Mike Gerwitz @mikegerwitz@mastodon.mikegerwitz.com

@kmicu We'll be in frequent communication with her OB/GYN, but there's still much uncertainty as this evolves.

The organization that owns the hospital we'll be delivering at today dedicated another location exclusively to dealing with COVID-19 patients, so the hope is that our location will be safer.

@jxself Thanks for the words of encouragement.

My wife and I are growing increasingly anxious about her giving birth at the end of April, given forecasts of the effect on our healthcare system in the United States, especially in New York.

It's not just about our exposure. Will beds be available if she has complications? Who will watch our children if any of us have symptoms? Will I even be able to be in the room? Will our newborn be safe? So much and more.

#covid19

@cwebber The article also doesn't seem to take into account increases in ICU capacity over time as we build out our healthcare infrastructure. It won't stay flat, as those graphs show.

@cwebber The user freedoms we fight for will be ever more important as people use technology even more during this crisis. I just hope that the companies we criticize so harshly do the right thing, however one wants to define that, rather than using this as an opportunity to further take advantage of people.

@cwebber There are certain things proposed in that article that aren't compatible with certain democracies, like the US. Though I suppose that if such surveillance were driven by private companies and enough got on board, then it could still happen without government involvement.

But a government-issued certificate of immunity seems compatible.

It'll be all too easy to let fears erode civil liberties. But we also can't let civil liberties cause negligence. We're in for much debate.

Social Responsibility Amid COVID-19 Outbreak:

https://mikegerwitz.com/2020/03/social-responsibility-covid-19

As an activist for user freedom, I focus primarily on issues of social freedom and equality through the lens of technology. I think about how to level the playing field, to help those who are vulnerable.

But some of the most effective things we can do today to make our contribution to society has nothing to do with software. Please consider others, even if you don't worry about illness yourself.

#covid19

@codesections `Intersection` is a lazy iterator. If you look at its source, the `intersect` method does nothing but initialize it---it does no actual work until you request an element from it.

In addition to being lazy, this also requires no memory allocation, and no hashing. Collecting into a new HashSet requires both of those things: allocating memory to hold the new set, and then hashing the items for storage. This is expensive if you don't need that.

@cwebber @cwebber Any time I research lower-level hardware components, e.g. breadboarding, I think about something like this. And then I consider the absence of supporting infrastructure: how do I generate a suitable voltage if there is no power source, for example? Are there enough components laying around to scavenge and make useful systems, or are they too coupled with existing hardware?

In essence: my core professional skills are useless and my nurse wife likes to point that out to me. :)

@jxself I'm happy to hear that---you're the first person I thought of when I heard about the cancellation.

I'm sad to see that the in-person #LibrePlanet2020 conference was cancelled this year, but I think it was the right decision. This must have been a very difficult decision, especially for a conference run by a non-profit and volunteers, and also considering that some may not be able to get refunds on e.g. travel tickets.

But they'll still be streaming live this year:

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/libreplanet-2020-in-person-component-canceled-but-well-see-you-online

I hope everyone reading this is in good health and I hope to see everyone in person in 2021.

@liw This works well for a lot of cases, but there's some notable ones where it doesn't:

- It requires Git (so users using e.g. a tarball won't benefit from it); and

- It functions more like a `make maintainer-clean` and may clean more than build files.

@codesections rss2email. I live in my editor (Emacs) and my MUA is Gnus (where I communicate with nearly everyone), so it makes sense for me to keep everything together.