Interesting Links for 06-10-2020

[andrewducker]

On Vaccinations Programmes and Normality in September 2021

(tags:vaccination pandemic )

What should the democrats do if they win the election?

(tags:USA politics )

Shock and despair follow revelations that Test and Trace system is being run on Excel

(tags:Excel spreadsheet pandemic OhForFucksSake incompetence )

Boris Johnson encourages people to congregate indoors for the good of the economy

(tags:cinema BorisJohnson pandemic OhForFucksSake )

Lawrence Fox is backed by some deeply unpleasant people with a lot of media knowledge

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1310953494799626240.html
(tags:fascism racism UK media politics )

Details on what went wrong with the Excel/Track and Trace fiasco

"The problem is that the PHE developers picked an old file format to do this - known as XLS. As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of."
(tags:fail Excel programming )

People Who Want To Be More Empathic May Also Develop "Liberal" Moral Values

(tags:politics morals empathy psychology )

Comments

[chess]

If you want to do data interchange between NHS and local government systems you basically have to use Excel, there is nothing else that everyone involved will be able to cope with. Due to long term underfunding etc.

[naath]

Because people can't cope with text files now?

This whole system is woefully underfunded and held together with spit and string and dear gods we have to fix it.

[andrewducker]

My understanding is they were submitting to the central point in CSV. But then they were loaded into a very old version of Excel to be uploaded.

[rmc28]

[endless screaming]

[penta]

I'm gonna be honest, I always squirm when non-Americans suggest massive changes for one party or the other to make after an election.

The second link is a prime example of why - even if he's right, he misses salient facts like it takes 2/3 of each house of Congress and ratification by 35 of the 50 states within 7 years to amend the constitution. The first part is hard, but the state ratifications are basically impossible.