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Normal here. Can you explain?

I agree - emojis often add emotional metadata to sentence. Often times it could be communicated with words but emojis are easier so naturally people are going to use them.

I think it goes back a lot longer than that - humans have been using symbols to express feelings for thousands of years. Written language is really the child of that. Personally I think humans will always communicate via little pictogram symbols, regardless of how perfect written communication with words is. There is something very innate about two eyes and an upward curved line meaning happy - and lots of similar examples. Emojis are just a form of this.

Energy consumption doesn't have to be tied to CO2, but it seems to me that there will always be a relationship between energy consumption and economic activity. After all, the energy is literally being used to do work.

I recently entered the used car market in the US and I was really shocked at how expensive cars are here compared with Europe.

How much weight and bulk would that add? Not to mention that the battery package itself will need to be larger and more robust. These things are barely small enough to use as it is.

I think that the issue here is it would be very hard to create a product that has replaceable batteries of this size and:

* Is waterproof

* Is small enough to be comfortable

* Has a battery large enough to be useful

* Has easy battery replacement - this is a really important one to me here. Remember that not everyone using these has the manual dexterity of a healthy 20 year old. These products have to be designed so that almost everyone can use + maintain them. If replacing the battery is a fiddly and hard thing to do for elderly and less dextrous users it is a hostile design and I'm okay with it not being done on accessibility grounds.

I don't think they are going to infect people intentionally. They are giving the vaccine and control to healthcare workers who are naturally very likely to be exposed throughout he course of their work. They will then compare the infection rates between the two groups.

That’s an interesting idea. Could you point me at any papers on the subject?

If the hardware is designed to handle it, why not?

Hmm I am not sure that Apple's products are really luxury products any more. For many many people they are quite essential.

Is there anything I can do as a user of the web about this? Is there a search engine out there that is better for these things than Google?

This is interesting. It would appear Santa Clara has quite a bit more capacity for when things get worse.

That’s fair enough but you have to accept you’re in the huge minority there. The average consumer does not want to have to flip a switch for every microphone on their devices when they want to use it. Not to mention the reliability implications of adding more moving parts and dust/water ingress points. There has to be a trade off between usability and security.

Wow what happens in week 52?

Do well at your job - the people who survive these things the best are the ones who are able to keep their job.

I wonder if in this lockdown era, it might have a new lease of life.

There seems to be a huge amount of innovation going on in this right now, which I think is ray of sunshine in this otherwise increasingly bleak picture. Part of me wonders though if this is because everyone is focusing on it, or rather we are so desperate that we try anything that looks like it might work.

I think part of the problem is that the hacker news community has to accept that we are in minority in terms of opinion on this. The general public is either okay with it or doesn't care. Anyone who has tried to explain this to a non-tech person knows what I mean.

Have you tried getting hold of isopropyl alcohol (or similar) recently? Impossible :(

I'm surprised that the government announced 3 month mortgage holidays, but not the same for renters. That seems like a pretty glaring omission.

Thanks. I have ppe that I can wear but I’m not using it yet. To be honest there is an air of hostility towards people wearing masks etc and I don’t want to get caught in that. If it gets worse I won’t have much choice though.

I’m really surprised at the public reaction in the UK. Many of my friends are still going to pubs and concerts like nothing is going on. Life is just continuing as normal. Feels a bit like they’re being used a cannon fodder in this huge “herd immunity” gamble, because some of them will get it, and some of them will die. Personally I’m staying as isolated as I can until the worst of this is over, regardless of the official advice.

This doesn't really seem to make sense. The US already has confirmed community transmission and the suspected case rate is higher in the US the UK. Also why now? Why not 2 days ago?

Thanks, that is a really excellent link.

I have no idea, and no desire to find out :)

Anybody know if there is a safe for work version of this? I would like to share it with my colleagues but the choice of language means I can't.

There is so much misinformation out there about this situation, I think skepticism of any report is not an unreasonable position. The Italian media has been criticised for drumming up panic.

That is a good point, I am still skeptical that he should be handing out advice though. I would also disagree that the media has no incentive to overstate the situation. The Italian PM has specifically asked them to tone down their reporting as it was causing panic.

I find it strange that even on HN we seem to fall into the trap of holding up people's opinions who ostensibly know nothing special about the subject. This guy is an engineer not a public health expert, why are we holding his thoughts and advice in particular esteem?