skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Catastrophic insurance is exactly how insurance is meant to work. If you want to save for medical procedures in your old age, you can get a savers account.

The whole point of insurance is that a big financial hit (caused by your house burning down, cancer, whatever) causes a non-linear amount of suffering. A few dollars (paid by 99 lucky healthy people) isn't noticeable, but the one guy who can now afford his emergency operation is a thousand times happier. Total cost = 100$750. Total happiness = 99 (-meh) + 1 * (OMG I'll see my grandchildren!!!).

I don't like the whole "forced savings" thing. If you get to 80, and can't afford an operation that you probably don't need, and didn't save for it, and your family won't bail you out ... everyone is mortal.

I guess you could say that people don't have the discipline to save. Fine. Tax the young, and give cash to old people. But don't treat health insurance as a pension - why should young people subsidize old people who want expensive (but most likely useless) operations, but not subsidize old people who can live with the fact that they are mortal and would rather have few bucks to spend at the Bingo club?
Except that the best political opinion blogging could never possibly be published on newspaper-replacing websites — to an anything but the narrowest audience they'd be completely indigestible.

Take my favorite Jacobite Neo-Cameralist: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ — not only is his writing TL;DR by a few orders of magnitude, his ideas are so legitimately politically-incorrect (not in the 90s movement-conservative sense (he's anti-democracy!)) that he'd be literally pilloried as a public figure.
Agreed. It works ok with Readability http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
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haha...I sure would have, if I could.

I think you misunderstood my point by assuming it as a decision. Im from india and those things dont cost cheap in here specially when i wasn't earning anything had only debt to pay to.

(P.S. I wish I could delete my thread now, wasn't worth it. Completely stupid!)
Xpilot-AI: A library for writing xpilot bots.
Richard Williams (of Roger Rabbit fame)wrote an excellent book about animation called "The Animator's Survival Kit". In it he describes (illustrated with beautiful caricature) how he once asked Milt Kahl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milt_Kahl)

"Milt, do you ever listen to classical music when you're working?"

Kahl is illustrated as turning back from his work, towering over Williams and bellowing

"Of all the s-s-s-stupid god-god-god-damned questions I-I-I-I've ever heard! I-I-I-I-NEVER heard such a-a-a-f-f-f-f-stupid question! Iy-Iy-Iy-Iy-I'm not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time!"

The author is then pictured with "Animation is concentration" written across the back of his shirt.

I tend to agree with this sentiment when it comes to programming. If you can't have quiet, find a place where you can to start new projects. Music is to be enjoyed, and I enjoy music most when it's the thing I focus most on. I can listen to music when cleaning, but not when programming (or cooking).
Don't spam. if you have info to add go to the original thread.

You will (and should) get flagged for such behaviour.

EDIT: I see you already posted the same thing elsewhere and got killed. And yet you are here trying again.

Also

"Why not work on open source projects? I am open to work on open source project."

Why don't you get to work then? Let us know when you have built something substantial and post the link here. "Open to work" means you haven't done anything in yet. In Open Source doing is everything.

A harsher way of saying this is "Shut up and code" (and then ask for jobs/whatever).
If you're young, get a job at a help desk or tech customer support. It will work wonders, trust me.
How strange to see JLG writing what is essentially an epitaph for Palm, which had acquired the remaining pieces of his (insanely awesome) BeOS.
Uh, if the banks had been allowed to fail the FDIC would have been wiped out.

If GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail the PBGC would have been wiped out.

Fannie and Freddie were wiped out and would incidentally have failed due to investor flight in the early 2000s if they had submitted financials to investors like other firms (meanwhile the CEOs got very rich). BTW off the books entities are what everyone hated about Enron... our GSEs are the exact same scheme.

Bernie Madoff's daughter was married to a SEC official and in spite of being reported to the SEC multiple times over the years his fund was not investigated. Only the biggest financial crisis since the great depression made his scheme unsustainable, at which point the fraud was obvious, and he was used as a scapegoat for the crisis itself... as if his fund caused it!

Some of the items on your list are good services that are provided by government... but if you look at the government budget they make up (at best) a few percent.
this is absolutely priceless; nice job.
The best place to start is where you are.

Unlike other businesses, tech businesses are rarely tied to a particular place. They have no plant or buildings, except usually for servers, and their customers usually come from all over the world. This means they're very easy to move.

So start where you are. And if you need to move later on, it's no great hassle.
According to the WHO, the US has the most responsive health care system in the world. It also has the highest cure rate for many types of cancer. Much of the high cost of our system is due to an out-of-control tort system, which this bill maintains. Trial lawyers are major campaign contributors to the Dems, and they get to keep all their goodies. So those costs are still going to be around. Also, the government allows doctors to control the number of physicians coming thru the med schools. This allows doctors to control their own supply and thereby keep their prices high. Nothing in the bill's 2700+ pages addresses this either.
Traditionally the Republicans are just contrary to anything the Democrats propose (as far back as I can remember). All of the Republicans I know personally are pro-lifers and this bill specifically addresses the use of government funds with respect to abortion.

So it's probably a bit from each category.
Rush Is on to Be First in iPad Apps
I used to have a bank account with NetBank, which was excellent in terms of both price and service.

Then one day, I received an email from ING Direct telling me that they had bought out Netbank and summarily closed my account, just because I live outside of the US. It took me months to get my money back and it cost me quite a bit to deal with the antiquated paper check they sent me. Even after hours on the telephone with them explaining my situation, that my access had been cut off without warning, that waiting for international mail would cause hardship, and that dealing with a check is difficult in this country, they flat out refused to give me my own money via electronic transfer or any method that would have been soon enough for me to make all of my monthly expenses.

It's good to hear that ING is nice in most cases, but I'd be very hesitant to ever give them my business willingly after what they put me through.
The best of the political bloggers are easily the equal of
the opinion columnists at the New York Times.

As the article rightly argues, this is probably false. Good writing is an art that requires lots of practice. Newspaper columnists have often set out to be journalists/writers/columnists and have practiced writing. Bloggers, even the best opinion bloggers, are usually people that have different skills and who happen to be writing about those skills. Their writing is usually inferior, although practice makes perfect and the blogging itself may contribute to their ability to write over time.
Unfortunately, if you want to pursue anything on topics such as these, you will need to live with the existence biases including your own.

For what it's worth it seems to me like the abstract ideological debate between state and private control tends to be vibrant in The States and therefore breeds more "ideological" positions.
Definitely one of the least helpful error messages of all time.

It's a shame that more technologies aren't moving toward a "compile and statically link everything" model, there's a lot to be said for that model in certain circumstances.
Your assumption is wrong, as clearly indicated by the data.
Countries with less competition and more regulation at least appear to receive closer to optimal value from their money (in the realm of healthcare).

Healthcare doesn't make sense when viewed as a market economy.

First off, there is a potentially infinite demand for healthcare. (How much will you pay to live a little longer? As death approaches, the amount you will pay can be seen as an asymptote towards infinity. You have to be a particularly well balanced individual for this not to happen.)

Competing for actual finite resources (hospital beds, doctors, nurses, medications, the drafty-but-fashionable hospital-johnny), with a number of people who are going to die anyway, but are willing (if not able) to pay non-finite sums of money, clearly points us towards a conflict. The only conclusion is for the price of the finite resources to increase indefinitely.
Well then I did answer it correctly for me, so the question is bad. I thought there was just some way to change it that I was aware of.
Will the e-book market end up like the games market?
Ok so you've successfully argued for 1% of the Federal budget and 5% of state budgets. I hope you're not going to stop your thought process there.
1) Taking longer is not an indication of strength of the
algorithm

Is anyone arguing it is?
Ignoring the bit about health care reform(I don't know anything about that).

1) Start with genius, this is a phrase used by Meredith Belbin in his advise about selecting a team. So, I am basically saying go where you will find the talent necessary to implement your start up.

2) Start in a place with lots of early adopters. That is, start where the people are known to try new stuff and be seen as cool if they are at the cutting edge with technology.

Just a few places: Boston, Silicon Valley, London...
There will be other places around the world with these characteristics.
Q: How much would it cost to insure against such catastrophic outcomes (with a $100 deductible and coverage enough for all hospital bills and recuperation)?

A: About $20 per month per person.

You're right this is the biggest risk young people face... the rest of their premium is just going to the old folks and their exploiters.
This is very much not true. You are liable up to the amount of capital invested in the typical company in most European countries. The minimum capital investment varies by country, but you are never liable for more than that in that form of company. There are other company forms where you are liable, but if you are going into a risky field you should not be using those. The way I understood it, the guys DHH was working for took credit in their own name to finance the company, which is generally a bad idea.
looks awesome. reminds me of marc andreessen's 3x5 index card hack: http://lifehacker.com/266387/marc-andreessens-guide-to-perso...
You need the following:

- proximity to universities - increases the probability to find talents and people willing to spend money in IT services

- proximity with airport and train hubs - increases the probability of having customers (+ transport => + businesses)

- high bandwidth Internet availability

I don't know what you are referring to regarding health care, but basically if taxes and insurances spending break your profitability, you didn't have a real business to start with.

Your number one spending will be salaries by a huge factor.
Nike Air Force 1 Premium Tweed Tweed Light Bone Brq Brown
Forget IQ, Collective Intelligence is the New Measure of Smart
The waiting time for a large chunk of Americans for all of those procedures is infinite, because they can't afford them at all. That makes the Canadian and British system look quite a lot better than ours. America has the best emergency care system for rich people in the world, but for the average Joe our healthcare system sucks compared to just about any of those socialized systems. The idea that America has the best healthcare system in the world is a joke.
It's a form of "slippery slope" argument: Increased government powers mean that more people are fundamentally beholden to the state for their well-being. If the state fails, these people will be very unhappy. Thus a socialist policy in a republic can, over time, act to distort policy to massively favor the whims of bureaucrats. In the _worst case scenario_ the bureaucrats might be radicals who want to install a communist system.

But I don't think this is true of either the European socialist states, or of U.S. liberals. You can cherry pick examples of radical elements, Fox News style, but they aren't the main concern here - economic risk is the big one. A tightly integrated state can operate more efficiently than one that tries to regulate companies from afar, but if it goes down due to a "black swan" event, recovery is going to be more difficult.
Micromax Info | News & events
Someone should tell Moldbug that the first thing the fascists do when they get into power is lop off the heads of the intellectuals. He prides himself on his historical analysis so he should research that. Maybe he is delusional enough to think that he is the "great man" (Thomas Carlyle) that will run the world, so he is safe. MM should be pilloried. Read his blog... don't be taken in by the rhetoric, long winded as it is.
It helps to do something... a little more mundane. No one goes around casually talking about their complicated lives (of which both guitars and blogs fall).

For example, I was cleaning up my backyard today (something mundane) and saw that some flowers had sprouted. I took a picture and posted it on Facebook exclaiming that Spring was here (again, something mundane) and when I go into work tomorrow I'm going to boast about the newfound glory of Spring to every single person I see.

You might take up a simple hobby like running (mundane), but it's something you can easily talk about. "I went for a run today. It was so nice out." Simple. If they're interested, you can fill in some more details about how you now have shin splints or that you stepped in a puddle. If they're not interested, no big deal. You had some top-notch small talk.
Actual benefits of health care reform, by year
Exhibition on Vietnamese women opens in Paris 
An exhibition featuring Vietnamese women’s daily lives kicked off in Paris, France, on March 20. The exhibition, co-sponsored by the Vietnamese Cultural Centre in France and the French association for Vietnamese children affected by Agent Orange/Dioxin, is showcasing 50 colour and black and white photos of different sizes.

The photos, taken by French people visiting to Vietnam, vividly describe the lives of Vietnamese women, both at work and at home, from different angles.

Modern Vietnamese people are not only considerate towards their families but also take part in the social work and many of them have become successful people.

However, there are still many women and girls seriously affected by Agent Orange/Dioxin, to which they or their parents were exposed during the American war in Vietnam. They are facing many difficulties in integrating into social life. Many French people have come to Vietnam and taken part in charity campaigns to make the lives of the victims better.

Since its establishment in 2001, the French association for Vietnamese children affected by Agent Orange/Dioxin has held many activities to raise funds and provide the children with free surgeries and scholarships.
I wish I would have had this link earlier. This is probably the best explanation of what the reform actually does that I have ever seen.
This helped me out a lot. You're forced to interact with people. More importantly, you don't have to be interesting to get people's attention - they are actively seeking your attention in the first place. It's an easy place to practice and become comfortable around people.
actually, it'll only make you a cynic and a misanthropist.
Why does it matter whether your pay cut was in the form of a perk or salary?

Clearly if your startup employer chose to offer you cash instead of a healthcare plan, it did so because it thought you'd value the cash + flexibility more than you'd value the plan.

It's simple for any small business to sign up for a group plan for employees... and it's not the cost that is the issue, it's the perceived value of the service.
Right smack in the middle of the article is an unnecessar TV pop-culture reference that just left me confused.

(If you’re a “Gossip Girl” fan, think of it as Little J. being crowned “queen” of Constance; or, if you prefer “Mad Men,” as Peggy after her promotion from secretary to copywriter.)

What does any of this mean?
yeah probably a bad question then. Apologies.
I love this, windsurfer. It goes quite well with my existing GTD system, and I really appreciate that you've made this available. Thank you.

Note: for college students who'd like to use it, consider reading Cal Newport's GTD for students:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/10/06/monday-master-class-ge...
https search. If google enable https then I would be happy with that, until then, duck duck go.
Meagan Good A Hottie
I wonder if this can then be bundled up into a security :P (pretty evil, I know..)
It would have miserably failed if they did not "miss" that part.
Missing in this thread so far is a discussion of whether or not this bill is even remotely constitutional.

Not only does it seemingly institute a poll tax, it stretches the "commerce clause" of the constitution beyond all reasonable limits, it violates the 10th amendment, and article 2 section 8.

But I suppose all of that will become irrelevant in our glorious new future where the life of every citizen of the US is dependent on the efficiency, fiscal discipline, and humane kindness of federal and state bureaucracies. Indeed, this is a future I think we all look forward to, as all of these glorious institutions have provided a hearteningly robust history exemplifying all of those qualities to the fullest. Haven't they?
Honest question: how does the passing of health care reform in the US relate to the question about where to start a small tech business?
if you are clever with HN search, you will find a thread written almost a year back where a CTO talked about being sidelined by a VP-Engineering.

The best thing I learned from that was, as a CTO you have to "measure everything and control the conversation"

EDIT: got that for ya - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509571
Starting off with paragraphs like this...

Some weeks though, it’s even easier than that. Someone will say something so breathtakingly wrong – so tracheotomy-cravingly moronic – that I don’t need to explain anything. Simply quoting their words back at them is sufficient to make the point.

...does not bode well for the rest of the article.

On the plus side I suppose he showed us that there's at least one blogger out there who's outclassed by the New York Times.
"I am all for affordable healthcare for everybody, just desperately afraid of how the gov't typically overspends."

Medicare currently operates on a 3% margin. That is, 97% of funds in the medicare program go toward reimbursing patient care. The vast majority of private health insurers operate on a 20-30% margin. The rest of the money goes towards marketing, sales, and towards profit.

Like it or not, every body is shouldering the cost of uninsured patients. One in 6 Americans don't have health insurance, yet they still consume health care. Who pays for that? Everybody does. Hospitals are under a federal mandate to care for everyone regardless of ability to pay. So, to compensate for their losses on uninsured patients. They artificially inflate the rates they charge everyone else to compensate. So, every time you use the health care system, you are paying for uninsured people's care.

Hospitals that have a disproportionately large share of uninsured and minimally insured patients (e.g. a county hospital, non-profit hospitals in the ghetto, small rural hospitals in farming country) routinely need and receive government subsidies to function. Those hospitals are largely subsidized by special funding bills.

Universal coverage, just means that we are now going to be explicit in determining how we are going to pay for people's health care.

edit: added 3rd paragraph.
Eno's music for airports, other ambient stuff, Philip glass and Steve Reich. Mostly, i walk around with my Shure IEM jammed into my ears so i can't hear anything.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144666

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=367418
I would have considered myself shy in the past and one of the rationalizations that helped me get over being shy is that everyone projects how they would react and feel on other people.

Do you judge others work or blogs harshly? Are you judgmental of others opening themselves up and putting their work and thoughts out in public? I'd say the first step is making sure that you are not judgmental of others putting themselves out there and in turn you'll realize the best people (and the only ones you should care about imho) are the ones that aren't judgmental and embrace people sharing what they are thinking and realize its tough to have brilliant ideas all the time.
the life of every citizen of the US is dependent on the efficiency, fiscal discipline, and humane kindness of federal and state bureaucracies

How? Get some cash, find a doctor, and give him cash to fix you. Nothing is stopping you from doing that under the new system.

it violates the 10th amendment, and article 2 section 8

No, it doesn't. You can argue that the 10th amendment didn't go far enough, but that is orthogonal.

The new healthcare regulations are not unprecedented; consider agencies like the FAA and the FCC (shouldn't each state regulate their airspace and radio spectrum), FHA (shouldn't each state build their own expressway system?), etc. Basically, your argument makes about as much sense as "income tax is illegal", and regardless of how you feel, the constitutional law is not on your side.

Were you really making so much money on capital gains that this is going to affect you negatively in any way?
I swear I read this as xploit.
If you're running Flash debug player, you get:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at com.jeroenwijering.player::Model/thumbHandler()

Some things never change.
Google Translate vs. the Humans
Moleskine has something like this, called the Weekly Notebook. Each spread has a page for appointments on the left (one week), and room for notes or to-dos on the right: http://www.moleskine.com/catalogue/diariesplanners/12_month_...

It's a very nice product, and it looks a bit more presentable than your solution. This can be important when you are in a meeting or with a client (or just to yourself -- using a fancy planner motivates me to keep it neat and up-to-date).
The thing you should realise is that everyone suffers that. Your not unique in being insecure a d ridiculed as a teenager :-)

(figuring that out helped me a lot)
Ars on failure of Palm Pre
That is just a ridiculous thing to say to Francisco Tomalsky - I think he's already demonstrated that he knows a thing or two about hacking JavaScript (see Cappuccino - http://cappuccino.org/learn/). How about you respond by giving us a code example that shows how he is wrong, rather than trolling?