60 days in jail for not paying a $2.75 subway fare costs the city $22,000 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DrRJKavanagh/status/1124319301694107650 <comment><USER2> "I could demonstrate to you that every single bank robbery, that in every single case practically, the cost of the police was more than the actual money that the robbers took from the bank. Does that mean, 'Oh, you see, there's really no economic interest involved, then. They're not protecting the banks. The police are just doing this because they're on a power trip, or they're macho, or they're control freaks, that's why they do it.' No, of course it's an economic... of course they're defending the banks. Of course, because if they didn't stop that bank robbery, regardless of the cost, this could jeopardize the entire banking system." \-- Michael Parenti

Despite quoting that I'm not a hardcore leftist (anymore). But I think it's an insightful quote, and does at least explain why certain crimes are handled the way they are. That being said, this simply shouldn't be a criminal matter, and should be handled more similarly to overdue parking meters, as some say in the twitter comments.

(Also, that quote is out of context, it is itself serving as an example to explain the (lack of) roi for american interventionism in South America. And yes I used to listen to a lot of Choking Victim)

<comment><USER3> But it didn't cost $22,000. If he didn't go to a jail would the city save $22k?

The city lost $215,000,000 in revenue due to the fare evasion.

<comment><USER4> And if they handed out $50 tickets for fare evasion, how much revenue would that generate?

<comment><USER5> The person who can't afford $2 is now going to pay $50? From where? How?

<comment><USER6> Have them spend a shift cleaning garbage. Done.

<comment><USER7> I see we're leaning real hard into that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" thing.

<comment><USER6> Okay, good point. I was being far too glib.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to be an unfair comparison to me. The penalty for not paying the fare is not meant to somehow recuperate the lost cost - instead, the penalty is there to incentivize people to pay the regular fare, rather than skipping it. The real question to ask is: if the penalty were reduced, how much more money would be lost due to the increased number of people not paying the subway fare? I don't see a good way to answer this question, but it seems to be the right comparison to me.

<comment><USER9> This is the right way to frame the question. It's pretty obvious that the purpose of such disproportionate punishment is to discourage everybody from breaking the rules; you can't just look at the individual that got caught.

If one is going to make an argument for any specific level of punishment for this offense, it should be based on the expected total cost/benefit across the entire population.

<comment><USER10> > you can't just look at the individual that got caught

Of course you can. Legal systems must be proportional to everybody. The non- existence of collective punishment is one of the pillars of Democracy.

That's not saying that the fine shouldn't be larger than the offense (of course it should), but proportionality must be maintained at the personal level for everybody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this must be common in most cases, but I have only one data point to back it up:

In 2014, I was working for a startup when I found out the founder had embezzled/stolen our investor money, lied to creditors, stolen employee salaries and W2 tax contributions, etc. and used the money to fund his big apartment, private schools for his children, two full-time nannies, and a nice BMW. After we found out we all resigned and the following Monday were sitting in the DA's office (financial crimes). The DA decided to pick up the case (fortunately, mostly because it was an absolute slam dunk after he confessed to it all through email) and it took them literally 3 years of interviews, research, etc to take the case to grand jury. Eventually, he plead guilty and has to pay back roughly 650K to employees + investors, but NYC must have spent well over 1MM to get that money back to us.

The only person that actually paid a lawyer in this case was the person who plead guilty, and of course, the tax payers of NYC

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know enough to take a position on this issue one way or another, but I think it should be pointed out that expensive jail time for a few people could serve as a deterrent that results in enough increased fare revenue to offset the cost.

<comment><USER13> This line of thinking has two serious problem: it assumes that people

1) Actually intentionally break the law as a choice and 2) Actually think about the consequences of their actions

And to a lesser extent, this ignores the subset of circumstances where people forget to pay, actually do pay but the payment gets lost, or can't afford to pay but need to get places.

This is why 3-strike rules are abject failures (life in prison for stealing a slice of pizza?). Crime and punishment are enormously complicated and the "obvious" solutions almost never actually work.

<comment><USER14> If we just stopped enforcing the laws, the damage to our society would be incalculable.

Is it worth it to prosecute petty thefts for less than $100? If not, then we are giving the green light to that kind of crime. What incentive would you have to run a small business selling things if the state won't enforce the law?

> This line of thinking has two serious problem: it assumes that people 1) > Actually intentionally break the law as a choice and 2) Actually think about > the consequences of their actions

I lived in New York City, and saw the people who tried that in Bushwick. I actually agree that there are sadly many adults who completely dysfunctional. But that does not mean that we should just abandon our laws. Is it not a much bigger problem that we have people who simply can not help but break the law?

<comment><USER15> > What incentive would you have to run a small business selling things if the > state won't enforce the law?

Small businesses exist even in places with no laws. Not saying it is a good idea to not have laws, or not enforce them, but it isn't like EVERYTHING ceases to work when laws aren't enforced.

I also don't think the effect is incalculable. We have lots of examples of places where the government collapses and there is no longer any enforcement of the law. We could certainly research the effect his has on the economy.

I am in no way arguing that we should abandon laws or stop enforcing petty crime, just saying it isn't quite that simple.

<comment><USER16> > Small businesses exist even in places with no laws

Only because other power structures emerge with their own rules. I think I'll take laws over "lawlessness".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks like outrage fuel. I'm really not seeing meaningful solutions proposed.

It's quite common in the US to do things like prosecute a notorious mafioso on tax evasion because they can't prove the murders etc. that he's responsible for. We don't know all the details of this specific case.

Yes, I get it, our entire 'justice' system is the worst element of a nation with a long history of racism. I wish we would find real remedies.

I don't see this particular thing really adding substantive discussion and furthering solutions.

Can anyone tell me what constructive purpose this serves?

Thanks.

<comment><USER18> > I'm really not seeing meaningful solutions proposed.

Stop jailing people for nonviolent crimes. Give the turnstile jumper the same treatment as the embezzler. Reduce the ridiculous US prison population!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Everyone's getting hung up on the 22k, but 60 days in jail for jumping a turnstile is insane at any price.

<comment><USER20> I agree completely. If I were sentenced to even a _week_ in jail for jumping a turnstile, I'd _still_ feel like they'd thrown the book at me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That $22000 amounts to good wages for everyone involved, though. A lot of people eating off the taxpayer for that one arrest, so less incentive to "fix" the problem. It's only a problem to the taxpayer, and to the taxpayer, it's _worth it_ to stick it to that guy who jumped the fare even if it costs tons of money because it's unfair ( I paid, you didn't ). This is pretty fundamental human psychology.

<comment><USER22> It most certainly does not amount to good wages for the person who is in jail for not paying a $2.75 fare. Their 60 days in jail will have long-lasting implications on their livelihood for the rest of their life. There are grave "collateral consequences" we must consider. (Read [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2512920](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2512920) for more on what this looks like.)

<comment><USER23> Then they should have thought about that before they decided to commit a crime. Life is about choices and consequences, and being overly permissive with those who have no qualms about breaking the law leads to a sick society where those who do actually follow the law are the ones who suffer.

<comment><USER15> We aren't talking about the individual person here, we are talking about the macro effect of this type of enforcement. Obviously having the severe penalty did not stop this particular person from committing the crime; the question is, how many people DID it stop, and is the number of people it stopped worth the cost?

No one is trying to defend the person, just trying to reason about what is best for our society as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We should just make the subway free. $2.75 doesn't come close to covering the cost of the ride, so why add a regressive tax on what amounts to a basic need?

<comment><USER25> I like this idea but think it has some practical problems. The money needs to come from somewhere. Normally I'd say just move it to some other form of existing taxation like income tax or property taxes. However, a reasonably large portion of regular subway users are people that live in New Jersey but commute to work in New York. You'd probably need to figure out a way to get money from these people as well. Potentially this could be done with some added fees on Ferries and other transit options between New Jersey and New York but it would require some thought and planning.

<comment><USER26> > However, a reasonably large portion of regular subway users are people that > live in New Jersey but commute to work in New York. You'd probably need to > figure out a way to get money from these people as well.

One option would be to tax the employers: [https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/11/06/mountain...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/11/06/mountain- view-head-tax-measure-p-google.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It costs $500/night to jail someone in NYC? You could put them in a room at the Four Seasons for less than that.

<comment><USER28> > It costs $500/night to jail someone in NYC? You could put them in a room at > the Four Seasons for less than that.

But then there'd be no-one stopping them from leaving.

Also the minibar and room-service charges would make the Four Seasons stay far more expensive. I'm sure the jail cost includes all meals.

<comment><USER29> Hyatt with an ankle bracelet?

/s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can someone explain it to me, why in SF its treated as a minor ticket similar to overdue parking meters as apposed to NYC where people are jailed for not having a valid ticket ? Never thought NYC could be soo ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> Because it's usually fined $100, that means something else is going on.

<comment><USER30> Could you elaborate ?

<comment><USER3> I am going to guess that he's a repeated offender and didn't pay previous tickets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I was in Prague my buddies and I decided to skip out on the fare. I was very young, dumb, and wanted to look cool.

On the train the police walk around checking tickets rather than having a ticketing booth etc. We obviously got caught.

We got fined what I think was $500 each and we deserved it. I should have just paid the $2.75.

Edit: I think it was Prague it's been a really long time.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well broken windows worked didn't it? NYC went from being the most dangerous city in the US to one of the safest.

<comment><USER33> Crime in NYC did drop precipitously, but it's not clear that broken windows policing was the cause. It's been studied and debated a lot, but as far as I can tell there isn't a clear consensus. Here are some sources:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#New_York...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#New_York_City) * [https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/why-did-crime-...](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/why-did-crime-fall-in-new-york-city/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd imagine the cost of arrests and incarceration are sunk costs though.

It's not like we pay the police $2,000 for each arrest, or pay the prison $500/night per inmate.

Does anyone know if these numbers were taken by adding up the costs of running a prison and police department and dividing by the number of arrests and inmates?

If so, it's a little disingenuous to make this argument.

Also, these cases are not about a 1:1 relationship of harm to society vs. cost of justice. If you let the crimes go, you'll have more people doing it because "everybody does it".

60 days in jail does seem pretty excessive though. If imagine tons of young kids or people in a rush would make a silly mistake.

<comment><USER34> > It's not like we pay the police $2,000 for each arrest

Not in a direct sense - but civil asset forfeiture and arrest/citation quotas do incentivize individual officers to take actions that benefit their department's budget and their annual review, respectively.

> It's not like we [...] pay the prison $500/night per inmate

In the case of private prisons (which house 8% of the US prison population[0]), a per-prisoner stipend is the most popular[1] business model.

The government quite literally pays the prison company a fixed dollar amount per inmate-night, which the company then turns a profit on.

[0]: [https://reason.org/wp- content/uploads/files/comparing_correc...](https://reason.org/wp- content/uploads/files/comparing_correctional_costs.pdf)

[1]: [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062215/busin...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062215/business- model-private-prisons.asp)

<comment><USER35> I don't understand why for-profit prisons even exist. It just sets up perverse incentives and encourages unnecessary incarceration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > This doesn't include the cost of their arraignment, court staff, prosecutor > or lawyer.

Then it does seem a bit excessive.

</comment><comment><USER37> $366 per day? Something isn't right when the original cost of the 'crime' amounts to almost 11 minutes of jail time... and instead they end up serving over two months. Is it always this imbalanced?

</comment><comment><USER38> If there was no punishment, how much would it cost the city in more skipped fares?

That said, I don't think anyone actually goes to prison for a skipped fare. There are better punishments out there.

</comment><comment><USER39> Since she's debating economics: maybe jail for some scares others...enough to make back the $22K spent for them?

</comment><comment><USER40> Good. Jail for such an infraction is fucking absurd. The city should change its stupid laws. I wish it cost more, really. This is what the city government wishes to use its monopoly on violence on? Say the turnstile hopper doesn't stop then gets into a chase that ends up with either him or the cop dead. Would that be worth it? Would the city reconsider its dumbass laws then? A simple fine would be plenty.

</comment><comment><USER41> $500*60 days +$2k =$32k

<comment><USER17> The series of tweets addresses that. They are calculating it based on serving 40 days because that's how much of the sentence you will probably serve.

<comment><USER41> thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> They should just charge a $50 fine on the spot, or take a shoe.*

* Nobody wants to lose a shoe, plus it stimulates the local economy (at least the shoe stores.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it moral and right to post these divisive headlines without even the basic context of line item cost breakdown?

</comment><comment><USER44> Putting someone in jail for breaking the law isn't about costs. Besides before you know it nobody pays for their ticket and then what? This is a nice deterrent for any other sad sack who thinks he is above the rules.

<comment><USER31> Why not fine them instead?

Before you say, not everyone can afford XYZ fine. I would fully support a income based proportional fine system in the US.

What i Don't support is putting someone in jail because they can't afford a lawyer.

<comment><USER45> What do you do about people with no money?

With BART especially, you can watch the same person that jumped the gate light up a meth pipe in the back of the train car.

BART police will kick them off the train if they get caught but can't really do much else since the city doesn't really prosecute for drug offenses. If you look at the arrest records, you see the same people arrested day after day. They don't have any money.

I'd like to see a program that gives the option of jail or rehab+community service.

<comment><USER31> I like this suggestion as well. People without money can instead do community service instead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nuclear Pulse Spacecraft -- propelled to .1c by a continuous stream of exploding fission bombs - <AUTHOR> http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=679

<comment><USER2> "While they worked feverishly at overcoming the technical challenges" is an incredibly optimistic depiction of the challenges of exploding a string of 4 kiloton nuclear bombs to propel a spacecraft to orbit.

I think the nuclear lightbulb designs hold a lot more promise than the Orion design. Even the NERVA and ROVER systems seemed more viable and efficient. They too have many unsolved technical problems (how do you store the fuel while the lightbulb is not lit or what to do with engine abrasion on NERVA and ROVER) but those problems seem quite small when faced with the very idea of blasting a hundred nukes in someone else's ionosphere.

Still, an Orion launch must be something very cool.

Just my $0.02</comment>


Five Reasons the Diet Soda Myth Won't Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/upshot/diet-soda-health-myths.html <comment><USER2> There is all kinds of solid research on the detrimental effects of artificial sweeteners.

One area that comes to mind where there is _a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects is on the microbiome.

Another is glucose uptake pathways and insulin resistance.

These things aren't myths, prior to this article I'd never heard anyone suggest that possibility. The amount of research, approaching the problem from numerous angles, arriving at a similar conclusion, is hard to deny.

[https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener- microbiome...](https://neurosciencenews.com/artificial-sweetener- microbiome-9935/)

[https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/530...](https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/suppl_1/S31/5307224)

<comment><USER3> Did you even read the paper in your second link? Nothing in that review suggests "_a lot_ of redundant evidence backing up effects" on the microbiome.

Excerpt from the review:

"To our knowledge, there are no data on the potential influences of aspartame on the human gut microbiome. It is hard to understand how aspartame influences the gut microbiota because this NNS is rapidly hydrolyzed in the small intestine. In fact, even with the ingestion of very high doses of aspartame (>200 mg/kg), no aspartame is found in the blood because of its rapid breakdown (29). Upon ingestion, aspartame breaks down into residual components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol and their components, which are readily absorbed so that they do not reach the large bowel (30)"

<comment><USER2> I did read it, you maybe didn't, if you had you couldn't say "nothing in that review suggests..." with a straight face. There's quite a lot of evidence cited in that review.

Also in the paragraph directly before the one you quoted you must have skipped over this:

"Aspartame consumption increased the fasting glucose concentrations in both the standard feed pellet diet and high-fat groups independent of body composition. A metabolomics analysis showed that aspartame was rapidly metabolized and related to SCFA production, especially propionate production. Changes in the microbial composition were observed in animals that received aspartame; the total bacteria and abundance of Enterobacteriaceae and Clostridium leptum increased."

If you don't find that convincing, here's the first Google result for "aspartame microbiome": [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615743/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4615743/)

By your response I'm not sure if maybe you think I'm making this stuff up? If you're really interested you won't have to spend much time searching to find a wealth of info.

<comment><USER4> Ok that's an animal study that suggests some changes in microbiome, still need to show its applicable to humans and that the changes are meaningful to health in anyway.

The second paper doesn't make any definitive claims on health or humans either.

There are reviews of multiple blinded, randomized controlled trials showing no adverse health outcomes. Are any such meta-analyses that show there are? Animal trials at extremely and dosages coupled with some human trials suggesting (without controlling for confounding factors) possible changes in gut microbiome without demonstrating any meaningful health outcomes is significantly less convincing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just drink diet soda if you think it tastes good and drink normal soda if you think that tastes good, and don't drink soda too often in general. Constantly worrying about things like these probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal and diet soda.

<comment><USER6> > probably takes more years off your life than the difference between normal > and diet soda.

Type 2 diabetes can take a lot of years off your life.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, but heart disease is the #1 killer and stress is its biggest nemesis.

<comment><USER8> Type 2 Diabetes increses the chances of Heart strokes, kidney problems, cataracts, nerve issues etc.

<comment><USER7> Yea I think that's more of what caused the Type 2 Diabetes to begin with rather than Diabetes being the sole contributor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't care about the debate of sugar vs. artificial sweeteners - my personal hobbyhorse/trigger is the way artificial sweeteners are added to products these days that are not marketed as "diet" or sugar free, apparently because someone figured out it would save money. I don't know if it's legal to completely fail to disclose, but I've noticed it's often quite obscured or they use tricky language. For instance I saw something that said "no artificial flavoring" but had sucralose. Yeah, people will smugly say "read the ingredients", but you used to be able to rely on the rest of the writing on the package not being actively deceptive.

If there's a market for drinks with _less_ sugar, why not just _do_ that?

A few decades ago I was pretty much on board with the smug disdain some people had for the unscientific tendencies of the organic/natural foods movement, but now I have to admit it seems like companies have decided that anyone who _isn 't_ buying organic has absolutely no standards and they are going to exploit it to the hilt. Even if organic standards are mostly BS, at least they aren't regarding their customers as asking to be abused.

</comment><comment><USER10> What if the problem with sodas isn't only the sugar (variants) but the preservatives?

I mean, why do we presume the preservatives don't affect the body's ability to process the rest of the soda content, so it accumulates?

<comment><USER11> What if carbonated / acidic drink removes the fat/sugars from your tongue and make your body think you haven't eaten?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's important to remember a simple fact about artificial sugars: they're about 10 times less dense than sugar (at least the one i use, which is a combo of maltodextrin and sucralose). This means that 10g of sugar is sugar sweet equivalent of about 1g of artificial sweetener. Which means if you're switching your sweetener from sugar to artificial you're getting 10 times less sweetener! Which means, even if sugar and artificial sweeteners were equally bad for you gram for gram, you're still getting 10 times less of thus 10 times less bad for you.

<comment><USER6> > gram for gram

I have no earthly idea if these are comparable gram for gram.

<comment><USER13> Exactly - there are plenty of things I will happily eat 500 grams of, and there are a great many things in this world I should never eat even a single milligram of.

This comparison is not even close to a given.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if the claims in the article were correct, which they are not, the basic reasoning is still wrong.

The author says that we should drink diet sodas unless they are proven harmful. But the artificial sweeteners are a new artificial chemical. That means we should not drink diet sodas unless they are 1) proven safe and 2) proven to help in weight loss, neither of which even the author claims is the case.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can't see the article (pay wall). Does it speak to artificial sweeteners? How bad are the two splendas I put in my coffee everyday?

</comment><comment><USER16> I've read repeatedly (but never dug into it) that contrary to intuition, replacing sugar by artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss. My own take is that I should consume less sugar, but if I'm going to commit that particular sin, I'll use sugar and not the funny tasting alternatives.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/07/17/5372621...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/07/17/537262142/artificial-sweeteners-dont-help-people-lose-weight- review-finds)

<comment><USER17> The intuition is correct and the article mentions it, purely taking a diet and replacing sugar with sweetener will help. It's just that in the real world people don't often make such pure diet changes, so what people are often asking is 'Does the average person who tries to consume artificial sweetener over sugar successfully lose weight?'. The answer to that appears to be: Not really.

Why? Is it to do with the sweetener itself? Or is it just with food labelling? Or marketing? Much harder question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the biggest impact that diet soda has it the high salt content dehydrates you which makes you perform worse at the gym and creates this negative feedback cycle. Additionally, diet soda's cause you to retain water which will make you look softer and the scale weigh heavier. If the majority of your liquid intake is water, diet soda is just fine. I've been able to lose significant weight while drinking it. It's the carbs that kill you!

</comment><comment><USER18> Article does nothing to debunk any of the "myths" just offers suggestions as to why you might not trust any scientific study.

</comment><comment><USER19> remember folks most diet soda has no sugar but has phenylalanine to get body to produce more dopamine to want more soda..hence no weight loss</comment>


West Virginia Officials Warn Not to Use Water Following Chemical Leak [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.wchstv.com/newsroom/eyewitness/140109_22268.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm from Charleston WV and live a couple miles from where the spill took place. People stormed stores for bottled water and some even resorted to stealing to avoid getting the rationed amount. About 1/6 of the state's population doesn't have access to drinking water and many don't have the money to "take a vacation" and leave the region. Businesses can't operatorate and the economic repercussions will devistate the region. The question everyone has is how long will it last? The chemical is dispersed in the water pipes spanning 8 counties and there is no easy way to get it out. We have been angered about the lack of national attention this has received and it makes us feel like no one cares about our state.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, because this is truly an unpleasant, if not dangerous, situation, but don't more people keep a supply of water somewhere in their home? I don't really consider myself THAT well-prepared a survivalist, but I've got about 40 gallons of drinking water stored up. I would highly recommend that everybody do the same. Drinking water is vital, and so many things can interrupt your supply that you really need to look into storing several days worth.

Again - I don't mean to sound unsympathetic - I wish everyone in your area a speedy resolution to this situation.

<comment><USER2> Drinking water isn't the only consideration. People can't take showers, cook with water, or even wash their hands. It wouldn't be a problem if it was one day, but if it goes on it will make living in the area terrible. The real issue is they don't know how long the region will be effected.

<comment><USER4> In the short term, drinking water is 100 times more important than the other items.

Long term I don't know how they are going to deal with something of this magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Native West Virginian here. We have kind of a strange situation in that we are rather right-leaning politically and so many people are employed by coal and energy companies that anything that comes across as "environmentalist" is met with hostility by the general public, even though we are too often the victims of horrendous incidents such as this, as well as highly questionable business practices like fracking, mountain top removal, etc. Just Massey Energy's track record alone is pretty disturbing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_Energy#Environmental_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_Energy#Environmental_record)

And in recent memory, the Chesapeake incidents:

[http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/82EF516757FCD5DD8...](http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/82EF516757FCD5DD85257C4600814C2B)

I think a lot of people have essentially accepted things the way they are now and aren't willing to rock the boat. There are a handful of documentaries that come to mind- namely The Last Mountain, Coal Country, and Coal Rush- that are pretty difficult to watch, but I think if more people in our area saw the effects of our beloved industry they might see things differently. However, I think most end up turning a blind eye to it out of fear of unemployment.

</comment><comment><USER6> An environmental disaster like this is tragic, but in a way it's better when it happens in a publicly visible way like this instead of silently poisoning thousands of people over many years. Events like this are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the externalized costs of coal. A Harvard study estimated that coal mining and use inflicts a public health burden to the Appalachian region of roughly $75 billion per year: [http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_ful...](http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_full%20cost%20of%20coal.pdf) (page 91). That's more than the entire GDP of West Virginia.

</comment><comment><USER7> If boiling and filtering is impossible to clean, well that means their water table is screwed for decades, no?

Pretty much abandon the area or risk cancer.

"Freedom Industries" indeed.

<comment><USER8> It completely depends on the type of chemical. Your scenario imagines something like radiation. Perhaps the chemical isn't incredibly toxic and can be flushed out. If someone spilled bleach you wouldn't be able to boil or filter it out but you could dilute it to where it's safe for consumption.

<comment><USER9> City of St Albans water, mentioned in the story as safe, appears do be drawn from the Kanawha, downstream of where the Elk River flows in.

So yeah, dilution appears to be the solution (really, the problem seems to be that one treatment plant drew in a large quantity of contaminated water).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I grew up in WV. My parents are still there. _Montani Semper Liberi_

I wanted to provide some information about the chemical that was spilled, which is being reported to be 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol.

You may see it referred to in its shortened form as _MCHM_.

This chemical is used in a purification process called _froth flotation_. [1] In the case of WV, it is used in coal purification.

OSHA guidelines list this chemical as hazardous. It is harmful if swallowed, and causes skin and eye irritation. At elevated temperatures, vapor may cause irritation of eyes and respiratory tract. [2]

If you are familiar with the so-called _fire diamond_ or NFPA 704 [3][4], this chemical is listed as:

Instability/Reactivity (Yellow) 0:

Materials which in themselves are normally stable, even under fire exposure conditions, and which are not reactive with water.

Flammability (Red) 1:

Materials that must be pre-heated before ignition can occur.

Health (Blue) 2:

Materials which on intense or continued exposure could cause temporary incapacitation or possible residual injury unless prompt medical treatment is given.

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

[2] [http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wvpn/files/201401/MSD...](http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wvpn/files/201401/MSDS- MCHM_I140109214955.pdf)

[3] [https://www.google.com/search?q=nfpa+704+fire+diamond&tbm=is...](https://www.google.com/search?q=nfpa+704+fire+diamond&tbm=isch)

[4] [http://www.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/User/dnscms/pdf/broc/h...](http://www.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/User/dnscms/pdf/broc/hazmat12.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is all over the local news here.

Coincidentally, I was just listening to some talk about alternative energy [0] with some interesting arguments for solar and hydro power over coal.

Makes me wonder if we've become inured to the environmental cost/risk of coal power and processing?

Also, coal is big part of the WV economy [1]. So this would seem to have the potential for an extended impact.

First with the water problems. Second in any backlash that arises against the industry in response to the spill.

0: [http://www.fiatlux.fm/pragmatic/2](http://www.fiatlux.fm/pragmatic/2)

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_West_Virginia#Coal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_West_Virginia#Coal)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even know that coal needs to be treated with dangerous chemicals - add that to the list of problems with coal power...

<comment><USER12> Coal processing also involves leaving giant reservoirs of fly ash, which can lead to incidents such as this: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=0)

Not to mention mountain top removal mining, or any other destructive practices considered A-OK in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I lived in WV for a while. A friend of mine who still lives there posted this on her Facebook feed: green ice from the water -- [http://i.imgur.com/pzBsLRP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/pzBsLRP.jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: Try new tech, framework V/s. fix what you got - <AUTHOR> We've got this interesting situation. I see two distinct camps at work. One that wants to experiment with new frameworks/technologies to address a wide range of problems (from code quality and defect rate to security and performance issues), and another camp that wants to stop wasting time on new untested tech/frameworks and fix them with minimal changes to what we've already built.
Each camp is a mix of of smart/clueless engineers and managers.
Camp 'change' argues that its easier to leverage advancements in new tech to fix our bigger problems and fix the small ones in parallel. It accuses the other camp of being too lazy.
Camp 'dont change' argues there is no good way to estimate and limit what issues the new tech/framework will introduce. It feels its better to fix the problems with what we have by tweaking processes and educating engineers/operators. It accuses the other camp of being led off path with 'shiny' new things and that they'll jump ship at the fist sign of trouble.
A few of us engineers observing this circus began evaluating some frameworks/libraries individually. It got us to a point where we now have diverging views amongst ourselves. E.g. using existing SQL db Vs. adding Cassandra for timeseries, existing AngularJS,Polymer1.0 UI app vs new UI in React, split into 'micro' services V/s. consolidate services etc. You get where this is going.
I feel we're not the first ones to go through this but I don't know enough people to talk to about this. Its part political and part technical, I'm interested in the tech aspect, though getting an insight into the political side would be interesting. Reaching out to the wise and experienced folks on HN on whether this is a solvable problem or my time is better spent on fixable things. <comment><USER2> what does management say? can they hire someone externally to help with the architecture?

<comment><AUTHOR> Management is in denial. They 'trust' their circus animals to not set the tent on fire.

<comment><USER2> out of my depth on this sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> i feel the same.

feels better to have it out in the open at least.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter says it unintentionally misused user data for advertising - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/twitter-misused-user-data-advertising-23a334c2-f6f9-4f9f-bbc9-e1d24d05c74c.html <comment><USER2> Ugh, at least they owned up to it?</comment>


Tell HN: My recipe against procrastination - <AUTHOR> I had a history of heavy procrastination. A therapist suggested that this is panic due to the great number of tasks in my todo list. You look them all and panic "They are so many".
My recipe:
1. Split your work into tasks. They may become hundreds, but don't worry. Describe them on a paper, or in a todo app.
2. Pick ONE suitable task for the moment.
3. Write it down on a piece of paper and put it in front of the keyboard. Close the todo app or push out of sight all other papers!
4. Prepare your workstation - open the IDE/text editor with the needed files open. Open the browser on the page you'll be working on. (I'm a web dev)
5. Go for a short walk or sit down in a quiet place. Leave all communications behind. NO DISTRACTIONS!
6. Start staring at something relaxing - trees, birds, 24h nature channel
7. If there comes a thought about the chosen task - write it down on a piece of paper
8. IMPORTANT: If you start thinking about the other tasks push the thoughts aside - "They are for later, they are written down. Now back to the current task."
9. After 10-15 minutes of relaxation return to your workstation. Look at the piece of paper and start working on the task.
10. When the chosen task is done go to 2.
After finishing a task reward yourself mentally and physically. When you are in your relaxation place say to yourself "Task done - good job from me", and give yourself a treat - something you love - something sweet, cigarette or a Cuban cigar if a big project was finished.
The workstation and the place for relaxation must be two separate places - this creates different brain moods, and this is important.
I think that the quiet relaxation and pushing aside the thoughts about the other tasks are the key moments in my improvement. Now I can make up to 5-6 fruitful hours of work a day.
I hope that this will help to someone with the same problem. <comment><USER2> Appreciate you putting this out there. Forced focus, it's a good technique. Why not start a workshop?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm only two months into this regime. I want to see durable results and maybe I'll start. But my town is not big. Is there a way to make an online workshop?

<comment><USER2> Sure, but I'm wondering now if an ebook 'brought to you by todo.yt' might not be a better idea in your case. Real experience presented with a real solution. You could collect emails, let people pay what they want (as thanks) via Gumroad etc. or just give it away under CC. Or do all of those... If you want help writing, happy to look it over with you.

Really like your thinking with todo.yt. I'm between folded lists in Vim and Trello most days. TBH I could live without Trello if I just tagged each todo line effectively, but your app brings all that timetracking and priority goodness to the situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it possible to write a book about my experience?

It will be very short: "I decided to make a tool for my needs. Work. Work. Work. I liked the result and I added multiuser. Now I am struggling to find a way to show it to the world."

I will contact you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There was another point but because of 2000 char limit:

10b. If the task is too long in time or too boring you may set an egg timer for 45 to 60 minutes and make the relaxation break.</comment>


Announcing Ionic 2 Final - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ionic.io/announcing-ionic-2-0-0-final/ <comment><USER3> We used Ionic 1.x for a few projects. We found that for relatively basic, brochure-ware apps, it worked just fine. However, for some of the more complex apps, we really fought the lack of support/options in the Cordova plugin space. This, of course, is not the fault of the Ionic team, but it does create a frustrating development experience that played a large part in us abandoning it as an option.

This was also our first experience with Angular. I really wanted to like Angular, but after more than a year of development, we left it for greener pastures. I understand that Angular 2/Ionic 2 are touted as being significantly better, but while all those improvements were being made, we invested our efforts in learning and building with Swift. I can say that we are delighted with the outcome and have no real inclination to leave it for an alternative.

<comment><USER4> About to embark on a potentially large Ionic project. What were some of the issues that you had?

<comment><USER5> I am about to release my largest Ionic project to date. It is a highly dynamic data entry and reporting system for field workers. My client is able to create and publish new data entry forms and reports from the private back and angular web app that I built for them.

The lack of any kind of commercial support is real and frankly that is the largest issue that you will have to deal with. I have searched high and low for any kind of commercial support that I can offer my customer. I am it. Or somebody like me.

However, I will say that in two years of using Ionic I have never had to modify one Cordova plug-in or any native code in order to release my apps. I do mess around with the native code sometimes but usually on an exploratory mission. Other than that, my biggest issue so far has been with how quickly ionic and Cordova get updated and how quickly my code gets out of date because of that. Then when I have to update I have to make sure that nothing breaks by writing all sorts of tests or doing manual testing yada yada yada. Also getting answers from support or anybody qualified is sometimes difficult and you have to wait days or just figure out your own work around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclosure: I work on Ionic

Ionic 2 is much more performant and scales much better for app development than Ionic 1. I have yet to meet anyone who has not really enjoyed developing Ionic 2 apps. We take a tremendous amount of pride in the developer experience!

Native apps will always be a little faster but if you can get 60FPS either way, who cares? Ionic is easier to build apps with, and developing in the browser is a joy.

A huge advantage of Ionic is being able to deploy the same code base to the web as a PWA and to a phone natively as a cordova app. Soon Ionic Native will expand to support PWA and Electron, too, so it will truly be a write once run anywhere experience.

<comment><USER7> I was really very well impressed by the small size of ionic apps. It's in the order of ~3MB which is great.

But the startup times are somewhat big. I'm talking, for the simplest of applications a startup time of ~5.5 seconds in ionic 2 (the beta) vs ~2 seconds in React Native in Android.

For me, that detail has a significant impact in usability.

Any plans to work on those startup times?

<comment><USER8> Disclosure: I also work at Ionic

So start up time is something that we are very focused on at the moment. Especially on the PWA side of things, TTI (time to interactive) is exceedingly important to ensure a good user experience. We are working on a few things at the moment but most likely the first one to hit is gonna be code splitting. So with code splitting, instead of shipping just one big bundle you will be shipping smaller bundles that are lazy loaded based on routes. This means that when the app first loads only the first bundle for the first view in your app will have to be loaded, parsed etc and then the other bundles will be lazy loaded. With this setup the browser (or webview) will never have to parse and load a huge bundle all in once, it will instead only have to deal with smaller bundles. This should give a pretty big improvement as parsing javascript is slow in every browser. From my testing on a moto g each MB of JavaScript in an ideal situation takes about 2 seconds to be parsed, so reducing the amount of JavaScript the browser has to deal with is a very fast way to get better load times.

<comment><USER7> Well, these are good news. Any timeline to expect the results from this to be suitable to apply in production?

<comment><USER8> The timeline on this stuff is asap haha (:

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not long ago I was an Ionic believer, but not anymore... the lack of support for their cloud services [0] has turned many people off and signals that they don't mind leaving their users "locked".

Devs are migrating en masse to react native. I have friends in several startups leaving their jobs because they've been tasked with maintaining legacy Ionic 1.x/Angular projects, while the codebases are migrated to react native...

For hacking quick MVPs is not bad, it was even cool 2 years ago, but for serious projects starting from zero, react native is a smarter choice.

[0] [https://github.com/driftyco/ionic- cloud/issues](https://github.com/driftyco/ionic-cloud/issues)

<comment><USER10> why use the cloud though? just build on premise and use existing MDM, or App Store

<comment><USER11> Right, AFAIK the framework itself functions independently of the services, so you can drop in whatever solution you want for push notifs / analytics / MDM.

<comment><USER12> that is what we do in our organization, we don't see value on their cloud services, we see value on their framework

<comment><USER10> Bingo! for hybrid development, I don't see anything better out there than ionic.

Key point - for hybrid development. There are a lot of use cases where hybrid mobile apps are appropriate (CRUD). With ever more powerful devices, the argument for hybrid increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Way to much hate here. I run an app with ~30k users and I never get any complaints about lag or comments on the stores that reflect negative on the performance. All criticism I've received has been by my own missteps.

Ionic 2 has given me two platforms and a great development experience. The few times I've had problems they have an amazing responsive team on Slack that's helped me out right away.

<comment><USER14> I've built many apps using Ionic, and usually with good results. I think the problem is that people don't really look at their 'use case' when designing their apps. There are apps where a hybrid solution works great, and apps where is doesn't.

If you are going to build an app that requires you to display 1000 items in a scrolling list, then yeah, forget any sort of Hybrid or Cordova based app - <USER2> full native.

Similarly if you want to have complex background geo-location tracking that doesn't suck your battery dry. You can't optimise that using Cordova as the 'go between', but you have to go native.

Outside of that, Ionic/Cordova will cover you bases and let you get apps to market 20x quicker without your users realising that it is not a native app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm always afraid of investing a lot of time into this type of frameworks and then having the rug pulled from under me. Most of the time I spent learning angular ended up being a waste of time and I'm still scarred from then.

Also that logo looks familiar?

<comment><USER16> You're not wrong. I've worked with Ionic v1 a fair amount. The framework is good for mockups and prototypes but nothing more. What ends up happening, as you app grows to include notifications, deep linking, etc, is you need to rely on more and more hacky thirdparty solutions. These days I either code natively or use Xamarin.

<comment><USER17> You are wrong. I have few mobile apps, made with Ionic and Ionic 2, some have been used on warehouse as part of huge WMS (to scan items and manage whole business process of warehouse worker), some were apps for business as part of CRM (with geolocation, maps and handwritten signatures). And every time product owners were very satisfied with the result and with speed of development.

Ionic 1 had too hacky API and not great performance, but Ionic 2 is much more mature in both of these fields.

<comment><USER16> I don't believe I ever mentioned ionic v2... I don't doubt v2 brought many improvements. However you just can't beat the power of not operating in a Webview.

<comment><USER18> However, Webviews do give you a very predictable container to target. If you use something like Intel Crosswalk [1] as part of your project for Android, you can bundle a recent Chromium webview to much older devices. And Flexbox is very well suited to solve phone/phablet/tablet layout problems.

[1] [https://crosswalk-project.org/](https://crosswalk-project.org/)

<comment><USER19> Because people seemed to love 80MB Chrome runtimes being bundled with terrible Electron applications on the desktop, Crosswalk allows you to bundle 40MB of chromium for your terrible application on Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "complex" and "object oriented" does not describe any future of JavaScript that I am excited about.

<comment><USER21> I think it's around 5 years too late to prevent the complexity explosion :)

JS has been object oriented since the beginning it just has an insane prototype based inheritance hierarchy that they're increasingly trying to hide/pave over.

<comment><USER22> > just has an insane prototype based inheritance hierarchy that they're > increasingly trying to hide/pave over.

Can you elaborate more on why you think it is insane? I think it is quite elegant, and in my experience they only try to hide or pave over it because _just so many damn people_ can't get over the fact that it isn't classical object oriented

Also, for those who haven't read: [http://javascript.crockford.com/inheritance.html](http://javascript.crockford.com/inheritance.html)

<comment><USER21> the way inheritance works in JS leads to a ton of inelegant design patterns that need to be remembered and very inefficient handling of many casts because the prototype chain is literally just a linked list.

It also prevents sound encapsulation of class local variables and methods, the main point of object oriented programming in the first place.

<comment><USER22> There are many other languages that do not have multiple inheritance, or do not handle it the way you typically see in C++ or Java type languages, go being one of them, ruby another. Composition is more favored, and arguably a far better pattern regardless. I disagree with your assessment that it prevents sound encapsulation, and regardless, a better argument made against it is the fact that it is a dynamic language. In any way, there are patterns to achieve classical OO-style encapsulation, but that is not the main point of object oriented programming in any case.

<comment><USER21> My argument doesn't have anything to do with multiple inheritance. C is the only one I know of that supports multiple inheritance and it's largely considered a historical mistake (see deadly diamond of death). Javascript uses something called the prototype chain to determine InstanceOf(). It's literally a linked list, and a ton of disadvantages come with the object system being a re-purposed linked list. It's possible (and easy) to break the type of an object by corrupting the prototype chain. It's the reason you have to do hacky stuff like Array.Prototype.ForEach to make sure your code actually works in larger JS applications. It's also slow and a big reason why javascript runs around 10x slower than most JIT'ed languages. The crazy object system prevents a ton of optimizations from working.

Encapsulation isn't the "classic version" of OO. It's literally the main reason OO was created. Javascript fails to encapsulate because it doesn't support true private data members. There's patterns to achieve some sort of data safety (see [http://speakingjs.com/es5/ch17.html#private_data_for_objects](http://speakingjs.com/es5/ch17.html#private_data_for_objects)) but they all have disadvantages because it isn't built into the language, it's another hack.

Composition can be easily achieved using interfaces in most languages, another thing javascript doesn't support.

Excusing these faults to being dynamic language is like saying the model T is a nice car because "it was good for its time". Many languages before JS (including perl even) supported a more sound and convenient type system.

JS was badly designed in many ways and we are still paying the price for it today. ES6 and transpiling have made it finally worthwhile to try to develop anything significant using it which has led to the recent explosion of javascript development. I pray that EMCA continue to remedy what can be fixed in future and that Typescript catches on since it mows over much of the insanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> At the moment we are in the process of evaluating different frameworks/solutions to build a simple native App for iOS and Android. Its mostly some basic forms to build simple objects that eventually get posted to a JSON API.

What astounded me most was that nearly none of the established solutions offers a simple way to just cache these requests until when the device is online or any other simple ways to get such basic stuff working when offline/the connection is bad.

Generally speaking: In early 2017 its still way to hard to get very basic stuff on native (let alone web based) mobile apps working offline. The whole offline-first movement still has a lot of educational work to do.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure I agree with this 100%. About two years ago I had to have shoulder surgery and so couldn't go golfing with my buddies -- I ended up making a mobile app to mimick the one used by the PGA Tour where I could track all of their scores online as they played so I could still participate in the banter with my golf buddies. A big issue was the fact that I wanted the live updates but had to deal with pretty spotty connection around the course.

I ended up using Firebase and it handled that case just BEAUTIFULLY right out of the box; the data updates optimistically on the player's own device, and once a connection is established Firebase syncs it with the datastore and all other phones update accordingly.

I would say that this is some pretty sophisticated behavior that I, the developer, just used right out the box following documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been using react-native for the last year and can't say I have much positive to say about it. Honestly, just about every day we hit a sharp pain point in component layouts, broken build scripts due to RN bugs, and runtime crashes. While Ionic 2 is young, I welcome another option to the JS native space. I'm also hoping Flutter.io will get to a stable release.

<comment><USER26> Check out nativescript. It has 2 versions, one of which is angular2 based. It's pretty neat

<comment><USER25> I've looked at nativescript- it's pretty neat... although still very young. Imho, there's no native JS platform that I'd recommend for a production app yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think it is pretty _ironic_ that Ionic 2 has a complete set of components for both iOS and Material Design:

[http://ionicframework.com/docs/v2/components/#overview](http://ionicframework.com/docs/v2/components/#overview)

,while Angular 2's official material design components are still in the pre- release stage:

[https://github.com/angular/material2](https://github.com/angular/material2)

Good job on filling the gap for Angular 2.

</comment><comment><USER28> Stupid question, but Ionic is not native, or was not at least. But react- native is actually using only native APIs through Javascript. So if you want to have a native look and feel, why not go with react-native?

<comment><USER29> I don't think that's a stupid question at all. Ionic uses Cordova [1], which basically launches a browser that runs your web page as an "app". That said, Cordova does give you access to native APIs, so you still have access to Bluetooth/camera/whatever. Phone processors and browsers are getting increasingly powerful, so it's totally possible to achieve native or near- native performance in a web view-based app - assuming you properly optimize your JS and HTML. I believe Ionic provides consistent styling, so it's definitely possible to make your app look and feel like a native one.

The real win using something like Ionic is that you can build your app using web tech that works equally well on the phone or in the browser, and that your developers already know. The trade-off is that it becomes more difficult (but certainly possible) to make your app look and feel native.

React Native gives you many of those benefits, but since it compiles to actual native code you can't reuse your code for a browser app.

[1] [https://cordova.apache.com](https://cordova.apache.com)

<comment><USER28> With react-native, if you isolate your components from your logic enough, (example: use Redux), you can reuse all the logic in a react-native app, and just change the components part, which is usually not that hard, at least on the simple apps I worked on. Another advantage that react-native would have would also be to be able to have native code and react-native code in the same app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've got an app that I started way back in February 2016 using ionic 2, so I've followed the alpha and beta, it's been a long slog, but even back when I started I could tell it was worth it. I'm currently using Angular 2 for another project - it's awesome.

</comment><comment><USER31> Thank you Ionic team!

I have already built tons of business apps with Ionic 2 (beta) and really like how easy it is and how well it scales. I also really like your ionic-app- scripts which make things like AOT a breeze.

I have developed native iOS since Apple introduced apps on the iPhone and I have created some very big macOS and also Android applications natively. I think there will always be use cases that you need to do natively. However for >90% of the apps I developed (and use) Ionic 2 is perfect and has saved me a lot of time.

The beta phase has been a bit though to keep up with because of how many changes where introduced by Angular and the build infrastructure, however since RC1 or so Ionic 2 is really really nice.

I came to the realization that native development is not feasible for many business contexts when I was tasked to build an application for iOS and Android simultaneously a few years ago. It was so much work and pain to keep both apps in sync that I have decided I never want to do this again. Luckily Ionic came to the rescue :-) You will still find platform specific problems, but so far it has been relatively easy to resolve them.

Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER32> We've been developing an app since the last beta and are happy to see Ionic come of age now. Congratulations, and thanks for all the effort.

</comment><comment><USER33> it's really just for Angular2? which is overly complex for many. I'm using vue which has different similar frameworks.

<comment><USER6> No, Ionic 2 is a complete rewrite of the framework with all of the lessons learned from Ionic 1. Writing apps with Ionic 2 is an insanely great experience!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> No body mentioned but Ionic Creator[1] still supports Ionic 1. I think it is great tool to start an app from scratch but it doesn't look cool when your own tool doesn't support your own latest product.

[1]: [https://creator.ionic.io/](https://creator.ionic.io/)

<comment><USER35> Not familiar with Creator, but I'd be frustrated if I had to wait for a drag- n-drop gui editor to catch up before seeing a release in any core framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like Ionic, but not a fan of the name of "Ionic Native". I think that might confuse people with regard to parity with React Native, when it's really much different (it's a Cordova plugin wrapper)

</comment><comment><USER37> This is actually something I'm excited about. I remember trying Ionic v1 and not really enjoying it. I built some MVPs and some apps using Ionic v2 about six months ago and I found it to be a pretty great experience. It was also my first experience with TypeScript and Angular 2 and I enjoyed the experience (especially versus traditional Android development). It's a neat product and I'm excited to see how the v2 final release compares.

</comment><comment><USER38> We're huge fans (and investors in Ionic) and we recently interviewed Max Lynch about how the project went from idea to the upper echelons of the Github leaderboard [https://hackernoon.com/step-by-step-advice-how-ionic- became-...](https://hackernoon.com/step-by-step-advice-how-ionic-became-a- top-50-github-project-and-you-can-too-65088a250068)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm a big fan of the icon font released by this project too[0]. It's similar in concept to Font Awesome, but I've sometimes found it fits my needs better.

[0]: [http://ionicons.com](http://ionicons.com)

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't understand the 'final'... they're not stopping development in any way.

So, isn't it just.. Ionic 2? or maybe Ionic 2.0?

<comment> squeaky-clean > So, isn't it just.. Ionic 2? or maybe Ionic 2.0?

Final is how they signify a version is ready for production and they'll stop modifying it. Up until now they've have 6 upgrades as Ionic 2.0.0-alpha, then 11 as Ionic 2.0.0-beta, 6 as release candidate, and finally, Ionic 2.0.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What's the equivalent for desktop site development?

<comment><USER42> That would be electron.

[http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

<comment><USER43> Electron would be analogous to Cordova, which is what ionic is based on. Something like Microsoft fabric or similar, or even bootstrap would be the analogous thing for desktop.</comment></comment></comment>


Juror in Apple-Samsung Suit May Have Owned Patent Used by Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpit.com/what-juror-in-apple-samsung-suit-may-have-owned-patent-used-by-apple

<comment><USER2> Sounds to me like an engineer with that level of experience, who had navigated the patent process for his own prior patent, would know a thing or two about patents. I'm open to the possibility that there's a conflict of interest, but this bogus article says things like "I don't know if Apple uses this patent...or Samsung." That's fishing for hits by generating false controversy focused on some poor guy trying to serve as a juror.

I think this is a terrible article for demonizing some poor juror who had to put his life on hold for weeks to sit through this case. Don't blame the messenger (juror) for the broken patent system.</comment>


Ask HN: Big Data Software, What's in it? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys I keep hearing a lot about "Big Data". I have no idea what it is other than people doing sentiment analysis on Twitter, and Business Analytics Software.
Is this a niche that a freelancer could take up? If so, what are the prerequisite knowledge or credentials you need to earn?
Also what is this big data software about anyways? It seems to me just a fancy charting/graphing software. Is there an open source version of it?
Curious to learn more. <comment><USER2> Big data, in my opinion, technically should be data that's atleast 5-10 TBs. But that hasn't stopped people from calling data that's an order of magnitude smaller to be "big data".

Example of big data could involve transactions, logs, click stream, sales data, or even GPS data (say in telecom).

If you're looking for some opportunities here, a good safe bet would be Hadoop and HBase. You can treat them as open source implementations of the original Google papers on Map Reduce and Big Table respectively.

Today so many companies are realizing that they have data locked up in logs and other largely static databases that they can analyze using map reduce jobs. You can generate reports, trends, patterns and more from these analysis and can use them to guide business decisions.</comment>


The early days: How 37signals built buzz out of the gate  - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1125-the-early-days-how-37signals-built-buzz-out-of-the-gate <comment><USER2> With great anticipation did I click through to read this article ready to gather evidence to blast 37signals once again for their tired "we did it, so can you, it's simple" philosophy. Instead, what I found was a very useful blog post outlining effective guerrilla techniques to get noticed. Nice post and it shows you that it's not always about who you know.

<comment><USER3> Just a question: How is 37Signals' _"we did it, so can you, it's simple"_ any different than pg's _"we did it, so can you, it's simple"_ approach?

Is pg's approach tired as well? Actually curious because the only difference in my mind between the two in this respect is that they have slightly different definitions of "it".

<comment><USER4> They've always struck me as being pretty similar. Although I guess pg plays down the "easy" bit more than 37signals does.

Another difference: YC's business model is actually based on persuading lots of eager young folks to attempt "it", whereas 37signals ultimately doesn't give a damn whether you do or not.

Not attempting to criticise anybody here, just making observations.

<comment><USER5> Continuing that line of reasoning, that makes 37signals the more "credible" source because they're unbiased. YC has a vested financial interest in lots of young people attempting "it".

Now that doesn't have to mean it's not in your interests too ...

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, 37signals remains, for the most part, the story of one success. YC has the chance to participate in and collect experience from many.

<comment><USER7> "the story of one success" - only if you consider the company succeeding as their sole success. But another metric is to compare the number of successful products 37signals has put out. They've made a bunch of apps and most (all?) of them do very well in their respective areas (lots of paying customers!) because of the common development philosophy they share.

In other words, when it comes to their ideas on how to build stuff well (a mix of agile programming and user-centered design they call Getting Real) they put their money where their mouths are.

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 37 Signals is a great example of how it takes more than good technology to succeed. Although, I doubt it's as simple as they make it seem. However, after reading their articles, it's hard not to think, "I can do that to."

<comment><USER9> Success is never guaranteed. It'll always be hard. No matter what you do -- follow Getting Real or get $10M in VC -- you'll probably fail. That's a truth of statistics.

But the risk of failure should hardly deter you, so if you're left with "I can do that too", then that's mission accomplished for us.

<comment><USER8> Getting Real was definitely very motivating for me and changed my outlook on web development for the better. Big thanks to the team at 37Signals for putting it out there for all to learn from ... even though it cost me $20 to get it early ;).

<comment><USER10> If you liked 'Getting Real', you might also like 'Growing a Business':

<http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/4/growing-a-business>

He said many of the same things 20 years before 'Getting Real', and as an added bonus, you get a _real_ paper book for nearly half of what Getting Real cost you. Ask tptacek, he seems to have enjoyed the book:-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Evernote Has Completed A $100 Million Round At A $1 Billion Valuation  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-has-completed-a-100-million-round-at-a-1-billion-valuation-led-by-meritech-2012-4?op=1 <comment><USER2> TC reporting that deal is in the works, not done.

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/evernote-1-billion/>

</comment><comment><USER3> If this doesn't scream "Bubble!" I don't know what does. These valuations are getting nutty.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess, billion for Evernote is less "bubblish" than a billion for Instagram.</comment></comment>


To Avoid Shutdown, Torrent Site Will Host Servers on Flying Drones - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bays-attacks-censorship-with-server-drones-120318/

<comment><USER2> This is like broadsheet newspapers all over again. PR release provides most if not all of the content of an article.

"Previous discussion": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3721198>

</comment><comment><USER3> It is so easy to shut these down without making the perpetrator easily known that the idea is ridiculous. If Iran can commandeer a US military drone, I think that this system is a waste of money.

\- An EMP would wipe-out unprotected electronics easily

\- Targeted energy weapons could fry sensors or the whole ship \- The frequencies it uses can be jammed

\- A Barrett .50, on the ground or out of a helicopter, could vaporize one of these

\- A seemingly normal airplane could "accidentally" ram it

\- A similar airplane could use a net and capture it, leaving no evidence

\- Hell, if it flies high enough, its onboard GPS device might self-deactivate due to US law.

<comment><USER4> Assuming these suggestions would be possible, who will condone wasting a lot of military resources on this?

I think though the big picture is that if these are so ubiquitous and easily deployable, then using one of these tactics to take one down is a waste of time and resources. Imagine detonating an EMP bomb 5 miles into the air to kill the surrounding drones (ignoring the possible backlash if an airplane or something else gets caught in the blast and causes an accident), only to have 10 more drones pop back up.

This is all assuming of course that this idea can work.

<comment><USER5> >only to have 10 more drones pop back up

This only works if TPB has significantly more money than every government and commercial concern that would like to take them offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> had to check my calender to see if it was April fool's day.

</comment><comment><USER7> To avoid shutdown, torrent site will host servers on flying drones only to be shutdown by government with predator drones?

<comment><USER8> Newswire: US Blows Up Another Torrent Site

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me a single storm might be capable of bringing down most all of these drones, wouldn't it? I wonder how they plan to account for this unless they plan to put them at extremely high altitudes.

</comment><comment><USER10> What a joke. These drones would still have to connect to the internet somehow...you would need radio transmitters on the ground, which would totally defeat the purpose of the drones.

<comment><USER11> > What a joke. These drones would still have to connect to the internet > somehow...

Not really, it's local area intranet. You only need a one-time handshake to connect to the public DHT peer networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They could outfit the drones with weaponry and have them do aerial battle with the US air force

</comment><comment><USER13> How is being shot down better than being shut down?

</comment><comment><USER14> We'll build a fort out back and eat candy for dinner every night, it'll be great.</comment>


Show HN: Jobagon, the one page for managing your job search - <AUTHOR> https://jobagon.com/?s=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Introducing Jobagon, the one page for organizing your job search!

If you're looking for a job, you should definitely organize your search, and now you can use Jobagon for that purpose. Job seekers who organize their search are likely to explore more jobs, be more confident in their search, and ultimately find a better job and even negotiate for better compensation. (I've tried both applying haphazardly vs planning my search throughout my career, and have watched friends do the same, and have seen the difference it makes first hand!)

What makes Jobagon better than your basic spreadsheet is that it's built for job seekers. This means it has features like status tracking (unapplied, applied, phone screen, onsite interview, etc), 1-5 star ratings, notes (have you tried taking notes in a spreadsheet? - the tiny cell UI makes it so hard!), etc. It also imports company data when it can, like the size of the company, headquarters location, and funding. Finally, Jobagon provides quick links for you, such as company links to Glassdoor, Crunchbase, or Paysa for compensation data.

Try it out if you're looking for a job!</comment>


MIT Is Pouring Resources into Commercializing Fusion Power - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-commercializing-fusion-power <comment><USER2> We're working on that at FusionAuth.io too. ;)</comment>


ASK HN: How to deal with journalists? - <AUTHOR>

Last week I mentioned in a comment on here that I was going to change the world by getting Rick Astley an award from MTV for Best Act Ever.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323248
Well, in the last week the site has gone viral. I've had over 120k unique visitors (up until yesterday) all supporting a unifying idea (which to me is the most amazing thing about the whole thing, that so many people have come together to collaborate on the project).
So far, Rick has gotten the lions share of the votes (according to an insider at MTV), we (the Internet) managed to get him invited to the event within 5 hours even though he wasn't invited in the first place. It's been truly amazing.
I've also done a couple interviews with the likes of Wired, the LA Times, The Age here in Aus and now Channel 7 here in Australia want me on TV. There are a couple more inteviews in the works right now.
Basically, it's moving at a blistering pace (from concept at 6am to article on Wired in less than a week) and I'm looking for any tips anyone has on how to deal with all the media attention from a hackers pov?
Cheers <comment><USER2> As a reporter, myself, most of these people are looking for two to three sentences from you, max. Some might print more, but basically, they're looking for sound bites.

The shorter and sweeter you can condense your message, the more you can control it when you recite it.

Also: make sure you get to meet Rick Astley and go to the MTV awards, yourself! It won't last, so get something out of it now!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really don't want it to last, I just want to get the award for the man and leave it at that (it would make an excellent "I once did..." type story).

I'm quite glad that there is an expiration date on this whole thing to be honest.

I'm still thinking about going to the awards, but it could be pricey for a 1 night thing (going to cost me in the vicinity of $5k AUD)

But thanks, short, sweet and mostly scripted - I can do that.

<comment><USER3> _"... I'm still thinking about going to the awards, but it could be pricey for a 1 night thing (going to cost me in the vicinity of $5k AUD) ..."_

5K would support a lot of development. Don't go, save the money and write a paper on _"how"_ social systems can be hacked. As for appearing on tv, MTV who cares? Rick who?

<comment><AUTHOR> you make some good points, although given the way the aussie dollar is crashing, $5k might be like $10.50 USD in a couple weeks..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't expect it to last. Don't expect special treatment. But if you can consistently provide a service or genuine analysis then let the world come to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The way I see it is I'm providing a launching point for a concerted, collaborative effort.

I figured Rick wouldn't have had a chance otherwise - which is pretty evident given he wasn't actually invited until I got people to make a stink by emailing PR departments of show sponsors and the show's producer directly.

Only took 5 hours to get him the invite when that started happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure why you're asking how to deal with the media when you already have? It's okay to just be blatant that you really want to relish your success. It obviously created a bit of a stir.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I'm just finding it overwhelming given I started it as a hobby I guess.

One of the commenter's above mentioned short and scripted - seems obvious unless you've got so much going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Think of snappy, quotable 1 liners and carry yourself very well/polished.</comment>


Ask HN: what is the best way to know why users leave my website? - <AUTHOR>

Google Analytics tells me 70% of visitors leave the site after seeing the first page. And most of them stay less than 10 seconds!
What is the best way to understand why they are leaving?
I am thinking of providing a way to give a quick feedback. I saw a great 'live comment box' service some time ago but cannot find it again. <comment><USER2> When I worked on ultimatecoupons.com, we wanted users to leave within a few seconds, because they clicked affiliate links. Maybe they got the info they needed in 10 seconds?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am selling web design services. My goal is to get them to order a website which is not happening.

<comment><USER2> Having been a freelance web designer myself, I can say that in my experience, people don't just click and buy web design services. If you are selling pre- made websites, your prices better compete with the cheap WordPress template sites (<$50). If users see a higher price, they'll bail. If you are selling something custom, users will bail when they don't see a phone number or when they see you aren't local to them (they want to meet you in person to discuss the details).

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting feedback. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Without an address it is hard to tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it does not help, but I prefer not to share the address.

I wanted to see if there are some general advice; what others are doing that works.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best framework for parsing thousands of feeds? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently working on what I hope will be a startup (lean, bootstrapped etc) and I am dealing with thousands of feeds.
Presently I am batching 5-10 feeds to download in batches of threads from Ruby using FeedZirra (https://github.com/pauldix/feedzirra) and then parse.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and done something particularly innovative they care to share?  I plan on ranking feeds by frequency of updates after some analysis, but in the mean time I am resigned to pulling everything down in as quick a time as possible.
I would love to use Superfeedr for this, but cost is prohibitive for me and I do not want to stump up the cash to pay for the credits whilst in development (although I could move to this in the future).
Not so bothered about the technology/language - this is a hodgepodge of Ruby, Ramaze, MySQL, Solr and good old file system storage.
Advanced thanks and appreciation of any and all comments! <comment><USER2> You might want to take a look at Samuel Clay's NewsBlur project: <https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur> and see how he handles this problem.

<comment><USER3> As others have said, task queues (look into Celery, which is in Python), Mark Pilgrim's feedparser, and make sure you don't fetch more often than you need to. A few thousand feeds is fine, but if you grow in the hundreds of thousands of feeds, if you want to update them more than once a day, you're going to have to pass in the cache controls (etags and last-modified dates). Even then, 50,000+ feeds is straining the limits of a single DB.

If you were to reach that point, then I recommend moving to a nosql db (like mongo, which is what I use for NewsBlur), and sharding it so you can read/write to more feeds without a problem. All of your analysis will have to be in a MapReduce, so it can be sent to different shards, but that's not too difficult to learn how to do. NewsBlur has a few examples of how to do this.

I used Python, but Ruby would also be a fine choice. Although I'm not sure what Ruby libraries you would use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out <http://www.feedparser.org/>. It's for python and pretty robust, handles Etags and Last-Modified headers. Well documented and loads of unit tests.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've done my fair share of it, and while I don't know that we ultimately tackled it 100%, there were plenty of gotchas.

1) Respect etags / last_updated tags. This will save you a ton of bandwidth, for one, and keep you from getting banned by the feeds you're pulling. It's important. What I ended up doing was a different method for new feeds vs. ones I already knew about -- on the initial parse (and subsequent ones too), I would check for an etag or last_modified indicator. If I can't detect anything, I set a poll frequency to something like a half an hour. This kept me from slamming servers that didn't properly implement etags, while I could check headers on the ones that did more frequently.

2) Hang on to your sockets. Opening / closing sockets is expensive for this particular task. What ended up working for us was queueing entries and using the same urllib handle for as many as needed polling at a time. Otherwise, we were flooding the box with open sockets.

3) Use a task queue. My environment was Python, so I had the beautiful Rabbit and Celery to work with. Never ended up having to scale, but the intention was that using a distributed task queue, it was built such that we could just add other nodes to do the fetching tasks if we needed to.</comment>


Engineer who attended cybersecurity event contracts coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/engineer-who-attended-cybersecurity-event-contracts-coronavirus <comment><USER3> As an Italian, I really hoped the horror stories that are coming out of Italy right now could help raise awareness of how things could look like when a government reacts too late to this threat.

However, it seems every major country is sadly going down the same path: [https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237119688578138112](https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237119688578138112) .

I hope you won't have to be as scared as I currently am for my parents. My dad is in one of the categories that has low priority for an ICU bed. Older than 65 and diabetic. If he gets sick and require an ICU chances are he'll die because medics, rightly so, will choose someone with better survival chances.

<comment><USER4> "will choose someone with better survival chances."

How does this differ from the death panels that used to be brought up in the US? Serious question as I didn't follow politics too much when I was younger.

<comment><USER5> It's called 'triage'. It's what they do _anywhere_ , including the US, when there are too many casualties to deal with.

And it's the doctors deciding based on who is most likely to pull through if they get care, not bureaucrats.

<comment><USER6> Normal triage is when you prioritize the most seriously injured patients so they don't die waiting for treatment. That's what hospitals typically do.

In a mass casualty event, hospitals engage in _reverse triage_ which optimizes for throughput. They prioritize cases that can be discharged quickly so that they can treat as many people as possible. This means they'll label the most serious cases "expectant" and let them die. After all, it's better to save two or three easier people than to squander limited resources on one person who is unlikely to survive.

It is _extremely_ rare for hospitals in the US to use reverse triage. I think the most recent time was during Katrina. The stories of that are not pretty.[1]

1\. [https://www.newsweek.com/vindicated-katrina-doc-tells-her- st...](https://www.newsweek.com/vindicated-katrina-doc-tells-her-story-99333)

<comment><USER5> Yes, that sounds accurate. I am not super familiar with all the terms, as I guess is evident.

The second thing is what's happening in a few hospitals in Italy right now and it's gut wrenching for everyone. The staff involved are human too and already stressed and to have to make those kinds of calls is awful.

So let's please _cancel everything_ :

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronaviru...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus- cancel-everything/607675/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so sad, I really hope he pulls through.

My office is a couple of blocks away from Moscone and I was pretty surprised by the fact that RSA didn't cancel. It seemed clear at the time that the spread wasn't going to be contained and getting a bunch of people to fly in from all over the world to sit in cramped auditoriums and shake hands with one another was a really bad idea.

All of the restaurants, streets, and coffee shops around the conference center were packed that week, and I fear that it will have made a material contribution to the speed with which this virus will have spread.

</comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, CONEXPOAGG is on with 130,000 attendees:

[https://twitter.com/LasVegasLocally/status/12371489198988369...](https://twitter.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1237148919898836994)

<comment><USER9> >Take THAT, coronavirus! :P

It's really hard at this point not to feel like people deserve what's coming. The vast majority of regular Joes still don't care and think I'm crazy for simply telling them to be responsible and buy some non perishable goods.

Meanwhile Mecca is shut down, Italy instituted a Nationwide lockdown overnight, UK hospitals are running out of capacity, China shut down it's entire industry for two months, Independent reports Trump admin may be considering declaring a Nationwide state of emergency...I'm losing track of all the clear, obvious evidence of imminently approaching danger from literally all over the world.

<comment><USER10> It seems pretty clear at this point that there's not going to be a shortage of nonperishable goods. Everywhere that's been hit by coronavirus, food's still available and stores are still open - the only severe shortage so far has been ICU beds. People seem more receptive (although still not universally receptive) to more helpful advice like "start washing your hands a lot more" or "don't go to any big events".

<comment><USER9> If there is an outbreak, you want to avoid going to places like stores - <USER2> just for yourself but to minimize your chances of contracting the virus and exposing others. It's the socially responsible thing to do.

<comment><USER11> I get almost all of my non-perishable items with Amazon and Amazon Fresh (left at my door without human interaction).

Not sure how much safer that is, but I imagine it's less exposure in total, if I'm careful about hand-washing.

<comment><USER12> Delivered by a robot? or minimum wage coughing worker?

<comment><USER10> It's about risk mitigation. It's not 100% guaranteed physically impossible to pick up the virus from a delivery package, but it's a very low risk, much lower than other infection vectors most people will be exposed to. Unless you're planning to hermetically seal yourself into your home for the next 8 weeks, the risk is probably so low it's not worth thinking about.

<comment><USER12> >Unless you're planning to hermetically seal yourself into your home for the next 8 weeks

Way ahead of you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is breathtaking that conferences organized and attended by affluent tech employees are not being canceled when conferences like SXSW and ComicCon __are being canceled __.

It hurts the people behind SXSW and Comiccon much more to cancel their events but they did it anyways. Is our industry really so much more unethical than average?

<comment><USER14> Austin pulled their permit; they were left with no choice (SXSW)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Headline just came across that there is a 2nd confirmed attendee...

</comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested in donating, here's the GoFundMe page setup to help the family of the engineer from Connecticut mentioned in the story:

[https://www.gofundme.com/f/xpcwgy-conquering- covid19](https://www.gofundme.com/f/xpcwgy-conquering-covid19)

</comment><comment><USER16> The one year DEFCON might really get cancelled

<comment><USER17> You didn't hear? DEFCON is cancelled. ;-)

<comment><USER18> Let's play "spot the fed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure I need a tinfoil hat at this point to imply that the people who are supposed to mitigate the effects of this pandemic have no objective quantification of how pervasive the spread of this disease is already.

I'd be willing to wager that if there was a good enough historic and near enough to realtime dataset of individuals entering the ER with pneumonia, and this disease is actually atypical for the season: that the ramp actually started more than a month ago in some regions.

Although I do wonder if the necessity of some pre-existing condition to perpetuate the development of the disease might present some type of choke in the significance of the anomalous nature of the thing..

Anyone know of any dataset like this? It would be really interesting to consider.

<comment><USER20> The Seattle Flu Study collects sample from people in the community, even before they are sick. Those samples will now be retested to look for this new coronavirus [https://seattleflu.org/updates](https://seattleflu.org/updates)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I'm not entirely sure this is interesting. The media seems overly concerned with 'COVID-19' specifically and I'm sure the backers of this project like to see relevant keywords, but I think in terms of an outbreak it would be more useful to consider specifically how this has immediately contributed to deviance from normal.

"... we've found 19 cases of covid-19 in [insert place]", or "35 deaths from coronavirus" deprived of context has nearly no utility.</comment></comment></comment>