> And if the virus had totally natural - accidental freak of Nature - origin, why would you give 4 year prison to a journalist who was covering the beginning of the pandemic in Wuhan?
I really wouldn't attach that much meaning to the prison sentence handed out. It is entirely in line with the CCP's behavior in the past. They strongly repress any information or people they perceive as causing them to lose face or look bad.
Not saying this is a conspiracy, but it does make it easier to forcefully cover up a conspiracy if they always react harshly to even small "infractions".
I haven't found much I couldn't script using built in automation [1] or if it's lower level one of the LUA based scripting tools like hammerspoon [2]. Mac automation is really robust. Even just the default provided tools like Automator or scripting GUI tasks via Javascript/Applescript can accomplish a lot.
Using a tool like Alfred [3] and having "workflows" attached to hotkeys for automated things works wonders. For example I have a "workflow" that lets me hit a hotkey on a playing video and it automatically creates a bookmark at that timestamp which is recorded to a SQLite DB. Any future times I open that video I get a list of bookmarks and the ability to jump to them. This script marks all the currently selected songs in iTunes as loved or the currently playing song as loved. [4]
I have a lot to complain about Mac/MacOS and the direction it's gone down recently, been using Mac since OSX came out, but automation isn't one of them. Out of curiosity what did you try to automate that you couldn't?
First off, I hadn't run into Hammerspoon before, so thanks for that - it looks like it might help with some things.
Most things I've tried and failed to do involve silent/background interaction with apps. For example, my company's VPN software doesn't handle sleep well at all, so I wanted to automatically disconnect before sleeping. I couldn't work out how to do it. The Mac Automation stuff (Automator and AppleScript) work if the app supports them, but my experience has been that support isn't necessarily reliable. Electron apps, at least, ignored my attempts last time I tried.
I figured out a way to do things using keyboard/mouse automation, but that fails in any context where I'm either actively doing something or where input isn't being accepted (e.g. when the lid is closed or when I'm actively editing code). On Linux I can at generally resort to Stupid X11 Hackery to make that kind of thing happen, though it sometimes needs WM integration if the app isn't cooperating.
I wanted to use a different ssh-agent on OSx which is a very simple "I want to set a global environment variable." That's literally impossible in OSX. So, I had to open a shell and every app that I wanted to use my ssh-agent had to be launched from that shell.
ah, nice! I haven't tried to figure this out since Yosemite was new and it looks like there's now instructions for how to do it. Thanks for this! If I ever have to go back to OSX, now I know!
In addition, there's AppleScript for automating UI apps, which is capable of calling bash scripts. The reverse of bash scripts calling AppleScripts is also possible. It's super powerful.
The "assuming they are making good money" is an important phrase here. Unless they are doing livestreaming, where they can make quite a bit of money on "Superchats" and memberships with a smaller audience, or have a 3rd party money making tool like Patreon, with members only content, you need to have a very large view count to get enough money on just Ad revenue.
Though I completely agree with what you are saying as whole, being picked up for television could be a bad thing for content creator. If they can manage an audience and can work out ways to monetize not just on Ad revenue that can be a lot better in the long run.
In this case their "slight" directly affected the functionality of the App: I was unable to buy or even view certain stocks. To me that is clearly App functionality that should be subject to user review and rating.
Mass shifts in public opinion due to actual changes in how the App behaves is not brigading nor retaliation and should not be protected against.
The functionality of the App and the policies and choices of the business are intrinsically tied. In this case their choice directly affected the functionality of the App: I was unable to buy or even view certain stocks. In my opinion that is, without a doubt, App functionality that should be subject to user review and rating.
It's one thing for the company to make choices that people disagree with but don't affect the actual functionality of the App. This could be environmental policies, partnering with a controversial government, using tax loopholes, etc. People going on brigades to review bomb an App for these types of issues are what should be protected against. Mass shifts in public opinion due to actual changes in how the App behaves should not be protected against.
I'm still surprised there is so much misinformation about this. There are two categories of masks. The first category only prevent you from spreading the disease. These include paper surgical masks, cloth masks and those blue disposable paper masks. These are only made to prevent you from spreading droplets in the air from your moth and nose. If someone with covid isn't wearing a mask this category won't do anything prevent you from catching it.
The second category are masks such as N95, P95, N99, P100, etc. Things like disposable painter masks or reusable masks with replaceable filters. These are meant to filter out particulate in the air and they do reduce the likelihood of you getting the disease. To call your mask P95 it must be certified by NIOSH and tested to meet the given rating, ie P95 must filter out 95 percent of particulate and be resistant to oil.
In the beginning the US and CDC were not recommending using masks. I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
> I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
Yeah, but instead of saying that they lied and said masks don't work.
I wonder how much of the current anti-mask sentiments arise from these lies.
Which person lied? I did not hear the claim (from a public health authority) that masks were not effective in preventing transmission. I did hear the claim that we are unsure if masks provide protection for the user (rather than just protecting others from the user), which still reflects our current knowledge for most mask types AFAIK. I did hear the recommendation against buying masks early on to protect the supplies for more critical users.
I also don't see how you can blame the health authorities for this when half the political leadership in this country continually questioned (and in some cases still questions) the efficacy of masks and successfully politicized the issue.
>“What the World Health Organization [WHO] and the CDC [The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] have reaffirmed in the last few days is that they do not recommend the general public wear masks.”
But in neither of those cases did anyone say, you shouldn't wear a mask because they won't work. They recommended against wearing masks because they thought the harms of people wearing masks would outweigh the benefits at that point. I tried to make the distinction between saying "we not do not recommend the public wear masks" and "masks do not help prevent sick people from spreading the virus" clear in my original comment. All comments I saw were the former statement, which I think is not misleading the public or lying, not the latter.
It's possible they were wrong w.r.t. the harms outweighing the benefits but that's easier to say in hindsight.
"They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus" reads to me exactly as "you shouldn't wear a mask because they won't work".
Exactly, and at that time my wife and I were wearing masks (that we already had from before the pandemic!) going in stores and people gave us looks, made comments, etc. That is what happens when our leaders are irresponsible, ineffective and plain stupid.
Not really, at least not Fauci. What he said was they wouldn't work for most Americans. What he was implying is that most Americans wouldn't bother to learn to wear them properly.
I think he was right. If your glasses are fogging, RainX isn't your answer. Make the damn mask fit better.
Anthony Fauci quoted below with his primary motivations:
"I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm's way every day to take care of sick people," Fauci told O'Donnell.
"When it became clear that we could get the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks," he said.
"And also, it soon became clear that we had enough protective equipment and that cloth masks and homemade masks were as good as masks that you would buy from surgical supply stores," Fauci added. "So in the context of when we were not strongly recommending it, it was the correct thing."
But a leader speaking out to the population is not the same thing as an engineer/researcher formulating a theory and correcting themselves as information comes through in their research notes. One of the important things you have to consider as a leader is political capital, which is a limited resource. Every time you tell people that they should do something that is different from what they wanted to do, you are burning that capital. You cannot change your mind "as new information comes through" every day, soon enough, everyone stops trusting whatever you say and are back to doing whatever they think is best.
So if you think masks _can_ help (now or in the future, with training, used correctly, when we have enough of them in the future, etc etc) then DO NOT say they do not help and then come back to that because you have "new information".
If the problem was sourcing PPEs for health professionals why didn't the government use emergency powers to seize shipments and ban selling of such critical products to the general population? At least temporarily while building stocks for health professionals (which I'm surprised we didn't already have stocks of, you know, that seems like normal preparation procedure for a national health emergency?)
Yes- he's negotiating a difficult position. At the time there was a big concern that people wouldn't wear the masks properly. "It takes training" was the implication.
But all the good quality evidence we have so far struggles to find a benefit to masks. This is especially true for DIY cloth masks that are being mandated for the public, but it's also true of high quality N95 masks. We only see a benefit when we drop the quality of evidence down, but this means we have less confidence in the result.
> RCT evidence was limited and showed no effect but accumulated evidence from retrospective case controls and cohorts all showed these strategies decreased transmission. N95 respirator mask OR 0.17 (CI 0.07–0.43), Gloves OR 0.32 (CI 0.23–0.45), Gowns OR 0.33(CI 0.24–0.45), All OR 0.09 (CI 0.02–0.35)
Note that this is for an N95 mask, not worse masks like surgical loop masks or cloth face coverings.
There's some research looking at post-operative wound infection rates. It can't find a benefit to surgeons wearing masks in clean surgery.
> We included three trials, involving a total of 2106 participants. There was no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials. We identified no new trials for this latest update.
> Authors' conclusions
> From the limited results it is unclear whether the wearing of surgical face masks by members of the surgical team has any impact on surgical wound infection rates for patients undergoing clean surgery.
> Conclusion: From the limited randomized trials it is still not clear that whether wearing surgical face masks harms or benefit the patients undergoing elective surgery.
Here's the most recent, very high quality, paper about masks and covid-19. This wasn't available when Public Health organisations were making their recommendations.
> Although direct evidence is limited, the optimum use of face masks, in particular N95 or similar respirators in health-care settings and 12–16-layer cotton or surgical masks in the community, could depend on contextual factors; action is needed at all levels to address the paucity of better evidence. Eye protection might provide additional benefits. Globally collaborative and well conducted studies, including randomised trials, of different personal protective strategies are needed regardless of the challenges, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence could be considered to inform interim guidance.
This para is saying we just don't have the evidence yet. It's saying people should wear facemasks because masks may help, but we don't know, and maybe masks cause harm.
> Interpretation
> The findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis support physical distancing of 1 m or more and provide quantitative estimates for models and contact tracing to inform policy. Optimum use of face masks, respirators, and eye protection in public and health-care settings should be informed by these findings and contextual factors. Robust randomised trials are needed to better inform the evidence for these interventions, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence might inform interim guidance.
Look at the difference in the description of distancing (supported) and masks (optimum use may help).
> Face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection (n=2647; aOR 0·15, 95% CI 0·07 to 0·34, RD −14·3%, −15·9 to −10·7; low certainty), with stronger associations with N95 or similar respirators compared with disposable surgical masks or similar (eg, reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks; pinteraction=0·090; posterior probability >95%, low certainty).
Tucked away in this para is "low certainty". This comes from GRADE. Low certainty means that masks may be much more effective, or much less effective, than they estimate.
>> In the beginning the US and CDC were not recommending using masks. I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
This happened anyway. Telling noble lies to the population just increases populism and makes people distrust the government even more. Which is paying off wonderfully right about now.
There are no studies that I know of that show that cloth masks provide protection for the wearer. The consensus now seems to be that they are effective at decreasing the likelihood that a sick person spreads it to a healthy person if sick people wear them.
In addition to what other commenters are saying just like vaccines masks only really work on a population level and even there they don't work as well as vaccines. The figures I've seen claim something in the range of a 20 to 40 percent reduction in risk of catching from an infectious person. That isn't anything like what I'd call protection
Could you simply separate hydrogen from the water, using electrolysis, or other methods and then use the Sabatier reaction? [1] Carbon dioxide in bulk may be harder to come by on the moon, however.
Also, the Lunar Gateway [2] is a key part of the plans by NASA/SLS. It's not about settling on the moon, it's about making it a stop off point to refuel or pickup supplies before going on to a further off destination like Mars. Instead of having to have all your fuel and payload when taking off from Earth, you can have a lot of your supplies and weight on the Moon. This means your trip off Earth can be cheaper. Getting out of Earths gravity and getting to escape velocity is the hard part. Getting off the moon is a lot easier.
The Sabatier reaction relies on carbon dioxide. For the concept of using it to generate rocket fuel, there's a reliance on atmospheric CO₂ which is viable on Mars but not the Moon (which is why the section in the Wikipedia article is called “Manufacturing propellant on Mars”). And the Lunar Gateway is irrelevant to what I'm arguing, which is that there's not really any reason to settle off-planet.
Free upgrade from paid product to paid product. Still paying yet product.
I question wisdom of the original term. What if "shut up and take money" is not enough? If so was it on purpose or by accident? First time in my life I think of conspiracy theories.
My take on catchy phrases:
- You are a product for for-profit
- You are a product if don't fight for your freedoms
> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market).
Can you point me to the specific law they are violating? From my understanding antitrust laws really aren't that clear and it depends on the situation and their control of a market. For example, you need to prove that they have a monopoly that hurts consumers. They may have a monopoly on iPhones but not mobile phones in general. My point is you are saying they have specifically broken the law, but I think that has yet to proven and is certainly not cut and dry until it's in court.
I really wouldn't attach that much meaning to the prison sentence handed out. It is entirely in line with the CCP's behavior in the past. They strongly repress any information or people they perceive as causing them to lose face or look bad.