skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is absolute demonstrable horseshit (he says without providing any references).

The cost of a gallbladder surgery does not go around and get funnelled back into research and innovation; it is padding the pockets of coders (an almost unheard of profession in much of the rest of the world), administrators and doctors who are busy paying off student debts the size of most doctors in the western world's mortgages.

Drug costs are completely out of control and the bankrupting effect this has on the most vulnerable members of a community is completely outrageous and out of touch with what a reasonable society should be expected to do. The high price of monoclonal antibodies and other treatments is no excuse for the blatant market failure that occurs here.

To further expand on this: Healthcare is a price inelastic good. The current situation in the US is one of abject market failure as what should be considered an essential service is made available to only those able to pay for it (or willing to bankrupt their families). The worst instances of this are in cases of cancer, where life-extending therapies (maybe only a few months, maybe many years, and a tiny pay-off of a long future) are only available for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So vulnerable families pay it - middle class families that thought they were doing everything right, sell or re-mortgage the family house in the hope of keeping their loved one around forever. Then they die. Then the hardship begins. This is, in my considered opinion, criminal.

Bottom line: I firmly believe there is no excuse for the wastage and high costs that the American system provides. Healthcare should be about innovation; and yes we need to fund it. But in the US as in other countries, significant funding is provided by governments for basic research which goes on to be capitalised by private companies, when this information should be free. Bottom line- this article, and indeed your comment, is a post hoc rationalisation of high healthcare charges, with little recognition of the true drivers, and it does not need to be this way
I'll put it another way, if you are moving 6 figures of product, you can afford a less risky and... evil.. payment processor
Scientific Secrets for Raising Kids Who Thrive
http://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/Scientific-Secret...
Typically demand outstrips supply for very simple exams but the private sector covers it pretty well without making you pay a lot more.

For example, here in Italy I can look for: public sector, private public-affiliated sector and full private sector.

When I needed a full low abdomen echography I first contacted the public sector, they told me they had a wait list of 2.5months for that common exam, but I could call a private public-affiliated clinic and do it there (they also gave me suggestions on which clinics were available). Cost ~23euros (not all the exams have this waiting time, when I needed just physiotherapy or to see a psychologist I had <7 days wait time)

Called three private public-affiliated clinics. These are clinics where all the staff is private and is managed like a normal company, but if they do an exam and you have the paper from your GP they can fill a form and get a part payed from the public sector (in a sort of exchange for helping reducing the wait time) In all of three they could visit me in 2-4 days, paying just ~30e.

Lastly there was the full private clinic, those are not subsidized in any way but they have a very short list and if you want you can make a private insurance that cover basically whatever exams you will ever need from them. They could visit me in the next 2 hours for just ~80e.

Note I was not in a emergency, if that was the case I could just run to the hospital and they would visit me instantly without making me pay anything (you can also run to the hospital without an ongoing emergency... they usually don't make you pay nothing anyway and do the exams but make you wait hours until they have no more urgent cases). Note also that if you have a serious condition (cancer like or anything with high risk of fatality) you will get ahead of any list and be visited asap, no money asked.

And Italy is considered one of those "long list countries" in EUW.
What is wrong with you Yahoo?
My tolerance for volatility and loss is higher than the traditional investor. Beyond Burton Malkiel's random walk there's Modern Portfolio Theory.

There are three pools of asset-classes that I consider:

Bonds - Historic low rates, soon to increase and drive down the price of existing bonds on the market. Bonds should cheapen 3-4 times this year thanks to Yellen.

Equity Market - Market PE and PEG values are above the level that historically precedes a correction. Two dynamics may be contributing: The first, domestic corporate equity investment is up due to the low T-Bill rates (a risky return in equity looks a lot better when government bond rates are effectively nothing). The second, foreign investors (specifically Chinese/Russian) trying to diversify away from government corruption. This phenomenon is well-documented in desirable housing markets (Toronto, SF Bay Area, NY, London, etc.) but harder/impossible to identify in the stock markets.

The second phenomenon does make the argument for a regime change, but only so long as the US Dollar remains strong relative to the rest to their home countries. Guess what the White House policy is going to do?

Cash/Cash Equivalents - A near zero interest rate with low volatility. Cash, from what I can tell, is the only thing priced normally from a discount perspective. I can afford to accumulate more cash at a -3% effective rate while letting the rest of my holdings appreciate. When everyone else is bleeding I'll be there with my liquidity.
Gotta love the libertarians. If the market thing doesn't work they can just say "It's not capitalist enough". Same as the scrum people "Scrum not working for you? You are just doing it wrong."
from the perspective of the individual, their own life is priceless, but from a societal level, each life certainly has a price. The US Govt uses 10mil as the price of an average life (for a soldier).
AFAICT, the article explains it only in the statistical sense of the word, not the plain-English sense, so I think you're missing the point of the comment.
Yeah, no issue with gay marriage in my view. The issue is where the decision needs to be rendered. I argue Federal rulings on X create a premise for rulings on Y and while you might really like the idea of X, it doesn't really matter to your life and it invites a negative impact from Y. Let X=gay marriage and Y=a state's self-determination of immigration law.
Oh neat! I've been wanting to build something like this that emails me this plus all tweets by people in a list.
Flagellation doesn't work. Let me offer you this. Lots of French words end in -eur: amateur, poseur, auteur, etc. Where English uses -er or -or, French uses -eur: for example, "motor" is "moteur". The trigraph "eue" does not occur in French; it would make no sense.

Well, that's not much of a memory aid, but maybe it will help anyway.
You shared a valid point of view and the only way to learn is by discussing things. People shouldn't down vote a view that they do not support as it only creates an echo chamber. The best way to change someone's mind is to listen to the supporting arguments for their opinions/beliefs.
I'm sure religious groups are going to opt out, so when smallpox 2.0 comes and everyone dies suddenly, the meek will inherit the earth once more.
Yes you have to file an IR3 if you make other income.

http://www.ird.govt.nz/income-tax-individual/end-year/ir3/ii...

My favourite part of our tax system is the advice to file if you have "income from an illegal enterprise"

EDIT:
Just as a reply to the original point. I'm not sure how complicated the US system is. I'm not trying to say it's bad either, it just seems to me that we have a system similar to the one that is getting lobbied against. And I like our system, it works well for me..
what a hilarious combination of informative and dickish... i... dont know what to make of that. thank... you?

i asked because ive used the free offerings and there were absolutely no headaches. there is nothing wrong with asking someone else a question like the one i asked you, you insane person.
This principle is why we are seeing a massive spike in Fentanyl use. It's many times more potent than Heroin (and therefore many times more profitable). Unfortunately, it's killing a lot of people in the process...
Sony’s touchscreen projector technology feels like the future of interactivity
I'm not a libertarian. I have no idea how you can possibly characterize the US's highly regulated health system as capitalist - could you explain?
Anyone still have yahoo mail or yahoo linked play accounts? Be extremely careful. I don't even know if any of the the Yahoo products are secure anymore
> Turbo Tax and H&R Block aren't being hacked

What is that based on?

> It's really, really hard to attack Intuit. It's much easier to submit fraudulent tax forms and pocket the returns before anyone notices

What makes you say that it's so hard? Also, the return on breaking into Intuit is millions of tax returns. Finally, attackers may not be after the refunds on a few returns, and more interested in a massive intelligence and identity theft haul.
Many tech companies are members of CCIA and should demand it stop advocating for Intuit's civilization-destroying agenda.

It's been one of their issues for a long time eg http://www.ccianet.org/2011/09/irs-tax-prep-not-a-budget-sol... and http://www.ccianet.org/2002/01/treasury-irs-announce-efforts... ... and it's a major activity of theirs http://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby...

> The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), of which Intuit is a member, represents its members on a wide range of technology issues, but spends a significant amount of its $6.7 million in lobbying on tax simplification. As ProPublica's piece points out, the group operates the website "Stop IRS Takeover" which bashes the idea of pre-filed returns. Disclosures indicate the CCIA has focused on "issues pertaining to tax preparation services" and legislation involving simple filing. It lobbied in support of Rep. Lofgren's bill that would have barred government-filed returns, and rallied against Sen. Akaka's bill that would have let taxpayers file directly through the IRS "without the use of an intermediary."
The CCIA is an active political giver as well, doling out over $650,000 over the past 20 years with 91% going to Democrats. Silicon Valley-based Rep. Lofgren, an opponent of IRS-prepared returns, has been the biggest beneficiary of CCIA donation, collecting over $12,000. The group also opposed John Chiang in the 2006 California controller election, chipping in $50,000 to the Alliance for California's Tomorrow — the same group that received $1 million from Intuit.

CCIA also gets lots of mentions in https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Repor...
The solution I can see for this is to reform the tax code.

Tax income tax based on where someone's office is; given them the right to vote there accordingly.

Tax someone's property where they live/own/rent it (property tax should be built in to the rent, but as this will be passed on to renters, they too deserve to vote on local issues).
what do you say about the argument put forward by this video?

https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
Ask HN: What are some examples of good code?
I keep reading on HN that I'm order to become a better developer I need to write code everyday, and more importantly read other people's code.

What are some examples of good code that you've seen?

Personally I'm interested in Ruby on Rails and I've recently started going through GitLab-CE[1] but what is your favor code?

[1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce
In some ways Japan may be addressing their demographic challenges in a way that works for Japan. For years the west (businesses, academia, think thanks) has tried to convince Japan they needed to open immigration to address low birth rates --however, given their aging population and the advances in robotics and automation, their holding back the popular tide might make their transition into automation easier as they are naturally drifting to an economy which needs fewer people...

Much of the west would also have plateauing or decreasing populations if it were not for the importation of foreign populations.

Even advanced economies will be unable to provide middle class lifestyles to everyone if most people are not being productive in some way. We may just have to get used to most people doing more with less. That might mean living healthy but more frugal and less consumerist lives.
> It would perhaps be better if a domestic resistance could disrupt the Trump agenda before it gets to the point that it requires bravery in the face of death

Will y'all stop ham-fistedly forcing your insane political beliefs into every thread? Thanks.
Yes, Stripe is better, just "tack on" the small % to your sales prices to cover the currency conversion fees . . .
The plain english explanation is that Americans consume a lot of everything relative to GDP/capita, and health care is not an exception to this.
Many courses (even one made in 2016, course.fast.ai) still use Python 2 for some reason.

Even some libraries only support Python 2.

Why can't we move on ;(
Thank you. It really is unreadable without it.

Does anyone know of any plugins that disables javascript on a website basis for chrome?
CommAI: a platform for training and evaluating AI systems by Facebook
In the US the quality of service is regulated but there are not many price regulations. Tell me, in what way would the US system have to change for medical providers to give clear pricing information? Be specific, don't use words like "capitalist" or "regulation".
You can't predict Black Swan events by looking at the past... by that logic 2008 shouldn't have happened because the markets were going up for so long. Actually I would stay out of predicting the future in absolutes myself... things are at best probabilistic.
Where is the story? This post doesn't link to any article or anything.
The Back-End for Front-End Pattern (BFF)
Well if the grandparent needs more than a hundred instances of VS Code open, that could be a serious issue.
> The United States has a complicated tax code because it attempts to make things more "fair" for some people.

As opposed to the other countries with automated taxes, that don't attempt it?
"Bad faith," seriously? I have to mention the bad aspects of anything that doesn't contribute to global warming if someone says it does? What's next, someone says mercury emitted by coal plants contributes to global warming, and I have to be careful to say "it's still a serious pollutant" if I point out that it doesn't?
The translation from docs to plain js is really easy for me, but it seems we might be in the minority.

Would have been nice to have something tangible to point others to ...
Done, thank you! We'll probably be playing whack-a-mole on this for the next couple months...
Google and Levi’s Project Jacquard jacket has restored my faith in wearables
>do you have any references?

My statement rested on the original intent of the OO paradigm, which I described in the subsequent paragraph, including the bus example.

And, the reason you agree that the bus is best modeled as mutable is because it represents this original intent!

You can (and did) make an argument for why you like immutability. There are valid reasons to want to be assured that the data doesn't change, but that doesn't make it good OO design vs just being overlaid to achieve some other purpose. On a side note, it also introduces the question of which copy of the object/state is referenced elsewhere and what the possible inconsistency means. That again points to the tension between OO and immutability.

So, never say never, but the more immutability you have, the more difficult it is to pull off a good OO design overall. If you imagine that every object is immutable, then you really won't have an OO design at all.

>Integer should also be mutable?

I see no inherent reason number objects must be immutable. In fact, if you've ever done math with Java's related BigDecimal class, you quickly realize how much cleaner and less error-prone it would be if that class was mutable, especially when performing a series of operations. That thing has internal state, so why am I forced to continuously assign the results of each operation to a completely new object vs simply having those operations update state?
No, I didn't misunderstand the quote:

"set up a nightly sweep from PayPal to a proper bank account"

In other words, there is no mention there of any second bank account as a final depository... which is, of course, the best mechanism.
No, what he's saying is the reason (health care consumption / GDP per capita) is abnormally high in the US is the probably same as the reason that (all consumption / gdp per capita) is abnormally high in the US.

That's not circular. It's merely pointing to an underlying cause that is probably not specific to the health care system.
Really..? I thought PayPal was extremely popular everywhere in Europe
Hm. Then suppose I turn off the OOM killer. What happens to a process that writes to its parent's page if the system has no memory left to commit?
German literary figure Gunther Gräss recalls his days as a young conscript into the Waffen SS:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/04/how-i-spent-the...

One of his peers finds the strength to resist -- and the witnessed struggle is a heartbreak.
> With offline software you have no such exposure

Generally I agree that it's a higher cost and therefore less valuable target, but there are ways to mass deploy some exploits. For example, you could use a browser exploit to obtain access, and then use that to mass deploy an exploit on tax return software.
I find the opposite effect - liberals have thought much more deeply about their views, and conservatives often just parrot shallow talking points.

For example, a group of my progressive acquaintances has been debating in depth on the New Yorker's reporting over past few months, including especially the long piece on Hillary the week before the election. They have framed that discussion around progressive views on fairness of opportunity and fairness of wealth distribution.

The leading political progressives have the same depth of argument - listen to Obama's speeches, the speeches at the DNC, Bernie and Robert Reich, Kander on voting, Stiglitz.

In contrast the right is intellectually bankrupt. Michael Anton's articles motivated the right for the past few months and the articles are poorly argued flimflam. Heritage's chief economist is disingenuous and misguided. The chief GOP wonk in Congress, Paul Ryan, is a mediocrity who barely understands healthcare never mind economics. This is what happens when a party goes to war on expertise[1] (because expertise of course threatens their donors' ability to make huge amounts of money[2]).

1. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of-experti...

2. http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/10/14871696/sco...
Why did you post this as a comment and not in the body of the post? It makes it very hard to find.
That sounds like a healthcare problem, not a playground problem.
So, one gets 1 VPS for free forever..?
The flipside of this is the reactionary multitudes who spout 'sjw' or 'virtue signalling' or 'socialist' when someone on the left questions the status-quo.

Its a problem on both sides.
Intuit's lobbying isn't limited to opposing return-free filing. They also lobby to keep the tax code at a certain level of complexity that puts the most Americans in the sweet spot between too complex to feel comfortable using software and too simple to need software.

FWIW, the reason that Intuit believes that return-free filing is a bad idea is that they believe that you need someone who advocates for the biggest refund/smallest tax bill and the government isn't in a position to be that advocate since its revenues depend on tax collection. I don't generally agree and this sort of lobbying was the one area in which I questioned Intuit's "Integrity Without Compromise" core value during my time working there, albeit not on TurboTax. However, I did meet many people that did work on TurboTax and they all believed this strongly.
There are certain attempts to bring this "pay for content" to masses. Current model of subscribing to each site doesnt work. I dont think there is one widely adopted solution exists that would let you do one payment and access to sites. I sae attempts like cointent and brave, but whether they stick or not is yet to be seen.

Ps:google emp.
Not using an IDE just strikes me as an exercise in pointless masochism.
A command-line fuzzy finder written in Go
I take it the writer of the headline has not met the Cotton Lobby in the US. We should all be wearing hemp, but they are quite good at their job. North Dakota grew hemp during WWII, but getting it legal again is a pain in the rear. I'm sure spider silk will have a bit of problems too.
Maybe (just a guess) it depends on where you are? I suspect if you live in a city which leans left, all the people who go with the flow and don't think too much about their views end up being on the left because that's everyone else. The people going against the grain at least have thought more deeply of their views.

And if you live in a majority red community, people who have left views will be the ones who have thought long and deep about their views.
That's like saying that software development is cheap because all you need is a $1000 machine. Sure, the barrier to entry is low, but achieving anything significant still costs a lot (whether in recruitment costs and salaries, or in sweat equity and personal time investment.)
Technically the situation in Canada is the same as in the US. You must use a third party to file your taxes online. There is a donationware system from simpletax.ca and most (all?) of the others will not charge for a sufficiently low yearly income.

That doesn't change the fact that in Canada there is no way for a citizen to file their taxes directly with the government other than by using the paper forms and mailing them in. There used to be a telephone system but that was eliminated some years back.

The relationship between the private tax preparers and the CRA is much closer than is healthy. I suspect that is related to the current situation.

This bothers me enough that I file my taxes on paper as a form of protest. The nice thing is that you can put pretty much any nonsense on there you want. They will just ignore your figures if they disagree which of course shows how silly the current situation is.