Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index – 2019 edition - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/spain-tops-italy-as-world-s-healthiest-nation-while-u-s-slips <comment><USER2> > "Primary care is essentially provided by public providers, specialized > family doctors and staff nurses, who provide preventive services to > children, women and elderly patients, and acute and chronic care,"

The public healthcare here in Spain has an endemic problem of ever reducing budgets, and it's so saturated (because of that) that most people that can also get private healthcare. When politicians touch that is to reduce the budget even further.

Yet people think that the main problems in Spain are other things... damn the propaganda machine.

<comment><USER3> So what are the main problems in Spain, according to what most people think? (I'm not very familiar with Spain)

<comment><USER4> National politics (Catalonia, etc). But there's also an endemic issue with spending on unnecessary infrastructure while underfunding heavily used infrastructure (such as public transportation in large cities); our budgets never seem to be able to reduce debt, and our pension system is doomed to explode, because eventually there will be more retired than working people.

<comment><USER5> Given that the life expectancy is so high maybe it makes sense to raise the retirement age here by a few years more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that's surprising to me because of smoking alone. When I lived there briefly in the early 90s, it seemed like everyone smoked. I wonder if that's changed dramatically or is just drowned out by other metrics...

<comment><USER7> This seems to have massively changed all over Europe. When I was a kid in the 90s you could go into bars that were foggy with smoke. TV characters would do it.

Nowadays it's generally not cool anymore, it's seen as a vice and people will sdmit so when they ask if it's okay.

<comment><USER8> The laws changed and smoking inside public spaces was all but abolished. There are still holdouts in the countries that passed these laws more recently but the trend is clear and it's acceleration.

I also noticed that one big factor that actually worked in discouraging teens from even starting is the "uncool" image built around smoking.

Unfortunately it look like the coolness factor is moving to electronic cigarettes and there's not much data to discourage the use yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love how 'click HERE' is not a link.

> To access the Bloomberg 2019 Healthiest Country Index data set for all > nations, click HERE.

<comment><USER10> The article seems to have been taken from the main Bloomberg site: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-24/spain- top...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-24/spain-tops-italy- as-world-s-healthiest-nation-while-u-s-slips)

The "click here" link is for terminal subscribers only so I guess Quint might not have been able to resolve it properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be curious how individual US states stack up here--it seems like there would be quite a bit of variance (and I'm sure the US isn't the only country whose stats become much less informative when aggregated to a single number).

<comment><USER12> [https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2017-an...](https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2017-annual- report/findings-state-rankings)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Russia looks worse off than I thought. Congrats, you share Egyptian health standards.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Bloomberg did an oopsie..</comment>


Composition over Configuration - <AUTHOR> https://johno.com/composition-over-configuration <comment><USER2> I have recently been digging into composition as related to object oriented programming.

Can someone summarize why this is better than say inheritance?

I can possibly understand the value of composition where you need a large team to be able to constantly add and remove functionality to a code base with this without having to mess with APIs override methods, etc...

But is there a fundamental benefit of composition over inheritance in ever circumstance? (I've read a number of articles on this recently and I am not understanding the benefits vs the complications it adds)

<comment><USER3> Another reason is it can help make testing more simplified. Instead of having to use a library to perform mocking or stubbing of specific functions within the objects, you can pass in fake instances of objects that help exercise the test properly. So instead of trying to mess around with the internals of an inherited object structure, you just redefine the objects during testing to meet your needs.

In other words, objects are composed of their dependent objects. I think this is where the idea of dependency injection comes from (though I find dependency injection frameworks complicated often, that's another story).

<comment><USER4> I can not more strongly endorse this reason.

Building abstractions around useful/loosely coupled ways of encapsulating dependencies, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread "bottom up", is part of an organic process that evolves into getting design right. A huge "lever" that you can lean on in this process is being able to mock the things that you want, while also being able to use the "real" versions of the things that you want. This allows your code to pretty much always be testable and flexible.

It takes some practice, but once you get it your code grows so much better.

<comment><USER3> > It takes some practice, but once you get it your code grows so much better.

It's true. I had a bit of a roundabout journey to getting this idea.

Studying CS, I learned a ton about implementation inheritance, and only a bit about composition - enough to sort of answer a question about it, but not really get the feeling. So overall I didn't use it much.

When I started working, I saw implementation inheritance used a ton and got the impression that it really made things way too complex. There was more to the complexity than just this of course (design patterns everywhere, convoluted abstractions, strange monolith tools, etc) but it didn't help.

Later I started learning about FP, where composition is just second nature, and frankly one of the main methods of abstraction you get. So learning how to compose things came from functions.

Over the past few months I've come back to more OOP, and I've been using composition a whole lot more. And it does make a huge difference, and I don't think I've used any sort of inheritance for my own code at all at this point.

So yeah, I agree and it is a journey.

<comment><USER4> I love that description of your evolution and I'd say it was actually the same for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't clearly explain what "configuration" he's talking about.

<comment><USER6> I think it's a frontend framework configuration, like enabling a gatsby plugin[1]. Anyway it seems like comparing apples and oranges to me.

[1] - [https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/plugins/](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/plugins/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A monk asked Java master Kaimu: What is the "single-responsibility principle"?

Said Kaimu: That a class shall do exactly one thing, and do it completely.

The monk asked: How shall I decide this "one thing"?

Said Kaimu: The Fisherman does not build ships, or we would call him a Shipwright.

The monk asked: Is there no room in your philosophy for interfaces? What if my class can serve as a Fisherman, and a Shipwright and Sailor besides?

Said Kaimu: What would you name such a three-headed monster?

The monk replied: Shísho, after my uncle. He lives by the sea and does all these things.

Said Kaimu: I would give your class Shísho three instance variables: a Fisherman, a Shipwright, and a Sailor. Then Shísho may implement those interfaces by delegation.

The monk replied: I speak of inheritance, yet you answer in composition. All of my uncle is a Fisherman, not just his left foot. What use are objects, if we do not faithfully model the world?

Said Kaimu: If I paint a fine shark upon this page, will you say, "Fine shark!" or will you complain that it is flat and does not eat you?

The monk asked: But how are we to know when the flat shark is shark enough? Or when our uncle should fish with his left foot?

Said Kaimu: Learning how is our "single reponsibility".

\- "Flat Shark"

[http://thecodelesscode.com/case/175](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/175)

</comment><comment><USER8> If your system doesn't have anything to gracefully handle inter-component communication without coding custom adapters and introducing new dependencies, all your "reusable" components will become a legacy mess in 2-5 years.

</comment><comment><USER9> Configuration === composition, IMO.

Composition is just bringing together a bunch of objects to form something that does more.

Configuration is just bringing together a bunch of primitives, perhaps structured, to form something that does more.</comment>


Sure Wall Street Adds Value, but for Whom? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/sure-wall-street-adds-value-but-for-whom-1465400378 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/5U9ug](http://archive.is/5U9ug)</comment>


$10k hacking contest announced - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2172

<comment><USER2> The restrictions are unnecessary. A hack's a hack.</comment>


Show HN: FlagTimes – The macOS app for anyone working in multiple timezones - <AUTHOR> https://www.flagtimes.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there HN peeps,

I just saw a post here on HN about 250 productivity tools and felt a tad sad to not see my own tool on the list, but I blame myself for not doing any kind of advertising of it but felt I might at least share it.

Anyway, It all started when I moved to Indonesia, doing the remote work/digital nomad thing and had a huge problem figuring out what time it was back home.

So naturally, instead of actuality working, I learnt swift and created an simple app just for myself, solving said problem. A month later, friends started bugging me about the app, so after a while I was like, fuck it, let's create this thing! :D

I released it, it got some love over at the Product Hunt community but maybe a week or two, sales went don't two maybe 1-2 sells a day. But to be honest, just knowing I might save a minute or two of a persons life each week makes my day. :)

Finally, a bonus link & LPT: Don't ever post your self-built tools to awesome- lists unless they are super complicated, non-learning-project apps that doesn't "solve anything at all": [https://github.com/iCHAIT/awesome- macOS/pull/452](https://github.com/iCHAIT/awesome-macOS/pull/452)

If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them! //Pierre

</comment><comment><USER2> It's always nice to see useful little tools like this in the MAS. Will definitely check this out when I'm back at my mac.

I'm sure I used to have an app called "Jet" that showed scrolling time zones side by side for this type of thing - but I can't find any reference to it anywhere. If anyone knows what I'm referring to and/or what happened to it, I'd love to know!

<comment><USER2> Ok so I checked it out.

Not bad - a bit more customisation would be nice i.e. it'd be better to have a (even abbreviated) city name than flag + timezone. I added two people I work with (in Ithaca NY and Houston TX) and it just shows me a flag + UTC offset next to the time - that doesn't help much to see quickly.

Also, due to the nature of it, after a couple of entries it becomes pretty wide.

I dont actually need the info all the time, I can usually guesstimate close enough, but when I want to know specifically, it'd be helpful to be able to see the times of multiple at once.

So for me, this isn't quite what I need, but good luck, and don't be deterred by that idiot on GH.</comment></comment>


Andrej Karpathy – AI for Full Self-Driving (Tesla) - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/hx7BXih7zx8 <comment><USER2> Why didn't he answer the first question in the Q&A session?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought he did?</comment></comment>


IBM high-fives Netflix open-source tools - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/07/21/ibm-high-fives-netflix-open-source-tools/

<comment><USER2> I'll bet you'll see lots of companies that require huge scale finding ways to monetize extra capacity and opening their platform with tools and API to access that platforms. Win/win.</comment>


Arguing Is Pointless - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/02/arguing-is-pointless.html <comment><USER2> No, arguing is not pointless. But the point of arguing is rarely to convince someone of anything. The point of arguing is learning the other persons arguments and the flaws in your own. Arguing is platonic dialectic. The author gets very close to the point of argumentation, and then misses it.

<comment><USER3> In my mind, you're making the case for debate. Argument has an emotional connotation, where as debate is more educational in connotation.

<comment><USER4> Arguing over minor differences in words when a person's intent is sufficiently clear ... really is pointless.

<comment><USER5> Not a minor difference; debates happen in civil threads on this site. Arguments involve situations like blowhards yelling at cops giving them parking tickets.

TFA confuses the two to some extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of the most heated, seemingly-intractable arguments I've participated in have led me later upon reflection to change my mind. I'm thankful the other party didn't take this viewpoint that arguing is pointless.

Also, a just society needs to operate by certain fictions: for example, that people are innocent until proved guilty or that all men are created equal. Among those should be the assumption that others can be persuaded through logical means (as opposed to say force or habit). I think it's somewhat akin to the principle of charity.

<comment><USER7> _Also, a just society needs to operate by certain fictions: for example, that people are innocent until proved guilty or that all men are created equal. Among those should be the assumption that others can be persuaded through logical means_

This is good if you are using this as a filter to find exceptional people. The exceptional people _can_ often be persuaded, because they actually listen and consider unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking. (Also note, that they aren't _always_ persuaded.)

However, if you are playing the odds - odds are people aren't really listening or devoting sufficient attention to a complex or genuinely novel idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One Christmas, at Mom's house, I walked by the Christmas tree, and--MEOOWRAAWR --her monster of a cat jumps out from under the tree and claws my foot! At this point, the reflex is to kick the cat, out of self-defense instinct.

TIMEOUT!

if i kick the cat, the cat will hate me, it will be a problem in the future as he feels defensive, and my poor mother will expel me from the house. So i swallowed my reflex, put neosporin and slippers on, then nicely petted the darn cat.

My personal relationships sure got a lot better after realizing this.

</comment><comment><USER9> IMHO, some arguments can be highly productive, but I think it takes a certain amount of rapport to effectively argue with someone. I've had discussions with friends where we began with one set of positions, and by the end had swapped positions! Those sorts of arguments are enlightening and memorable, but they require a certain amount of openness and ease with the other person, where you can feel free to toss around ideas without necessarily having to defend them. If you don't have that, then indeed, confirmation bias will kick in.

In cases where I've felt that happening, I've found it helpful to try to pinpoint fundamental assumptions or values that are (by definition) inarguable. Unveil these, and you'll either resolve the debate with "well, you value X and I value Y, and no amount of arguing will change that," or "we both assume/value X but have reached different conclusions, Y and Z -- what would it take to falsify Y or Z?" My girlfriend and I have somewhat opposing political views, so I have some practice at this.

<comment><USER7> I'd phrase this as a rule: "Only argue if you feel close enough to the other party to admit if you're wrong, and if they feel the same way."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Instead of emotionally arguing with someone, you should rationally consider how to persuade the person, and whether it is worth it. That's a much better suggestion than "doing nothing" as suggested in this pointless flame-bait article*

*please think before replying to that sentence.

<comment><USER11> "Instead of emotionally arguing with someone, you should rationally consider how to persuade the person,"

What is your evidence that this works any better than raw applications of social power (which is the failure state described in the article)?

<comment><USER10> My statement would still be true in that case. You would just be proposing a shortcut because "rationally consider how to persuade" would be a constant function that always returned "apply raw social power".

However, as can be pretty clearly seen from psychological literature, neither making emotional and oppositional statements (what I was saying) or "raw application of social power" (whatever that means) is the most effective method of persuading someone. Here is a list of 18 studies demonstrating the subtleties of persuasion (3rd google result for "psychological studies on persuasion")

[http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/the-psychology-of- persuasio...](http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/the-psychology-of- persuasion.php)

<comment><USER7> _"apply raw social power"_

This follows my experience of how decisions are made in corporate America. It's all about animal dominance games. Logic is only an auxiliary weapon. It's a grenade launcher beside the main cannon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the argument. It helps _to not be flat wrong_ , as the author was in the case of his parking ticket and his attempt at appealing it.

I thought that was funny, because he was essentially playing the part of the guy trying to cut into line (from his later example), and the cop was the person _not actually arguing with him_ while not letting him get away with it.

Mind, stopping yourself from arguing with people who call you on doing the wrong things is probably a wise change to make.

</comment><comment><USER12> Defeatism at its worst. If arguing is pointless, why even have your own opinion at all? And what point does democracy have?

<comment><USER7> _If arguing is pointless, why even have your own opinion at all?_

So you can live your life by it?

 _And what point does democracy have?_

Democracy involves artificial environments and contexts where there are rules constructed to make arguments follow a certain structure so they can be settled through voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> NO IT'S NOT

</comment><comment><USER14> Arguments are necessary. There must be a way to intellectually resolve disagreements without resorting to ignoring the other. If one think that the other person is hopeless, then the relationship is in a terrible state. That's how wars get started. Humans should be above that, we should be able to communicate well, and resolve differences of opinion with ease.

Currently much of the frustration associated with arguing comes from the terrible tools and methodology we use.

Sign up for ArgueX. Real communication in arguments. <http://arguex.com/>

I'm a co-founder of ArgueX.

<comment><USER10> I'd be interested in this--I tried building something like it a long time ago, but it's a very difficult problem.

<comment><USER14> We think we have 'the solution'. Please sign up for beta. Invites will be going out soon.

<comment><USER15> Excited to see your concept, but if you want to appeal to the HN crowd, don't store/email me my plaintext password.

<comment><USER14> We're using Drupal, and from what I understand the password is md5 encrypted before it is saved into the database. However it sends you a one time email of the password before encryption. This is so that you have a local copy of your password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Politely discussing issues with people can be very productive.

Arguing on the internet is pointless.

<comment><USER17> >Arguing on the internet is pointless.

Have you never been convinced by a counter-argument delivered via "the internet"? Not even enough to alter your position even slightly, nor even your approach to others in presenting your position?</comment></comment>


The comma operator in JavaScript. - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/RfZed/

<comment><USER2> Take a look at this:

[http://jsfiddle.net/RfZed/2/](http://jsfiddle.net/RfZed/2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> var x = 5, y = 6 // typical JS

(2,4) // returns 4

thus,

test(2,4) adds 0, 2 and 4

test((2, 4)) adds 0 and 4</comment>


Reflections on UChicago's New Venture Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://thaddeusdiamond.com/2017/06/04/reflections-on-uchicago-new-venture-challenge/ <comment><AUTHOR> Has some lessons I learned about accelerators, entrepreneurship, and raising from investors. Hopefully it helps others learn more about these opaque industries.</comment>


Office UI Fabric – Site now focuses on React - <AUTHOR> http://dev.office.com/fabric <comment><AUTHOR> I've been building a O365 add-in and using ui fabric. It looks like the documentation site I was using for reference has completely changed to focus on react components.</comment>


Hey Heroku, Your Servers are down (As a gist) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1709861

<comment><USER2> Seems they are indeed having some issues... their status page is updated now:

HTTP Routing Issue ISSUE: We're experiencing a widespread outage affecting our HTTP routing, principally affecting apps on our Aspen and Bamboo stacks. It is also affecting API calls and the heroku.com web site. We are currently investigating this issue further.</comment>


What kind of driverless cars do people want? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/what-kind-of-driverless-cars-do-people-want.html <comment><USER2> Given a few years, I don't think this will matter. I hope they always are programmed to save the greatest number of lives, and that we figure out how to make roads safe for pedestrians regardless of how the cars are programmed.

But things like overall increased safety, no more drunk driving, being able to live 4-5 hours from work and having your sleep time being your commute time - not to mention communal cars, ordered when you want them, always at the ready - will overcome most of this. It is amazing what we blindly use in the name of convenience and easier lives.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use monday.com? Is it better than the others? - <AUTHOR> monday.com must have a lot of marketing dollars. I've been seeing their ads all over the place: display, youtube preroll, outdoor, subway, etc.
The interface they advertise looks really clean and simple. almost too simple.
I've used all the project management tools in the past: trello, jira, pivotal tracker, basecamp, clubhouse, asana, etc. and to be honest they all kind of do the same thing.
I've found that the make or break factor in all these tools is the human component. Is there someone or someones in your org who takes ownership of managing the tool and keeps everything organized? Does the team all buy into it and use correctly? Does the team use it for communication around projects or do all the real conversations happen in slack?
To me all these tools are so far away from being a silver bullet and yet they're all advertised as if they are a silver bullet.
So has anyone used monday.com? How is it different?
Also, why do new companies keep going into this space? It just seems like a commoditized product with different marketing strategies / target demos. <comment><USER2> I used monday.com a few years ago. Back then it was called "dapulse". Thank goodness for the name change. I felt silly every time I said it.

I don't remember exactly how their philosophy differs from all the other project management tools. I just remember really wanting to like it because of how clean it was, but not really being able to. I think it required too much setup and customization for my liking. Kind of like how Jira is super customizable, but you have to put a lot of work in to getting something that works really well. My team ended up switching back to just using Github issues/projects/milestones.

I completely agree with what you said about the human component being the most important part. I've never had any success using a project management tool with a team that is unwilling to put forth the effort to maintain it. On the other hand, I've had great success using less-than-perfect tools with a team that is willing to keep it organized. Right now my team is using Gitlab as our project management tool. There are a few things that bother me with how Gitlab does issue tracking. However, it is working phenomenally for us since everyone helps keep it organized.

</comment><comment><USER3> Speaking of marketing dollars, grammarly probably has more

<comment><USER4> That is funny, we all must fit the demographic. I get bombarded daily by both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coincidentally just posted a blog about these tools - "5 Great Tools That Didn't Work Out — Software Project Management" [https://medium.com/kredx- engineering/5-great-tools-that-didn...](https://medium.com/kredx- engineering/5-great-tools-that-didnt-work-out-software-project- management-667563c513b)

<comment><USER6> That blog post makes me uncomfortable. I would've gone totally crazy if my company switched project management tools every x months because "it's just 95% there...".

Just pick one and stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used it few times, it's as good as the others. I don't think there ever will be a silver bullet, what works for some companies won't work for others. The real issues are people issues.

<comment><USER4> As in all things software, it's always more of a people issue. For PM software to be successful in an organization, you need someone in a position of authority to be the champion or directly supporting the champion that drives the team usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. I am in Brazil, and I have been seeing their ads all over the possible places too, but for the Monday pt-br version.

<comment><USER9> I've felt your pain, just in Spanish</comment></comment>


"Disruption as a path to success" -- Women need to realize work isn't school - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/women_need_to_realize_work_isnt_schol.html

<comment><USER2> A nice piece, and in no way limited to females.</comment>


Free "Open Pass" Tix for DeveloperWeek in Bay Area Feb 6-7 - <AUTHOR> https://www.eventbrite.com/e/developerweek-2018-tickets-36162005532?discount=virgilsecurity-open#tickets <comment><USER2> Conference site:

[http://www.developerweek.com/](http://www.developerweek.com/)

"Join 8,000 attendees at one of _San Francisco's_ largest..."

No. Oakland is not San Francisco.</comment>


Speed is a feature. Introduction to performance engineering - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pawel_niznik/speed-is-a-feature-introduction-to-performance-engineering-c69785d08094

<comment><USER2> "Well, we handle it by Scaling Out."

Or by optimizing the code, switching to better algorithms, making better use of cache, etc.

"So, if the whole system is designed to Scale Out, one is in a relatively good position."

Not of the scale out overhead dominates the cost. A relatively recent, and widely read, article about this is at [http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/01/...](http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/01/15/COST.html) , titled 'Scalability! But at what COST?'. Quoting from it:

> Folks have gotten all wound-up about scalability, despite the fact that > scalability is just a means to an end (performance, capacity). When we > actually look at performance, the benefits the scalable systems bring start > to look much more sketchy. We'd like that to change.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree. Hence next paragraphs.

"Scaling Out means adding more Resources, and those Resources cost $$$. If the whole system can Scale Out, one would only be talking about Cost Effectiveness.

Cost Effectiveness would be a function of how fast Processing Time grows with the growth of Throughput or Data Volume.

There's another way to Scale Out — changing the implementation. It's not considered as Scaling Out really as it takes a lot of time. (Actually, I would call it an optimization). So, by definition, Scaling Out needs to be something done quickly, in connection with managing Resources."

It's just not the part of the definition I'm proposing. Bottom line is that systems should be scalable if they are not, one will encounter issues during rapid growth.

Scalability might lead thought to lack of cost effectiveness with given SLAs, or degradation of SLAs. That brings us to optimizations.

<comment><USER2> The title is "Speed is a feature. Introduction to performance engineering."

However, the topic covered very little about performance. It asserts that scaling out is the primary way to get performance, but never shows that is true.

This is not a-typical for 'enterprise' systems, where the primary goal seems to be to spend money on physical things, than on paying people to be clever. (Which is different than hiring more people; it's hiring the right people).

I've had several clients where they had performance problems that they were thinking of solving by throwing more hardware at it, without doing the root cause analysis to figure out where the slow-down was. I've then gone in and found order of magnitude changes.

The author elsewhere says that enterprise software "Is scalable. Scalability is the ability to support both more customers and bigger customers. Your architecture does the right things if you can throw in more boxes."

This rejects the idea that good enterprise software can fast enough without needing to scale. Which I disagree with.</comment></comment></comment>


The New Science of Sentencing - <AUTHOR> https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/04/the-new-science-of-sentencing?utm_campaign=Data%2BElixir&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Data_Elixir_47

<comment><USER2> Hard to imagine this is science. If we want to ensure the guilty do not repeat, wouldn't killing them immediately not guarantee a recidivism rate of 0%? Unless you believe in reincarnation or ghosts at least it has a real mathematical basis.

<comment><USER3> It may be subjective, but I don't think recidivism rate is so important that you would kill people who may not reoffend, or really might not be guilty in the first place. Personally I would prefer that at least in the case of non- violent crimes, it is better to parole almost everyone to reduce the suffering of innocents.

I also found the following quote weird because the article states people are worse at predictions and more biased than statistics:

> "You mean to tell me they're using statistics to determine what's going to > happen to me?" he asked. "That ain't right."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought _Minority Report_ was just a movie...

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if those statistical models will also include how time spent within the prison increases recidivism.</comment>


Learn languages by reading - <AUTHOR> http://paralleltext.io/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. Is there any way to make the audio match the language's accent?

<comment><USER3> Accent? The text is being read in English!</comment></comment>


Dutch university hit by cyber attack on its Windows systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/cyber-attack-against-um <comment> chroem- It's interesting how the language around these incidents has shifted to give the impression that cybercommandos have stormed into cyberspace with their cyber assault rifles, when in reality the chances are very high that some university administrator probably downloaded a shady program from a porn site.

<comment><USER2> > chances are very high that some university administrator probably downloaded > a shady program from a porn site.

Nah, in reality someone probably clicked a link in a malicious email that launched a backdoor on their computer. The likelihood of that approaches 100% on untrained users. And, as this is a university environment, that user likely had local admin.

You only need 1 successful click to breach the good ol' "secure internal network" after which all bets are off - few companies sufficiently secure their networks from "internal" attackers.

On a traditional Windows network, credential hygiene practices are woeful and Domain Admin (admin access to every single domain-joined device on the network) level credentials are lying around everywhere and once those are compromised, every single domain-joined device on the network can be compromised.

I've seen this all happen in the span of 10 minutes - a remote user with VPN gets compromised, the attacker connects to the corporate network through them, gets Domain Admin and spreads malware through Active Directory to every single device on the network - X thousand workstations, Y hundred servers etc.

There's no actual vulnerability to remediate - you just have to "administrate properly" to prevent this. ([https://aka.ms/spa](https://aka.ms/spa))

<comment><USER3> >Nah, in reality someone probably clicked a link in a malicious email that launched a backdoor on their computer. The likelihood of that approaches 100% on untrained users.

In 2019 this is actually very unlikely. Driveby exploits have been pretty rare for years now.

<comment><USER2> It's still one of the top methods.

See for example Symantec's report [1] with lots of data.

[1] [https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/i...](https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/istr-24-2019-en.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I literally just got a call about someone being hit. The avenues used to penetrate are email spam and RDP.

<comment><USER3> When was the last time you saw email spam linking to a browser driveby exploit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Allegedly it's the CLOP ransomware.

 _" All dhcp-servers, Exchange-servers, domaincontrollers and networkdrives have been encrypted."_

Source in Dutch: [https://tweakers.net/nieuws/161538/deel-diensten- universitei...](https://tweakers.net/nieuws/161538/deel-diensten-universiteit- maastricht-offline-door-cyberaanval.html)

Clop: [https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/blogs/other- blogs/mcafee...](https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/blogs/other-blogs/mcafee- labs/clop-ransomware/)

<comment><USER6> Uh so they don't have up-to-date AV definitions? Sounds like McAfee was on it in August and Windows Defender has it no later than the 9th of December [1].

[1] I'd expect it to be earlier than that, but this article date is the only thing I've found: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware- encyclo...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclopedia- description?Name=Ransom:Win32/Clop!MTB&ThreatID=2147746036)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Central point of control (domain), central point of infection.

As someone else said it, many networks are crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

We need a new model, that makes lateral movement much harder. There's no reason to allow an infected domain controller to infect the whole network, but I don't know what the solution looks like which still allows centralized control.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are there any documented reports of Linux/Unix systems ever being hit by ransomware? Or files on NAS appliances (NetApp, Isilon, etc) being encrypted in a way that is unrecoverable (especially since snapshots can be scheduled regularly)?

Certainly you can steal data from non-Windows systems, so exfiltration attacks are similar on both, but AFAICT, these "we've got your data" style attacks are unique to Windows. If an IT (desktop/laptop) environment was more Mac-heavy, would these be an issue either?

<comment><USER9> Linux systems are less targeted because they're less commonly used, their userbase on average knows more about technology and they're inherently more secure.

<comment><USER10> Ha! This got a good chuckle out of me. Check again; this happens more often than you would think in the web hosting business, especially the small to medium business segment. "It's just a website how hard could it be?"

If I had a nickel for every RHEL 5 (yes, 5!) box still running after we begged customers to please, please move to something actually receiving patches...

In theory ransomware shouldn't have as large of an impact, but in practice backups are not a magical wand of "restore website and lose 0 transactions" either. That's assuming the backups are actually configured to grab the correct data, and haven't been silently failing for months...

<comment><USER9> I meant for people using it as their daily driver operating system (not servers).

Most linux enthusiasts know a bit more/are interested in technology so they would be likely to engage in better security practices than a typical "home user" using Windows. In addition features like package managers and actually functioning permissions systems help as well (how long has Windows had public UAC bypasses?)

Of course you're correct and most servers run linux and get hacked every millisecond otherwise though because they don't keep them updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Big list of ransomware or possible ransomware attacks in 2019 at:

[https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/2019/01/09/ransomware- attacks-2...](https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/2019/01/09/ransomware- attacks-2019/)

I think the date should be December 2019 (not January), judging from the list of incidents by month.

One I know of, against Regis University in Colorado, occurred in late August (first reports from August 22).

[https://www.regisupdates.com/regis-quick-updates/test- post](https://www.regisupdates.com/regis-quick-updates/test-post)

It's mainly a Windows shop. Lots of disruptions for weeks (I teach there part- time, but was not teaching that term). By November(!) things were pretty much back to normal:

[https://www.regisupdates.com/regis-quick-updates/its- updates...](https://www.regisupdates.com/regis-quick-updates/its-updates-for- saturday-nov-2)

</comment><comment><USER12> according to an insider, tweakers [0] is reporting that it is a ransomware attack and many device have been encrypted

[0] [https://tweakers.net/nieuws/161538/deel-diensten- universitei...](https://tweakers.net/nieuws/161538/deel-diensten-universiteit- maastricht-offline-door-cyberaanval.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting to read, the University in Gießen (Germany) is down for weeks with similar issues. [https://www.uni-giessen.de/index.html](https://www.uni- giessen.de/index.html) (engl. Version below). They use Instagram and Facebook to organize 38.000 people and distribute passwords offline [https://www.instagram.com/jlu.giessen/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/jlu.giessen/?hl=en)

\- [https://www.denbi.de/news/763-shut-down-of-de-nbi- services-h...](https://www.denbi.de/news/763-shut-down-of-de-nbi-services- hosted-by-justus-liebig-university-giessen) \- [https://www.instagram.com/jlu.giessen/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/jlu.giessen/?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER14> There really isn't more information about this than the above so we don't know.

Here's a few Dutch sources at the bottom you can throw through a translation service: "nearly all windows computers were hacked", "we dont know if this was criminal and if the perpetrator(s) demand money".

Noteworthy quote "We are researching if the attackers could access that. Our expectation is that this is very difficult." on the storage of scientific data.

[https://nos.nl/artikel/2316120-cyberaanval-op-computers- van-...](https://nos.nl/artikel/2316120-cyberaanval-op-computers-van- universiteit-maastricht.html) [https://www.1limburg.nl/groot-cyberhack-bij-um- criminele-aan...](https://www.1limburg.nl/groot-cyberhack-bij-um-criminele- aanval-niet-uitgesloten?context=topstory)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this similar to what happened this month in Germany? [https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-38000-people-will- st...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-38000-people-will-stand-in- line-this-week-to-get-a-new-password/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Huh that note reads like something generated by this: [https://whythefuckwasibreached.com/](https://whythefuckwasibreached.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Remote browser isolation protects against this sort of thing

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

</comment><comment><USER18> on _its_ Windows systems</comment>


Why "children," not "childs"? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2016/03/en-plural.html <comment><USER2> I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece!

The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food to them (beef), while the English people who slaved in the fields raising the actual animals (cow) continued to use their ancestors' words for the live animals. This is why we have different words for the meat of the animals (beef, poultry, mutton) vs. the actual animals (cows, chicken, sheep).

<comment><USER3> Old English had [a plural ending in S]([https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Nouns#Strong_Nouns](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Nouns#Strong_Nouns)) that predates Norman invasion.

You might be able to argue the Normans influenced the normalization towards plurals endings in S, but languages are generally pretty resistant to borrowing grammatic features wholesale versus, say, borrowing vocabulary.

<comment><USER4> > but languages are generally pretty resistant to borrowing grammatic features > wholesale versus, say, borrowing vocabulary.

Not always check Spanish for example they took a lot from Arabic, like 'EL'.

<comment><USER5> LOL, what? Spanish "el" is etymologically derived from Latin ille/illa/illud, which became el/la/lo in Spanish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book The Unfolding of Language[1] describes the forces that shape how language evolves. One is extending the use of a pattern (e.g. "en" for plural), even in cases like this one where it wasn't technically appropriate. Another is the use of metaphor. E.g. "discover" used to mean "to remove the cover of", but now its meaning is purely metaphorical and the literal meaning has been mostly lost. Another is laziness: slurring long compound phrases together until they're effectively one word. A lot of conjugations/declentions are a result of this. I recommend this book if you're interested in how languages change over time; it's very well written.

EDIT: Another fun fact is that words sometimes begin to mean their _exact opposite_. For example, "wicked" used to mean "evil", but in England (and elsewhere, but especially England) it's started to mean "sweet".

And there's always the great consonant shift: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary- Manki...](https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Mankinds- Invention/dp/0805080120)

<comment><USER7> I was amazed to discover that oranges used to be called "noranges" but "a norange" was corrupted into "an orange".

<comment><USER8> Oh! That suddenly makes the Spanish "naranja" seem way more connected!

<comment><USER9> I don't know the connection but it is called narangi in Hindi, which is suspiciously close to not be connected.

<comment><USER10> Makes sense. It's borrowed from Sanskrit through Arabic: [https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/naranja](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/naranja)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Worse imho is the "glasses", "pants", "pliers", "scissors", etc thing. Single object with plural name just because it happens to be made of two similar parts. Most objects are made of multiple parts though and they get a singular name just fine.

That and the "double u", why not "we"??

<comment><USER12> I can live with "glasses", "pants", "pliers" and "scissors", but "data" drives me crazy because even native speakers seem to be completely inconsistent when it comes to its number.

EDIT: Now that I think about it there is another one that is hard for me, even it I know it is the correct form in English: visa (singular) and visas (plural). In my mother tongue it follows the same pattern as datum and data, it's Visum (singular) and Visa (plural).

<comment><USER13> Data is a plural of datum, if you're considering the individual pieces, but it's more commonly used (in my experience as a US native) as a collection singular like sand. Ex the sand has formed a hill, the data has filled the hard drive.

<comment><USER14> And in the UK, Lego.

<comment><USER15> Lego is the brand name; "let's play with Lego" is short for "let's play with the Lego bricks". I think it's much closer to a group noun :)

See also: Meccano, Duplo, Brio, Scalextric.

<comment><USER12> In Germany we even stopped pretending that it's just a bunch of bricks and use the word as if it were the name of the game. We say "Let's play Lego". Does this sound strange in English?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It'd be great if we native English-speakers would tolerate — and even encourage — "mistakes" in English to streamline (refactor?) the language and make it easier for non-native speakers to become fluent:

\+ The world would be better off with an easy-to-use, global lingua franca.

\+ For historical reasons, both good and bad, at the moment English is the logical candidate. (The use of an alphabet also supports English as a global lingua franca, but "misspellings" should be tolerated as well as discussed at length in the comments here.)

\+ We should accept usages such as "childs," vice children, and "it's" as a possessive, as being proper English and not mistakes. (English as a Second Language teachers could doubtless come up with a long list of such "mistakes.")

Such an approach to achieving a common global tongue would be more likely to succeed than was seen with Esperanto.

<comment><USER17> Can I make a wish? As a non-native speaker it would be great to have a consistent alphabet, it wouldn't matter the order of the letters, a letter would always correspond to a single sound, specially with vocals. If the Latin alphabet is not suitable for this then it would be great to have a new alphabet or maybe just the Latin one but with some letters added.

<comment><USER18> This is basically impossible for English, since for many vowels, the various dialects map the diaphonemes of English into mutually incompatible sets of phonemes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects#Chart) (and even that chart is underestimating the differences - tour and moor definitely have different phonemes in en-AU, even though they are allegedly from the same diaphoneme.

If you had a conservative spelling system, where each diaphoneme was mapped to a single letter, speakers of dialects with many merges (e.g. American English) would struggle to spell correctly, since they would be unable to distinguish several letters apart. If you had a simplified system, then most speakers would get confused by merges that existed in the spelling system but not in their own dialects; and speakers of more conservative dialects wouldn't be able to write sounds that are to them different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In Russian it's "ребёнок" (child) and "дети" (children). "Дети" is actually a plural form of now archaic "дитя" and used because... "ребёнок" does not have a plural form.

The funny thing here is that "ребёнок" while not being archic comes from an anchient-russian "робя", which has plural form "робята", which is actually used in modern language too, but meaning can be anything from "boys" to "guys" or any other generalisation of a group of young people (both boys and girls).

PS: at the same time you can actually invent a plural for "ребенок" if you want to, but it may be considered as something similar to cockney, but used on purpose in otherwise normal speech.

<comment><USER20> > "ребёнок" does not have a plural form

"Ребята" is the plural form for singular "ребёнок". However the meaning of "ребята" is migrating from "children" to "young guys".

<comment><USER19> this is what I've wrote

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A bit OT, but there is a wonderful PBS/BBC series on the history of English on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7REAOG1kc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7REAOG1kc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZR1EXGapc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZR1EXGapc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg63k5JDH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg63k5JDH8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqlVl0K9tw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqlVl0K9tw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVH6LdoEDNs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVH6LdoEDNs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLDvP-N0zQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLDvP-N0zQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej60L8xLLdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej60L8xLLdo)

</comment><comment><USER22> This only goes so far back. I believe they actually came from German. Oxen in German is Ochsen German still actively uses the -en plural, and all nouns in the dative plural must use -n.

So, Ochsen -> Oxen, Maenner -> Men

(Slightly unrelated) So if you look at Scotland and Ireland, they've get some really interesting things in their dialects. die "Kirche" in German is a "church", in some dialects in scotland, it's a "kirker". Or in old dialects in Ireland, "children" is sometimes spoken as "childer".

EDIT: I retract my theory on the relationship between children and kindern :)

<comment><USER23> Curiously, Kinder and children are completely unrelated. Child comes from the Proto-Germanic kelþaz which further came from the Proto-Indo-European stem gel-. On the other hand, "Kind" comes from Proto-Germanic kinþa, which comes from a Proto-Indo-European stem ǵenh₁- meaning "to produce, to give birth", whence also "genesis", "genealogy" and "gonad".

German definitely did not cause those curious plurals. We know for sure Old English had them itself from Proto-Germanic, and it makes a lot more sense for a language to retain irregular forms for words that are used very often, than to loan grammar, which is a relatively rare occurrence.

EDIT: How do you type asterisks here? Escaping with a backslash doesn't work, nor does using three in a row

<comment><USER24> For the uninitiated: That's highly speculative

for reference

cold [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo- Eur...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo- European/gel-)

call, cry, (yell?) [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo- Eur...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo- European/g%CA%B0el-)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/child](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/child) from PIE g(')elt- ("womb")

from Proto-Indo-European gel- ("to ball up, amass"). according to the PGmc page [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto- Germanic...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto- Germanic/kel%C3%BEaz)

but

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolphin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolphin)

says from δελφύς (delphús, "womb"), which says from

From Proto-Indo-European gʷelbʰ- ("womb")

I'd offer German "Quälgeister" as modified reflex of the latter. Also "Quell" is synonym for off-spring. Well, spring is a direct translation of "Quelle", i.e. source. Coincidence? Cry fits in, too.

I do not believe the dolphin theory, though. I guess tail-fish is more likely. they have a penis after all, which is way funnier in general, perhaps to funny for low brow scribe type doctors. Ancient Greek δελφίς (delphís) lends itself for φίς (phís) > fish. cf. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fin) IMHO

any questions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In Dutch, child/children is kind/kinderen, which is the same double plural. We also have that construction with ei/eieren for egg/eggs.

(Regular plural suffixes are -en and -s.)

<comment><USER26> In the chicken post, which they link to in the article in question, it says:

"The OED notes versions in such Germanic languages as Dutch (kieken, kuiken)..."

But chicken is kip in Dutch. Maybe they're talking about older versions of the word.

Also interesting, perhaps, is the other '-en' that comes to mind: boy/boys, which is jongen/jongens

<comment><USER23> "kuiken" is Dutch for a chick, a young chicken (curious that in English, the form with the diminutive became the one used for the adult), whilst "kieken" is dialectical Dutch for "chicken". "kieken" and "kuiken" come from the same root, it's just that one of them got mutated by a sound change that never quite spread over the entire language.

"jongen" is another story. It used to be "jonge", which is the substantivized version of the adjective "jong" (young). The -n was later added by analogy from the other cases. This is why the plural is pronounced "jonges" (written "jongens"), and the diminutive is "jongetje" even in the standard language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Huh... I wonder if the the "eng" from England and English related to the Middle English englen and Old English englas for "angels"? Is England the land of angels?

Edit: Ah, no. It's from the Angles: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles)

<comment><USER28> According to the Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory I drew the same parallel in ~595: " _Non Angli, sed angeli – They are not Angles, but angels. Well named, for they have angelic faces and ought to be co-heirs with the angels in heaven._ ".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I#Famous_quotes_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I#Famous_quotes_and_anecdotes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So you mean to tell me that all those years of calling them "linux boxen" _actually_ wasn't crazy?

</comment><comment><USER30> I love all the replies here uninformed by reading the fine article.

</comment><comment><USER31> "childs" is, and always was uncommon, but seems to exists. Also saw it source code written by non-native speakers.

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Children%2C+Ch...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Children%2C+Childs)

<comment><USER32> Appears even less - looking at the results, those slight bumps correspond to authors named Child, rather than its usage as plural.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The article fails to explain why English moved from en to s for plural forms around 1400, though.

<comment><USER34> If you're interested in that sort of minutia, there's a History of English podcast that goes into it in mind numbing detail.

The answer is that the -s plural is from the Vikings/Norse, and the -en plural is from the more complex system inherited from Anglo Saxon languages.

English is like a creole or a pidgin language in a lot of ways and a lot of its features are due to various foreign invaders imposing their grammatical rules on the local vocabulary.

<comment><USER35> > The answer is that the -s plural is from the Vikings/Norse

Which is interesting, because modern Swedish has an -n plural (among other plurals) and no -s plural. Compare ögon (eyes) and öron (ears) with their old english eyen and earen. I guess it would follow that Swedish had a lot of Angle Saxon influence in its evolution.

<comment><USER34> It's actually more that the Old Norse and Old English had different endings and the Vikings didn't bother to figure out the English system. I don't think they know whether the -s is from a Norse ending or whether the Norse settled on -s for other reasons.

The simplified version eventually spread because England was a mixture of various ethnicities for centuries and you'd have different variants of English from one town to the next— and after the Vikings you had the normans.

I think it's the equivalent of the guy I was eating with at a restaurant in Nicaragua who yelled to the waitress 'honey, el forko por favor?' Like, there was an attempt at Spanish.

<comment><USER35> > I don't think they know whether the -s is from a Norse ending or whether the > Norse settled on -s for other reasons

I think you misunderstood... Modern Swedish doesn't have the -s ending at all for plurals. My point is that somehow that got lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "... and the archaic eyen come from." \- weirdly this isn't so archaic in the corner of Scotland I'm from. In our dialect we have "een" (which confusingly has a homonym "een" for "one"). Example usage:

        Ma cowkin made ma een waater

Explanation of that and more fun words and phrases here: [http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13140464.Word_up__20_of_t...](http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13140464.Word_up__20_of_the_best_Doric_terms/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Article misses the broader context. This is from the Germanic roots; existing Germanic languages still have this as a predominant pluralization pattern. German: auge (eye), augen (eyes).

</comment><comment><USER38> If you want to learn more about these curious facts about English I recommend reading "The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way".

</comment><comment><USER39> Makes me think of how Mädchen ("girl" or "maiden" in German) is neuter/neutral instead of feminine:

[https://blog.assarbad.net/20090810/das-madchen-why-is-it- gra...](https://blog.assarbad.net/20090810/das-madchen-why-is-it- grammatically-neutral/)

<comment><USER40> Same with "Frauchen" (diminutive of "Frau" i.e. women) by the way...

<comment><USER39> Und auch _Fräulein._

<comment><USER40> Gnädige Frau :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So how about the plurals of some words ending with "us", like fungus-fungi, but virus-viruses-not-virii and how about dingus-dingii-or-dinguses, doofus- doofii-or-doofuses and so forth?

<comment><USER42> Bad understanding and appropriation of latin and greek to seem smarter than one really is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> pff, what we really need it's Chinese language written in pinyin lacking tones, that's as primitive grammar as you can get, it doesn't even have plural

people think Chinese it's complicated language, but the opposite it's truth, the characters and tones are making it scary, but once you get rid off characters and tones it's one of the simplest languages, much more logical than English

English itself it's extremely illogical languag with way too many exceptions not following general rule, heck even Slavic languages (again more difficult at first sight) are more logical than English

</comment><comment><USER44> The evolution of language fascinates me. English has a fascinating history. 1000 years ago Old English and Althochdeutch (Old High German) were almost interchangeable (AFAIK). The really fascinating part was the period after 1066 for several centuries where English wasn't the court language of England.

Now this period and lack of centralization is probably responsible for the many dialects (which now are mostly just different accents for other reasons). But the language changed so much over this period. Middle English is largely readable (but weird) to the modern reader. Old English is basically a different language.

In this period English lost of what I like to call the bullshit like gender of (non-person) nouns. Case of nouns (other than pronouns) also basically disappeared. It still had the formal/informal distinction of the second person that so many other European languages had (but we lost that later). Verbs and nouns became way more regular.

None of this happened with German (although Germany as a country didn't really exist until the 19th century and was at best a collection of city-states prior to that) but German in its various forms was still the ruling language (although Latin always had a certain preeminence what with the Holy Roman Empire and the Electors and all).

Compare modern German grammar (where nouns and adjectives have to agree with case, number, gender and article). It strongly suggests that the ruling class seems to embody conservatism and traditions, which is unsurprising given that the status quo is pretty good if you're the ruling class.

You see this in England where the precursor to modern French was the court language of England for hundreds of years. This has the effect of keeping commoners out (even more than they already are by virtue of hereditary title).

It's almost like without central control English became more _democratized_.

Obviously the printing press had a massive effect in standardizing spelling (other posters have mentioned that u and v were largely interchangeable).

Radio (and later TV) had a massive effect on standardizing pronunciation.

But still English has rapidly changed. One example I remember is if you go back and listen to early speeches by Churchill you'll here him say "nazi" not as "natsi" but as "nazzi" (much like the non-American ss in "aussie"). But by later in the war (IIRC) the "ts" phenom had pretty much been imported into English.

Another thing I read was the mathematical model for how verbs become regular [1]. Basically, the less a verb is used, the sooner it becomes regular but how long it takes is quite predictable. Apparently "to wed" is the next verb to become regular. "To be" should take about 44,000 years.

It makes you realize just how rapidly language changes and how grammar really is descriptive not prescriptive and why it's completely pointless to get your pedantic about "literally", less vs fewer, "very unique" and so on.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/09/2...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/09/29/the- evolution-of-the-past-tense-how-verbs-change-over-time/)

<comment><USER45> There's a lot of misonceptions in here, some major, some minor.

English derives from a more coastal dialect of Germany, and is closest to Frisian and Dutch (the latter more by convergent evolution). Modern German comes from a High German dialect, which is much more different (although still West Germanic). In 1000, English and Frisian would likely have been mutually intelligible--particularly since they would have been visiting the same markets as traders--but the same would not be true for English and Dutch or English and Germanic.

Old English lost its inflection and became highly synthetic. This is primarily due to the influence of Old Norse, a North Germanic language, and the process would have begun some time before the Norman invasion in 1066. Note that a large Danish population settled in England in the 800s (the Great Dane Army invaded, and Alfred the Great ultimately let the settlers they brought with them stay), and they eventually brought Swein Forkbeard into England in response to Æthelred the Unready, which eventually leads to William's conquest in 1066 after several successive kings find themselves dead with no sons. The loss of inflection made it easier for North Germanic and West Germanic speakers to understand each other, since the roots were largely the same but the inflectional bits were different.

Your characterization of the Holy Roman Empire is wildly inaccurate. While there were several independent cities of the Holy Roman Empire, there were several large duchies and kingdoms--most notably Brandenburg, Bohemia, Saxony, the Palatinate (the four secular electors), as well as Bavaria and Austria. It was by no means "at best a collection of city-states."

Regularization is not an inherent process of language evolution. Actually, English isn't really systematically regularizing: American English has transformed the past participle of "dive" from "dived" to "dove", and there is effectively a movement to make the plural of "octopus" into "octopi" as opposed to the correct, regular "octopuses" (or the actual Greek plural "octopodes").

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> For the same reason it's Unixen, not Unices, of course.

</comment><comment><USER47> That is one of the reasons why I support Esperanto.

</comment><comment><USER48> Because some dude or gal somewhere some time ago thought it would be funny that generations to come would need to learn irregular forms of some random words! Why would grammar rules apply all the same to all the words, not that logical is it? /s

<comment><USER49> English is made up of words from many other languages. It only got a set of rules after the fact, which is why there are so many exceptions.

<comment><USER19> > so many exceptions.

You know nothing, Jonh Snow (seriously though, from a russian point of view English has very few of them)</comment></comment></comment>


Cryptos Fear Credit - <AUTHOR> http://www.perrymehrling.com/2017/09/cryptos-fear-credit/ <comment><USER2> >Once everyone else realizes the superiority of cryptocurrency, they will all want to switch over, and the value of fiat currency will collapse.

You really think so? Cryptocurrency requires a massive infrastructure (the internet) and inaccessible physical locations will always have a need for physical cash. It's like saying every country will go digital with money, I don't think that's the case now or in the future. The hand-to-hand gesture is just too fundamental to being human to be circumvented by some clever logic boards.

Credit in crypto? I don't mean to come off as rude, but do you understand that proof-of-stake in crypto is an emerging issue, and that proving that you own a particular bitcoin or that you are even the owner/controller of a particular address on the blockchain, is not an easy task. Credit is built on a secondary or even tertiary idea of "how reliable is this individual to eventually bring the balance back to zero or near zero" and cryptocurrencies don't play in this nether-region, because it is already an amazing innovation that we can have a distributed ledger at all.

To say that credit is the next logical step in the evolution of crypto... I don't think you have really condensed or absorbed the very paramount differences between normal money and cryptocoin. One is a physical IOU, the other is an indication of where transactions have moved. Cryptocurrency is not fundamentally an IOU any more than a bar of Gold is an IOU. Credit is possible with IOUs, but it is not possible if the boolean value is "yes I have one satoshi of gold" or "no I don't"

Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> _> >Once everyone else realizes the superiority of cryptocurrency, they will all want to switch over, and the value of fiat currency will collapse._

 _> You really think so?_

I didn't write the blog post, but I think it's pretty clear that he's saying is that this is what many crypto fans believe. I don't think he's claiming to believe it himself.

 _> Cryptocurrency is not fundamentally an IOU any more than a bar of Gold is an IOU._

Correct. Bitcoin is digital gold. But a bar of gold _is_ an IOU. Because gold gets most of its value from its ability to be traded for other stuff, it's basically a form of credit. You can think of gold as a general purpose IOU from the economy to the person holding the gold. If the economy collapses, the gold isn't worth much. Bitcoin is the same.

Unfortunately, neither bitcoin nor gold can be currency. Currency must have a reliable stable value. As far as I know, the only way to ensure stable value of a currency is through centralized monetary policy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is part of why cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can never become true currencies. They pretend that credit does not exist. I'm skeptical that a decentralized monetary system is even possible.</comment>


Correlation of $$$ to Olympic medals. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/xhjy2/correlation_of_to_olympic_medals/

<comment><USER2> awesome read. Had a good laugh.</comment>


Kontena 1.1.0 Release Highlights - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kontena.io/kontena-1-1-0-release/ <comment><USER2> Kotena is: "The Developer Friendly Container & Microservices Platform. Everything you need to run and scale containers in production."

Because they forgot to put that in the blog post.

Top Tip! If you're doing a big release of your awesome new software, remember to say what it is in the release post. Just in case it ends up on HN, or something...</comment>


FOSDEM 2018 schedule - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/ <comment><USER3> This is the first year with a combined CAD and open hardware dev-room organized by the folks from CERN.

[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware...](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/)

<comment><USER4> I'm thoroughly looking forward to the KiCad talks.

<comment><USER5> Those and also the other free electronics CAD talks - there's two newcomers at least that have some exciting ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems that language rooms are less popular: Guile, Python, Ruby, Lua rooms are not present compared to last year. Nevertheless there are bunch of talks that seem interesting to me:

      - Automating Your Lights with Open Source
      - Using Cryptographic Hardware
      - Smart Cards in Linux and why you should care
      - Inside Monero

I will probably be there for both days.

<comment><USER7> In my experience (I've been to FOSDEM 3 times) the language rooms were the most difficult ones to get into as they were full 90% of the time.

It also looks like Python has a main track on Saturday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is going to be the first year that Nim[1] received a stand at FOSDEM[2]. I'm super thankful to FOSDEM for accepting our request and can't wait to chat to all the attendees.

Myself and the rest of the core Nim team will be there, so do swing by if you've got some free time in between the brilliant talks.

1 - [https://nim-lang.org](https://nim-lang.org)

2 - [https://fosdem.org/2018/stands/](https://fosdem.org/2018/stands/)

</comment><comment><USER9> For the people going to FOSDEM, there are many volunteering tasks available at: [https://volunteers.fosdem.org/tasks/](https://volunteers.fosdem.org/tasks/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Open source software and hardware talks this year too: [https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/space/](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/space/)

</comment><comment><USER11> FOSDEM is one of the most community-oriented conferences I attend, which is quite an achievement considering its size nowadays.

A couple of us from the Prosody XMPP server project will be there in the "realtime lounge" area. Feel free to come and say hi!

</comment><comment><USER12> Fosdem is great, I've been there many times. If you have the chance you should definitely go. What I like is that is it very low-key/accessible. Over the years I 'met' / talked with RMS, Robert Love, Tim O'Reilly, Wietse Venema, Timo Sirainen and Larry Wall by just walking around on campus and bumping into them.

<comment><USER13> I have also been there a couple of times, but the last time it felt a bit strange seeing so many people carrying around Apple devices on what is supposed to be a FOSS conference.

<comment><USER14> A lot of FreeBSD development is done on Apple devices these days.

<comment><USER13> Might be, but the ones I noticed were happily using OS X, iPhones or iPads.

I use quite a few comercial software and spend most of my time on Windows, so maybe I don't have any right to say anything.

It just felt strange seeing some people advocating a FOSS world, while their devices weren't in sync with that message.

<comment><USER14> I was referring to Apple devices running OSX. Guess I should have made that a bit more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm excited to go to FOSDEM for the first time this year. I plan to be hanging around Open hardware and Internet of things rooms.

> FOSDEM is free to attend. There is no registration. Just turn up!

I was quite surprised to see that. Even free to attend conferences usually require registration so that they can plan ahead and prevent overcrowding. Did FOSDEM not have this kind of problems in the past? Judging by the number of people I know that regularly attend it, it's quite a well known event.

<comment><USER16> > so that they can plan ahead and prevent overcrowding

They don't do anything to prevent overcrowding, and so it is indeed painfully overcrowded and you may not be able to get in to see any talks you planned to. You basically have to pick one room, get there early, and then just camp out all day.

<comment><USER17> Each talk can be overcrowded but the venue is very large and there are more parallel talks going on than at any other conference that I know, so it's the nature of the beast that people will not distribute themselves perfectly equally for each of the maximum of 33 different ongoing talks at the same time.

Each room is also not equal of size. The key note room is massive so there is always a seat there, but some is just sized for 30-40 people. When a famous project is talking in such a room it will fill up extremely fast, or in the worst case, be already filled up from the previous talk and people will just stay in their seats.

The common solution that other conferences do with this problem is giving out tickets to each talk and have people register exactly what they are going to see, but that in turn carries a equally massive issue in that there will always be empty seats from people simply not showing up. This in turn can lead to organizations trying to overbook in order to "fill the empty seats", turning into arguments and fighting when the calculated probability of an empty seat shows to be incorrect in reality.

I have been at FOSDEM for several years now and I never felt it to be overcrowded. Some talks will have a poorly chosen room (often based on topic genre than expected audience attendance), so a room designated for the IT security track can have 18 talks where the average number of listeners is 25 but then during a single session the Tor project has a talk in that track with an attractive title, and 100+ people are suddenly hoping to get into a room which is intended for 30.

<comment><USER16> I meant things like the food queues as well - they can get crazily long - <USER2> even corridors can feel dangerously overcrowded to me the few years I've been there. Then when it rains it also gets super humid from all the wet coats and bags everyone carries. It's a valuable conference definitely and I appreciate the effort that goes into it but I don't find it very pleasent. It's a bit more like a festival than a conventional conference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those interested in Linux-based Virtualization (includes Xen, KVM, QEMU) and IaaS topics:

[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/virtualization_and_ia...](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/virtualization_and_iaas/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sorry for an off-topic question, but does anyone know where to park a car not far from the university overnight? It's our first year at FOSDEM, and we would like to avoid driving to the center of the city only to leave the car there. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looking forward to the AV1 update.

<comment><USER4> On which track will the AV1 update be?

<comment><USER21> Open Media track</comment></comment></comment>


Is the NSA Blinded by Big Data? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/surveillance-state/e78cbf912907

<comment><USER2> The author might be underestimating the NSA's technical ability. The logic here is that each person has ~300 friends, and three hops is 300 x 300 x 300 = 27 million. This is a big number, but the NSA doesn't have to give the same scrutiny and technical resource to each person. It's well known that most of the connections won't be interesting and there are methods to reduce the size of the list.

Which brings us to the author's dismissal of pattern recognition. Statements like "A pattern recognition algorithm would come up with "young Saudi men" as the closest heuristic for the 9/11 bombers" are equivalent to "I've designed a bad classifier in my head and I'm telling you how wrong it would be". The NSA has more than a few smart people on this and they are probably working all the harder due to so much public attention. Algorithms can get very sophisticated with a sufficient amount of data and processing cores.

The reality is that the NSA doesn't have the technical capability to find meaning in billions of communications. But they aren't stupid either. The scale of their data isn't going to hide us. Whether or not they'll use the data responsibly is another question.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you know what mass surveillance and analysis is good at? Chilling political movements and spotting rising leaderships.

I bet NSA is not blind to that. Actually, they're not blind at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's one huge flaw in the exponential math here: duplicates. There's a good chance that a large number of people your friends know are already included in your network – the percentages will vary, but it definitely cuts down the pure exponential growth.

<comment><USER5> Several simplifying assumptions were made; in a real world scenario you would have a certain number of duplicates that is shared with any given contact; but the overlap of redundancies between contacts is going to be low. You also need to figure that some of your contacts have an order of magnitude more contacts than your your average contact, and that they are more likely be connected to other super-connectors. So your second order-contacts are likely to be richer in people who have more contacts than the average networker...

Even building a decent estimator for this sort of problem is a hard problem; since you need to get some good estimates for a number of distributions ( number of contacts, number of duplicates between pairs of contacts, number super-connector bilateral contacts, etc.).

My general sense is that duplication of contacts has little effect on the number of contacts of contacts of contacts; and that the number of super- connectors you know would have a greater impact.</comment></comment>


An extreme journey to find a rare beast - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/bespoke/story/hunt-for-the-grey-ghost/index.html <comment><USER2> Planet Earth is by far the best nature documentary I've ever seen. I'd recommend it to anyone who's yet to see it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is like a whole experience. BBC does it again. The presentation is beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still remember the snow leopard sequence shown in Planet Earth. I'm definitely looking forward to see this in the new Planet Earth.

</comment><comment><USER5> You made my day</comment>


Over 200,000 Endangered Antelope Suddenly Die Thanks to … Weird Weather - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/herds-endangered-antelope-die-hours-when-unusual-weather-triggers-disease-180967876/?no-ist <comment><AUTHOR> 3 hours from healthy looking to dead. That's frankly kind of terrifying and must have been quite disturbing to observe in person.</comment>


Ask HN: What is happening with Google Ads? - <AUTHOR>

I just noticed today that neither Google or Bing are showing any Ads on none of my computers. They are logged in with different users and I don't have installed any Ads blocker.<p>I'm not missing them just genuinely curios about it. What am I missing? <comment><USER2> Confirmed here as well. Very strange, yet delightful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks... I am not crazy then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I searched for cat collars and had a bunch of ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> That worked thanks... I tried another bunch but didn't show me too much (i.e Aruba, Jamaica). I tried on two different networks and I got mixed results, so I guess they don't have enough inventory for my location.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What stuff can hackers license to companies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 17 AskHN questions in 15 days. But in that time no comments from yourself? How much do you charge your clients, what is your biggest business expense, what skill do you wish you had, what 5 websites do you visit daily? And you probably already thought about what hackers/coder can license to companies or even did some research. Please share.</comment>


U.S. companies discover the dark side of a Covid-19 business boom - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/u-s-companies-discover-the-dark-side-of-a-covid-19-business-boom <comment><USER2> I believe this is all economically unsustainable. Ultimately, these costs cannot continue and people will just stop following all rules. The likely result is selective enforcement.</comment>


Platypus genetic code unravelled - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7385949.stm <comment><AUTHOR> Summary: _One big surprise was the patchwork nature of the genome with avian, reptilian and mammalian features..._</comment>


Poland approves logging Europe's last primeval forest - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-03-poland-europe-primeval-forest.html <comment><AUTHOR> Also before the final decision: [http://www.nature.com/news/polish-scientists- protest-over-pl...](http://www.nature.com/news/polish-scientists-protest-over- plan-to-log-in-bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa-forest-1.19428) and [http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/19/ancient- bial...](http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/19/ancient-bialowieza- forest-facing-major-destruction/)

And after: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-environment- forest-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-environment-forest- idUSKCN0WR15H)</comment>


Ask HN: Will we ever know what is the actual death rate of Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> Figures vary drastically by country with very high variance. <comment><USER2> Most developed countries have systems in place to capture statistics like deaths so I'm sure they are being counted.

For less developed countries that task is much harder.

However, with the high level of death it is almost certain many Covid-19 fatalities are being missed, which means the official numbers are probably on the low side.

But as the numbers are so high and will undoubtedly continue to rise into the future, does that really matter?

This is the worst pandemic to hit the world since the Spanish Flu of 1918.

> Figures vary drastically by country with very high variance.

Different countries:

1\. Took different measures to tackle the problem (i.e. with better/worse outcomes).

2\. Are at a different point on the curve (i.e. for some countries the worse is yet to come).

3\. Are actively trying to hide the true numbers.

<comment><USER3> I would guess the numbers are overstated due to cases being "clinically" diagnosed without an actual test (i.e. doctor looks at symptoms and says you probably have Covid)

We also have no idea of test accuracy across the myriad of tests being administered. Look to the Spanish Flu post analysis to see how wide the StdDev will likely be.

<comment><USER4> Counterpoint. Countries are reporting higher death rates in even if you take out the deaths attributed to COVID-19. One possible explanation for this difference is people are dying from COVID-19 and not being counted as victims of the pandemic.

Financial Times has some reporting on this.

<comment><USER3> Case in point, we will never really know and we should feel lucky that this wasn't catastrophic and we got away with our lack of preparedness.

<comment><USER2> I think the count of the number of countries that have _got away_ this outbreak is much smaller than the number of countries still dealing with the outbreak.

I would also say many of these countries are just at the start of this process.

The are only a few ways a country can get over the virus:

1\. Find a vaccine (which is still months/years away).

2\. Impose very strict isolation rules (i.e. New Zealand)

3\. Develop heard immunity (i.e. reach a point where 70+% of the population have been infected).

<comment><USER3> Everyone got off easy because the CFR is single digits, likely less than 1%.

I'm talking about a real epidemic, where one in 3-5 died, than things would be real bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably not to a high degree of accuracy. Many will die without having been tested and diagnosed. Some will die indirectly of complications. The testing itself is not perfect. Seriological screening will only give us an approximation for how widespread total infections have been, since we know some infections will pass unseen. For instance spain just released a study indicating that 5% of their population of has been exposed and 1/3 of those had no symptoms. That means that exposure is ten times the tested rate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Like most questions, the answer will get more complex the closer you look. But we're doing the "science" thing: collecting more data, and narrowing the error bars. Past a point, you know enough that more accuracy won't change your action choices. That's a good enough answer for me.

Here are some recent analyses:

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v1)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00495](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00495)

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3590771](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3590771)

</comment><comment><USER7> We'll likely be able to figure out a more accurate rate by reading between the lines. IMHO some inaccuracies are inevitable because of straight up lying by certain State interests.

</comment><comment><USER8> Working out death rate for anything is surprisingly complex.

Countries count deaths using very different methods (someone who tested positive and died in hospital; someone who tested positive and died anywhere; someone presumed positive with covid mentioned as cause on death certificate; all cause mortality etc etc). Some of these figures are affected by amount of testing available.

Eventually we will get a number for the death rate of covid-19, but that will have lots of caveats around age and comorbidities.

At the moment the UK is severely undercounting deaths directly caused by covid-19, and isn't counting deaths indirectly caused by covid-19.

The Kings Fund has an excellent explainer here: [https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/deaths- covid-19](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/deaths-covid-19)

NHS England+Improvement have some notes on their data here: [https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work- areas...](https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work- areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/)

The Office for National Statistics have a nice (but out of date) page here: [https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths- involving...](https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving- the-coronavirus-covid-19/)

Chris Hatton has a great thread about the mortality statistics for people with learning disability and or autism: [https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/12609675671555153...](https://twitter.com/chrishattoncedr/status/1260967567155515398?s=20)

And Nick Stripe has a twitter thread here: [https://twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/126124441541637734...](https://twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/1261244415416377344)

Another paper on UK care homes: [https://ltccovid.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/England-mort...](https://ltccovid.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/England-mortality-among-care-home-residents- report-12-May.pdf)

This is for France, and it's pretty good: [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/12/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/12/science.abc3517)</comment>