but I read somewhere that the half-life of this thing in direct sunlight is 2.5 minutes so after an hour or so it's pretty much gone if that's true.

I saw a shift in behavior following Trump's conference appointing Mike Pence as the effective coronavirus czar.

Every morning there was a small stash of N95 masks at my local Home Depot until yesterday. Similarly I started seeing specific sorts of non-perishables disappearing from the shelves of Trader Joe's and Safeways. Where it goes next, I don't know. But I think the crowd has spoken on the subject already.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/16/china-bubonic-plague-ou...

This could have been a non-starter had not the Chinese Communist party covered this up as long as they did. That's what needs to change. There might be a genetic predilection for Asians to be susceptible to coronaviruses, but if we attack these things head-on as they emerge, they won't amount to much.

If we pretend they're not happening, one day we're going to get a pandemic. That day might be today unfortunately but only time will tell.

https://youtu.be/8uIVf_o9aXM

But I agree it's absolutely absurd no matter who's pushing these. And all it amounts to is ideological theatre on both sides of the fence. And I don't think that theatre is going to close during my lifetime.

And that's for the same reason that no matter how much data they feed Tesla's self-driving AI, it will still try to kill you now and then. The problem space is just too big. All the people I know in this space don't think it will be solved for at least a decade and maybe not even then.

But I do suspect the 2020s will see the creation of agents combining classical algorithms with deep neural networks to do amazing things in domains that are closed and constant. But they're all going to be glorified (yet wonderful) unitaskers.

The only thing that worries me is that I don't trust FAANG to do the right thing ever anymore, and it's amazing to me that so many have opted into the panopticon of things in exchange for the ability to order stuff and turn their gadgets on and off.

https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667957/

This would reduce a nearly impossible job in machine intelligence to a really difficult simulation problem.

But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Less thought-leadering, more actual results please.

OTOH I chose to pursue a PhD in biochemistry rather than be the third member of the Yost group and that led to 3D Studio.

So I will boil my heuristic down to TLA or BigCo. I'd miss out on the next Facebook or Google with such a heuristic but what are the chances I would get an opportunity to join one of those companies at the ground floor in the first place?

in recent years, there was one startup bought out at a modest price for which I might have made epsilon more money being their CTO but it would have come with sleepless nights and anxiety at no additional cost.