mdemare

I’ve always wondered why StackOverflow didn’t implement a bounty system based on money.

I’ve regularly asked questions on SO that were too specific to get a good answer. I’d have loved to be able to just award $100 for the accepted answer.

It seemed so bloody obvious. But no, bounties are based on karma, you can’t even set a bounty if you’re a new user, and SO tries to make money as a job board...

"Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small." Rob Pike, creator of Go.

Forrest Gump is from 1995. Apple had barely begun going up then.

I grew up typing in BASIC games from magazines. I had no way of saving the games on a permanent medium, so when I was done playing, I lost the game.

Feel better now?

We can perceive the absence of consciousness in others?

Considering Scott's interest in things kabbalistic (e.g. Unsong), and his general erudition, I suspect he knows more about the origins of Moloch than you give him credit for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch#Carthaginian_Cronus

When aggressive drivers pay more than gentle drivers, that creates an incentive for aggressive drivers to drive more gently. Some of them will, and that in turn will save lives, not just money.

In the Netherlands, I don't think this was even attempted, apart from forbidding visitors.

I'm surprised at how little effect even a strict lockdown (western style - Wuhan style was much more effective) had compared with the Swedish approach. I did not expect cases to rise so slowly and even plateau with the policy that Sweden chose, and I did not expect cases and deaths to decrease so slowly with the policies that Spain, France, Belgium and Italy chose.

I now suspect that ending lockdowns, temporarily banning just a couple of high risk activities such as conferences and clubbing, universal mask wearing, and extra protection in hospitals and long term care homes might be enough, at least until October (in the Northern hemisphere).

If you trust the death rate, and the number of deaths reported are both accurate, the UK is at 40k/300k = 13%. A very long way from immunity, but not 0.5%.

> I suspect you are quoting case fatality rates instead of death rates

No. There were 652 confirmed deaths and 129 probably deaths in NYC in the 18-44 age group. If there are 3 million people in that age group in NYC (my estimate, look up if you want the exact number) that gives a confirmed death rate of 21.7 per 100k and confirmed + probable death rate of 27 per 100k. Close enough.

No, the annual death rate for the age group 18-45 is not 1000, it’s around 150. That is, even in the group of adults least affected by Covid-19, it would be near the top of the list for causes of death. In the most affected group (75+), the casualty rate is nearly 100 times higher.

It would be around the murder rate in Cincinnati (if all victims were 18-45 and the infection rate was equal to NYC)

I don’t have a narrative - I don’t pretend to know what the best course of action is.

But I am pointing out some of the glaring factual errors repeatedly made by people who are dismissive of the severity of this disease.

There we go again. In NYC, 19 out of 100,000 people aged 18-45 died. (1)

There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population).

21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes.

1) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

By March 8th, they had been 3k deaths in Wuhan. It was blatantly obvious by that time that Covid-19 was dangerous, and also that the testing situation was such that no one knew how widespread the virus was. Since the strict Spanish lockdown started just 6 days later, it seems clear that not halting the march was a big mistake, although it seems unclear how many were actually infected there.

It activated when I greeted my cat. My cat is called "Timmie"

I have a HomePod and we're getting increasingly good at pronouncing French and Dutch artists with the accent of someone with no conception of foreign languages in order to get Siri to play them, e.g. "Gene Ferret" for Jean Ferrat.

Apple Maps will happily butcher Dutch and French streetnames to the extent that we cannot recognize them at all.

Siri will just make a random guess if it can't understand what I asked it to play. It's just so supremely awful at almost everything.

What a bargain! They’re €849 ($919) in NL, tax included.

> I believe that we need to resume normal operation of society, and make strong efforts to protect the at-risk.

Nearly half the population is at-risk (age, comorbidities, obesity).

I think that.

Specifically, I think that first world societies can afford to give 25% of the workforce a paid sabbatical without ceasing to exist. And I find it depressing that there are people who think this is a shock that rich societies cannot absorb.

Sure, it'll be painful. Taxes will have to go up afterwards, the retirement age might have to rise. But it's possible.

Callous and false

There are only a handful of countries that can borrow in their own currency, and borrowing in another currency is very risky.

That article is from early March. It’s May now, no need to estimate anymore. I agree that CFR is fairly useless. But if you test everyone, as was the case on the Diamond Princess, IFR = CFR.

> An IFR of 1% seems too high. This doesn't seem to line up with data from the Diamond Princess (~1% IFR in a population biased towards elderly).

The Diamond Princess has 13 deaths for 712 cases, so 1.8%.

More infectious, sure? But more lethal? Why?

Without a lockdown, most of the country will eventually be infected. NYC currently has 21000 excess deaths, so extrapolating that to the rest of the country would mean 21000*328M / 10M = 690,000 excess deaths. That's assuming that nobody else in NYC is going to die of Covid 19, even after lifting the lockdown, so this is an extremely conservative projection, and it's already close to 1M deaths.

What's implausible about this? Is Covid 19 less lethal outside NYC? Can R remain below 1 anywhere in the country, without a lockdown?

Liberals and Christian Democrats are center-right, Social-Democrats and Greens center-left. Those are the main power blocks in quite a few European countries.

And US liberals and European liberals have quite different ideas about taxes, immigration, climate change, law and order. Europeans would not call Biden or Warren liberals. (Who would Europeans call a liberal? Maybe Paul Ryan, or Bloomberg).

Nobody there is going to die in April from covid?

Nembro, Italy. Pop. 11000, 152 deaths. 1.38% of the population died. In March.

The vastly different homelessness rates between countries suggests otherwise.

> Give enough monkeys enough pianos and time and they'll eventually write Mozart's Piano Sonata No 16.

Sure, No 16... No 19 is right out though.