3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits • Hacker News Board

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#211

Post by mdorazio » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

nopinsight wrote: post #186

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the depression the US emerged as the global hegemon because of major shifts in power that happened as a part of WWII. The US was uniquely adapted to grow to be the global super power at the same time that European nations were taking a huge hit from the war. I suspect this will ultimately lead to China as the new hegemon. We're seeing key advantages to the Chinese state that the US cannot adapt to. Decades of p…

A key determiner is who invents an effective treatment and vaccine first. Many bright young minds globally are paying great attention to Covid-19. If it happens in a country, possibly US, East Asia, or Europe, then the institutions of higher learning in the country would gain immediate prestige. (Pretty sure some teams in China have set its sight on this.) If it happens in East Asia, that would also be a recognition…

I agree with the last part of your statement, but not the first. By the time an effective vaccine is developed and run through human trials, most of the population will already have gotten Covid, so it's not likely to be a savior moment. Additionally, given how many vaccine candidates are already in the pipeline, it's pretty likely there will be multiple options approved within a few months of each other.

On a related note, if China wants to improve its STEM research prestige level, it needs to do something about the rampant fraud in research results that cause a lot of people to be highly skeptical of anything they publish.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#212

Post by threatofrain » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #148

abyssin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't even start to think about climate change, a phenomenon we're completely aware is happening, but still do nothing about, despite consequences that will be worse than this virus.

There a lot of well paid individuals who have the job of convincing regular people that climate change is a hoax and lots of regular people believe them.

Are these regular people citizens of a democracy? Then the chain of responsibility stops there. No greater entity will swoop in to help if the citizens of a democracy can’t be trusted to make the kinds of decisions confronting them.

It’s only a democracy if you can keep it.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#213

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #178

_y5hn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each country has economic and market mitigations. Some are beginning to copy US model of Gov paying bills outright for a period. If everyone can do this with low cost, there's no reason for high risk and damage to economy later. This incident will make us learn fast. The medical experts do consider economic and market impacts, and there are alignments in governments how to balance everything. However, since this is a…

I'm not saying countries are not implementing economic mitigations - I'm saying the only voices in decision making are coming from medical experts - there is no public evaluation or discussion of economic impact as a counterpoint to any action suggested by epidemiologists and doctors. The economy minister here is just putting out fires - he has zero say in the measures taken. And the politicians in charge are too afr…

In my country the different parts of leadership has displayed a unified front in the media and been very clear what they know and that there are unknowns that need to be learned now. If some politicians are "delegating blame" and not taking part, that's indeed a problem. Though it could be a perception problem. I've strong doubts weighted discussions across branches are not happening most sane places. Normal responsibilities during such incidents will be shifted and cease as well.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#214

Post by driverdan » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

Demiurge wrote: post #177

luma wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully f…

As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future…

Having worked on this type of application in the past they should find a new company to work with if they can't handle this traffic. We were handling hundreds of requests per second with ease 10 years ago. That was with MySQL and the app running on the same server.

It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#215

Post by helen___keller » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

My biggest concern is that we aren't working on the infrastructure and cultural shift that is going to be needed to have a return to normal.

The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded.

In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices:

(a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks.

(b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives.

In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life.

We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit.

We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test.

To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over.

As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be

The simple fact is we're lacking the national leadership to make an effective response to this disease.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#216

Post by komali2 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

chewz wrote: post #163

dragonwriter wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work in the US. Sure, just like the Depression did. And just like the Depression, a few years of boom times afterwards and that effect will be negated until the next similar event.

> And just like the Depression, a few years of boom times afterwards and that effect will be negated Actually Depression changed consumer habits for entire generation. People saved more, spent less, kept money under the mattress etc. Not a generation that you can kick-start an economy with.

Weird memory but my depression era great Grandma (matrilineal side all had kids at like 18) was teaching me a "depression soup" recipe. The first thing she had me do was peel the potatoes. All I could think was "this is the best part of the potato... We are literally throwing food away right now."

I think lots of experiences like this with her led to me quite unfairly latching onto the "ok boomer" ageist wave. Time and Time again she would do things that would make me wonder "wtf did your generation learn from all the lessons you went through..."

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#217

Post by rmrm » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #151

stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage. Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 8…

The biggest risk stated in 2008 was contagion to "main street" economy, which did eventually occur to some degree.

This virus and fallout went directly to the main street economy (of the entire world at same time) and stopped it cold.

I think its entirely unknown what the ultimate ramifications are of this cold stop to the world economy. But I see no reason to think its not bigger than 2008.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#218

Post by sciencewolf » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #151

stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage. Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 8…

This is huge. It may be a months of jobless claims compacted into a week.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#219

Post by komali2 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

brobdingnagians wrote: post #104

mtberatwork wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to be optimistic and think we all learn valuable lessons from this but realistically most people will just double-down in their convictions and blame some other externality as to why their own political/economic ideologies didn't pan out.

We haven't yet seen the full effects of the current political shift or of the measures being taken. It may be premature to believe we know all of the lessons that are to be learned from this, or even that the ones we believe we are learning are grounded in data. Hindsight will make all of this much more clear.

But politics is nothing if not consistent - who was blamed and who was punished for the 2008 financial crisis?

Don't be rational when you answer that question. Remember back to what Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnel were saying, and remember that people believed them.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#220

Post by Demiurge » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #184

Demiurge wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future…

The matching UK system has a (huge) queue in it: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-fo...

Is there a human factor in processing these?