skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Any HN conversation that starts out as a debate about Obamacare and ends up saving someone a few thousand dollars a year is a good conversation, so you are very welcome.

Health insurance prices are a nightmare. Please don't let me come off as sounding like I don't think they are. The goal of the ACA was fix that problem, and though it fixed some very important problems, it surely didn't fix that one.
You're assuming it hasn't happened already - all we know for sure is we haven't (yet) had one with Snowden's type of motivation.

(Or perhaps we have, and whichever trusted journalists they've chosen to share with are franticly poring over the exfiltrated data working out how best to angle the story without throwing the whistleblower and/or innocent FB users under the bus...)
Yes, the coincidence was intentional, thanks for noticing! I haven't read the book but I loved the famous review[0] of it.

Getting my online portfolio in shape is one of those projects I keep weighing against actually making some new art. A few old pics can be found here, but I have many many more to photograph and put online:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140210041241/http://www.kevinfr...

Also: I don't mean to imply that my writing software has no influence on my artwork -- I've even made a few works of digital art[1], and for a while I was planning to go to grad school in that direction. But I've been programming since I was a kid, and I see "writes code" as a separate thing from "works as a software engineer." I could have made that clearer.

Thanks for your interest!

[0]: http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

[1]: http://lv8.biztos.com
What are we supposed to take away from an out of context blog post about someone's office drama again?
I hope anyone worth their weight in salt leaves Facebook as an employee and as a user. Employees should already feel shame since the election. They all know what Facebook is built on and what they've done and what they're doing.
Nobody upthread of you is arguing that health insurance prices did not go up after the implementation of the ACA. The argument is that the rate of increase has decreased. I don't know if this is true, and don't have data to argue one way or another, but you and the other people in this thread are arguing about different numbers.
She's was a Sysadmin at Facebook from what I can tell.
Ok, but g is an abstract psychological theory, not practical achievement and success in life.
GScope – Kotlin's scoping functions for Groovy
Many happy memories. Can we make it full-screen please ?
a. The problem of easily raising money from VCs.

b. The problem of being able to sell your solution while having a shockingly low transaction per second.
> do we simply not understand biology well enough to make a theoretical analysis?

Correct. We understand bits and pieces of biology but we don't understand the entire system well enough to predict anything with any confidence.
Ghost is a very nice platform. How do you think it compares to Grav? My firm has been considering both.
> I can't speak to how it works at FB but I would imagine that there are a lot of limitations on what rank and file employees can do. I guess I could be wrong.

Cool, now read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503

Any changes to your thoughts?
Tragically Lost in Joshua Tree’s Wild Interior
Aw man. So much nostalgia. <3
Blockchain is in the open so you don't have to trust one organization. Multiple organizations watch each other. And one organization might quit anytime.

You're right that many blockchain projects are based on one organization, let's say that Porsche project, and they could use a distributed database instead.

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/themes/porsche-digital/porsc...

"All activities are documented in the blockchain, making deletions transparent." Sure, but Porsche is the only provider of data (writes) and can change the rules. I don't see how others are writing in the same blockchain.
Then download your data file and see. I don’t think FB has this data from iPhone users, but I’d be happy admit I was wrong if you proved it.
The author was a senior engineer at FB, well respected, and known for digging into really hard technical problems.

But yeah, it is a bit "inside baseball" and I'm not sure how applicable to outsiders.
Please don’t adopt this kind of hostile style. It wrecks the whole conversation.
In case some UX / HCI experts read this thread, are there any credible studies of information density in user interfaces plotted over time?
It took me about 5 weeks.

If I lapse on usage, I find myself unable to really feel like I'm working at 100% efficiency. It takes a few weeks of nightly use before I feel good again.

You may not feel a night and day difference. It can be subtle, but things like not needing multiple naps a day can really make a difference to your quality of life.

If your SO says you snore, or choke and stop breathing, PAY ATTENTION. Get a sleep study!
> signaling success and status

You already have the insight. "Signaling" is just as much advertising as anything else. It's well-studied and the money spent in maintaining status-quo is just as important as growing a new product.
do you have any citations to back this up? that’s a serious claim. Huge breach of trust by Apple if true.
That the person writing has a huge ego and you should probably not hire them.
Not sure I agree, there are some pretty entertaining and well made movies about several religious topics. Also, one real flat earther that I know in person is a pretty good artist. He just has taken too many hallucinogens and gets drunk daily, which blunts his skeptic and logic abilities.
Okay, got it. I wouldn't call that PoS, but I see what you mean.

I think of the crux of PoS as the incentive system that keeps bad actors out -- if you act maliciously, you lose your stake.
Evidence suggests it wasn't true at the NSA five or so years back...

It's _probably_ true that things in general have gotten better since then, and it's probably true that they're better at _some_ companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon - but I'd tend to agree that it's very unlikely to be true for "most companies".
I'm not totally clear on the different situations here. I thought the tax penalty was only about $3k for even fairly wealthy families (family of 4, $150k/yr salary). It sounds like you felt you couldn't afford ACA insurance ($17k) and couldn't afford to pay the penalty either, so you went out and purchased $3k of "insurance" you don't actually have any faith in and didn't really want. Am I confused about the penalty amounts? Or you just felt that if you were going to pay $3k, you might as well give it to Christian Medishare?
The short answer here is yes. We're constantly working to get more complete models, but surprisingly big effects can come from surprisingly small pieces of the puzzle. We still don't even really understand how Tylenol/Paracetamol/Acetaminophen works!

A great example of the gap between our current models and what would be sufficient comes from the COX-2 inhibitors (Vioxx/Celebrex). Ibuprofin (Motrin/Advil) and other NSAIDs modulate both COX-1 and COX-2 receptors in the body to reduce inflammation, but inhibiting COX-1 also causes stomach damage. The early COX-2-specific inhibitors were designed from the ground up using our best models, which were thought to be well-understood. Unfortunately, after several years on the market, it was discovered that this also came with a large increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The body just has so so many moving pieces, and while we're getting better, it's going to be some time before we are able to base these studies entirely on theory, and when we get there we'll be able to skip the mice entirely!
iOS doesn't. Apps using private APIs are not allowed on the App Store. Apple granted Uber an entitlement for a private API, but no other app has this:
https://twitter.com/chronic/status/915930211941781504
Yep. Equifax, Experian and Transunion come to mind.
Healthcare is a basic infrastructure problem, not that it is considered this. As a basic infrastructure problem, there are many who see a profit to be made in supplying services. Each country views healthcare from a specific point of view and that dictates how they will, as a country, provide the general healthcare service.

A country like the USA see this in the light of healthcare as a business, make as big a profit as you can, irrespective of the actual services that you provide. In other countries where the relevant governments provide universal service they allow private businesses to dictate the price that the government pays for the supplies required.

So, we have general commodities when supplied into the healthcare system being charged at 10x or greater for on item which, if not used in a healthcare environment, is charged a much lower price. This applied to things like computers, phones, chairs, tissues, matches, paper, toilet paper, gloves, etc,

The suppliers get away with this because of the perception that these goods are of a higher quality. These goods often come off the same production lines as those sold in a normal commercial market.

I have seen up to date medical equipment that cost a large fortune that looked pretty, but if you actually looked at the basic equipment was technology that was anything up to 10 years old and was superseded by stuff your could get commercially.

The amount of money charged for drugs is based on the amount of money spent of research, which if you actually looked at the figures thrown about were spent by the public purse not the private.

It is a captive market and those supplying into it want it that way to maximises their profits. Morality questions are not considered to be important unless it has regulatory considerations that will significant reduce your profit margins if you fail to live up to them.

The problems within the healthcare system (insurance included) will not be solved any time soon. Even if there was a revolution that changed the entire basis of how and when healthcare was supplied, it will soon return to what we see today as greed is the basic motivator for society as a whole.

To bring about real change requires people really changing and this will not happen because we are basically looking out for ourselves and our own. This occurs on the local level, on the regional level, on the state level and on the national world levels.

The healthcare system is an area that needs a complete overhaul worldwide. It is not going to happen since most people do not have the ability to see past their local situation.
I respect Facebook and their engineering chops as much as the next person, they are truly world class programmers, but how the holy hell is everyone daydreaming that they don’t work for an advertising company?

You sell and use people’s data to get money: this is the business plan. Full stop.

Connecting people can definitely be lucrative and useful in other ways but facebooks particular implementation is impression based not action/outcome based.
No they’re not. They’re in denial. I used to work there as an intern, so I get a front row seat to how a lot of employees are reacting. The word I would use is: indignation.

I’ve seen this us-against-them mentality play out elsewhere in various toxic cult-like organizational cultures. The NSA was a great public example of just how manifestly horrifying things can get with tens to hundreds of decent people willfully participating in corrupt or unethical practices.

The way this all works is terribly fascinating, but the short of it is that you have to become closed off and indoctrinated in order to fit in. Particularly at places like Facebook, Google, and generally anywhere else that provides free on-campus dinners (a good heuristic), employees build their social circles and identities around the company. This, coupled with various other factors, permits an astounding cognitive dissonance amongst a large group of otherwise benign and rational people.

EDIT There’s an interesting additional complication I’ve seen at times: internal spin. The media gets things about companies so wrong so frequently that it’s almost too easy to discount the things with an uncomfortable shred of truth as ‘fake news’.
Why a size threshold? An American GDPR seems like a fine idea, especially if it’a similar enough to GDPR that complying with one gets the other for free.
With iOS we have to trust/hope that Apple is doing the right thing. With Android we can audit the code. Yes, the early permissions model left a lot to be desired, and was subsequently revised. But we could always look at the OS source to see where things might be leaking. Unless, of course, these things are happening in the Google Framework level, at which point, we have to trust/hope that Google is doing the right thing.
FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data.
And yet we know that the personal data of your customers is worth billions.

And we also know that nothing about writing walled software ecosystems prevents one from syphoning this data.

So it would appear that Apple has purposefully left money on the table.

So please tell me how that fits with your 'self-interest' explanation of Apple's stance here.
You could easily click on the (rachelbythebay.com) after the link and find out that a lot of her posts have been discussed here over the years, and that a number of them have been posted in the few weeks. Those recent ones will give you the context.
Perpetual arbitrary changing license fees are something everyone wants to avoid.

The fees went away, they started moving.

Its more complicated than that, but ultimately they won: the people demanding license fees got flipped off and they got what they wanted for free.

...so, I know a lot of people have been angry about this, but by every metric what they did was a total business success.

If you want the guys from Unity to act differently, you have to actually tangibly affect them (eg. pick a different engine), not just complain.
As I understand it, and your accountant is an expert while I am not, you have to be actually self-employed --- not moonlighting or doing side-work, with your money all coming in through the LLC --- and your spouse can't be eligible for group coverage through their job.
> Anecdotally I've heard of interns getting fired for just looking at profiles (that they aren't actual friends with) even around 5 years ago. So at least they take it somewhat seriously.

So the customer's privacy got violated, because interns had blanket access to private customer data. To me that's very much not taking security seriously.
Consider also every large adtech firm.
I used to make Hypercard stacks back in 7th grade when I was learning from Quantum Link (Q-Link) hackers like Mobeius from the Pan-American Information Network (#hellonearth).

And AOL hackers and soical engineers like HappyHardcore, creator of AOL4Free & the Master Blaster, the famous Da Chronic, creator of AOHell and KT (Shameer) who first taught me social engineering in 1995-

http://www.stepbystep.com/America-Onlines-Dark-Side-131812/

Koceilah Rekouche aka Chron, photo from the 1990s-

https://www.flickr.com/photos/captivating/3816111466/
Just flag and move on.

I didn't mind when it was one out of context post, but it seems like there's been 5 or so hitting front page from her domain in the past 2 days. Your guess is as good as mine.
I think the previous commenter must have meant "had" as that says as of sometime before the 2012 date on that article the master password allegedly no longer worked.

Still egregious if that sort of early stage stuff hung around that long, but not the same as it being there today.
Waiting lists for doctors can be long for non-emergencies. This applies to most countries with a public health system.
Typically they are prioritized based on need, not money.
Also arranging regular appointments weeks/months before allows for less downtime in the doctors office thus cheaper healthcare. It's annoying but it works.

Also Germany suffers from an ageing population which is why there aren't that many experienced professionals of any kind.
It constantly amazes me how huge the variation is between some software services and the reward for their effort.

On the one hand you have giant startups earning millions from a tiny SaaS tool.

And on the other hand you have a single developer sharing a huge library of useful tools for free.

It's a crazy world now, it seems opportunity is everywhere.
Their business model is leaky abstractions as a rule and malicious compliance when exceptions occur -- we (our policymakers) have to know the underlying complexity (of Facebook in order to issue permission for its continuing existence), otherwise it's a foot-gun by default (for constituents of those policymakers), and furthermore when we need Facebook's help to clean up its messes then it's half-hearted and doesn't address the underlying issue.

There's not much they can do other than assume absolute pacifism and absolute neutrality, to a fault. Effectively they must be resolute in their support for the stability of society, and that includes putting down political activists like Antifa and BLM. Facebook must no longer be a platform for activism of any kind, where all content deemed objectionable by anyone is pruned.
The class definitions were not in any file. That was the entire point. They didn't exist at all except as transient build artifacts.
Would that be a negative aspect?

Why wouldn't you try to bring the best possible experience to your reader?
Correct. There are many stats relevant to the national discussion that a patriotic Facebook employee might leak. One is the effective CPM (eCPM) rate between the Trump and Clinton campaigns. My hunch is there was a massive disparity there, in favor of Trump. Facebook has only released the "paid CPM" rates, which is suspicious. Most Facebook advertisers look at eCPM, which combines paid + "organic" reach, in other words: the net reach per dollar spent.
True, but as patients we obviously have no control over that. Also, ironically, if my insurance had simply processed the claim as they were supposed to, they would have paid far less than I'm being billed. ER cash prices are purposely inflated because insurance reimbursements are typically 1/3rd or less of the billed amount. But when the claim gets denied, they come after the individual for the full cash price.
Big misconception here.

Private interests incentivize individuals to undermine our democratic mechanisms. If we let them, we are fools to expect anything else.

The only reason many other companies don’t have to have to explain themselves to governments is they are legally allowed to incentivize the opposite with capital. It’s called lobbying.
Jesus Christ, if you want to put up one of those buildings you'd have to pay the existing renters over 3.5 years rent.
As your other comment showed, "status" and "status-quo" are just as important.

A brand will spend money to signal that they have the success to be able to spend that money, something that has had close to a century of study. You can also see this in how Silicon Valley companies "signal" through fundraising, which is just another form of advertising.

You have an interesting perspective but I assure you that it is not new. Please don't take my word for it, instead here's a good article since you're referring to economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
Zuck has full control of the company by design, those shares you bought are participation options with no control.
I respect Google and their engineering chops as much as the next person, they are truly world class programmers, but how the holy hell is everyone daydreaming that they don’t work for an advertising company?

You sell and use people’s data to get money: this is the business plan.

Are people working there really so nieve(sic) as to believe that this is surprising?
> FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data.

Really? So are stories like [1] complete lies? Or does someone inside just blindly grant these "explicitly requested permissions"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503
>"There was a feeling, said one of the people, that Facebook wanted to take aggressive steps to make sure it could regain user trust. And over all, he said, confidence was up."

I'm curious what might be the source of this regained "confidence."? The idea that this will all just blow ever in a few months?
Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning [pdf]
You seem to have an assumption that people aren't competent to decide their own ideas and only follow what they see the most of. That's true to a large extent but you'd have to ban all religious information too if you really meant it.

This whole idea that false information needs to be suppressed only became popular after Trump's election win. People needed an excuse to explain that because they couldn't imagine so many normal reasonable people could possibly vote for him. The only explanation must be that they were not very intelligent and got suckered by external influence. That's a pretty arrogant viewpoint and its conclusion - censorship - is pretty naive direct action that ignores their legitimate concerns as well as the obvious horrible side effects that come with censorship. Since when did "these people aren't smart enough to take care of themselves, let's tell them what to do because we know what's best" ever work on a large population who are different from the "bosses"?
I was think about the similar analysis in Eldred v. Ashcroft: http://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/why-a-recent-sup.... (I’m sure you can find counter examples and people who disagree. Especially considering the implications on the Second Amendment, e.g., Heller.).

The problem with giving prefatory clauses force of law is that such clauses will almost certainly be exteremely general, leaving a court in the position of trying to decide whether a specific law furthers some abstract goal. That is policymaking, not adjudication.

Also, we wouldn’t stand for it if the shoe were on the other foot. If the first amendment said: “robust political debate being necessary to a free state, the freedom of speech shall not be abridged,” would we treat “political debate” as a limiting clause, allowing restrictions for non-political speech?
7 Awesome (and Free) Websites All Newbie Programmers Need to Know
Somehow I doubt you would apply that argument to designing bridges, or medical practice, or airline piloting, or bus driving, or law, or any of a zillion other professions where credentials are normal and essential to safety and liability. We don't let random schmoes do those other things-- aspiring and starry-eyed or not-- without first proving that they know what they're doing.

We certainly don't wait until the bridge has fallen down or the plane has crashed or the patient has died before we put a burden on the professional to certify their competence.

I don't think it's unreasonable to mandate rigorous certification for life-critical, security-critical, and financial software engineering.

You can write a cookie clicker with a high school degree and put it online if you want. But the moment your cookie clicker takes credit card numbers, you should be legally obligated to know what you are doing or hire someone who does.
Size threshold is presumably to allow small startups to grow and explore models without crushing compliance costs. That’s the kind of regulation that protects incumbents who can afford the lawyers and software tools to do compliance properly.

There tends to be an inverse relationship between regulation in a space and incumbents springing up, for better or for worse