Pandemie koronaviru dolehla v březnu i na hypoteční trh. Objemy poskytnutých hypoték se propadly o čtvrtinu. Průměrná úroková sazba hypoték však roste již třetí měsíc v řadě, v březnu vzrostla na 2,45 procenta.

Kvůli koronavirové pandemii pracují z domova tisíce lidí. Home office má však určitý pracovně-právní rámec, což tuší málokdo. Jaká jsou práva a povinnosti zaměstnanců a co musí zaměstnavatel udělat, aby neporušil zákoník práce? Ve spolupráci s právníky Bořivojem Líbalem a Markem Poloni přinášíme praktický servis rad pro zaměstnance a zaměstnavatele.

Podřízení na něj spoléhají v časech dobrých i zlých. A když přijdou opravdové těžkosti, záleží často jen na jeho schopnostech, jak moc se podnik otřese, nebo zda padne úplně.

Možnost cestování je silně omezená a nic zatím nenasvědčuje tomu, že by lidé v letošní letní sezoně mohli vyrazit na zahraniční dovolenou. Zároveň ale nikdo dnes ještě neví, zda se nějaká možnost přece jen neobjeví. Pokud jste si koupili dovolenkový zájezd, jste asi momentálně jako na trní. Pojedete? Vrátí vám peníze?

Firmy i finanční trhy mají za sebou první letošní kvartál. Bilance obou není z důvodu preventivních vládních opatření proti šíření nákazy covid-19 nikterak růžová. To potvrzuje i Partners index podílových akciových fondů.

Děti se v online světě pohybují naprosto přirozeně a svými technickými znalostmi často předčí své rodiče. Na druhou stranu jsou právě ony nejohroženější skupinou čelící útokům internetových predátorů a kyberšikaně. Rodiče často o hrozbách ani netuší. Vyzkoušejte si náš kvíz a zjistěte, jak jste na tom s digitálními znalostmi právě vy.

Současná koronavirová krize otřásla finančními trhy, zlevněné akcie jsou příležitostí, jak zhodnotit investici. Jenomže kdy je správná chvíle investovat? Už se trhy odrazily ode dna, nebo přijde další propad? A jak snížit riziko špatného načasování? Nad tím se zamýšlí Michal Valentík, investiční analytik společnosti Broker Trust.

Nová zákon „Lex voucher“ stanovil pravidla pro vypořádání cestovních kanceláří s klienty. Na problematické situace, které mohou být s koupeným zájezdem spojeny, jsme se zeptali advokáta Ondřeje Vokála.

Do pracovních i osobních životů vstoupila pandemie, jakou nikdo nepamatuje. Krize, která nastává, se dotkne všech. Nad aktuální situací a tím, co nás letos čeká a co je klíčové pro rozhýbání ekonomiky, se v komentáři zamýšlí personalista Tomáš Surka.

Mohlo by se zdát, že pojišťovny budou v koronavirové době zaznamenávat zvýšený zájem o sjednání životních pojistek. Zejména kvůli krytí rizika pracovní neschopnosti, což se vztahuje i na onemocnění infekcí covid-19. Praxe je ale zatím opačná.

• 2 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.60)
• 1/2 cup almond milk ($.40)
• 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder or cocoa powder
• pinch salt
• few drops of stevia, if more sweetness is desired

• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil ($.80)
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder or cocoa powder ($.80)
• 1/4 cup finely ground coconut palm sugar ($.80)
• pinch salt 
• 2 tablespoons chopped pistachios ($.40)

1. Place all fudgesicle ingredients into  blender and puree until very smooth. Add more almond milk or water if needed to facilitate blending. 
2. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for several hours until fully frozen. 
3. Prepare the chocolate shell coating. 
4. Place all the chocolate shell coating ingredients into a small bowl and stir well until smooth.
5. Remove the fidgesicles from the freezer and pop them out of their molds.
6. Dip the fudgescicles into the hard chocolate shell, or drizzle it over them to coat. 
7. Just heating the coconut oil up enough to melt it and not any warmer will yield the best results. If needed, gently remelt the chocolate hard shell. 
8. Add a sprinkle of chopped pistachios or other chopped nut, if desired. Cacao nibs also work well.
9. Any leftovers can be wrapped and stored in the freezer for a week or so.

ingredients

• 1 avocado, chopped ($1.25)
• 1tablespoon finely chopped celery ($.05)
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion ($.05)
• 2 teaspoons mustard ($.05)
• 2 teaspoons mayo  (use something like Veganaise or make your own) ($.10)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• Lettuce and optional tomato for serving

directions

• Coarsely chop the avocado, add the remaining ingredients, then stir gently until evenly incorporated. 
• Store leftovers for up to a day or two in an air tight container.
•  

nutritional information:       calories: 280       fat: 37 gr      carbs: 15 gr      protein: 3 gr

These are just insanely good and great for summer. I really don't think there's a conventional dessert that could be any better tasting than these. I used paper cupcake cups and a cupcake pan ... the paper lined pans seemed to make just about perfect sized tarts. They certainly didn't last long in these parts, although theoretically they can be covered and frozen for up to a week.

A note about the dehydrated bananas ... these need to be just dehydrated enough to take some of the moisture out but not hard. I dehydrated my gently for about 6 hours and that seemed to work out well.


ingredients

• 6 dates ($3.00)
• 1/2 cup walnuts ($.50)
• 1/2 cup finely shredded coconut ($1.00)
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons agave
• pinch salt
• 2 avocados ($1.49)
• 3 bananas, dehydrated ($.45)
• 4 limes, juice and zest ($2.00)
• 4 tablespoons agave ($.40)

directions

1. Make the crusts first. In a food processor with the "S" blade, process the dates until mush. 
2. Add the coconut, coconut oil, agave, and salt and process until it begins to clump. 
3. Last, add the walnuts and process until the walnuts are fully incorporated and the mixture sticks together.
4. Divide the crust mixture evenly into and press into the bottom and sides of eight paper lined cupcake cups. 
5. Put in the freezer for about a half hour, until firm.
6. For the filling, in the food processor with the "S" blade, process the avocados, bananas, lime juice and zest, and agave. It takes a minute or two, but this will become velvety smooth and the consistency of thick pudding.
7. Spoon the filling into the tart crusts and chill well before serving.

ETA: You guys are amazing. I was really not expecting to get so many volunteers! I have more than enough people for now. I'm happy to add any additional names to the list for future opportunities. I can't add any more volunteers for this course, otherwise it would end up being all my friends which isn't great for diversity.

My awesome job involves creating free online courses about genomics. The first course I've been fully in charge of is about to go live, and it needs some final quality checks. It's quite exciting IMO: it's about using genomics to identify and avoid antibiotic resistance.

We need people who can put in a couple of hours in the next week, and just play around with the course and see if there are any obvious problems, whether that's technical issues like display problems for your particular hardware and software, or conceptual problems like confusing instructions or something that doesn't make sense. We are definitely not expecting any one individual to go through the whole course in detail, and we're not looking for copy editing or proofreading. I mean, if you have the sort of brain that can't help spotting typos, we don't mind reports of those, but we're mainly looking for something more general than that.

We want people from all backgrounds, so a mix of people who know something about microbiology and genomics, and people who have no idea. I will say that the course is fairly technical, though, so you probably don't want to volunteer if sciencey stuff is hateful or scary to you. We are especially happy to have beta readers who aren't completely fluent in English to be more representative of our target audience.

Other than doing some good for the world, what you get out of it is a £25 Amazon voucher. So in order to get paid you need to be in a position to receive and spend an Amazon voucher. We might possibly be able to acquire vouchers for other countries' versions of Amazon, or else I can informally arrange to swap to something more locally useful. But it's not employment, it's a volunteer thing with a small token of appreciation.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, but if you actually want to sign up you need to interact with my work persona, so I'll ask you to PM me about arranging that. You're also welcome to pass the request on to anyone else who might be interested. The number of available slots is somewhat flexible, probably in the range of 3-5.

comments

So, to break up the all pandemic all the time posts: I spent most of March getting my first big project at work over the line. I and my team have just released a FutureLearn MOOC. Behold: Antimicrobial Resistance in Bacterial Pathogens.

It's not completely unrelated to the pandemic, because it's about using genomics methods to detect and avoid antibiotic resistance, and track outbreaks of infectious diseases, albeit bacterial rather than viral. It turned out the timing was quite fortuitous, because the whole world is under lockdown and lots of people have time for taking online courses and interest in epidemics and outbreaks.

So slightly under halfway through the course, we have 5000 sign-ups, from basically every country in the world except places like North Korea and Turkmenistan that don't let people access the internet. And we got a personal message of congratulations from the head of section for making such an awesome course.

On the other hand the timing was slightly disastrous because two weeks before launch the lead educator had to drop out of working on the course and go off to run the national Covid-19 sequencing effort. The rest of the team pulled together in very trying circumstances, more than just the general lockdown and emergency, they're all more or less directly involved in clinical-related work on the pandemic. But the last few weeks have been intense, to say the least.

You're welcome to have a go if you like. It's completely free as in beer - we're funded by the Wellcome Trust so we pay for everybody to have premium access to the course. It's quite technical though; our target audience was basically people who are already working in the field of antibiotic resistance but want to learn about modern cutting edge techniques. If you have college-level science and a general interest it should be fine, and we do have a bunch of keen secondary school students who are desperate for something to learn while public exams are cancelled.

If you are excited about it but it's a bit too technical, there is a companion course called Disease outbreaks and antimicrobial resistance. Which I didn't really work on directly, it all happened before I joined the institution, but it's still part of the portfolio of courses I manage.

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I’ve been working a regular, 40-hour week since December now. Before that, I had Fridays “off”–I worked on client work, yes, but I also ran all the errands and did all the chores, leaving me both weekend days pretty much to myself.   What I’ve discovered, in the past three months, is that I resent […]

Российская фигуристка Виктория Синицина раскрыла свой заработок и рассказала о самых дорогих покупках. Спортсменка заявила, что в месяц тратит на одежду около 15 тысяч рублей, причем в список покупок всегда входят вещи для выступлений, например, колготки. Самой дорогой покупкой она назвала кроссовки от Gucci.

I have finally obtained the first batch of the printed "Programming Algorithms" books and will shortly be sending them to the 13 people who asked for a hardcopy.

Here is a short video showing the book "in action":

If you also want to get a copy, here's how you do it:

1. Send the money to my PayPal account: $30 if you want normal shipping or $35 if you want a tracking number. (The details on shipping are below).
2. Shoot me an email to vseloved@gmail.com with your postal address.
3. Once I see the donation, I'll go to the post office and send you the book.
4. Optionaly step: if you want it to be signed, please, indicate it in your letter.

Shipping details: As I said originally, the price of the dead-tree version will be $20+shipping. I'll ship via the Ukrainian national post. You can do the fee calculation online here (book weight is 0.58 kg, size is 23 x 17 x 2 cm): https://calc.ukrposhta.ua/international-calculator. Alas, the interface is only in Ukrainian. According to the examples I've tried, the cost will be approximately $10-15. To make it easier, I've just settled on $10 shipping without a tracking number of $15 if you want a tracking number. Regardless of your country. I don't know how long it will take - probably depends on the location (I'll try to inquire when sending).

The book was already downloaded more than 1170 times (I'm not putting the exact number here as it's constantly growing little by little). I wish I knew how many people have, actually, read it in full or in part. I've also received some error corrections (special thanks goes to Serge Kruk), several small reviews and letters of encouragement. Those were very valuable and I hope to see more :)

Greetings from the far away city of Lima, Peru!
I loved this part: "Only losers don't comment their code, and comments will be used extensively"
Thank you so much for putting this comprehensive collection of highly important data structures, i'm already recommending this to two of my developers, which I hope i'll induce into my Lisp addiction.
--Flavio Egoavil

And here's another one:

Massively impressive book you've written! I've been a Lisp programmer for a long time and truly appreciate the work put in here. Making Lisp accessible for more people in relation to practical algorithms is very hard to do. But you truly made it. You'll definitely end up in the gallery of great and modern Lisp contributions like "Land of Lisp" and "Let Over Lambda". Totally agree with your path to focus on practical algorithmic thinking with Lisp and not messing it up with macros, oop and other advanced concepts.
--Lars Hård

Thanks guys, it's really appreciated!

If you feel the same or you've liked the book in some respect and have found it useful, please, continue to share news about it: that definitely helps attract more readers. And my main goal is to make it as widely read as possible...

Heh. K Tempest Bradford happened across an old photo of me and Neil — I’m in a sari, so I’m guessing this was at the Hugos. We look very young, so at least a decade ago — maybe two. 

As I was driving back from Kate’s house after a three-day Thanksgiving trip (as opposed to a nine-day one which is my usual MO) I was thinking of a list I’d put here. Whether I’m online or off, I’m usually thinking of lists. To do lists, reading lists, library lists, “crap to fix in my […]

Event cancellations at local bodies due to COVID-19 will reduce revenue, but not rent and other fixed expenses. Many local bodies already operate on extremely tight margins and struggle to pay their bills even during normal times. All members are encouraged to continue to financially support their local bodies, even if there are no events …

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The Grand Master Sabazius has provided some useful information and advice to O.T.O. members about how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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