April Is Canceled • Hacker News Board

Re: April Is Canceled

#121

Post by wpietri » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #119

wpietri wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think pressure to do something and motivation to do something are entirely unrelated? I get the guy's intent. Some people will like and be excited by this. Some people will feel sad and guilty. But even if he only had the first group in mind, he's addressing the whole world. The reaction from ecopoesis is a valid one, because it's not the message he needs. Where we aim doesn't matter as much as what we hit…

I think the pressure is non existent unless you somehow believe this webpage is aimed at people going through serious personal torment and/or turmoil rather than an equally large (or larger) number of people who are cooped up trying to adapt their daily life. It would take some serious self righteousness to take this as a message to the former. The issue I had with the response was the direct attack on the author's i…

It is not just pointless for others. For some, it is harmful.

"Fuck this" is not an attack on the author's intent. it's a valid reaction to how it lands for some readers. If the pressure is nonexistent for you, great! But people other than you are also reading it.

Re: April Is Canceled

#122

Post by mcv » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 8:43 AM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #53

mcv wrote: post #18

I wish I had time for any of that. I keep reading ideas for how to deal with the boredom of self-isolation, but nobody writes about the stress. My wife and I have to homeschool two kids while also doing our own jobs from home. We're lucky of course that we have jobs, and we can do them from home, and we have two awesome and healthy kids. But homeschooling while we work really is a bit much.

My feelings really go out to you. Hope you all come through healthy and caring for each other. Meanwhile, it's even tougher for people with kids at home who still have to go to work. Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to work with zoom and github.

In my country, only people with "vital" jobs, which means health care, police, emergency services, everything related to food (production, delivery), logistics, garbage collection, etc. still go out to work, and for them, child care is still available. Home workers have to handle their own children.

Re: April Is Canceled

#123

Post by poletopole » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

WantonQuantum wrote: post #104

poletopole wrote: post #27

I already found a new transcendental number in my research and it has only been three weeks.

Nice! How many transcendental numbers are we up to now? (Kidding! I kid!) What properties of Poletopole's constant make it interesting?

Odds are you might see my paper on HN later this week if I'm right about what I discovered today. But the constant popped up while I was playing with a prime/integer model that allowed me to eliminate the complex space of any real system. However, today I realized the significance of what I had discovered the other day while playing with a 5-cell system and should lead me to finally end my research ongoing since August, which was to derive a prime number space--as silly as it sounds--but now that I have unlimited free time to work on the paper, things have escalated quickly. I started on this project because I needed an ambient space to work with topologies for a theoretical and highly decentralized/distributed, partition-tolerant, declarative, multiplexed L8 (yes, L8) protocol based on some of the entropic principles of digital communication Claude Shannon introduced, but not exclusively; it is semantically plain HTTP at L7 but is IP tunneled over HTTP/2 and the dat/ipfs protocols and runs on the WASM. Why I'm developing that protocol is another story, but I will say that, as a programmer, I done. Anyways, tomorrow I will see what the tide washes ashore.

Re: April Is Canceled

#124

Post by tathougies » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #98

tathougies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010, there were about 62k ventilators in American hospitals, more than any other developed nation at the time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215 If you take into account non-'full time' ventilators (not sure what these are but apparently they exist), the US has 99k.

It's not the count but the distribution. NY State only managed to come up with 6500, feds finally gave them 4400 more but the federal "stockpile" turned out to be a lie. There is also a good chance given how complex the machines are that many a decade old from 2010 are no longer functional? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/politics/coronavirus-v...

NY state has 8 million people. The United states has about 320 million. Thus, assuming an equal distribution, I would expect NY to have about 1/40 the number as the entire country. 62000 / 40 = 1550, so actually New York has a lot more than one would expect.

I would expect there to be more ventilators today than 2010 (but I could be wrong).

Re: April Is Canceled

#125

Post by etrk » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #84

etrk wrote: post #19

In an alternate reality, Newton did five pull-ups instead of inventing calculus.

It's OK. Leibnitz[1] (who independently invented calculus) would also have had to be doing pull-ups for calculus to not have been invented. Although Newton not having invented calculus might also have hampered his contributions to physics, which would have been a great loss. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz ---- Something I just learned about Leibnitz from that Wikipedia article - he was al…

Yeah, unless Leibnitz was busy making some tacos.

Re: April Is Canceled

#126

Post by rabryan » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

WantonQuantum wrote: post #100

rabryan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions? Where and when? Plus why criticize something thats advocating staying home in order to save lives.

The exponential growth can make it unintuitive but here are some numbers to consider: In the last 5 days (data from CSSEGISandData) the total number of deaths (excluding china) has doubled from 20679 to 38798. In the 5 days before that, the total number of deaths (excluding china) also doubled. So worldwide (excluding china) the total number of deaths looks like this: In 5 days: 77,596 In 10 days: 155,192 In 15 days:…

Its an s-curve with parameters that are changing by the hour and is sensitive to so many other variables. I’m definitely advocating as extreme a response as possible, but I see those numbers more as a pessimistic upper bound (necessary for people to take appropriate action).

And I as well hope things are changing quickly...

Re: April Is Canceled

#127

Post by rabryan » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

klingonopera wrote: post #74

mdavidn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US expects at least 100,000 deaths. Extrapolated to the world population at the same rate, that's 2.4 million deaths.

That's just over a quarter of the annual deaths due to malnutrition. Is it okay for me to just shed the equal amount of tears, or are people then going to accuse me of being emotionally stunted?

Definitely an okay sentiment in my opinion. First world countries haven’t had to face reality in a while apparently...