edejong

Talking about Vitamin D and calcifediol: why are we not informed that Calcifediol treatment (and as such Vitamin D supplementation) significantly reduces the chance of ICU admission and mortality in COVID-19 based on RCTs [1,2]?

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34097036/

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602...

Thank you. Thank you for your views. Thank you for the link to the documentary. Thank you for taking the time to find the words and sharing them with us. I feel we need beauty in our increasingly desolate world.

In the past I have designed, implemented and brought into production many Akka based systems with medior and senior teams. Most of these were akka-streams based.

The Akka actor model requires a different mode of thinking which can cause problems for experienced engineers. Ideas such as 'let it crash' and at-most-once-delivery are not trivial. Basically systems design based on resilience instead of robustness.

When Actor based systems are well designed, they can be extremely powerful, scalable, resilient and adaptable.

Small nitpick. I found that akka-streams missed many useful primitives. For our toolkit, I designed flows with retry-logic, flows with cache lines and flows with metric measurements (sending data to Datadog).

It would start with us software engineers to be more exact in our communications. For an engineering discipline, we’re terrible at it.

Take your example. I don’t know whether a web page is encrypted. I do however know whether the transmission of one request of some website contents to a specific web browser is. But that won’t yet tell me whether the communication between me and the website has stayed confidential between the intended parties (which is probably what you’re interested in).

I’d love to dislike all and every autotuned song of the last fifteen years.

Swallowed coin cells can lead to life threatening situations in children. It occurs frequently.

https://www.poison.org/articles/button-batteries

Everything to cause division among the populace. If you’re looking at the standpoints, you’re mistaking the player for the ball.

Well, if you make broad generalizations like that, then software engineering has mathematics as a foundation.

Perhaps you don't want to make broad generalizations?

No virologist or epidemiologist will say it is 'usual' that viruses tend to mutate to become less virulent. Perhaps, and even that is contentious, an expert could make a claim for a specific type of virus.

This type of reasoning is based on an assumption that a pathogen limits its reproductive number by increasing its virulence. It is reasonable to test this hypothesis, but unfortunately we do not have enough data points to make any conclusive statements.

Ok, instead of some handwaving from economist, I'd rather have Nature [1] with loads of good references and no paywall.

My point is that we simply do not know. The word 'usual' is deceptive here. Usual for the viruses we studied? Usual for all viruses? Usual for viruses which recently have made the jump to a new species? We do not know. We simply have no idea.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5

The author of the article doesn't understand science:

"Distancing, hybrid models, classroom barriers, HEPA filters, and, most notably, requiring student masking were each found to not have a statistically significant benefit. In other words, these measures could not be said to be effective."

No! If you cannot find a statistically significant benefit, perhaps your experiment design is flawed. Perhaps your sample size is too small. Perhaps you have too many confounders. But you cannot conclude the measures are not effective!

It gets better! Read the article. It says:

"COVID-19 incidence was 37% lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks and 39% lower in schools that improved ventilation. Ventilation strategies associated with lower school incidence included dilution methods alone (35% lower incidence) or in combination with filtration methods (48% lower incidence)."

In other words, the study actually found many significant interventions in schools, among which masks. Unbelievably bad reporting from Intelligencer.

> True, though usually viruses mutate into less virulent forms.

Citation needed. The delta variant is the prime counter-example with higher R0 and slightly higher mortality. SAGE admitted SARS-CoV-2 will very likely mutate to defeat all build-up immunity. Variants of SARS-CoV-2 (SARS and MERS) showed the potential to have very high infection fatality ratios.

There is no reason at all to suspect COVID will suddenly become mild.

Well, if you dive into data science and ML, you'll see it is much more than just a bit of linear algebra. Some topics (and as a data engineer, I am not an expert):

- Distributed computing

- Feature selection

- Budgeting / accounting of experimental design (these TPU clusters are not cheap)

- ML architecture

- Involvement of domain experts (multidisciplinary teams)

- Storage

The whole list is much longer, but just some topics to think about. For me the term "AI", although overly broad, come to mean the engineering and organisation needed to pull these kind of projects.

That was the state of AI in the 90's. AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero have shown that it does not need to search exhaustively when it can search intelligently using reinforcement learning. The 'direction' is something the system learns and is not given by the devs.

There has been the hypothesis that it’s actually bad ventilation in schools and offices causing the asthma related problems. One thing to check before choosing a school for the kids.

I very strongly second this. The zero COVID strategy with localized lockdowns and a high emphasis on tracing would have prevented millions of deaths worldwide.

Same story as one I shared 4 years ago. Seems to be the best tactic! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031932

Edit: don’t want to sound accusatory

Sound synthesis: mostly when I was playing with PD (Pure Data). Linear algebra comes up all the time in sampling theory.

Music composition: this is a bit more far fetched, but I always thought of composition as a combination of vectors which can vary semi-independently. We want to pick some plane through that vector space and move within the plane. For example, we can vary in harmonic complexity, melodic complexity, rhythmic complexity, dynamics, tempo. But it wouldn't make sense to do all at the same time. So we pick one plane, say harmonic complexity and dynamics, and move within that plane. This allows the listener to get used to the 'space' that is opened by the composition. We can then slowly add more vectors, to keep the interest.

A very visual representation of this is the trackpads that you can see on certain modular synthesizers. Often there is a complex setup, but the variables of the setup are reduced to two dimensions, which allows the composers to vary within this projected plane.

Piano tunings: well, basically you have a vector of 230 piano strings of which the overtones are all slightly out of tune. To tune a piano 'correctly', you need to minimise set of equations of strings and overtones (matrix).

W.r.t. combinatorics: I was thinking of tuning systems and scales. I have always thought about the theory, but never written it down. Some other people actually did a much better job than me: http://andrewduncan.net/cmt/

W.r.t. linear algebra: mostly in relation to sound synthesis, but also in relation to music composition, theory of overtones, piano tunings... You ask, I'll explain.

Music and piano playing taught me things about (math related):

- Exponentials and logarithms

- Harmonic series

- Combinatorics

- Chaos theory

- Some calculus

- Resonance

- Linear algebra

It also taught me about physics, cognitive psychology, learning theory, history and even some sociology.

Is Linux unreasonable? The kernel has been backwards-compatible to user-land from the start.

Or TeX, C, RS232?

One of those graphs that’d benefit from a logarithmic scale.

This reminds me of framevr.io Totally 3D with support for headsets and very expandable.

A bit like modern television series, isn’t it?

Rates are persistently low preventing mass inflation which is a risk due to increased money supply. So, property is a nice holding zone, increasing demand thus increasing prices.

In other words, nobody wants to hold liquid asset at the moment.

Doesn't matter at all. If your eye can see it, it goes through the object detection process. Attention is not necessary. In particular, the brain associates it with all adjacent information.

That’s exactly the intention. There should not be a conscious connection between the ads and the actions, because it would reduce the effectiveness.

Thing is, your brain does all the processing: it reads the label, it detects the colors and brands, it associates it with previous experiences and reinforces all these connections. Then, at the last moment it decides not to engage the neocortex, so you’re not consciously aware of it.

I wish it was that simple. First of all, around half of the lethal accidents with motorcycles do not involve another road user. The other half is often caused by the motorcyclist due to speeding, insufficient distance or incorrect clothing and protection.

Second of all, while cars have seen half a century of safety improvements, motorcycles have lagged behind. Nevertheless, road use and traffic density have increased. Riding a motorcycle is akin to driving a car without a seatbelt, without a crumble zone and without ABS (and even then it is more lethal). Accidents happen. It is how you prepare for them that makes the difference.

Yes, I also find it incredibly stupid how the US has become so walking and cycling unfriendly. The reason why the Netherlands is different is not due to legal or regulations. It's because we have had leaders who made long-term plans to separate the various types of traffic. This means we separate the risk groups. You won't find many walking on roads with traffic exceeding 50 kph (30 mph). You won't find cyclists on highways. That is the solution.

Perhaps treating the other road users as people instead of derogatory terms like cagers would help. In addition, choosing a mode of transport which is literally 20 times more lethal per kilometer than driving is your responsibility. You can always choose to be a ‘cager’.

“And any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all.”