Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community - <AUTHOR> https://left.it/2020/03/13/covid_19-open-letter-from-italy-to-the-international-scientific-community/ <comment><USER2> Chris Martenson likes to say "If the facts scare you, the problem isn't with the facts". (also check out his COVID-19 updates, I think they are very well done! [0])

You may think "it's not here yet". It is.

You may think "the numbers are low". They aren't. We are failing miserably in our testing, our numbers are easily off by a factor of 10 (for infections).

You might not want to be "weird" and not want to practice social distancing. You need to.

You need to act when it feels too early and honestly, in the US, that was a week+ ago so at least act now.

I don't say these things to whip people up in a panic, I say them because we are about to get hit hard here in the US. If you know a nurse maybe send them a text and ask how they feel. I can tell you the nurses I know are freaking out because they know we are not prepared. A have a friend who works at a big hospital. They have 2 cases (at least as of a day ago) and they almost buckled under it. They don't have many masks, they don't have training, and the hospital itself has no plans in place. When asked "How many masks do we have?" the answer (on Thursday of this week) was "I don't know" from the head of infections diseases. Let that sink in. March 12th.

I can understand not knowing the count off the top of your head in November 2019, I can understand it in December 2019, I can still wrap my head around not knowing it in January 2020 but damn it... It's March, you are in a meeting to discuss COVID-19 and you don't know how many masks you have on hand?

The world has been warning us for months now and they had no plans for how to handle visitors. The nurses have not done n95 mask fit tests. They are not getting clear direction on how handle mask reuse. We are not prepared for this. If this hospital (which I would trust for any major procedure) is feeling the strain with 2 patients what happens when there are 4? 8? 16? 32?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaE...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaEkFimDeepqyWf)

<comment><USER3> > I don't say these things to whip people up in a panic, I say them because we > are about to get hit hard here in the US.

The average person in the US rightly did not have much reason to be concerned a few weeks ago, but that's not the case anymore. It's important to understand that the situation has evolved rapidly for the worse here, and our response ("panic level" if you will) must escalate accordingly.

In particular:

\- Each one of us is now at much higher risk of infection, possibly orders of magnitude higher than the official numbers suggest. The bungled testing rollout, the high level of community spread and the number of deaths together suggest the official numbers are grossly under-counting. [1] This is very different from a few weeks ago when the cases where mostly imported or had known transmission routes.

\- A few weeks ago, the CDC was still hoping to contain the epidemic by tracing and quarantining cases. But that has changed. Whereas China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc have succeeded in containing the disease so far, the US has already failed and the CDC now expects it to eventually spread to most of the US population. [2] Its strategy is now to slow it down enough to avoid what's happening in Italy.

\- The situation in Italy has shown us the magnitude of human suffering that will result from people "under-panicking" and going about their daily lives at a similar stage of the epidemic. There will be a rapid explosion in cases, leading to a meltdown of the health care system. Many of us will lose our loved ones, and many of us will die unnecessary deaths from hospitals being overrun. Not to mention the impact on the economy, which we can't measure yet in Italy but could well be greater than the cost of locking down early.

So stop thinking "it's fine". It was a few weeks ago. It's not anymore.

[1] [https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or- peop...](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will- die-f4d3d9cd99ca)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- updates/summ...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- updates/summary.html) or [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfYC4YLsu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfYC4YLsu4)

<comment><USER2> 100% agree with what you are saying. I really meant more so that I don't want to encourage hoarding or panic buying to the level where other people can't get what they need. You should be worried, you should be preparing in anyway you can (2 weeks+ food, isolate yourself as much as possible, discourage gatherings of any size).

<comment><USER3> Yep, 100% agree. No reason to go rob-a-hand-sanitizer-factory crazy. But as you said, everyone one of us should be worried enough to go prep and do our part to slow the spread (WFH if possible etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus.

It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit _and_ because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the world.

Why on Earth is this a good model?

Undoubtedly for the safety of citizens, but even with all the people shouting about a "fascist revolution" going on with the previous government, it only took _three orders_ to strip everyone of most of their freedoms without anyone batting an eye (especially since no one knows for how long, the April 3rd date is a joke).

Quarantining is probably inevitable (although it won't help the overloaded ICUs until two weeks from now, so more capacity will always be needed), but following rules in place in an outbreak does not mean one should not question their principles.

And this letter should be sent to the media and the government, since both can't even understand an exponential, or basic statistics (even with the so- called "peak" reached, _cases will keep on increasing_ until recoveries are due).

Personally I'd like fast-tracking of anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs instead (those are the ones which will get out of this mess, quarantining is just flattening the curve, although immensely beneficial), along with setting up place for non- intensive care COVID-19 patients. Every ICU bed freed is a victory.

<comment> tuna-piano Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc. Italy was unable to stop the spread before reaching a huge level and spreading to other countries.

Why blame China for "allowing this virus to spread all around the world" when Italy allowed the same?

(Italy even had a warning that it was coming!)

<comment><USER5> Doctors and civilians tried to sound the alarm that something was going on, and were silenced until it was too late. To their credit, the CCP fired the Wuhan officials who presumably silenced those people, but it is still their responsibility for fostering a culture where towing the line and hiding problems until they cannot be hidden is acceptable for leadership positions.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing to credit. Everyone was in on the silencing, the CCP only used those officials as scapegoats. Everyone on all levels of politics was keeping this a secret and hoping it would go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a physicist, it still feels odd to me they are talking about statistics with such confidence here.

It seems only SK has earned that right and has tested enough people to get reliable statistics. If you only measure the sick in the hospital...

<comment><USER8> The pattern is fairly consistent across countries [0]:

[0] [https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.ft.com%2Fthe- world%2Ffiles%2F2020%2F03%2Ftrajectory-mar14.png?fit=scale- down&source=next&width=700)

<comment><USER9> That is the most useful graph on this subject so far. Go look at it now. Most countries have exactly the same growth trajectory measured from 100 cases. That's solid data about how this behaves.

Singapore and Hong Kong have been able to slow things down by strong measures, but it's still a straight line on a log graph, just with 1/3 of the growth rate. Italy is on the same line, just 8 days ahead of Europe and 13 days ahead of the US.

Only South Korea shows flattening so far.

<comment><USER10> I still don't get how people - including apparently some governments - don't get or don't believe it. Getting this graph is as simple as 1) taking the daily measurements, and 2) plotting them on log scale (and technically 3) shifting the lines to overlap, but that's just cosmetics). The trajectory of the entire West being the same as Italy's is immediately apparent.

<comment><USER9> It's much worse than that. Italy's health system is already collapsing at 20,000 victims. The population of Italy is 60 million. That has to level off at some point due to saturation, but that's at somewhere in the millions or tens of millions.

<comment><USER11> FWIW, at the moment it's only lombardy's health system which is collapsing, because most of the victims are concentrated there and the growth rate there was _much_ faster because the lock down was only imposed late.

The growth rate is the same in other regions but delayed, and there is some hope that the rest of the country might be able to cope with it better if the lock down measures are effective.

<comment><USER12> Hopefully. But the health care system in Lombardia has to be the best or at the top of entire the country. Southern Italy will struggle with fewer cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work as Principal ML Engineer, and did a little epidemic modeling in my ML PhD.

I wrote an analysis of how this is going to hit Ireland, including the best calculations I could find on fatality rate:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/predicting-the-impact-of- cor...](https://email@example.com/predicting-the-impact-of-coronovirus- on-ireland-bff1b6d00d6a)

I think that left unchecked this could kill millions of Americans in a couple of months. I'd love to be wrong.

<comment><USER14> >If that trajectory persists, and we don't arrest it, in the 2 weeks closest to peak rate, we'll have seen 75% of our cases emerge.

vs

>in a couple of months.

Why months? If there are 75% of the cases within 2 weeks, won't 75% of the deaths also occur within 2 weeks?

<comment><USER15> It says in the two weeks closest to peak rate. So if the peak is mid-May, those 75% would all fall in May.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe Italy is a worst case, both because it didn't quarantine early enough, and because greater population inversion.

> It's now a well-established fact that older people and those with underlying > health issues are more susceptible to succumbing to Covid-19. With 23 > percent Italians aged 65 or above and a median age of 47.3, the Italian > population is the oldest in Europe. This is chiefly responsible for the high > fatality rate in Italy.[0]

Also these articles.[1,2] And similar to the age effect in China.

0) [https://www.ibtimes.sg/fatality-rate-7-16-why-coronavirus- de...](https://www.ibtimes.sg/fatality-rate-7-16-why-coronavirus-death-rate- double-italy-rest-world-40975)

1) [https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/heres-why-the-coronavirus- deat...](https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/heres-why-the-coronavirus-death-rate- is-so-high-in-italy/)

2) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/italy- elderly-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/italy-elderly- population-coronavirus-risk-covid-19)

<comment><USER17> Italy isn't the worst case, they're just 2 weeks' ahead of most other countries.

Looking at the latest SitRep from WHO, my home country (Sweden) has small no. infected (775), but grew 25% vs the previous day. If that rate keeps up, number of infected will keep on doubling every 4-5 days and in 14 days' time will be at what Italy is today (17k infected). And then another week later it'll break 100k. Exponential growth is a bastard in that sense.

<comment><USER18> In Sweden we've avoided testing people who haven't been in high risk areas, and moved from that to only testing 'risk groups' (elderly and with preexisting conditions), so the numbers shouldn't be seen as reflective of the total number of infected.

<comment><USER14> Isn't Sweden itself a risk area? Looking at cases per 1M population [1], Sweden is at no 10, and its neighbors Norway and Denmark are at 2 and 6.

How come there are so many cases per capita? All the neighboring regions like Poland, Russia and even the North of Germany, have fewer cases.

[1] [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries)

<comment><USER19> Sweden, like the UK and possibly the Netherlands has chosen to let the disease spread among the population to achieve what they call "herd immunity" [1 - Swedish]. There might be some truth to the herd immunity thought, the problem is they don't have any control over the speed at which the infection will spread through society. Eventually everyone who can be infected will get infected no matter what is done so that herd immunity will also occur in a situation where the spread is limited by isolation as is done in most other countries. In other words, herd immunity is a given outcome of all approaches and as such does not need to be stated as a goal. The goal should be to limit the load on the health care system so as to limit the number of people who will die in the wake of reverse triage in an overloaded system.

In short, the stated goal will always be achieved so it is a variable which can be struck from the equation. Having this as a goal is the equivalent of not having any goal at all.

[1] [https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/strategin-lat-manga- smittas...](https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/strategin-lat-manga-smittas-i- lagom-takt/)

<comment><USER20> Note that it's only the opinion of someone that Sweden is following the "herd immunity" strategy, and it's denied by several officials.

Sweden hasn't closed down schools etc like other countries have done so it's fair to argue that it's being done in practice, but it doesn't seem to be a conscious decision.

<comment><USER19> _Statsepidemiolog Anders Tegnell säger att resonemanget om flockimmunitet "delvis" stämmer, men att det inte är myndighetens strategi. – Vårt huvudsyfte nu är att få smittspridningen att gå så långsamt som möjligt._

...which translates to...

 _State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell says the reasoning around herd immunity is partly correct but that it is not the organisation 's strategy - our main goal now is to get the infection to spread as slow as possible_

...but the Swedish government is not actually doing much to limit the spread of the disease other than telling people who show symptoms to stay at home. By now it has mostly been proven that infected people spread the infection for a few days before they show symptoms and the fact that children can be and often seem to be asymptomatic carriers the spread will be rapid and result in a large number of people in need of medical care. The Swedish health care system was already overloaded before the pandemic so it will not be able to handle a large number of patients in need of critical care. The same scenario is now playing out in Italy so this should not come as a surprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate." \- Michael Leavitt, former HHS Secretary under President George W. Bussh

</comment><comment><USER22> My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months?

We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and we were ready to work harder and focus on scaling and growth.

Of course, the more tragic situation around us makes our issues seem small. I think we will likely announce to our team to work from home starting Monday. How surreal.

<comment><USER23> _> the spread in our city is quite low for now_

If you're in the United States, where testing has been infuriatingly limited, the fact of the matter is you have _no idea_ what the spread in your community is. The numbers aren't low because nobody has the virus, they're low because nobody has been tested. If we did actual testing, they might come in low or they might come in high, who knows. As it stands, nobody has any real idea just how bad the spread is here. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Given that, the safest course is to assume the spread is high, and act accordingly.

<comment><USER24> The state of Ohio has only 26 confirmed cases, but two days ago the Director of the Ohio Department of Health estimated that 1% of the state's population (100k) may be infected due to the high ratio of cases being community-spread [1].

This is the likely reason for such a high number of celebrities in the news testing positive -- it's already everywhere; they are the only ones getting tested.

[1] [https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/ohio- de...](https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/ohio-department- of-health-director-believes-more-than-100000-people-in-the-state-are-already- carrying-the-coronavirus/95-f6d8add8-94b5-42ec-bba1-347e6eed29bd)

<comment><USER25> That 100k number is for the whole world. It was a poorly worded tweet

<comment><USER26> She said it out loud. There's nothing confusing or ambiguous about it. [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-ohio-health- offi...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-ohio-health-official- believes-over-100-000-people-with-coronavirus-in-state)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here in France even with the Italian experience relayed in the press, i.e doctors having to make many times a day a choices between the ones who will live or die, many people don't take it seriously.

I am shocked but not surprised by the behavior of my fellow citizens. Many people still went out shopping, went to the restaurants, still think it is a simple seasonal flu and do not at all comply with the recommendations of avoiding contacts.

The government decided at last today to close the restaurants and most of the shops except grocery stores and drug stores.

Also I think in France at some point the army will have to be called to help, to let policemen enforce the rules and be used to secure sensitive sites. With the periodic social unrest that France endures since the last major "ethnic" riots of 2005 and the more recent and more social yellow vest protests, I am afraid that in France there will be also a lot of indirect deaths of the sars- cov-2 pandemic.

<comment><USER28> > I am shocked but not surprised by the behavior of my fellow citizens. Many > people still went out shopping, went to the restaurants, still think it is a > simple seasonal flu and do not at all comply with the recommendations of > avoiding contacts.

This is what happened in Italy as well. 1. people are recommended to stay the fuck home and reduce physical interactions 2. most people don't care and carry on with their normal life 3. state now needs to enforce harsh rules because people don't seem to understand that it's serious 4. some people still don't care, go to parks, beaches, private parties

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Flattening the Curve" is a deadly delusion

[https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a- dea...](https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly- delusion-eea324fe9727)

"Flatten the curve" scenario requires r0 to between 1.0 and a small number above 1.0, like 1.1. In other words, it's not happening, you either contain the virus or let it explode.

<comment><USER30> It's also somewhat troublesome that for the 'flatten the curve' tactic the best case scenario is still infecting everyone...

<comment><USER31> No it isn't. The hope is that at some point a vaccine or lighter treatment becomes available. If that occurs before the end of the flat curve, that's a major change in outcome.

<comment><USER32> Most vaccines take 1.5 to 2 years to develop. By then most of the population will have been infected by it and will develop a natural immunity or resistance to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's unlikely that other countries can do what China has done. As an example, China is able to do 200 CT scans a day at each fever station throughout the affected regions. In the US we can maybe do what 10 CT scans a day with a single machine? In China they were able to figure out within a short duration if someone needed to be quarantined. They built hospitals in days. It's not just about locking down. China has people taking temperatures of people entering their apartments or when they show up at work. There are drones patrolling the streets that detect people with a high temperature. I have a hard time seeing us in the US build out what China did in just a few days.

<comment><USER34> Do CT scans even help?

<comment><USER35> They're an effective diagnostic, faster than testing for the virus directly. At least they seem to be effective at these fever clinics. NYTimes Daily podcast had a good explanation of how these fever clinics work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The last part urges lockdowns like China and South Korea but my understanding is that South Korea has not been doing lockdowns and instead was able to ramp up testing quickly and isolate infected from others. Is that incorrect?

<comment><USER37> Yes no lock downs and I believe minimal travel restrictions (only Wuhan, China?). They did extend the school holidays. Even in the center of the outbreak Daegu there was no lockdown in the city.

<comment><USER37> Other things people probably don't realise about Korea. Self isolating and monitoring for people entering the country. Also they aggressive tracked contact with infected people. Watching supermarket survalence video seeing who they were near and then publishing nationally the time and location of where they had been

<comment><USER38> plus everyone is wearing a mask

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > It's hard for non-specialists to intuitively grasp the way an exponential > rate increase can get out of control.

The best way to explain the exponential growth (and shock people) is ask them about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem)

<comment><USER40> I like the way a teacher explained it in grade school. She said to imagine we had a choice between two deals. One option is that someone would give us $100 each day for a month. The other is to receive 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second day, 4 cents on the third day, doubling each day until a month has passed.

Of course we all chose $100/day. Then she told us it was too bad we didn't take the other option, because we would have been multi-billionaires.

<comment><USER41> Keep in mind that your teacher is wrong (or you remember incorrectly). Given that a month has at most 31 days, 0.01 * 2 ^ 30 = 10 737 418.24 (if you sum up all the payments, double that - $20m), so quite far away from "multi- billionaires". The general principle stands though.

<comment><USER40> Oh right, of course I forgot to divide by 100. I should have also remembered what my other teacher said: always check your units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Here in the U.S.A. in Indianapolis, my 60 year old dad is out at a club right now dancing with his old people girlfriends. He is a smart dude (on paper - tenured professor of finance), but he doesn't think he has a thing to worry about.

I hope we get a lock down here. Many people are too selfish, arrogant, and stupid to make the right choices even when it is obvious.

<comment><USER43> I would argue that your father's actions are brutally rational: get the virus now, so he still has a shot at a ventilator before the system is swamped. He could be recovered and immune when the rest of you are figthing over the ICU.

Not exactly neighbourly though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just from the start already i dont get a scientific feeling.

"In just 3 weeks from the beginning of the outbreak, the virus has reached more than 10.000 infected people."

Does this mean only tested 10.000 people? Reads a bit odd though too, i assume they were not infected already when the virus reached them?

"From our data, about 10% of patients require ICU (Intensive Care Unit) or sub ICU assistance and about 5% of patients die."

Is this from 10% of the people actually going to the hospital, or 10% of all tested, or 10% of all people that got the virus?

<comment><USER45> Who cares. The point is to get people out of their comfortable complacency.

Read this one: "We are now in the tragic situation that the most efficient health system of the richest area of the country (Lombardy) is almost at its full capacity and will soon be difficult to assist more people with Covid-19."

<comment><USER46> I care. These doom and gloom shrieks and exhortations for President Madagascar to Shut. Down. Everything are distracting from the real work governments have to do to tackle this severe and protracted crisis in a competent manner, i.e. following the advice of real, not collective-letter experts.

<comment><USER47> The advise from real experts is also to shut everything down.

<comment><USER46> No. It is to flatten the curve, i.e. to get infected slowly and manageably, in order to minimize peak ICU admissions. This will minimize deaths. If you fuck up initially, like China and Italy, by severely underestimating the problem, you're forced to shut down everything for a bit, but in the end everyone will be doing the same thing - shutting down some things to control the infection, not try in vain to "stop" it.

<comment><USER48> Best to shut down now and flatten as much as possible, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Here in Israel, ministry of health wanted a full lockdown. But business won, so only a partial lockdown is enforced, and they are shutting down only clubs and restaurants. People will still be able to visit parks, roam freely, etc. Today there was an article [1] that some idiot that was in quarantine left it and was arrested on the street. There is no discipline. A hard lockdown is likely the best option everywhere. It works, as evident in countries that have enforced it.

1: [https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5694758,00.html](https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5694758,00.html)

<comment><USER50> > Today there was an article [1] that some idiot that was in quarantine left > it and was arrested on the street. There is no discipline.

Hopefully he/she was nabbed quickly, without spreading the disease to anyone else. Is Isreal using electronic tagging on those quarantined folks to ensure that they can't just leave their assigned place without anyone knowing about it?

<comment><USER49> They are starting to talk about it, but there are big privacy concerns of tracking citizens by intelligence agencies. Not sure what the status of this is, but will probably pass parliament because everyone is very scared. They can abolish it later, but we all know they probably won't.

It is unclear of the idiot that evaded quarantine is sick or only precautionary, but that's just the people we have—morons. Very different from Hong Kong and Singapore.

<comment><USER50> > but there are big privacy concerns of tracking citizens by intelligence > agencies.

Huh? An ankle bracelet ("tag") is quite transparent, it's not covert "intelligence". The deal is, you get to wear it for a couple weeks while you recover from your potential illness, and you _know_ you're being monitored so you're not going to just leave your assigned place and hang out anywhere else.

<comment><USER49> What they were speaking about here is using people's phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > Every minute is exceptionally important as it means saving lives. Don't > waste it!

The fact that the US Senate did not speed up the emergency measure by staying is loosing 2 days. At that time the measures are in place the problem is twice as large. In normal times this is just a business day delay but in these times calendar days are the measure and weekends are counted too. We really need to start thinking and acting differently.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's too late for the U.S. There isn't a clear, organized, unified direction of testing and action plan for all humans within its borders. That's the only way to get and organize an effective response.

We're canceling/closing off large groupings of humans and basically hoping/praying? for the best for the next few weeks. It's sad. This type of haphazard response drives conspiracies and confusion that is then opportunistically taken advantage of by all sectors of power.

</comment><comment><USER53> Lockdown resident: i fear our population will get bored off the lockdown, and/or fearful of shops running out of goods (part caused by sick workers, sick transporters, and people taking a risk and going shopping anyway), and by Wednesday there'll be reports of social unrest. This will be seen by other countries, who will impose more stringent curfews, and a cycle of restrictions will start. When the forces of law and order get sick, then the real fun will begin. Of three local food shops to me, one just got closed as a workers spouse has been hospitalised. Tomorrow, do i go get whatever food may be left in the other stores, play hide and seek with the police, then perhaps get sick, or let my family go hungry?

</comment><comment><USER54> The fact that growth rates seem very similar in all affected countries, baffles me. Surely lifestyles, social structure (number of families/kids etc.), hygiene habits differ slightly and testing rates/effectiveness of the health system varies greatly among them. If these factors aren't important, does social life even matter? The effectiveness of China's lockdown is a good argument for it, but perhaps they were just more effective at identifying and isolating spreaders? My point is that there's a chance that it spreads through the air or in some other way unaffected by curfews etc. (if you leave the windows open...).

<comment><USER55> It's not true that they are similar in all affected countries. The ones in that graph are cherry picked for similarity. If you look at China, Taiwan, Singapore etc there are differences.

eg Fujian [https://mackuba.eu/corona/#fujian_china](https://mackuba.eu/corona/#fujian_china)

Taiwan [https://mackuba.eu/corona/#taiwan](https://mackuba.eu/corona/#taiwan)

HK [https://mackuba.eu/corona/#hong_kong](https://mackuba.eu/corona/#hong_kong)

Taiwan is impressive in that they had thousands of flights a month to China, have only 30 active cases and no lockdowns. They had people ride on the planes from Wuhan to identify sick passengers during the flight and quarantine them on landing.

As a Brit I'm embarrassed by our performance in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Lockdown is not a long term solution though. This virus isn't going to disappear anytime soon. It might be good for countries that are getting out of control, but for places where it isn't a problem yet it just delays when it his.

Places without a problem yet should take reasonable sustainable precautions to flatten the curve instead. ([https://www.flattenthecurve.com/](https://www.flattenthecurve.com/))

<comment><USER57> Lockdown is literally what flattens the curve. The slower the virus spreads, the flatter the curve gets.

The virus still spreads in lockdown, just at a slower pace. We will likely see resurgences when the lockdown(s) are lifted, but the idea is to plan to do that when we can handle it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> We don't need military patrolling our streets just yet. Not saying it won't come down to it, but the sentiment in the US is less, uh... flexible, towards being heavily locked down as compared to the aforementioned countries.

<comment><USER59> Or at least, some people would like to believe that. I suspect an astonishing large number of them will discover differently, should those ideals be put to the test. Just a hunch.

<comment><USER48> Much of the herd will comply. Many others will make their stand, especially with the current state of sentiment In the right wing population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> From Italy, don't trust the Italian media, they are the first that are making so much fuss and wrecking chaos, and especially making quite some money because as an industry it was starving for some time.

Statics say clearly what strategy could have been followed to take care of coronavirus without much disruption of the working force. And the people at the government are mostly old farts, which says quite a lot why they panic.

</comment><comment><USER61> The time shifted rates of growth tell a compelling story, along with the fact that 1000 people out of 10000 required hospitalization. That is certainly statistically significant. I am now concerned that my birth country, the UK, has the wrong response. UK hospitals will not be able to handle that much traffic.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm not too optimistic. Scnes like this at multiple US airports. [https://twitter.com/JasonWhitely/status/1238986444615618561](https://twitter.com/JasonWhitely/status/1238986444615618561)

</comment><comment><USER63> I've seen comments here trying to play down the message or discredit the signatories of this letter. Don't.

Please take it seriously. This is not sensationalism.

What the letter means is that if your country is not there yet, you might be _DAYS_ away from widespread panic and total lock down.

I'm writing this from Barcelona, Spain. This last Sunday, 6 days ago, I went on a walk with my girlfriend, had a nice lunch, took beautiful pictures...

The virus was just some nagging news.. A couple of hundred people infected somewhere far away.

6 days later, we're at over 6000 infections, the country is in total lock down.

Same pattern as Italy (even faster), we're just a couple of days away before tens of thousands is reached. This is what exponential growth means.

<comment><USER64> There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February.

We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored.

Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it.

Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and soccer games with 10.000-100.000 people a week ago because people did not want to make the hard choices needed even as Korea was burning and Italy started to.

Excuses that China is authoritarian do not cut it - this was a huge fail of governance and doing what people are elected to do

<comment><USER65> Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth. It's just too fast for our primitive brains. In some sense, we are standing in the middle of the road, frozen like deer in the headlights.

Science is supposed to mitigate the shortcomings of our natural intuitions and cognitive biases. The problem is that most people are not scientists. When a non-scientist is asked to trust a scientist, he or she is subject to all of the usual suspects: arguments from authority, confirmation bias, Bulverism, appeal to emotion, etc. What this means in practice is that scientists are generally not trusted over the word of one's friends and family.

<comment><USER66> > Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth.

This layman has read that we intuitively think of numbers logarithmically, which makes him wonder if we human beings do, in fact, intuitively understand exponential growth.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-natural- log/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-natural-log/)

<comment><USER67> ...and see it as merely linear. That's the problem.

Exponential growth is like dynamite. It's absurdly fast, compared to anything people see in daily lives.

<comment><USER16> Dropping stuff and falling are good examples. If you're paying attention, anyway. I can still grab stuff that's fallen maybe 10-20 cm, but by 50-100 cm it's moving way too fast.

<comment><USER68> That's a terrible example, why would pick an explicitly sub-exponential relationship?

<comment><USER69> Because exponential is even worse.

<comment><USER16> Right. Because it's not linear.

The only truly exponential example that comes to mind is milk souring. But that's too slow, unless you keep notes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Mike Pence is not the right person to manage US response to the virus. We needs someone with different skills. If you live in US, please call your congresspeople and ask them to make a change:

[https://www.house.gov/representatives](https://www.house.gov/representatives)

[https://www.senate.gov/senators](https://www.senate.gov/senators)

</comment><comment><USER71> I was downvoted here recently for sounding the alarm bells on how bad this is going to be and accused of trying to incite panic. Folks, COVID-19 is something that should be taken seriously. President Obama had great advice: "stay calm and listen to the experts". All the experts are saying this is going to be bad and we should be getting ready now for what will happen in the future.

</comment><comment><USER29> Please also read this, I believe it's the right approach:

[https://medium.com/@jb_89278/the-11-day-plan-to-contain- covi...](https://medium.com/@jb_89278/the-11-day-plan-to-contain-covid-19-the- global-11-day-plan-99e324630de7)

The guy is tech enterpreneur and VC investor who has been advising our (Czech) PM.

<comment><USER72> It would be impossible to do this in the U.S. I'm not sure he appreciates the size of the U.S., the resistance among many Americans who don't like being told what to do, the denial by Fox et al, the distributed nature of our government and on and on. I can't even imagine it working in my county.

<comment><USER73> Yeah, there would be rioting pretty much immediately if anyone tried that here, and I'm sure the same would happen elsewhere.

I'm personally a fan of controlled, opt-in infections to help speed up research for a vaccine along with moderate quarantine (cancel many public events, encourage self quarantine). It may not be as effective, but it's much less likely to end in riots.

<comment><USER29> The alternative may be an explosion of cases and a complete collapse of the health care system. Because there is a good chance that mild social distancing measures are simply not enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I've been using [https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/) through OBS with family to share content/games and webcam chat. Works great on mobile with apps, desktop on web.

</comment><comment><USER75> It's said Germany does not lock down cities and fatality remains to be extremely low, which gives British, even USA the confidence to practice herd immunity.

I hope in US we will not see this exponential infected scenario, finger crossed.

<comment><USER76> German cities are starting to lock down.

Berlin has canceled any gathering with more than 50 people. If it's less than 50 people, you have to keep a list of everybody who's there for a month. Schools are closed. As are recreational places (cinemas, clubs, museums, gyms, baths). Restaurants have to enforce 1.5 meters separation between patrons.

[https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/aktuelles/rathaus- aktuell/2020...](https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/aktuelles/rathaus- aktuell/2020/meldung.906890.php)

It's not quite Italy yet but it's close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Can anyone vouch for the legitimacy of the names on this list? Is this authentic? I've been running my own numbers, and it does not seem far fetched at all. Governments need to be taking this extremely seriously.

<comment><USER78> For what it means, I know some of the people on that list and I can say that they are real scientists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> My relatives will never open a "left" website. Is there a version of this letter with the graphs on another website?

</comment><comment><USER79> > From our data, about 10% of patients require ICU (Intensive Care Unit) or > sub ICU assistance and about 5% of patients die.

I think that we really need to understand precisely what conclusions these represent when we see statements like this.

Exactly what does "10% of patients" mean? 10% of those who test positive? 10% of those who test positive and also show symptoms?

It seems that a majority of people who contract the virus and test positive (let alone those who are exposed) do not show any symptoms at all.[0]

Of those who do show symptoms, estimates regarding how many any seek out, receive, or require care vary _widely_ , so much so that it's very difficult to draw any conclusions using any dataset that I've seen.

So I ask: When the authors here say "From our data", exactly what dataset are they using and what operations are they performing on this dataset to arrive at this number?

This is crucially important, because if this 10% is actually 10% of those who already seek treatment for respiratory illness, and also subsequently test positive for COVID-19, then the death rate is actually much, much lower than most of the published reports.

It seems to me that we need to know the answer to this before proceeding with any other restrictive public policy solutions.

I'm particularly concerned with the decision to close schools, which in many cases (at least here in the USA) is inevitably going to lead to kids being placed with grandparents for care, which is a terrible outcome if our goal is to reduce exposure to vulnerable populations.

It is OK to question the panic. It is OK to believe, as I do given the available data so far, that the panic is more harmful than the virus itself. I have started a subreddit to gather data and opinions inclined toward using this as an opportunity to appropriately prepare rather than race to drastic solutions likely to hurt vulnerable populations.[1]

0: [https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.20...](https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180)

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepareInsteadOfPanic/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepareInsteadOfPanic/)

</comment><comment><USER80> Taiwan is probably the best model for how to handle a pandemic. The Chinese government took strong action well after the virus became a huge problem there. I suspect we will see a similar anti pattern repeated around the globe. I'm sure that Donald Trump will follow the CCP in talking up how he reacted decisively to the problem (a month late in both cases). This type of response hardly deserves praise. Taiwan was swift and proactive in its response, and acted intelligently before drastic measures were needed.

</comment><comment><USER81> One of the most important upvotes of our lives.

</comment><comment><USER82> Why didn't more people die in China?

<comment><USER83> Because Wuhan started welding people's doors shut as soon as they passed 400 new known cases in a single day.

That kind of behaviour is not acceptable in the West (nor should it be, anywhere), but we still probably need to be taking this virus a bit more seriously than we are.

<comment><USER84> I think these claims of "this is not acceptable in the West" are absurd and one of the causes of the current catastrophe.

All you need is to pass a law and enforce it with police and military, it's not hard.

Since there is a good reason for the law, there won't be widespread resistance, and in fact on balance citizen are likely to help enforcement rather than hinder it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> This is not "from Italy", it's been organized by a far-left Italian magazine. Yes, they are "from Italy", but the title is disingenuous and misleading.

Note that the page lists "the editors" (of the magazine) as the authors, and the first signature is by the magazine's publisher. The rest appear to be various academic personalities they have reached out to, many of them not from Italy or in Italy.

As for the contents, I don't necessarily disagree with the advice, but this letter is not particularly well written, nor particularly authoritative.

For example, this section:

> The beginning of the outbreak had the exact same number of infections in > China, Italy, and other countries. The difference is that China strongly and > quickly locked down Wuhan and all of the Hubei region 8 days before Italy > [3].

This is an exceedingly poor phrasing, almost seeming to suggest that the outbreak started with a few cases everywhere in the world at the same time. Inadvertently or not, this dovetails with China's PR push trying to claim that the epidemic may not have started there (something that is readily disproven by all epidemiological and genetic evidence).

Even setting aside the potential for confusion, the claim on its face is clearly baseless. Maybe the outbreak started with ten people getting infected in the Wuhan wet market on the same day (if we go by the wet market theory), while in Italy it started with a single infected person entering the country. Or, vice versa, maybe in China it started from a single infected person, and in Italy it was brought in by ten different people carrying it into the country separately. Who's to say?

At any rate, if you look at the source for that claim, you can see that it is shifting the timelines to align at some particular point in the outbreak, and it is comparing the time from that point when China imposed the Wuhan lockdown with the time when Italy imposed the whole-country lockdown.

The source is certainly more interesting, and gives a better picture of the situation than the letter does (although we have seen similar and better analyses in English for a while). However, the "8 days" figure is somewhat arbitrary. For example, Italy imposed a partial lockdown on the areas of the country where individual cases were found days before they shifted to a whole- country lockdown. Maybe that date should have been compared instead?

By the best information currently available, the first case in Italy came from a person who was infected in Germany. According to the letter's claim, the outbreak starts with "the exact same number of infections" (one, presumably), and then grows at the same speed. But then Germany's timeline should be ahead of Italy, yet it's not.

Then there is the elephant in the room, of course. If you cannot rely on China's lockdown to contain the infection, then the rational and prudent thing to do was not to wait for outbreaks in other countries and impose lockdowns there. It was to restrict and heavily control international travel (cancel flights, test all passengers, force visitors to quarantine, etc.). Would that have been accepted by the public? Would that have been accepted by the authors of this letter?

tl;dr: title is grossly misleading, please correct.

<comment><USER86> Agreed, though you can find letters from individual Italian medical professionals saying about the same thing. Most authoritative would be a letter from the government of Italy or the equivalent of the AMA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Also someone from Italy here: never, ever praise China as it is the same authoritarian state that caused all these deaths by silencing the truth when it mattered the most. Had they not violently censored doctors (like their own people or the current holocaust being carried on against Muslims), we would not be suffering through this devastation. This is also absolutely not an open letter "from Italy": it's a message from a minor—poorly written— publication.

</comment><comment><USER88> Not sure why this is on the number 1 spot currently.

This is a letter signed by non-experts (albeit sometimes scientists/engineers). To me, it comes off as the climate-change denier letters or 9/11 "truthers" letters.

Please let the experts do their job. Don't spread uninformed opinions backed up by Facebook posts and panicked researchers with expertise "relevant to virus spreading" such as electronics, architecture and art history.

Be safe out there but don't let the fear and resulting panic of this virus be worse than the virus itself.

<comment><USER89> I hope you haven't read the reports from the medical frontline in Lombardie - They are making life or death choices now due to influx of ICU patient without enough equipment and medical staff exhausted and starting to get sick themselves

One frontline story among many here [https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...](https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538)

<comment><USER90> Triage, i.e. if you show up and have any condition that reduces your chances of survival you are not treated at all. Palliative care only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The left drove us to the same situation here in Spain. I cannot be more concerned with their politics, sadly, we should be prepared to a massive spread.

</comment><comment><USER92> The handwaving arguments in this letter are not convincing (especially the "You do also understand that, as long as the rate of increase is exponential, no linear solution to contrast it will work (I.e. increasing x times the number of ICU machines, etc.)" nonsense). The stats in this very letter indicate that 10% of patients require ventilators, which cost about $4000. So even if the entire population were sick at the same time, would need population * 0.1 ventilators, at a cost of $400 per resident.

The fact that we haven't spent $400 per resident to stockpile ventilators is a failure of society and a failure of government. The economic damage over these next few weeks will be far, far greater than $400 per resident.

<comment><USER93> If you take every potential apocalyptic scenario and stockpile supplies. It'd add up to much more than 400$/resident.

The real shame is globalization. If manufacturing occurred in Europe. In North America...etc. we'd all just quickly ramp up our respirator production.

Instead the west outsourced this to China

<comment><USER94> This is only the first part of the problem.

The second part is, optimized supply chains that are effectively as empty as possible, all the time.

Here in Canada an 18-day rail blockade by native bands was enough to cause serious concerns in the supply of propane and other fuels in the eastern part of the country.

It's shocking that eastern half of Canada, the majority of its population, faces winters with just 3-weeks supply of fuel. The reason? Nobody wants to carry inventory.

So for many things, we outsource creation, AND we optimize-away buffer stock.</comment></comment></comment>


Schneier on Security : Another New AES Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/another_new_aes.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's interesting that there are attacks against AES-256 that don't work against AES-128. Apparently, "the key schedule for 256-bit version is pretty lousy." Surprising, to me at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know a lot about cryptography, but I have read a little about it and I've used it in projects. Could someone explain why a 256 bit key seems to crack more easily than a 128 bit key according to this paper? It seems to me that the opposite should be true.

<comment><USER4> Because they're keys to different algorithms. The bit-length in AES is not an arbitrarily tunable parameter. AES-256, AES-192, and AES-128 are related but nonetheless different algorithms. The recent attacks on AES-256 and AES-192 have exploited the key schedules, which is one component that's different between the three algorithms. AES-128's key schedule is better-designed.</comment></comment>


Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/12/30/240317.full.pdf <comment><USER2> They trained a deep neural network to reconstruct what a patient was seeing from fMRI signals and were mildly successful. Cool!

Things get really awesome in Figure 4. They had patients imagine an image/symbol that that they would then try to reconstruct from fMRI signals. They had a few successes and were able to operate at better than chance when humans evaluated the reconstructed shapes. That's awesome!

<comment><USER3> [http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain- movies/](http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/)

<comment><USER4> Guess the kyoto group are competing w/ Jack Gallant's lab...

btw, pycortex from his lab is out on GitHub...neat to play around w/ if you have the fMRI data

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool results. Just want to point out that there's a time lag between "thoughts" and the appearance of a signal through fMRI, which explains why the image needed to be imagined for a long period of time (8 seconds).

Most thoughts are more fleeting than this, and couldn't be read with fMRI. So there's no need to get /too/ concerned about the privacy of our thoughts. Not yet :)

> Each imagery block consisted of a 4-s cue period, an 8-s imagery period, a > 3-s evaluation period and a 1-s rest period.

<comment><USER6> Strap someone to a gurney and you have all the time in the world. Would an fMRI require a search warrant?

<comment><USER7> You can't make them hold the image in their head for you to pick it out, though.

<comment><USER8> Don't think of the pink elephant.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine pictures in my head, so regardless of how long I will think about pink elephant, you will see nothing.

<comment><USER8> For people like you, they can always fall back to the old "$5 wrench" method...

<comment><USER9> IMHO, thermorectal cryptoanalysis with soldering iron is much more effective for similar price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what would happen if you could feed back the output into the visual system using VR in near real time. Would you be able "see" anything you could think of?

<comment><USER11> And then feed the signal from that back into... oh fuck it

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very impressive. Please note this was done with magnetic resonance imaging.

A more invasive approach was this: "Reconstruction of Natural Scenes from Ensemble Responses in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus" (1999).

\- [http://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/18/8036](http://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/18/8036)

\- [http://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/19/18/8036/F2.large....](http://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/19/18/8036/F2.large.jpg)

What is a bit concerning are the applications, e.g: forcibly extracting thoughts from non-collaborating people.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a weird form of overfitting.

You give the brain a set of images to fit/train the original model. Then you show the brain a set of images similar to the ones used to train the model.

... you will never really understand what the brain sees in novel situations unrelated to the training task.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a related article: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211009377) ...and a few other interesting ones from my link archive

Brain map [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/227498-uc-berkeley- team-b...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/227498-uc-berkeley-team-built-a- semantic-atlas-of-the-human-brain)

3d-printing by thought [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130613-3d-printing- your-th...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130613-3d-printing-your- thoughts)

Brain computer interface for controlling a Hex Bug and painting tools [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI)

Typing by thought [https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/biomedical/bionics/fa...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/biomedical/bionics/facebooks-director-of-typing-by-brain-project-discusses- the-plan)

</comment><comment><USER15> What is up with "These authors contributed equally to this work."?

<comment><USER16> Typically most credit goes to first and last author. However, there are cases where one person needs to be first author, but multiple people are equally deserving.

<comment><USER17> This strongly depends on what field you are in and can vary even between minor sub-disciplines. Also that statement is frequently meaningless and authors get added for politics target than contribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One step closer to Black Mirror Season 4: Crocodile, among other things.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would definitely buy a play back machine in the future so I don't have to take so many pictures on trips.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbSEjOJL3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbSEjOJL3U)

</comment><comment><USER21> Now if only the information from EEG was half as useful from fMRI.

<comment><USER22> Theoretically, you could do the same thing with EEG via source localization techniques[0] on the EM spectrum.

In my experience, barely any labs have the know how to implement them in a performative manor to pull something like this off whereas a lot of the fmri software is made from the manufacture (GE, Siemens, etc) that transforms the raw data into the voxels that were used in this setup.

[0] [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Source_localization](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Source_localization)

<comment><USER21> Sounds like you still need too many electrodes !

<comment><USER22> Depends on which brain regions you want to acquire signals from (usually based on the literature), but generally yes, you need to sample from a "sufficient" number of places (one of my fmr colleges has a lead reduction paper coming out this year that will talk about this).

But keep in mind here, using eeg (and beamforming) is still way cheaper and accessible than any fmri machine, though as far as having the skills to implement such, I think it is out of the reach of most labs who do this sort of research.

Electrodes are even getting better[0] wrt cost and actual ease of real world usage (dry/non gel needed/comfort).

[0] [http://doc.ml.tu- berlin.de/bbci/publications/GroVoiFaz11.pdf](http://doc.ml.tu- berlin.de/bbci/publications/GroVoiFaz11.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: M.io – Chat with Anyone Across Slack, Cisco Spark and Stride - <AUTHOR> https://m.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! We're officially launching today! M.io is a universal messaging network. Users of popular chat apps like Slack, Cisco Spark, and Atlassian Stride can use M.io to send each other direct messages and join cross-platform channels. M.io is the easiest way to chat with external vendors, partners and customers regardless of which chat app they use. Feel free to check us out and drop any feedback!</comment>


Asimov: The Last Question (1956) - <AUTHOR> http://multivax.com/last_question.html <comment><USER2> This and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_Party) are two of my favourite Golden Age Sci-Fi short stories

</comment><comment><USER3> Also available read by the author himself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3U30wSAV4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3U30wSAV4Q)</comment>


How Did L.A. Become a City of Palms? - <AUTHOR> https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-did-la-become-a-city-of-palms-and-other-questions-about-californias-trees <comment><USER2> As a recent first time visitor to California, from Australia, the abundant eucalyptus and jacarandas were a major surprise. Of course the palm-lined strips in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles were expected, though still impressive - I hadn't thought to lump those in with the other immigrants.

Thankfully we also got up to Muir Woods (just north of San Francisco) for a taste of the pre-European flora. Looks to be an interesting book, weaving the history of the state through the botanical angle.

<comment><USER3> I'm Australian, lived in LA for a decade or so .. and my trips around the Griffith Park area always led me to a particular grove of eucalypts and jacaranda that always reminded me, very much, of home. There are parts of that park that could be Australia, imho .. minus the snakes, but plus coyotes and cougars ..

<comment><USER4> Native Los Angelope, when I visited Australia there were definitely parts where I was like, this looks like home! I think it was just the eucalyptus, but it was pretty sweet.

<comment><USER3> Its the desert life for us all!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my seaside Mediterranean town many oaks have been cut down and replaced with palms to give the town a more glamorous look.

Now in those areas there is no shade and during summer they are deserted, the only moving objects are cars. Some grass and palms among asphalt and concrete are simply not a good heat moderator. It looks nice on a postcard though ^^.

</comment><comment><USER6> A related 99% Invisible podcast: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palm- reading/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palm-reading/)

</comment><comment><USER7> On the topic of non-native palms - I only recently learned that most of the 'palms' that are a surprising sight in the UK - eg in Plockton in the north of Scotland [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plockton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plockton)

... aren't palms at all, but Cabbage Trees, native to New Zealand ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyline_australis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyline_australis)) and they're nothing to do with cabbage either. Probably not news to gardeners and botanists but I'd always wondered how they got there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of a piece from the LA Review of Books:

[https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/piety-perversity- palms-l...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/piety-perversity-palms-los- angeles/)</comment>


Richard Branson: In it for fun not just money - <AUTHOR> http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/in-it-for-fun-not-just-money <comment><USER2> I am half way through Richard Branson's biography "Losing My Virginity" now and really recommend it to anyone who wants a fun read - [http://www.amazon.com/Losing-My-Virginity-Survived- Business/...](http://www.amazon.com/Losing-My-Virginity-Survived- Business/dp/0812932293) -

He made a lot of REALLY bad business decisions (i.e. decisions which lost him lots of money) in the first 25 or so years running Virgin which is pretty good evidence that this blog post is not just PR.

On an unrelated note, something else I learned from the book is his success was pretty much 100% due to a cousin of his from South Africa showing up in London unannounced and looking for a job - turns out that cousin had a great ear for "what's cool", which resulted in Virgin signing their first successful artist (a studio musician who hung out at one of their studios), whose record sales kept the company afloat for its first 10 years.

Just goes to show you the importance of the right team - as well as being in the right place at the right time...

<comment><USER3> I read the book 2 years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy... My biggest takeaway from that book is he took an approach to entrepreneurship which emphasized low risk / high uncertainty ventures.

For example, he started his business selling Virgin records by mail and used pre-orders to limit any real inventory risk. That gave him the cash flow to fund the eventual opening of the Virgin Record Store.

Then later, when he decides to open an airline, he purposefully chooses to lease rather than buy planes. That lowered his initial capital outlay and made the risk of the airline going bust not so bad on his wallet.

I think I also remember that he was really good at setting up his different companies using a holding co structure. I think that allowed him to segment out each business and made it so that the failure of one would not affect the others (esp. re financing).

I also got the idea that he took a lot of small low risk bets. Taking his Virgin brand and simply applying it to pre-existing products (maybe even cola? I cant remember too well). Even the airline was already another airline I believe. So by applying his brand to a wide variety of products he was able to circumvent having to do a ton of R&D or heavy capital investments.

<comment><USER2> It's important to separate the decisions he made, versus the decisions his McKinsey & Co Trade "business manager" made.

I get the impression from the book that people would call Richard up looking for money, and if it sounded like fun Richard would say "Sure", to which all the other Virgin stake holders say "Are you nuts?". Then Richard moves forward with it one way or another, and its up to the other employees to make it work.

That, at least, sounds like the story behind Virgin Atlantic, as well as a few of his big adventure trips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I completely believe him. Whenever you see Branson in pictures he's always got this boyish grin on his face.

That's more proof to me than anything else, he can't be in control of himself that much that he could fake that consistently. He's done some very dumb stuff knowing full well that it couldn't really hurt him just for the heck of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The titled could have been 'In it for "stuff that matters" not just the money':

"Most people feel that they can create something that is going to make a difference to other people's lives - that is how they start their businesses."

Reminds of Tim O'reilly post "Work on stuff that matters"

1/sthg that matters to you more than money

2/ create more value than you capture

3/ take the long view

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that- matters-...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters- fir.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious if pg agrees. He sometimes presents startups as this extraordinarily painful chore, but my experience is more like Branson's.

<comment><USER7> He wrote once that startups are fun in the way that doing survival training is fun - which is to say, not at all if it is not your thing.

I tend to believe that.

Edit: actual quote

>rankly, though, if I've misled people here, I'm not eager to fix that. I'd rather have everyone think starting a startup is grim and hard than have founders go into it expecting it to be fun, and a few months later saying "This is supposed to be fun? Are you kidding?"

The truth is, it wouldn't be fun for most people. A lot of what we try to do in the application process is to weed out the people who wouldn't like it, both for our sake and theirs.

The best way to put it might be that starting a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, if you're into that sort of thing. Which is to say, not at all, if you're not.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks, I really needed to hear that right now. It might turn out to be bad advice, but I love getting excuses to do what I really want.

<comment><USER9> Why live your life if you're not doing what you love?

<comment><USER10> You were down to -1 points. Your phrase is awesome and try to live by it every day. The people that down voted you must be really screw up. I'm really curious as to why they would do that. What is it that bothers them so much about your phrase? They are probably old and bitter. Or maybe young and pessimistic. Who knows. If one of those persons that down voted this comment could shed some light as to why, it will be greatly appreciated.

Of course, more than likely those same people are now going to down vote me.

<comment><USER11> Your comment and the parent's lack empathy for someone's circumstances. Also, you should just make your point and not worry too much about votes and points. I say this because, presumably, the implicit goal of a conversation is to understand rather than score points.

<comment><USER10> I thought it was pretty clear I was trying to understand why they didn't like the comment. It wasn't about the points but about why somebody would not like that quote. You only have one life, once you are dead, you are dead. So why not enjoy it by doing what you like? (As long as you follow the law of course, i.e. if you like hurting people then that is a no-no) Why would somebody dislike a comment like that? That is what I was trying to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds nice, but I'm somehow very wary of following this logic. Let's hear from the guy who's living paycheck to paycheck who did what was fun. Though maybe he's still happy too, who knows. Or maybe the guy who started doing it and then "wised up" in his 30s but then it was too late and he's stuck in a job that's more boring than what he could have had if he was more prudent with his career.

God, I sound like my dad now.

EDIT: Also, him saying that money is a detail only helps in the short run. I have the same attitude toward an interesting project I'm about to quit my job for, but I recognize that this "fun", as it were, will be very short lived if I don't have some revenue. So, trying for real and lasting a year is better than selling out, but finding a way to make money off of the "real" thing is necessary if it's going to last.

</comment><comment><USER13> I suppose it really does come down to common sense.

If you get into business specialising in something you have little to no passion about and you are unsuccessful then chances are you won't have enjoyed the process whereas if you are unsuccessful after attempting something you truly are passionate about then you will more than likely have enjoyed the process regardless.

It reminds me of what my Dad used to tell me 'Do it because it makes you smile, not because it makes you money'.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I think his attitude is authentic to his younger years, it is still somewhat amusing to hear a billionaire talk about not being into something for the money...

<comment><USER15> If you're a billionaire, and you're still in it, you're NOT in it for the money, that's pretty obvious. Branson has FU money, and then some. He could retire and live very comfortably, but he's still working. Don't tell me he's motivated by being able to buy an even larger small country.

<comment><USER16> He has FE (Fuck Everyone) money.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol not everyone. SEC and FBI don't take that. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Stanford> Allen Stanford 2.2 Billion

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson> Richard Branson 2.6 Billion

In the same league.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone else noticed that in the article photo, what appears to be the Statue of Liberty behind him and the woman is leaning at something like 30 degrees?

<comment><USER18> This happen often in sailing :-)

Mast bending over due to the wind, photographer compensating for this by tilting the camera.

<comment><USER17> I thought about that but if you notice, it's only the statue that leans. The island and all background objects are even with horizon.

<comment><USER19> Fisheye lens effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although they say Iron Man was patterned off of Elon Musk, the first person that came to mind when watching the movie was Branson.

<comment><USER20> phew, you said _movie_ ... i was about to say, when the comic first came out, Branson was probably still in diapers

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure owning a private island doesn't hurt either :p

Branson's a fascinating character - that cover story Forbes ran a few years back about Branson and other successful people who were all afflicted with dyslexia really helped motivate my younger brother who has a really severe case, so for being a good role model for people like my brother he has my thanks.

<comment><USER22> The story of how he bought Neckar Island is so compelling! The audacity of someone so young to offer $100,000 (if i recall correctly) for an island that was up for sale in the millions is such a great case of guts and bloody mindedness to succeed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: imagine a world where Google was truly evil ... - <AUTHOR>

... and had the most resources, same drive, same execution, lack of morals, and audacity to plagiarize what every up-and-coming startup and other successful company is doing in its own market.
For example, imagine that Google were to exactly replicate Quora, StackOverflow, Wikipedia, EBay, Amazon, etc. in UI, UX, distribution channels and deals and then gradually stopped showing those competitors as search results, provided incentives to corporations to partner with it instead of its competitors, bribed/lobbied every government agency, and that it would rather copy/destroy its competitors than acquire them.
Now, imagine that you were an ambitious entrepreneur in that environment / geographical area. How would you compete?
Just so you know -- this is actually happening. Not in the US and not with Google, but far east, and with actual big tech companies there.
What would be your practical advice to those entrepreneurs in that particular country? <comment><USER2> Because Google is amoral - corporate "persons" don't have the free will necessary for meaningfully characterizing them as moral actors - the idea that Google is ontologically good or evil is a category error (given the assumption that good and evil are meaningful terms).

That's not to say that a corporate "person" cannot be used as a tool or means for moral agents to commit acts of kindness or commit harm. But moral responsibility for those acts lies with the moral agents who run the company or otherwise make the decisions which lead to such states of affairs.

There is nothing in the scenario which you describe which is evil so long as one accepts that a corporation maximizing its profits is a good, i.e. characterizes corporate "persons" as moral agents rather than a force which moral agents possessing free will may harness for their acts.

I will add that the fundamental premise of the scenario is that Google would create a walled garden and give it preference over open networks such as the internet when providing information to users of its services.

The application of ethics to such scenarios is left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. This is the classical question about a corporation maximizing profits vs its social responsibility. Furthermore, ethics/moral stand depend on the societal norms. In the scenario I gave, we are looking from the outside -- it may be perfectly "legit" within that society (and in fact, that's how many see it in my actual applied country). But reality remains: a giant with the resources, tenacity, and goal to copy and replace most every other successful company.

So my question remains: what should tech entrepreneurs do in this "imaginary" environment/scenario?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My advice would be to focus really hard on a single area in the market. Google (or the Asian companies you seem to be _really_ talking about, like Renren and Sina) can copy your user interface and quote-unquote "idea", but their size creates problems. They're not as focused as a small start-up can be. Big companies lumber, small companies sprint.

Since all of the front-end parts of a website are stealable, you have to win by focusing on back-end technology and community. That's how all of the sites on your list have found success. For Quora, StackOverflow, and Wikipedia, it's the community. For eBay and Amazon, it's the back-end technology. That's somewhat oversimplified, but you get the idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a kid, I was always paranoid about the kind of things Google can do. They can effectively build an accurate psychological profile on absolutely anyone on the internet. They track your search history, email, contacts, even your telephone number. They have all your docs, and now, with Chrome they CAN track your browsing history. And with things going paperless, they know everything about you.

Then their goals: build a database of genome of every person on the planet!!

My problem wasn`t the consolidation of data itself but the motivations of the people doing so and the easy target such service providers may make for crackers. Google is still run by ideal-respecting founders today. This won`t always be the case for a publicly-traded company. For a mild example: What is going to stop Google from selling potential clients to marketing firms when it goes in search for a new revenue stream?

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope it would be broken up by antitrust regulators.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would hope so too, but in the case/scenario, the very regulators are lobbied/bribed/look the other way. Not every society is as law-centric as the US, especially the fast, emerging countries.</comment></comment>


Scrum Is Not for Humans - maroun-baydoun https://maroun-baydoun.com/blog/scrum-is-not-for-humans/ <comment> aaron-santos Would love to hear a generous explanation of scrum practices from the author.

> I dislike Scrum because it makes a few wrong assumptions. First, that > developers are lazy and need to be micro-managed to deliver.

Weird take. Mine is that Scrum assumes that people have biases and that it advocates for behaviors and processes that attempt to address these biases.

I'm sure that he knows that standups attempt to address stuckblindness[1], that planning poker is a solution to anchoring and framing biases. It's pretty easy to go through Scrum practices and draw a direct line to a bias it's attempting to address.

Scrum's biggest weakness is that it is easy to cargo cult. A lot of people stop there and label it as a bad solution. I'm not asking anyone to Scrum harder, that won't work, but put on a generous explanation hat for once and try a benevolent or even neutral explanation before a malevolent one.

[1] - [https://garybasin.com/noticing-stuckness-is-a- superpower/](https://garybasin.com/noticing-stuckness-is-a-superpower/)</comment>


Streak.com (YC S11) Takes On Salesforce With A Simple CRM For Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/21/gmail-streak/ <comment><USER2> I've been one of Streak's biggest advocates for a while now-- I use it for everything. In particular, it's been extremely helpful for hiring, fundraising, and business development at MixRank. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> I like how it can apply to all the use cases you mention above, and also how they have a variety of demo videos on their website demonstrating them. About to try it out now for my startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've been using Streak at Entelo and we're very happy. The "social integration" provided by most CRM systems is lacking and when you combine Streak and Rapportive inside of GMail/Google Apps, it's really quite powerful.

The CRM landscape feels like it's undergoing a change somewhat similar to what happened a decade ago when cloud-based providers like Salesforce disrupted incumbents like Siebel. Salesforce, while a very powerful product/company in many ways, is not immune to disruption and it's great to see folks like Streak, Nimble, 37Sigs/Highrise attempting to compete with them.

<comment><USER5> I've been using Rapportive forever -- I am actually surprised there aren't more startups trying to eat Salesforce's $65-200 per seat per month lunch.

<comment><USER6> ming.ly is another

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its a fantastic app - I've been using it for about two weeks and its completely replaced a clunky process of trying to link lead spreadsheets, with Highrise contacts and Gmail emails. We store contacts in Highrise but it is pretty lousy for pipeline management. Because Streak lives inside gmail, it makes it really easy to see all the email associated with each lead. It also replaces Boomerang (email scheduler applet) and Tout (email template app) so I can get more done without leaving my inbox. Streak and Rapportive handle almost all my CRM needs at this point.

</comment><comment><USER8> I highly recommend this for those using google apps and looking for a light- weight CRM to handle inbound email leads. I looked at Salesforce and shuddered at the complexity when I just wanted a way to make sure I followed up with inbound email inquiries in a methodical fashion.

It's a big upgrade from my previous homemade gmail tagging system / boomerang hack. Also, the reusable text snippets are a huge time saver.

There are a few improvements that could be made, but overall I think the product was executed beautifully.

Nice job guys.

</comment><comment><USER9> I voted this story up because I want somebody to kick Salesforce's ass.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting but it also means I would have to use gmail.

<comment><USER11> What's wrong with that?

What do you use?

<comment><USER12> You're relying two different services to run your business, which can be gone away in a moment.

\- If you're not in US, your goverment can shut down Gmail ( for ex. because google is trying to evade tax. )

\- Streak can be sold to anycompany which just want to push their services.

Streak should actually be something like Thunderbird extension with RDBMS running in background

<comment><USER13> > Streak should actually be something like Thunderbird extension with RDBMS > running in background

The most popular email client is Outlook with iOS devices in second place (as of June 2011). Although if you combine Hotmail + Yahoo Mail + GMail the total marketshare beats Outlook.

<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is definitely a lot of room for a lightweight, "bottom-up" CRM app out there that's focused on usability. I think Dropbox has handily proven that this sort of thing can get peppered across companies without a top-down, sales-driven deployment which is what Salesforce is.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have tried a bunch of these tools now.

I agree completely that there is a problem to be solved. I don't believe any of the tools I have tried have found a proper way to solve it yet.

The best helper I have is still rapportive.

There is something about the input output flow of information in these tools that is off.

</comment><comment><USER16> We have been using this for support for our app, and we are very happy with it. Started out using a different service, but the GMail integration was key for us.

</comment><comment><USER17> We're using this combined with yesware and it's been great.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how hard it would be to also support self-hosted mail users (with a webmail client talking imap, or ideally something which works with mutt).

</comment><comment><USER19> Well done. I've got this running on my Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pricing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Streak is currently free while in Beta and there will always be a free plan. In the future, Streak will offer paid premium features, stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like it's gonna be pretty popular</comment>


Torch: a scientific computing framework for LuaJIT - <AUTHOR> http://torch.ch/ <comment><USER2> This is still my favorite ML framework. Lua is a joy to code in.</comment>


Got Papers? Preserving the Demoscene's Material Heritage - <AUTHOR> http://gotpapers.untergrund.net/

<comment><USER2> Yogurt is alive!</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone have success stories with MongoDB? - <AUTHOR> When we talk about MongoDB most of the discussions focus on how people have lost data and have had operational issues with it.<p>Are there any companies/teams that have successfully deployed and scaled MongoDB in the recent years? If so why did you choose it despite the negative publicity and what kind of data and access patterns are you using it for? <comment><USER2> There are many, many companies that rely on MongoDB. Companies like Google, Facebook, Cisco, Expedia, eBay, just to name a few.

In my experience data loss and operational issues are a thing of the past. With the current version of MongoDB, 3.6, there are lots of data safeguards in place. One of the biggest frustrations that any company faces in the age of the internet is old topics of discussion. MongoDB has come a long way since many "problem area" blog posts and articles.

If you haven't tried out the latest version and put it through its paces, I would highly encourage you to do so. Judging by reports of others here as well as performance and security analysis done by outside vendors, MongoDB is truly web scale.

I've written my own blog posts on MongoDB Performance ([https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/mongodb- perform...](https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/mongodb-performance- issues/)) and Data Durability ([https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/data- durability...](https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/data-durability- mongodb/)) which, while based on MongoDB 3.4, still offer some useful insights into the current state of MongoDB.

Try it out and report back your own findings.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried out many major versions which add new features (MVCC in 3.x was a game changer IMO). But it's just difficult to convince a lot of engineering teams these days to use MongoDB because of all the negative reviews floating around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have worked on several projects that successfully used MongoDB over the past six or seven years now with three different companies. One project had over 5TB of data spread out over a couple of databases with numerous collections each, and no we didn't shard that database. We also didn't have any issues with accessing the data at that size. When I see negative stories around a technology, especially databases/data storage, I personally like to dig in to see if things are as bad as people say. All platforms can have issues (don't get me started on SQL Server and torn pages ;) ). Most of the negative press I've seen around MongoDB was from people not understanding the technology. Sure there were valid issues/bugs and some people might have lost data, but I don't think it was as widespread as some posts would have you believe (except for those running old versions accessible from the internet without proper authentication that is). Also a lot of posts that keep coming up are from several years back. MongoDB has changed a lot over the past couple years, and they continue improving the platform with each release. Bottom line, understand the platform before using it, learn it's strengths and weaknesses and you should have a successful implementation as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too. One of my consulting gigs back in 2012 was based on MongoDB and the system is still working well in production afaik. The use case was to store complex documents but size wasn't an issue, nor was the global table lock (it was a law firm's document management system). But over the years people's opinions seem to have changed from neutral to outright hostile when I bring up MongoDB.

Also I used mongo's map reduce framework back in the day for reporting, something that stored procedures are still lagging behind (based on my experiences in MySQL and Postgres)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi there, guess there are plenty of companies out there with success stories. Personally I have been quite septic when I was asked to use MongoDB for a government project in the area of tax income prediction. We stared small more in terms of an POC, but the success came faster than we thought and we had to scale out. Luckily this was a really easy task with MongoDB. That it is purely made for it but it is one of its pros. An other project, last year was in the area of health / hospital software with faily high security and HA targets. Also this was easier that thought in the beginning. The more I use MonogDb the more I like it. Personally I think the success story of MongoDB is just in its Beginning but this is my own opinion. The best thing you can do it to give it a try. But please do not make the same error like me. First get a _very_ good understaning of the document model than design your DB. Many calls for help I get can be boiled down to a design which was obviously make be some one who was still thinking in relations instead of documents. Have fun and enjoy, as soon as you climbed the hill and start thinking in documents you have passed the line. :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes I do, I've deployed MongoDB cluster with 3 node replica set for production. I've started with single instance MongoDB for development with version 2.2.2. Right now I'm using 3.6. It is a nice journey with MongoDB. I learned about data and science from MongoDB only. Eagerly waiting for 4.0.0 when I can use transaction also.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my company, we are currently working on several projects backed by MongoDB. All of them do it successfully. Everybody I work with is really happy with MongoDB. I only know one user that thinks MongoDB has not a really good performance, why? He compares it with ElasticSearch in a strict search use case. As you can see, he is not making a good comparison. So, it's better to learn and test before saying uncertain phrases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you guys have any whitepapers/engineering blog posts about using MongoDB? I'd really like some engineering insights into what access patterns are used in modern MongoDB based systems.

Also, regarding ES, its easy to see how each system prioritizes things. For me if I had to design a system today I'd use MongoDB as the main OLTP database, use ES for search (with regular jobs syncing data between Mongo and ES), and use Hadoop/Spark for analytics. Mongo is decent for OLAP loads but there's no point running OLAP queries on production OLTP stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I'm working to a global company in a global project, its hard to describe how we use the database but in simple terms, we store the information of customers and their preferences about alerts & notifications, params & configuration about the alerts and of course the alerts sent by our application. about the negaive publicity I think in most of cases it related with mistakes about how to work with mongodb.

Regards

</comment><comment><USER8> We use MongoDB in several capacities on several projects: A cache/ speed layer for content distribution worldwide (relying on replica set across data centers), an event source for customer loyalty and profile management, and as a backend for an e-commerce style customer facing web store. In each of those projects we leveraged several mongo features that were well suited to the problems we had. Our mongo clusters have been remarkably stable and work very well. Our scale has not required sharding at this point. Our QPS and write rates have been well within the design SLA. We did have to periodically analyze query performance and apply index and or query syntax changes, but other than that didn't encounter any issues. The biggest wins for us was time to market and flexibility: Compared to the RDBMS counterparts, we move faster, resolve issues faster, and deliver web pages faster. The negative publicity has been "in the noise" and typically reflected more negatively on the generators of such rather than the product itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Caching is an interesting use case. I never thought about that. Would love to see a blog post/writeup on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used MongoDB extensively for the aggregation framework. The tools within that subset of mongo provide a rather granular and speedy approach to manipulating compound datasets into usable, normalized results. I recently built a translation service using MongoDB as the backend, and utilized the aggregation framework to weight and score translations based on different criterion.

</comment><comment><USER10> We use MongoDB as our primary database (hosted with Mongo Atlas) here at Mixmax and it's been a pleasure to use. It's allowed us to move very quickly by not having to deal with schema migrations when adding new features. We have a few terrabytes of data and a query volume of about 1k writes a second.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have helped to several companies working with MongoDB and now they have deployed more instances in other "old" services to speed up the performance.

I Think that MongoDB needs some maintenance and attention like other databases. If you use MongoDB because your stack is based in javascript and you think that it could be easy because support javascript based commands but you don't have any background as dba, you will fail like this guys: [https://dzone.com/articles/why-we-moved-from-nosql- mongodb-t...](https://dzone.com/articles/why-we-moved-from-nosql-mongodb-to- postgresql)

I have experienced issues too, but nothing catastrophyc because I have studied so much this technology and I feel confortable

</comment><comment><USER12> We did in 2014 a rewrite of an API that was in SQL Server for MongoDB along with asp.net. It was very good, very fast and very satisfying. This was my first professional contact with mongodb.

</comment><comment><USER13> We using MongoDB for many internal projects (ASP.NET Core) in our big company. Biggest replica-set - 3x(8 Xeon cores and 32GB RAM) has 600 inserts/600 update/500 deletes in second without any sharding.

Average document size ~ 50 - 300KB. It work perfect with authomathic failover, when Oracle with their CLOB types collapsed with Disk IO. MongoDB save a lot of time for us.

But first you need to understand how it works and then you'll love it too.

</comment><comment><USER14> At my current company we're using it for several purposes, caching layer, documented oriented data, disparate data sets that have frequent change. In our experience as well as many others the MongoDB issues of the past have largely been fixed. I'm hopeful that people's perceptions of MongoDB will change as the product continues to address the needs of the development community while continuing to build a strong database product.

</comment><comment><USER15> We use MongoDB for performance, as a kind of caching layer in front of our relational DB. Since it's pretty well normalized, joining all the tables together for a web page render takes forever, so we do that once and store it in Mongo, then just return that whenever a site needs data!

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder where all these horror stories come from - I only have seem 'loss' of data if people were not trained using MongoDB. An I mean not trained at all, MongoDB is easy to learn. There are plenty of success stories by major companies out there, google them ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> We use mongodb shard cluster to support up to 10k simultaneous users for our web application. Without this sharding architecture, no matter how big our sql server is we can't handle that work load.

</comment><comment><USER18> i`m new in mongo but i`m happy to learn everything about it, for the moment i`m to fresh to throught to opinion, but it is an excellent way to storage data.

</comment><comment><USER18> i`m new in mongo but i`m happy to learn everything about it, for the moment i`m to fresh to throught a opinion, but is an excellente way to storage data</comment>