America's Department of Energy "has started a new Office of Nuclear Energy projects called the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program" (or ARDP) reports Popular Mechanics: "The $230 million program will give $160 million to scientists working on two reactor designs that 'can be operational' in the very near future." The "Advanced" part of ARDP is an industry term for the generation of reactors we have today... Generation IV — the super advanced reactors? — are in the research phase, but the ARDP statements mention development into the mid 2030s and likely includes generation IV. So the technical difference may be arbitrary, but the advanced reactors are often safer, smaller in overall form factor, and more standardized in order to be easier to install and scale. Most existing power plants are idiosyncratic, built on a case-by-case basis to suit individual communities or use cases. A more uniform process means plants that are easier to secure, support, and regulate. One of the leading projects the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) mentions may sound familiar: "NuScale Power LLC is expected to receive the first small modular reactor design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year," the NEI reports. NuScale's tiny modular reactor is designed to be deployed for small communities with lower power needs and embodies advanced reactor values. (NuScale received previous funding and is not eligible for this program.)

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The latest save my life story (must-read) makes me wonder how to listen to people we support. People who are suffering. What conclusions to draw from what they say?

This is part of the "we're going to have to learn to live with it" approach, which is another part of save my life. It's not only about medicine, math, politics, money and power -- it's also about individual people who need -- what? How can we help? How to listen? How can we help? What to say? And how can we help?

The author wasn't able to convey her condition to the first doctor over the phone. I wanted to know how the doctor could do better. Also how the doctor could have made a difference when there was no treatment, at the time -- not sure if there's treatment possible now, even.

It's about more than science. It's about us.

Anybody thinking how we can lobby the Senate to support local governments so we continue to have police, fire, sanitation, health care, teachers, etc.

Sweden's death rate per million (376) "is far in advance of Norway's (44), Denmark's (96) and Finland's (55) — countries with similar welfare systems and demographics, but which imposed strict lockdowns..." reports the Guardian, "raising concerns that the country's light-touch approach to the coronavirus may not be helping it build up broad immunity." "According to the scientific online publication Ourworldindata.com, Covid-19 deaths in Sweden were the highest in Europe per capita in a rolling seven-day average between 12 and 19 May. The country's 6.25 deaths per million inhabitants a day was just above the UK's 5.75." Slashdot reader AleRunner writes: Immunity levels in Sweden, which were expected to reach 33% by the start of May have been measured at only 7.3%, suggesting that Sweden's lighter lockdown may continue indefinitely whilst other countries begin to revive their economies. Writing about new Swedish antibody results in the Guardian Jon Henley goes on to report that other European countries like Finland are already considering blocking travel from Sweden which may increase Sweden's long term isolation. We have discussed before whether Sweden, which locked down earlier than most but with fewer restrictions could be a model for other countries. As it is, now, the country is looking more like a warning to the rest of the world. The Guardian concludes that the Swedish government's decision to avoid a strict lockdown "is thought unlikely to spare the Swedish economy. Although retail and entertainment spending has not collapsed quite as dramatically as elsewhere, analysts say the country will probably not reap any long-term economic benefit."

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My brother found this picture of me as a kid in my father's photos.

"Firefox will prevent websites from forcing users to directly save PDFs without opening them in the web browser window," reports The Windows Club. "Mozilla is rolling out this feature to the masses with the stable release of Firefox 78." Right now, Mozilla has added this feature to Firefox 78 in the Nightly channel. The issue was first raised in 2011, and it took Mozilla 9 years to fix it. Many websites host and offer PDF documents with the following HTTP header: Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="whatever.pdf." This is an indication to the web browser that the PDF file should be saved with the specified name rather than try opening it in the web browser window. But since Firefox has a built-in PDF viewer, it should be for users to decide whether they want to view or save PDF documents.

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"Having re-open-sourced MS-DOS on GitHub in 2018, Microsoft has now released the source code for GW-BASIC, Microsoft's 1983 BASIC interpreter," reports ZDNet, adding that GW-BASIC "can trace its roots back to Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's implementation of Microsoft's first product, the BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 computer." "Interested to look at thousands of lines of glorious 8088 assembly code for the original 1983 GW-BASIC...?" writes Slashdot reader sonofusion82, adding "there are not Makefiles or build scripts, just a bunch of 8088 ASM files." Or as Hackaday jokes, "Microsoft releases the source code you wanted almost 30 years ago." In the late 1970s and early 1980s, if you had a personal computer there was a fair chance it either booted into some version of Microsoft Basic or you could load and run Basic... Now you can get the once-coveted Microsoft Basic source code... They put up a read only GW-BASIC repository, presumably to stop a flood of feature requests for GPU acceleration... From what we understand, GW-Basic was identical to IBM's BASICA, but didn't require certain IBM PC ROMs to operate. Of course, BASICA, itself, came from MBASIC, Microsoft's CP/M language that originated with Altair Basic... We did enjoy the 1975 copyright message, though: ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ON THE PDP-10 FROM FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 9 1975 BILL GATES WROTE A LOT OF STUFF. PAUL ALLEN WROTE A LOT OF OTHER STUFF AND FAST CODE. MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE (F4I.MAC). Bill Gates was 19 years old, Paul Allen was 22.

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"The publication of a long-awaited report from Imperial College London that models the impact of coming out of lockdown has been delayed for several weeks, following criticism of the team's methods, as the debate around the UK's coronavirus restrictions has become increasingly politicised," reports the Financial Times: The report has yet to be released, although its findings have been shared with government, according to two people associated with the Imperial team. The delay comes as the rightwing press and some Conservative politicians question the need for such stringent lockdown measures in the UK. A number of Tory figures, including former minister David Davis and Eurosceptic MP Steve Baker, have cast doubt on the Imperial team. They accuse the scientists of using an outdated computer code in an influential March report that predicted the UK could suffer 500,000 deaths during the pandemic if the government failed to take action. The Telegraph newspaper suggested last week that Imperial's modelling could be "the most devastating software mistake of all time..." A senior member of the team told the Financial Times, "Given the increasingly politicised nature of debate around the science of Covid-19, we have decided to prioritise submitting this research for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will release it publicly at that time...." Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, Britain's senior scientific body, added that the public had a false impression that the Imperial model dominated government decision-making in mid-March, when ministers decided to impose a lockdown. "Theirs was not the only model considered," he said, "and we didn't need a model to know what would happen when this highly infectious virus arrived. Italy's healthcare system had already reached its limits and they were begging us to act."

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New research from Imperial College London suggests the coronavirus "may still be spreading at epidemic rates" in 24 different states in America, reports the Washington Post: Some states have had little viral spread or "crushed the curve" to a great degree and have some wiggle room to reopen their economies without generating a new epidemic-level surge in cases. Others are nowhere near containing the virus. The model, which has not been peer reviewed, shows that in the majority of states, a second wave looms if people abandon efforts to mitigate the viral spread. "There's evidence that the U.S. is not under control, as an entire country," said Samir Bhatt, a senior lecturer in geostatistics at Imperial College.... The Imperial College researchers found in 24 states, the model shows a reproduction number over 1 [suggesting the virus is not waning]. Texas tops the list, followed by Arizona, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, Alabama, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, New Mexico, Missouri, Delaware, South Carolina, Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Maryland.... This has become a geographically complex pandemic, one that will evolve, especially as people increase their movements in coming weeks. Laws and health regulations vary from state to state, county to county and city to city. There are communities where wearing facial coverings is culturally the norm, while in other places it is rejected on grounds of personal liberty or as refutation of the consensus view of the hazards posed by the virus... Experts in Tennessee are also concerned about people from other states beginning to flock to Nashville and Memphis on summer vacations. If a surge happens, said David Aronoff, director of the Vanderbilt University infectious disease division, "the tricky part will be putting the toothpaste back in the tube" by shutting down again. In addition to "behavioural precautions," the researchers recommend rapid testing and contact tracing. But If there's no change in the relationship between mobility and transmission, their report states bluntly that "We predict that deaths over the next two-month period will exceed current cumulative deaths by greater than two-fold... "We predict that increased mobility following relaxation of social distancing will lead to resurgence of transmission, keeping all else constant."

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This is a technical post.

The three words in the title of the post are noun, verb and subject.

Let's go through them one by one.

• Node is a popular developer platform with set of common libraries called packages. It's based on JavaScript which is a very popular language. And its power comes from the very deep set of freely usable code you can build on. That part is the reason why I switched to JavaScript in 2013. I wanted to tap into the work of all the other developers using Node. That it was JavaScript was incidental, and honestly the Node platform had nothing to do with it, because at the time I switched I had little idea what it was.
• deprecates is a word that platform vendors use when they are going to break the implicit promise that the platform you're developing on is stable. The word platform implies stability. The fact that platform vendors can do this is one main reason we like to work with open source software, because if we don't agree with what they're doing, we don't have to go with them, which hopefully means they'll be less willing to break us.
• request is possibly the most used package in Node. I'm not sure. But since Node is used to make servers and one thing servers do a lot of is call other servers to get information, and request is pretty much the only way to do that, you'd have to say even if it isn't the most popular package, it certainly is one of the most important. If you were to remove request almost all Node apps would break. And that is exactly what they're doing. It won't work. I'm sure of it. And they don't know it yet. But they'll find out.

A couple of stories to go with this.

• Back in the late 90s when we were working on a new version of Frontier, we were generating a lot of new routines for developers to call. We had packages of routines called suites, and as we were generating them we didn't know which package an individual routine would go in when the new version was finalized. So we created a temporary package called toys, disclaimed it would be deprecated before we shipped. We gave it a silly name so people would remember it was doomed. I said to devs, don't depend on anything in toys being there after we ship. Well, as promised, when it came time to ship, we sorted all the routines in toys to their permanent homes and deleted toys. Everything broke. Everything. The outcry was so loud and angry that we put toys back. The lesson is this, when you ship something to developers you're stuck with it, so be sure you can live with it when you ship. You have to live with your mistakes too. Clearly the Node developers think request is a mistake. Well tough shit, you have to live with it. Sorry I didn't make the rules.

Food safety concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic, along with "changing consumer preferences," are "contributing to a shift toward plant-based food options," reports CNBC, citing alternative meat makers in Asia. The New York Times shares some specifics, including statistics from Nielsen showing that from April 12 to May 9, demand for uncooked vegan products jumped 53%. To meet the demand, Impossible Foods has been hiring more workers, increasing pay and adding more shifts. Beyond Meat reported record sales in the first quarter of this year... [F]or the first time, plant-based meats are often competitive in price with ground beef, and sometimes easier to find, as fears of meat shortages prompt bulk buying... Impossible Foods, which before the pandemic sold more of its products in restaurants than in grocery stores, has expanded its retail footprint. Chief executive, Pat Brown said his products are now sold in more than 3,000 stores, up from fewer than 200 in January. In the first quarter of the year, Beyond Meat, whose stock is publicly traded, reported net revenue of $97.1 million, an increase of 141 percent over last year. Its products are now in 25,000 grocery stores nationwide, and the company recently expanded into China. "We were saying that by 2030, Beyond Meat could have a $1 billion in sales," said Alexia Howard, the senior research analyst of U.S. food at Bernstein, an equity research group. "Now, we're saying by the end of 2020, which is only 18 months later."

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"The drug US President Donald Trump said he was taking to ward off Covid-19 actually increases the risk of patients with the disease dying from it," reports the BBC, citing a new study published Friday in the Lancet. "The study said there were no benefits to treating patients with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine..." Hydroxychloroquine is safe for malaria, and conditions like lupus or arthritis, but no clinical trials have recommended the use of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus. The Lancet study involved 96,000 coronavirus patients, nearly 15,000 of whom were given hydroxychloroquine — or a related form chloroquine — either alone or with an antibiotic. The study found that the patients were more likely to die in hospital and develop heart rhythm complications than other Covid patients in a comparison group. The death rates of the treated groups were: hydroxychloroquine 18%; chloroquine 16.4%; control group 9%. Those treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine in combination with antibiotics had an even higher death rate. The researchers warned that hydroxychloroquine should not be used outside of clinical trials. The BBC also reports that a separate trial involving over 40,000 healthcare workers around the world is now testing whether hydroxychloroquine could prevent infection.

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"Hundreds of renewable energy projects may be asked to turn off this weekend," reports the Guardian, "to avoid overloading the grid as the UK's electricity demand plummets to record lows." Britain's demand for electricity is forecast to tumble to a fifth below normal levels due to the spring bank holiday and the shutdown of shops, bars and restaurants mandated by the coronavirus lockdown... Meanwhile, the sunny weather is expected to generate more renewable electricity than the UK needs... The National Grid control room plans to use a new scheme this weekend that will pay small wind turbines and solar installations to stop generating electricity if the UK's renewable energy sources threaten to overwhelm the energy system. About 170 small-scale renewable energy generators have signed up to the scheme, with a total capacity of 2.4GW. This includes 1.5GW of wind power and 700MW of solar energy. Other companies have also signed up to boost their electricity use when demand falls too low.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've heard reports of people having trouble unsubscribing from the nightly email. If you've been having trouble, please let me know by respoinding to the email.

Read this quote from the Republican governor of North Dakota about masks. A silver lining to the pandemic is the only way out of it is to cut the level of insanity to zero and start acting according to science. There is no other way out of it, assuming you don't want to bet exclusively on a miracle. Either we stay collectively insane, we'll all get the virus, sooner than later, and a shitload of us will die, and the survivors will have a new Dark Ages. If we could only apply the objective brainpower to this problem that we do to a sports game like football or basketball. There is a winning strategy but it requires teamwork.