivity.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say Israel is objective. But the parent post is taking a true point and hyperboling it into a total lie. Israel is bad enough without the lies trying to make it seem even worse -- discrediting its detractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And by "Facebook blocks accounts" we mean:

>Editors from two Palestinian news publications based in the occupied West Bank _say_ their Facebook accounts were suspended last week and that no reason was provided, _alleging_ their pages _may have been_ censored because of a recent agreement between the US social media giant and the Israeli government aimed at tackling "incitement".

Rubbish journalism: no actual causal connection between the Israeli government, Facebook, and the pages being taken down has been established. It's merely assumed to be there because al-Jazeera and its readership are predisposed to believe the nefarious tentacles of the Israeli government can reach anywhere.

<comment><USER12> "blocks" and "suspends" accounts are the same thing. Nothing you said or that the article said contradicts the headline.

<comment><USER13> To be absolutely fair, the italicised parts are important.

There is no proof, only accusation.

Edit: The article also does not prove that Facebook unblocked them (as no block was proved), nor reached out to Facebook on if they did indeed respond saying it was accidental.

<comment><USER6> Did you read the article?

 _Facebook replied on Saturday with an apology, saying the suspension had been "accidental"._

That means it happened - Al Jazeera is one of the more reliable networks according to my journalist friends, and aren't usually known to publish something without fact checking or couching it in 'unconfirmed'.

<comment><USER13> Replied on Saturday to whom? The way I parsed that as "replied to the owners of the Facebook account", which is hearsay.

Facebook also has not published any PR statement apologizing for this, so either they are not real news agencies to begin with, or this never happened, or both.

Al Jazeera is reliable except when it comes to issues like this, they suffer from a bias from having this done to them in the past as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$19.97/MB - Megabyte of Unusual Cost - <AUTHOR> http://www.teabuzzed.com/2009/08/19-97mb-megabyte-of-unusual-cost/ Why..!? <comment><USER2> I got a similar message while in Cancun a few months ago ($0.03/kb for data - Sprint international roaming). Turns out that they must have meant pesos (Mexico uses the $ sign for pesos, but they are worth 1/9 of a US $), because they only charged me US$0.003/kb.</comment>


Extroversion Makes People Happy Say Psychologists - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1721954,00.html

<comment><USER2> I'd agree that extroverts generally are happier, but I'd argue that a large part of the reason is because the majority of people are extroverts and, therefore, society is built around their personality type. Introverts are inherently at a disadvantage in most cases because they are often treated as if something is wrong with being themselves. The author even suggests that introverts try to gain happiness by aping the behavior of those who already have it, essentially saying that if you're not an extrovert, then your only option is to turn yourself into one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Glad to be an extrovert then :-)</comment>


Singapore carrier grounds 2 Boeing 787-10 jets after checks - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/4bd5c0c7351c437bb32d5be31e805eeb <comment><USER2> Wow, the quality of AP news writing has plummetted.

> Like many other places, Singapore has grounded Boeing 787 Max aircraft > following two fatal crashes of Max 8 planes, in Indonesia in October and in > Ethiopia last month.

That'd be 737 MAX, of course.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Flagged for flagrant inaccuracy.

<comment><USER4> I see that there's an inaccurate statement about the "787 Max", but the grounding of the 787-10 today did happen: [https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore- air...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-airlines- grounds-two-boeing-787-10-dreamliner-jets-due-11403920)

<comment><USER3> > the 787-10

Not exactly. "The 787-10" as a whole is just fine.

Singapore airlines found a maintenance issue during routine inspection on two of its aircraft. Blade turbines are wear parts and are replaced as needed. The 787 can take two types of engines, one of them tends to wear out blades faster than expected. The article is sensationalism.

<comment><USER5> Sensationalism how? The article reports what happened in real life (except for the "787 MAX" error): 2 (maybe more?) 787-10s were checked, they deemed the fan blades too cracked, the 2 planes are now grounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> is this the same problem that 787-9's had with the Trent engine?

<comment><USER2> looks like it, yes</comment></comment>


Why has Microsoft seemingly stopped innovating? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-has-Microsoft-seemingly-stopped-innovating

<comment><AUTHOR> Rob Glaser shares his views on why Microsoft seems to innovate less and less.

</comment><comment><USER2> That site breaks cursor key--based scrolling. Quite unpleasant.</comment>


TnyMail: Free, Fast, Anonymous Email Alias - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnymail.com

<comment><USER2> how do you prevent this from becoming a haven for spammers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, spammers can't use the addresses to send from, as they are only used for incomming mail. Secondly, they are set, by default, to expire within 6 hours. So after 6 hours the address no longer exists. Therefore, for spammers to be able to send spam to the account, they would first have to know what account is active, then send spam to it within the period in which the account is active. So it is not easy to spam, also, if spam does hit the account, it will not last more than the active period.</comment></comment>


Is web development for kids? - <AUTHOR>

cssarrowplease.com 1323 tweets and 173points in HN? Somebody created a web page for displaying an arrow? Seriously? Next thing is 1k likes for displaying a popup which in most Widget libs is just new AlertBox("Hello world"); Is it me or the web is full of people who get excited rewriting UI components in a technology that was designed for documents (HTML/CSS)? <comment><USER2> Who cares.

Someone made a site, people liked it. I don't understand what there is to be mad about.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've only read the CSSArrowPlease post, but any interesting examples of problem solving, be it in CSS or C++, I like to read. That was one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3948284>

And another recent example, fwiw:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3916477>

</comment><comment><USER4> This should be a reply to the original HN thread on cssarrowplease.</comment>


Bletchley Park wins £4.6m grant - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-15171726

<comment><USER3> That's fantastic news.

I was at Bletchley Park last weekend for Over The Air, a mobile development conference/hack day. It's a truly extraordinary place - if you haven't been yet, you have a real treat in store.

They've already done a fantastic job bringing the place to life, and the working reconstructions of both Colossus (the first electronic programmable computer) and Alan Turing's Bombe (the mechanical device that cracked Enigma) are both completely spellbinding. They also do a really good tour.

<comment><USER4> It is fantastic news. It's only recently that the UK government apologized for Turing's post-war mistreatment, which tragically led to his suicide at the age of 42.

I only recently learned of Turings seminal work on mathematical biology; he demonstrated that much of the complexity found in nature is the result of simple algorithms. His concepts we learn about today in fields such as fractals and Chaos theory.

It's possible that Alan Turing might have one become one the all time great scientist had he survived to live out his career.

Bletchley Park is very high on my to do list next time I'm in the UK - <USER2> with IWM Duxford [1].

[1] <http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/>

<comment><USER5> They did officially apologise recently. Some more grants would not go amiss though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just read that the Bletchley Park Trust needs to raise a further £1.7m on their own in order to 'unlock' the £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.[1]

Time to get that bank card out of my wallet.

[1] [http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/sup...](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/contact/donation/support.rhtm)

</comment><comment><USER6> JGC will be pleased as punch with this:

[http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/1000-for-bletchley-park- thanks-t...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/01/1000-for-bletchley-park-thanks-to- geek.html)

Great to see that Bletchley Park will live on, it's one of very few historical sites that have meaning to those that are interested in our digital beginnings.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I am pleased as punch. Especially since when the Alan Turing petition was successful I bent the ear of the then Prime Minister about funding Bletchley Park. Not long after a small amount of lottery funding was announced that enabled them to make the bid for this larger amount. I don't know whether that was really because of me, but it doesn't matter. This news is great.

Here's the email I sent to Downing St. summarizing the situation on September 11, 2009:

      Kirsty,

      As you can imagine I have an Inbox filled with
      media requests and congratulatory notes from
      around the world.  A common theme in these
      mails is a desire to see a memorial of some
      kind to Alan Turing.

      Three suggestions (in order of popularity):

      1. Find some way to fund Bletchley Park and the
      National Museum of Computing.
      2. Use the Fourth Plinth for a Turing statue
      3. Name the marathon at the 2012 Olympics after
      Turing (he was a very good marathon runner and
      it's his centenary in 2012).

      All of these are good suggestions.  If the government
      did #1 you would have my full backing.

      John.

It is bloody marvellous that they have got the money to improve the site. I triply love Bletchley Park because of: (a) The codebreakers part (b) The National Museum of Computing and (c) it is now the home of the National Radio Centre (for all the UK hams out there) and I studied to be a radio amateur there with MKARS.

<comment><USER8> I have to say, I _really_ like the idea of using the Fourth Plinth for a statue of Turing - especially if the statue could somehow include some representation of his mathematical works.

<comment><USER9> No, what it needs is at the base of the plinth a small screen and keyboard where you get connected to either a random anonymous person on the Internet or an AI, and you have to work out which one you are speaking to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to admit that the first time I got really aware of Bletchley Park was while I was reading Cryptonomicon from Stephenson and started looking into its actual history. One of the few monuments in reality the digital age actually has. Nice to see it preserved.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really great news for all that love Bletchley Park and for all that have yet to see it.

<comment><USER6> Hehe, I knew you'd comment here :)

Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How much of it is going to be wasted like this:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12575029>

Why use tax payers money to buy prints of Turings papers when the original papers weren't lost and the content of the prints was known? Makes no sense to me. Just so you can stick some pieces of paper in a glass case somewhere?

<comment><USER12> They were papers owned by Turing with his handwritten notes on them.

<comment><USER11> As I understand it they were mainly offprints (reprints of articles that were bound in the original print run) sent to Prof Newman when Turing was published. It's possible Turing owned them but not in any significant way. Newman kept the papers. Then he tried to flog them for £½ million at Christies, couldn't, but somehow he or his supporters managed to convince the NHMF to give £200,000 GBP (along with £30k (?) or so funds raised elsewhere) for the papers.

It appears from all reports I've seen that there is literally nothing of significance that would be lost with the export of these papers. None of the Press, which all seems to be based on the writing of Gareth Halfacre, detailed what was special about the papers:

"The set includes articles which have been annotated by Newman, along with Max Newman's name inscribed in pencil in Turing's hand. Accompanying the set of offprints is the Newman household visitors' book with several signatures of Turing, that of Turing's mother and, of special significance to Bletchley Park, signatures of other wartime codebreaking giants." [from [http://www.nhmf.org.uk/LatestNews/Pages/EleventhHourRescueof...](http://www.nhmf.org.uk/LatestNews/Pages/EleventhHourRescueofTuringCollection.aspx)]

It seems the public were sold a lie. People thought the papers were Turings original notes and such when in fact he just wrote his friends name on the top.

The NHMF should now just take hi-res scans of the documents and sell them for whatever they can get. Nothing of significance will be lost you can look up the papers on Google Scholar.

Edit: as an associated example, you can get <http://plms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s2-42/1/230.extract> for free but it costs you $22k for the first edition print ([http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sea...](http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=4443664&sid=69da1a2a-1a27-430d-8164-e60ed80422c8)). IMO the free online version is more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The history is important, and I'm really pleased they got some money. They still need a bit more. And really, in the scheme of things, a couple of million is not much for such an important site. I am worried about them being able to get it, especially at the moment.

It's a bit depressing that programming and that kind of thinking is neglected in the curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER14> I went recently, it really needs the money. It needs it so bad I wouldn't bother going until they've spent this money. Donate in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER15> Terrific news - a shame Tony Sale was not here to see it.</comment>


A Minimal TTL Processor for Architecture Exploration (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/piscedu2.htm <comment><USER2> >Eight 74172s provide eight 16-bit registers in a three-port register file. This file may simultaneously write one register ("A"), read a second ("B"), and read or write a third ("C"). In a single clock cycle, the following occurs:

>a) one register is output to the Address bus and the ALU's A input;

>b1) another register may be output to the Data bus and the ALU's B input; or

>b2) data from memory may be input to another register;

>c) an ALU function is applied to A (and perhaps B) and the result is stored in the first (address) register.

I consider the 74172 a FOUR port register file, since it can simultaneously perform two reads and two writes. Exploiting all four data paths can really turbocharge a design, even a so-called "Pathetic" Instruction Set (PISC) machine like this.

Dunno if 74172's are generally available nowadays but I have several dozen purchased in the 20th century for a yet-unbuilt design of my own.</comment>


Aquamacs 2.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://aquamacs.org/news.shtml

<comment><USER2> Roughly 5 years ago I was an Emacs user. I remember I got my first job out of college at a Windows development shop, and I tried to use Emacs for the first couple of weeks, before I had to give in and use Visual Studio like everyone else around me. Being able to actually compile the project from the Project file was kind of a must-have =)

Nowadays I can't really think of a good use for Emacs. I use XCode for C++, Textmate for Python (and some old PHP and Java), MacTex for writing articles...

But man I'd love to use Emacs again and whip out some Elisp!

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps it's tabbar-mode but for some reason I find Aquamacs to be crazy-slow when compared to the vanilla Emacs.app. I realise there's a lot of extras that are included in Aquamacs but the difference is just insane. It's a shame though because I love the default setup (after I've turned off all of their modifier key changes).

<comment><USER4> Same here. It has consistently gotten slower since the 0.9+ days. My simple test involves loading up Slime, opening a Lisp source file of moderate size and holding down C-n. The recent releases of Aquamacs consistently spikes at 25-50% CPU usage on my MBP. The lag is noticeable while editing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just installed it and I installed the Mac 23.2 build a few days ago. Aquamacs is nice because just about everything (e.g., latext support) is bundled in. The plain 23.2 build starts faster and seems lighter. I alias 'Emacs' to start the new 23.2 plain app, 'aquamacs' to start Aquamacs, and can run the default emacs install with 'emacs'. Nice to have all three depending on what I am working on.

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on GNU Emacs 23.2 if anyone is curious.

</comment><comment><USER7> Folks, if you'd like to try out a 64-bit, Intel-only optimized build of Aquamacs 2.0, please e-mail me at david.reitter@gmail. At least on my system this build is noticeably faster.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love Aquamacs, but man... FOSS projects sure have a hell of a time with good (visual) design.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good job

</comment><comment><USER10> I spent a while today trying to decide what I like better, Cocoa Emacs or Aquamacs, and I eventually decided upon Aquamacs.

I found that Cocoa Emacs is faster to setup and get running, but once you have Aquamacs behaving the way you want it the extra features really are worth it. For me, tab support and the ability to re-open windows & frames from the last session seals the deal.

One oddity that I struggled at first with was how to get it to load ~/.emacs.d/init.el. I eventually solved this by loading it from: ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el

<comment><USER11> the thing that made me switch from aquamacs to cocoa emacs was that cocoa emacs acts more like the emacs on other platforms (ubuntu, bsd, windows). I liked aquamacs though, if I used exclusively osx I'd probably use aquamacs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IMO, the best free text editor for the mac is jEdit.</comment>


Why success is really more luck than hard work - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/success-luck-hard-work <comment><USER2> "You want to know who works hard? Our Filipino helper who spends 2 years away from her family in a foreign land and in these two years _spends almost every waking hour working_. That's someone who works hard".

Among several distasteful elements of this article, this was one of the more striking. I'm glad that kind of workplace is illegal in the U.S.

<comment><USER3> > _I 'm glad that's illegal in the U.S._

Which part of it do you think is illegal? That would be totally legal in the US as long as the helper immigrated legally.

In the case of undocumented immigrants, the US relies heavily on them (sometimes paid, sometimes literally enslaved). Restaurants, agricultural products, cleaning, and child care would be radically more expensive for everyone if undocumented immigrants didn't work long hours doing those jobs for what is often less than minimum wage.

<comment><USER2>
      Which part of it do you think is illegal?

"Spending almost every waking hour working". There are limits on shift length, minimum required breaks, etc. even for domestics.

<comment><USER3> That's only true if the worker is someone's employee. If they're contractors or subcontractors, they don't have a shift length.

Either way, there's a vast gap between labor laws and reality in the US.

<comment><USER2> A domestic _with no control of work location or hours_ is not a contractor (under U.S. labor codes, anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the key to success is "smart work". Luck won't make you successful, nor will working hard for the sake of working hard.

<comment><USER5> Yes, introducing intelligence into the equation is mandatory... Without it, you can't reach efficiency. I think success requires efficiency more than luck.</comment></comment>