pascalxus

Take a look at this dashboard, specifically the bottom right section. The last 3 days, it seems that the number of reported cases is going down quite steeply. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...

now, I know, today's number's aren't fully in yet, and there are day to day fluctuations. but, if you trust the numbers for the last 3 days, it looks like the number of cases is not increasing exponentially. I know the actual case number is much higher, but, what matters is the relative percent increase or decrease from day to day, and it does not seem to be increasing in the last 3 days. am i wrong?

Starting a few days ago, almost no one is going out, except to do their big shopping. so how can the virus still spread?

I rarely if ever buy new clothes (maybe a few times per decade). And, even on those rare occassions when I do, for jeans, its usually a used clothing store for less than 10$. As for t-shirts, I think I have a lifetime supply already (20 or so), so I won't need to buy those for a while. Those t-shirts last a long long time. I still have some cheap ones from 20 years that are still going strong.

So, on the one hand, people react with aghast to find out that a bottle of Purrel soap costs 20$, when it actually should cost 2$ to produce.

But, here in CA, on the other hand, when a House (something far more crucial to people's lives), costs 800,000$ instead of 200,000$, that's okay (at least with the vast majority of voters).

I should mention the reason for 1 and the other are completely different. The soap, is merely due to the seller, wehreas the housing shortage is a political choice voters agreed to.

The crazy thing here is that they go after these gougers so aggressively for just selling a 20$ bottle of soap. And yet, predatory hospitals in the US can do x1000 times worse and not even get a slap on the hand. Hospitals are the #1 cause of bankrupcy in the US.

One day, about 5 years ago or so, I tried to login to my yahoo account that was still active at the time and I couldn't even login. They just said my account no longer exists! WTF! the account I had been using for over 10 years simply ceased to exist from one day to another. After that, I vowed to never use another yahoo product again.

i don't understand how knowing that you have the virus makes it less likely that you will die from it. There's no cure right? and at this point, anyone with a flu or cold will assume they have it and act accordingly, right?

I don't think getting rid of the people who know the system best will help anything. Some new guy who comes in with no clue of what happened or any of the codebase is not going to do a better job. It's just going to reduce long term productivity and increase risk.

Just get some green lentils from the bulk section. Lentils are high in zinc and It's always better to get your nutrition from actual food, rather than supplements which are unregulated and contain god knows what (not to mention it's not how your body normaly absorbs nutrients).

I completely agree with the sentiment to build more, much more housing. But, in order to make that happen, we also need to:

- get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will happen)

- reduce regulations on builders

- ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that consumers don't get ripped off)

- provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of legal protection that prevents builders from being sued and penalizes NIMBYs that try to stand in their way).

The benefits of building more are so numerous:

- every house that gets built reduces costs for everyone else as well, as the stress of under supply lessens

- it's easier for people to get to work and find work

- easier for companies to higher people

- more jobs getting created, not just from people able to get to work but new jobs getting created from all that construction

- It'll help the environment immensly! Everyday, I see the 580 - 5 lane highway clogged up with cars crawling by at 10mpg, probably getting very low MPG over a very long distance (this is where most of the CO2 pollution is coming from, at least in the US!)

- over the long term even people with houses already will pay lower property taxes (decreasing values reduce prop taxes)

- as the number of average miles driven per commute comes down, there will be less and less traffic.

the first thing you should do is talk to customers, or potential customers. don't make the mistake of building something people don't want. I know your currently thinking: "this is a product people will definitely want because of X,Y,Z". But, you really need to test those assumptions. You'd be surprised how people might react.

having to live in the "most expensive and exclusive city in the country" is not a plus.

I'd take shelter over Iphone any day of the week.

Most of All 6 of the things I mentioned haven't improved much in the last 50 years (Granted Food & Water are already very very good).

Using the US as an example: Housing, Medical and Education are all far less affordable and accesible today. All rising far faster than inflation.

Even our ability to transport people effectively from home to work and back has not improved much. The cost is just as high as ever. Cars/public transportation aren't able to move any faster than they could in the 70s (safety reasons, etc) and as the housing situation worsens, people's commutes get longer and longer. Thus the time it takes to arrive at ones destination hasn't improved. And it doesn't help that we seem to be moving the homes and works further and further apart (due to the cost of housing).

The improvements we're making these days are increasingly minor. Compare a car from today vs one from 20 years ago. there's not a whole lot of difference in terms of impact to you as a human being. even safety improvements are becoming increasingly incremental as we fight for every last 1000th of a percent of improvement.

where do you plug in the laptop to make that video chat, when you have no house to stay in?

All our modern day luxuries are contingent upon access to basic shelter. That shelter is harder to get than it has been for a long time: at least in the coastal cities - where most of the jobs are.

People can't arbitrarily choose where they want to live. People have to go where the jobs are, otherwise there's no money to pay for the house.

Having more unaffordable overly fancy michelin star restaraunts nearby doesn't reduce the hardship of not being able to afford shelter. And who needs high end retail when you can't even afford a place to live? How many gucci bags does it take to keep you happy when your stuff is out on the street and you have no place to plug-in your 1200$ iphone?

now you might be thinking, we already have shelter and we're not at risk. but the vast majority of people are just a few months away of no paycheck from absolute homelessness. even engineers, often don't have more than a years worth of runway saved up.

> "most prosperous time in history" That is no longer true, at least not here in the US. the most recent adult generation is now the 2nd or 3rd most prosperous generation and not by such a large margin as everyone thinks. The thinking goes that since GDP per capita is up and productivity is high, that we are much wealthier but it's not true.

Even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP can't adequately measure wealth because it uses the wrong basket of goods. if you have a million dollars and you can afford 1000 iphones but a house costs 5 million, then your not wealthy.

Wealth is being able to afford the basics of life: Shelter, food and water and by extension: transportation (because you need to get to a job), education (because employers now require it, regardless of whether its useful), and medical insurance because you don't want to loose your shelter.

Those 6 things are just as expensive as ever, if not more expensive than ever and the average person is less able to afford them, at least in the coastal cities. Calculate how many hours of work per week it takes to afford shelter. people work longer hours than ever, and nearly 50% of their salary now goes just towards shelter which equates to 20 to 25 hours a week of work just to afford shelter. Was that the case 500 years ago?

Yes we've come a long way from 500 years ago, undoubedly we can afford much more food with much greater variety than ever. we eat like kings, dress like kings. But, still live in shelters we can barely afford.

I don't see that happening at all currently. The housing market is insane in the bay area, as usual, even out here in the tri-valley area. as far as livermore, houses are selling like hot-cakes, not even on the market for a week.

> Thanks. I believe I can improve my diet with more veggies, fruits and grains.

That sounds like a great start!

Once in a while, i like to take a hike in the forest and look around and marvel at all the nature. It's really impressive. And to think, that everything you see before your eyes was the only thing humans had to eat: mostly edible weeds, various types of leafy green veggies, and whenever they were lucky enough to find it, they'd gorge themselves on a fruit tree/bush. One of the things you'll notice very quickly is how much abundance of choice we have in the supermarket (compared to how little in the forests and plains) with so much access to so many delicious fruits and veggies - it really makes you greatful for all the abundance we now have.

Eat lots of fruits and veggies. try to make 50% of your diet fruits and veggies. the other 50% should be Whole grain, beans, nuts/seeds.

if fruits and veggies don't sound appealing, it's usually because someone's taste buds have been blasted to death with artificial ingredients. but, if you get off all that stuff for a few months, your normal taste buds should re-emerge.

Fasting has been shown to have countless numerous benefits that is extremely powerful for many purposes.

Be Careful with Supplements. in the US they are COMPLETELY unregulated. They could put whatever they wanted in there, even if it contradicts what's on the label. You don't need supplements in the first place. Just eat food. Nature's food already has everything the body could ever want. humans spent millions of years adapting to Nature's food, there's nothing better out there than that.

Addictions are more severe, the earlier they happen.

the thing is, it takes a decade of delay for this to set in because fast-food and other harmful food like substances are much more harmful in child hood. So, if you were raised descently well on normal food until your 20s, then started eating horribly, it's not nearly as bad as if you started eating horribly in your childhood.

We can see this clearly in China. The older generation seems to have some resistance to junk food in terms of weight gain: this is why asians have a reputation for remaining slim, even if they eat junk food. But, it's not due to their genes: they were simply lucky enough to not be introduced to those bad foods until their adulthood.

If you look at the newest generation in China in the cities, their obesity rate is skyrocketing at an extremely high rate.

absolutely. When my family goes out to eat, we usually only order 1 meal and split it between the 3 of us, the meals are that HUGE. half the family don't get what they want, but it is cost effective.

but it doesn't have to be that way. We're using up barely like 2 or 3 percent of the land in the US. We can simply build more cities and there will be more than enough land for everyone. by artificially keeping people penned into a limited area of land like a bunch of chickens in a crowded chicken pen coupe, we're only hurting ourselves.

The key is: 1) companies first (with tax incentives they'll do or move anywhere). 2) jobs next 3) Where jobs go, people follow.

You know there's something seriously wrong with the state of the housing industry (how it's regulated, zoning, etc), when our only hope is to hope for a Recession or worse.

What we have now is much worse than a housing bubble. We have a severe housing crisis caused by lack of supply, regulation, zoning and thus costs to build.

The difference is: Even if no one can afford housing: There doesn't have to be bust. For example: if there's only 9 houses on the market, there only need to be 9 people willing to buy in at that price. So, essentially, with a severe housing shortage, only the richest 0.1% need be able to afford the houses on the market and they can still maintain an extremely high prices.

Meanwhile the coping mechanisms are in full effect:

1. longer and longer commutes causing ever more CO2.

2. multiple generations living together

3. roomates bunking together, not having families, not having kids

4. decreased spending in other areas as every last dollar goes to housing

5. ever more louder cries for rent regulations which makes it even hard to build more supply thus resulting in a death spiral.

I just recently read, "Harry Potter A Sorcerers stone". I must say, it's really good.

they're all from at least 1 or more months ago. i haven't run the updater script in at least 1 or more months.

It's a very good question. I would imagine more economies of scale? but, I would have thought that DO has enough economies of scale to reap all the benefits. but, I'm not sure.

My impression is that DO is doing just fine. I get the sense that the layoffs are just to add to the profitability, not necessarily a sign of weakness. The article did mention that they were still growing revenues very aggressively.

In 2012, They simply sent out an email that said:

"Legacy Service End of Life" here are the details: "We've been analyzing customer usage of Joyent’s systems and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our early products and have not migrated to our new platform, the Joyent Cloud.

For many business reasons, including infrastructure performance, service quality and manageability, these early products are nearing their End of Life. We plan to sunset these services on October 31, 2012 and we'd like to walk you through a few options."

So, I had to migrate everything to a new host which was a huge pain at the time because i was running a live Strategy game which are very time consuming to move with a minimal amount of down time, disruption and risk. not to mention everything that goes to changing over the DNS servers to point to the new address. Facebook login also added another layer of complication. It's all doable, but it takes a lot of planning and risk mitigation to get it 100% right with an absolute minimum of downtime.

Other than that, joyent uptime and performance was fine. But, having to move hosts is a big deal breaker.

> Remote is acceptable, even encouraged.

11% of all SE jobs posted on Stackoverflow in the last 4 months or so were Remote:

https://skilldime.com/app.php?PieChart2=Remote

I like the way the blog post is so well written in a witty style that's both entertaining and interesting to read.

LOLZ: >"Now Instagram has too many ads and finding a genuine phone charger on Amazon requires a degree in investigative journalism."

DO makes a great product. I've been using them for many years and I hope that they succeed.

I've used other hosts in the past and had nothing but trouble. Joyent ended one of their hosting plans and I had to migrate EVERYTHING which took forever. Then Rimuhosting had an actual hardware failure that resulted in non-reproducible errors happening very frequently - that company nearly brought down my whole business. Then there was Serverpronto which had too much downtime.

by comparison, DO has been much much better, always up, always trouble free.