anonsivalley652

Does MSFT still use smartcards everywhere?

People can't see who's contagious in the early stages, so they're gambling with their lives by not taking proactive precautions before it's a widespread problem.

COVID-19/SARS-cov-2 is something to take seriously for several reasons:

- To reiterate an important point: "Healthy" infected people go around unwittingly spreading it for several days to a week, so you have no idea who's really sick. And you have no idea how many people in public actually have it at any one time. It's another reason this pathogen is so successful.

- It's a terrible flu for most.

- It can quickly turn life-threatening. A number of bodies were discovered in Wuhan of people trying to walk or drive themselves to the hospital, but they died before reaching it.

- FIXED: If hospitalization is needed, the average CFR is 16% (Russian roulette odds) and 49% for critical condition.

- There is no treatment.

It's going to be a full pandemic in 7-21 days (depending on the area), and last from 19-35 days. For example, someone already died from it within 40 mi / 64 km of where my mom lives in a rural/suburban area. You have to assume the number of infected is 10-30x the number of identified cases because the CDC has strict PUI criteria that are turning away patients. (Oh, and it costs $2000±1000 if you take the test and test negative.)

Haven't had a problem with VRBO yet. Had a place in Paris in the 1st arr. the last time.

Cool. Fruit cocktail trees are also awesome because they have multiple fruit varieties on a single tree via grafting. If you know how to do grafting, you can add additional fruits without planting more trees.

Now, if only I can figure out how to start an avocado pit or a pineapple top because several experiments have failed.

Awesome.

Columbia says they have a lifetime warranty, but a $300 running rain jacket I bought at their flagship store sometime ago they refused to repair or replace it when all of the inner liner started flaking off and it was no longer usable. I'm never buying anything from them again.

The most durable day-bag / school backpack I have ever owned was a Trager. It was needed because I went through 9 backpacks in high-school since our school didn't have lockers. Supposedly in the 70's pipe-bombs were detonated in them and the lockers created shrapnel. Anyhow, that backpack held 4-6 books like a champ. It had/has a lifetime warranty and they even replaced the zipper on a 10 year old product for free. Sadly, they're out of business now.

A Mac Mini expanded with two SSDs with syncthing is superior to sneakernet because it provides replication. And, if you really want to, add a 14 TiB HC520 placed in an external USB 3 case.

Add an rsync server to get backup. Forget the cloud, most solutions are overpriced and insecure. Use TarSnap if you have absolute have to backup reasonable quantities of critical data and call it a day.

Try them all and then pick one (or two):

- SpiderOak One

- Mega (very cheap)

- Syncthing (open source)

I don't particularly care about what Tesla, SolarCity or Silevo does or doesn't do. What is concerning is handing over hundreds of millions in socialist corporate welfare that goes to waste, when that money could've helped the homeless and desperately poor who get austerity instead.

Caregiving, in-home nursing care, rehabilitation and long-term care (assisted living/nursing home/hospice) should be provided by a different social safety net department because of it's specialized and complex nature that also requires licensure and auditing (making sure elderly and disabled aren't abused or neglected).

Single-payer, universal healthcare should also include (all but cosmetic and elective procedures):

- prescriptions

- mental care including therapy, psychiatry, rehab and commitment

- dental care

- vision care and prescription glasses

- hearing aids (avg cost is $3000 USD)

- mobility and safety aids for disabled and elderly

- gym memberships for people below a certain income level

- smoking, drinking and substance abuse intervention, counseling and cessation assistance (medications, tools, relocation assistance)

- weight-loss for obesity/significantly overweight with effective, tailored, holistic approaches

I'm sorry but that's wrong because that's trying to twist the meaning of words. No money, no healthcare isn't universal obviously. With no single-payer, government-funded, healthcare system, only doctors and patients who have to pay for everything themselves, that is in no way "universal healthcare."

The problem with charging poor people for healthcare is that they get sicker and sicker and then need emergency care, and that's more expensive than giving them free healthcare in the beginning.

It's unethical and classist to pick-and-choose who gets life-saving cancer treatment based on their income. Doctors with integrity would be abhorred at being presented with such a decision because it goes against the fundamental values of their profession.

Wow, that's cool. I wonder if vision, dental, medical, hospital, prescriptions and mental are all covered without fees?

The very poor in the US only get Medicaid (rarely Medicare, which requires paying into Social Security long enough).

Medicaid:

- It doesn't pay doctors, specialists and dentists enough, so they often treat patients poorly (spend less time, not thorough enough, don't order necessary tests).

- Medication is all paid-for with no co-pays (out-of-pocket expenses), but at a limited number of pharmacy brands and limited selection of medications (formulary).

- Emergency and necessary hospital care is completely paid-for.

- There is a limited selection of doctors and dentists available to choose from. Most, not all, are reviewed very poorly.

- Only one dentist cleaning visit a year is allowed even if the person needs it more frequently because they produce plaque faster.

- There are very few specialists who are assigned by the doctor, often with very, very long waiting lists. Furthermore, some specialties do away with waiting lists and make people call on a certain time at a certain day like animals for very few appointments. They make it a game to play with people's lives and waste their time.

- The choices of insurers who actually provide the Medicaid insurance is usually 1, 2 or maybe 3 in certain counties.

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Medicare (similar to typical US convoluted, private insurance):

- Has several confusing options, lots of rules and fine-print.

- Medication isn't covered, it needs Part D insurance or ExtraHelp.

- Hospital insurance requires enough taxes paid or paid Part A private insurance.

- Medical insurance requires enough taxes paid or paid Part B private insurance.

- Medigap private insurance can be needed to pay co-pays, deductibles, coinsurance but it doesn't cover long-term care (no LTC = $$$$), vision/eyeglasses, dental, hearing aids, or private-duty nursing.

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It's possible to have both Medicare and Medicaid, which means good insurance but with some out-of-pocket expenses.

Maybe Medicare improved without costs, for all, would be far, far better than people dying from cancer having to go to bankruptcy court rather than finish their bucket list?

I don't want to crap all over Koreans or Korean culture, but there's one element that profoundly bothers me: the abandonment and shunning of the elderly. Many are homeless or live lonely lives in destitution and having to rely on charity food. Also, certain bridges have become notorious for mostly all elderly people committing suicide because they can't take it anymore. Korea has a lot going for it, so I hope it gets better in this regard and inequality.

The US and many other countries also need to address inequality seriously too, if not for moral reasons then for selfish, long-term GDP and consumer purchasing power reasons.

Yes, but it will take time because the acceleration is proportional to the amount present until it reaches a carrying capacity and burns itself out, or it slows in deceleration because of large quarantines / isolation orders. The problems are many:

1. The fed/state/county/local officials are placing prevention of panic ahead of telling the truth. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo said yesterday, with De Blasio next to him, that it's "only 2x more dangerous than the flu," when it's 20x-50x deadlier than influenza (because each flu strain differs).

2. Like a third-world country, the CDC is hiding information about tests performed and negative results.

3. The CDC is actively thwarting doctors from ordering SARS-cov-2 tests because of overly-restrictive PUI criteria that don't allow discretion of the doctor, so it's a virtual certainty people with COVID-19 are being told that they don't have it because some pinhead bureaucrat said so and they're going around in public infecting people before they come down with what they may assume is a bad flu.

4. COVID-19 takes a number of days to manifest itself, and it appears that people are contagious before they have symptoms, so they spread it unwittingly to potentially many others because it's so infectious.

5. Mild and moderate cases of COVID-19 won't be tested and reported, giving a false sense of the situation.

6. People who died before the SARS-cov-2 test was available haven't all been tested. There were several bodies that tested positive today in Washington state adding to the death count, but not every morgue is going to do this. Plus, it's possible many such bodies were released for burial and will never be tested.

7. It takes weeks to a month for recognition phase (the current situation in the US as of writing) to give way to initiation and acceleration phase of pandemic. I figure, based on the current trends, the US is about 2 weeks ± 4 days away from acceleration.[a, b] But, by that time, it's too late for many people because they were already infected by numerous infected people who weren't showing symptoms.

8. The poor and working class rarely have sick days and they can't afford to miss work, so they'll work anyhow. The prevalence of "F everyone, I have to take care of myself first" is what happens when people aren't paid living wages and guaranteed sick days off. And so, more people will be infected and more people will die because of greed.

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Then, once a country begins pandemic acceleration, it may last about a month ± 2 weeks before the number of infected drops enough that it's no longer pervasive. [a]

a. Based on China's Wuhan epidemic curve as a rough, approximate model.

b. Five phases of pan/epidemics: investigation, recognition, initiation, acceleration, deceleration