People disregard security warnings on computers because they come at bad times - <AUTHOR> https://news.byu.edu/news/most-people-disregard-security-warnings-when-they-pop-our-computer-screen-why-they-come-bad <comment><USER2> This is fascinating research! It's one of those things that seems obvious in retrospect, but if it was obvious, why has nobody addressed it before?

I have to say, though, the example security alert they show looks like spam to me. I'm not a regular user of Chrome, so maybe that's how they all look, but it looks like it's trying to sell me some seedy 3rd party tool that will "clean up" my settings while really installing malware to show me more ads.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not a regular user of Chrome, so maybe that's how they all look

Interestingly, that's an exact replica of the real Chrome Cleanup Tool that was/is in use when we ran the research (I'm a coauthor). The news article only reports overarching "did they heed the warning" stats, but in the published paper we actually didn't care whether they heeded it or not. We cared how much they deliberated over their decision before making a choice. We measured deliberation, or attention, via mouse cursor movement tracking. For example, straight-line trajectories towards the dismiss button indicate less cognitive attention than do less-than-straight-line trajectories (wavering, hover time, click latency, etc.). If someone deliberated for a long time, they might decide in the end that they thought it was spam. But at least they deliberated instead of making an automatic, hasty decision! Users were more likely to show signs of deliberation when the prompts were shown at low-interference times than they were at high-interference times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting.

I can't imagine that I'm alone in this, but when I use the computer, I'm usually trying to get something done. Now, I realize that my security systems are often trying to help keep me from doing something foolish, but much like software updates, I'm not interested in taking my off of the task at hand.

I'm not sure how the software is supposed to wait until after I've done something stupid, but I agree that I would be more available (attention-wise) to take note of it afterwards.

<comment><USER5> They could have passive indicators, like the warning lights in a car. You aren't supposed to stop driving the second they come on, yet they're persistent enough that you don't forget.

Chrome updates seem to be doing this lately, it indicates there is an update (and it's already been downloaded) and that you need to restart.

Windows on the other hand is in your face when you don't want it to be (from annoying dialog to attempting to restart itself), but then after you dismiss the dialog it gets hidden in the notification tray. It expects you to remember.

I wonder if it would be better to follow the chrome/car approach and have something like a red windows menu button.

<comment><USER4> That sounds a lot better than their dark patterns tricking my distracted self into accidentally OK-ing an upgrade to Windows 10!

<comment><USER5> I actually have the opposite problem. Windows 7 updates that refuse to install so I can't upgrade to windows 10. I think it's related to when I installed silverlight (for netflix or something) which decided then decided that my OEM copy of windows was pirated.

Shit like that has me eyeing up a return to ubuntu.

<comment><USER4> I hear you. I spend probably half of my time in a Unix-ey dev environment, and way too much of the other half in Microsoft Office. When I tried running Windows in a VM on RHEL (maybe it was Fedora) and then Ubuntu or Fedora in a VM on Windows, I just found that Linux played nicer in the guest VM than Windows did, so I still find myself with a Windows host. But, I tell you: if they ever make MS Excel work nicely on Linux - I'm done with Windows! :-)

<comment><USER5> I had that experience installing docker recently, the home edition of windows 10 doesn't support it properly because of arbitrary feature limitations.

Generally I stick with windows for work related activities, but with .net and soon sql server being cross platform and my favorite games already there I don't have much of a reason to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So do requests to install updates...

</comment><comment><USER7> Are people who receive warnings from the chrome cleanup tool representative of people in general? It seems to me they've preselected for a high risk population.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to redo this study with multiple designs for the dialog box, because as others pointed out, the one pictured in the article looks like sketchy spam (although that doesn't invalidate the claim that people disreguard the dialog when it comes at a bad time if, for a given design, there is a difference in click rate).

</comment><comment><USER9> Just as people catch overly-generic exceptions because they don't want to stop to think about exceptions when they're righting the normal code path. Thus we have one of the tragic failures of Java's checked exception mechanism: it fights against human instinct rather than complimenting it.

</comment><comment><USER10> As with many UI/UX failures, this one has a long pedigree. A Greek interface analyst some years back identified the canonical case: [http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/35/aesops-fables/375/the-boy- who-c...](http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/35/aesops-fables/375/the-boy-who-cried- wolf/)

I'm a long-time computer professional, I've used systems for decades. I've got a security mindset. Which is to say, I'm the furthest thing from a typical user.

 _I consistently dismiss and get rid of security alerts._

There are a whole host of problems with the general process of _conveying information to people in a method likely to result in the desired action_. It is a very broad and general problem. It ties into various areas of alerting, alerts overload, cognitive processing, psychological biases (of both users and developers), and more.

Among the elements:

1\. Users are generally trying to do something. Something _other_ than what the developer is trying to alert them of.

2\. Users are often trying to do _several_ things. The more so with mobile computing. Hopefully they're not operating heavy machinery (lawn mowers, cars, aircraft), _but that happens._

3\. The local user environment is often hostile. _Never underestimate the hostility of the operating environment._ [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/ef662JsTwbGM_zH1s8qGZg](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/ef662JsTwbGM_zH1s8qGZg)

4\. The user, not some remote developer or site, is in ultimate control over their system. Perhaps not _perfect_ control, but control.

5\. _Systems are insanely shitty at preserving user state._ And pretty much always have been. _Especially_ GUIs. In my physical office, items remain where I leave them. Though the appearance may seem chaotic to others, _it has a logic to me_ , even if that's only happenstance and temporary. _Things moved, even only slightly, are maddening._

Our desktops often have little or no respect for our organisation. They don't have sufficient space, they don't retain order. File managers reorder files, desktops reorder windows and icons. Applications, closed, don't restore to original state.

Curiously, it's limited and simple systems which tend to fare far better. Commandline and console tools don't have this state to be interferred with. Directory listings don't re-order themselves spontaneously. Screen, or tmux, or vim, or emacs sessions are surprisingly effective at retaining state. The old PalmOS didn't afford a great many capabilities, _but those it did it afforded well_. Android, by contrast, fares far worse, and a constant frustration is loss of content-in-process edited in a browser session.

The upshot: _users hate restarting or updating systems, because everything changes, and systems don 't respect user state._

So even _if_ an update could be run quickly and effectively, it's avoided.

6\. Systems don't provide an option for rescheduling maintenance work for a truly opportune time. Office cleaners don't work during core business hours. Maintenance work is, where possible, scheduled for off-peak hours or days. Our computers don't generally follow these practices, _if only because the maintenance processes themselves aren 't self-contained_. User prompts or queries (often utterly meaningless) need to be addressed. Updates cannot happen in a single contained session. Multiple reboots and restarts occur.

7\. Vendors don't limit system security updates to system security changes. In far too many instances, other changes are piggybacked in -- crapware installations, _feature removals_ , and more, which past experience has often shown _cannot be effectively rolled back._

This gets _directly_ to the fable I started this with and its message: trust is a very, very fragile commodity, and abused is lost often forever. _Do not fuck with your users ' trust, you will die._ Maybe not quickly, and often only slowly and painfully.

8\. Programmers' and users' priorities for alerts differ hugely. A programmer's primary concern is covering their own ass -- not failing to alert for something which might possibly go wrong. A user's concern is _getting their job done_ and _being alerted if the building is on fire_. For pretty much anything else, _they simply do not care, nor should they_. Psychological limits on attention, and practical limits on expertise, mean that _querying_ users for actions is almost always wrong. _Do the right thing, do it without fucking with what the user 's activity, do it without fucking with the user's state._

I've written previously on alerms and alerting in hospital and Google settings:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1x0p1b/npr_sil...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1x0p1b/npr_silencing_hospital_alarms_results_in_better/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2j9xri/alertin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2j9xri/alerting_response_google_site_reliability/)

Repacking this, what _should_ alerts do?

1\. If an action is harmful, _disable it._

2\. If it's not possible to tell if an action is harmful or not _figure out what the underlying threat is and fix the flaw exposing it._

3\. Create stateless systems -- operating systems, applications, etc., should simply _revert to previous state when respawned, without user action._ (A "wipe slate" feature might also be useful, though think through that.) This calls for a pretty solid re-think of just what applications and environments are.

4\. _Schedule maintenance for times the user isn 't actively using the system._ The only exception is for maintenance which can occur without violating user space.

5\. _Do not overload security and bugfix updates._ The Windows 10 forced migration is a key instance of this. Virtually any carrier- or vendor-based smartphone or tablet update likewise. There are reasons I have bought my last Android device. Samsung and Google have both violated my trust repeatedly.

<comment><USER11> > 7\. Vendors don't limit system security updates to system security changes. > In far too many instances, other changes are piggybacked in -- crapware > installations, feature removals, and more, which past experience has often > shown cannot be effectively rolled back.

Hi Sony, that would be you, wouldn't it?

I was a living billboard for Sony Z series until they decided to push ads (Amazon shopping link) at me that I couldn't figure out how to remove.

Edit: no so much about the annoyance but the fact that it shows exactly how little they care about even flagship phone owners.</comment></comment>


Subjot: Reverse Google+? Twitter meets Quora? Let's see where this goes.  - <AUTHOR> http://sjot.it/puVvdZ

<comment><USER2> It amusingly says "We ask for a Twitter or Facebook account to help find your friends on Subjot. We'll never post to Twitter without your permission".

So it will post to Facebook without your permission?

<comment><USER3> oh good catch... we'll fix that because no we will not post to FB without your permission.

<comment><USER3> and we now fixed this on staging and it will go out with our next code push.

<comment><USER4> Good. Almost scared me away from trying out your service. I'm glad I read this comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> There was some talk about the need for this on Google Plus: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080274-264/hashtag- creat...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080274-264/hashtag-creator- brings-his-idea-to-google/)

It is good to see that somebody made an implementation for this, but it might be hard to get people to post information to this service instead of/in addition to Google+/Twitter.

<comment><USER3> It's still early days for us but we're seeing pretty good engagement and retention. Even though people sometimes describe it in terms of Twitter, I actually think its something very different. Subjot is more a discussion and conversation platform and I think its more accurately described as a new kind of forum (its topical and has comments).

So as Subjot's cofounder, I still love Twitter and plan to continue to use it to broadcast my thoughts... particularly ones I'm not looking to have a conversation about.

<comment><USER5> Twitter confuses the hell out of me when people are conversing, so you may be onto something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm pretty happy to see mutations and variations like Subjot, and, yes, even Heello to appear; Twitter seems to have become too large to do a lot of experimentation themselves (not surprising: every change of the fundamental format would have massive ramifications).

In addition to "substreams" (probably the defining feature) & comments, Subjot interestingly keeps a posting length limit (250 characters).

As Google+ demonstrates (IMVHO, of course), _some_ limit actually is a good thing in terms of scannability, "follow cost" &c.

Those newspaper folks didn't invent the lead for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand why apps make twitter and facebook as the only gatekeepers. Why not have an independent signup?

<comment><USER3> We initially had independent sign up as an option and probably will do that again in the future.

The reason we ditched it, is because Subjot is a network effect product. It's WAY better if you can find some friends already using it, which was far more likely for a user if they signed in with Twitter/FB rather than had the option to do that later in the process.

Subjot is still small and in "private beta" in the true sense of the word (we didn't expect the internet to find us yet) so you may still not have any friends using it but some people do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Subjot solves the one problem everyone hates when following, circling, or friending people you enojoy. There is no longer the "Hey everyone look how cute my dog is" syndrome. Best of luck to Chris Carella and everyone at Subjot!

</comment><comment><USER9> One day with Subjot and I am really impressed. Has a nice feel and fits in nicely between my Twitter and Google+ postings.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a looking for a social network which would let me tweet longer post (don't want to tweet longer via an isolated blog). Google+ does not and I'm already starting to hate Google+ (out of protest for their naming policy).

<comment><USER3> You can create 250 character jots on Subjot and post them to Twitter and Facebook. There is also a bookmarklet that lets you share to Subjot/Twitter/Facebook from anywhere on the web.

<comment><USER10> I'm actually not following what Subjot does (can't understand via the text blurb) and I'm not enthusiastic about logging in on any new service via Facebook/Twitter. So I'll wait for now.

<comment><USER3> Louis Gray had a nice post about Subjot yesterday if you are interested in hearing it from someone else's perspective. [http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/08/subjot-subject-based- shari...](http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/08/subjot-subject-based-sharing-to- help.html)

<comment><USER10> Thx. Well, one thing is common here that I too have a lot to say on many topics and one common denominator (either Facebook or Twitter or whatever) is not a suitable choice (hence I use different platforms for different topics but I know its not totally effective).

It's an ideal concept to sort various different interests of a single person interest into separate containers based on target audience. I think Google+ came close but their naming policy sucks. I wish they'd allow different identity/per-Circle, which could help resolve this issue. But in perspective, I should be able to target my audience based on their interest as I know best and vice-versa. Twitter is totally ineffective here to most degree.

<comment><USER3> I love your comment. I have been studying identity and the internet for years. Subjot doesn't solve the problem of easily posting from different identities but I do promise to respect people's identity and have internet friendly policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love Subjot. Much better than Twitter because there is less 'noise'

<comment><USER12> There's only so much noise on Twitter as you opt-in to. You don't have to follow a bunch of people on either service.

<comment><USER3> One of the reasons I created Subjot was because I wanted to share even more. On Twitter if I don't post about tech or nyc tech I lose followers but I have so many more interests than tech. I wanted to post about music, football, street art etc, without spamming people who only care about my posts in tech.</comment></comment></comment>


How 2 M.T.A. Decisions Pushed the Subway into Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subway-crisis-mta-decisions-signals-rules.html <comment><USER2> > After a 1995 collision of two trains on the Williamsburg Bridge killed a > train operator and injured more than 50

Overreaction to safety incidents and inability to do cost-benefit analysis cripple American transit systems. DC's Metro, for example, was designed for trains to be driven automatically ("ATO"). In fact, they operated in automatic mode for _decades_ , since the system was built in the 1970s. But in 2009, after nine people were killed in a collision, the system was disabled, and will remain disabled indefinitely.[1]

The result of disabling ATO is that what was previously a very smoothly running system has become a disaster, with human operators lurching into stations, then lurching some more to place the train correctly relative to the platform. Almost a million riders inconvenienced every day for a decade, just to avert recurrence of an incident that resulted in a handful of deaths in 30 years of operation.

[1] [https://ggwash.org/view/62992/metro-kicks-the-automatic- trai...](https://ggwash.org/view/62992/metro-kicks-the-automatic-train- operation-can-farther-down-the-road).

<comment><USER3> I hate the driver who pens the L line going to Brooklyn from Manhattan. He speeds way too much and then breaks way too hard. I have seen passenger fall because of it time and again. If we can't get rid of the union workers, I would rather have MTA pay these guys wages to sit at home and replace them with computer-driven subway.

<comment><USER4> I've never been bothered by that (and as others point out, the L is automated, anyway). What _I 'd_ like to know is why, when the L reaches the 8th Ave stop in Manhattan, the operator waits 10 seconds after coming to a full stop before opening the doors. The train has already stopped, so this seems unnecessary.

There's also this weird thing where, while the train is sitting there waiting to return the opposite way back to Brooklyn, they close all the subway doors except one in each carriage. It doesn't prevent people from getting on.

<comment><USER5> They do this at every terminal. I have no idea why.

<comment><USER4> I found an answer here [1], via a Reddit thread [2] (where the answers are apparently gone):

        I won't go into details, but if the conductor wants to exit
        the train and leave the doors open at the terminal, he needs
        to walk to the next car at the last stop in order to open
        the doors, which is why there's a short delay before they
        open. If the doors open immediately at the last stop, then
        it means the train is either going to go to the yard, or the
        crew is going to manually key open one door per car (which
        is only done if the train is going to sit there for at least
        10 minutes, and helps the air comfort system).

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.com/mta-worker-goes-underground-share- sub...](http://www.ibtimes.com/mta-worker-goes-underground-share-subway- secrets-reddit-top-10-reveals-324984)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kx5fa/iama_new_york_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kx5fa/iama_new_york_city_transit_subway_conductor_ama/)

<comment><USER5> Very interesting. I definitely always hear the conductor moving between cars at the last stop but I never connected that to being why the doors can't be opened.

I think it's funny that the train's computer knows it's the last stop and announces that fact to the passengers... but the conductor has to manually override some sort of system before he or she can exit the train.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had to read a little bit to find the _real_ reason - combine faulty signals which trigger over-speed warnings when they shouldn't — with the following...

"Train operators face steep penalties after a number of instances of tripping a signal, like losing vacation days or being forced into early retirement."

That's a recipe for exactly the problem they are seeing. Fix the signals. Fix the policy. It will fix the problem.

But I also suspect this whole thing is much more intentional than we are being led to believe — it's actually intentional policies which have led to _expected_ slowdowns in a jaded attempt to boost funding. The whole narrative around overcrowding has collapsed. The narrative around underfunding is also collapsing. But I'm not sure the other shoe (proof that this was a charade to increase funding) has dropped quite yet.

<comment><USER7> We live in a society where all the actors in the system need to virtue signal about how much they care about safety, usefulness of the system be damned. That's why the draconian speed limit policy in the first place.

The union wants the trains to go slow so they can say they're fighting for policies that protect workers. The MTA wants signal enforced speed limits so they can say they're preventing crashes.

If we could just have an adult discussion about the damage of marginally (if at all) increased risk compared to the benefits of a more functional subway system this wouldn't be as big of a problem.

This isn't even a resources issue, changing policy is close to free.

<comment><USER8> _The union wants the trains to go slow so they can say they 're fighting for policies that protect workers. _

Have you ever performed maintenance literally inches from a train going 40mph? The union has valid safety concerns for wanting trains to slow down in the vicinity of workers, and this particular safety measure only applies to late- night routes when they are performing maintenance on closed lines that share tracks with operating lines.

The problem is that the MTA introduced a number of other "safety" measures that did nothing to affect the safety of workers or employees, such as increasing the distance between cars or introducing speed-limiting signals, and these other measures apply 24-7.

<comment><USER7> Trains don't need humans to steer them and the humans there are being paid to (presumably) operate them safely.

Cops and tow truck drivers have more exposure to worse traffic going faster for less pay and nobody is in a hurry to bring back the national speed limit.

I'd take working on tracks over changing someone's tire on the side of the highway.

<comment><USER9> Trains also have really long braking distances. If you can see a track worker in the way, it's already too late. Hence the declaration of these work zones.

In my areas, they usually close a lane next to the accident in addition to the lane where the accident occurred. This is basically the exact same thing.

<comment><USER10> They close an entire highway lane for the towtruck moving a stalled car off the shoulder? Not all towtruck work is related to accidents, in fact most of it isn't.

<comment><USER11> Many US states require drivers to move over, leaving an empty lane next to emergency workers. Specific state laws vary for law enforcement, fire and emergency medical, highway workers, tow truck operators, and disabled vehicles, but while all states appear to at least nominally require moving over for law enforcement. California does not seem to notify drivers on the road much, but other western states do notify/advertise much more, and Indiana and Ohio are fairly vehement about it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_over_law#In_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_over_law#In_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The negative feedback loop on faulty signals should be a read for anyone doing engineering, including software engineering.

If the workers go the proper speed, the faulty signal will trip an emergency break. This actually threatens their jobs because they'll be blamed for tripping the e-brake as if the signals worked perfectly.

1\. The management trusts the automation too much without proper checks or tests proving the automation is accurate. 2\. These workers are still blamed, even after signals are known to be bad. 3\. People, even in here, blame the workers (and the union) for the fault of the system's quality being garbage. 4\. Workers try to preserve their jobs by just working around the problem and reducing productivity all-around.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure. The incentives could go either way. If the incentive is "on time performance is a must and the signal system is not going to check your speed", then people would drive the trains over the recommended speed to make the schedule, and thus derail the train around curves or not keep the speed low enough for the block system to provide adequate train protection.

As it stands now, the incentive is to not get "tripped", so people drive the trains well below the speed at which the signalling system will trip the train... doing anything else runs the risk of getting yelled at or worse, and nobody wants that, so they play it safe.

A computer can be programmed to take into account both concerns and drive the train at the exact speed to satisfy all the constraints of the signalling system. If a computer gets tripped for travelling through a block too quickly, a meeting is had and a fix is checked in. The software doesn't care if you're mad at it. You just fix it and move on. Humans are more fragile, and if you don't align the incentives correctly you will not get the right result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I first learned about computer networking, I remember being blown away when I learned that network congestion dynamics also explained how freeway traffic worked. It's cool to see the same idea in this article!

Specifically, I thought it was amazing how it explained why if someone stops abruptly on a crowded highway, every subsequent driver will have to experience that pause, even hours later, so long as the highway maintains the same level of congestion.

You network folk will undoubtedly explain it better than me, but I think that's the correct gist of the idea?

<comment><USER14> I've always had this odd feeling that traffic is actually a Bernoulli flow, where instead of "pressure" you have congestion.

eg if you have two lanes merging and the system is at capacity, then the "pressure" across the streamline increases and traffic slows down as a result. And when you have very little pressure (or diverging arterial roads) traffic tends to speed up.

Of course there is a secondary problem of "phantom" traffic jams where the system is not really slowing down due to traffic merging or anything, you just have spots where traffic is not flowing at all for no real reason (the optimal solution being that everyone puts their foot on the gas and accelerates together). I suppose the physical analogue might be cavitation or non- laminar/turbulent flow?

I can't find any academic references on this but it's always made intuitive sense to me.

<comment><USER15> This is exactly why traffic regimes are sometimes described as "laminar" or "turbulent".

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Strange how the article blames the workers and unions while also admitting it's not their fault.

\- cheap and worse brakes appear to be the initial error beeing made

\- lack of control over their signals and blaming the workers for it is not excusable. Also there must be some kind of cheap and reliable assistant that can calculate the maximum velocity and help the driver.

\- badly organized maintenance is also not the workers fault.

<comment><USER17> > Tony Utano, the president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, said he > would fight any rule change that could put workers at risk.

Given that any change "could put workers at risk", it seems pretty clear that the union's are _likely_ to be _somewhat_ to blame.

Surely the _train operators_ are not to blame for bad signals but why then is no one else at the MTA to blame? Are the workers that installed the signals not union members too? Are _none_ of the MTA managers union members?

<comment><USER18> Managers are generally not allowed to be union members since they have an adversarial relationship with the workers.

<comment><USER19> > Managers are generally not allowed to be union members since they have an > adversarial relationship with the workers.

Managers are generally not allowed to unionized because they aren't covered by the federal law which protects that right; where they are unionized (which happens in some public sector areas) it's usually not in the _same_ unions as their employees, for the reason you discuss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like there could be large benefit from A) removing the punishment for tripping the signal, that causes drivers to go extra extra slow (well under safe and officially regulated speed) cause they know there are faulty unpredictable signals which they'll still get punished for tripping; and B) fixing faulty signals (which they probably don't even know about when all the drivers are slowing down so much in case of faulty signal that they don't even know which ones are faulty).

Contrary to the article saying "And there's no easy fix", it seems like this would be a fairly easy fix?

<comment><USER21> From a moral standpoint, it's definitely wrong to punish drivers for signal issues, and we should stop doing that.

However, if drivers all started going at the normal speed and regularly tripping broken signals, it would absolutely destroy the system. When a train's emergency brake is tripped, it takes tens of minutes to reset it and get the train going again. If that was happening at every faulty signal on a daily basis, the system would grind to a halt.

Really the only fix is dealing with the signals. But that's extremely difficult because they haven't been regularly maintained and are very old. Most of them use mechanical timing systems and other insane things that nobody has built parts for. There's no particular reason to believe that "changing them back" would go any better than the botched rollout of the initial change.

<comment><USER22> Sometimes if something is hard you should do it more often so you get good at it.

That is workers should be rewarded if they trip a system and after investigation it is proven the system was wrong. That worked just found a real bug and it needs to be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The London Underground, a system of similar size and age, has had no track worker fatalities since 1998."

As far as I can tell, the London Underground only allows work on sub-surface and deep tracks when the line is completely shut down. Like, not just slowing down trains on the tracks either side of the work, but not running trains on any of the tracks full stop.

<comment><USER24> Also, as I understand it, the line shuts down each night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems stupid to use these unreliable "signals" at all, but even if they have to use them for "safety" they don't have to use them for operator evaluation. It would be real easy for every operator to carry a device that could prove e.g. she drove an appropriate speed even though her train tripped a poorly-maintained signal. I'm not foolish enough to imagine this would lead to the signals getting fixed, and from a political perspective it might be important to stipulate that it wouldn't, but that seems secondary to the horrible schedule problems that tentative driving has caused.

<comment><USER8> What sort of magical device would accomplish this feat? It couldn't be GPS- based, as GPS signals wouldn't penetrate to the subway level. It couldn't be momentum-based, because that's not sufficiently accurate. It couldn't be connected to the train's computers because that would require major upgrades to every train in the system, which would take decades.

<comment><USER25> I don't have an amazon link for you, but it doesn't seem that magical to me? Submarines have had inertial nav for decades. This is a simpler problem, because travel is restricted to rails and drift can be corrected as often as necessary. Every airbag in every automobile is equipped with a very accurate fairly inexpensive MEMS acceleration sensor, which would the only specialized component required for such a system. Hobbyist components like the ADXL345 are also cheap. It wouldn't surprise me if such a system already exists for e.g. tracking underground mining equipment, but if not it wouldn't be an impossible task for an organization with the budget of MTA. It's not as though the system would need to be incredibly precise; it's replacing one that at its best can only measure average speed over some huge distance.

<comment><USER8> Submarines also need to surface periodically to verify their navigational position as dead reckoning is frequently off by a margin.

Airbags are equipped with acceleration sensors that have a very simple test: is the acceleration force greater than X? If so, deploy!

The point of the system is to have a system that is accurate enough to replace the current system, which neither of your solutions achieves.

<comment><USER25> Yeah that's what's meant by "drift". Submarines correct every few thousand nautical miles. The hypothetical device could do so at every station. The current system is not accurate at all, and even if it were is quite imprecise by design.

But you've convinced me. A much better solution would just be a camera pointed at the speedometer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the best article I've ever read on the subways. So many people blame so many factors: people holding doors, overcrowding, badly made signals, etc. But this explains it very well with clear visuals.

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome visualizations.

<comment><USER28> Absolutely! One of the best use of visualizations to support a story I've seen ever. New York Times in general does a great job with visualizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a great use of visualizations. Bostock made his mark while at the NYTimes.

</comment><comment><USER30> how hard is it to put a location based speed governor on the train instead of using antiquated mechanical signals to enforce max speeds? or is that just too much common sense for the MTA?

<comment><USER8> It would be extremely difficult. How would the train know where it is? GPS is unusable at that depth. You'd need location beacons...but at that point you're better off just using signals, like they already are, rather than upgrading every train and dealing with the ongoing maintenance of making sure that each train's location-based speed governor is properly up-to-date with all proper slow-down locations.

<comment><USER31> Could you please explain why positioning would be hard? Since trains only move on the edges of a fixed graph, you'd think positioning would be super easy compared to almost all other indoor positioning applications.

<comment><USER8> Your indoor positioning applications would require the installation of numerous positioning beacons--or in other words, significantly more hardware than the many thousands of speed signals they have already installed and are unable to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Didn't MTA say they are increasing the speed limits after the Village Voice article was published?

</comment><comment><USER33> Meta but the interactive visuals are great! They're an excellent supplement to the text.

</comment><comment><USER34> Losing your job over a faulty signal sounds like some serious bullshit. I hope they sued.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I love interactive docs as much as the next person, I wondered if all these demos were really necessary to get the point across in this particular case. The text did a pretty admirable job, along with a few charts. Did the more graphical pieces help, or were they more of an "ooh, pretty" feature?

<comment><USER36> Close reading of text for information is a dying skill.

If it can't be stated in 120 characters or presented as an animation, you've lost a big part of your audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> root cause? undercapitalized.</comment>


Army Corps of Engineers to Build Temporary Hospitals in NY - <AUTHOR> https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-four-sites-identified-army-corps-engineers-initial-list-temporary <comment><USER2> The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the finer things in the US. I find it encouraging that they are involved with this effort.

Please note that's an extremely specific observation and doesn't implicitly suggest anything else, positive or negative, about the rest of this situation.

<comment><USER3> They are and they aren't. What they did for New Orleans is stupid-incredible. Stupid because it's a river-gulf city below sea level that the rivers are trying to absorb with no plans to relocate. Incredible because wow, that's an accomplishment. A lot of that is subject to political whims, though, so it's not necessarily the Corps's decision.

<comment><USER2> [https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/](https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an onlooker I feel like once America awakens to a crisis it is impressive to watch. I mean this kind of should have happened weeks ago, and the executive branch is a bit of a panicked joke. But I mean... You've got this colossal capacity to deploy field hospitals and hospital ships and such and ramp up capacity.

Terrible hurricane? Show up with a massive floating power plant and water treatment facility plus air logistics.

And I think one of the strongest virtues of the United States is being proven by Trump: the incredible power of leadership at all levels of government. In the absence of a leader at the top you've got senators and congresspersons and governors and mayors and CEOs all getting shit done. This is all an incredible (but regrettable) exercise of numerous fail safes inherent in the American system.

<comment><USER5> True, but as an American, it definitely feels like we're bringing our B game to one of the nastiest challenges the world has ever faced. We had the ability to write a blank check and fire up mask, ventilator, and test production the second it was clear this was a global problem.

So instead of sending excess equipment around the world, we're playing catch up on our own shortage, and the control measures have to be a lot stricter because of it.

<comment><USER6> > the second it was clear this was a global problem

The problem is that the west has nobody in power with living memory of a pandemic. An unfortunate failing of human cognition is that most humans discount that which they have no direct experience of. So it was never going to be clear to most people that this was a problem until we had waited way too long. I mean, most people can't be bothered to not spend everything they make when the last recession was 12 years ago, so what do we expect when there hasn't been a pandemic in the west in over 100 years...

<comment><USER7> OK, so... how does that explain Taiwan or Korea, who had the same "living memory" we do and managed to get this under control without breaking their health care systems?

I mean, your point is true, but the lack of action wasn't the fault of the average citizen or their living memory. The decision-makers should have had access to better info, and of course they did. Doctors from China and Italy told us long ago that PPE equipment was a bottleneck. Epidemiologists could see what was going to happen with the rate of spread. Local health officials in states knew at the outset that they needed more tests. Hell, the federal government has a whole departmental center dedicated specifically to the control of disease; they've spent decades modeling out how to respond to crises like this.

Yet... no decisions got made. That wasn't for a lack of "living memory of a pandemic".

<comment><USER8> I would like to ask people to not to attach "Asianness" to having a working government.

Even back just 2 decades ago, in every Asian country, a typical saying would've been "When will we live like in America?"

The West was the envy of the world in its best years, and it can be again.

If you can fix your societal problems, you will be, if you can not, you will not.

<comment><USER9> Western commenters often see the strengths of Asian countries as stemming from their governments, but much of what goes well in Asia has to do with civil society.

<comment><USER10> I think much of what went well in America had much to do with civil society. I believe we collectively figured out there's likely no god and mistakenly assumed everything that went along with the whole community & church system was to be thrown out. Not sure what to do about it because I think the weekly meetings with recognizable families was important but the Olstein style self help pastors isn't.

<comment><USER11> Sport was originally a form of discipline and training - not just of the body, but also to be a good loser and a good winner. I think we need to abandon, for the most part, spectator sport, and create a social norm where people actually physically meet up weekly to play the sport of their choice at an incredibly amateur level. Imagine if every Sunday almost everyone in your community turned up to play - some people playing chess, some people playing football, some people swimming. Whatever their mind is interested in and their body can cope with. This would be completely different than the current system of sport, where those who want to do it fit it into their weekly schedule at a suitable time. One person goes to yoga on Thursday afternoon in an office building, another person rides their bike on Tuesday morning, a team meets to play netball on Wednesday. The would, of course, be permitted to do whatever they want. But there would also be an expectation.

Unfortunately I don't know how to get there from here - for the time being, there's no support of anything amateur. We're basically told to be a pro or go home. Not just sport, anything and everything.

<comment><USER9> There is a good intuition here. The arts, too, once served a primarily communal function. Most of the steps that later became the ballet are drawn from folk dancing, which at one time was common to all communities.

In Tokyo sometimes, you walk through a neighborhood where the people have blocked off an intersection for circle dancing in a relatively simple style.

Maybe the easiest thing to get tech people to do would be live CounterStrike. One half of the office is "guarding the VIPs", the other half is rescuing the hostages. People spend hours and hours on these kinds of games as it is. Bringing it into the real world would harness some of that engagement for health and community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The Army Corps is expected to immediately begin work to construct the [four] > temporary hospitals. The Governor is also requesting FEMA designate four > field hospitals

NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't imagine the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago I wasn't terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and worse for the US.

<comment><USER13> The acoup blog just did a piece on chemical weapons and their dis/use in modern times. Part of that analysis was a dive into Modern v. Static armies.

Static armies are what Saddam, Assad, and the Iranians have. Though their weapons are pretty up to date, they still get squished when fighting Modern armies like the US or France. That is because their 'doctrine' is Static, mostly to be coup-proof. In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. They don't get to play jazz. This is due to regime issues that don't translate into up to date warfare.

In Modern armies, you have terribly expensive weapons too. But the _training_ is what makes it really work. You have to train field commanders to play jazz and improvise. It's a constant blitzkrieg of movement and mechanized/digitized warfare. There is no sitting around. That takes training people to think for themselves; a big no-no in regimes.

The US is _the_ example of a modern force, complete with fancy gadgets and fancy training.

We should _expect_ that NYNG could get eight field hospitals going in hours. That is the entire basis of our military, to move really fast and get things done. Imperfectly? Oh hell yes. But fast is the entire name of the game.

[https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use- ch...](https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical- weapons-anymore/)

<comment><USER14> What happens when those workers all get Covid-19? This is an invisible enemy that's already on our soil and growing exponentially with the ability to spread by asymptomatic carriers. I hope you are right....

<comment><USER13> Not to be heartless, but many militaries are fairly experienced in rapid reductions in manpower resources.

Also, acoup's blog post does a really good job of going through the differences in Modern and Static military doctrines. Much better than my TLDR of it.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if there are any historical accounts of military warfare during a global pandemic affecting both sides at the same time.

<comment><USER15> WWI[1] - the pandemic ended up being called "Spanish flu" because Spain was the only country publishing accurate statistics since it was neutral in the war. The belligerents were heavily affected, but were muzzling the press due to wartime censorship.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really don't think they are doing enough. The virus is still growing at an exponential rate, and when you look at the other countries that managed to get things under control vs. the ones that didn't, the actions that NYC and the rest of America are taking fall squarely into "this looks like the ones that didn't get things under control."

Public transport needs to be disabled. People need to be required to wear a mask when they go out. Police need to enforce people staying inside.

Italy got the growth rate down to 15% per day. That's still enough to hit the whole population by early May.

<comment><USER17> > People need to be required to wear a mask when they go out.

Well, you can't do that here because those masks don't exist. We don't have enough for healthcare workers, much less everyone else.

<comment><USER18> It's probably not surprising to anyone who knows how industrial production works, but to a layman like me it's really surprising how hard it seems to be to produce more suitable masks in a short time. I didn't expect the supply chain and machines for such simple products to be that complex and hard to set up.

<comment><USER19> It's probably not hard to increase production, but it's definitely hard to increase it 100x.

<comment><USER20> I have no clue about softer materials, but setting up the tooling for making the simplest of plastic parts is a multi-step process where each step takes weeks. And, for roughly the same reasons as in software development, making that shorter is likely to be both expensive and drop some quality. With medical equipment you generally don't want to drop quality. So, if making these masks is any similar to the only industrial process I know about, we might have the needed capacity just in time for the autumn rebound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/)

the NY numbers have more than doubled today (from ~10k to ~22k). What is happening? Are some belated test results coming in?

EDIT: Numbers were just corrected, are now at total ~16k with ~5k new cases. Still high growth, but more reasonable.

<comment><USER22> The numbers seem to update in a weird staggered way; for example right now for New York I see 15801 + 5429, which is right about the +33% the US has been seeing since Mar 1.

<comment><USER23> There is a lot of noise in the data but the general trend is more than clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am very curious about the "technical issue" that is preventing NY from receiving aid in the relief bill.

<comment><USER25> I am as well, but overall I'm very frustrated by the lack of coordination and leadership overall. This combined with de Blasio's proven inability to lead is making the situation much worse than it needs to be.

<comment><USER26> This is a pandemic. Across country and state lines.

Any response that is not federal is going to struggle.

The buck stops solely at the white house and congress for failing to see the warning signs and properly respond.

<comment><USER27> Cuomo OTOH has been quite effective at working with the administration to ramp up testing to the highest throughput in the nation, as well as enacting other measures, and getting FEMA involved, while DeBlasio's response was pretty much only to point out that "orange man bad", and dragging his staff around with him to infected areas. As of 2 days ago, he went to the _gym_.

If you listen to WH pressers, you will see that federal government wants the governors to do what they can to procure stuff and enact measures for their states, and step in when the governors feel their response will be inadequate. Which is what we're observing in CA and NY as the governors of those states chose to put politics aside for the time being and actually engage.

The reason for delegating frontline response to the states is that if the federal government steps in to buy medical supplies for example (which BTW it still does from time to time - they ordered $500M worth of N95 masks yesterday), such a purchase would first soak up available capacity, and then it'd have to be disbursed to the states, instead of going to them directly, adding delay and confusion.

FWIW, I have not seen this level of coordinated response to _anything_ and I've been in the US for 20 years now. I did not know some of the things that are being done are even possible. FEMA and Army Corps of Engineers started to step in massively over the past week. Companies are starting to make ventilators. Drugs and testing equipment are approved for use in weeks instead of years. The list goes on.

<comment><USER28> > _Cuomo OTOH has been quite effective at working with the administration to > ramp up testing to the highest throughput in the nation_

Let's be honest, Cuomo just went out and outbid everyone to get the materials his people needed. He didn't work with the admin to do a thing, he waved money around in the global marketplace. Not hating on him, that's his job. He's supposed to look out for New Yorkers. But a lot of states out there don't have New York's bottomless checkbook. Nor do they have New York's influence.

Easy to look good when you're not really depending on the federal government for testing throughput. Again, guy's done a great job. But he's done it by circumventing the limitations set by the administration not really by living with them like the rest of us have to.

<comment><USER29> Anything to back up your claim of him out bidding everyone else? I believe right now there are restrictions on price gouging for necessary supplies.

<comment><USER30> "Cuomo also urged the federal government to nationalize the effort to acquire protective medical supplies — including masks, gowns and gloves — that are in short supply. He says masks that used to cost 85 cents are now priced at $7 as states are forced to bid against each other for limited supplies."

[https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/03/22/818971445/new-york-governor-cuomo-calls-for-army-corps-to- help-build-temporary-hospitals)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > _" The Governor also issued an executive order temporary closing the > Department of Motor Vehicles for all in-office visits. Online transactions, > including for license renewals, are still be available."_

It seems a bit dated to even have in-office visits for things like driving license renewals. The UK equivalent, DVLA, closed all their office counters a few years back. Now everything is done online and by post.

<comment><USER32> On the contrary, I wish we'd be more aggressive about drivers licensing. The whole process is fairly meaningless.

My mother-in-law barely has enough motor control to turn the key to start the car, yet somehow she just renewed her license. People like her need to be taken for a test drive, not allowed to renew online.

<comment><USER33> That more of a retesting requirement than a renewal problem. We can have both, easy online renewal for most people and an age cutoff for people where they require periodic retesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here is the very informative briefing Cuomo gave today [1]. Quick facts for the state of New York:

1\. ~15,000 cases of confirmed COVID-19

2\. 114 individuals have died from COVID-19

        a. 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had underlying health conditions.

        b. ~80% of those who died under the age of 70 had underlying health conditions.

3\. 18-49 years old represent 53% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases.

4\. hospitalization rate of 13% which is very good, flattening the curve works. Stay inside.

Cuomo has mandated the City of New York to hand over a plan in 24 hours (as of today) to outline how exactly the local governments will curtail overcrowding in parks and other public places. When asked why Cuomo can't do this himself, he stated in a fair manner that while he does have the power to do so, he would not be as apt to devise the plan as the local governments are. This is the right move.

Gov. Cuomo made a similar judgement when pressing the federal gov't to curtail fed regulations and to allow him to open over 200 labs available within the state of New York to provide faster testing than what the federal government was able to do.

This opening of state-wide labs is why NY has nearly 15x the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases when compared to the next highest, the state of Washington. NY also has a more accurate hospitalization rate because of this, which is a very important number to be tracking when figuring out how to "flatten the curve" which currently sits at 13%.

Governor Cuomo is following the playbook of South Korea as effectively as possible in this current political climate and has successfully deployed every move available to him and helped push federal barriers down to allow NY to attack this virus faster than any other state. He is showing leadership that everyone wishes to see at the Federal level.

Having all of these laboratories in the state of NY makes me grateful every time I think about how much I pay in state taxes. But I can't help to think about how all of the bloodshed is a direct result of the failure of leadership at the federal level to be proactive about the situation. There is nothing of greater importance than every individual human life. The federal government sacrificed these people and all the people who will suffer and die in the future in the name of better polling numbers, placating a fan base, and keeping stocks afloat for a mere month longer than they would have.

Edit: Moved 53% statistic into its own bullet. Don't know know why I had it as a sub-bullet of the deaths statistic.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbIVnnMT18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbIVnnMT18)

<comment><USER35> The state tax rate in NY has nothing to do with this response (that seems quite good) to the COVID-19 pandemic. The labs that will be performing these extra tests are private labs, not labs funded by NY state taxes. I wish people could separate their criticism of the different governmental responses to this pandemic from their preferred stance on domestic tax policy.

<comment><USER34> We have a well-funded state university system paid for by tax dollars which provides these labs with competent, well-educated employees. But yes, these labs are not directly funded by state dollars.

<comment><USER36> yes private universities like stanford and harvard would have no way of creating competent well educated employees. do you have proof the employees even when to state schools?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A couple of observations:

First, most of what's out there in the media and popular discussion is nothing less than ignorant. Sometimes I feel people watch too many movies and think they are real.

Under normal conditions it can take over a year to go from nothing to making something as simple as a certified N95 mask at scale. Under normal conditions component lead times in electronics can easily be in the 8 to 16 week range. Not to mention such things as manufacturing tooling, molds, test systems, etc.

Making hardware is hard for a reason. It takes time, and money can't always accelerate the timeline.

And so, reporters pounding away at test kit, mask or PPE is ignorant and counterproductive. Making 100 million masks in haste could result in ineffective masks that provide little protection.

This problem is exacerbated by a supply chain that has been the subject of major disruption.

The sad reality is, when you don't control the entire supply chain you can only accomplish so much. This is surely a lesson that might change the world post COVID-19.

Aside from that. It seems to me converting cruise ships to temporary hospitals might be the quickest way to expand capacity. They are self-contained little cities with rooms for thousands.

</comment><comment><USER38> This effort should be commended. However, I'm wondering, where are all the billionaires and corporations when the world needs them? I'm not even asking this flippantly. Seriously, how come they're not doing anything? Just for the past few months Bloomberg spent half a billion essentially to achieve nothing.

Couldn't he repeat the feat and build a few hospitals to help out his home state? Or his country? How about everyone else?

<comment><USER39> I believe he could repeat that feat 120 times and still be a billionaire.

<comment><USER38> Indeed. Maybe we should demand it of him and of others in his position.

Regular people are placed under a tremendous burden all over the world and they are expected to cooperate and to sacrifice.

The very least the rich could do is shoulder part of the financial burden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone know if it is possible to volunteer for the Army Corps of Engineers?

</comment><comment><USER41> All of those shipping container to modular homes should be working on making mobile hospital wards.

Doesn't need to be fancy, just functional and better than being in a tent.

Need someone to coordinate it though.

</comment><comment><USER42> At current pace the whole US will be infected by May (I wonder, whether the market have priced that in already).

<comment><USER43> To be fair, the market isn't pricing deaths of old and sick people. It is pricing the suppression of economic activity as a result of the lockdown. If the whole of the US were really infected by May and if by June the lockdown would be off and the virus in the rear mirror, you would see a big market rallye.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This blog post covers the math of why this is necessary

[https://medium.com/@donnellymjd/covid-19-nyc-should-brace- fo...](https://medium.com/@donnellymjd/covid-19-nyc-should-brace-for-impact- and-shut-down-now-a7c62afac81e)

</comment><comment><USER45> Why didn't we start a month ago? 6 weeks ago?

</comment><comment><USER23> The United States jumped from position 20 or so on the world ranking for the number of cases to spot number 3 in a manner of days. NYC doubled overnight. There was an article published all of seven hours ago that claimed the US was #4: [https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-now-has-third-highest-number- co...](https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-now-has-third-highest-number- covid-19-cases-after-china-italy-1493618) it has already been made outdated by developments: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) .

Wonder what degree of revisionism the 'it is just a flu' crowd will engage in where they are on the record.

<comment><USER46> From what I can tell (even here on HN by a few bad actors), they seem to have pivoted to a "we simply can't do this to the economy; it's not an option for a disease that only kills old and sick people", without the faintest hint of a plan for what they'd actually _do_ given what we know and the resources that we have.

We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and competent government that South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan apparently have, but we don't have those. So their "plan" is effectively a plan to just let millions of people 60+ or with pre-existing conditions die without much effort to save them. It's not only unconscionable, it's incredibly stupid. Do they think we're just going to go back to work and restaurants and on vacation while millions of our loved ones take their last gasps in a converted convention center somewhere? The economy grinds to a halt either way, and there's no moral or political path forward for what they want to do. Which is why they don't have the courage to even spell it out, it's just some magic handwaving about how we must do something different.

And all this against the backdrop of them and people like them downplaying this from the start and putting us in this position.

<comment><USER2> Not all Americans are doing that.

I am actively trying to promote work from home options and mostly being ignored.

I am actively trying to talk about home health care options. It's been extremely controversial, so I am reluctant to push too hard.

There's a lot of disinterest or active blow back against any attempt at a grass roots movement in the absence of sufficient leadership from the top.

Given how powerful America is, it's not unreasonable for the world at large to be concerned.

<comment><USER47> I am actually terrified about home remedies regular people provide without deep understanding of human physiology and medicine.

Please refrain from providing advice to people if you're not in the position to do so unless you're a medical doctor. It sounds good hearted but this is exactly the kind of things we shouldn't be perpetuating. You can cause inadvertent loss of life in worst case.

My parents are forwarding all kinds of shit from social media from fake vaccine news to completely insane home remedies such as going to a sauna when you have fever to "kill the virus". I am not suggesting you're doing this, but just to illustrate extreme case of misinformation.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I know. I've actually been around this block before.

I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my 32 year old son who still lives with me. I left all the CF lists years ago because people with CF live in terror and mostly don't want to take chances on trying anything not prescribed by a doctor, even though they are facing certain death.

Doctors don't know how to fix them. When I was diagnosed in 2001, life expectancy in the US was age 36.

Like anyone who has CF or who has a loved one with CF, I know quite a lot about germ control and daily home management of potentially deadly lung problems. Unlike most people with CF, I'm currently drug free. My condition is managed with diet and lifestyle.

I think it's outright irresponsible to say nothing at all in cases where I know a thing and no one else is speaking up, even though I surely an not the only person who knows X. I've mostly spoken up to say, essentially, "If there aren't enough ventilators to go around, airway clearance techniques have been around forever and some of them are non invasive and don't require mechanical intervention. You may still have options, even if the worst comes to pass, the medical system is overloaded and you are trying to survive a deadline epidemic while locked down at home."

If you want to see my past remarks, I've added the link to that discussion to my profile. I'm disinclined to do too much cage rattling on HN in discussion.

I'm currently working on developing a blog in hopes of putting together useful information about best practices for simply avoiding germs in day-to-day life.

I think I know a lot of useful information. I don't think I'm behaving irresponsibly.

I'm still trying to sort out for myself what I think works going forward. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who can tell me what that is.

<comment><USER47> Please don't do any of this. I beg you.

If you want to help, volunteer in a hospital.

<comment><USER2> I absolutely cannot volunteer in a hospital. Cystic fibrosis puts me in a high risk category. That's like asking me to intentionally become the Typhoid Mary of covid19.

<comment><USER47> I see, perhaps you can then you can:

\- Spread information about hygiene, CDC recommendations on how to prevent spread of Coronavirus and reiterate/ephasize the importance of washing hands/cleaning public spaces.

\- Donate money to medical research, who knows, some of these home remedies may be useful. But not without getting the research done first.

You don't see the danger of providing medical advise to others? I've been wrong many times of something that I thought was intuitive to me but ultimately there was a "oh..." moment when I saw experimental results or some concrete evidence.

There is also a network effect - you say X to person Y. Person Y tells X to 10 other friends who then tell 1000 other people. The misinformation that started from you could potentially affect a lot of people and then you start having deep thoughts such as - I tested X on myself and it worked. But now 100,000 people are doing it - is it safe?

This is why you should stop from providing medical advice to others. I am saying this with respect to you and your earnest intentions from heart.

<comment><USER2> Cystic fibrosis is supposed to cost up to a quarter of a million dollars per year for medical care per patient. Two members of my household have it. I've supported us all on well under $20k annually for at least eight years and we were homeless for nearly six years.

I often have insufficient money for food. Yet, we are still alive.

I respect your genuine and valid concerns about giving advice in situations where you don't know what you are talking about. Trying to give me advice to do things like volunteer in a hospital or donate money I don't have falls in that category.

Maybe take a few minutes to at least look up cystic fibrosis before commenting further about what you think I should be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chupa-chups [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657717)

</comment><comment><USER47> I very much admire Gov Cuomo - he is perfectly straight forward in his approach, putting aside partisanship and truly care about his state and the New York City. I encourage everyone to watch his updates to see for yourself. We need more leaders like him. In his presentation, he is telling how to run the Federal goverment and recommendations - which just illustrates the competance of the executive branch of the US Govt. Same thing with Gov Newsom of California.

Latest update: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZeKTlpcqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZeKTlpcqU)

<comment><USER48> This article sums up the feelings of many New Yorkers, myself included:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/media/cuomo- new-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/media/cuomo-new-york- coronavirus.html)

In normal times he is utterly infuriating and represents some of the worst qualities you see in a politician. In a crisis... well, you need a solid pair of hands and a leader capable of making big decisions effectively. And he is definitely that.

<comment><USER49> I am not ready to change my assessment of him. There were ample situations in in "peace time" for him to push harder but he didn't. DeBlasio may be more inept, but Cuomo only pushes things hard after they become very popular. That's still not leadership.

<comment><USER50> There's a difference between leading with ideas and such and executing well. The latter is more important in a crisis.

<comment><USER49> I'm not even asking for ideas, though. Subway, weed, rent, cannabis, etc didn't need ideas.

I'm not asking for Good Robert Moses, I am asking for Good Robert Moses's Oddjob.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> So what changed in the last few days? What is playing out is EXACTLY what epidimiologists, scientists, mathemeticians, the US intelligence agencies, and the WHO have been saying for over a month at this point. This has ALL been predicted and no one fucking cared or listened until it is BY DEFINITION TOO LATE.

I've even been saying this for weeks now, and I get challenged on it. Even though _every single day_ we continue to just follow or beat the worst trend lines from the worst affected countries BECAUSE WE'RE NOT DOING ANY OF THE THINGS WE KNOW WORK.

What's going to be different next time? Are we going to have a global conversation about our inability to plan more than 2 days out? Our inability to grasp truly horrific facts and accept them, instead of letting fearful human brains go "That could never happen in America" (lol) even in the fact of raw statistics? Or is this just another thing I'm going to be eye-rolled at and told "it's just how it is". A global pandemic and economic slump (I'm metering my predictions here because this site doesn't seem to be able to handle realistically gloomy predictions for the future) still isn't enough to get us to ask how we got here?

<comment><USER52> I today saw the number of infected for US jump 8k (it seemed to have been reduced from 14k, which was really alarming). [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

A quite worrying turn that rate of cases is ramping up so quickly in US. Don't know what else to say. And there isn't really that much you can do as an individual, if the other people are not taking it that seriously. Just yesterday I saw a child with his parent cough with a rattling sound in a supermarket without covering his mouth. It is these types of small actions of neglectedness that compound, making this virus so hard to stop from spreading.

Hopefully you at least build antibodies when you get sick. Otherwise this will never stop spreading until we get a working vaccine.

<comment><USER53> > I today saw the number ... > [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

Note that the number for the current day isn't yet necessarily complete. For example, as of this writing, Washington and Illinois were not yet in the table [1].

Washington numbers get released at 3pm PST [1] and Illinois numbers don't specifiy an update time [2]. It looks like the number should end up around 8.5k today, so better than yesterday's 14k.

Of course, with all the back-and-forth on test availability, comparing numbers day-to-day is challenging, since more testing is likely to reveal a higher absolute number of cases.

[1] [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/)

[2] [https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus](https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus)

[3] [https://dph.illinois.gov/covid19](https://dph.illinois.gov/covid19)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: 'We're going to be fine'

[https://news.yahoo.com/why-nobel-laureate-predicts- quicker-2...](https://news.yahoo.com/why-nobel-laureate-predicts- quicker-210318391.html)

</comment><comment><USER55> Interesting life lesson for those who are not familiar is the concept I think it's called 'don't spit into the wind'.

By this I mean all of the politicians who constantly gave Trump a hard time at each and every turn. I don't mean any in particular investigation and I don't mean they needed to agree and not criticize him at all at any time. But maybe they should have thought that this person 'The President' has the ability to give their region (or their state) what they need 'greenlight' and yes he should do it because 'it's the right thing to do' but human decision making and interaction is more than that. And people are people. This is no different for any political process or politician. Sometimes you have to simply (to use the phrase) 'not be a dick' if there is a person in power who can give you things you need to play the game. Doesn't mean you should like the game and doesn't mean it shouldn't be that way but in the end it is the way life often is.

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow, ok, finally.

</comment><comment><USER57> I keep having this crazy, irresponsible, dangerous... hopeful idea: virus cruises. Take one or more available cruise ships, equip it with ventilators, tests, supplie, ask for volunteer crew, passengers, and medical staff, and send everyone off for a two week cruise to get deliberately infected with the virus, study its characteristics, and start to build herd immunity. Seems like it'd be a way to get started fighting back.

<comment><USER23> You'd be murdering people. That's an un-ethical medical experiment. About as unethical as what already happened to those on the Diamond Princess. 8 of them are dead now, there are still another 15 in critical with some of those expected to eventually die.

<comment><USER22> Just to punch it in a bit more: The ship was quarantined about a month and a half ago. This isn't a week-or-so sickness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > Over the past days, an inspection team led by the Army Corps of Engineers, > and including state officials from the Office of General Services, the > Dormitory Authority of the State of New York

Huh? What? How was this not already done? YEARS ago? What if this was something _fast_ moving?

We knew a pandemic was inevitable. No stock pile of mask? No plan for ad hoc hospitals? If they're making it up as they go then what has FEMA, the DoD and the CDC been doing with our money? Using it for TP?

</comment><comment><USER59> We have plenty of space (churches, meeting halls, school and university dormitories) to use for temporary hospitals w/o the Army building temporary buildings that will cost a fortune and later be torn down all on the taxpayers' dime. Charitable organizations, universities and institutions should be willing to donate those resources.

I don't want to pay the army for building: I want their _doctors_ doing research on a cure/fix for Covid-19 and I want their _soldiers_ alert and ready. It would be cheaper to hire immigrant Mexicans to build temporary hospitals.

Using the army to build hospitals when better space is already is a waste of time, a waste of money and little more than a boondoggle for the suppliers who are chosen.

And isn't this possibly a violation of the _posse comitatus Act_?

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

<comment> crooked-v > We have plenty of space (churches, meeting halls, school and university > dormitories) to use for temporary hospitals

Making these spaces fit the physical needs of these hospitals (massive power requirements for equipment, hallways and elevators with certain amounts of clearance for transporting patients, extremely well-controlled ventilation systems, sanitizable surfaces everywhere, rooms laid out with central access for doctors and nurses) would take so much time and effort that it would be more money- and time-efficient to build new buildings with the expertise of a group practiced in building new, reasonably high-quality buildings as fast as possible... like, say, the Army.

These need to be _modern hospitals_ , not 19th-century sanitariums where patients just get dumped into a bed and left to die or recover on their own.

> It would be cheaper to hire immigrant Mexicans to build temporary hospitals.

Right, and I'm sure hiring random people to construct temporary buildings as fast as possible would result in something that won't fall in on peoples' heads immediately.

> And isn't this possibly a violation of the posse comitatus Act?

The Posse Comitatus Act applies to the use of the military as law enforcement, so, no.</comment></comment>


I performed brain surgery on my CPU to lower its temperature 15 degrees - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/delidding-your-cpu-is-scary-but-worth-itand-surprisingly-easy/ <comment><USER2> I once fixed a bent pin in a socket 775 motherboard's CPU slot by bending it back with a knife. I was pretty sure I'd break the board, but it worked!

<comment><USER3> The tip of a mechanical pencil with the graphite retracted is the perfect size for fixing bent pins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For someone who doesn't really game nor overlock CPUs, why doesn't CPU manufacturers use the same technique out of the box?

<comment><USER5> Intel hasn't spoken about why they use the thermal interface material (TIM) they continue to use. Best guess anyone has is that there's a higher cost somehow with a soldered lid. I'm not completely sold on that, but Intel hasn't defended their practice in any way so it's open to interpretation.

<comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the use of solder the central issue to first generation Xbox 360's famous Red Ring of Death? The solder would fail and the machine would refuse to boot.

<comment><USER7> That wasn't for interfacing with the heat spreader it was soldering the actual data pins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this doesn't feel like it is any more than an advertisement.

<comment><USER9> Aren't you feeling the need to rush out and buy the $50 doohicky that replaces the simple razor blade?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why put the IHS back on? Surely heatsink directly in contact with the CPU would result in better cooling than going through another thermal interface?

</comment><comment><USER11> Title is pure clickbait. Delidding is super easy with right tools, brain surgery is not easy.

<comment><USER12> Maybe one day brain surgery will be super easy with the right tools. But yes, I somehow expected the article being about someone who fixed the silicon or something crazy like that.

<comment><USER13> That would take a FIB (Focused Ion Beam) workstation. Very expensive. Christopher Tarnovsky has one and has used it to hack a bunch of TPM chips and smart cards. It's very impressive, especially since some of what he does is done while the chip is powered on...

Delidding isn't brain surgery. Removing and bypassing (depositing new metal to form wires / cutting old connections with the ion beam) a mesh, then probing and decrypting the data bus is much closer. And even then, if you mess up you grab a new chip, with brain surgery you can't just get another patient.

As someone who's had brain surgery, I'm very, very glad brain surgeons don't often mess up!</comment></comment></comment>


How The President Of Toyota Would Phrase An Apology - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/business/global/03toyota.html?_r=1&em

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this in the NYT today and was reminded of a comment I had once made regarding Japanese corporate culture.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545>

 _The great thing about Japanese corporate discipline: when GM has a tough year, GM blames the year. No way we could have predicted spiraling gas prices, a down economy, and increased foreign competition. When Toyota has a tough year, Toyota blames Toyota. You can bet that somewhere in the bowels of that megacorp is a team of economists reevaluating their currency hedging strategy, while another team is working 16 hour days coming up with a car that captures the imagination of the American consumer but is priced to move as compared to the Prius._

Quotes from the article: >> While it still has _plenty of cash_ , and now outranks General Motors as the _world's biggest carmaker_ , that is _not good enough_ , Mr. Toyoda told journalists.

The company, hit by a spate of recalls in the middle of the decade, is _betraying its roots as a quality automaker_ , he said. >>

Disclosure: "I don't work for Toyota" is true only to the extent that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.</comment>


Ask (Challenge? Beg?) HN: How to get help from here to there. - <AUTHOR>

Hi, longtime admirer, first-time poster.  Please don't laugh but to make a long story short, one of my part time jobs while finishing my coursework is as a barista at Starbucks.
I'm trying to organize a drive effort to get as many coworkers as possible to donate a week's worth of tips and a week or two worth of the free coffee we get to ship overseas as part of the continuing relief effort for Japan.
All my ongoing research so far indicates that there is a huge discrepancy between the "everything will soon be under control" image in the media and the reality of people who still have many, many challenges to overcome at the local level (kinda like Katrina).
Just yesterday there was a front page New York Times article about a viral video on YouTube not too long ago where a mayor of a small town in northern Japan put his pride aside and literally bared his soul in front of the YouTube community and told everyone that his village is slowly starving to death.
The biggest problem I have so far is overcoming the logistical hurdle of getting items from the store-level to a central area and then from there to Japan where there are plenty of groups/organizations/local governments who say they'll gladly welcome anything they don't have to pay the shipping fees for.
I've tried working with FedEx, but they keep referring me to the Red Cross, whose official position seems to boil down to "Nobody wants food, just send money."
Other companies seem to have a mind-meld with Red Cross PR as well.
My attempt to reply with a photo taken from a story in a Japanese news site of people holding signs that translated to "We can't eat money, please send food and supplies" made no difference whatsoever.
Anyway, you people seem to be much smarter than me so I'm putting this out there; think of it as an intellectual challenge whose answer would be appreciated by many, many people:
How would you, if you were me, overcome the logistical challenge of shipping free donations?
I found excellent agencies that can deliver the non-perishable foodstuffs (mostly instant coffee), I've found a charity that specializes in, among other things, a website with "live maps" of food caches that people can figure out how to travel to (keep in mind the area is mountainous, and transportation is limited due to lack of automobiles, gas, and destroyed infrastructure).
I can't figure out how to get the stuff there without just, you know, paying FedEx to ship it, which would kind of make the whole money-raising aspect pointless.
Any and all ideas would be welcomed.
Thank you for your consideration. <comment><USER2> I fear the following will sound rather negative. If you're only looking for positive suggestions, please skip over this. I know you mean well and I wish I could offer you more encouragement. Hopefully others are able to do so.

I'm writing this with more than ten years of experience providing international response search and rescue services. We got started after getting frustrated by our inability to get obviously needed supplies into disaster zones. It turned out to be easier to provide services. Along the way we learned a lot about the road blocks and solutions.

I've seen warehouses full of supplies from the US donated by well meaning charities. Thousands of people donated clothing, packaged it up, shipped it out, and expected to make a difference. But there it sat, rotting in the heat and humidity. The intended recipients thought "those damned stupid Americans, sending us stuff we don't need." The donors thought "those lazy recipients, not putting our goodwill to use."

There are valid reasons why the Red Cross and other agencies say "Just send money." Just because a disaster has occurred doesn't mean that customs inspections stop, or taxes aren't collected.

A clip about one mayor's village doesn't accurately portray the entire picture, including what is already in the pipeline, if they'll still be there the next week, and the logistical problems of getting anything there.

You can send money in seconds. Supplies take days, or weeks, and these situations are very fluid. Send the money and it can adapt to the current situation. Send supplies and they'll rot, and possibly clog the network, if the situation has changed.

Getting "the stuff" from here to the port in Japan doesn't take care of all the distribution past that point. For starters, someone needs to break down your containers into smaller packages and route them via whatever means are available to their intended destination. (And those means are already shipping other things.)

And someone needs to track what is still needed, what has arrived, what is in transit, etc.

There are a lot of very complex pieces to the puzzle. The Red Cross and the other agencies know how to fit them together _relatively_ well. Let them continue to do so rather than reinventing the tools, processes, and relationships they've already developed over many years.

<comment><AUTHOR> David, your experience is obviously a valid basis for your views.

Please don't take my response as a disregard for your advice, because I've read your entire post and I agree with everything you've said - to a point.

No disrespect to your past experience. I'm having a hard time mentally with this effort and I've only been doing it as an amateur for a bit over three weeks.

Having said that, I respectfully, let's see how to say this, not so much "disagree" but maybe "semi-agree" with the issues you highlight:

>> those damned stupid Americans, sending us stuff we don't need

I am in no way part of the marketing dept. (just a low-level guy that gets you coffee in the morning), but I have to say in defense of what I'm trying to do, small, lightweight, non-perishable, individually-vacuumed sealed bags of micro-ground instant coffee that can be made with hot OR cold water, I have been specifically told by numerous groups over there, would, if not be needed, definitely be very welcomed.

EVEN IF they never get totally "upstream" the volunteers who are privately making trips to bring supplies while the government/Red Cross is still in the "planning" stages are often times running on very, very little sleep. Something so simple as being able to shake a water bottle with some flavored instant coffee could the moral (not to mention the driving alertness) of some very, very exhausted people. And it may find its way even further up the chain.

As for custom inspections, I don't know it off-hand but there is an international agreement that Japan is part of where during disasters if you mark the shipments in a specific way, many pass through customs or, if they have to be inspected, are designated "priority" and rush-inspected.

As for the money being sent, well, there are "big agencies" like the Red Cross which raise tons of money and then find themselves in the crosshairs of Bill O'Reilly types again, and again, and again months and months after any disaster when it comes to light that not very much of the money raised actually went to the relief effort people thought they were donating to.

As for the fluidity part, here's an example of the fluidity I've come to learn of from speaking to counterparts in Japan: not only is the Red Cross advice of "it's cheaper for them to buy locally" not true since understaffed relief agencies have to waste time actually doing the buying, but in Japan's case, they would have to buy the supplies in the VERY EXPENSIVE south to transport to the cheaper north, the problem being the supplies in the north are either gone on the east coast or being hoarded in the west.

Oh, and with the recent radiation scare, bottled water is so expensive all of a sudden that it would actually be cheaper for them to use water sent from the U.S. for their relief efforts.

So, general truisms may be based from years of experience the Red Cross has in doing relief, but as you say, the situation is fluid and these truisms don't seem to be holding so true anymore, at least for Japan.

As far as the "distribution past that point" I've found groups that have done it, and are ready and willing to do more.

As for the tracking, I just spent and hour speaking with a lady from this organization who would like to merge efforts:

<http://www.sparkrelief.org>

And you're right, a YouTube clip or two don't convey an accurate picture.

But since our store is near one of these:

<http://www.mitsuwa.com/english/>

I can tell by the still-sullen looks on many people's faces and the never- ending phone calls that employees make on their breaks and lunches, not to mention the expression on their faces, that while the situation is "fluid" the suffering is still very much present.

So, you're right - items donated to charities may wind up in warehouses as they've done in the past.

But TV tells me that money seems to be no different in many cases.

And I've learned something interesting while doing all this.

People who won't put $10 towards a donation effort will gladly buy $50-100 worth of something or donate much more than that in sweat if they can feel useful and perceive that their effort is actually going somewhere other than an account at JP Morgan or what-have-you.

I agree with you about the clogs and bottlenecks. But even though I'm by far no expert, the "fuzzy picture" that seems to be emerging is that there is not just the good will impulse but tiny dots of, I don't know, network meshes of people of goodwill that are trying to connect with each other all over the place and trying to bypass the big charities altogether.

No warehouse, just people ready to collect and people ready to roll up their sleeves and distribute. Not make plans to distribute, but actually get in their own cars on their own time and take packages out with their own hands.

I know it's messy but I've come across so many people who are trying to take matters into their own hands, both as individuals and groups and if we can't use all the technology we have these days to do something like this at this point, then, I don't know, what's the point of life?

I may be naive or something but at the same time something in me just refuses to believe that in this day and age when some folks can send a flying drone halfway across the planet to kill somebody, it's an absolute impossibility to send people diapers, powdered milk and instant coffee, with all the know-how and internet communication platforms that are around.

I just can't accept this reality.

But I thank you for your thoughtful reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do some googling and make some calls to your closest military installation concerning "space available" shipping. If they are flying out there anyway and have space available, they sometimes take charitable donations with them. I don't know if there is any fee involved or what have you.

<comment><AUTHOR> What a good idea that I would not have thought of. Thank you!

<comment><USER3> Some of the storm scenes in _Jurassic Park_ are from a real hurricane that made landfall in the last day or so before they were scheduled to leave Hawaii. The site below is the best online resource I could find and it leaves out a lot of critical details (that I remember from a show on The Weather Channel). IIRC, one person (probably the person referred to below as Kennedy) got out of Hawaii via space available with the military and then airlifted supplies in to give relief to the Hawaiian people, in part so they could get the cast and crew out who otherwise would have been stranded there for god- knows-how-long. There were no commercial flights in or out and no permission to do anything of the sort. The plane was only allowed to land because it carried relief supplies. Once empty, it was okay to fill it back up and fly home. There were a number of ways in which the film crew provided relief locally (to the hotel they stayed in and surrounding areas) while still on the ground because of the expertise and equipment they had. It's really a very inspiring story which I think should get more press.

So just keep trying. You don't know what you can do until you try.

Best of luck.

[http://www.lost- world.com/Lost_World02/Jurassic_Park.Site/Pr...](http://www.lost- world.com/Lost_World02/Jurassic_Park.Site/Production.html)

 _Kennedy jogged two miles to the airport to explore their options.

"The destruction in the airport was unbelievable," she recalls. "All the windows were blown out in the terminals, and the buildings were full of palms, trees, sand and water. Every single helicopter had been tipped on its side."

Thanks to her relentless efforts among airport and military personnel in Lihue, Kennedy was able to hitch a ride to Honolulu on a Salvation Army plane and began organizing from a pay phone. Over the next 24 hours, she not only coordinated the safe return of the company, but also arranged for more than 20,000 pounds of relief supplies to be transported from Honolulu and Los Angeles into Kauai._

<comment><AUTHOR> >> So just keep trying. You don't know what you can do until you try.

Will do. Thank you so much for taking the time to suggest this route and for your encouragement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a Quant Finance Monte Carlo Engine in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://boundedvariation.github.io/

<comment><USER2> Useful to see Monoid applied so naturally to a real world problem problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Will the next financial crisis be caused by a Haskell space leak?</comment>


Microsoft's next Xbox is Xbox Series X, coming holiday 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/12/21016575/microsoft-xbox-series-x-next-xbox-console <comment><USER2> When is holiday 2020? What holiday? Why can't Americans use either months or at least seasons that we southern hemisphere people can accurately translate to our own calendar?...

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a PC if you connect a mouse and keyboard

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice Mainframe form factor :)</comment>