My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_story_brooklyn/ <comment><USER3> > This is a tough one. I'm an attending physician.

> Guidelines are there for a reason. As much as I despise our Commander in > Chief, I don't think the CDC is compromised. Fear doesn't rank over > guidelines, but I understand the situation. No one wants to be the doctor > that discharges patient zero.

> Personally, I'd admit you for fever of unknown origin for the time being and > monitor you for any signs of sepsis. If everything looks good from an > observation stand point, I'd discharge you with strict droplet precautions > until the fever subsides.

> I think your doctor did the right thing given the context.

Given the above comment, most replies here are arguing against CDC regulation saying it is too stringent. Its very helpful to understand comments in this lens, rather than that the CDC is just under-testing for unknown reasons.

<comment><USER4> The guidelines for testing were so absurdly stringent because there was almost no testing capacity in the US, despite their being hundreds of labs with RTPCR equipment, because the CDC screwed up their test kits and the FDA used emergency powers to prohibit labs from developing their own tests, and forbids the creation of commercial test kits and the importation of foreign ones. Three weeks after CDC (after an already unconscionable delay) shipped the non working tests, they have "fixed" this situation by permitting labs to use the 2 of the 3 primers in the original test that mostly work. So as of yesterday we are starting to have the ability to actually test, and the criteria are being loosened.

<comment><USER5> >> forbids the creation of commercial test kits and the importation of foreign ones

I was wondering about this... Very hard to justify that in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> Seems pretty mucked up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, this is bad. A ton of people from NYC / Brooklyn also commute back to the east end of Long Island for weekends so this has a potential to spread pretty quickly.

I don't keep up with the news at all but recently I started reading some articles from major news outlets just for more info about this virus. It's mind boggling at how different each channel's reporting is (I'm in the US).

I was at the store this morning and they had a TV playing. One channel down played it like it's nothing and it's even "technically" less potent than the regular flu because they compared yearly flu deaths to covid-19's deaths and played it off like "we're no where near the number of deaths that the flu has killed this year!" and then all of the surrounding anchors all agreed with the spokesperson they had on, etc.

Others make it out to be 1 notch away from an apocalyptic event.

So I guess this is really what "fake news" is? I don't get it. You can get a life time of prison for ordering someone to kill someone else but somehow it's ok to potentially gamble with the entire human population by not giving accurate information about a virus that's killing people.

<comment><USER8> I just saw a virologist give out the flu argument in addition to presenting the naive mortality rate and making an intentional arithmetic mistake (100-3.5=97, perhaps 96.5 does not feel such a big number anymore).

I would recommend to study this site [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) if you want to be more informed.

<comment><USER9> Rounding up .5 is considered proper form.

<comment><USER10> I agree. If you only have two significant digits to work with, pretending to have more precision is a different kind of dishonesty.

<comment><USER11> 100 - (3.5 +/\- epsilon) is 96.5 +/\- epsilon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Swiss government issued the following guidelines [1] to prevent further spread of the virus. Masks are considered useless unless you are infected.

\- Wash your hands thoroughly. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvcvvRp3lsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvcvvRp3lsY)

\- Cough and sneeze into a paper tissue/handerchief or the crook of your arm. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_rFPtQgKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_rFPtQgKE)

\- If you experience shortness of breath, have a cough or fever: • Stay at home. • Contact a doctor immediately by phone or call the coronavirus infoline. • Avoid contact with those around you. • Do not go directly to the doctor or to a hospital emergency room.

[1] [https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-...](https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche- epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov.html)

<comment><USER13> _Masks are considered useless unless you are infected._

This is a bizarre claim that can be countered against the reality that every front-line worker is equipped with a mask.

EDIT: Almost immediately I dropped to -2. Bizarre. Again, every health agency the world over equips health workers who deal with potential COVID-19 with N95+ masks. For some reason people desperately want to clutch onto the notion that it's useless because otherwise..uncomfortable and uncool mask, right? Another poster mentioned that the source didn't even state that about masks, but instead about surgical masks which is a tiny subset.

-Masks prevent aerosolized matter (e.g. a sneeze) from getting at mucous membranes (where it needs to get to yield an infection).

-Masks prevent you from touching your hands to the vulnerable areas of your face. It is effectively a check. So when you touch that door handle leaving the subway station it's far less likely you'll transfer to your mouth or nose, and we naturally touch our face thousands of times a day. Ideally one would have a mental process they follow where you clean thoroughly before taking it off.

Those alone seem like an absolutely _enormous_ win for masks.

[https://time.com/5785223/medical-masks-coronavirus- covid-19/](https://time.com/5785223/medical-masks-coronavirus-covid-19/)

[https://www.livescience.com/respirators-prevent- coronavirus-...](https://www.livescience.com/respirators-prevent-coronavirus- infection-study.html)

I'm certainly not at the point where I'm going to wear a mask in public, but the whole "Hurrr masks don't work at all" seems like either disinformation (e.g. stop buying all the masks because we want them), or people trying to comfort themselves in some bizarre way. Every bit of evidence says otherwise.

The moderation through this is absolutely cartoonish and ignorant.

<comment><USER14> Those paper masks do little if anything to help the wearer from taking in anything. They do not filter the air—they are far too porous and loose-fitting to filter. They do help prevent the wearer from spreading their germs and touching nose/mouth as you said, but they are not an effective air filtration device.

<comment><USER13> As mentioned by others, _surgical_ masks don't filter, but N95 masks absolutely do and are what health care workers are being equipped with.

N95 masks just look like cheap little paper things that you stick on your face.

<comment><USER14> No they don't. N95 are solid looking and sometimes have a plastic square housing on the front [0] and surgical masks are paper and pleated [1]

[0] [https://images.app.goo.gl/RZAgMSssThGJQrnf6](https://images.app.goo.gl/RZAgMSssThGJQrnf6)

[1] [https://images.app.goo.gl/fRW2dmSxUo1Lm1Dh8](https://images.app.goo.gl/fRW2dmSxUo1Lm1Dh8)

<comment><USER13> Yes, yes they do. I can find a million pictures of N95 masks that _look_ just like a cheap little paper mask (not like surgical masks -- not rectangular. Just cheap and like it's made of paper similar to a paper filter).

[https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-rxcy1k/products/11668/images...](https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-rxcy1k/products/11668/images/74845/1D-W795-800x533__72074.1581616670.1280.1280.jpg?c=2)

<comment><USER14> Now you seem to be just arguing for arguments sake or you're the kind of person who can't ever admit to making a mistake or being wrong.

Your linked image in no way objectively looks "just like" cheap square pleated surgical masks. [https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LyoAAOSwMTFeMbmh/s-l300.png](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LyoAAOSwMTFeMbmh/s-l300.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the key findings coming out of China is that CT scans can outperform reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) lab tests in diagnosing the Coronavirus[1].

[1][https://www.itnonline.com/content/ct-provides-best- diagnosis...](https://www.itnonline.com/content/ct-provides-best-diagnosis- novel-coronavirus-covid-19)

If the CDC's current tests are flawed or too few, then the CDC should provide guidelines to health providers to quickly diagnose potential patients using CT scans.

<comment><USER16> A CT scan is fairly standard procedure for diagnosing many things. Why do doctors and hospitals need CDC permission to use it to test? This seems like a bad movie where the CDC is not doing much due to political pressure. Why can't doctors act in their patients' best interest on their own?

<comment> semi-extrinsic A CT has a pretty high radiation dose. As far as I understand, for every 2000 people given a chest CT we expect 1 person to get a fatal form of cancer due to the CT.

Compared to the natural incidence of getting a fatal cancer in your lifetime (about 400 in 2000), this is a very low. And for serious conditions, a CT can literally be a life saver.

But if you apply chest CTs to screen for a disease with (let's say) a 0.1% fatality rate, the side effects of your screening increases the fatality rate by 50%.

<comment><USER17> It's ~29000 deaths / 70M CT scans per year.

That's 414 micromorts, which is almost exactly as risky as skydiving once on average.

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

Source: US NCI 2007

<comment><USER18> The wikipedia article says skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump. So more like skydiving 50 times?

<comment><USER19> I don't think biologic math always works combinatorially like multiple sky dives.

This sometime troubles me with radiation dosing comparisons. Another is time distribution, when a radiologic imaging study is equated with exposure from X amount of time in an airplane at high altitude. The time frames are different—- drinking 1 liter of water in an hour is usually safe, and drinking 50 liters of water is fine spaced out over a longer time period—-but not 50 liters over an hour. Radiation doses are often quite time dense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This implies that our government is managing the propaganda around Covid-19 by simply not testing suspected cases. Is this true?

<comment><USER21> To a substantial extent, yes.

UC Davis Medical Center statement on refusal of CDC to grant permissions to test suspected patient:

[https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/contenthub/novel- coro...](https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/contenthub/novel-coronavirus- patient-and-precautions-at-uc-davis-medical-center/2020/02)

"UC Davis Health does not control the testing process."

Florida refusal to release testing data:

[https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/02/27/flo...](https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/02/27/florida- wont-release-data-on-coronavirus-testing-1264003)

Note that Spring Break in the US, in which about 10 million college students consume substances, exhibit poor judgement, congregate in large numbers, swap bodily fluids, and return to some 3,000+ institutions of higher education, begins today. With Florida and cruise ships as prime destinations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_on_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_on_cruise_ships#Diamond_Princess)

I just posted my own update on COVID-19 yesterday (after watching events overtake me for 4 days -- I'd started after listening to the US CDC press conference on Feb 25):

[https://joindiaspora.com/posts/bc04cb503c840138f4b8002590d8e...](https://joindiaspora.com/posts/bc04cb503c840138f4b8002590d8e506)

On the Media's episode this week focuses strongly on COVID-19 and if anything is rather _more_ alarmed and alarming than my own take (I very conciously strove for verified data and sober takes):

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the- med...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-black- swans)

Audio: [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/...](https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm022820_cms997580_pod.mp3)

Features Laurie Garrett, excellent content. Focuses to a large extent on _both_ government mishandling and information suppression -- in the US _having no information to report_ rather than China's suppressing avaiable information) -- as well as other forms of mis- and dis-information.

<comment><USER22> > consume substances

I find this kind of euphemism use really weird. "Substances"? Water is a "substance". A carpet is too. Why not just say what one is actually referring to?

<comment><USER21> You might care to insert "mind altering" before the phrase.

But as used, relatively common in standard English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > At this point, the hospital called the CDC requesting permission to perform > the COVID-19 testing. The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did > not have the most life-threatening symptoms

Two questions:

1\. Why would the hospital require _permission_ to run a test?

2\. Why would the CDC not want to test suspicious cases _before_ severe symptoms present? From what I've read, the virus is contageous whether severe symptoms are present or not.

<comment><USER24> The core problem is that the CDC (and country) has had the capacity to test only a few hundred samples per day. Meaning, they don't have the ability to test everyone with flu-like symptoms.

Nobody thinks it's right to NOT test every potential case. It just wasn't possible.

Good news: Just today, they released new rules that should increase testing capacity by 400x.

<comment><USER25> The CDC doesn't run the tests. The hospitals and independent labs do. There has been some issues with the test kits distributed by the CDC, but since the virus genome has been sequenced you don't actually need a test kit (it's just a faster process if you have one).

However the CDC has enacted emergency powers to make it _illegal_ for hospitals to use their own testing equipment, which they have in-house, to test their own patients unless they first get CDC approval. And the CDC has ridiculously stringent requirements for approving these tests.

As a result, the only _confirmed_ case of community-spread COVID-19 in the US is in Northern California, because the UC Davis hospital basically said "go fuck yourself" to the CDC and tested anyway.

This is not because COVID-19 is not spreading throughout the community--it is! --but rather because the CDC's stringent testing requirements _prevent_ testing of any case that cannot be rationalized away as having been caught elsewhere. If you don't test for the virus, then you don't confirm the presence of the virus, so there is no virus, amirite?

<comment><USER4> Some clarification based on what I've been able to put together (caveat: I'm not an expert in this area)

The CDC developed a testing protocol (crudely, a set of 3 conserved RNA sequences of the virus to chemically "grep" for). The protocol is here [1] and I think anyone with suitable equipment (an RT-PCR machine and an oligonucleotide synthesizer to make the primers and probes?) could run tests using just the information on that web page, though they would probably also want known positive samples of the virus to validate against. And there are lots of labs with suitable equipment. But as that page says, it is not legal to do this clinically.

The CDC also sent out test kits [2]. These are just vials of primer/probe pairs synthesized from the short sequences on the above page, and a fake positive control to validate with. These were authorized by the FDA, and so are legal to use. But apparently somehow they screwed up the production of primer #3 (or maybe the sequence itself is wrong), and so almost all the labs were not able to validate the test. After several _weeks_ the CDC has still not fixed this problem, but labs are now allowed to run tests using just primer 1 and 2, so testing capacity is rapidly increasing (though of course who knows how sensitive or specific the tests are).

The federal organization preventing labs from running tests is the FDA [3], not the CDC. It is also the FDA who would have to approve the commercially produced test kits.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr- panel-p...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-panel-primer- probes.html) [2] [https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download](https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download) [3] [https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and- response/mcm-...](https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm- legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/information-laboratories-implementing- ivd-tests-under-eua#ldt)

<comment><USER25> What you say is correct, but is conflating a separate issue.

You are correct that FDA approval is required for a clinical test, and for that a CDC test kit must be used (even though the biochemistry involved is trivial and a grad student with access to the right tools could put together their own kit...)

An entirely separate issue is that the CDC has used its emergency powers to restrict usage of these kits--you cannot use the kit to test a patient unless the CDC gives the OK for doing so. Even though for a long time many of these kits were not being used to available capacity...

<comment><USER4> My understanding was that prior to Friday, CDC Atlanta's comically limited RT- PCR capacity was backlogged even under the "see-no-evil" testing criteria, and that approximately no other labs were able to do tests (since validation of the CDC issued tests failed). If there was _also_ unused lab capacity that is good to know, do you have a source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They don't post anything about the costs, but that would likely be the defining vector in this whole situation.

I mean, let's face it — noone's going to go get tested if it means you'll have to pay 5k+ out of pocket for the experience (even if it's a negative test and you require no further treatment), plus would have to be fired from your job for missing work and doing a self-quarantine for 2 weeks (if it's positive yet mild enough to not require hospitalisation), plus be evicted from your apartment for failing to pay rent due to the loss of the income (possibly having to cut the self-quarantine short in the first place due to any such pending evictions or the prospect thereof).

For this whole thing to work, testing has to be free, workers have to have protections, housing has to be affordable and plentiful, and Andrew Yang's UBI (Universal Basic Income) suddenly sounds like it might be a pretty good idea, after all.

</comment><comment><USER27> So is there a way to prepare our bodies for getting sick? Me and my wife and our 8 month old live 40 hours a week in public, so it's going to happen.

We already eat healthy, me and the wife workout. But the kid? Not sure how to prepare him.

<comment><USER28> I'd say you're doing the only thing a person can.

You see many people speak of "boosting your immune system" but it's pure quackery. A person's immune system is many layers and types, a system, it's not a single thing that can be adjusted at will.

The way I see my immune system is a 100 liter tank of water. You can't overfill it but it can be low. At most it can only be 100 liters. Your immune system can only be as good as normal there's no turbo button to over-boost it.

<comment><USER29> Get enough sleep.

<comment><USER30> Yes. Pure speculation, but lack of sleep might have been a factor in relatively young doctors in Wuhan dying from the virus. And quantity of viral matter might also be an important factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have a brutal cold right now with a ton of congestion and a fever. I am trying decide on if I should go to the hospital here in California - <USER2> anyone read anything that helps you make that decision?

I am a Caltrain rider daily and I feel like it is not fair to subject other folks to this if it is a COVID-19 - but I don't also want to overload the health system unnecessary if there are folks with Acute symptoms.

<comment><USER32> Either way you should call first — speak to a doctor on the phone and get their recommendations.

<comment><USER33> stupid, mostly-unrelated question: how does 'call a doctor' usually work? do most people have a doctor that they can just call? If I had a need to call a doctor (fortunately I don't at the moment), but don't know any doctors, what should I do?

<comment><USER32> Assuming you're in the US and have insurance you can usually go on your insurance company's website and find a local provider (doctor). You can then just call them up and say you're looking for a new primary care physician.

Also, many areas have urgent care centers for things that are serious but maybe not emergency room serious.

Unfortunately, cost is a variable in the US and I can't give any good guidance on that. (Not a doctor, standard disclaimer.)

<comment><USER34> Good luck with using the insurance company's website. The doctors they list in my area seem to either be deceased or not accepting new patients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Doctors give out the "unknown virus" diagnosis literally all the time. It's extremely common.

</comment><comment><USER36> China: underreports diagnosed cases.

U.S.: underdiagnozes cases.

Not sure which is worse.

<comment><USER21> At least in China, somebody knew the ground truth.

As much as I criticised China's initial response, their eventual containment has proved highly effective.

The US (and numerous other countries) are point-by-point repeating China's initial failures.

This will delay control by days. Growth is presently doubling every 3 or so days, increasing by an order of magnitude every week. Delays will increase consequences directly proportionate to those rates, both infections and deaths.

As it is, if Rest-of-World (RoW) response is where China was ~22 January, we can expect to see 100x present cases (~2 orders of magnitude) and ~500x present deaths (~2.5x OOM). Very roughly.

<comment><USER37> What was your critique of China's measures?

To me the extreme measures were just an indication that they understood better than they let the rest of the world know what they are dealing with. I mean, they locked down entire cities at who knows what costs, and they were _disinfecting the streets_. Or maybe they did let everyone know via official channels. Frankly, I was surprised that WHO didn't treat this as an emergency much earlier.

<comment><USER21> I criticised the _initial response_ , largely from ~mid December 2019 - ~21 January 2020, specifically attempts to shut down any and all discussion of the outbreak initially, as well as downplaying reports. See from three weeks ago this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22274827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22274827)

In terms of the actual epidemiological response, most especially since ~22 January, limiting travel, events, large congregations of people, and shutting down workplaces and schools, has been absolutely appropriate. Those measures have received some criticism, including by Chinese citizens. I don't feel _those_ criticisms are at all warranted.

The information environment is difficult to navigate. I'd argue that China's erred on the side of too much control, as it tends to do, but in general, _after_ 22 January, the process as a whole has worked, judging by results. The challenges are certainly staggering, particularly at China's scale. The avoiding of mass panic and protest is commendable.

The fact that other governments -- Japan, Korea, Iran, and the United States, notably, and all but certainly North Korea, are repeating many of the same mistakes (or multiplying them several-fold, in the case of Iran and PRK) -- shows that this is highly typical.

I'm also quite disappointed by the international response, and that of the United States quite specifically.

One of the first references I posted to HN following news of the Wuhan outbreak was Albert Camus' 1948 novel, _The Plague_. The story it tells, of society, government, and individuals, in the face of pestilence, is timeless. And contains valuable lessons:

[https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the- pl...](https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-plague.pdf) (PDF)

HN submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22150237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22150237)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The reality is that containment has long been off the table, which should be obvious to anyone who understands the jist of R0, the long incubation, the reality of global travel and the lack of tests.

It is time to switch modes from quarantine to containment and stop pointing fingers. Openly tracking potential cases in realtime can help communities slow the spread so we don't get crushed with huge spikes of critical cases all at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not to state the obvious, but there's not been a diagnosis of covid-19 yet, so let's keep that in mind before concluding this person has it.

Also, otherwise healthy 30-year olds need to do exactly what this person is doing: quarantine & treat it with the same meds as the flu.

</comment><comment><USER40> The story is rather worrying, and as there is at least one news report about it now I assume at least a basic amount of checking has been done to verify it.

From what I read, in many of the publicized cases here in Europe that started with a single person travelling there were several confirmed cases in people with close contact to the original patient.

The reports from the US are mostly about single patients with no known source of infection and about denied tests. If you don't test, you don't actually know how widespread the virus is right now. It seems plausible to me that the low number of cases in the US is mostly because of the far more limited testing, and not because there are actually that few cases.

<comment><USER41> Korea had few confirmed infections. Then a few people got very sick they started testing everyone those people were in contact with now they have thousands of confirmed infections why because they tested thousands of people not because thousands of people are very sick. So I agree not just the US many other countries probably have larger number of infected but few severe cases so not much testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> On the face of it, seems stupid you didn't get tested. But I don't know the other side of the story. If there really is a limited supply of these tests, it makes sense for CDC to assign them accordingly. Frankly, if you don't end up with COVID-19, this is a bit of a non-story.

Regardless, it sounds like a bigger budget should be set aside for for testing. If I was in charge and had the resources, EVERYONE coming back from an infected country would be tested; symptoms or not.

If it turns out you do have it, my thoughts and best wishes go out to you. (I'm sure the media coverage will explode; shame these things don't get the attention until after the fact).

<comment><USER43> The CDC has undoubtedly pushed massive amounts of funds into test kits...but that has to be manufactured. It doesn't just appear instantly and out of thin air. Then you have to distribute it to clinics/ERs. Testing will gradually expand, and the requirements for testing will be loosened once supply can finally meet demand.

<comment><USER44> In the mean time, why not import test kits from Italy or South Korea? Those countries test hundreds daily, if not thousands.

<comment><USER43> I would assume because Italy and South Korea need those kits since they actually have massive outbreaks where in the US it has been very muted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Welp. I've been a bit wary about riding the subway while corona is bouncing around, and this pretty much confirms that I should be.

</comment><comment><USER46> What is this? We don't know whether this person even had the corona virus.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's going to spread here, I'd rather have it and get immunity sooner than later when it's full swing and treatment might be limited.

<comment><USER48> you dont get immunity to it. you can re-catch it, at least according to certain sources. woman in japan got it again, or at least it seemed to have gone away entirely, and then came back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This helps highlight just how much of this is nothing more than FUD.

The CDC counts real flu deaths and estimates infections. It doesn't test for them. As a result you get a relatively low fatality rate.

But for COVID-19 we are using only confirmed deaths and confirmed tested infections to come up with a fatality rate that seems much higher than it actually is because most infections go unreported.

This is just a reality of the post-fact based world we now live in. Everything is bonkers.

<comment><USER50> Medical statisticians are not tards, and the math used to estimate CFRs is reasonable. Yes, there's uncertainty, because when something is massively growing, it's not meaningful to test the population at large and ordinary surveillance mechanisms are not effective yet. We also don't really have serological testing (allegedly Singapore has a good serological assay?) which doesn't help.

It's worth noting that the real issue is that CFR skyrockets when the medical system saturates. With good medical care available, the CFR is still much higher than the flu but less crazy. The problem is, COVID-19 can create enough severely ill cases to saturate medical systems with uncontrolled spread.

<comment><USER51> >Medical statisticians are not tards

This paper has 4000 citations: [https://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/1990/01000/No_Adjus...](https://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/1990/01000/No_Adjustments_Are_Needed_for_Multiple_Comparisons.10.aspx)

<comment><USER50> So? It has a point. I disagree with a lot of it, but...

* The fundamental point: A study with 100 comparisons will erroneously reject the null hypothesis at p<0.05 for 5 of them, which is a good part of why we adjust for multiple comparisons. But the same issue holds if we do 100 studies, and reject null for 5 of them. One of the fundamental problems with p values is that we don't really know the baseline number of things being compared in unpublished and preliminary research, which in turn makes the p value somewhat meaningless.

In effect, we've unfairly penalized the study with multiple comparisons vs. the same findings showing up from studies with individual comparisons.

* Studies with multiple comparisons are great engines of hypothesis generation. Setting too high a bar for rejecting associations means that we'll possibly discard too much.

* Most of our tests for multiple comparisons assume a degree of statistical independence which just isn't present.

The abstract is particularly horribly written, but those three points are reasonable points. (At the same time, there's circumstances where _obviously_ we need to adjust appropriately or get absolutely stupid, irreproducible results-- e.g. fMRI data.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


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<comment><USER2> This seems to be somewhat related to the idea of test marketing an idea with some Adwords and a landing page. In both cases this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the many valuable services that have popped up over the last few years.

This was a very timely article for me. I hadn't heard of Unbounce before so thanks for the tip.

</comment><comment><USER3> Using wordpress+website optimizer (a/b test), google spreadsheets api (form data collection) and chargify (billing, up to 50 customers), you might be able to achieve a similar effect for a bit less money and a bit more programming.

Working on a wordpress plugin to address some of the additional programming requirements... any thoughts? How would you implement this and what are the major challenges you see? What would the plugin be worth to you ($0, $50 or more)?

</comment><comment><USER4> ...which was really easy and quick because I already had a merchant account. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am not trying to downplay Ryan's accomplishments as a marketing hacker, but it's important to keep in mind that they (as the article states in the very beginning) already have 1,500 users and 10,000 people signed up on the mailing list. That's a hefty pre-condition for getting an additional $1450 in recurring revenue in a few days.

Also, if this money is significant in light of their other revenue, I'd say that their marketing hasn't been monetizing their user base optimally. If it's not, then it detract from the accomplishment of brining in that extra $1450. Again, I am not trying to knock the idea down. It just seems like some of the commenters assume that this experience can be replicated without an a priori sizable user base and traffic.

</comment><comment><USER6> The "Free SEO Analysis" tool is pretty cool - although surely that required some amount of programming development, and it's not mentioned in the blog post.

<comment><USER2> Their primary product (the SEO tool) isn't what this article was about. It was about NEW offerings that he wanted to test, how he went about it, and what the results were. IMO it was exactly what was represented in the title.</comment></comment>


56 of the top 100 Android apps use device id, contacts and/or location data - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/january/jan15_appprivacyconcerns.html

<comment><USER2> Makes me wonder if Google shouldn't require apps that access user information to provide an explanation of why the data is being accessed, how it is used, and how long it is kept. Then allow users to click through the notifications to get more information.

<comment><USER3> I've been wondering long enough why devs aren't forced to provide a short description why they need the permissions they're asking for.</comment></comment>


Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry into Trump Associates - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html <comment><USER2> I wasn't alive during Watergate, but I did read All The President's Men. One part of the book that this reminds me of is the part where they go too far -- I don't recall exactly, but they took a chance and accused Ehrlichman (I think) of something he did not do. They knew they were wrong because instead of dodging the question or covering it up, he flatly denied it on public television.

I don't want to read too far into anything, but that still seems to be how things work today. Flat denials don't happen unless an accusation really is false, while dodging the issue is an indication that the accusation is at least partly true.</comment>


Free Idea: Consumer Reports for EULAs - <AUTHOR>

After that SouthPark episode where Stan basically signs away his life to Apple, my company's instituted a new policy where all EULAs need to be approved by our legal council before we accept them. The thing is that EULAs are often chained together since software makes use of other software. So to accept one EULA, legal council needs to look at 15 different EULAs. This is expensive and takes a ton of time. It also makes devs upset, and slows down dev time.
My idea, which I'd like you to steal- is to make a Consumer Reports for EULAs. MOST EULAs come from pretty similar boilerplate that can be summarized into what you can and can't do with the software.
You'd just need your customer's admin account to specify what he does NOT want employees to agree to (by selecting icons depicting what they want him to agree to), and use that blacklist combined with your maintained list of software EULAs and the associated agreements to decide whether or not   employees should accept EULAs. You would also record that an employee has accepted an EULA, and you would also review EULAs that aren't in your system within 24 hours.
Edit: I'm pretty sure my company would pay 5/user/month for this. (around $300/month) <comment><AUTHOR> South Park Episode: [http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s15e01-humance...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s15e01-humancentipad)</comment>


Microsoft finally urging users to upgrade from IE6 - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10406468-264.html

<comment><USER2> "Finally"? What about the much-maligned contest in Australia that encouraged people to upgrade? What about the "Browser for the Better" program that gave out meals to the poor for every user who upgraded to IE8? What about the prompts to upgrade to IE8 on most Microsoft web properties over the past half a year?

More like the author "finally" noticed.

<comment><USER3> I think my favourite anti ie6 is google landing page with the big download chrome image.

Just a shame so many ie6 people have IT overlords that mandate its use .. hopefully that will change as more convert to windows 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i watched their commercial on youtube and didn't see anything that would "urge a user to upgrade from ie6".

how many computer-illiterate people even know what version of ie they're using? they see the blue ie icon and assume whatever they have on their computer is what it's being mentioned in the commercial. and worse, they probably see all these safety features in the commercials and think they're even safer now.

microsoft needs to take more drastic steps to force users to upgrade. if windows' automatic updates haven't upgraded ie for them by now, they should put some kind of interstitial ad on msn and team up with yahoo (or whatever most of these users are using as their homepage) to explain (with big scary pictures) that their ie version is out of date and that they should upgrade.

<comment><USER5> > how many computer-illiterate people even know what version of ie they're > using?

This is important. Remember, most people don't even know what a browser is. Internet Explorer is very cleverly named: people don't think they're opening a browser, they think they're opening the internet.

<comment><USER6> >This is important. Remember, most people don't even know what a browser is. Internet Explorer is very cleverly named: people don't think they're opening a browser, they think they're opening the internet.

It is funny that you say this. Today, I'm visiting a friend and his family. His grandma asked his sister: "what is the internet."

And her response was pretty much: "it is simple. Let me explain. It is so you can do research for homework, watch videos, and read email."

Up until today, I've only heard of such ignorance about the internet, but never have I seen it.

My first thought was: "wow, it is like that HN submission about how if you ask a kid why the sun exists, their response would be, "to make things grow.""

We cannot separate external experience from self without effort, a bit of training, and some self awareness. Something the laymen rarely wants to do. Mistaking their initial reactions as true to the world, since it is apparently true to them. The internet experience is only one example of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm dubious that any campaign of this sort could be anything other than marginally effective. The real holdouts that I'm worried about aren't staying with IE6 out of ignorance, it's a matter of financial necessity. Internal and business-specific apps are holding back a lot of these upgrades. If you have to choose between a $50,000+ development investment and staying on an outdated browser, most IT departments are going to maintain the status quo.

This is why I think Chrome Frame is such a good solution- you get all the benefits of a modern browser, without having to immediately invest in updates to essential apps. Of course this also runs the risk of being (understandably) stymied by Microsoft marketing FUD.

::sigh::

<comment><USER8> Chrome Frame is great, but there needs to be an official, Microsoft-blessed "IE6 frame" to deal with this. From what I understand, the compatibility mode in IE8 isn't good enough. People need to move onto the new browser and use a modern rendering engine by default instead of retrofitting the old browser.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it would certainly be nice if the problem was solved from both sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> about time, don't you think?

guess they finally realized, that they aren't going to be doing too well in the future, if the only exposure to their browser will be at work on the IE6

"switch from firefox to IE? Are you CRAZY? I use that piece of crap at work all the time, it's the crappiest software I've ever used and all sites look like garbage in it. No Thank You!"

</comment><comment><USER10> Anti Explorer is a small piece of code you can place in your site's HTML which stops Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE / Explorer) from rendering your page. Along-side this, a notification alerts the user he / she is using MSIE and prompts him / her to download Firefox instead.

We've all been there. We design our site with Internet Explorer in mind, only to find we have to resort to numerous hacks and complicated code to get our site looking like it should in MSIE. Numerous Web Citizens have written hacks and workarounds for MSIE, only to be dismayed at all the extra effort they had to put in to get their designs cross-compatible with MSIE.

<http://anti.eire-media.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> When I start IE6, About 1/3 of the time rather than open the homepage I have set, it loads Microsoft's IE8 download page. This doesn't seem to be new.

Is IE6 really that prevalent still? I don't work on a particularly tech- oriented site, and only about 3.5% of our visitors appear to use IE6.

</comment><comment><USER12> In fairness, Microsoft finally has a browser that's significantly better than IE6.

<comment><USER13> We can all thank the Mozilla Foundation, Apple and Google for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does windows 7 have a nice auto update like in the mac that will prevent this from happening in the future? We can't be expecting people to upgrade every 2 windows releases :).

<comment><USER15> Windows has had a good auto-update system since Vista. However, one of the biggest issues with IE 6 is that its use is still mandated by a lot of companies because they have old, unmaintained webapps that only run on IE 6.

<comment><USER14> > Windows has had a good auto-update system since Vista.

I beg to differ. The vista one might have actually updated your software to the new stuff though. But from what I remembered in XP, if you wanted the new windows media player, IE, or live messenger, you have to download them from their websites.

Also the only thing I remember from windows updates is the constant nagging restart prompt that sometimes closed unsaved work. You cannot call that good.

<comment><USER15> Oh, Windows Update on XP was terrible. And Vista's was far from perfect. But it _was_ integrated into the OS and it did, for the most part, do its job of keeping software updated (however annoying it was about it). By 'good' I simply meant well-integrated and effective. I've had complaints about almost every auto-update system I've used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not target both IE6 and IE7 users to upgrade?

<comment><USER13> Won't those who updated to IE7 also more readily update again? Getting people to update IE7 should be the easy part. IE6 is the problem.

<comment><USER17> Except for those using IE7 because it was the default in Vista. IE6 is definitely the bigger problem, however.

<comment><USER13> What was that strange word you used there? Vista? Never heard of it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Simula: a 3D/VR window manager for Linux written in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula <comment><USER2> Bad choice of name, reusing a venerable old name from the classic programming language Simula.</comment>


Show HN: Occupy Everything; a weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://market.android.com/details?id=com.thinglet.occupyeverything

<comment><USER2> Just installed it, very cool.

One quibble: The app does not rotate to landscape view when I open the keyboard on my G2 (which is typically how I view things).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm adding a couple more cities right now, I'll unlock orientation change as well.

<comment><USER2> Cool, thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just pushed out the update for screen orientation. Also includes Newcastle, Orange County, and San Diego news hubs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't have Android but the product information page looks great, very clever idea and great use of a weekend!

<comment><AUTHOR> Much thanks, it's coming to iOS soon! Any ideas for improvement?

<comment><USER2> That page needs a QR code that links to the apk file or to a market:// link.

edit: In the meantime:

[http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300...](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=https%3A%2F%2Fmarket.android.com%2Fdetails%3Fid%3Dcom.thinglet.occupyeverything)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just updated the description with an ASCII QR code, thanks for the interim link and good idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll never understand why these people get everyone's support but the tea party is reviled.

<comment><USER2> Depends on where you stand. Fox, for example, takes the alternate view.

Still, at Occupy Phoenix yesterday there were a number of signs that were downright embarrassing, either by virtue of misspellings or because of a vitriolic message. Or both.

The presence of 9/11 Truthers didn't help either.

These are exactly the kinds of things that some people like to point out about Tea Party rallies. I say, great, call out ignorance and venom when you see it, but do it for everybody. And don't paint everybody with the same brush.

Anyways, while I'm certainly not in agreement with everything everyone at every Occupy event believes I find at least enough common ground to want to stay informed so this app is quite useful.</comment></comment>


The Best Encrypted Messaging Apps You Can (and Should) Use Today - <AUTHOR> https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/the-best-encrypted-messaging-apps/ <comment><USER2> Is this article sponsored? Hard to say if it's without such label, but easy to say when it recommends close-source apps, or when server is close-source and network owned by social network...

It also misses community-based projects like Tox, Ring that are end-to-end encrypted and decentralized (DHT) by design and Riot (federalised Slack-like with end-to-end encryption), or Wire - one of the most feature-complete IMs.

[https://tox.chat/](https://tox.chat/)

[https://ring.cx/en](https://ring.cx/en)

[https://riot.im/](https://riot.im/)

[https://wire.com/privacy/](https://wire.com/privacy/)

<comment><USER3> wire.com's certificate just expired. :/

<comment><USER2> For me it's valid since 3rd of Nov to 4th of January.

<comment><USER3> Maybe their site is load balanced or regionally served, and they forgot to update on of the servers' certificate.

I did get a confirmation from Wire.com's support this morning that they are aware of the problem. Seems fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The characterization of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as an encryption protocol destroyed the last bit of trust I had left in this article after the recommendation of a bunch of closed-source apps owned by social networks, while arguing in service of privacy, took most of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with you. Anyone that gives Whatsapp 1st place is... hahhaaa

<comment><USER5> ... then why did you post it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flagged for being potentially dangerous in its inaccuracy. This post is terrible advice and is BuzzFeed meets infosec in its quality and analysis.

Many of these services are unauditable and should not be used for secure communications. Security is opt-in in cases, and there are even warnings _in the article_ that certain things are not end-to-end encrypted.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think I can agree with this list at all. Whatsapp on number one is kind of odd to me, I'd think Signal would take first place or at least a higher place than whatsapp. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the same too. maybe its a paid list

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They should include the amount of meta data collected also in the report. For example WhatsApp collects and stores data about when and who did you chat with, but for example Signal only has knowledge of the day user was last seen using the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exectly1 And there were reports of Apple can unofficially decrypt face time and imessages

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sad to see they missed Wire, built on standards (WebRTC) and fully P2P with encrypted connections.

<comment><USER10> Wire is indeed awesome. However, as far as I can see, it's still questionable, whether it is as secure as developers tell us and if it really could be "trusted". AFAIK, Signal's developers said something like "we do not recommend to use Wire/Wire's protocol" (however, it all could be kind of political).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did they "forgot" to tell if that this list is sponsored?</comment>


Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential - <AUTHOR> https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/ <comment><USER2> There are an amazing number of inaccuracies packed in to this article.

The prediction this professor made about the number of deaths was not at start of February, like claimed in the article. It was three weeks later, when China was way past the peak.

The claim that the PFR has converged to the same number everywhere seems totally unfounded, though it's hard to say for sure given how vague he is about which regions he is comparing. But e.g. London and NYC are very similar in size, NYC has more deaths by a large factor.

He claims that the virus will peter out after inflicting one month's worth of excess deaths. NYC has already had 4-5 months worth of excess mortality, and are not yet through it. Is he just uninformed or intentionally lying? Hard to tell.

He claims that R0 is meaningless without also including a measure of how long a person remains infectious. That makes no sense. The definition of R0 already includes all the infections over the whole period of infectivity.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had the same opinion since the start of this thing (you can go through my post history if you want), and I've been astounded at how incredibly unpopular it is. If you try and point out what's happening with the data, people on Reddit and elsewhere will attack you.

It's weird how the same people who are touting the lockdown are also saying we need to "listen to scientists" etc, but they aren't doing that: those people simply ignore or deny the facts and data which don't agree with their doomsday hypothesis.

This whole situation is so emotionally charged that it overrides the good sense of good people.

EDIT: If anyone is a fan of Warren Buffett, you should take some time from your day to watch the Berkshire meeting from yesterday. I really appreciate how he puts everything in context with none of the politics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rm13iUUgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rm13iUUgE)

<comment><USER4> My take: China panicked and so did the west. As it became clear this is nothing unusual, leaders can't admit such a cataclysmic mistake and double down. Now many common places for discussion (Twitter and the coronavirus Reddit for example) are clearly under some form of control and shamelessly pro-panic. Others go with the flow (HN) which is the same in this case. And as usual only the uncensored places allow for dissenting opinions.

<comment><USER3> Maybe so, but I don't think it's China's fault, or the US governments fault for that matter. I guess it doesn't help that the current administration doesn't instill a sense of security, but I think the state of things is mostly caused by the media whipping people into a frenzy. The virus does what it does, regardless of what the talking heads of state say.

For example, Google was touting how great their YouTube stats were for news content because people were so hungry for news about coronavirus. So the news gave people what they want: doomsday all day every day. This corona thing has been very profitable for media.

While I haven't checked today, I'm sure if you go to the front page of any mainstream news site all you see is negativity (CNN, NYT, Fox, etc) and articles about how everything is falling apart.

So, I think if we're to blame anyone, we should first blame ourselves and second blame the news and their clickbaity-ness.

<comment><USER4> I'm fine with blaming the news first, then the leaders. There is so much context missing from the reports. When did we ever have counters for other infectious diseases? Naturally people follow the panic - I did so too at first.

I did learn a lot about law during this though. In particular how little it all matters, even the core parts of national constitutions. All overruled, changed and whatever in days time. Those laws mean nothing.

<comment><USER3> That's true. The government does what it wants at the end of the day. If they don't like the laws they can just change them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Logistic functions: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've heard this from the same places I usually hear conspiracy theories which is to say: I don't think this is untrue but it definitely isn't validated or verified.

Heretics wouldn't be allowed in epidemiological circles, which is why epidemiologists wouldn't be quick to spout this off, but the question still begs: what would a time bound have to do with a virus? And is there a proper comparative a/b case (perhaps in a similar country) to look at? And are there other viruses that behave this way?

Even shorter: Why would this virus be different than any virus before it? If it were created in a lab, which some intelligence agencies (and other conspiracy theorists) believe, could that account for it? Then why?

I'm unconvinced largely by the conspiracy theory, but I also don't necessarily think it's been convincingly proven false.

</comment><comment><USER7> Headline: "Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential"

TFA: "After around a two week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths)..."

<comment><AUTHOR> you might as well quote the entire sentence:

"After around a two week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes "sub-exponential"."

<comment><USER7> Not necessary, as my point was the headline is grossly misleading; the Nobel prize-winning scientist explicitly refutes the claim in the first part of that sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn near everything in the biological world winds up looking sigmoidal. The question is always "over what timescale"

</comment><comment><USER9> > but I think we've really screwed up. We've caused pollution, we've allowed > the world's population to increase threefold in my lifetime, we've caused > the problems of global warming and now we've left your generation with a > real mess in order to save a relatively small number of very old people.

I agree with him on this. Just wanted to add that it is mostly at the expense of children - they are least to blame for all this mess but suffer most. No friends, no proper school, heck, not even going out with their bicycles or skateboards for months. I don't think they deserved this and I don't know how we will ever pay them back.

<comment><USER10> No one "deserved" this pandemic. The universe isn't some sort of cosmic judge. The laws of nature simply tick forward blindly and ceaselessly, and we make do as best we can :)

P.S. I'm a compatibilist, so I see no contradictions in this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Transcript of video via autogenerated subtitles: [https://pastebin.com/P4z71D8W](https://pastebin.com/P4z71D8W)

<comment><USER11> > if you have twice as long infectious and half the R 0 you'll get exactly the > same growth rate (7m15)

uh... no. (I am not an epidemiologist, but neither is he, so...)

R is an estimate of the total infections one person will cause. So if you're infected for twice as long, and R remains the same, then the growth rate will be halved. If you also halve R, the growth rate will _also_ be halved.

I don't believe he understands what he's talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> He says a lot of stuff that's all hipster, and also probably true.

BUT this article is about this -

"After around a two week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes "sub-exponential".

This bit implies some sort of God, or the virus has sentience reason for "some kind of break kicks in"

So unless you want to explain this within the realms of reason, this article contributes nothing, because this is what it's about.</comment>


Content Blocking Primer - <AUTHOR> http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2015/09/19/content-blocking-primer/ <comment><USER3> As usual Eric Meyer presents a reasoned, well thought out view on things.

It hasn't been talked about much here (that I've seen) but he's right - <USER2> blocking of JS and Fonts (I guess CSS too but that seems less useful/likely) means those who insist that a webapp _must_ be a 5mb SPA to be "useful" are going have some interesting conversations with clients (or less clients)..</comment>


Bye-bye kindle - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/165724/byebye_kindle_ereader_screens_coming_for_netbooks.html

<comment><USER2> Once I found out that my laptop could play mp3s, it was bye-bye iPod!

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know that this necessarily kills the Kindle and other ebook readers, but it will definitely require some serious adjustments.

Up to now, ebook readers held an a huge advantage with the e-ink screen and ergonomics. Ebook readers still have an advantage when it comes to ergonomics, but I think they'll have a hard time appealing to the average consumer based on ergonomics alone.

The ergonomics advantage isn't even one that ebook reader manufacturers can expect to keep. It will be reduced to just about nothing as soon as someone makes a netbook with a screen that can rotate around and fold down so it can be used like a tablet.

There must be price cuts. I can't imagine enough people will prefer the simplicity and ergonomics of a dedicated ebook reader over an equally priced- and now equally functioning- netbook to sustain a business.

They also need to focus on what they're good at and figure out what inherent advantages there are in having a dedicated device. Ebook readers need to be as simple as books, they shouldn't have to boot up, they should be extremely light, you shouldn't have to worry that some email worm is going to keep you from reading your books, etc.

In any case, this is only a good thing for consumers. We're likely going to see cheaper and better ebook readers as well as better netbooks.

</comment><comment><USER4> There was more geeky link to the same story on HN - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630237>

</comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't Amazon just come out with a reader that worked on these new netbooks?

They already have an iPhone app... So I don't think it's too big of a leap to think they may extend to other markets as demand rises.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a kindle 2 and a netbook and love that they are separate. I treat the kindle as a book/magazine and use it on the subway, in a cafe, in bed etc just like a book.

I would never do the same with my netbook especially considering how much larger it is. The kindle 2 is the perfect size for reading and a 10" netbook is the perfect size for a netbook.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like this is the impressive high-res-black-and-white-or-low-res-colour display technology of the OLPC laptops, available for other companies to use. I'm looking forward to it.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, I'm very curious to see that, too. Didn't know they could make e-ink displays suitable for _video playback_ already?

This sounds almost too good to be true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't looked into this for a while - but isn't one of the advantages of the Kindle the ecosystme that surrounds it - in the same way that the iPod is not just an mp3 player - i.e. the iTunes ecosystem?

<comment><USER10> I'm not entirely sure about that. There are many books "available" on the internet, and this one appears to double up as a netbook. That's a pretty serious advantage over a plain "eReader".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The part that surprised me was that Amazon hadn't acquired a patent for the screen technology.

<comment><USER12> They didn't invent it. They're just licensing it for use in the Kindle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's the content stupid.

</comment><comment><USER14> How can a standalone screen technology kill an integrated consumer device with the world's best infrastructure behind it?

The article clearly states that the product is the screen, _not_ a complete netbook.

Stuff and nonsense. If anything, Amazon might license the screens.

<comment><USER15> Have you ever tried to use something like a reference book on an e-ink device? There's a reason why Sony Readers didn't have any kind of search. The refresh is sloooowwwww. A 1 second overhead on each click _on top of normal processing_ will _kill_ most web apps. For a device that's accessing data locally, it's murder.

Better interactivity will also give a better online shopping experience on the device. It will open up lots of other uses.

Damn straight Amazon will license the screens. How about an Amazon branded netbook that had the Kindle functionality, but also could boot as a netbook?

<comment><USER14> I own the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2. So yes, I have used e-ink devices quite a bit :)

The screen refresh on the K2 is waay, waaaaay better. Much less painful to type and use UI elements.

But I have learned not to use ref books on them not because of the slow UI/search (it's not so bad), but because I require a physical book for memory "wayfinding," to flip back and forth, to rescan, and remind myself, "hmm it was about in the last quarter of the book..." or "Where did I read about that study? I'm thinking... yellow book about yea big... aha, that one", etc. With a digital reader that always looks the same, and feels the same, you lose something.

That is where the Kindles (et al) fall down - nothing to do with the screens, just that the natural UI of books is very good for these things.

<comment><USER15> _But I have learned not to use ref books on them not because of the slow UI/search (it's not so bad), but because I require a physical book for memory "wayfinding," to flip back and forth_

That's _exactly_ what I'm talking about! If the Kindle 2 had better interactivity, there could be a highly responsive interface that could give you the same "wayfinding" feel. (Think of the flick-scroll contacts on the iPhone.)

Such is _impossible_ on the Kindle.

<comment><USER16> A netbook-type replacement for the kindle isn't going to improve this at all.

What is your point?

<comment><USER15> You can't implement a flick-scroll type interface without immediate feedback. A delay of 1 second or even an large fraction of a second makes this untenable.

My point is not a Kindle replacement being a netbook. It's about being _interactive_. 1 second screen refreshes cripple interactivity.

When I use text search to find things in electronic references, I find myself doing one find, quickly perusing the results, then often doing another refined search and perusing those results. Adding 1 second to each input is going to add something like a half-minute to each search session. That's _death_.

<comment><USER16> I think that your confusion here stems from your misunderstanding of the people who are in the market for the kindle.

They're not using it for _anything_ other than reading books, and most of them don't want to. You know what demographic represents a large portion of kindle users?

The elderly.

While we geeks might enjoy envisioning kindle users as the sort of technical elite that salivate over the kindle's wireless distribution model, or its e-ink screen, the people actually using the device don't care.

It is a book reader, not a mobile computing platform, I'm not sure how hard I can drive this point home.

The people who really _are_ geeks (people that use websites like HN), carry things like netbooks around because they have real keyboards on them. Putting a real keyboard on the kindle would ruin it.

The refresh time on the kindle's screen (kindle 2) is almost perfect. It is almost exactly the ammount of time that it takes my eyes to transition to the top of the page and continue reading.

For me, the experience with the kindle is _better_ than experiences I've had with dead-tree books.

I (and I suspect the overwhelming majority of kindle users) hope that amazon never changes it.

<comment><USER15> No, this is your misunderstanding. (It comes across as quite insistent, actually. You're opposing views I don't hold, rather you are projecting them onto me.)

I'm advocating a reader-type device for _other uses_ like reference. I'm not talking about a Kindle replacement. I'm _not_ advocating putting a real keyboard on such a device. A very flat pad with no hinges would be the best, actually.

You're only talking about the narrow use-case of the Kindle. There are other use-cases for print media, and these represent _additional markets_.

Kindle refresh time is good for linear reading of entire books. But this is not the only use case that print media satisfies!

That's about a half-dozen things you misunderstood.

(However, a device with the enhanced interactivity I am talking about would also be just as usable as a plain old eBook reader.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Exactly the kind of technology that can kill your business overnight.

Now, imagine Apple finally delivering a 10" iPad with dual e-ink and full color, with their characteristic award winning industrial design we all love.

Just imagine that.

<comment><USER17> "Imagine" is right - that is quite a fantasy.

First, that Kindle killer isn't even close to existing.

Second, if you think $400 is steep for a device that has a 1 second refresh rate and a gray-scale screen, just wait until you see the price tag on 10" of full-color, touchscreen, iInk.

Third, and the real barrier to entry, Amazon has the bookstore to back it up. You can make the finest e-book reader in the world, but until you have "magic" wireless delivery and a limitless library to back it up, it's considerably more inconvenient to use than the Kindle.

Apple will not crack this space. It will have to be Google or Microsoft.

<comment><USER18> The whole point of the Kindle, at least as I perceive it, is to sell more books on the Amazon store. Why wouldn't they let a company like Apple provide yet another interface for their store? If anything, an "iPhone of ebook readers" would increase sales on Amazon.

The Kindle is not an end in itself. The store's the thing. Kind of opposite from the iPhone ecosystem, where the store exists to sell the phone.

<comment><USER15> Such a device from Apple would have multiple uses. Imagine the 10.1" pad in a magazine-thin form factor on a coffee table, interfaced to your iMac. You could also have an advanced remote control for Front Row, a special multi- touch iPhoto viewer/editor, the same for iMovie, multi-touch oriented apps for Facebook, and a Twitter widget that could float in from the background.

Done right, a device like this could rule the living room!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Between WinAmp and iTunes, bye-bye iPod!</comment>


The digital epidemic killing Indians – BBC – Video - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-46152427/the-digital-epidemic-killing-indians <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR : Fake news of children kidnappers roaming in India circualting on WhatsApp led to 2 young men passing by getting lynched.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind [1] comes to mind. It only takes one person to spark the masses.

1 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowd:_A_Study_of_the_Popu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowd:_A_Study_of_the_Popular_Mind)</comment>


Intel AppUp: App Store for netbooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.appup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It is worth mentioning that AppUp will be preloaded on netbooks from several big vendors and that netbooks sold at places such as Best Buy will have a retailer branded version of AppUp preloaded. That means potentially an appstore accessible to millions of users. Whether users will know about it or care is not so certain.</comment>


The U.S.S.R. Fell–and the World Fell Asleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-r-felland-the-world-fell-asleep-1481930888 <comment><AUTHOR> Author[Garry Kasparov [0] was the Russian Chess Grandmaster

makes this article even more impressive. My Mother in law escaped Hungary while under communism and moved back in 1990, their house was about 50 steps from a fenced russian military base, and they were still leaving while they moved back. I do not think the gravity of the words "we opened our windows and they were gone" really sets in unless someone lived through it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov)</comment>


Show HN: Rake like build library for Crystal language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MakeNowJust/crake <comment><USER2> This would make a great link for "Show HN". Adding "Show HN :" to the start of the title will put it there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! Okay and sorry.</comment></comment>


Badges in the real world - <AUTHOR> http://openmatt.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/badges-in-the-real-world/

<comment><USER2> So... certs?</comment>


Intel's new storage chip is 1,000 times faster than flash memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/28/9058393/intels-micron-memory-3D-xpoint-speed <comment><USER2> If you asked me to explain what a memristor is without using the words "memory" and "resistor", I probably would have said something very close to this sentence in the article:

>The new architecture does without transistors entirely, relying on a bulk material property change to switch bits from a low-resistance to a high- resistance state.

So what's the difference between Intel's 3D Xpoint and memristors?

<comment><USER3> Maybe there's no difference ? maybe they want to play the stock market, because for memristors, they might have competition, for example from crossbar inc ?

<comment><USER2> The memristor patents might be an issue as well.

<comment><USER3> Maybe intel mostly licenses the tech from crossbar, and just scales the production ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


These Whistleblowers Think the NSA is Blackmailing Obama and Congress - <AUTHOR> http://www.policymic.com/articles/68485/these-whistleblowers-think-the-nsa-is-blackmailing-obama-and-congress

<comment><USER2> Someone needs to ask Obama why he both backed and co-signed bills that would curb the power of the NSA before he became president, only to completely change his tune afterwards.

I've said it before, but I also believe that the NSA now has the power to make sure that presidents toe the line.

The question everyone needs to ask themselves is; who's line are they toeing? Who's the piper? Who is the power behind the throne?

It might just be conspiracy theory, but the problem is the NSA now genuinely have the capability to do this. Even if they aren't, how would we know if somebody rogue came in to head up the NSA; an American Joseph Goebbels for example. We wouldn't even know, because all of those secret courts and secret policies would hide the reality from the public until it was too late.

I just hope that we aren't too late already.

</comment><comment><USER3> Effectively, these people are saying that the U.S. government has been overthrown in a coup and that the plotters were so successful that they have been able to keep it quiet until now.

Reminds me of something Putin said in an interview with foreign press back in 2003 or 2004. He said that nobody has clean hands, not even himself. But you have to move forward.

What the USA needs now is a politician with the courage of Putin, to admit that there are problems and corruption at the heart of government, but to move ahead anyway. As Putin's example has shown, you can start with unclean hands and nevertheless gain the support of a majority of the electorate.

America has to move beyond its Puritan past and stop pretending that those in power are pearly white, or even that they need to give the appearance of being pearly white. That pressure to appear so clean is what opens the door to the corruption that has plagued American politics since the postwar boom of the military industrial complex.

</comment><comment><USER4> The NSA already believes its actions protect national security. It follows its stability protects national interest. Keeping tabs on people who control its budget and accountability keeps it stable.

They have means, motive, and opportunity to collect evidence to compromise government decision-makers.

The only reason I could imagine them not acting on it would be accountability, which almost no one who could hold them accountable is exerting. At least not yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> I sure hope not .... but I have no way of knowing. Which is a problem.</comment>


Ulcers & HighFives: How being on the Front Page of HN allowed us to test our NLP - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtly.co/blognew.html

<comment><USER2> Title is poorly phrased. It should say "how getting on the HN front page allowed us to test our NLP."

The title reads that you performed NLP on Hacker News headlines, which would be more interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, very good point. However, I'm not sure that it would have been more interesting. :)

Edit: But what a good idea. We'll do that now. BOOM.</comment></comment>


Seven habits of effective text editing - <AUTHOR> http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html

<comment><USER2> A few developers I've known have made the case that they just don't see text editing speed as the bottleneck in their day-to-day work. They're perfectly happy with the speed at which they can edit text and that's fine. What gets to me a bit is the dismissive attitude this type of developer tends to take towards usage of Vim, as if using it makes me some sort of misguided autist.

The reason I think it matters is that there are a limited number of hours in the day. When I get home from work I have maybe three or four hours on a good day to make some progress on my own projects. If during that time I can save 10 minutes of holding down arrow keys and carefully maneouvring the mouse cursor around my code and so on, then in a week that's an extra hour or so of extra project time.

<comment><USER3> > They're perfectly happy with the speed at which they can edit text and > that's fine.

I think they miss the point. Speed editing with vim is not about how many lines you may produce in the day.

It's about the lag between the moment you think about what you want to write and the moment when it's written. Your editor should not be in the way, and that's what vim, when mastered, is all about : you simply don't think about it anymore.

It's for the same reason that vim tries to reduce hand movements, so you won't feel your editor in those extra displacements.

<comment><USER4> Also, it's extremely satisfying to record a complex macro and then 100@@ it across a wide swath of your file

<comment><USER5> One of my favorite tricks was binding @q to <space>. It really speeds up playback so I don't need to necessarily count occurrences or go recursive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A few developers I've known have made the case that they just don't see text > editing speed as the bottleneck in their day-to-day work.

Right, it's only a bottleneck if you use the wrong tool for the job. As much as I love vi for text editing, it is the wrong tool for HTML editing and for a growing number of other file types for which more specialized editors exist (e.g. Eclipse for Java).

I know that vi experts think they are very fast with vi but they are wrong: if you are using vi for anything but simple text files, you are not being as productive as you could be and you should really consider being more mentally flexible and use the right tool for the job instead of vi for every job.

<comment><USER7> The best programmers use either Emacs or vim. vim goes way beyond "simple text editing" you don't seem to know what you're talking about.

<comment><USER8> No! No, no, no, no, no. The best programmers use _whatever they use_. You are making the same mistake as the guy you're replying to. There is no one best way. We need to get over this mentality as a community. I don't mean to pick on you, as this was clearly just an off-the-cuff comment, but this kind of dialogue is simply worthless. I agree that the grandparent poster seems pretty clueless about vim and its ilk, but an equal and opposite reaction that's just as subjective and baseless will get us nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A great resource in order to learn new key bindings and be more efficient in Vim: <https://www.shortcutfoo.com/>

Great article by the way. I enabled "hlsearch" and added "map <CR> :noh<cr>" in order to exit the highlighting by pressing return.

<comment><USER10> shortcutFoo is pretty slick. Bookmarked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I love most about vim:

Whenever I read an article like this I find solutions to problems I didn't even know I had. The _abbr_ trick is awesome!

<comment><USER12> I've always prefered to retrain myself instead of using abbreviations because I was afraid I would need increasingly more of them because of the abbr crutch. However I have never heard of this happening to anyone. Does anyone have any experience with this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> .. Or you could, you know, just use whatever IDE is appropriate for your language and _be a lot more productive than you ever could with Vim_.

<comment><USER8> I know this is bonkers, but maybe some people are more productive with GUI IDEs and some are more productive with vim and a terminal multiplexer.

<comment><USER14> Possibly, but I doubt that that is ever the reason for choosing one over the other. These productivity claims only serve as rationalizations of choices already made.

<comment><USER8> I opine that we're more productive with our tools of choice _because_ we chose them. And that's perfectly fine. We can claim that everyone else would be more productive if they used our unique cocktail of tools and techniques, but the irreducible fact that they do not _want_ to is proof enough of our error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Trivia: This is written by Bram Moolenaar, maintainer of Vim (the trivia part is that he maintains Vim; hopefully it's quite clear that it was written by a guy named Moolenaar).

<comment><USER15> And original author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The great thing about vi[m] is that even after twenty years of using it, as my primary editor for everything (paired with LaTeX for document generation, mutt for email, etc), and much of that time spent teaching students how to effectively use it, I _still_ sometimes learn about useful commands that I didn't know about. (Today: asterisk to jump to next occurrence of current word.)

<comment><USER17> ... and hash to jump backwards to previous occurrence of current word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Vim lovers would love Steve Losh's Coming Home to Vim: <http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/>

This was on HN a couple years back. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1710702>

</comment><comment><USER19> How much of this is because we still can't have a button which "puts the cursor where I'm looking".

(Or that we can't touch where the cursor should be).

"Go to the next instance of this word, wherever that is" is helpful; having to proxy a leap to somewhere you are looking at, through a vim command, still seems suboptimal.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Bram Moolenaar is the main author of Vim.

Note that this article was written in 2000. 12 (!) years later, we have amazing plugins that make :make rather quaint.

Most important vim command?

:help uganda</comment>


Ask HN: Karma Points Stuck at 1619 - <AUTHOR> Not sure why even though I submit links which get upvotes my karma points are still the same. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> For questions like this, you should contact the moderators at email@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Dancing Links (A very useful hack by Knuth) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Links

<comment><USER2> Cool, this.

A very nifty (if somewhat detailed) complexity analysis of the Algorithm X appeared in blogosphere's festschrift for Knuth's 70, <http://11011110.livejournal.com/128249.html>

I've used P159 in my absolutely first assignment in the intro programming class. I was to make a N-queens solver. The assignment obviously asked for a 8-line backtracking program. But I was naïve. I went to the library and turned it inside out. My solution was ca. 500 lines, and also implemented a way to find the number of solutions without computing them (this was from IIRC a paper by Rivin), and had a randomized mode which would find just a single solution but for fast for very large N (this I found in Norvig's AIMA in a footnote referencing a paper by J.M., I don't remember the page or the full name)). Good times.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it's obvious to some, but not to me: what are some applications of algorithm X?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using it for GUI layout management. jquery based. still hacking on it though.

<comment><USER4> How are you coming up with the constraints and what fills what needs ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw this here earlier.</comment>


Counterfactual Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/the-no-self-defeating-object-argument-revisited/

<comment><AUTHOR> Among others, I liked this quote:

This is not to say that counterfactual thinking is not encountered at all outside of mathematics. For instance, an obvious source of counterfactual thinking occurs in literary fiction, particularly in speculative fiction such as science fiction, fantasy, or alternate history. Here, one can certainly take one or more counterfactual hypotheses (e.g. "what if magic really existed?") and follow them to see what conclusions would result. The analogy between this and mathematical counterfactual reasoning is not perfect, of course: in fiction, consequences are usually not logically dictated by their premises, but are instead driven by more contingent considerations, such as the need to advance the plot, to entertain the reader, or to make some moral or political point, and these types of narrative elements are almost completely absent in mathematical writing). Nevertheless, the analogy can be somewhat helpful when one is first coming to terms with mathematical reasoning. For instance, the mathematical concept of a proof by contradiction can be viewed as roughly analogous in some ways to such literary concepts as satire, dark humour, or absurdist fiction, in which one takes a premise specifically with the intent to derive absurd consequences from it. And if the proof of (say) a lemma is analogous to a short story, then the statement of that lemma can be viewed as analogous to the moral of that story.</comment>


Google doesn't get people, it sells them - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/09/05/don-norman-google-doesnt-get-people-it-sells-them/ <comment><USER2> A moot point yet creatively made.</comment>


Why aren't there more startups in Michigan? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-arent-there-more-startups-in-Michigan

<comment><USER2> I've wondered this myself a few times. If I were going to do a startup myself, I'd probably stay right here (near the northern tip of the state). For any topic/problem that will hold my interest, I know at least a couple other people nearby who'd likely be interested as well, and with my cost of living as it is now, I'd have a pretty long runway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Serial, Michigan-based entrepeneur Dug Song has some insightful comments.</comment>


$600 Is Too Much for Samsung's New Chromebook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://chromeunboxed.com/news/samsung-chromebook-pro-64gb-best-buy-but-is-it-worth-it/ <comment><USER2> Not when the iPhone is $1k... I remember the good old days of sub £100 (yes I'm from the UK) phones.</comment>


A just culture guide - <AUTHOR> https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/just-culture-guide/ <comment><AUTHOR> Finding out what went wrong, but without throwing people under a bus, is important. I thought HN might be interested in this bit of work from England about "just Culture" within healthcare. Here we're not talking about a data centre outage for a few hours. We're talking about when people die, or when people are caused severe life-limiting harm.

Creating a just culture enables staff to explore what went wrong, and to learn from that, and to prevent it happening again. It means that staff that did not intend to cause harm and were not grossly negligent will avoid disciplinary action, but it allows room for that, or for criminal action, if staff set out to cause harm.

NHS Improvement is one of the "arms length bodies" of the English NHS. They don't provide any health services themselves, but they regulate and support organisations that do. They used to be called Monitor. They regulate the corporate structure, the finances, the appointments of very senior leaders, and some of the safety of English NHS trusts.</comment>