Mattasher

Many, many links in that article, but in the only study I see, this is not an experiment, it's observational study.

There are lots of reasons to believe wearing masks might be correlated with other mitigating behaviours (hand washing, going out less, etc), which would also reduce contact with the infected.

Also, I see no mention of studying possible side-effects of universal, permanent mask wearing, which makes this study irresponsible at the least.

Yes. Typo :(

Quarantine for the sick is an age-old method. Lockdowns of entire populations for extended periods is a massive experiment, and the closest analogy we have is the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, based on the idea that some of them might pose a danger.

Based on an earlier discussion here on HN about Zoom burnout and latency I recorded a cast episode about that very subject:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/3-is-latency-killing-o...

I worked for a company that was on the vanguard of trying to make ICOs legal and mainstream. Among other problems, there were tensions between trying to achieve regulatory compliance, transparency, and privacy of trades. I worked on a potential solution involving ring signatures, but it never made it into production.

There were some other important tensions too, happy to discuss if anyone wants to get into the weeds. FWIW I still would love to see a highly fluid market for shares in small businesses and pre-IPO startups.

YKYZ | Toronto | Remote | Long-term contract | React & UI

ykyz.com is a small but fast growing (check our Alexa numbers) website that provides a forum for audio conversation and short form podcasting (microcasting). Our tech stack is React with a RESTful API. We use cryptographic signatures in place of a traditional login system, making our system partially decentralized.

We are looking to fill at least two long-term contract positions right now.

One is for an app developer with extensive experience using React Native to build cross platform mobile apps. We would prefer someone who has used tools for static site building as well.

Two is for a UI wizard who can dramatically improve the onboarding flow for our new users, without sacrificing our unique way of having conversations or handling user authentication.

We are based in Toronto, Ontario, but this is a remote work opportunity. To apply, send an email to info@(our domain name)

I often use this as an example of an "unknown known" for most English speakers. We know how to order these things, but we don't know about the specific rules that govern their ordering and that we have (implicitly) mastered that.

This is a major source of dissatisfaction for me as well. Especially latency related to keyboard input and program startup. Are there any resources out there specifically intended to help you speed up your (Mac) with these things?

You have to wonder, when you see these stories, whether the engineers in charge of these programs spent much time driving around, trying to see the road like an AI might. In my experience, driving in the city, it's rare that I can go more than a few miles before some exception comes up that requires human judgment. Here's a few of the things I saw just last week:

* Car double parked. Do I cross the center line to go around them?

* Stop sign that's been bent and it's no longer obvious which street it refers to.

* Semi with its hazards on in a left turn lane. Do I make a left turn around it?

* Cop directing traffic by hand at an intersection.

Most city driving is a series of continual exceptions to the rules, or situations that are one-off. Who thought this would be easy?

Small sample sizes are much more likely to produce extreme results, because it's easier to get an extreme result by chance. In the US, the highest rates of cancer occur in the most rural counties. So do the lowest rates of cancer.

Think about it like grabbing from a giant bag of M&M's. The fewer you select, the higher the chances your results will be skewed towards one color.

A few more details: The microcast channel of ykyz lets you record episodes of up to 90 seconds long, and automatically generates an iTunes compatible RSS feed from those episodes. Only episodes posted to the special microcast channel (https://ykyz.com/c/microcast/) are syndicated. Note you need to post a short introductory “Bleat” to c/intros before you can record microcast episodes.

How about our ability to echo-locate, given enough practice? That seems like yet another sense that goes beyond just hearing, and is probably linked to our proprioception skills.

Current user don't need it, but I'm wondering if the benefits will be a strong draw for users dissatisfied with the current oligopoly of gatekeepers in community and social publishing.

Thanks. I'm trying to gauge whether people think decentralization (and censorship/deplatforming resistance) will be a strong draw in an era of dissatisfaction with dominant social media and community sites. I'll take that as a strong No from your perspective.

How so? To give more detail about the system, users generate private keys client side, which are used to sign their requests. Providing an email address is optional, and even (initial) usernames are randomly generated.

* All content mirrored on IPFS or Storj or whatever

* All transactions on the content made available and properly structured into a DAG of signed documents

* Make the API public and open source so people can run their own peers (basically, federation of access points)

Another major issue, beyond the comment in the article about how people may have shifted around usage temporarily to take advantage of the service, is the all-you-can eat effect. Compare how much you eat and drink your first few days at an all-inclusive resort versus how much you'd consume each day after a couple weeks there. The novelty of gorging wears off, and if you were paying gas and maintenance per trip that would happen especially fast.

I'm certain lowering the cost (and opportunity cost) of driving will mean more driving, but the magnitude of the change can't be predicted from a short study.

Sort of. The result is even stronger though. For one, the probability of the event can be tending to zero. So the thing you are multiplying together (in the negative case) gets closer and closer to one. For another, it states that not only is the event certain to occur, it will occur infinite times. In other words (and frighteningly!), no matter far out you go along the timeline of diminishing probabilities, if the rate of diminishment isn't high enough, infinite occurrences still await you.

It's even worse. The second Borel–Cantelli lemma shows that if the marginal risk of an event (per time unit) doesn't decrease to zero at a fast enough rate, there's absolute certainty it will occur. (strictly speaking, an infinite number of times in an infinite sequence).

One of the first websites I built (and one of the few sites left untouched for 20yrs) was a design experiment: http://lyca.com/

I wrapped a probability distribution around this very phenomenon a few years back:

https://statisticsblog.com/2013/05/30/uncovering-the-unrelia...

The expected duration converges to exactly double your wait time so far. I've found the "unreliable friend" distribution to be very useful in my modeling!

We've had mathematical models of change for over two thousand years. We have reliable, precise ones for astrological changes. As far as I know, we have none related to ecology or other complex systems that have proven capable of making long-term predictions.

I never said we should ignore any prediction. My calculation is purely Bayesian: how much prior trust should you place in a model (or class of models) with no long-term track record of success?

Outside of astronomy, I don't think there's any history of reliable 80+ year scientific forecasts that predict specific changes to our world.

True still in many places. Though in some countries you can be arrested for "hateful" posts or acts even if they are non-violet. You can also be kicked off Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, LinkedIn, Paypal, Youtube, the app stores, and Visa payment processing for expressing unpopular opinions. So not jail, more like a version of the black-mirror punishment that made undesirables invisible blurs.

How is it unfair for people making twice as much, to pay twice as much? If anything, "fairness" would favor a system where (absolute) taxes went up slower than income, as I doubt consumption of government services increases linearly with income (modulo rent seeking by the very rich and powerful).

Previously posted to HN half-a-year ago while still in the idea stage. Now a developed website.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17732902 for previous discussion

I had a Rio Carbon. Procedure was: Download podcasts to your computer, drag and drop the files to the player just like with any external drive.

I thought the Rio was a great little player it's a shame Apple wiped the field of competition so quickly.

I'm not sure people understand the extent to which domain names (and thus registrars & registries) are the linch pins of freedom of speech and identity right now. This, and the ongoing breakdown in the reputational barrier between consumer and service provider do not bode well at all for online freedom:

https://beforetheban.com/BeforeTheBanWhitepaper2018_10_01.pd...

> It is why brands are sold. Someone buying a trusted brand wants to give their product starting levels of trust that it doesn't deserve. It's an effective way of cheating customers.

This seems excessively strong. Another way to view it is as a way of signalling intent (and proving skin in the game). Buying a brand is similar to those expensive and structurally pointless columns on old bank buildings: it proves the company has a put a lot of money on the line and doesn't intend to close up shop a week later.

Good catch! I believe she did both replacements, in different tweets. I've updated the footnote to be more clear.