Thriptic

We already have the ability to measure COVID status because diagnostic labs are required to report the presence of certain things to CDC in real time upon positive test result. COVID-19 is almost certainly one. Further, countries like Britain tried what you are describing and the process was a total shit show ultimately leading to failure.

What makes flawless real-time communication hard is that you're talking about integrating thousands and thousands of groups of various sizes, with various technical capabilities and budgets, with various requirements, and with various legacy systems in place. You have multiple stakeholders who all want something different out of the project. You have very real security, availability, privacy, and fraud concerns. Oh and did I mention the government would really rather not pay for it?

Just creating a practical UUID for every citizen in the US is unprecedented, let alone associating all existing historical data for one person from all over the country / world with that handle, parsing that data into a standard format, and creating a system where that record could be updated in real time in a secure manner. Unsurprisingly, it's a monumental undertaking.

According to anecdata from a friend of mine at 3M, they are running manufacturing 24 hours / day and are expanding. Apparently one of the problems was that when China was infected, 3M depleted a lot of their existing mask stock selling to the Chinese. When the virus came to the US, existing stocks were already somewhat depleted.

I think it depends on what you are doing. If you are doing something intense enough, it works.

Check out on the roofs, the guys who break into sky scraper construction sites and scale the buildings. Go Pros work perfectly for their use case:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gLDYtH1RH-U

I believe it is one of the premium features, yes.

I agree, I think some people in this thread need to slow down and think very carefully about what they are suggesting. Let's remember that America at least was founded not only liberty, but also on life and the pursuit of happiness. I agree that we should always stay vigilant against governments using crises to erode liberty, but at the same time we must also consider the public good in decision making. For example, we have broad freedom of speech protections but we do not allow people to yell "fire" in a crowded theater or make terroristic threats because we have decided that such actions overly encroach on the public's well being.

As this article correctly points out, we should be very concerned about contact tracing, and any contact tracing program needs to have broad privacy and legal protections built into it. What this article does not say is that there should never be any contact tracing for any reason because it has the potential to be abused which automatically outweighs any benefit to public good. Similarly, our stay at home orders should have termination dates based on transparent metrics, and we should be very careful about how we apply martial law. That being said, I find it not only ridiculous but enraging that people would advocate flaunting quarantine out of high level principle. You do not have the right to do harm to others by acting as a viral carrier. You do not have the right to endanger other people with your behavior. You do not have the right to get sick behind principle and then demand scarce hospital resources and provider time. I'm sorry but that is not reasonable, ethical, or in line with the principles our country is based on.

Executives get that kind of salary because their tenure is short, they are under pressure, and they are (at least in theory) held accountable for performance by multiple stakeholders (employees, shareholders, the board, customers, etc). Members of Congress have a sky high re-election rate, have a much less stressful lifestyle, and are generally not held to such an account for their activity. We want to disincentivize choosing politics as a career, not encourage it.

I don't believe that. I'm simply saying that if the stated logic for this bill is that we need to regulate encryption because there is an unacceptable risk of misuse, then my response is that I actually accept the current level of misuse risk given the current level of regulation. Instituting further controls in the form of regulation would cost us more than the perceived reduction of risk that it affords.

Obviously this bill is about more than that, but I think that statement pretty much torpedoes their main public argument.

I think its better to just admit that freedoms / tech will always be misused by criminal actors, and that's just a price we agree to pay for privacy, security, and liberty. I don't think think that's a controversial statement, and we make such trade offs all the time unconsciously. The United States has largely agreed to accept a certain amount of criminal gun violence in the name of personal gun ownership. We agree that a certain amount of money laundering will occur due to shell corporations and foreign ownership of assets. We agree that police have to let a certain amount of crime go unpunished in order to protect against unreasonable search and seizure. The only difference between those things and this is that no one has the balls to stand up and admit that a certain amount of child abuse is an acceptable price given the stakes at hand, even though it is true.

Passed != Implemented

It is somewhat amazing to me that politicians don't seem to understand this. The solution is so simple: give people money directly, give money directly to businesses with the promise that they will not fire anyone, and do it yesterday.

Perhaps I'm simply misreading the situation and am in a bad mood, but it seems that whenever we see a government program rolled out, politicians seem more interested in preventing fraud, misuse, and politically sensitive spending than they are in seeing the program actually succeed / solve it's stated problem. This results in layers of complexity, regulations, and bullshit that impede the program from functioning efficiently. I would rather a cash transfer program have a 25% fraudulent claim rate and a 90% legitimate claim success rate than a 2% fraudulent claim rate and a 50% legitimate claim success rate. Politicians seem to want the latter. Further, there were arguments during the negotiations about the 2 trillion dollar bail out about abortions and oil subsidies ffs. These guys need to get their heads out of their asses and join us in the real world.

They have been issuing logically inconsistent statements for weeks saying masks don't work for the general public but do work for healthcare providers. It's difficult to then turn around and say masks work for everyone without losing all credibility.

I know what their stated purpose is, but it is true that wearing a mask protects the wearer as well to a degree. Stating that it doesn't (as many in the media / CDC / politicians have said) is factually incorrect. If they want to say that masks need to be preserved for healthcare workers or sick people, then they should say so and I would agree, but when they start bullshitting to try to trick people into the behavior that they want then it completely undermines their credibility. People then start asking things like "is it actually true that we need to socially distance or is that a lie as well?" The number one thing you should not do during times of crisis is start lying.

For example, I don't trust the WHO much anymore because they lied and said that closing China's borders would not stop the spread of corona behind pressure from the Chinese government.

It's very irritating because people don't understand the concept of defense in depth. Are surgical masks going to give you total protection? Of course not, but as you say they provide SOME benefit. Saying "masks don't work because they don't fully stop the virus and users misuse them" is basically equivalent to saying "code review is a waste of time because it won't catch every bug and because devs don't do it correctly". The solution isn't stop doing code review, it's to teach people how to do it and to understand it's limitations.

If someone wants to exercise their freedoms and accept responsibility for harm they cause to themselves, I don't have a problem with that. I do however have a problem with someone's exercise of their freedoms causing physical harm to me without my consent. In the same way that it's not acceptable to get lit and then drive a car because it creates a risk to other people, people should shut up and stay inside when told to do so in this context as they risk getting sick or being sick and spreading the disease to others, potentially killing them.

I elected people to govern. If I have to govern for them, what exactly are they being paid to do again? Besides, what we need during a crisis is expedient, logical decision making, not incredibly slow and decentralized power.

Yeah but that's the point. The use of this term makes people think that this is simply about socializing when it is not. The fact that it's hard to stay 6 feet away from someone else in a city while outside is why people should stop going outside unless they absolutely have to. It's not enough to simply stop hanging out with people, and this idea can't be communicated well with this term. Many people I see outside make no attempt at distancing themselves from strangers they are passing or while shopping.

Ironically, the problem is not that we have done too much damage in the short term but that we haven't done enough. What we need to do is stop people from going outside unless absolutely necessary. It's pretty much that simple, but no one likes what that looks like: martial law, forced quarantine, forced house arrest like they have in China. The government should deal with the short term pain by stepping in and back stoping every business by guaranteeing payroll for a few months. It will be insanely expensive and be political suicide, but it would work (as seen in China). What won't work is the weak, iterative preventive methods we are employing now which don't stop the virus from spreading (as people won't comply) and lead to prolonged economic pain.

People are getting caught in a liquidity crisis, which is one thing that happened during 2008 too (albeit in a slightly different way). They don't have enough cash for basic use and are being forced to sell whatever they have to meet obligations.

It's worth it. It is occasionally annoying to not be able to easily interact with some people or find a person or two to talk to, but other than that there isn't much downside. I got back time each day that I was wasting on FB, I found that I didn't care much about the content that I was missing, my privacy has improved, and I got away from the outrage culture that permeates most social networks. After I quit FB I was living with roommates who were constantly agro about random stuff that was ultimately irrelevant which they learned about through IG and Twitter. It was definitely making them less happy.

Putting the emergency fund in equities really undermines the premise of having an emergency fund. A primary purpose of having an emergency fund is so you won't get caught in a liquidity crisis and be forced to sell assets when prices are low to raise cash, thereby losing money. The probability of this happening skyrockets if you invest your emergency fund in stocks because chances are the time when you will need your emergency fund is when you are laid off or facing financial hardship. This is frequently during a recession when asset prices are low and you don't want to sell. I'm somewhat concerned about my own cash reserves right now as it happens, and I wish I'd kept more cash on hand.

Also it had an enormous impact on early online gaming. IRC was the default way many clans assembled, communicated, recruited, and coordinated match play and scrimmages between each other. Channels like findscrim allowed CS teams to match with other parties of equivalent skill looking for scrimmages in real time all over the world, 24 hours per day.

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking. If you're asking "what's the difference between a shotgun optimized for sport and a shotgun optimized for military / police / self-defense use?" then the answer is configuration mostly. Shotguns are pretty crude instruments so they don't vary much in terms of actual mechanism between use cases. The most obvious difference would be ammunition capacity. Sport shotguns (depending on the sport and exceptions apply) typically carry between 2 and 4 shells because trap / skeet only require you to fire 2 successive shots at any given time. "Combat" shotguns have much higher ammunition capacities so you aren't reloading as frequently.

Additionally sport shotguns typically have long barrels (I believe because pushing the sight farther away from the shooter's eye has been shown to improve accuracy among other things), are heavy because weight is less of a concern, and typically lack accessory mounting points (eg for ammunition holders, flash lights, other shit) because they are unnecessary and throw off the balance of the gun which may reduce accuracy. Competition guns are also frequently configured to fire a different type of ammunition which produces less recoil for the user and puts less strain on the shoulder over long bouts of practice. This ammo may do less damage to what it hits, so it would be less appropriate if you are trying to kill a person or a large game animal.

If you are asking "what's the difference between any gun optimized for sport vs one optimized for killing things?" then what you're effectively asking is "what's the difference between a computer optimized for hitting an overclocking record vs a server optimized for running your mission critical thing in production?" Nuanced rifle differences are out of my wheel house as I don't shoot rifles much, but the biggest difference from a design philosophy perspective is the performance:reliability trade off. If your rifle fails in a competition setting, that sucks but you're not going to die. If your rifle fails in combat while someone is shooting at you, you have real problems. Like servers, rifles designed for military or self defense use are therefore designed to operate correctly under a much wider range of conditions because they can't fail, and they sacrifice accuracy to meet that requirement. The most obvious example would be the AK-47 which is notoriously reliable to the point where it's a meme due to its simple mechanism and loose tolerances, and not nearly as accurate in standard configuration as many other rifles, even other rifles used by armed forces.

The other obvious difference is fire modes in a military setting (this is obviously context dependent). There is no need for burst fire (one trigger pull firing multiple bullets) or full auto fire (holding down the trigger yields continuous fire) in a competition setting because those fire modes are mostly used for scaring your enemy and getting them to stop shooting at you. You're not interested as much in hitting them, just suppressing them. You don't need to suppress a paper target because a paper target isn't shooting back at you.

If I look at your question literally, it's a hard question to answer because anything can be used to kill someone. What's the difference between a tank and a truck that a terrorist uses to run over people?

I happen to have access to a biomedical research lab and medication / chemicals that could kill me with a very high success rate if I decided to go that route, so it's not a relevant concern.

I don't think they are really. Guns are tools made to inflict kinetic damage. They can inflict damage on humans, damage on animals, or damage on targets.

That may seem like pedantry, but a huge number of guns aren't design to be used in anger, fired at a living thing, or will ever be purchased for the intent of firing at a living thing. I own a shotgun exclusively for shooting at clay targets for example, and I have no intention of ever pointing it at a living thing. Firearms used for sport are frequently explicitly designed for use in sport rather than being designed for combat, self defense, or hunting.

If it's true that there is a three week latency period while you can still be infectious then we are screwed. There's basically nothing you can do because quarantine becomes impossible short of forcibly quarantining everyone.

If even Xi Jinping doesn't have the political cover to pull it off, the US political leadership surely won't.

Considering that a majority of the Lets Encryot userbase would probably be running http rather than https if it weren't for free certs, it's still probably preferable to have only one or a handful of malicious entities able to observe traffic. You're not wrong though overall, the certificate model doesn't have built in protections for malicious CAs.

Overall I would argue that companies that are dealing with sensitive data should be using EV certs anyway to help users defend against phishing attacks which Let's Encrypt doesn't offer to my knowledge. This is tangential to your point though.

I think it's both.

I was at PAX East over the weekend with a 100,000 strong cohort of people who aren't exactly well known for personal hygiene and I wasn't scared, but it probably wasn't the ideal place to go. As long as you take strong precautions (cleaning shared surfaces aggressively, using hand sanitizer or washing hands after touching shared surfaces or people, avoiding sick people, avoiding confined spaces, etc) then I don't think there is really that much risk short of being coughed on by someone, but not much risk != basically no risk if you don't go. I actually went with a friend who was sick with the common cold and I was more concerned about him getting me sick than me getting COVID-19, and it seems I managed to avoid both.

So VPN in to a subnet where only a bastion host is exposed effectively?

We have technology right now to solve the problem. Carbon capture, planting trees, alternative energies, etc. We have just decided not to properly invest in deploying them or advancing them to make them more efficient. Green new deal might be a step in the right direction.

It's also somewhat misguided in my opinion. For some reason a large portion of the population have decided that it is categorically impossible to do anything about global warming from a technical or policy perspective. They have thrown up their hands and have decreed that we must all live awful lifestyles and shouldn't even try to innovate our way out of the problem. We are spending a tiny fraction of available resources fighting this problem, and it is not inconceivable that we could develop solutions which would change the state of the world dramatically if we actually threw money and talent at the problems.