If I'm basically expected to prove my value to a loudmouth that walked in a few weeks ago in a place I've worked in for >year because he can't figure out how to evaluate people - I'd rather do that in an interview for another company - sounds healthier.
>This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects.
This isn't really what I'm worried about. Right now people are talking long COVID, subtle long term brain damage and it seems like mechanisms are still unknown. So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage. I'd be much more comfortable with the vaccine if the long COVID studies included groups :
- no vaccination/hospitalised
- no vaccination/asymptomatic
- vaccination/not infected
- vaccination/infected
I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.
> I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.
Respectfully, I think what you're really waiting for is this thing to blow over so you don't have to take any personal risk. That's likely to be a fail, as you're just a waiting Petri dish for the live virus to infect.
All kinds of things have risk and the craven merchants of doubt are busy spreading FUD about the vaccine. It's really our only way out of this shit show, because waiting around is just prolonging it.
Or would you like to have a long drawn out conversation about the long term health effects of:
* preservatives
* artificial sweeteners
* high fructose corn syrup
* pesticides
* HPV infection
* influenza/rhinovirus infection
* sunburns
* a night of heavy drinking
Because we can absolutely have a long, drawn out, twisting conversation about all those things.
On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects.
I don't really mind social distancing measures untill people in the risk groups get vaccinated - all of my high risk contacts have been. So I don't get what we need to get out of, my government is already saying they will eliminate COVID measures after summer, UK style.
I'll get vaccinated at some point if I have to do it for travel or what not - right now I'm not convinced - the social arguments don't make much sense to me (variants will come up anyway, you can get infected and spread the virus even if vaccinated you're just reducing risk)
> On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects.
Well if you're feeling conflicted between these things, you're just being willfully ignorant at this point. The vaccine protects against severe COVID, hands down. Long COVID is highly correlated with severe COVID. The data is absolutely rock solid on both of those. And for these nebulous "unknown long term effects" of the anti-vaxers keep scare-mongering with, the data on that is also pretty damn good. There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year. mRNA vaccines have been in use for decades to combat influenza, and there is similarly absolutely no data to support long-term effects from their use. Even a cursory education about how mRNA vaccines actually work, how they create an immune response and don't alter your DNA should be enough to convince most Science-minded, reasonable people. The immune response induced is on the order of any other; there's nothing special about the COVID vaccine immune response! And it doesn't give you an actual viral infection. A vaccine is literally all the benefit with none of the downside. Unlike dummies who think that somehow actually getting COVID is better for immunity. No data supports that conclusion, either.
The vaccine is effective and safe. People who tell you otherwise are just manufacturing doubt and spreading FUD. They are fucking this up for the rest of us. We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern.
> right now I'm not convinced
Well, I'm not inclined to believe that you can be convinced, because you didn't reason yourself into the position you're in now. No one will be reasoning you out of it. We're mostly just combating your further spreading of FUD like your apparent willingness to be a link in the chain in further spreading of the goddamn virus. It's really incredible the selfishness here.
You're just being presumptive, overreaching in conclusions and overconfident in your narrative. I've seen two studies linked recently about long COVID. Neither included vaccination as a test variable. Since these two studies were recent and newsworthy enough to link on HN I'm assuming your "There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year." boils down to there is no data because we didn't look for it. There would be no data of asymptomatic long term effects of COVID if we didn't search for that either.
I have 0 problems with people at risk of serious COVID getting vaccinated, in fact I convinced my grandparents to do it. I don't really see what it buys me as a healthy 30 something year-old with no preexisting conditions, other than likely being a day out after the shot.
>We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern.
How does that compute ? I thought nobody actually believed zero COVID is possible ?
Bigfoot is out there, and UFOs. Sorry, I shouldn't mock you. But seriously, epidemiologists, you know--Scientists--without political agendas study this problem very carefully...and do not see any widespread effects from the vaccine after a year. It's not like they forgot to look for it. If you seriously believe they are just being willfully blind to it then you're going to be off a long chain of other rationalizations that are just more hallmarks of the fact that you didn't reason yourself to where you are. But I already suspected that so I am not trying to convince you as much as tag your misinformation for passers by.
> I don't really see what it buys me
This is really the crux of matter. You only think about yourself. One, you are are far higher risk of Bad Things (tm) straight-up getting COVID, especially with Delta and Lambda coming. Again, the data is absolutely clear on that. Two, other people exist. Data shows you are more likely to be infected and more likely to infect others if you are unvaccinated. You help keep this thing festering by offering yourself up as a host. And no, vaccinated people are not doing the same. They are actually taking precautions that protect themselves and others. You're just being selfish and obstinate, and it isn't even principled, you are just worried about vague side-effects that only affect you. Worse, you put vaccinated people at risk too. If you are infected, and also being in contact with vaccinated people, you are just offering evolution more dice rolls to create a more infectious variant that can evade vaccine-induced immunity and infect the people around you. In fact, you tempt evolution to do so, because it's then a selective pressure. It's like giving your crazy neighbor who steals people's bullets and shoots them into the air randomly free ammunition by putting it on the porch with a bow on it instead of locking your shit up in your house. It's infuriatingly irresponsible.
> I thought nobody is actually believed zero COVID is possible?
I said herd immunity, not zero COVID.
herd im·mu·ni·ty, noun:
resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination. "the level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity varies by disease but ranges from 83 to 94 percent"
Zero COVID was a possibility when infections were low. But back then, people were saying it only affected a few people and didn't even want to wear masks. Irresponsible people brought this upon us and keep it going with continued irresponsibility.
I think you're irresponsible and I'm saying it you explicitly.
>you know--Scientists--without political agendas study this problem very carefully...and do not see any widespread effects from the vaccine after a year.
??
This entire thread is me asking if there's some studies that compare long COVID sideffects with groups based on vaccination. Instead of linking these, since you're already certain (and I would very much be convinced if you can show me) you are saying "believe science" ? And I'm unscientific ?
By all means enlighten me and I'll edit my top post with links to stop spreading misinformation.
So you're just googling post hoc and haven't actually looked into it. How scientific.
This study [1] is what got me interested, they claim gray matter loss compares to control group even in asymptomatic cases but they excluded vaccinated people from what I can tell. I want to see this level of data for the groups I mention and then we have a really good insight. And this data should be possible to get.
Your links are articles referencing self-reports and doctors guesses...
> So you're just googling post hoc and haven't actually looked into it. How scientific.
Actually, I've seen dozens of articles fly by and they all said pretty much the same thing, because the data is so clear that no one really disputes it. I just googled it because it's stupidly easy to find. Nothing's going to convince you anyway, so there's no point in putting in more effort at this point.
If you're so concerned, don't get the vaccine. But I'm begging you to please stop spreading baseless FUD about long term side effects. There is 0 evidence or any theory at all that could account for that.
> So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage
This is pure conjecture base on literally nothing. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just baseless. The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. The mRNA vaccines cause you own cells machinery to build virus proteins at which point it works just like any viral subunit vaccine, which have existed since 1970 and include flu vaccines, hep A and B, and few other you may have had already. Billions of people have received those types of vaccines and they don't have long term negative effects, except rarely when someone has an acute reaction right after vaccination. It is true that some people have allergic reactions (a strong an destructive immune response), but they happen within about 4 hours and symptoms usually clear up in a few days.
If the COVID vaccines had some mysterious far off long term effects, it would be the first vaccine ever to do that, and there's no reason to suspect that might be the case. You may find this nature article interesting https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7, it's about general vaccine immunology.
I'm not telling you that you need to get vaccinated, but the particular concern you're raising isn't something you should be worried about.
>The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response.
You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well - it's like saying "we have this black box service we sort of have an idea of what it does and if we send it X/Y/Z we know what happens, it should work the same with W too - I've been in that scenario often enough to know that's an assumption that I'd rather see the data for.
I already saw that people in my peer group reported short term side effects like headache after getting vaccination, have taken days off from work, family members complained about dizziness the day after.
It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies, should be insignificant even compares to money that will be spent on vaccination campaigns - so why skip out on valuable data.
> You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well
I'm not assuming, the whole field of immunology seems to be on board here. We know pretty well how the immune system work and how immunity develops from exposure to foreign material, it isn't black magic. There's no black box here the immune system has been well studied, and we know the inputs as well.
Vaccines are probably the safest medical intervention we have, the reactions you're describing are typical immune responses that are well studied, well understood, and temporary. No vaccine has every caused some long range reaction in the we you're describing.
> It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies
One could, but there's absolutely no reason to bother, because immunology is a well established field and we know what happens after people receive subunit vaccines. The only moderately novel part here is the mRNA which has been tested for 30 years in vitro, in animals, and in people.
There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine. Again, you don't have to take the vaccine, but the thing you are worried about isn't supported by any evidence or research it is amateur conjecture at best.
>There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine.
By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible aince these people don't even know they had the infection and shouldn't be studied either.
Saying that the immune system is well studied and we know what happens when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects is again overreaching.
And I'm not saying my "amateur conjecture" is likely true, I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things - especially when you're vaccinating a huge % of population in one step (other required immunisations happen generationally)
> By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible
No, not at all. The virus binds to ACE2 receptors on cells, where are all over you body and in your circulatory system. You could be infected and fight it off without acute symptoms and still have enough systemic damage from the virus and immune response to have lingering effects.
> when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects
We do, it's cellular damage from the infection. This is well studies with the flu and various other viruses. What we don't know is why it seems to effect some people and not others, the risk factors, and we're still parsing through symptoms to put together a full picture. There's no mystery as to how this happens. When researchers say they don't know why brain fog is a symptom, it doesn't mean they have no clue how it happens.
> I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things
It isn't surprising though. Plenty of viruses can cause lingering systemic damage without sever acute symptoms. The long covid cases were appearing as early as late April 2020 in the US, and clearly wen't caused by the vaccines that weren't available for a year. This whole what if scenario is just baseless FUD.
I think this code is bad because it uses if/else (it should be if not abort) and it only tests/handles one error case and the log is not very valuable, would be much better to wrap the block in try catch and capture all exceptions (should be fairly obvious from exception that stripe.handleCardPayment doesn't exist)
TypScript is sort of this. It's the best of both worlds, if it wasn't built on top of JS legacy garbage type system and core types it would be ideal.
But a powerful structural type system built on a flexible object model is really a great mix - type as much as you need, ignore types when they get in the way.
I've coded in Clojure enough to know that there are cases where it completely sucks (mostly when you have to do imperative low level code). I used to have a link to a standard library implementation of channels that was downright hideous to read as an example of this (and that code transformed to Java is actually easier to follow).
Clojure has some cases where it's insane how elegant you can make the solution, but frankly static languages with good type systems and tooling come close enough but don't have the scaling downsides.
You can find hideous Haskell code too. Especially in code for which lazy evaluation doesn't work and you need to coax the runtime into computing stuff in the right order.
Money isn't everything, there's a status component related to those professions (especially if you are coming from poorer background) and a lot of people like the idea of being a doctor or a lawyer. TBH you have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy sitting in front of a screen 8H a day to work on stuff most people would find meaningless (eg. getting paid to optimize ad revenue, speed up PHP execution to save data center energy usage...).
Likewise being a plumber isn't that respectable either.
And let's not even get into the dating/marriage aspect of it.
In my job, I get exposed to the owners of plumbing, construction, and other blue collar industries. From what I've seen, their houses are huge, their spouses are gorgeous, and they live in regions where they get to have an incredible quality of life.
The owner of a construction company told me once that he makes a 15% profit per year, and he charges far less than the competition because he would feel slimy taking more.
Tradesmen that can run a business and aren’t in the auto mechanics space, the oil industry, or working (vs supervising) in construction seem to do so well.
Those three are caveats based on anecdotal evidence on industry trends and manual labor injury risks.
Occasionally the status thing will come up regarding jobs and I find it interesting. I suppose HN tends to view software developers as high-status, probably because of its roots in the bay sate startup scene, where to imagine, yeah.
But when I tell people what I do. A large number still don’t know what the fuck it actually is, outside “something with computers”.
My impression is lawyers, doctors, bankers and consultants are the highest status among the general public, closely followed by engineers. Tradesmen below all of those, not quite at the bottom but in the bottom 60-70 percent.
and that perception of status is largely dictated by the mass media and movie businesses. Portraying a job as high-status makes it high-status in the eye of the audience, that's why it's generally accepted as higher status to be an actor than to be a backend developer. You 'll rarely see a show that ridicules actors but computer nerds are regularly ridiculed
I mean that's part of it, but the media/movie industry doesn't operate in a vacuum. People would rather watch a medical or legal drama than a drama about plumbers. Dealing directly with other people in high stakes situations lends itself to an entertaining show.
And even if most doctors/lawyers don't have a job as interesting as the stories depicted in Hollywood, they still don't have to get their hands dirty in the way that plumbers do. I'm also not sure that being a pediatrician or a dude who writes wills is considered high status, higher than a plumber sure, but not the same thing as being a specialty surgeon or a defense attorney.
Further, the circles that "high status" workers run in are more likely to include extremely successful/wealthy people due to friends made in college and grad school. The top 20 medical schools churn out over a thousand students per year, and some of those will surely go on to do high profile work.
Engineers are a bit of weird middle ground in this - computer nerds that run in elite circles (top schools, successful in SV, etc.) or that work in high stakes environments (mainly security) don't seem to be considered low status or ridiculed by the media. There may be a few nerd stereotypes mixed in, but if you watch enough medical or legal dramas you will find stereotypes for those professions too. Same goes for finance bros, cops, teachers, etc.
However, I agree a random computer nerd is considered somewhat low status. People that work in IT or are developers at random companies are looked at a bit more like tradespeople. It's not too surprising though that how hard a job is to get relates to its status.
Would the world be a better place if people stopped paying so much attention to status? Probably, I'm not saying that this perception of status is the right way to go about things, or even that the status "rankings" are rational. I'm just saying it is not caused by the media. Perhaps reinforced, but there are plenty of underlying reasons. Going to college was a high status thing even back when movies were still silent. Conversely, the US military has tried very hard to glorify itself in the media, but joining the military is still considered a low status thing to do.
Ya people worried about status always seem to be the people not in the trade.
Excluding the trades really tied to the oil industry or tough construction work… every debt-free plumber/carpenter/electrician/HVAC seems to be A-ok happy. If they have small businesses acumen, these types seem to be financial rocketships by their 30’s.
To people saying this is caused by use - this is irrelevant - people are upset because they use other comparable cables this way and don't have these problems nearly as often. I've noticed Apple usually has thinner cables - maybe it's that - frankly I'd prefer more robust ones.
I mean if they can't get Apple to include them in this (like you said you can use BT magic keyboard so clearly there's a way built-in) they have no chance at getting touchid
My problem with laser combos (printer + scanner) is that they are >50% larger than an inkjet with same features. Inkjet is just the right height where you can use it on a shelf/desk and it won't be unbearable + you can stack some stuff on top.
WiFi kind of helps but still not a fan of having a giant box around for something that I rarely use (but still need often enough to justify owning)
I feel like investing in market pathologies has become too common and modern democratic governments are far too slow at doing there roles and curbing such behaviour.
Bitcoin is the obvious example of something that should have been banned years ago (and all proof of work crypto), but there are so many examples coming up daily, if there was ever any faith in institutions it's eroding quickly, and once you remove that you accelerate the pathologies (people start acting like anything goes) and society starts to destabilise.
> Bitcoin is the obvious example of something that should have been banned years ago (and all proof of work crypto)
not that i would invest in bitcoins (or any crypto), but i don't see it as an obvious ban. The only reason i can deduce from your "obviousness" comment is that proof of works "wastes" energy. But then it is hypocritical to argue this when other modern conveniences also "waste" energy, and yet you don't call for a ban.
It wastes entrepreneurial energy too, since it doesn't actually provide value to anyone.
Not the way a car, a phone, a hairdresser, a movie or Google maps does. The economy is just what everyone does/make. Think of the opportunity cost of all that human resource being wasted on a pyramid/ponzi scheme, which does not produce any value. It only redistributes it, poorly. Yeah thanks. We really need more gambling infrastructure with even less oversight.
If we would make a list of important things we want to explore further, how would crypto be on it? Why?
It's ok as a storage of wealth, but the amount of investment money and energy wasted on this stuff. And in the end it's going to bankrupt gullible idiots that put their pension in dogecoin. Maybe in the US you just let these morons starve, but in the most of the world, you wouldn't. So it makes sense to protect society against having to bail out suckers from a completely useless and pointless economic exploitation.
So I can imagine banning on on the sheer notion the existence is a net loss for society.
There was no value to WWW and HTTP in 1990's. Yet hackers tinkered with those technologies just for the sake of doing something cool and here we are 3 decades later. I see the same spirit with DeFi, NFT, dApps and Crypto in general. And just like there was a crazy boom in the late 90's (pets.com anyone?), history is rhyming again (dogecoin anyone?).
What is sad is that some of the top comments on hacker news are dismissing this cool new tech by choosing to focus only on the negatives.
If the problem is co2 emissions, banning is not really the solution. The solution is co2 cap-and-trade, with a yearly dropping cap. We have it in EU, and it's very effective at dropping the co2 emissions of electricity production and industry. What is needed is carbon tariffs, or carbon club:
To beat the rest of the countries into submission. If all co2 emissions are under same cap-and-trade emissions system, from climate pov it doesn't matter that bitcoin is energy inefficient. The bitcoin miners will simply have to buy their emissions rights or use clean energy. Even if bitcoin energy use would skyrocket, the co2 emissions would continue to drop at the same rate as the co2 cap drops...
The root of the problem goes deeper - why haven't developed nations such as USA and Australia have co2 cap and trade? I'd blame fox news and its ilk, which have figured out which buttons to press on people to make them dumb. Despite the immense damage to environment and society they have created, democratic societies have not figured out how to fix that problem. Come on, we have had decades of time to monitor and learn of Murdoch et atll, and the problem has only got worse...
What is the utility provided by crypto ? Money laundering, avoiding capital controls, financial speculation ? All while burning insane amount of energy and hoging up limited chip making supplies.
It's clear cut that o the whole crypto is a huge negative for society.
The use case of crypto is to purchase things online without the knowledge or permission of your government. How you feel about that probably tells you more about how your feel about your government than anything else.
Are computer games also a huge negative for society?
With your reasoning, they provide no utility, waste an insane amount of energy, mostly involve violence, etc.
I don't want to live in a country that starts banning things for those reasons.
The utility of cryptocurrencies is not decided by governments, or companies, or you. The utility will be decided by reality. I like living in democracy and capitalism, but it seems you prefer a dictatorships.
>The utility of cryptocurrencies is not decided by governments, or companies, or you. The utility will be decided by reality.
No the utility is determined by you me and everyone else collectively. The problem is financial mechanisms that allow inflating these bubbles are not market driven, central banks are flooding the markets with low interest rates, if they want to direct the markets they need to react to negative distortions they cause.
Crypto is no different but instead of central banks you have a shadowy network of large investors at the top artificially moving the market. It's like a continuous pump and dump scheme.
> not that i would invest in bitcoins (or any crypto), but i don't see it as an obvious ban. The only reason i can deduce from your "obviousness" comment is that proof of works "wastes" energy. But then it is hypocritical to argue this when other modern conveniences also "waste" energy, and yet you don't call for a ban.
While other activities may be wasteful, proof-of-work is waste distilled almost to its purest essence. It's literally a race to see who can waste the most. There's really no comparison.
It's the scale of the wastefulness of bitcoin that matters.
If a car burnt through a months worth of electricity for your home just so you could drive to the shops to get groceries and come back, then that would quickly be banned. Bitcoin and other currencies have a lot of money being pumped into the system by people who refuse to account for the wastefulness that is crypto and instead, want to drive up their investment.
There's no replacement of traditional digital payments by cryptocurrencies.
Going back to the article, I'm glad China priorities it's people (funny to say that given the Xinjiang situation) over the profits of big corporations.
Bitcoin uses energy without providing substantial utility unavailable from other vastly less wasteful alternatives.
Additionally it provides a place for the rich and ruthless to prey on the weak and gullible with endless washtrades and exchange scams. It should be banned.
The utility is hard to measure, but brushing it off being valueless is subjective. It should be clear to you at this stage that not everyone agrees with you.
The governments of the world are one of the driving forces behind the pathologies. The reason asset prices are crazy is because the government has figured out that if they print money and give it to asset holders then they get stock market growth but are still able to call inflation low.
If they didn't have their thumb on the scale, interest rates would be higher and boring, stodgy savers would be in control of the money instead of the sort of people who think Bitcoin looks like a good idea.
If they don't want people putting money into insanely risky ventures they should stop punishing people who invest in low risk ventures.
I don't disagree, but I can see why they want high growth. But if you choose that path you need to actively manage the pathological cases, especially the ones you create.
* If the US Congress were capable of identifying pathological cases, would the government go through the ceremony of shutting down every couple of years just to remind everyone they can't balance budget?
* If the Chinese government could identify pathological cases, would we have error bars of +- 15 million deaths around their 60s-era economic policies when they tried to rush improvements through central planning?
Those are my top two favourites, but there are others. The approach the government has to climate change also springs to mind. You're calling for something that we have fairly solid evidence that they can't reliably and safely do. They can kill off things that are novel, sure. They aren't reliable at making sweeping judgements about what technological changes are good or bad. Government's are very marginally competent at identifying value for money.
It is far safer to let something like Bitcoin run than risk, eg, a government nipping the next internet in the bud because people are using it to look at dirty photos. The only thing to complain about here is that they've disabled the extremely reliable capitalist incentive structure that would stop people doing things they know to be a waste of time and money.
How exactly would Bitcoin be banned? Do you think governments would rather ban Bitcoin or Tor first? Or how about blanket “banning” ransomware? Or the other unpopular foss flavor of the month?
