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OP here. If you are sick of COVID-19 stuff, I'm sorry. I found this useful for calculating the chances that zero/one/two of my partner and I are hospitalized, admitted to the ICU, or dies.

Given our underlying conditions, my rough calculations show a 6/1000 chance one of us is hospitalized, 0/1000 chance (rounded down) that both are hospitalized. Good news since we have kids.

Furthermore, a 1/1000 chance one of us is admitted to the ICU, and 0/1000 (rounded down) one or both of us dies.

Edit: Used a Monte Carlo simulation (n=10000) with a simple probability chain. Caveats and assumptions abound and YMMV, of course.

Here's the study on arxiv [1], if you're more inclined to use that system.

[1] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2003/2003.05003.pdf

Downloadable database of historical data by country [1], used for the Johns Hopkins CSSE COVID-19 dashboard [2].

[1] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19

[2] https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...

"Secondary drowning" is another term people use to describe another drowning complication. It happens if water gets into the lungs. There, it can irritate the lungs’ lining and fluid can build up, causing a condition called pulmonary edema. You’d likely notice your child having trouble breathing right away, and it might get worse over the next 24 hours.

Both events are very rare. They make up only 1%-2% of all drownings, says pediatrician James Orlowski, MD, of Florida Hospital Tampa. [1]

[1] https://www.webmd.com/children/features/secondary-drowning-d...

As an aside to the parent poster, an often-stated guideline for the maximum amount you should own in the companies you work for is 10% of your portfolio value [1][2]. Modern portfolio theory (Markowitz, et. al.) calculations for a bundle of assets probably would bear out that 20% in a single stock is not on the efficient frontier [3].

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-invest-in-your-compan...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2013/10/22/how-mu...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

Same here, but maybe the difference is that we install Windows 10 Pro whereas the author is a Windows 10 Home user? The article doesn't seem to state the version they are using.

Most annoying is that there are a large number of little bits of functionality that phone home or send information out into the ether: Windows Defender and its submitting of samples, searching via the Windows button, Task Scheduled telemetry items, a plethora of Control Panel privacy settings, etc. etc. etc.

Also annoying on Windows 10 Pro is that the same windows builds have slightly different functionality --- even if the machines have the exact same hardware.

For example, the Search History and Permissions is sometimes named Change the permissions and history of search, even for the same Windows 10 build. It's bizarre.

Also, don't get me started on the intellisense typing when the windows menu is open. (Really Windows, when I press the Start button and then type in Update, you search the web and show me Wikipedia information? And it takes like 5 seconds?)

Don't forget the lame This PC icon...

Sorry, this turned into a cathartic listing of Win 10 grievances. :)

One way to make money is if you sell the bond at a higher price later to another buyer. From the article:

“Why are people buying at negative yields? It is mainly in expectation that you’re going to be able to sell to someone at a higher price later on,” said Andrea Iannelli, investment director, fixed income at Fidelity International. “Whatever the yield you have to assume you’re going to make more on the capital gain than lose on the yield.”

So Y < X, but if you bet you can sell at price Z to another buyer later, Z > X and you profit.

As an analogy I just thought up: it's kind of like overpaying for a house, thinking that in time the house value will appreciate.

There are links to two different forms on the File A Claim page [1]: A PDF for adults as of 5/13/2017 [2], and one for minors as of 5/13/2017 [3].

It looks like, if your goals are a balance between receiving the settlement, privacy, and effort, the PDF (probably [2] if no minors were involved) is the way to go.

[1] https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/file-a-claim

[2] https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/admin/services/conne...

[3] https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/admin/services/conne...

Boy, this brings back memories. I was working at Andersen Consulting (AC, then Accenture) at the time our CEO, George Shaheen, left to join Webvan. The general sentiment at AC (at least amongst the grunts in my circle) was that we were glad to see George Shaheen leave, but were all left wondering if we should be jumping ship too, to join the dot-com boom.

The partners at AC were trying to hang on to talent for dear life because of the dot-com boom. When Webvan went bust many of the the partners/associate partners were quick to point that out, maybe as some kind of misguided retention pep-talk or something.

As a funny aside, there were some who used to call George Shaheen "George Unseen:"

http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/remember-george-4

http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/ceo-of-the-future-4

http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/george-unseens-reward-4

http://www.bigtimeconsulting.org/webminivan-a-look-back-4

For all the criticisms of Musk, and recent wackiness, it's moments like these that I thank our lucky stars that there are people like him on this earth. It just seems like these days there are so few people thinking about the long-term future of the human race.

I love it that his solution to the "AI terminator" problem is making a brain-computer interface so that we can have a fighting chance when AI takes off.

I love it that he wants to help us kick our addiction to non-renewable fossil fuels.

I love it that he wants to make us a two planet race so that we don't have all our humanity eggs in one planetary basket.

Thank you Elon.

Reminds me of an experience I had in a college C++ course.

The professor was notorious for being a real tough grader. For my final project, I wrote a command line file encryption/decryption program. But, it encrypted and decrypted practically instantaneously. Since we had to demonstrate the program real-time in the computer lab to him, I was worried he wouldn't believe it actually did anything. So I added a delay and a progress bar for effect.

When I demonstrated the program, as the progress bar was going, the professor audibly said "oh good!" I was thinking in my head "oh yeah!" So I guess the effect worked.

He still docked me 5% points because the final decrypted file had an extra newline at the end. LOL

The parent was saying that viruses might make an individual stronger (within their lifetime), which would be interesting and maybe novel.

In contrast, disinfectants might make a bacteria population stronger over time, but as you said, individual weaker bacteria die off (darwinism).

(Edited after 8 minutes to clarify.)

Why advertise drugs to customers, they're not medical professionals - that's why we have GPs.

Frankly (and maybe it's different in Canada), but I feel like people will have better health outcomes if they are aware of the options and consult, work with, and even challenge if need be, their GP.

GPs (or Primary Care Physicians, PCPs in the U.S.) share some goals with their patients, but many goals are not shared:

* Spending less money / good drug success / less side effects vs. using only tests/drugs they GP is comfortable with * Avoiding lawsuits vs. candid discussion * Taking time to research medical hypotheses vs. needing to get to the next patient

Come to think of it, if one is willing to invest the time, have an inquisitive mind, and demand a partnership relationship with most service providers, perhaps that person will generally have better outcomes in many areas (home repairs, dental, car service, etc.).

In addition to all the benefits listed above...

Sync claims that, if you have the Sync setup create your own encryption key on your device, files are end-to-end encrypted. I believe them. Moreover, Sync support confirmed that they do not have access to meta-data about your files either. Thus, their admins do not have access to your unencrypted files or information about them.

They support all the usual devices both on the desktop and mobile apps.

Their servers are located in Canada, not the U.S., if geography matters to you from a privacy perspective.

I will also second that Sync seems much speedier than Dropbox. Startup / connection time is maybe 50% faster on my dated machine. (Dropbox seems to say Connecting... forever!)

You can run both Dropbox and Sync.com at the same time if you want to migrate slowly. I use Dropbox for non-sensitive files (e.g. rando family pictures) and Sync.com for sensitive files (e.g. birth certificates, financial files). With Sync.com and their more thorough end-to-end encryption, I feel safer that my file data cannot be used for random studies or anything else Dropbox feels like they can justify [0].

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/dropbox-sharing-data-study-ethic...

After doing accounting for my business, a medium-sized non-profit, and our personal finances, I keep coming back to Microsoft Excel. Using someone else's accounting software feels like trying to do an Iron Man with a straight jacket. At least with Excel, you can code VBA/C#/formulas/etc. to your heart's content and make it do exactly what you want. That's what I love about it.

Want to import bank data? Well, you DO have to export the CSV manually from the bank, but then you can code something to make your financial reporting do exactly what you want.

Need graphs or reporting? MS Excel, well, excels at that.

Want to munge the data in a special way? Easy to do with formulas, coding, excel builts-ins, or some combination thereof.

Want to pre-process data before you suck it into a finances program? Write an external munger that exports to a .txt file, and then link an Excel Data Range to that .txt file.

I wonder sometimes if I have blinders on for choosing Excel, but hey, it works. And since I like coding, it actually makes doing finances kinda fun.

I was completely unaware of this proposed change, and can see big problems for individuals/small businesses if they end up implementing this. I've submitted a comment via email.

Using a broad definition of ML/data science, here are a few ideas:

First, coding toy problems (related to shipping or not) that implement linear regression, genetic algorithms, or neural networks, etc. will be a useful start

Analyze shipping and tracking EDI data to predict whether a shipment will be late (0.0 to 1.0 output, 1.0 being it will be late for certain)

Predict the likelihood a customer will churn (stop using your services) based on changes in volume, billing amounts, and other characteristics

Predicting this year's peak season shipping volume based on past years' data. See if you can beat the marketing/sales folks' predictions

Identify factors correlated with the most profitable shippers

Predict the likelihood a package is damaged

Use a genetic algorithm to improve driver routing

Reconfigure pickup times / drop off times to improve profitability

Use EDI shipping data to build a network graph of who is shipping to whom, segmented by type of some sort. Say you find that many A-type firms are shipping to B-type firms; any B-type firms that are not already customers could be interesting targets.

Score prospects to estimate their profitability by comparing their characteristics to existing customers' profitabilities

Use a neural network (or something else) to analyze EDI shipping data, damage data, and make packaging recommendations to customers

Analyze tracking EDI data, segmented by delivery area (zip+4?) and see if there are areas where drivers are more efficient at delivering faster. Maybe start an initiative to look at what separates the most efficient drivers from the least.

Reporting: not sexy, but really useful in this space

Bona fides: I used to work in the supply chain consulting space and consulted at firms like yours. Things are surprisingly basic in the shipping space - less meaty data science than one might think.

Edit: Formatting

Perhaps they should change it to "Do Good," although that might be at odds with their goals of maximizing shareowner profits and dominating the world.

<SLIGHTLY_UNCOMFORTABLE_BRAG> I completely reverse-engineered a popular online task management system, but made it an application that runs locally on my laptop. Now I control all the functionality, and most importantly, the data. Also, I can add things that maybe wouldn't be interesting for the many, but are very useful to me (e.g. when I enter a URL as a task, it fetches the title and sets that as the task name; e.g. it auto-summarizes arxiv postings as discrete tasks and takes a crack at prioritizing them for me; e.g. all my email gets auto-funneled into separate tasks, so I'm always at "Inbox zero").

I would say it has improved my productivity and focus a lot. </SLIGHTLY_UNCOMFORTABLE_BRAG>

How about you, @kureikain?

TL;DR: Only bleach and/or a high temperature in the dryer kills most of the bacteria. Various laundry detergents seemed to have no effect. If you are a norophobe, try to use disposable paper towels, nappies, etc. when you can.

A news curator that learns what news and articles make me happy, productive, and wealthy, maybe allows me to select certain websites (e.g. HN, NPR) as preferred sources, and then sends me a separate email per news story/article. I can rate whether the news story/article was worthwhile or not and the system learns and improves.

I think it varies based on the style of the presenter and whether they like to keep it loose or prepare every word.

I like to prepare. My best speeches were the ones where I wrote small ideas I could potentially say on post-it notes, and stuck them to a large wall.

Then, I re-arranged, edited, added, deleted, etc. until I liked the story line.

Then, (a la Tim Ferris), I break it up. I practice each 10 minute section separately, being able to deliver each 10 minute section 10 times in a row.

And just remember: presentations are not 'What do I say next?' but 'What do they need to learn next?'

This resonated with me because I was a corporate drone that left to "mindlessly" become an entrepreneur. More charitably, I believe it's being in love with the idea of being an entrepreneur but pursuing that path based on pop-culture information (think Entrepreneur magazine articles) and less on direct experience.

Nonetheless, even though my business ultimately failed, I thank my lucky stars I'm not working in the cube farm anymore. On to business #2!

Reminds me of a Harvard Daily Stat from 2012, inspired by Zillow data, which comes to a different conclusion. The Zillow data was based on a larger sample size as compared to the article above, which I felt was too qualitative.

The Daily Stat: After Just a Few Years, Home Ownership Beats Renting[1]

In three-quarters of American towns and cities, it takes 3 years or less for a homebuyer to begin seeing savings over the cost of renting, according to a CNN report on data from Zillow[2].

Factoring in such costs as mortgages, rents, down payments, commissions, taxes, and maintenance, Zillow calculates that the "breakeven horizon" is as low as two years in some areas. But in New York City, which has some of the nation's highest rents, it still takes more than a decade before ownership makes more financial sense than renting.

[1] Harvard Daily Stat, 9/12/2012 [2] http://money.cnn.com/gallery/real_estate/2012/09/06/buy-rent...

Two (weak) reasons I can think of: 1. If doing a low-volume of tracking requests, it could be an easier implementation instead of learning the ins and outs of an API. 2. No carrier approval required for web scraping, unlike the APIs.

Which region/country are you referring to? What's the use case?

IANAL, but I used to work at one of the large transportation providers. For the high-volume tracking use cases, web site scraping probably won't cut it (too slow, probably get blocked by the carrier). Most high-volume trackers used the carriers' APIs. It was sort of a love-hate relationship and my carrier would sometimes block high-volume carriers who ran refund services on behalf of other customers.

In short, whether it's "legal" or not, if you are doing a high volume of tracking for refunds you will be at the mercy of the carrier who could cut you off at anytime. A firewall against that is to have a bunch of high-volume paying customers of that carrier who would pitch a fit if your service was turned off.

[Edited for clarification]

If a condition infrequently happens, a logged debug statement that compiles with the code (or at least travels with the source code) can be preferable to keeping a breakpoint around in the IDE. I personally don't feel comfortable relying on the IDE to maintain an important breakpoint for an infrequent condition. (Having flashbacks of Visual Studio 2008 dropping or moving old breakpoints).

It seems like there would be a narrow window where firms would want a "Coming soon" website. So you'll only have like five minutes in the new firm's life get their attention and get them to sign on the line that is dotted. Also, since they are new they won't have much cash to spend.

There are lots of website creator websites (Wix comes to mind, or even wordpress), so cutting through the others' marketing noise and capturing a new firm within a short window seems very difficult.

It might be interesting to look at the tactics of capturing customers for other businesses that cater to the initial steps of creating an entrepreneurial venture. LegalZoom comes to mind (for incorporating a new business). Also, The UPS Store and getting a PO box --- how do they attract new small businesses?

My $0.02. Good luck!

To answer the part of your question I'm able to answer:

Q: Is there a safer way to back up Google content?

Install the Thunderbird email client which can download all gmail mail via a separate user-initiated request or automatically, to Thunderbird files or separate .eml files. Every time you open the client it can automatically sync with gmail.

Then, back up those files two ways: locally to an encrypted partition on an external drive, and via a more secure cloud service (e.g. Dropbox, Carbonite, Mozy, Sync, Box, etc.).

[Edited to comment on which part of the question I'm able to answer]

nmap doesn't work, as one example.