/dev/chat

Faheem Mitha

06:11

Most of India is now officially on lockdown.

Nobody responded to my earlier query about internet speeds.

DannyNiu

07:03

I wrote an article summarizing the new features that might be introduced in SUSv5/Issue8, at https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv5259291

Would interested people care to comment on it?

Kusalananda

08:02

@FaheemMitha Yes, my Internet connection is working as usual. I have noticed that Zoom meetings are sometimes (by rarely) problematic (doesn't want to start). I'm assuming that's because there is a bit of extra pressure on their servers.

It may well be the same issue with other conferencing and video chat services.

Faheem Mitha

08:17

@Kusalananda Ok, thanks for the feedback. Do you notice any difference in audio calls, like Skype?

Kusalananda

Not really. I don't really use Skype often though, only about once a month.

(now in meeting)

Faheem Mitha

@Kusalananda Ok. How's the current situation in Sweden? Do you have lockdown too?

Kusalananda

09:00

@FaheemMitha No lock-down. No forced closing of schools or work places. General, and very strong, advice about not traveling between cities, working from home if possible, staying at home if sick, etc. Travel abroad is not possible. Restrictions on meetings (max 500 people).

We only really have two main metropolitan areas in Sweden, and the most cases are in the Stockholm region. The advice there is to stay at home, but the government is trying to get people to act of their own accord instead of restricting them with rules.

This did not work in the Netherlands and other places though, so we'll see.

Faheem Mitha

@Kusalananda I was reading that (some people think) that your govt is "experimenting" with herd immunity.

Certainly, by current European standards, it's looking a bit relaxed.

Curfew currently here in Bombay. Streets are mostly deserted, though there is a certain amount of road traffic. Trains are shut down. For this city, it's very quiet.

Kusalananda

That's a view that I've seen too. There is no plan that relies on herd immunity. There is however information about what herd immunity is, from the government, and some people think that this means that "that is the plan".

Faheem Mitha

@Kusalananda I see.

And the UK has gone into lockdown.

Kusalananda

Yes, they have high population density in urban areas. That makes sense.

Faheem Mitha

I read that most of their cases are still in the London region, but I haven't checked the details.

fra-san

10:56

@Isaac The numbers shown there about the last few days are provisional, but yes, at least the rate of new infections seems to have stopped increasing.

Faheem Mitha

@fra-san Is there any consensus in Italy that things are starting to slow down?

fra-san

@FaheemMitha I'm not up to date with the news right now, I'll get back to you later about this.

Faheem Mitha

11:20

@fra-san Ok. Based on the graphs I've seen, it also seems to show a levelling off.

Hopefully things will be under control by April.

jesse_b

13:29

@FaheemMitha: You should be pleased, I'm learning ruby

I'm ashamed to admit I sort of like it

Stephen Kitt

@jesse_b why ashamed?

jesse_b

@StephenKitt I like my programming languages to have hardcore names like BASH and PYTHON. POWERSHELL (trollface.jpg)

Stephen Kitt

POWERSHELL FOR POWERUSERS

jesse_b

:)

jesse_b

14:46

I'm too used to typing bash after #!/usr/bin/env. I keep trying to interpret ruby programs with bash

Faheem Mitha

14:57

@jesse_b Why should I be pleased?

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha You've said in the past that I should use ruby instead of bash

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b I have?

I don't know Ruby myself, so that sounds unlikely.

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha I could be mistaken but I swore you had recommended it before

Stephen Kitt

chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=ruby&user=7257&room=26

Feb 5 '18 at 19:15, by Faheem Mitha

@Jesse_b Python. Common Lisp. Possibly Ruby.

in reply to

Feb 5 '18 at 19:11, by Jesse_b

@FaheemMitha What languages do you recommend? You seem to hate everything I like :p

so Jesse’s memory is correct

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt Fair enough, though note the qualifying "Possibly".

The next sentence is

Feb 5 '18 at 19:15, by Faheem Mitha

Possibly because I don't actually know Ruby.

jesse_b

15:25

@FaheemMitha: You should learn ruby

jesse_b

16:17

Ruby plays fast and loose with syntax

fra-san

17:24

@FaheemMitha I think Italian authorities are being cautious about why the number of new cases has been slightly declining in the last few days (more stable than declining, actually). We'll likely have to wait a few more days to be able to confirm that the situation is actually improving.

Faheem Mitha

17:51

@jesse_b Why?

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Because you recommend it :p

Faheem Mitha

So the Govt just announced a 21 day lockdown. Extending the current lockdown, that was scheduled to run till 31 March, apparently.

I was wondering what their plan after 31st March was, since that was too short a time to really flush out the virus. Their plan was apparently to extend. Yay.

And it seems this lockdown is for the entire country.

This really is one for the history books.

jesse_b

I don't think the lockdowns are really to "flush out the virus" just to slow the amount of hospitalizations down so as to not overload the medical system. The virus will never truly be gone and will only cease to be an issue after almost everyone gets it and develops antibodies

Faheem Mitha

Current count is 519, according to worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

@jesse_b It's possible for a virus to go before almost everyone gets it.

jesse_b

@FaheemMitha Maybe, but define go? I don't think any virus has ever actually disappeared. People still get the bubonic plague for example

Faheem Mitha

17:55

The number of carriers just need to go below a certain number. And it needs to stop being so diversified, so outbreaks can be isolated if ncessary.

But my familiarity with this topic is minimal, so this is just educated guesswork.

@jesse_b By go, I mean stop being widespread.

@jesse_b Yes, I'm aware. There was a plague outbreak in Surat in the 1990s, I believe.

I'm not sure excactly what the govt is thinking, but I'm sure they would not have made such a decision lightly.

It's going to be incredibly stressful for the country.

jesse_b

Yeah I guess not "almost everyone" but right now basically everyone is a potential carrier, if say 50% of the population (so not almost everyone) develops antibodies then there is at least a 50% lower chance of transmission and therefore slower spread.

Faheem Mitha

1994 plague in India

The 1994 plague in India was an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in south-central and western India from 26 August to 18 October 1994. 693 suspected cases and 56 deaths were reported from the five affected Indian states as well as the Union Territory of New Delhi. These cases were from Maharashtra (488 cases), Gujarat (77 cases), Karnataka (46 cases), Uttar Pradesh (10 cases), Madhya Pradesh (4 cases) and New Delhi (68 cases). There are no reports of cases being imported to other countries. == Initial reports == In the first week of August 1994 health officials reported unusually large...

jesse_b

Also I predict that this virus will be significantly more deadly next fall/winter. Right now we are taking extreme precautions to prevent the spread. I predict that by the end of the summer everyone will have forgotten about it and it will spread again even worse

That is also (sort of) what happened with the spanish flu

I also think despite being more deadly next winter it will get less media coverage

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b That might be true. But I also agree that at least in India they're probably just focusing on slowing it down enough so that the health services can keep up with it.

if we get the kind of scale that Italy is seeing, it would be catastrophic.

There are also a bunch of people chasing a vaccine. Though apparently it's going to take a while.

jesse_b

yeah a new drug (chemical) being administered en mass should definitely go through the proper testing which takes years. It could easily end up having a higher fatality rate than the virus itself

Faheem Mitha

18:04

@jesse_b The talk is for next summer. I suppose that would be very fast, but I think there are plenty of motivated people behind it.

jesse_b

I would worry about the testing sample size which is never big enough to properly predict the amount of anomalies that exist in > 6 billion people and also the length of the testing. Some things end up having long term affects that you just can't see in the first few years. Then you end up with some lawyer on late night tv 8 years later. "If you or someone you know was given the COVID-19 vaccination and have developed super cancer, please call 1-800-LAWYERUP"

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b Are you aware of any such examples of a vaccine having unexpected long term side effects?

fra-san

@jesse_b Not many, apparently: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

jesse_b

Not really but I did read about how difficult it is to get a vaccine approved for use in the US and usually regulations like that are enacted after the fact

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b Regulations like that?

fra-san

18:17

Sorry, @jesse_b, I meant "not many viruses/deseases". It wasn't clear in my message.

Faheem Mitha

I really hope they are going to scale up testing drastically, otherwise this lockdown isn't going to be so useful.

DemCodeLines

18:52

Why is MAC address formatted differently two different systems that have the same OS? I ran the shell command “ifconfig -a” on two CentOS 6 machines and I see that one reports the “HWaddr” in the colon format while the other uses dashes. Why would this happen?

jesse_b

@DemCodeLines I think it depends on the hardware manufacturer

of the NIC itself

DemCodeLines

Oh, so it’s not the OS being weird. Thanks, that helps.

Wait, but then why would Windows report the same MAC address with a dash, while Linux uses colons?

jesse_b

19:12

@DemCodeLines No idea

ilkkachu

19:25

@DemCodeLines Because standards. So many to choose from. Well, Wikipedia seems to say the dash format is what IEEE 802 says. Just be happy you don't need to see the 0123.4567.89AB format, too.

jdrch

20:07

@ilkkachu The best part about that is having to enter a MAC address in a field that silently accepts only 1 of the above formats, and only upper or lower case :P

Many router and other networking hardware UIs have that issue. So you have to keep re-entering the address in different formats until the field accepts it

ilkkachu

@jdrch yep. older firmware on Dell N2000 series switches did just that. At least show mac address-table address just returned an empty output if you gave the MAC address in the wrong format. Luckily they fixed that.

(Lucky for them, since I can imagine someone might want to yell a bit at a feature like that.)

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