Inside Airbnb: New York City - <AUTHOR> http://insideairbnb.com/ <comment><USER2> New York has 3.4 million housing units and Airbnb only has 13,415 highly available, entire unit listings. Is Airbnb really to blame for rising rents, or are people just looking for a scapegoat?

[http://www.nyc.gov/html/housing/assets/downloads/pdf/housing...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/housing/assets/downloads/pdf/housing_plan.pdf)

It seems to me that if New York wants to reduce rents, they should build more housing.

<comment><USER3> I think its important to compare the AirBnB stock with the available stock of units, not entire stock. I would posit that rent is driven by marginal availability instead of total size of unit stock.

<comment><USER4> Yet marginal availability __is __driven by total unit stock.

<comment><USER3> Is it? Driven is a strong word. It suggests significant causality.

<comment><USER4> You don't think availability is driven by supply?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like AirBnB a lot, but the whole marketing it as a community thing just seems... weird, and a little disingenuous.

Granted I've only stayed in entire-appt bookings, but every single one of them has been run by a real estate person(s)/ entrepreneur managing multiple properties, who does not actually live there, and all of them have some self check-in so you never meet the person. It's really nothing more than a rev stream for these "hosts." I've been doing a lot of AirBnBs in Tokyo currently, and it's especially heinous here, like trying to up sell you on other stuff, or trying to justify a crappy, cheap bed because "it's factored into the price."

I just don't know about AirBnB's whole 'community' angle.

<comment><USER3> I think they can build a lot of ways in which the "community" angle adds value to a guest.

For example, they could encourage hosts to provide a list of top 3 things to do / eat / see, and aggregate this for guests.

Based on a guest's FB profile, they could suggest neighborhoods where they would enjoy staying, or connect guests to hosts who share similar interests.

There is so much potential, and I won't hold the current lack of community oriented benefits against them. Startups put a stake in the ground, and then build towards it.

<comment><USER5> AirBnB is fine how it is now (for me), I'm pretty indifferent to the 'community' aspect... It's just funny (and, well, dishonest) that they market it like it's so community oriented. Maybe it was community oriented before, but it is literally inundated with profit-seeking power users renting multiple apartments solely to tourists (no actual residents).

That facet is incompatible with 'community.' Forcing them to recommend stuff isn't community, but it is a nice perk.

Granted not everyone is like that on AirBnB, I'm sure there is much more community for shared apartments where you are living with travelers... but for whole apartments I would venture the large majority at this point are these profit seeking/multi property/ no residents types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are the externalities of a business model like AirBnB. It's great to be able to rent out your apartment for a few weeks while you go on vacation. But people are now buying up multiple apartments to rent to tourists instead of residents, and that reduces housing availability for residents are drives up prices further in an already painful market.

<comment><USER7> That's not really an externality, that's a market equilibrium. New York housing is very scarce, and you should beware of economic thinking that arbitrarily assigns scarce resources to certain people. Everyone has a right to a place to live, not everyone has a right to a place to live in the most in-demand parts of America.

An externality would be something like if AirBnB guests were a major nuisance to other people and there was no market solution to this problem. It's true that AirBnB guests and renters are often violating housing agreements and local regulations, but I'm not actually convinced the harm of this, to the extent it even exists, outweighs the economic benefit of more people being able to travel to New York--one thing that is clear is NYC hotels are too few and too expensive.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused by the juxtaposition of these two arguments:

> That's not really an externality, that's a market equilibrium. New York > housing is very scarce, and you should beware of economic thinking that > arbitrarily assigns scarce resources to certain people. Everyone has a right > to a place to live, not everyone has a right to a place to live in the most > in-demand parts of America.

and

> one thing that is clear is NYC hotels are too few and too expensive.

It's particularly baffling because there is _much_ greater flexibility around choice with temporary lodging than permanent lodging on a wide number of axes (location, comfort, cleanliness, etc.).

As for your other argument:

> An externality would be something like if AirBnB guests were a major > nuisance to other people and there was no market solution to this problem.

If my neighbors are renting out their apartment on AirBNB, and their guests are a continual nuisance, what is the "market solution" to my problem? If I complain to the guests or the tenants listing the unit, there's a good chance that they won't listen. The only other person I could complain to is the landlord, and _if_ the landlord does decide to pull their lease, that's recourse that they're only able to take because the tenants are breaking the law[0] - a law that was put in place specifically because of this externality.

A "market solution" might be if AirBNB allowed _neighbors_ to rate rentals on AirBNB, but that's a feature I would be very surprised if they ever added[2].

[0] The fact that they are breaking the terms of the lease does not inherently give the landlord the right to break the lease, but the fact that they are breaking the law may.

[1] The history of tenant rights is pretty well-studied and documented, and there's a reason that virtually every jurisdiction in the US places restrictions of some sort on temporary lodging.

[2] And frankly, I'm not sure it would do much good anyway, because the people reading those ratings would be the guests, the very people causing the issues in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Until I saw the map, I just hadn't realized the insane size of AirBnb.

These numbers are pretty rough due to things like suites vs multi room apartment listings, etc. but:

\- They're listing about the same number of rooms as the 30 largest hotels in NYC combined.

\- NYC only has about 70,000 rooms total, so AirBnb is fast approaching half as many rooms as NYC Hotels total.

Stats from: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hotels_in_New_York_City](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hotels_in_New_York_City)

<comment><USER10> If the rentals number in the search results is correct, Boulder, CO has 1,864 listings on Airbnb. The population is somewhere around 104,000 people, with around 42,000 households.

That is insane.

Not sure how many hotel rooms there are, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's about 1/3rd the number of Airbnb listings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> While it's great that Murray Cox has made the data 'Public Domain' I'm sure AirBnB would probably have a different view as to whether he is in a position to decide such a license upon scraped data from the AirBnB site.

[http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html](http://insideairbnb.com/get-the- data.html)

Including property reviews (written by 3rd parties) as a Public Domain data- set seems pretty clear-cut inappropriate - in the same way that it's no ok or legal to crawl Yelp.com, compile a data set of reviews and deem them 'Public Domain' for anyone to use a they see fit.

I mention all of this because this kind of abuse of the concept of Public Domain harms its reputation and also puts fellow community members in difficulty if they go to incorporate this "Public Domain" dataset and later run into legal issues with the original rights holder.

I assume most HN users are firm supporters in the true concept of "Public Domain" and thus I hope the community will call out improper and harmful miss- interpretation of the concept.

</comment><comment><USER12> NYC's real estate is hard for me to understand. As of 2004, I was able to get a cheap/ugly hotel room 2 blocks from Central Park for $90/night. Fast forward through a recession and housing crisis and I can't seem to find a room in a hotel OR airBnB for under $150/night. How demand has gone up that much in that time period is beyond me. Even 3 years ago I was able to find AirBnB's in midtown for like $120/night, and now they seem much higher on average.

It appears that there is essentially infinite demand to push prices up.

<comment><USER13> Overseas investors, especially Chinese, have targeted specific housing markets around the world and have pushed up prices in those areas. I'm in SF and we've seen basically the same thing...1 BRs are creeping toward $1m at the moment. Anyone who's tried to buy in any of these markets is well aware of having to compete with these all-cash offers for well over asking.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/realestate/wealthy- chinese...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/realestate/wealthy-chinese- buyers-head-to-new-yorks-suburbs.html)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-realestate- chin...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-realestate-china- manhattan-insight-idUSBREA3O0TL20140425)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-all-cash-buyers-in- us...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-all-cash-buyers-in-us- housing-2014-7)

<comment><USER14> Why would that drive AirBnB prices up? If anything, I'd expect it to drive rental prices down because there would be fewer owner-occupied units and more rental units as investors rent out.

As one example, Vancouver, notorious for huge amounts of international money buying up property, has relatively cheap AirBnb units

<comment><USER15> >As one example, Vancouver, notorious for huge amounts of international money buying up property, has relatively cheap AirBnb units

Genuinely curious - is this something that someone has proven (i.e. is there data somewhere to support this)? Or is it more of a personal observation? Thanks.

<comment><USER14> Just observation; sadly Vancouver doesn't have zillow - not sure what a good equivalent is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The legality part is interesting. If it's "illegal", but widely used, it makes the regulation wrong, not people, does it?

<comment><USER17> While it may imply that there's a non-trivial amount of public support to overturn the existing legislation, it doesn't inherently make the regulation "wrong".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > New York City is a city of renters, yet despite its high stock of rent > regulated housing, in 2015, rents continue to rise.

Most economists do not agree that rent control is a useful way to maintain housing affordability: [http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts- panel/poll-re...](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll- results?SurveyID=SV_6upyzeUpI73V5k0)

I don't see any real support here for the assumption that Air B'n'B is having a negative impact.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotal evidence here. The last person renting the apartment I rent in NYC didn't live in the apartment. She was renting it as two units on AirBnB (and lived in different building). She was kicked out when the landlord discovered it, and we were lucky to grab it.

If at all, this proves that long term rental units are being rented on Airbnb. This might not drive rent but drives availability of units.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting that they used "classic" web scrapping while they could just use their JSON API (just use Charles Proxy when using their mobile app and the API is exposed).

[http://insideairbnb.com/behind.html](http://insideairbnb.com/behind.html)

[https://github.com/tomslee/airbnb/blob/master/airbnb.py](https://github.com/tomslee/airbnb/blob/master/airbnb.py)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to translate a listing to a particular building? I tried using InsideAirbnb's data, but had no luck: [https://jsc.cartodb.com/tables/official/map](https://jsc.cartodb.com/tables/official/map)

<comment><USER21> I spot checked the ones on the map that corresponded with my building and it checked out. Handy...

<comment><USER20> I know this is unrelated but I had read about your company earlier this week, and was really impressed. Looking forward to hearing more about you guys!!!

<comment><USER21> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The overwhelming majority of the ones that I checked were marked as "high availability". Demand outruns supply, in the tourist capitol of the world? Does that mean prices are too high? Or does it mean that AirBnB has to go fully mainstream?

</comment><comment><USER23> There may be some bugs in the aggregation of multiple listings - checked a friend's apartment (who definitely only has a single listing) and it says she has "1 other listing".

Interesting data though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Airbnb is targeted at tourism, and passersby. End of discussion. It has zero effect on long-term apartment rental. The only 'disruption' this is causing is to the rip-off merchants in the old-school hospitality industry, who have been gouging tourists since time immemorial.

This kind of nonsense is almost guaranteed to be backed by big business hotel chains.

In response, I will double down on my commitment to spend time in more Airbnbs, and not at hotels.

<comment><USER25> Any sources on your wildly baseless claims?

<comment><USER24> Nope, but from what I can tell from data analytics such as presented, this doesn't set me apart from anyone else. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If there was no rent control/stabilization artificially limiting housing supply, AirBNB would not be an issue. A big part of the "problem" is simple arbitrage between very cheap subsidized rents and prices the tourist market can bear.

<comment><USER27> Rent control is moot, there are less than 1000 rent controlled units, and as their tenants leave they cease to be rent controlled.

Without rent stabilization, even with a decent job in tech, I would be commuting 2 hours each way (or sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 5 other people) instead of 35 minutes.

If rent reflected current building sale trends in my neighborhood, my rent would be increasing >60% year over year.

<comment><USER26> "If rent reflected current building sale trends in my neighborhood, my rent would be increasing >60% year over year."

OK, sure that would suck for you, but it's what the market is doing. Artificial price ceilings restrict supply and create arbitrage opportunities. Living in Manhattan is not a human right.

<comment><USER27> I live 35 minutes away from Manhattan (on a good day) in Brooklyn, on the border of Queens. Is your conjecture that rent stabilization drives rent prices up confirmed by anything but randroidian theory?

I have a feeling that luxury units laying vacant, purchased in a cash-only private deal, do more to drive up the price of housing than rent stabilization.

That, by the way, is a vast majority of investment in new housing stock in NYC. Some buildings cut a deal with the city to get tax breaks for providing 20% of the units as stabilized.

If rent were fully deregulated: good luck finding someone willing to travel three hours to work in a midtown office for peanuts (or, for that matter, in any job other than finance).

Do you have any non speculative examples of full deregulation actually increasing the stock of affordable, safe, up-to-code housing in a growing city?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


12 Companies Hiring Developers in Boston - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/21/12-companies-hiring-developers-in-boston/

<comment><USER3> We're new to town, but we're already hiring like woah in our new office in downtown Boston.

In particular, we're currently highlighting two clutch roles for a Ruby on Rails Engineer and a Data Engineer.

We were recently named to Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Energy. We're newly venture-backed, we've been called "the killer app for energy efficiency" ( <http://bit.ly/dZBy7q> ) and our work has been featured in publications such as Mashable ( <http://on.mash.to/hqyZqF> ), TechCrunch, The New York Times ( <http://nyti.ms/ayzLHb> ).

To learn more about our very competitive salaries, excellent benefits, fun company culture, and small arsenal of office helicopter drones, check out: <http://www.earthaidjobs.com>, and send us an e-mail at jobs at earthaid dot net

</comment><comment><USER4> We're in a period of open ended hiring at TripAdvisor. If you're interested in travel+Facebook, or travel+mobile, or possibly just like traveling... contact details in my profile.

Some of what we do:

<http://www.facebook.com/instantpersonalization/>

[http://tech.tripadvisor.com/2011/02/augmented-reality-on- ipa...](http://tech.tripadvisor.com/2011/02/augmented-reality-on-ipad- project.html)

<http://apps.facebook.com/tripadvisortravelmap/>

<http://www.whereivebeen.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Add Zynga to the list as well. We're building the next generation of social games from Central Square in Cambridge. If you are into games, this is the best place in Boston to work right now.

Great team, great opportunity.

My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> Canonical is pretty much always hiring and is an amazing place to work. Most of the jobs are actually home-based, but we have an office in Lexington that's specified for a few of them (and certainly available for anyone who wants to be in an office). It's not downtown Boston, but it is an easy reverse commute.

<http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/overview>

[https://tbe.taleo.net/NA3/ats/careers/jobSearch.jsp?org=CANO...](https://tbe.taleo.net/NA3/ats/careers/jobSearch.jsp?org=CANONICAL&cws=1&rid=86)

</comment><comment><USER7> Add Memrise to the list!

We just charged happily out of TechStars Boston, and we're eagerly looking for people to join our team of neuroscientists, Grandmasters of Memory and software developers to help us reinvent learning:

\- Python/Django

\- lots of jQuery

\- iOS

Hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com

Shout out if you're in New York (and potentially remote) too!

</comment><comment><USER8> Brightcove is also hiring a RoR dev, a front-end architect, and many other software engineering positions: <http://www.brightcove.com/en/company/careers>. hollar at me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Add Adverplex, we're a tech-driven startup incubator in Kendall Square. Always looking for entrepreneurial engineers who know Python and/or Ruby.

<http://www.adverplex.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I am looking for a first technical hire for a bootstrapped startup with thousands of paying subscribers.

<http://www.alwaysontechnologies.com/jobs/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Cyrus Innovation is hiring in downtown Boston for a small Agile/XP team working with Java/Groovy:

<http://cyrusinnovation.com/workplace>

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh, and pythonistas should check out Django Zoom (Heroku for Django) - <USER2> sit about 50 yards away in Dogpatch, and they offer an amazing 1-click deploy for Django.

</comment><comment><USER12> We got a few positions open over at The Boston Globe/Boston.com, you can find them on monster.com or the NYT's job section.</comment>


Heathrow Airport remove need for passports with new facial recognition - <AUTHOR> https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/heathrow-airport-to-remove-need-for-passports-with-new-facial-recognition-technology-a4128051.html <comment><USER2> It's about time!</comment>


How mitmproxy works - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/code/mitmproxy/howitworks/index.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great, informative post; I'd just point out that generating on-the- fly certs is a basic functionality of all the web app testing tools, Burp Suite being the most famous.

If you haven't looked at Burp Suite and, unlike Aldo Cortesi, can stomach running a Java program (I don't like Java either, but...), Burp is both the industry standard tool used by appsec testing for web work _and_ pretty inexpensive for what it does.

<comment><USER3> I run plenty of Java every day without breaking out in hives. I don't particularly enjoy _writing_ Java, though, and the most natural way to extend the Java interceptors is to use Java (Jython notwithstanding). I could have been clearer about this in my post.

I should also add - Burp is a fine tool, but I would hope there's room for more than a single "industry standard" in this area. Mitmproxy has some comparative strengths, is completely open, and is improving rapidly. I'd hate for people to be discouraged from trying it out and helping to make it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the documentation, the mitmdump utility is likened to tcpdump. Can mitmdump work without being configured as a proxy/router, ie: using libpcap/tcpdump?

I guess it wouldn't really be mitm in this regard, but manipulating the traffic is not always needed.

Currently I use httpry to watch http traffic without interfering with its flow, but httpry is fairly limited in its functionality.

By the way, very impressive piece of software. Its nice to have more quality open tools like this.

<comment><USER3> [edit: I actually misread your question. We don't at the moment have reassembly of HTTP flows from pcaps in base, but there's an external project that does this. As another comment noted, transparent mode is probably still your best bet. <https://github.com/cjneasbi/mitmextract>]

Yes, it's very similar to tcpdump in this respect. You can write flows to disk like this:

       mitmdump -w outfile

And then read them back:

       mitmdump -r outfile

All the standard options for modifying, replaying and filtering are available when you read saved flows. So you could do this:

       mitmdump -r outfile -s foo.py -w newfile

Which will read flows from file, run the script foo.py over each flow as its read (which can then modify them arbitrarily), and then write the result to newfile.

<comment><USER4> Transparent mode is great but invasive, and mitmextract is fine for non real- time analysis.

Sometimes you might want to analyze traffic on production systems and changing routes is not an option.

What I would love to see is a way of doing a non-invasive, realtime processing of http traffic, eg when a specific post request is made, trigger some job.

<comment><USER3> That would be nice indeed. Mitmextract uses libnids, which can do stream reassembly on the fly. It's not such a big step going from reassembling a pcap file to doing the same thing on network traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article really! I develop mobile application and you don't know how your software is indispensable for me :) i use it quite everyday really appreciated

</comment><comment><USER6> mitmproxy = Malcolm in the Middle Proxy?

<comment><USER7> Mitm=man in the middle</comment></comment>


Not dead, just resting: How discredited technologies can be unexpectedly resurrected - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12381449 <comment><USER3> The lesson I draw from this is that you should be sensitive to the distinction between "discredited" and "making progress on a longer time scale than you can recognize".

You can discredit _any_ technology -- or overestimate it, for that matter -- by analyzing it on a short enough time scale, just as you can take a random walk and interpret it as a series of dramatic surges and crashes.

<comment><USER4> Look at Smalltalk, for example: Sometimes things don't need to be directly successful to have a _huge_ influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope Dvorak starts picking up traction.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, it seems to have gotten a big boost when Microsoft (and Linux!) started including the Dvorak layout in system software and providing an easy way to switch between layouts on a per-program basis.

The first time I tried out Dvorak, I had to hack around in ResEdit, make a new keyboard layout, and then glue labels to a keyboard cover. If I weren't 12 years old, I would never have had time to bother. And even then, I gave up after a few days because I had homework due that I needed to type up fast, and couldn't afford to put up with hunt-and-peck.

When I tried again in college, everything was all preinstalled, and I just had to change a Keyboard setting. And I could alt-shift to go back to Qwerty, so if something urgent came in - say, I had to respond to an instant message - <USER2> could do that and then go back to learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember a comment a long time ago that paper would never die because it is too "user friendly." That was back in the late 1980's when that phrase was thrown around a lot, but it looks like it is true.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wrote about something very similar a while back: <http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2005/04/why-bubble-burst.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Best recent example is Social networking. Friendster was a joke before MySpace, er, made it popular before making it a joke again.

Later Facebook may have succeeded in not making it a joke.

<comment><USER6> Online video-sharing as well. This was a joke in the first dot-com boom: everybody _tried_ including RealAudio on their pages, but too many people were on dialup, the player was unreliable, and quality was too grainy. Then YouTube came along in 2005, after everyone had gone to broadband, and suddenly succeeded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dupe:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328767>

I think it's an interesting idea though. How many things sort of fade, or don't take off, only to be resurrected and achieve popularity elsewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm stumped these days on how to handle dupes. I had been deleting them when folks pointed them out (except the print version over the multipage one). But here it's apparent that a bunch of folks didn't see the original. I wish I could transfer the karma points to you, or link this submission to the original, though I imagine that would introduce many more new complications.

What do other folks think about duplicates?

<comment><USER10> > What do other folks think about duplicates?

I don't really care - unless pg creates some kind of market for the karma points I have accumulated, they're worthless (like ideas?:-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do folks (hint, hint) point them out though? I can't say my memory is good enough to recognize dupes. I know on a few occasions I've submitted something _I_ had previously submitted.

<comment><USER10> Shrug... part ego gratification, part "hey, this system might be better at catching these things".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why automatic app updates in iOS isn't a good idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparsebundle.net/posts/why-automatic-app-updates-in-ios-isnt-a-good-idea

<comment><USER2> Although I understand the concerns of the article, I do not agree. I think auto updates make for a much better experience for both users and developers. The web has had this model forever. With iOS you do have the review process delay, but major bug fixes can be expedited and released in under a day. This is probably faster than a lot of companies' web release process.

Also as a developer, I would rather have the burden of feature changes and processing feedback than the user have to sift through release notes to determine if they should update or not. Most users probably don't read the release notes in favor of just clicking "Update All" (speculation). All in all, I would rather have all my users always up to date so I can push bug fixes, features and improvements faster.

<comment><USER3> On the whole, I have been loving automatic updates while using the beta. It makes managing the device much easier, so that I can focus on just using it.

However, I have been bitten by one notable exception: I own a Samsung television and the Samsung-authored remote control app is an utter disaster. It always has been, but the bottom-feeding developers who make it have actually managed to make it worse. (Rather than fixing glaring usability issues [1] they have decided to update the user interface to a brushed-metal look...in 2013...and have taken away important 'buttons' like the one that allows you to select the input signal source - to switch from antennae to the Apple TV, for example).

I would have loved to 'pin' this app so that I could cautiously read app reviews prior to each upgrade.

[1] For example, this app is supposed to be able to control multiple devices, so that if you own a Samsung TV and a Samsung disc player, it can control either. I, however, only own a TV. It would be really great if, when it detects only one device, it goes straight to the controls for that device. Especially since switching over to the Apple TV remote app and back to this one starts the process all over again. It's truly terrible.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would someone be interested in learning (and for projects) ML together? - <AUTHOR> I am planning to self learn ML.
I will be following this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr6VqTRO1v0
Curriculam link: https://github.com/llSourcell/Learn_Machine_Learning_in_3_Months <comment><USER2> You can't "learn" machine learning (whatever that entails) in 3 months.

If you want to actually build up some skills, you should look further than a youtube video with a clickbait title.</comment>


Chrome for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://www.galleryforeveryone.com/

<comment><USER2> The "FOR NERDS" picture annoys me: there's no good way to write code on just a Chromebook, is there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't tried this yet, but planning on giving it a shot: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5195912></comment></comment>


The NHS is looking for up to 250k volunteers - <AUTHOR> https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/03/your-nhs-needs-you-nhs-call-for-volunteer-army/ <comment><USER2> Taiwan, which has one of the best medical systems in the world, is heavily reliant on civil society -- which is many things, but one of which is heavy participation by unpaid volunteers. Social capital is a real thing and a valuable thing.

<comment><USER3> One of the problems the UK has is that "The Big Society" was used as a political punchline for the best part of the last decade.

<comment><USER4> Similar to the problem in the US, where one party has been talking about how incompetent government is. For decades. And working to ensure that it is (so parts of it can be privatized). Now, look at it, when we need it.

<comment><USER5> > where one party has been talking about how incompetent government is. For > decades. And working to ensure that it is (so parts of it can be > privatized).

I'd be much more likely to accept that this was causative if not for the existence of San Francisco and other one-party cities that nonetheless _exemplify_ incompetent governance.

<comment><USER6> I feel the same. SF turned me into a libertarian/neoliberal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't it be more appropriate just to hire people and set them to work in the NHS?

It's way past time the government stopped messing around and just hired all the spare labour - which can then be directed to assist the NHS or directed to stay at home as required.

When there are so many people without work that want it we need to stop QE'ing Gilts and start QE'ing workers hours instead.

All this could be done with an off the shelf PAYE system and a few scripts to generate the BACS file to hand over to the BoE.

It fixes the layoffs, redundancies and the lack of work for the self employed and it will automatically back off when things recover.

Pay people and they spend it - keeping the economic circulation ticking over.

<comment><USER8> What will they spend it on?

They can't go out, can't spend it on anything but essentials and some percentage of those essentials are difficult to get anyway.

<comment><USER9> > What will they spend it on?

Amazon.

<comment><USER8> Prioritising essentials and even it is out of stock of some stuff you'd want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mixed feeling about this. The NHS should be funded to run some of these services. However, it a good way for people to contribute.

Still worried about a slippery slope - free at the point of need. No relying on extra support. If we need it pay people to do the job.

<comment><USER11> It's a global epidemic. The NHS is funded to run all of these services, but not when 1.5 million people have been asked to shield themselves.

<comment><USER10> Then supply more funding. People are being made redundant, this should not be just for a person that is boring being inside.

<comment><USER11> The Government is providing 80% of your pay to anybody not able to work. Self- employed measures are being announced soon. Redundancies are limited in comparison.

<comment> grey-area Instead of or as well as doing that, they could pay people for volunteering to help the nhs. The other measures you mention are very costly in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it be safer for people who has recovered to volunteer?

<comment><USER13> There isn't yet a test to say with certainty if you've had Covid-19. (EDIT: its coming, but isn't available yet)

I'm fairly sure I had it, but can't be 100% certain until the test for antibodies is available.

<comment><USER14> There are antibody tests. The UK just ordered 3.5 million of them

[https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/uk-buys-3500000-antibody- test...](https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/uk-buys-3500000-antibody-test-fight- coronavirus-12450702/)

<comment><USER13> Right, but they're not available yet.

<comment><USER14> They are, there are dozens of suppliers. I don't know how quickly we will get all the 3.5m tests but in smaller quantities they are available now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just heard there will be a round of applause for courier and delivery drivers on Monday It will be some time between 9am and 5pm.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a nice positive way for people to feel useful and lend a helping hand.

The headfake could be that this leads to an improvement to the health and well-being of the 250k volunteers some of whom might otherwise suffer from feelings of loneliness and helplessness

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting to see the comments suggesting that we should expect the NHS to pay if there is a problem that needs solving. It seems the implication is that labour should never be done voluntarily (even in a crisis situation) in a free economy. I find it bleak that we expect our societies and markets to function, solely driven by "selfish" value-chasing individuals.

As someone who has grown up benefitting from the NHS, I will sign up to volunteer, and am glad to do so. I wouldn't be surprised to see ample response from the rest of the nation.

Interestingly, in the past I've also experienced private health-care in the US, and yet wouldn't consider volunteering in the same situation on that side of the pond (and, of course, they likely wouldn't ever ask).

<comment> grey-area That's not the reason people are suggesting it, the economy is in dire need of stimulus, and many people are out of work..

<comment><USER18> This reply is underrated. It's not about community vs selfishness, it's killing two birds with one stone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the initiative is laudable. We know that on a regular Friday or Saturday night, the NHS is already struggling with waiting time up to 4 hours in hospitals and low bed capacity. Mass COVID-19 infections would certainly cripple the NHS in no time. Yet, the problem is how do we ensure that those 250K volunteers do not become carriers of COVID-19 ?

<comment><USER20> > the NHS is already struggling with waiting time up to 4 hours in hospitals

Interestingly, my local hospital emailed today and said that "Emergency Department attendance figures have fallen by 130 cases per day, or around 40% as a result of this crisis"

<comment><USER21> A friend made the surprising point to me that a hugely helpful element of quarantine is reducing traumatic injury across the board -- dramatic reduction in DUIs, car accidents, construction accidents, things that take beds in the ER.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does one find out if they are an at risk group? Edit> I'm asking. See if I can volunteer to help

<comment><USER11> They have almost all received a text message by now. (A few are being reached by other means.) I know a couple of people that have received them, they're pretty serious.

<comment><USER23> A couple of my family members received letters 2 days ago, saying they are to stay at home for 12 weeks. That's in Scotland though, so things might differ elsewhere in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The government needs to provide PPEs for volunteers, this should be a must.

<comment><USER11> Some of the jobs include telephoning people isolating to check on them, so everyone can help in some way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can UK's NHS protect 250K volunteers? Or even get them gloves and masks?

</comment><comment><USER26> National Health Service. Free at the point of use. No insurance. No "co-pays". No ultimate death panel of them all: provision based on financial or social status. A basic human need provided to all.

<comment><USER27> * Needs volunteers to function

<comment><USER28> During my brief visit to the Midlands many years ago, the U.K. seems to have a community cohesion that we don't have much in the US (many rescue services are non profit and operate exclusively with volunteers for example). They will benefit from it through efforts such as this.

<comment><USER29> > the U.K. seems to have a community cohesion that we don't have much in the > US (many rescue services are non profit and operate exclusively with > volunteers for example)

Counter-example: I thought the majority of fire and rescue people in the US were volunteers?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_fire_department#Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_fire_department#United_States)

<comment><USER28> It's a good point, but quite a bit of the US population lives in urban areas, no? Which is going to overlap with where quite a bit of healthcare system strain might occur, making volunteers necessary.

Will citizens heed the call? To be determined.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>