Liberty

Interesting: https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/07/automl-zero-evolving-code-that-learns.html

Yeah, there's a french-language forum that I frequent that has the ability to upvote things. It doesn't do much, doesn't feed into a huge algorithm and things aren't sorted by votes, but it's a nice positive feedback and encourages good behavior and adding value.

Bill Nye: Also: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.08.20148775v1 "Air recirculation role in the infection with COVID-19, lessons learned from Diamond Princess cruise ship"

This is just creating incentives for a circle jerk with no opposing viewpoints, or a small clique turning warlord and silencing everybody (because many won't want to pay for a formerly free service and just leave) they don't like by coordinating downvoting. Terrible idea.

Acquisition at TSS: https://www.totalspecificsolutions.com/about-us/transaction-updates?tid=63 h/t @pearnick

EMT describing what experience can be if your area gets overwhelmed with COVID:

Either that, or rapidly kill the site because you lose critical mass and attrition isn't replaced by new blood. Pretty big gamble. Making something more exclusive and expensive doesn't automatically make it better. All the good contributions of the past on this site were done by people who just joined for free. I think the funk that this site is in is as I described in the other thread here: https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/not-an-investment-board/msg422378/#msg422378 If traditional value starts doing well again and there's a bunch of opportunities in that area, I expect the posting on this board to become quite valuable. In the meantime, it's just resting a bit.

People noticing their resting heart rate is higher even after months with a mild covid. Scary. Also: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1 "Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19"

School's primary function is pretty much to babysit kids while parents work. There's actually a very low density of learning going on there. The social aspects are important, but can also be two-sided since many schools have pretty bad peer culture and are run more like prisons than anything else (if your school wasn't like that, good for you, but I'm sure most people here don't come from bad neighbourhoods..). I'm sure it'll be bad for some, neutral for others, and maybe good for some...

I'm sure it sucks, at least in some aspects. What's the impact of losing grandparents and uncles and aunts and possibly parents, or having parents/family with physical problems that last after the disease, though? It's not like there's a choice between a perfect world and a choice between this. The choice was to competently deal with the outbreak, like most other countries, and have very little cases going in the fall. It's not when the house is on fire that you wonder if you should maybe get some insurance and buy a fire extinguisher.

"They told him he polled best on the economy. They told him the economy can't reopen unless kids are back in school. You can be pretty sure that was the extent of his thinking on all this."

This is the "general" section, which isn't supposed to be just about investing. If you go to the investment section, it'll only be talk about companies. Same for the Berkshire and Fairfax sections. There's also a thing called a computer mouse. It allows you not to click on things that don't interest you. The main problem with this forum right now is that it is heavily rooted in the traditional value way, and traditional value has been underperforming for over a decade. That doesn't help. Back when value was doing much better (in the rebound of the GFC, for example), this board had a lot more investing-idea activity, but I'm guessing most members are not finding much of interest through that lens these days.. Almost all my investments today wouldn't be considered traditional value, and when I discuss them here, I don't get much reaction. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A couple recent ones I liked: Good interview with David Patterson, mostly about instruction set design and the tradeoffs between various CPU architectures, RISC-V open source arch, etc: https://lexfridman.com/david-patterson/ Interview with Charlie Songhurst (mostly about investing, startups... he's just a very smart and clear thinker): http://investorfieldguide.com/songhurst/

That has not happened in many places. Taking California, from April 1st week till now The cases increased from 1200 to 7500. Deaths went from 70-80 to 60-70. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/ We'll see, I think there's other variables too. We're no doubt getting better at taking care of patients as we go up the learning curve (I've always said that if I ended up getting it, I'd rather get it 6 months in the future when we better understand what is going on and how to treat complications than in the early months when we were just guessing and flying blind). I think vitamin D probably has an impact (as it has with other respiratory infections) and the fall may show that. Early infections probably also hit more elderly populations because there was no lockdown, measures, and widespread understanding yet, while now the most vulnerable are probably taking more measures even in places that are fairly open, etc. In any case, it's much much worse in the US than it would be under competent leadership, as the rest of the world has shown. It's going to have a much bigger economic and human cost than it needed to, which is tragic.

The issue is that people look at the country-wide aggregate numbers and that's misleading, because it's actually a bunch of different infection centers going in different directions. So NYC and others are going down and getting under-control, mortality decreasing, while other places like Florida and AZ are going up, and mortality is likely to come with a lag of a few weeks (you don't usually die right after being diagnosed, it takes a while..). There's no scenario in which the current US situation is good, though. It's not even the fall yet, when things get even riskier, and you'd much rather get into the fall having almost no infection rather than having tens of thousands of new ones a day.

Taiwan gold standard:

https://moiglobal.com/elliot-turner-202007/ Presentation on Twitter.

Some of you always demanded randomized controlled studies for HCQ, irrespective of how many studies showed positive results for HCQ. So let me present the RCT for cloth masks https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577 Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated. Below is cited by CDC in their guidelines: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24229526/ Conclusion: Our findings suggest that a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection. Ok, first, the study isn't saying what you think it's saying: "this study was to compare the efficacy of cloth masks to medical masks in hospital healthcare workers (HCWs). The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between medical masks and cloth masks." (common sense would probably bet against the null hypothesis here) There's a big difference between a healthcare worker in a hospital and John Doe on the street, and if you can get a medical-grade mask instead of a cloth mask, you should use that. No question. The goal is to reduce R0 below one, so masks could be only very partially effective (and I think they're more than that) and yet make a huge difference (especially if both/more nodes wear them, as they compound), as Taleb pointed out in one of his pieces on masks. Second, it's one piece of evidence. There's also overwhelming evidence that they work in practice for regular people who aren't in hospitals or highly risky areas, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the studies catch up with over months and years, but we don't exactly have time to wait around. So a study like this shifted my priors a little bit, but not much, and in the meantime, let's use our brains and look at what works in practice based on a mechanistic understanding of what is going on. What the studies are saying is its very possible to get infected with the cloth masks and spread the infection. That is to use them as a "last resort" without diluting other aspects such as ventilation and distancing. Unforunately, unlike in S. Korea or Japan, ventilation is not highlighted in western countries. And I dont think from my interaction most people understand that the mask is simply "a last resort" but they should really act as if they dont have a cloth mask. For example, taking S. Korean guidelines (most S. Koreans actually use N95 mask which are much better than cloth mask) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/south-korea-office-coronavirus-covid19-work-enviroment/ Follow these guidelines when conducting in-person meetings: Inform attendees that they should refrain from attending the meeting if they traveled abroad in the last 14 days or have shown symptoms such as fever, respiratory distress (sore throat, coughing, difficulty breathing, headache, muscle pain, fatigue). The meeting host should check for respiratory abnormalities or fever and make sure those with symptoms don’t attend. Refrain from physical contact, such as shaking hands, before or after the meeting. Make sure hand sanitizer is readily available in the conference room so attendees can use it frequently. Provide a well-ventilated, spacious area for the meeting and be sure to ventilate before the meeting. Take a break every hour to ventilate the space by opening doors and windows. Maintain a distance of two meters between every attendee (minimum one meter). If this cannot be met, refrain from meeting in person. If the meeting is still necessary, ensure every attendee wears a mask, even when speaking. Masks are up to personal discretion if ventilation and distancing can be followed. From above clearly, the more important aspects are Ventilation and Distancing than masks. Masks are last resort, but as per S. Korean guidelines one should preferably "refrain from meeting in person" if ventilation and distancing is not possible even if you have N95 mask. No, that's not what it's saying. And it's not what the actual facts on the ground around the world are saying.

Tread:

Some of you always demanded randomized controlled studies for HCQ, irrespective of how many studies showed positive results for HCQ. So let me present the RCT for cloth masks https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577 Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated. Below is cited by CDC in their guidelines: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24229526/ Conclusion: Our findings suggest that a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection. Ok, first, the study isn't saying what you think it's saying: "this study was to compare the efficacy of cloth masks to medical masks in hospital healthcare workers (HCWs). The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between medical masks and cloth masks." (common sense would probably bet against the null hypothesis here) There's a big difference between a healthcare worker in a hospital and John Doe on the street, and if you can get a medical-grade mask instead of a cloth mask, you should use that. No question. The goal is to reduce R0 below one, so masks could be only very partially effective (and I think they're more than that) and yet make a huge difference (especially if both/more nodes wear them, as they compound), as Taleb pointed out in one of his pieces on masks. Second, it's one piece of evidence. There's also overwhelming evidence that they work in practice for regular people who aren't in hospitals or highly risky areas, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the studies catch up with over months and years, but we don't exactly have time to wait around. So a study like this shifted my priors a little bit, but not much, and in the meantime, let's use our brains and look at what works in practice based on a mechanistic understanding of what is going on.

Don't worry, at the rate the market cap is shrinking, soon you'll be able to buy the whole thing and do whatever you want with it.

https://voxeu.org/article/unmasked-effect-face-masks-spread-covid-19

https://masks4all.co/what-countries-require-masks-in-public/

With bad companies, most of the surprises are negative. With good companies, most of the surprises are positive.