skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's well beyond theoretical. The system is total nonsense.

I think a sane first step would be a N-month statute of limitations on bills. Anything you're going to be billed for should be sent within N-months. I'm not saying that it should take that long. I'm saying right now there's no limit whatsoever. You could receive a bill for some itemized sub portion (lab work, specialist, a different doctor, etc) a year after a hospital visit and you have no clue what it's for.
It's mainly to minimize risk. If everything goes well, home birth is an option, best with a midwife. If it's legal, anyway. But if something goes wrong, you'll end up at hospital, mother and/or child may die or be disabled, and the overall price will likely be greater.
I’d love to know of an existing end to end encrypted chat platform with a search experience comparable to Slack.

The only way that’s obvious to me is searching locally on your device. This will not be a happy experience for any moderately sized organization.
OTS sounds like a good thing overall if it is less wasteful and lower cost. With Amazon's logistics, they should be able to use the data from these food shortages to better inform the OTS system of what to order and when to order it. Maybe it's bad in the short-term, but the insights are still valuable for better logistics.
Crony capitalism.

"Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk taken for them, but rather, as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism

(exactly what I explained in a separate comment on this thread :-))
Do you know any coyotes that can smuggle Californians in?
>not because of the supply and demand.

It's still supply and demand. When you have a monopoly on the demand side, you can significantly put downward pressure on the price.

Supply and demand doesn't cease to exist even when the market is screwed up. It just puts constraints on the curves. Google "supply and demand graph in a monopoly" to see more.
I'm assuming the former, but I could be wrong.
That would be disappointing. The iPhone X has been a game changer for me. It's such a step forward from the previous iPhones, it feels like same jump as when I got my first iPhone 9 years ago.
I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market.

I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with.

If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, that's wonderful. But, they can leave me out of it, and I can do without whatever pay schedule and benefits they manage to extract from the employer.

IMO the real issue with current law is that collective bargaining agreements must apply to all employees in a bargaining unit.
I don't recall what the itemized bill was before insurance took care of it, but with health insurance, each of my kids actual cost to me was $100 out of pocket. In the US.

I'm sure the quoted price before insurance was probably ridiculous, though.
After thinking about this article for a while, I have two observations to
make.

One, if we're at the point where we need a how-to guide for people to leave
the technology industry, the industry has a really big problem. And I don't
jsut mean its "toxic culture" as the article puts it. Women and minorities who
make it into a technology career in the first place are probably twice as
competent as others, simply because their work is judged twice as harshly [1]
and there are no end of people eager to make their life harder, one way or
another. So those companies that are losing their women and minority workers,
are losing talent they really want to retain, over and beyond any diversity
considerations.

Two, this is really not the time to leave a career in technology, not for
minorities, not for straight white dudes. Right now, tech skills are in very
high demand and it is quite possible to make a very lucrative career out of
them. This is a unique opportunity for women and minorities to do vey well
professionally through skill and brain power alone. It is adding injustice on
top of injustice to allow yourself to be swept by the wayside when you have
what it takes to get ahead. Despite the "toxic culture", the industry sorely
needs competent technologists. If you are one, you should let nothing stop
you from taking advantage of it.

Now is not the time to give up. You give up now, you're giving up on a
brilliant future and a great career that you absolutely deserve. Don't allow
that to happen. Not "for the good of the industry"- for your own interest.

We need a guide for surviving and thriving int the industry, in spite of its
culture- not one for bailing out.

_____________

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-gender-matte...

These studies reveal that in many selection processes, the bar is
unconsciously raised so high for women and minority candidates that few
emerge as winners. For instance, one study found that women applying for a
research grant needed to be 2.5 times more productive than men in order to
be considered equally competent.
For step 3, I almost always loosen my grip on the wheel and let it mostly straighten myself. So miming wouldn't include nearly as much counter-steering, even if I did remember to mime the whole process.
I think this is the gist of it. Most of the arguments I’ve seen against unionization seem to appeal to the inflated egos that a lot of developers possess.
To be clear, the US has obscene levels of infant mortality overall. But many states are significantly worse than the national average.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...
If you work with some industrial machines via serial protocols it is very much alive.
I've always been in a fine negotiating position for pay, but I've never felt like I had any negotiating position for things like getting a cubicle or office instead of an open floor plan, getting IP rights to things I do in my spare time that are not related to my own job but related to something my employer is doing somewhere, running an interview process that doesn't suck for both candidates and interviewers, etc.
And yet for profit entities proliferate it at every level, and the constant drumbeat of people against nationalization is for people to be "smart" consumers of healthcare, as if you can make an informed market-based decision about which provider to use while in the back of a damn ambulance.
I think maybe people wouldn’t eat something here, other there. And not it’s trouble for people rate restaurants, even menu items
where can one find a trustworthy website for batteries?
In addition, building construction has a massive carbon footprint. Concrete creates 5% of the world's CO2 [1], not even counting the energy used in construction. Home delivery from a distribution center eliminates stores. Seems like that will bring massive energy savings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...
Ask the non-union folk about that.

Getting into a movie industry union is very difficult and rather expensive to boot. You don't just get into these unions by showing up at the door.

The correlation to software would be having a list of progressively difficult things you have to do, so that, ultimately, only 10% of people make it in. The rest pay their dues by working minimum wage jobs and unpaid internships.
Getters and Setters – Cliff Click's BlogCliff
I learned about the Transputer from Byte Magazine, probably by reading one of Dick Pountain's articles. I thought it was interesting enough that I wrote Inmos to see if I could get some free documentation. I think I must have filled out a standard form, because I remember that they wanted to know what kind of professional role I had. I just wrote "student" and they sent me a bunch of stuff anyway, but the paperwork that came back said I was a "consultant", which I found rather amusing.

Alas, Transputers were on the way out at that point (probably they were never on the way in), so I never got to actually work with one.

They still seem pretty cool, but in a decidedly retro way now.
Except collective bargaining won't exist without that law. The free rider problem will destroy any possibility of collective bargaining. That's why I think it's disingenuous to say:

If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, that's wonderful. But, they can leave me out of it, and I can do without whatever pay schedule and benefits they manage to extract from the employer.

Well you can't really 'opt out' of the benefits of their negotiation in that way, and for the same reason you can't opt out of the union. You're not talking about a future with some unions where people can also choose to go it alone, you're talking about a future with no unions at all. At least be honest about that.
Like how a number of different ad blockers subscribe to the EasyList ad blocking list, correct? https://easylist.to/

“
The links listed below allow you to select filter lists for use in your browser provided that you are using a compatible ad blocker (tested with Adblock Plus, AdBlock and uBlock Origin). Furthermore, EasyPrivacy Tracking Protection List is available for Internet Explorer 9 and higher.
”
Me, I'd say kleptocracy. Got that from Gibson's Peripheral :)
The government only (at least in Québec).
> I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit

You realise that unions are something imposed on employers, right? They don't like them.
Programmers have unions in some European countries, for example IG Metal in Germany.
> You ask for the VAT number and only if the company is from your own country, you add the VAT, otherwise its 0%.

No, it is not 0%, it is VAT deferred.
It seems to be a huge deal if it leads to the kernel folks both breaking the embargo and getting patches out later than they could have.
Is that not somehow auto-discoverable using DNS trickery?
Interesting that the Czech republic are in 5th place. They definitely don't spend $32k per birth.
Yes, Cap'n Proto is careful to require that the data is aligned.

(Protobuf, on the other hand, fundamentally doesn't allow for multi-byte loads in the first place since integers use variable-width encoding, so alignment is irrelevant there.)
Germany and Switzerland have complicated systems where you are mandated to have insurance but the state provides you with insurance if you cannot afford it.
Do you agree that his arguments are not logic and conclusive?

In that they are public speaking and they are not a thesis. They are public speaking, and those aren't logical and conclusive. The point you're trying to make could only stand if all the speakers you like and feel represent your world view have 100% logically rigorous speeches.

But can you point out where he says it’s so great to be alive?

I don't need to, to refute your silly assertion that he's somehow anti-happiness. None of these videos are direct statements about joy, because they are from talks where he is making an entirely differnt point, but it's clear that he's like any human being who thinks children are wonderful, and likes to have fun and laugh.

Talking about the potential of children, and of a pristine relationship with one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg9TY8uwaSY

Humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyWwuv1UkRg

Stoner Comics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jisfAwMOhrQ

3. If you call „I survived the gulag where thousands perished“ as a silver lining you must have a pretty grim world view.

Again, not what I said. You said that he put forward books to depress his audience. That's obviously not true. The Gulag Archipelago is meant to alarm and meant to make a personal, emotional connection to the magnitude of the possible evil of such flowery sounding utopian ideologies.

If you don’t find it depressing you must have a very strong character

Or, one could be sure that one is in opposition to such ideologies. My father's older brother disappeared due to one regime with a collectivist ideology. My family here in the US is only here because the US military defended their lives from another regime with a collectivist ideology. Why should The Gulag Archipelago make anyone depressed, as opposed to angry? As opposed to resolute in the opposition of disguised evil?

I can only imagine it makes someone depressed if they identify with such an ideology.

What's more, I explicitly cite Dr. Peterson's message, "As for a silver lining -- to buck up, bear your burdens, and strive to live a worthwhile life," as a silver lining. I find it problematic that you ignore that and try to stuff a different position in my mouth above.
I don't understand your comment? The question of the post is why does it cost this much? A responder said capitalism, and I am just going further into the various political definitions that describe the current system, which is helpful in inderstanding the original question of the article.

If it's an oligarchical corporate state, then it would make sense that hospitals (companies) abuse of their regulatory capture (oligarchism) are exploiting the majority of people financially and otherwise (neo-fuedalism), largley by making them dependent or subservient to their systems.

How is that backwards?
The problem isn't that a few stores ran out of bananas or one item for the day. Take a look at the pictures: entire sections like produce are basically empty.

The only time I've seen shelves that bare were at Kmart and Sears locations before they went bankrupt and shut down.
The main developer has rewritten the whole thing in version 5 in NodeJS and HTML5, it's pretty slick now. I have it running in a docker container on GCE.
Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like a really good app. It recommends to disable the Windows firewall - which is understandable. But, then you start getting pestered by Windows to turn it back on. Do you turn off the Windows firewall or have them both turned on?
If it is their intellectual property now, then yes. Even if they aren't actually mad at you for using it, protecting assets is a part of business. Valve did this quite a few times.
18 months now! :D
> I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market.

But that is the market, is it not? If your employer chooses to require all employees to negotiate as a unit, and is not required to do so by law, aren't they just doing that because they're a rational actor in the market?

The law is a different question, yes, but the fundamental motivation is to prevent 80% of the company from negotiating, say, "We all get 1-hour lunch breaks" and the remaining 20% from benefiting from the negotiation because that's the rational thing for the company to do in that situation, thereby providing an incentive for people to remove themselves from the "agreement" and coast on it nonetheless. What would you do to solve this problem in other ways?
I won't take a position on this plan until I see the details. There are plenty of neighborhoods south of 60th that aren't congested. And congestion varies greatly by time of day. It would be pretty unfortunate if entities which aren't actually contributing to congestion get swept into this scheme. Delivery trucks need to service businesses in busy areas, but they usually operate in the early morning when traffic is light. Likewise, taxis and rideshares that operate during off-off hours are filling in for the reduced service of the MTA without actually contributing to congestion.

A congestion pricing scheme that increases the efficiency of the total transportation system would be excellent, but I am skeptical. Congestion, whether on the subway or the road (or even the sidewalk), is already a negative feedback loop that encourages seeking alternate routes/times. If people are taking congested roadways, they are doing so _in spite_ of all the other options available to them in a city with extensive public transit. I am curious what kind of data informs this plan and whether it is primarily a solution to transit times or just another source of revenue for the MTA.
The ability to have and provide for children could be considered a fundamental human right, or THE fundamental right.
That's fair. I have never worked with them, so I don't know the precise details; but one of the big complaints I've heard was that compilers weren't ready for them yet, while these days there's now a larger field of open source compilers and has been a lot more research in parallelism.
The only problem I have with a light client is the fact that it is nigh to the impossible to do any sort of mining at all.
What makes you think engineers are against these practices?
A free-standing birth center, without a financial incentive to divert you into an associated hospital, could run you $700 out of $3000. (you pay $700, insurance pays $2300) Some of these places are very nice, feeling far less like a prison or mental institution than a hospital. I know one where the laboring mother can open the door to her room, then step out on to a patio that is separated from the street only by some large bushes. There is no feeling that the place is ready to lock you in and call social workers over a bit of dark humor.

A midwife at home would be perhaps $1000 out of $5000. (you pay $1000, insurance pays $4000) Residents of California may have trouble finding this; the obstetricians got their competition mostly outlawed.

Doing things by yourself is of course free. I did that with twins and with a 10-pound (4.5 kg) kid.

With all of the above, you are far less likely to be subjected to time pressures that will lead to drugs and ultimately to major surgery. Surgery is not just an expense; it is a hazard to both mother and babies because it impairs the ability to maintain and deliver future pregnancies. Surgery rates in the USA are improperly high because of how an uneducated jury is thought to respond; death and injury from surgery ("at least they tried everything") looks better than death and injury from non-action.

Except for the do-it-yourself option, there is emergency equipment. People greatly overestimate the chance of having a fast-developing problem, and they overestimate the ability of a standard hospital to respond effectively. If you truly need surgery, the time to travel for it can overlap nicely with the time it takes a hospital to prepare.
This is basically a Value Added Tax (VAT) combined with a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Both of those are things that have been proposed in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Nearly 1% of children born in Mississippi die in the first year. Insane!
I think that's some of it, but there's probably other causes too. Like malpractice risk driving certain decisions about care and US specific cultural expectations around the role of nurses or midwives, pain management, etc.
Sure there is, I'll articulate one: the federal government is giving preferential treatment to people who waive their constitutional privacy rights (and pay money) and going out of its way to intentionally inconvenience those who don't pay up and give up their rights. The government giving explicit preferential treatment to people who waive their constitutional rights and punishing those who don't is a clear violation of citizens' constitutional rights: if the government can do whatever it wants to make you miserable until you waive your rights, you don't really have them.

It's analogous to a state government monitoring citizens' speech, picking out anyone who criticizes the governor's political party, and banning them from using the freeway.

Would my argument pass legal muster? No, I'm not a lawyer and I thought of it in 3 minutes on a Friday afternoon. Is it articulable? Yes. Could the court rule in my favor if it were explained better by someone with esquire at the end of their name? Sure. Judges often accept or make any argument they like no matter how bad so long as it fits in with their political ideology.
The world is going to split into “cheap AI” that runs in the cloud and is free or heavily subsidized by selling your data and giving you biased functionality toward the AI provider and “expensive AI” that runs completely locally and has no or limited outbound connectivity and is solely biased toward the user desires. Hopefully this comes in open source as it will be hard to write and expensive to run on local hardware.
option=value, option:value, option/value and even option\value (without dashes). Not joking.
Even in a seller's market unions will still provide you with leverage you couldn't get otherwise. Unions aren't only so the dispossessed can bargain for more, they're so any group can bargain for more.

The one example I always give is of my mom starting out working in the 70's. Her employer was not unionized but had several unionized competitors in the city. Because her employer didn't want to bother with union negotiations all the time they paid a quarter more an hour than their competitors and so no union ever started up. My mom was benefitting from a union she wasn't even a member of. You could be in that same position if a programmer union ever started up.
Gamedev is the only sub-industry that comes to mind that could see a large benefit from a union. That said burnout is so high and there's so many people beating down the door for a job that its never really materialized.
Use http://textnow.com if you need an incoming/outgoing phone number. It's free also. If you just want calling, and you care about open-source and security, use Riot. http://riot.im/app and if you want something a little more simple I suggest ooVoo.
read Anathem, if you haven't already.
I think the realistic among us realize that creating a software developer’s union would lead to dramatically increased offshoring. Actors, plumbers, etc.? Can’t offshore those, so the dynamic between workers and management is a little different. Software development, you can offshore the hell out of that. Shoot, look at automobile workers, granted there’s still a sizable amount in this country but nothing like it used to be — and I think unions had a lot to do with that (“we’re paying them how much? Just make em in Mexico”).
>>compensation should be based purely on your individual skills

First: Profit seeking organizations don't care about skill they care: about wait for it... profit which is the money you add vs the money you cost, which may be completely divorced from skill.

Second: Literally nobody can accurately measure a specific individuals contribution, through skill or otherwise.
I'd love to throw the guy a few bucks in bitcoin, but the network fee is going to cost me $11.
Gah, typos! More THAN theory, and

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function
Do they mix knockoffs with the Amazon Basics stock? I've bought a few cables and stuff from there and they've always been pretty good, but I don't think I'd buy from any other seller there/be comfortable if I wasn't getting Amazon's stuff.
also, there's nothing preventing a program from debugging a trusted process, and getting that process to perform the requests for the malicious program.
The Untreatable: The Spanish Flu of 1918
This happened with our first child on our PPO. We kept getting bills for over a year. I had no idea what half of them were for or who any of the doctors mentioned were. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those bills were scams from people who look for birth announcements in the paper.

Subsequent children were under an HMO, and we never saw a bill.