Microsoft’s open-source shopping spree has claimed another victim: npm. [Nat Friedman], CEO of GitHub (owned by Microsoft), announced the move recently on the GitHub blog.
So what motivated the acquisition, and what changes are we likely to see as a result of it? There are some obvious upsides and integrations, but these will be accompanied by the usual dose of skepticism from the open-source community. The company history and working culture of npm has also had its moments in the news, which may well have contributed to the current situation. This post aims to explore some of the rationale behind the acquisition, and what it’s likely to mean for developers in the future.
For all the technology we have, it can still be frustratingly difficult to get any concrete information from the media. Sometimes all you want to do is to cut through the noise and see some real numbers. Watching talking heads argue for a half hour probably isn’t going to tell you much about how the COVID-19 virus is spreading through your local community, but seeing real-time data pulled from multiple vetted sources might.
Having access to the raw data about COVID-19 cases, fatalities, and recoveries is, to put it mildly, eye-opening. Even if day to day life seems pretty much unchanged in your corner of the world, seeing the rate at which these numbers are climbing really puts the fight into perspective. You might be less inclined to go out for a leisurely stroll if you knew how many new cases had popped up in your neck of the woods during the last 24 hours.
But this article isn’t about telling you how to feel about the data, it’s about how you can get your hands on it. What you do with it after that is entirely up to you. Depending on where you live, the numbers you see might even make you feel a bit better. It’s information on your own terms, and in these uncertain times, that might be the best we can hope for.
About a year ago, Zachary McCoy took a bike ride around his neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida. It may have been forgettable to him, but not to history. Because McCoy used an app to track his mileage, the route was forever etched in the Google-verse and attached to his name.
On the day of this ill-fated bike ride, McCoy passed a certain neighbor’s house three times. While this normally wouldn’t raise alarm, the neighbor happened to be the victim of a burglary that day, and had thousands of dollars worth of jewelry stolen. The Gainesville police had zero leads after a four-day investigation, so they went to the county to get a geofence warrant. Thanks to all the location data McCoy had willingly generated, he became the prime suspect.
Treating the most serious cases of COVID-19 calls for the use of ventilators. We’ve all heard this, and also that there is a shortage of these devices. But there is not one single type of ventilator, and that type of machine is not the only option when it comes to assisted breathing being used in treatment. Information is power and having better grasp on this topic will help us all better understand the situation.
We recently wrote about a Facebook group focused on open source ventilators and other technology that could assist in the COVID-19 pandemic. There was an outpouring of support, and while the community is great when it comes to building things, it’s clear we all need more information about the problems doctors are currently dealing with, and how existing equipment was designed to address them.
It’s a long and complicated topic, though, so go get what’s left of your quarantine snacks and let’s dig in.
The news these days is dominated by the one big story: the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the first reports of infection surfaced in China sometime in late 2019, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease, bloodlessly dubbed SARS-CoV-19, has swept around the globe destroying lives, livelihoods, and economies. Getting a handle on the disease has required drastic actions by governments and sacrifices by citizens as we try to slow the rate of infection
As with all infectious diseases, getting ahead of COVID-19 is a numbers game. To fight the spread of the virus, we need to know who has it, where they are, where they’ve been, and whom they’ve had contact with. If we are unable to gather the information needed to isolate potential carriers, all that we can do is impose mass quarantines and hope for the best. Hence the need for mass COVID-19 testing, and the understandable hue and cry about its slow pace and the limited availability of test kits.
But what exactly do these test kits contain? What makes mass testing so difficult to implement? As we shall see, COVID-19 testing is anything but simple, even if the underlying technology, PCR, is well-understood and readily available. A lot of the bottlenecks are, as usual, bureaucratic, but there are technical limits too. Luckily, there are clever ways around those restrictions, but understanding the basics of COVID-19 testing is the best place to start.
There’s a lot of good in the world and that includes you. Humanity has a way of coming together at crucial moments and we have certainly reached that with the outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus. At this point, most people’s daily lives have been turned upside down. We can all have an impact on how this plays out.
It’s scary, it’s real, but we will get through this. What we need to focus on now is how we can behave that will lead to the best outcomes for the largest number of people. The real question is, how can we help? If you’re stuck at home it’s easy to feel powerless to help but that’s not true. Let’s cover a few examples, then open up the discussion in the comments so we can hear what has been working for you.
Like everyone else, hackers and makers want to do something to help control the spread of COVID-19. The recent posts on Hackaday dealing with DIY and open source approaches to respirators, ventilators, and masks have been some of the most widely read and commented on in recent memory. But it’s important to remember that the majority of us aren’t medical professionals, and that even the most well-meaning efforts can end up making things worse if they aren’t done correctly.
Which is exactly what [Josef Průša] wanted to make clear about 3D printed medical equipment in his latest blog post. Like us, he’s thrilled to see all the energy the maker community is putting into brainstorming ways we can put our unique skills and capabilities to use during this global pandemic, but he also urged caution. Printing out an untested design in a material that was never intended for this sort of application could end up being more dangerous than doing nothing at all.
The nested design lends itself to mass production.
To say that he and his team are authorities in the realm of fused deposition modeling (FDM) would be something of an understatement. They know better than most what the technology is and is not capable of, and they’re of the opinion that using printed parts in respirators and other breathing devices isn’t viable until more research and testing is done
The safest option is to only use printed parts for structural components that don’t need to be sterile. To that end, [Josef] used the post to announce a newly published design of a printable face shield for medical professionals. Starting with an existing open source design, the Prusa Research team used their experience to optimize the headband for faster and easier printing. They can produce four headbands at once on each of the printers in their farm, which will allow them to make as many as 800 shields per day without impacting their normal business operations. The bottleneck on production is actually how quickly they can cut out the clear visors with their in-house laser, not the time it takes to print the frames.
