Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier? - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/03/21/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-still-coronavirus-outlier/#.XnZH06FRUlQ <comment><USER2> > New tests that produce produce results in 10-15 minutes are becoming > available, but even with the improved tech, _under the current policy a test > will only be administered in the most extreme circumstances, when people > have had a fever for four days or more_.

This is an important factor that may indicate this "outlier" is more of a delay, rather than a reality of some exception.

As a resident, I'm quite concerned about the lack of testing.

<comment><USER3> Extreme testing policies wouldn't hide exponential growth - if it is growing exponentially, you'd expect the number of people meeting the criteria to also grow exponentially.

<comment><USER4> It wouldn't hide it FOR LONG. In a month, we'll know which hypothesis was correct.

<comment><USER5> A month ago Italy was fine and now 5,000 people are dead. A month ago the virus had been in Japan for a month already... and still today fewer than 50 deaths.

Obviously time will tell with all of this. But so far, time has told us that either a) the transmission rate is extremely low in Japan for some reason or b) no one is dying from the virus in the world's oldest country, for some even harder to explain reason.

The world needs to be looking hard at Japan to see what the hell is going on there.

<comment><USER6> I strongly agree. Yet Japan is rarely mentioned along with Taiwan, HK, S. Korea as exemplars of good management.

I think it's because they've bucked the Test, Test, Test advice yet still had a relatively good outcome so far.

It feels wrong to so ignore Japan. If they are doing something right here, the world should try to find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Japan, people wear masks so they don't spread their germs. In the US, people want to wear masks to avoid other's germs. Totally different mindset. And in the US we are being discouraged from wearing masks because they don't block the virus from going in even though they could be keeping asymptomatic people from spreading.

Well I feel duly embarrassed for not thinking that way earlier. Just ordered some cotton masks.

I'm sure there are other reasons the spread is different in Japan but this is something we can do. Not the disposable ones though.

<comment><USER8> I do wish US politicians would tell people to go back to work, but wear operation masks.

<comment><USER9> > I do wish US politicians would tell people to go back to work, but wear > operation masks.

Surgical masks, as well as N95 respirators, are already in short supply for medical use. Encourage further non-medical use would exacerbate the supply shortage and hasten the rapidly-approaching catastrophic collapse of the healthcare system.

The current recommendation (and, increasingly frequently, mandatory order) that non-essential work that cannot be done remotely should be suspended is correct.

<comment> barry-cotter A vacuum cleaner bag is over 80% effective at catching virus size particles, a tea towel/dish cloth 70%, a surgical mask 90%. There's no tea towel shortage. Western governments should be encouraging use of makeshift masks.

> Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory > Infections among the General Population

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In South Korea epidemic was started with one sick cult member spreading it to wast number of people. In Italy the person who started Lombardy cluster was first asymptomatic for weeks, was later misdiagnosed and spreading the disease in hospital. It seems that the epidemic is starting without similar super- spreaders in Japan.

Case fatality deaths to recovered rate in Japan is 18%. In South Korea it's 6.6%. This might indicate that Japan has 3X larger undocumented/documented rate.

This early in the exponential curve 2x difference is just 1-2 week delay.

<comment><USER11> Notably, there's a big difference between South Korea - which seems to largely have largely gotten the epidemic under control, and Italy where it seems to be totally out of control despite a severe lockdown.

Whats a key difference between South Korea and Italy? Widespread use of face masks.

<comment><USER12> > _Whats a key difference between South Korea and Italy? Widespread use of > face masks._

Gonna wager a guess that there are vast amount of differences between South Korea and Italy that could affect the spread of a virus.

<comment> barry-cotter Indeed. Italy has among the highest rates of working adults living with their parents in the world for one.

<comment> why-oh-why And South Korea has the highest rate of soju drinkers.

If you're gonna pull a statistic out of a shadowy place, at least explain its link to the question.

(For the record South Koreans drink twice as much alcohol as Italians _)

_ [https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alco...](https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msb_gsr_2014_3.pdf)

<comment> barry-cotter People were going to work in Italy in non-essential industries until recently. Those workers went home to their aged parents. Countries with lower rates of working aged adults living with the elderly are likely to have higher infection rates of a particularly vulnerable age group than those where such living situations are less common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People are mentioning this is due to lack of testing, but if that were the case wouldn't hospitals be overwhelmed like they have been in Italy and elsewhere?

Testing or no testing if hospitals run out of ventilators for people in need, or out of masks, that would still happen if the disease was spreading like it does elsewhere

<comment><USER14> The counterclaim is that Japan has an unusually high per capita number of ICU beds.

<comment><USER15> This appears to be true, it is #1 in hospital beds (not the same as ICU beds, but should be correlated)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_beds)

<comment><USER16> > but should be correlated

It's not, as shown by the very link you posted. ICU beds are a separate column in that table. Japan only has ~7.3/100k.

<comment><USER15> That seems to be correct. Oh well, I hope that the link helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've been discussing these questions recently on the #covid19 channel of the HN Tokyo Slack [0] - all the same sort of points raised as below - but nobody knows for sure.

There was an outbreak in Hokkaido a few weeks ago and that was the Japan hotspot for a while. The governor there quickly declared a state of emergency and that was brought under control - if you believe the official figures that is.

The best Japan tracker that I've seen is here [1]. From that you can see that there have been 16 deaths in 愛知 (Aiichi - prefecture capital is Nagoya) but only 141 cases as of now. Assuming deaths have an approximately average lag of 3 weeks from infection and an about 1% death rate, 16 deaths would translate to very approximately 1,600 deaths 3 weeks ago. As the general Japan is upwards, even according to official figures, there are probably several thousand cases in Aiichi today.

For new cases, in the last few days Tokyo is ahead.

Also, the government has given schools to reopen in April [2] . If that happens, cases may start rising sharply.

[0] [http://hntokyo.io/](http://hntokyo.io/)

[1] [https://covid-2019.live/](https://covid-2019.live/)

[2] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/20/national/school...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/20/national/school- can-reopen-april-after-coronavirus-shurtdown/)

<comment><USER18> Do you know if there are slack workspaces for other regions?

<comment><USER17> HN Kansai meetp & slack are here:

[http://hnkansai.org/](http://hnkansai.org/)

[https://hnkansai-slack.now.sh/](https://hnkansai-slack.now.sh/)

HN Fukuoka is here:

[https://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-Fukuoka/](https://www.meetup.com/Hacker- News-Fukuoka/)

I found them via the unofficial HN meetup page maintained by Anton Tarasenko here:

[https://github.com/antontarasenko/hacker-news- groups](https://github.com/antontarasenko/hacker-news-groups)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Japan's obesity rate is only 3.6% while the US's is 32%, and Italy's 42%.

[https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14321?ln=en](https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14321?ln=en)

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

This suggests many consequent differences, like far fewer seniors taking all of the drugs that accompany obesity, like ACE and ARB inhibitors for hypertension, and the myriad drugs that combat diabetes.

But ignoring the contribution of specific drugs, it's much more likely that fitness and the absence of comorbidity diseases are the principal factors that favor countries with significantly better basic fitness like Japan (and Taiwan and South Korea) and their reporting fewer cases.

What's more, since most positive cases will never be counted unless they need hospitalization, we may simply be seeing healthier immune systems reduce case severity, so more cases in these countries are flying below the radar.

<comment><USER20> Italy's obesity rate is not 42%. That's the rate for 2 year olds, which is bad in and if itself. The obesity rate overall is about 10% though, which is amongst the lowest in oecd counties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'll offer one hypothesis and a quick explanation.

Iodine. The Japaese have a high iodine content in their diet. I'm taking 10x the US RDA. Some have suggested this is the reason for lower breast cancer rates there (no time to cover all that here and now).

I read about Iodine years ago, and followed some doctors suggestions that it can help asthma. My asthma is effectively gone and my last PFT showed my lungs function better than average for my age. I haven't touched an inhaler in years.

Since we are dealing with a respiratory virus, I figure anything that helps the lungs is probably a good thing.

For some fun reading you might want to read about the relationship of iodine and: cancer, lungs, mitochondria, apoptosis, breast cancer, asthma, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and any number of thyroid problems.

If you think Iodine is only good for the thyroid gland, I suggest reading about the sodium-iodine-symporter and which tissues have it.

Anyway, I had already thought about this when it seemed Japan's death rate from covid-19 was lower.

<comment><USER22> That's an interesting theory I hadn't heard before. I've read about iodine in seaweed and seafood, part of common diet in Japan; and how iodine influences thyroid hormones.

Just started searching on the role and effect of iodine in the body - indeed, it seems to be fundamental in fetal development and cell regeneration (its suppression, apoptosis); the endocrine system, metabolism, repiratory, immunity.. I never knew how important iodine is, thank you for pointing this out, I'll study more.

A possibly relevant snippet:

> Based on the reported values in seaweed, some have claimed levels of 12 mg > (12,000 mcg) in Japanese diets, leading Abraham and Brownstein to propose > that

> "only mainland Japanese consume adequate amounts of iodine and that 99 > percent of the world population are deficient in inorganic, non-radioactive > iodine; that is, they have not reached whole body sufficiency for that > essential element."

<comment><USER21> There is also a widespread claim that too much Iodine will negatively affect your thyroid. All of those claims seem to be rooted in a single experiment that others have reviewed and say it does not support the claim. My own experience and that of the Japanese suggest otherwise too.

There was one cool study that showed the connection between kelp and reduced incidence of breast cancer. It was based on Japanese women whose cancer rates shoot up when the move to the US. The funny part for me was at the end, where they suggest that people don't start eating a lot of kelp because of the high iodine content which has these negative effects. They then proposed further study to see what was in the kelp that prevented cancer. I was just... I dunno. SMH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Japanese smoke more, but see less lung cancer. If we can figure out why, it might cast light on the covid19 pandemic.

[https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-japanese-lung-cancer- smok...](https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-japanese-lung-cancer-smoking- paradox-2248990)

<comment><USER24> Maybe check how many smokes they usually do. I know some people in western countries will smoke a pack a day.

<comment><USER23> I imagine they've already eliminated the really obvious explanations of that sort.

IIRC, genetics and a high consumption of seafood, especially shell fish and other things high in iodine, seem to be likely factors.

If you tolerate seafood well, that's potentially of interest. People could look into studies relevant to that angle.

<comment><USER7> If iodine is the reason, probably from seaweed rather than shellfish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm also thinking of the "biological resistance" angle.

Japan is known to have extremely low rates of common comorbidity factors: cardiovascular conditions, obesity, etc. By very significant margins, consider dividing the prevalence of these conditions by 2 to 10 compared to the West.

Add to that a generally balanced nutrition, due to a culinary culture quite aligned with those goals (whether by chance or by design, that's another question...)

Hypothesis: added to the factors you mentioned, you end up with a population 'much less likely' to develop complications with COVID-19 (also possibly immune quicker on average after infection, thus lower R₀). So they get it but instead of 20% requiring hospitalization, maybe only 1-5% do, and that's somehow manageable and results in much lower numbers since they only test critical cases.

We'll only see in the postmortems of all these patients, but I'm willing to bet right now that most cases requiring ICU treatment had some sort of underlying condition that favored the virus progress; age being one such condition (as defined by De Grey, essentially tear and wear of the machine conceptually).

I don't know, but there's definitely something with Japan and COVID-19, and the slow progression of infections (despite the lack of strict confinement measures or systematic testing) is already fact compared to any other country I'm aware of. It's not just luck.

<comment><USER26> Probably more likely they are just ignoring it.

In 2018 influenza killed around 61,000 people (46000-95000 95%UI) in the USA. Estimated 45,000,000 people got sick. 21,000,000 people made hospital visits with around 810,000 people hospitalized.

So it didn't fling the USA into a recession. Business continued as normal.

For Italy you had 7,027 deaths for the '13-'14 flu season, 20,259 '14-'15, 15,801 '15-'16, and 24,981 '16-'17.

So why does ~25,000 deaths one year goes practically unnoticed, yet less then 5,000 deaths send the economy into a death spiral and the government to essentially strip all rights from the population?

It's not like if people just continued with business as usual the death toll would be unusually high. I fully understand why you want to slow the spread of the disease... but if ultimately if 70-90 thousand people die in the USA and 30-40 thousand people die in Italy.. it wouldn't even be that unusual or extreme. It would just be a slightly higher then average people die from just run of the mill every year seasonal disease.

It's the same reason why although terrorism killed 25 people in the USA in 2019 and was all over the news and people freaked out, and caused panic attacks, and calls for legislation and.. so on and so forth. Yet bee/hornet attacks killed around 60-90 people in the same time period and nobody, except close family members and friends of the victims, gave two shits.

It's the novelty, strangeness, and uncertainty that causes a massive reaction. And it is the response that is causing damage to the economies, society, and destroying people's lives. Not the disease. Not yet. Maybe it will, but that is far from certain.

In other words...

The reason it's not a big deal in Japan has nothing to do with how many people get sick or die or inherent vulnerability to the sickness. The median age of a person in the USA is 38. The Median age of a person in Japan is 46. This is a massively older population and there is a limit to how much a healthy lifestyle really makes in fighting disease.

The real reason it's not a big deal in Japan is because they choose to not make it a big deal.

<comment><USER27> At a 4.3% death rate if the same number were infected you would be looking at 2 million in the US.

<comment><USER28> 4.3% is just simply wrong, even by absolute worst case measures. Please don't spread this number.

Even in Wuhan, they revised the official number down to 1.4%, and every serious epidemiologist is saying it's likely much lower, because of undocumented cases. (Current models have it at 86% unreported).

<comment> Engineering-MD Which model has it at 86% unreported? I just haven't seen this particular study.

<comment><USER25> [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221)

> We estimate 86% of all infections were undocumented (95% CI: [82%–90%]) > prior to 23 January 2020 travel restrictions.

I think that's what GP was talking about.

<comment> Engineering-MD Thank you, I hadn't seen a study quote it that high previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The people who claim wearing a mask doesn't work are missing one of the biggest benefits to wearing a mask. If you are sick and don't have symptoms yet. It help reduce your chances of infecting others.

Yeah they arent 100% fool proof. But it's better than nothing. If it reduces my chance of getting sick by 1% and that 1% turns out to be the bit that makes my daughter not get sick then it's worth it.

<comment><USER30> I think that once this crisis passes we will have an updated view on the true effectiveness of masks. All the Asian countries that flattened the curve heavily endorsed the wearing of masks. But there may be other factors at work rather than the direct efficacy of masks (not touching your face, sending a social signal to keep distance, elevating humidity around your mouth and nose, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some days ago, I found this comment from someone living in Japan.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605657)

<comment><USER32> This is what I've heard from my friends living in Japan – people are sick, but the government is refusing to test them because they want to keep the numbers down so the Olympics don't get cancelled.

But other threads further up pointed out that even with massive under-testing, it should be hard to cover up a COVID-19 outbreak if it spread exponentially as expected – there would be reports of hospitals being overloaded and having to turn away people with severe symptoms, so maybe something else is going on.

<comment><USER33> If the government has such strict criteria for testing, might it also not have implemented strict 'stages' that you must proceed through after a diagnosis? And a further, stricter criteria before even allowing hospitalisation?

My other suspicion is severe cases will try their best to hold off on self- reporting given the strict government testing criteria and lack of awareness/panic.

This is one key way that Japanese and US society diverge - Americans are much less afraid to 'make a fool of themselves' if they believe they are correct/in danger. Japanese unfortunately, much more so and especially when given direct government directions.

<comment><USER32> That doesn't explain the difference in death rates. If Japan were turning away severe life-threatening cases (especially despite plenty of hospital capacity), you'd expect an increase in deaths and rioting in the streets – at the very least, _some_ indication that something was wrong.

And if they _weren't_ turning away life-threatening cases, you'd expect reports of hospitals stretched far beyond capacity.

There really aren't any other plausible explanations than "Japan actually has significantly fewer or less severe COVID-19 cases than expected". It would have to be an implausibly massive cover-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm here in japan and have been trying to find an answer to this for the past week. It has to be the masks.

<comment><USER34> To elaborate, yes Japanese are pretty clean by nature and do have social distancing naturally, but everyone is still taking the subway, the government has not cracked down much. Ubiquitous wearing of masks is the only really unique thing i can think of. (Actually even now not everyone is wearing them, but its still a good percentage and as soon as Japanese feel sick they wear masks) So I've come to the conclusion that if Japan isn't just "lucky" (Lucky after 8 or 9 weeks is probably impossible) it has to be the masks.

So assuming it's the masks, why have masks stopped the explosion we see elsewhere? We can theorize it must have kept the R rate down (Reproduction rate).

But, I do think a lot of people ARE still getting sick here. I think the government is only testing those with very severe symptoms so we aren't seeing the true extent of the infection rate. I even think I might have had it a week ago as I had (very minor) similar symptoms. The weird thing is we don't see a lot of severe cases here in japan. The main thing that I believe the masks are doing is stopping droplets getting spread from infected people (Meaning infected people who wear masks don't spread the droplets as much). I think this reduces the rate of spread, but also I think reduces the amount of viral load that is getting transferred from infected people and can reduce severity of symptoms.

You reduce Infection Rate and you also reduce Infection Severity (reduce viral load) by wearing masks which combined with japan only testing severe cases leads to the results we see now in Japan.

<comment><USER35> Riding the subway doesn't make you sick. Not washing your hands and then touching your face with hands that have the virus from touching parts of the train makes you sick. You can't touch your face much if you have a mask on it. The virus doesn't just float around in the air. It only exists in water particles that fall quickly onto surfaces.

<comment><USER36> This is commonly believed, but how do we know how true it is?

If breathing particles into your throat and lungs is the primary vector (seems likely to me, although I don't know exactly what is), then what you are saying is wrong.

It seems that masks are being de-emphasised, based on the obvious fake reason of saving the retail stock for the front-line workers (how does avoiding buying retail stock magically get masks into hands of nurses?).

It also seems to me there is an over emphasis on washing hands, and avoiding touching your face (well mouth, nose or eyes). That could be one vector (although unlikely to be the main vector) yet why is everyone so hyper focused on it like it's the critical vector? It's the emphasis on washing and touching I find disturbing (even though obviously we should wash hands and avoid touching holes).

<comment><USER37> Washing and touching is what people can do without shooting each other over masks. I am sure it helps like 10%. Doubt it will have a massive impact either way. I'd like to think most people wash their hands reasonable often.

<comment><USER36> Yep.

What weirds me that it seems likely a bandana over the mouth could change R0 from 2.2 to 2.0, yet we talk about washing hands.

A 10% reduction of transmission is _super_ good when you are dealing with exponential growth.

We need both together, yet we are focusing on only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Personally, and this is my opinion without any evidence to back it up. I believe that this is just a combination of several factors:

\- Japan acted sooner than most by closing schools, tightening their borders, informing their citizens and asking for their cooperation.

\- Japan's culture is a big factor, people respect and obey their government in general, the use of masks is common place, practicing social distancing is already part of their culture, with no kissing, hugging or handshakes for the most part, the exception being their public transportation, which are well known for how packed they are near the Tokyo area.

\- Japan has a good health care system [https://www.who.int/whr/2010/en/](https://www.who.int/whr/2010/en/)

Lastly, let us assume that Japan isn't testing everyone they can as suggested by some, as a way to somehow keep the Olympics going.

\- Japan has an older population, which is high risk group as we know.

\- IF they are in-fact manipulating numbers as some suggested by not testing, than we would be seeing a spike in the death rate for the 60-80+ age groups. Now I can't provide a metric to prove or disprove this and the only thing we can do is wait and see, but I have doubts about the government ignoring their people in-favor of an event that likely won't happen this year or at least not the early half of the year.

EDIT: Lastly and this is a factor that none of us even suggested, is luck. Luck is important and impossible to control.

<comment><USER39> Consider this:

To date, have you observed any other countries and governments undertesting? And if so, was it for reasons other than the Olympics?

That gives you a baseline of disincentives to report.

Now extend: \- what would the cost (financial, reputational, etc) be to Japan the government if the Olympics do not go ahead? \- might there be other disincentives for Japan to undertest relative to its neighbours?

Also recall, in some cases a little bit of disincentive mixed with poor planning/incompetence leads to a lot of unplanned underreporting :)

The trick in all cases is to look for a metric that governments have not thought to obscure/or cannot control that strongly signal the thing you're trying to verify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This interesting and really shows the power of social distancing. I believe this is also why China/Korea/Taiwan/Singapore were able to overcome the disease. The virus doesn't spread well without close contact.

<comment><USER41> I think it will turn that wearing masks has a much bigger effect than anticipated. (I suppose that's a form of social distancing.)

<comment><USER42> Imagine if the whole pandemic could have been prevented if we just manufactured masks at a higher rate and everyone wore them.

Now even hospitals are running out.

<comment><USER43> I cannot for the life of me understand why we aren't turning every available textile mill into mask manufacturers right now. It should be trivial to do and clothes aren't a critical item. I'm sure most countries have planned something like this as it's a common need during major wars. We're basically saying that since it's not 100% effective, so it's not worth it. Meanwhile, neither is social distancing, but that's super dooper important.

<comment><USER44> I live in Portugal and some producers are being told to make disinfectant out of drinking alcohol.

I assume the same is being done with mask production, or will be done. The same is happening with alcohol in other European countries, I don't know about the US.

<comment><USER45> There's places doing it, but not by mandate.

With the amount of ethanol produced for fuel in the US, it's the other ingredients and packaging that would be the capacity limit.

<comment><USER46> With the Russia - Saudi Arriba oil war going on ethanol producers are caught in the crossfire and have no problem supplying all the ethanol sanitizer users could want. (I don't think they are happy about it considering, but they are eager to corner this new market even if it only lasts for a few weeks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Healthier population and strong pre-existing social norms/habits conducive to limiting spread?

<comment><USER48> Those are definitely some "pros" but a big "con" is they have the oldest general population of any country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is it really so outlandish to blame the masks? Relative to Westerners, East Asians seem to wear a lot more masks, and are willing to improvise.

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/25/national/japan-...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/25/national/japan- mask-shortages-covid19/)

> _A tweet from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Disaster Response > Division (@MPD_bousai) offers advice on how to wear masks and dispose of > them properly, while a free DIY mask instruction manual is available in > English, Chinese and Korean on the Oita Prefectural Government's website_

Can you imagine that happening here?

<comment><USER50> Belgium here. My wife is creating a mask right now, based on free internet instructions. She is not alone in our neighbourhood, and I see masked people at our bakery. I'd say we're not there yet, but learning very fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is what patio11 had to say about it:

"I will say this: when Japan had major natural disasters in 2011 I praised the response and wrote a long blog post about how things were much better than commonly believed.

I have written no such post this year. That is not because of insufficient personal interest in the topic."

[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241103181511180288](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241103181511180288)

<comment><USER52> I don't think patio11 is a Japan expert.

<comment><USER53> Yeah, he simply lives there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why do we place such low stock in mere fortune? If original cases that penetrated borders were asymptomatic then that merely creates a rare event (i.e. all Japanese risk vectors being clearly symptomatic) and its always plausible for a rare event to happen.

Instead we're bending over backwards wondering if its about Japanese bowing/shoe/mask culture.

<comment><USER55> Luck can play a role, but consider the confounding factors against luck:

1\. Travel with China. There was a huge amount of inter-country traffic up until the New Year. 2\. Population density. Japan is quite high, and this should increase the country's R0. 3\. Population demographics. Over 20% of Japan's population is over 60. This should increase the CFR for the country.

So there are two basic scenarios. One is that Japan is somehow mis-counting patients and deaths (similar to kodokushi). This could also be intentional, in a misguided attempt to protect the economy and the Olympics, or it could simply be a bureaucratic flaw in their methodology.

The second is that something unique to how the Japanese culture, healthcare system, etc is giving them an advantage.

Once we're on the other side of this pandemic, there's going to be a world of fascinating research/study into how different countries reacted to COVID-19, and how successful they were.

<comment><USER56> I have been looking at it the other way. That it is not something about Japan making it better. There is something about Italy, Milan specifically, that makes it worse. Point I was able to isolate is air quality.

My hypothesis that had borne out rather well, if a place reports high severe cases, they have historically bad air. At the least bad air for the past three months.

<comment><USER55> China had terrible air quality until they shut everything down, yet their CFR is half of Italy's, and that's probably due to the fact that it started there and the learning curve was steep.

<comment><USER56> I'll note my hypothesis is exposure. Thought being that the elder in Milan have had years more exposure to the pollution than what I understand to be the more transient working class of China. (Specifically, the area hit.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Not so surprising. You have also the same outliers with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

\- In Japan, people naturally respect social distancing. Touching someone is considered rude, everyone bows instead of shaking hands and nobody kiss.

\- Almost everybody wear mask when they are sick to avoid contaminating others. They do that since way before Cornavirus and on voluntary based.

\- Washing hands is common, being clean (bath culture) is part of common minimal respect.

\- People listen and obey to their government.

\- Last but probably very relevant: they have a completely different place of the elders in society. In Japan, the elders often live alone, sustain their life by themselves: it's a matter of proud. Even contact with their own kids is often sparse. Meaning, probably also lower risk of infection.

<comment><USER58> \- Almost everybody wear mask when they are sick to avoid contaminating others. They do that since way before Cornavirus and on voluntary based.

We're told that masks do not work

<comment> barry-cotter Indeed. Here's the US Surgeon General spreading disinformation on Twitter.

> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

>?They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! [http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm](http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm)

[https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...](https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160?s=20)

<comment><USER59> The Surgeon General is correct. Masks are for the sick.

<comment> barry-cotter They said masks aren't effective at stopping people getting sick. That's misinformation. If they weren't effective at reducing infection healthcare workers wouldn't wear them.

Saying there aren't enough for healthcare workers isn't. Save respirators and surgical masks for healthcare workers. Wear a mask if you're going outside even if it's just a tshirt covering your face.

<comment><USER59> >If they weren't effective at reducing infection healthcare workers wouldn't wear them

Yes, they would. The healthcare worker may already be sick, and are regularly closely interacting with people that have compromised immune systems. An illness that wouldn't slow down a nurse may kill a patient.

<comment> barry-cotter If we agree that masks slow the spread of disease from and to wearers then we are in clear disagreement with the Surgeon General. Masks work and the general populace should be encouraged to wear makeshift masks until such time as there are enough surgical masks for everybody or the crisis is over.

<comment><USER59> We don't agree. Masks would only help in the event that someone coughed/sneezed directly on your face but missed the eyes. Even then, removing the mask and washing your face without contamination would be difficult.

Makeshift masks don't necessarily even help in that situation, become a liability when contaminated, and putting it on then removing it causes additional risk.

<comment><USER60> This is why that someone also needs to wear a mask.

Don't worry, people aren't morons and have been using masks in Japan and other countries for decades just fine.

Yes, masks can hold contaminated droplets --that's their purpose. When people don't use masks on the other hand, those droplets that would have remained on the mask now end up everywhere else, and now you have a far more spread vectors with basically _everything_ being potentially contaminated.

Using a mask ensures that a lesser percentage of your contaminated droplets end up in other places.

<comment><USER59> If you are sick, masks are great. Even homemade ones. This is about healthy people wearing masks.

<comment><USER60> > If you are sick, masks are great. Even homemade ones. This is about healthy > people wearing masks.

First, masks work better when both sides use them. In Japan, healthy people wear masks as well during flu seasons because it makes it offers better protection than wearing nothing.

Second, in the specific context of COVID-19, how do you know they're healthy? That's the key, because asymptomatic cases are estimated to be the main driver of this pandemic by far. And it's only worsened by the fact that only few tests are available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The number of deaths seems to be tracking with South Korea's trend [1] while the number of positive tests are much lower [2]. That does seem to indicate the testing is not matching up with South Korea's at least. 1\. [https://covid19dashboards.com/compare-country-death- trajecto...](https://covid19dashboards.com/compare-country-death- trajectories/) 2\. [https://covid19dashboards.com/compare-country- trajectories/](https://covid19dashboards.com/compare-country-trajectories/)

</comment><comment><USER62> I've been wondering the same thing about Massachusetts where I live.

We have 416 confirmed cases, 58 requiring hospitalization - it's unclear how many of those require the ICU. I know of several people who are suspected of having it but have been told to just self quarantine but haven't been tested, so obviously the infected numbers are much higher.

Still we only had our first death yesterday. He was an 87 year old already in poor health. By this point in Italy, things were already much worse.

Is this the beginning of the tsunami, or is it possible that it won't get as virulent here?

<comment><USER63> > Is this the beginning of the tsunami

Yes. The problem with coronavirus is that young people apparently can be asymptomatic and spread the virus around massively, which means that without mass testing they will continue to spread... and then, detection of symptomatic CV patients takes time, both in that the patients go to testing and that the test gets executed. Unlike countries which have done mass testing for weeks/months, for the US, Germany and many others the current infection counts are a momentum in time of about ~1-2 weeks past. Time in which the virus can spread _exponentially_ , something humans are not really good at visualizing.

Shit will look grim, especially the deaths, pretty soon. Italy shows the beginnings, and they hit hundreds of deaths a day now.

<comment><USER62> Actually Germany is another strange data point: according to Wikipedia's sources they have 21,890 confirmed cases and "only" 77 deaths.

This seems dramatically different than Italy's experience. Italy had over 1400 deaths by that point in their confirmed infection count. Is it how they're counting? The age group infected?

Honestly, I'm just trying to find a ray of hope here.

<comment><USER63> > Italy had over 1400 deaths by that point in their confirmed infection count.

Italy has the problem that exploding rents after the financial crisis forced many young people to live with their parents and grandparents which not only means that they're heading for a demographic disaster as it's hard to get kids when grandma lives with you but also that the coronavirus has it easy to spread to elderly patients which are at _horrible_ risk for serious corona cases.

Additionally, the financial crisis aftermath has _wrecked_ the Italian healthcare system as it's easy to "save" money there on short term. Hospitals were closed and nurses and doctors fled to e.g. Germany or Switzerland due to higher pay, which means that now when the crisis hits the staff is overwhelmed, the beds are overwhelmed and people, especially old people, are sent home to die so that there is a chance to save those young who _do_ develop severe coronavirus cases.

<comment><USER64> It sounds like you've hit on a reason that it might not be as bad for anyone else. Grandma and grandpa are sitting around having dinner with a bunch of asymptomatic but infected young adults. Everybody rubs their faces together when they show up and leave. It's a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER63> The US has a different problem - people showing up sick (or symptomless but infected) at work because they cannot afford to stay home or lose their job.

Germany... let's just say we had to enact strict lockdowns due to utter idiots going to "corona parties" and God I wish I were joking here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I think this is a good question. Here are some random observations on Japan:

1\. Japan, Tokyo area in particular, is crowded but clean and neat.

2\. The Japanese, contradicting western prejudice, are not particular healthy. Lots of heavy drinking and smoking.

3\. The Japanese never did a China travel ban. Lots of trade with and tourism from China.

I personally guess the answer to the question is that they did very good testing and contact tracing wrt. COVID19 and do not have the same testing bottlenecks as other countries.

<comment><USER39> They really didn't implement a China travel ban? I find that hard to believe

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> It is really amazing how quickly we adapt to things. Earlier today I was watching a twitch streamer from someone at a bar in Japan and I was surprised to see that many strangers close together in one room and thought they were being reckless. A week ago I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

</comment><comment><USER67> points not discussed well in western media: 1) they do crashing clusters very well based on this paper. well[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v1)

2) Why packed train in Japan still hasn't caused outbreak They don't speak despite the high density in train (remember - it is utter silence on public transportation in Japan) and all wear masks.

3) Intensive use of chest CT scan to find out critical conditions. They have highest number of CT scan per 1000 people in the world. [https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct- scann...](https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct-scanners.htm) Plus, remember, PCR has high false negative and testing everyone is waste of resources (look at Italy. they tested everyone regardless of severeness of symptom and totally fucked.) You can test a lot only if well-prepared like Korea with SARS experience.

4) Compliance Japan has always suffered from Tsunami, Earthquake, Fukushima, ...etc. They are used to calmly adjust their life without panicking. No toilet paper shortage. They don't get surprised at all with Earthquake with magnitude of 6 unlike Americans in California.

</comment><comment><USER39> Be rational and consider all options:

1\. The data is accurate and captures all coronavirus cases.

2\. The data is not accurate and does not capture all coronavirus cases.

I read the entirety of this thread as though HN assumes only 1 is possible. If 1 is correct, then HN's inferences sound reasonable (habitual mask use, practiced social distancing).

But what if 2 is correct? Is there any disincentive for governments to accurately test and capture all cases? Is there any particularly outsized disincentive for Japan to do so?

I leave the above questions as an exercise for the reader.

</comment><comment><USER67> points not discussed well in western media:

1) they do crashing clusters very well based on this paper. well[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v1)

2) Why packed train in Japan still hasn't caused outbreak They don't speak despite the high density in train (remember - it is utter silence on public transportation in Japan) and all wear masks.

3) Intensive use of chest CT scan to find out critical conditions. They have highest number of CT scan per 1000 people in the world. [https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct- scann...](https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct-scanners.htm) Plus, remember, PCR has high false negative and testing everyone is waste of resources (look at Italy. they tested everyone regardless of severeness of symptom and totally fucked.) You can test a lot only if well-prepared like Korea with SARS experience.

</comment><comment><USER67> points not discussed well in western media:

1) they do crashing clusters very well based on this paper. well[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v..).

2) Why packed train in Japan still hasn't caused outbreak They don't speak despite the high density in train (remember - it is utter silence on public transportation in Japan) and all wear masks.

3) Intensive use of chest CT scan to find out critical conditions. They have highest number of CT scan per 1000 people in the world. [https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct- scann...](https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/computed-tomography-ct-scann..). Plus, remember, PCR has high false negative and testing everyone is waste of resources (look at Italy. they tested everyone regardless of severeness of symptom and totally fucked.) You can test a lot only if well-prepared like Korea with SARS experience.

</comment><comment><USER68> Japnese are like Chinese, are quite obedient, therefore can follow quite throughly of the checks in the entry and exit of the country.

Plus, itself has much more modern and disciplined public health system, with more experiences dealing with similar issues.

Last but not least, the Japan lands are literally isolated from continents, making the transition of virus through other medium much more easier to track.

<comment><USER57> > Japnese are like Chinese

I would advise you to never say to a Chinese or a Japanese that they are alike.

Excepted if you want to enrich your vocabulary with new insults in a foreign language. Many of them are nationalists, and not really appreciating each other.

<comment><USER68> Hahahah

Stereotyping is nature.

I am Chinese, I know very well what happened in WWII, and Japanese people willingly supported their fascism government, and the monstrosity committed by the Japanese invasion army on Chinese soil.

Then do I feel insulted that Japanese retained and even refined a lot of ancient Chinese traditions, and modern Chinese culture have been greatly influenced by Japanese, because they were more receptive to western influence early on?

In many people's eyes, I should.

But, no, I do not. I admit to facts, not sentiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Hmm, could they be lying to keep the Olympics? If so, how would they get away with it?

(Not accusing, just repeating something a Japanese friend said.)

<comment><USER70> The olympics angle is somewhat irrelevant — if Japan is totally covid free, but the rest of the world is a mess, then the olympics still can't happen. Local coverup brings no obvious benefits.

To announce a shift in olympic schedule requires a total behind the scenes replanning. I suspect they're on that now, and will announce a new date once logistics have been finalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Because they don't test enough, Masayoshi Son was criticized by netizens because he wanted to test more people.

[https://inc42.com/buzz/masayoshi-son-gets-criticised-for- his...](https://inc42.com/buzz/masayoshi-son-gets-criticised-for-his-free- coronavirus-testing-initiative/)

</comment><comment><USER72> So far the places that have held up well (Singapore, China, Japan, South Korea) have a culture that favors masks.

In Hubei, you would be arrested if you were out without one (this may have lapsed now).

There may be other cultural/demographic/political aspects, but this seems key. Japan, in many ways, handled the crisis poorly. And yet they're still doing ok.

</comment><comment><USER73> Most people assume that the various governments' published statistics are accurate. They also often implicitly assume that the various statistical measures are consistent across nations. Are these reasonable assumptions given the politics of the various countries?

</comment><comment><USER74> Italy is special not just because of its elderly population, but because of its socially active and well-connected elderly population. Multi-generation families are still normal.

By contrast, Japan's elderly population tends to live socially isolated in the country-site.

</comment><comment><USER75> Because they're monocultural and don't have a lot of foreigners living or coming into the country, and the Japanese themselves tend not to travel as much internationally (these days). And yes they wear masks commonly.

</comment><comment><USER76> Do Japanese people living outside of Japan have an unusually low rate of hospitalization? Perhaps there is a genetic component.

Or perhaps it involves some differences in diet, or treatment.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think cultural factor is huge in Japan's case. They don't really like hugging and touching each other socially. They are more restrained in their physical social behaviours.

</comment><comment><USER77> I wonder if "no shoes in the house" plays a role.

<comment><USER78> We don't wear outside shoes in our house. (Midwest US) Not sure it would play a role with viruses but definitely keeps out dirt and other contaminants, just makes for a cleaner environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> It's worthwhile to track whether there's suspicious spike in number of Kodokushi.

</comment><comment><USER80> Re social distancing:

Italians and Spanish kiss when they greet each other. They're the worst hit in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER81> I wonder if there could be a genetic factor. Maybe something ~unique to Japanese?

<comment><USER82> I was curious of a genetic link after hearing about a family in New Jersey where four members died after one dinner party [[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-51978164](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51978164)]. Being relatives, though, they may have all had similar comorbidities.

<comment><USER81> Huh. Italian family. So I suppose that they might carry susceptibility genes. It's my impression that Italians are extremely diverse genetically, but I guess that there could be ~isolated subpopulations.

I wonder whether anyone's looked for that in the data from Italy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Isn't India the real elephant in the room here?

</comment><comment><USER84> More iodine in their diet?

</comment><comment><USER85> I can tell you what happened in Spain.

In Spain the Government did not take it seriously, it was a relaxed attitude. The person that was in charge of giving news , Mr Simon, said he expected two or three people getting infected in the future.

As a result of this attitude, there were no controls in borders. They let people(thousands) go to football(soccer) matches in Italy, where there were already known cases with no consequences.

Then serious cases started growing exponentially every two days, 50 to 100, 100 to 200, 200 to 500, and instead of doing something, they WAITED!!

How is that? Because the people in power are socialist and communist and considered a priority number one the 8th of March(8M) women manifestation. Doing something before meant cancelling the manifestation,(along 55 smaller ones in Madrid this day) which was super important for them.

So the only thing they did was hiding the exponential data two days earlier so people would go to the manifestation.

They believed they could wait and deal with it later after the 8M. In the manifestation more than 100.000 people gathered.

It was too late, after the 8M the two women of the prime minister(socialist) and the vicepresident (comunist) were infected. The communist one was already infected at 8M, so she alone herself infected hundreds or a thousand other people.

So it is just a matter of incompetent people in charge that prioritize their own party and private interest over serving the community.

Now it is the other way around, after doing nothing for so long they have become totalitarian despots(Well, they already were, specially the communist one, is only that they have an excuse now) and they won't let people go out of their houses and walk or run alone.

In the following weeks the weather in Spain will be much better and sun alone will be able to kill viruses and save us from our politicians.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's because they acted early. All the epidemiological models show that if you lock down when there are only a handful of cases, the disease can be managed effectively. There is no mystery to this, it's because they "overreacted" by closing borders and schools when the West was still telling people not to, and now they can relax the restrictions.</comment>


Need for Speed: Accelerating Maven Snapshots - <AUTHOR> http://product.hubspot.com/blog/speeding-up-maven-snapshots <comment><USER2> While I commend the author for taking the time to write this article and sharing their experience with the community, I can't help but think that this is a solution to a problem that was created by the very team that solved it. Or maybe another way to think about it is that this accelerator is attacking a symptom of a larger, more systemic problem.

The real problem I see is a system composed of over 3500 frequently changing modules, all with the concept of repeatability (ie release versions) removed. The issues with snapshots only aside, the core issue is the massive number of modules involved.

I mean what is the ratio of modules to engineers? I don't know the size of their engineering team but assuming it's around 100, that ends up with 35 modules per engineer!

Looking at it from another perspective, what's the ratio of modules to features in HubSpot and their internal tools. My guess is HubSpot has less than 3500 features...so now you have more modules than features?! That implies that functionality for a single feature spans multiple modules and isn't organized properly. Again, a fundamental architecture problem that should be solved rather than patching maven to work around it.

Even with a magic build tool to handle this at build time, the system is so complex just with modules alone that it's fundamentally unmanageable in any holistic way, which is probably why they stopped bothering with releases and went to a snapshot only approach.

My unsolicited suggestion to them would be to focus on reducing the complexity of the modules and their interdependencies along quantitative metrics like modules:engineers or modules:features ratios. It varies by org of course but in general, worst case should be no more than one module per engineer and definitely less than one or equal to one module per feature.

It's great that they've open sourced the tool but if they don't solve the underlying complexity problem of their system they're going to spend most of their time solving problems that they've created. This time would be better spent moving their product forward which would benefit all stakeholders at HubSpot.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Copying my reply from reddit]

I can give you some background on the way we structure things in case it's helpful. We use GitHub for our open-source projects, GitHub:Enterprise for our internal code, and our engineering team has about 300 engineers. Each project or feature usually lives in its own repository, and is split into a number of Maven modules. Using the maven-snapshot-accelerator ( [https://github.com/HubSpot/maven-snapshot- accelerator](https://github.com/HubSpot/maven-snapshot-accelerator) ) as an example, it's roughly 1,000 lines of code split into 6 Maven modules (representing a small percentage of what my team owns). There's the root pom which just aggregates the other modules, a core module that contains the POJOs, a REST API module that uses the POJOs, a client module which uses the POJOs to hit the REST API, a module for the maven plugin, and a module for the maven extension. If this was an internal project, it might also have supporting Hadoop jobs, Kafka workers, Spark jobs, etc. depending on how the system was designed. Each of these would usually live in a separate Maven module. I'm not sure how much thought we gave to splitting into Maven modules along these lines, it just kind of seemed natural to us. It also has a few benefits compared to larger modules:

\- The dependency trees are smaller, because you're pulling in a more focused set of libraries rather than the kitchen sink

\- Our build infrastructure only builds what has changed when you push a commit, but it can only do this at Maven module granularity. So by splitting things up this way, pushing a change to your kafka workers won't rebuild your Spark or Hadoop jobs.

Using one of our larger open-source projects as an example, Singularity ( [https://github.com/HubSpot/Singularity](https://github.com/HubSpot/Singularity) ) is split into 15 Maven modules (and represents maybe a third to a half of what that team is responsible for).

Snapshots vs. versions is a whole different topic and probably deserving of its own blog post. More generally, whether we should bend our workflow to the tools or bend the tools to our workflow is a constant tension and something we're always thinking about, so feedback is always appreciated.</comment></comment>


Epsilon: The JDK's Do-Nothing Garbage Collector - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/epsilon-the-jdks-do-nothing-garbage-collector <comment><USER2> JVM GC development has seen an upswing in the last few years, one of the most interesting new GCs are ZGC that show impressive numbers, delivers less than 10 ms pause times for any heap size, often than 1 ms for many applications, while having impressive throughput numbers. Another interesting adoption to the containerized world we live in is that GCs recently started to frequently return memory to the OS when not being used.

If you want to read more about these new GCs, this is a great post: [https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection- part-2-1c8...](https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection- part-2-1c88847abcfd)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Shenandoah headed by G1's lead Christine Flood! I don't know enough to compare it to ZGC but it's an exciting time in Java's GC lineup.

<comment><USER4> They promised low latency in G1, then they promised low latency in Shenandoah, now they promised it in ZGC.

Okay.

What JVM really really needs for performance is value types: a lot of GC problems will simply not exist with value types.

Project Valhalla started five (!) years ago, and they are still working on it.

JVM could also use multiple heaps per process (so multiple GCs could run independently not affecting other heap execution and GC). There were talks about it years ago, but nobody is working on it AFAIU.

<comment><USER5> G1 _has_ low latency. And as someone who programs c# for a living: I DO NOT WANT value types.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, could you expand a bit? From what I have seem the proposal for Java seems useful.

<comment><USER5> In the c# I dislike the extra mental load of having to work out which rules apply to the lexical thing I see being manipulated in the code. If I see references being assigned in Java I can tell that that's the case just by looking at the code. In c# I have to see the definition of the objects to tell what semantics are being expressed by the syntax. Likewise, with properties in c# a straightforward field assignment can be pretty much anything which means again, innocent looking code can be misleading and the only way to know is to read the definitions. Java is simpler to read and I value that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also Raymond Chen: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98125) \- who quotes the story of a piece of embedded software which accepted leaking since it would be used in the runtime of a missile.

<comment><USER8> Similarly, the cooling solution for some missiles' control-systems' is simply 'thermal inertia', i.e. they just race against overheating, as program- termination can be relied upon to occur first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: I ran some benchmarks for all GCs in OpenJDK 12 some time ago: [https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy- languages/blob/master/J...](https://github.com/ixy-languages/ixy- languages/blob/master/Java-garbage-collectors.md)

Epsilon tied on speed but lost to Shenandoah on latency because never freeing memory isn't ideal either, even if you never run out of memory.

<comment><USER10> Ya if you allocate/deallocate onto a stack, the most recently freed memory is more likely to be hot in the cache for the next allocation, reducing overall latency.

It's something I do all the time in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speaking of garbage collectors, I had a thought the other day, wondering if performance could have a huge linear speed up if the graph of object pointers was stored compactly in memory, separated from the rest of an application's memory.

The object graph could be stored in a succinct compressed format to reduce it's size as much as possible, compared to actual 64 bit pointers.

Then the GC algorithm could crawl the graph much much faster by virtue of needing to access far fewer memory pages, and increased likelihood that those pages will be in a fast cpu cache most of the time.

<comment><USER12> Luajit does something vaguely like this: [http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage- Collector#arenas_block-ma...](http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage- Collector#arenas_block-mark-bitmaps)

It doesn't need to access the actual data when sweeping.

<comment><USER13> The latest version of LuaJIT is still using the old GC. As far as I know the new GC design is in limbo, with no plan to implement it in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this article about Instagram turning off Python's garbage collecting is somewhat relevant and interesting:

[https://instagram-engineering.com/dismissing-python- garbage-...](https://instagram-engineering.com/dismissing-python-garbage- collection-at-instagram-4dca40b29172)

<comment><USER15> Read it. It's still garbage collecting, but doing it through reference counting. There was an extra GC for circular reference collecting. That one was disabled as well as object freeing up before termination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now I'm no Java expert, far from it, so would appreciate any answers to this. I'm interacting with bunch of CLIs that are either in Java or using the JVM otherwise (Clojure mostly), how much of the startup time for this things can be attributed to the GC? It's mentioned in the article that short-running programs (almost all CLIs I use) could use Epsilon since the heap is cleared on exit anyways. But wondering how much of the typical program actually spends on, what I guess is initializing the GC?

<comment><USER17> I think the overhead of GC is negligible for many small programs. Claes Redestad @ Oracle gives a good overview here. [https://cl4es.github.io/2019/11/20/OpenJDK-Startup- Update.ht...](https://cl4es.github.io/2019/11/20/OpenJDK-Startup-Update.html)

I would look into GraalVM native images if you want fast startup.

<comment><USER8> There's some precedent for chopping out the GC for short-lived applications. DMD, the (self-hosting) D compiler, does this, effectively using a push-only stack for the heap, never doing anything akin to freeing memory. [0]

In modern GCs, allocation is already as fast as can be (pointer-bump allocation), so I imagine the only win in chopping out the GC is that you don't need to initialize the GC (it's otherwise roughly equivalent to simply terminating before the GC needs to be invoked).

Perhaps the DMD example isn't quite the same, though, as it's possible its GC has slower allocation than pointer-bump.

[0] [https://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/increasing-compiler-speed-by- ove...](https://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/increasing-compiler-speed-by- over-75/240158941)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To address the short-running program issue, can't the regular GCs just not clean up on program exit?

<comment><USER19> Perhaps there may be objects that depend on the finalizer callback for correctnesss. I have seen people use finalizer to do things like close file handles, and presumably not calling close may not guarantee data is persisted.

<comment><USER20> At least on unix systems, process termination implicitly calls close() on every file descriptor anyway. There should be no need to call it explicitly.

(You won't get the chance to log any write errors reported by close() or react to the errors, though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It'd be nice to have a per-thread mode for this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably good for running Java on your cruise missile.

<comment><USER23> Peter Lawrey said he had HFT clients who wrote Java and managed to get their object allocation so low that they never had a GC pause, and just waited until market close to restart the JVM.

<comment><USER24> A number of games written in managed runtimes will pre-allocate a large number of objects at the start of each level/zone, and hope they don't run out before the next level (where a GC can run).</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists have found more evidence for liquid water on Mars - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2015/4/13/8384337/mars-water-liquid-curiosity

<comment><USER2> The crux of the problem with Mars is that its magnetic field is smaller than its atmosphere. All water gets blown away by the solar wind. Venus has a similar situation, and it's reacting somewhat similarly, having lightweight particles blown away by solar wind. Indeed, the Earth is the only one of the 3 with a larger magnetic field than its atmosphere. We look like a small gas giant by comparison - our magnetic field reaches far out into space, more than half as big as Neptune or Uranis' magnetic fields. This protects our water and other environmental factors.

Sadly, this means that seeding the planet with water, perhaps by towing an ice-asteroid into orbit and knocking it to the planet, would be a temporary fix at best. Eventually all of that water would just evaporate away and join the Heliopause.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that "temporary" in this case means, like, "one million years or more."

While I appreciate that that's a very short span of time by both geological and evolutionary standards, I don't think it's meaningfully "temporary" by human standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > However, many scientists believe Mars was much warmer and wetter billions of > years ago, when it may have had a thicker atmosphere to help trap heat.

This is both fascinating and horrifying. Given the timeline of the solar system thus far, it would seem plausible that an entire evolution of species, including the rise and demise of intelligent life, could have already started and finished on Mars.

<comment><USER5> Taking this one step further, it is also possible that life has been exchanged between our two worlds. Large meteor collisions in the past have moved parts of Mars to Earth, and possibly also Earth to Mars. And some small life can exist clung to rocks in space (we know of such creatures here on Earth)! So perhaps, Mars was once wet and warm and full of life. Perhaps it suffered a large impact of some kind billions of years ago, and perhaps that impact flung Mars rocks with little tiny Martians on them towards Earth. In fact, this could have happened thousands of times.

It's possible, anyway. You know, while we're speculating.

<comment><USER6> Yep, it's called Panspermia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do I feel that this is the 5th time scientists have found the first evidence for liquid water on Mars?

<comment><USER8> Because this is far from the first evidence. There is plenty of evidence for liquid water on Mars both past and present. In fairness, the article mentions this. In spite of the headline, it only claims the first direct evidence. Personally, I think even that is a bit of an overstatement. To me, this is simply one more bit of evidence that supports the current scientific consensus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the Nature Abstract[1]: Indirect evidence for water on Mars was found by detecting the presence of salts that absorb atmospheric water vapour, and suggest that transient brines form in the upper 15cm of the martian subsurface.

It's fairly exciting news.

[http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo24...](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2412.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> A little less than half the surface of Mars has pressures above the triple point of water, so wherever the temperatures dip above 0C, maybe a few hours a day in the equatorial regions, liquid water can exist. Deeper craters closer to the equator or seasonally in the northern lowlands or the southern Hellas or Argyre region.</comment>


Show HN: PLANNIVERSARY Make gift lists, get reminded for birthdays/anniversaries - <AUTHOR> https://www.planniversary.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> My wife wanted an app to list birthdays and anniversaries. I wanted an app that would keep track of the gift ideas I had for people and to get reminders of these ideas as the birthday rolled-up. And that's how Planniversary was born!</comment>


Await and Defer in Coffeescript core - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/pull/1942

<comment><USER2> For the curious -- previous discussion about adding TameJS constructs: <https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/1710>

And the history of a previous attempt at doing something similar:

<https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/241>

<https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/287>

<https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/350>

[http://gfxmonk.net/2010/07/04/defer-taming-asynchronous- java...](http://gfxmonk.net/2010/07/04/defer-taming-asynchronous-javascript- with-coffeescript.html)

<comment><USER3> Dude you are awesome. I used to think splats and destructuring were what made CoffeeScript more than just pretty Javascript. But this new stuff is doing even more substantive work on our behalves. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> Thank @maxtaco -- TameJS is his baby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The defer syntax feels wrong to me, I think because it looks like a function call but doesn't behave like one (because it assigns to its arguments). If it behaves different then it should look different.

Since it creates a continuation, perhaps it should resemble the syntax for creating a function, like this:

        await resolve "host.com", (ip, err) ~>
        console.log "#{ip} #{err}"

or this:

        await resolve "host.com", (ip, err) <-
        console.log "#{ip} #{err}"

Introducing an operator like this would also avoid some name collisions.

And does the callcc really have to be able to assign to things? Make it work just like a formal parameter list, and then you can actually compile it into one, avoiding all that pass-by-reference hoopla.

The autocb thing is even weirder. Magic variable names? I've never heard of a language that resorted to this. Why not just some new syntax to mark a parameter as the callback? Perhaps some postfix modifier, to match the splat syntax?

        resolve = (host, callback <-) ->
          ...
          return ip, err

or overload a keyword?

        resolve = (host, return callback) ->
          ...
          return ip, err

<comment><AUTHOR> If I understood correctly, they would become keywords, like 'return', 'true', 'false' are in javascript, and 'class' is in coffeescript. The problem with it is that any functions called _defer_ would have to be renamed in order to work on this version of Coffeescript, possibly breaking some existing code.

<comment><USER5> This is really pedantic, but I also think it's important: class is a keyword (well, really just a reserved word) in JavaScript as well. The reason it's important is that some engines will actually have issues if you use syntax like this[1]:

        var obj = {class : "blarg"};

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Reserv...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Reserved_Words)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we are kinda splitting hairs here, but strictly speaking, 'class' is reserved word in JS. It will become a keywords when they start using it. The link you provided does make this distinction: _reserved as future keywords_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a game changer, in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Positive or negative?

<comment><USER6> Positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who didn't understand the new constructs, the following excerpt from TameJS[1] website helps:

> `await` marks a section of code that depends on externals events, like > network or disk activity, or a timer. An `await` block contains one or more > calls to `defer`. Calling `defer` constructs a new deferral. Only once all > deferrals inside an await block are fulfilled does control continue past it. > `defer()` behaves much like a normal function; it returns an anonymous > function that you give to your async functions. These functions "fulfill" > their deferrals by calling the callbacks passed to them.

[1]: <http://tamejs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I love CoffeeScript, and I would hate to see this become part of the language specification.

Just a few things off the top of my head:

\- Why does defer() look like any other function.

\- Completely changing the return keyword's meaning if "autocb" is a function argument is just silly.

\- The generated JavaScript is utterly unreadable and unquestionably comes with a performance trade-off.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this just saving some tabs, or is it cooler than that? Will a return return to the top function? Will exceptions get caught across callback boundaries?

</comment><comment><USER11> Please, no. I'll stop using coffeescript the day the compiled JS becomes unreadable at first look. A bundled flow-control library with special syntax privileges would be more feasible, and prevent mangling the output.

<comment><USER2> Don't worry -- this is currently just a pull request and a fork that you can try out:

<http://search.npmjs.org/#/tamed-coffee-script>

The real challenge here is to see if this branch can be made to generate the asynchronous code you would have written in the first place ... or how close we can come to approaching it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is a cool thing to be considered.

Mostly because you can already do it with runtime AST metaprogramming (which is very doable in JS, due to Function.toString, even though is not as easy to do as Lisp/Clojure's macros), and have it as lib.

What the language support adds is simply the convenience of not passing a function with the block of code that will be instrumented. In fact, with language support, you can even debug it.

And the best part about this change: if you don't use it, it will not affect you at all. It is opt-in by default.

Not saying we should take this change lightly, but I believe it does have many merits, and we should not be too quick to dismiss it.

<comment><USER12> I'm a huge fan of stuff like this, however it's not strictly true that features like this are "opt in." If you write your code alone and in a vacuum, it's opt-in. However, if you write your code on a team, if you use NPM packages that were compiled from this code, if you use backbone extensions compiled from this code, you're opted in "by proxy" to the code it produces whenever you find yourself stepping through the code in a debugger or reading the compiled code in a browser environment.

IMO, it could be a win by virtue of producing _consistent_ code for the most common cases. It may seem unfamiliar at first compared to the code you would personally write, but if it becomes a standard and everybody's code ends up looking much the same, that's a win overall.

I think this is already true for binding functions to the current 'this' and for comprehensions, and we could use a standard 'pattern' for the resulting asynchronous code for most common cases.

But I grant that it isn't purely optional in a world where very few people write their own stack in its entirety.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ever since I wrote this I realized that this feature, as outlined here, is not opt-in, even in a vacuum, due to the fact that will break all variables named 'await' and 'defer'.

About using others' code: compile time code generation is always possible, and you can't prevent the libraries you are using from using it. It can even be worse: they can runtime code generation, or a downright obfuscator.

Since more and more languages are being compiled to JS (Clojurescript being one formidable recent addition), trying to stay "pure" with respect to the libraries you use is getting harder and harder.

My biggest worry is that Coffeescript starts stagnating from lack of innovation (which seems to affect most stable languages).

One way Scala managed to experiment with features while still trying to be stable, was through Scala Compiler Plugins[1].

This we could be having a less theoretical conversation, by throwing it in the wild, and learning from the experiments people make with it.

[1] <http://www.scala-lang.org/node/140>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this work with the Promise API without defer?</comment>


The inside story on how I raised $200k in 6 days. - <AUTHOR> http://caterpillarcowboy.com/post/489762022/the-inside-story-on-how-i-raised-200k-in-6-days

<comment><USER2> This is hardly a play by play on how you did it; more like a gossip rag. It is entertaining to read but hardly constructive for anyone else.

PS: good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Left out is the 10 years spent networking, building relationships, learning about business and developing products.

</comment><comment><USER4> This makes it sound easy!

I'm not surprised AngelList played a key role... Venture Hacks is an awesome resource. Nivi and Naval do genuinely care about helping startups: <http://venturehacks.com/intro>

I wouldn't pitch them until you have an amazing demo and your shit together though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Aw... I was hoping this was you, Jason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Soon ;-)

<comment><USER6> Good luck!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more I learn about raising money, the more I realize that it is impossible without extensive networking. I am European, living in Japan having a start up focusing on the US market. I can work online, meet my friends online, why not raise money online? I guess before that will become reality we might have to wait a while longer...

</comment><comment><USER8> Good luck. Generally how much is equity given away in such a deal? i.e. a seed round where you have an intermediate demo but not any customers or monetization yet?</comment>


Sony to stop making floppy disks - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8643844.stm

<comment><USER2> First they came for my cassette loader ...

About a month ago I had some PC trouble and needed to make a Trinity recovery disk. Needed a writable CD. Used to have them all over the house. I go a look and ... nothing but writable DVDs. Finally found how to write a CD image to a DVD and make it bootable.

But I wonder when DVDs will become the new floppy.

What do people use for archiving stuff?

Has anyone thought about migrating their older archives to some newer media?</comment>


Sophisticated Sorting in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sitepoint.com/sophisticated-sorting-in-javascript/

<comment><USER2> I wonder what's so "sophisticated" about that. This tutorial is definitely below the bar for HN.

<comment><USER3> Not really sophisticated by any means. It's more in the "Good to know, now move along..." territory if you ask me. I guess someone, somewhere will find this tutorial useful though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sophisticated but informative. Nice article and examples.</comment>


SRE as a Lifestyle Choice - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bellmar/sre-as-a-lifestyle-choice-de9f5a82d73d <comment><USER2> This was a fantastic and enlightening read, thank you.

I'm always impressed when I read about the exploits of the US Digital Service. As I understand it, they have basically no direct power. They can walk in, say "I'm here from the White House," and anything beyond that is chutzpah, effort, and nightmare-difficulty cat herding. Getting whole departments to volunteer to try a different hiring program from that humble starting point is staggeringly impressive, and I think the author's underselling it.

</comment><comment><USER3> >There was a really interesting talk at Strange Loop this year about how quirks in code layout fool programmers into chasing their tails thinking they're improving performance when they're not.

I think the author may be referring to this talk:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A)

<comment><USER4> Absoluteky astounding take on optimisation - one example uses techniques to get 25% speedup in SQLite - wow!

I couldn't find discussion on HN - maybe because YouTube doesn't have canonical link addresses for videos?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "White House HR once tried to reject a candidate whose previous employer was Github because he didn't specifically list experience with version control on his resume."

This happens in the private sector too, had this with an internal recruiter that had no idea about the role and was only checking for keywords.

<comment><USER6> This is why those stupid lists of skills are important to include on resumes.

<comment><USER7> This is why I explicitly avoid these lists and highlight some core tech which should be meaningful for other engineers. I try to use terms specific enough to implicitly include several skills.

My intuition is that if my CV is ignored by a recruiter, it's because engineering is not involved enough in the sourcing process for the company, and that is a terrible signal.

<comment><USER8> From the other side of the screen, I see a lot of people inside organisation's trying to hire and becoming annoyed when their recruiters send them CVs that aren't ideal matches.

So this cuts both ways. If you want engineering to have eyes-on early, that necessarily means they're gonna see some CVs that don't fit. Recruiters tend to avoid this because of the 'signals' they're getting back from their client.

<comment><USER7> Relation between engineering and sourcing also works the other way: engineering can teach recruiters to read CVs better.

A minimum would be to have the recruiter explain why they thought the CV was worth a review and the engineer can then correct them.

Also, in the companies I worked for, recruiters where checking GitHub or LinkedIn when they needed more signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> SRE is a framework of critical thinking applied to computing.

Our society seems more interested rigidly regurgitating a customized framework and avoiding critical thinking of their own.

It's better for business, they say, saves money.

This is what folks like Cal Newport discuss in Deep Work, and Feynman meant by ignoring other people's work. Paulo Freire warned about importing others models.

This feels too much like thinking SRE is some literal thing. Label life stuff in your own way. That's having work/life balance, IMO.

I don't want to cart that shit around all the time.

</comment><comment> hunter-gatherer Working in tech in the government, this resonated with me. The author summarized things well. Another problem in my agency is that only HR is allowed to construct job postings. We provide inputs, but they put it all together. I have seen this work against us consistently. We also aren't allowed any variance during interviews. All interview questions must be identical across all interviewees. This rule prohibits follow-up questions. Believe it or not, it is difficult to have a meaningful interview and to properly guage one's experience with thid handicap.

Apologies for errors. I'm on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER10> The lens is that of an SRE, but what the author is basically doing is applying an iterative improvement process, or learning cycle, or decision cycle. There are many examples of them in many industries. Many of them are used to improve quality, but they can also be used to fix crappy process. I find they work best when implemented asynchronously (e.g. an outsider who is pissed off decides to fix the broken thing, and goes around and helps improve different parts of the process)

</comment><comment><USER11> Tenth paragraph defines the acronym, "Site Reliability Engineering." Is there enough room to expand that in the title?

<comment><USER12> I think it's very common knowledge that's what the acronym means. I've never worked at a company that didn't just say SRE

<comment><USER13> SRE has a lot of different meanings, even in the science & technology world [1]. (I'll refrain from claiming that such is "common knowledge".)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting read as I am considering a Grade 6 or 7 Technical role in the UK civil service (right at the top end of the GS scale) and am looking at how they recruit and to tailor my cv to suit.

I am lucky in that I have done board style interviews before and have contacts who know how the system that most UK techies wont have.

I think Marianne ought to touch base with Loren DeJonge Schulman at War on the rocks as She has written on the hiring challenges the US government faces

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought this was going to be about error-budgeting your carbohydrate SLO in your dietary SLA.

</comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr: We applied the principles of root cause analysis to a non-technical process (hiring) and it made things better.

You should still read the article though, it has a lot of eye-opening info about how broken government hiring is.

</comment><comment><USER17> Some more blog ideas:

Can you apply DevOps thinking to things that don't involve computers?

Can you apply Agile thinking to things that don't involve computers?

Can you apply the UNIX philosophy to things that don't involve computers?

<comment><USER18> The UNIX philosophy comes down to making tools that each do one thing and do it well. It's already the same philosophy as a workshop full of hammers, screwdrivers, squares, saws, planes, etc.

Put them together and you can build a cabinet. But you probably wouldn't want a "cabinet making tool" that tries to do every job required in the cabinet making process.

If anything, all of the philosophies that we apply to computers and technologies are taken from other areas. Of course you can take them back out and apply them elsewhere! Computers are a very recent addition in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What the hell is SRE?

<comment><USER20> Site Reliability Engineering</comment></comment>


S3 Media, keep iOS photos and videos on Amazon S3 - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/s3-media/id1438775079?ls=1&mt=8
This is a very good app for saving your media forever on S3 with background uploading for iOS and you can view all the media on any device.
Plus, when you want to access your media objects, you can use any S3 tool and don't have to open iTunes to try and get a million photos off iCloud. <comment><USER2> I was thinking about making a similar app years ago that would use an SSH server instead.

The only issue compared to iCloud (and why I wouldn't be using this just yet) is that you loose support for iCloud Photo Library.

If you make a full-featured suite of equivalent apps for Mac that can replicate the iCloud experience I would pay good money for that.</comment>


Apple researchers train AI drivers to merge lanes in a simulated environment - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/29/apple-researchers-train-ai-drivers-to-merge-lanes-in-a-simulated-environment/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious about how "relaxed adherence to rules" will be implemented.

If you're merging from an onramp into the rightmost lane of traffic, you'll get in either in front of someone or behind someone. Meanwhile, the merge lane that you're in is narrowing.

Say that after the merge lane disappears, there's a nice, fat shoulder, divided from the highway by a white stripe. You're not supposed to cross that stripe.

If things go wrong, you might sometimes elect to continue on into the shoulder, and then merge. Or you might just stop in the merge lane, which has its own problems.

So, if traffic is thick and stubborn, will an autonomous vehicle stop in the merge lane, or continue into the shoulder?</comment>


Aplette: a minimalist APL oriented toward scripting within a UNIX environment - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gregfjohnson/aplette <comment><USER2> Does anyone have examples of use to share?

<comment><USER3> The .inp files in the qa directory seem to be the only samples. The user guide looks mostly reference.

Note to anyone posting a new language experiment: samples are critical!

[https://github.com/gregfjohnson/aplette/blob/master/qa/print...](https://github.com/gregfjohnson/aplette/blob/master/qa/printing.inp)

<comment><USER4> I would like to add that keeping samples up to date is important too. In the early days there may be breaking changes, I should always be able to run the samples with the latest version of the language and not get any errors or end up with unexpected behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it. I will revisit the qa directory, and also add a samples directory. I added an APL command that you may enjoy, related to the issue of examples. ")font" will print a nicely formatted two- column summary of all APL commands, together with the "APL touchtype font" versions of those commands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to see you're still around! Do you post your code anywhere these days?

<comment><USER5> I use github to post code, and also as a convenient way to copy work in progress from machine to machine. I just updated [https://github.com/gregfjohnson/rubik](https://github.com/gregfjohnson/rubik), a fun javascript hack that supports interactive simulation and solving of 3x3 Rubik's cubes. (deployed at [http://gregfjohnson.com/rubik](http://gregfjohnson.com/rubik))</comment></comment></comment>


Software patents no longer allowed in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://tech.icrontic.com/news/new-zealand-becomes-a-game-changer-software-patents-no-longer-allowed/

<comment><USER2> Relevant discussion from yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516710></comment>


Visualizing JavaScript Code as 3D Cities - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/visualizing-javascript-code-as-3d-cities-5785867f7d85#.jt49wh5s6 <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884694)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome!

Really pretty visualization - so interesting to see the distribution of where my lines of code are.

Copying generator.js into every project got tiresome, so I modified it to work from the same directory as lib.</comment>


OMG: Our Machinery Guidebook - <AUTHOR> https://ourmachinery.com/files/guidebook.md.html <comment><USER2> Very lengthy and seemingly pretty good, but I wanted to see it applied. So...

* The home page at [https://ourmachinery.com](https://ourmachinery.com) just says "We are building something..."

* The About Us passage on the home page just says "We are game engine developers with a passion for diversity, openness and knowledge sharing etc." without saying what they do, then points you to Instagram, which shows a super diverse team of three adults and one child, but doesn't give a clue about their project(s?)

* The blog [https://ourmachinery.com/post/whats-happening-this-year/](https://ourmachinery.com/post/whats-happening-this-year/) talks about transparency but I still don't know what they do

* There's no GitHub or similar link

<comment><USER3> I found the name Niklas Gray from one of their previous HN submissions[0]. Googling the name turned up a Github account[1] and a blog[2], but nothing hinting at what they do, except that it's game related.

[0] [https://ourmachinery.com/post/physical- design](https://ourmachinery.com/post/physical-design)

[1] [https://github.com/niklasfrykholm](https://github.com/niklasfrykholm)

[2] [https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/NiklasGray/1016727/](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/NiklasGray/1016727/)</comment></comment>