skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The underlying problem here is that the consumer doesn't care what the cost of their drugs are; all they do is sign on the dotted line when the doctor recommends something.

Insurees are essentially paying a monthly cost for an effectively unlimited pool of medical funds. As long as the bill is above what their copay costs, they couldn't care less how much the drug costs - if anything, they will choose the drug that costs more than what the nearly identical drug costs so they can 'get their money back.' As long as the consumer is separated from the consequences of their choices, costs will continue to rise. Some kind of incentive for people to actually care about the cost of their decisions needs to be engineered into the system.

Suppose, perhaps, that instead of mandating that employers provide insurance to full-time employees, the government mandated that employers provide catastrophic insurance and contribute the remainder of the difference between the old system and the new to a kind of Health Savings Account: something that's tax-advantaged, and can only be used to pay for healthcare. Employees would then pay their medical bills directly from this fund, and funds will continuously build if they're not used. The kicker is that this HSA also doubles as a retirement fund, and any funds left over when retirement age is reached can be withdrawn without penalty. People will see the money as theirs, and will be much more careful about how they spend it, thus putting pressure on doctors and healthcare providers to reduce prices, rather than increasing them.

This took me ten minutes to think up. Give me half an hour, and I'll work out most of the kinks. Give a team of professionals a few weeks, and I'm sure that we could come up with something that makes infinitely more sense than the ridiculous hodgepodge of special interest legislation and twisted incentives that we have now.
WTF about the American people's morale, fuck your morale NSA.
Thanks guys, really appreciate the suggestions :)
It's hard to talk about David Simon without immediately thinking of The Wire, and I'm glad he mentioned it (he's infamously annoyed that people see it as compelling drama more than its attack against institutions, including the capitalist system):

> So I'm astonished that at this late date I'm standing here and saying we might want to go back for this guy Marx that we were laughing at, if not for his prescriptions, then at least for his depiction of what is possible if you don't mitigate the authority of capitalism, if you don't embrace some other values for human endeavour.

And that's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to endure somehow.

That's the great horror show. What are we going to do with all these people that we've managed to marginalise? It was kind of interesting when it was only race, when you could do this on the basis of people's racial fears and it was just the black and brown people in American cities who had the higher rates of unemployment and the higher rates of addiction and were marginalised and had the shitty school systems and the lack of opportunity.

I still think The Wire is the best TV drama yet made, and that includes Breaking Bad, though I haven't watched Sopranos yet. One of the most amazing things about its achievements is how so un-cop-show-like it is...besides cops being of mixed character, they almost never draw their guns on the show...and yet it's still an addictively entertaining show. Simon and his co-writers were so good at creating characters (and drawing from his deep reporting experience) that even as his show has a strong anti-capitalistic tone, the Wire keeps your attention no matter what your political beliefs. Perhaps Simon could eke out one more grand show...beliefs and opinions can be affected by popular culture as they are by political discourse.
Republic Wireless has a $40/month 4G plan with the Moto X: https://republicwireless.com/plans
Behind what?
Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience
Raise awareness, get bipartisan politicians on board, raise funds to get public support.
* He is defrauding his landlords. They rented him property on the understanding that it was a legal and low-risk engagement.

* He is hurting the neighbors to the properties he re-rents. They arranged to live in residential neighborhoods adjacent to other semi-permanent residents, not an illegal hotel. Hotels are not found in charming residential neighborhoods for a reason: nobody wants to live next to them.

* He is evading taxes that are used to improve new yorkers' quality of life at little/no expense to local residents.

* Insurance fraud is a probable consequence of his business. Since it's hard to get commercial insurance for your illegal venture, if he has ANY insurance, it would be a renter's policy and maybe a personal umbrella policy. Any claims he made would be fraudulent.
This works for a while, but you'd still end up with problems (albeit problems that self-heal relatively quickly) when a highly weighted trust-issuer decides to misbehave.
"According to NYC Research and Analytics, the average price for a hotel room in New York City is $281 a night. That’s for all five the boroughs. In Manhattan, it’s hard to find a room for under $350. Add that hefty 15 percent tax and lodging in Manhattan is an activity for the 1 percent."

Yes, hotels in Manhatten are expensive, but calling it an activity for the 1% is a stretch. The rhetoric of 99%/1% was in response to 1% of US earners taking 20% of total income, at an average of like $400,000.
Yes, it works exactly that way. Marketing and bribery ensures that both doctors and patients will prefer the "new" and expensive drug.
I don't see how those two statements are consistent with each other. The first says you're trying to judge whether or not the law is reasonable, and the second says that you're not trying to comment on what the law ought to be.
Mental Model: Circle of Competence
Have you looked at discourse? Its more of a discussion board.
Yes, I should probably have been more clear on that; it's a "may void your warranty" in that if you've done it, they can refuse to honour the warranty, if they deem it appropriate, and there's technically nothing you can do about it.
If it is externalities that you are worried about, the externalities from him being in prison are likely to be far higher than the externalities of him trying to rent out a few apartments.

I don't agree with the guy, but I also suspect he may have a point about some of the regulations being over prescriptive.

Also, I think that believing that this guy should be in prison for these actions is far more sociopathic than anything this article claims that this guy is doing.
http://openbiometrics.org/revolution.html

The OpenBR source code was shown in Revolution S01E18 and S01E20. Pretty neat actually that they went to the trouble to get real code for the biometrics app they were showing.
After talking with my very conservative family in the mid-west. Yes. They are hated.
It is leaked internal code never meant for public use. Technically more of a grey area than "stolen", but still a bit sketchy in a legal sense, although I personally would have more of an issue with the fact it's not really fully understood by the people using it (or anyone outside of Samsung, I believe).
Really? According to this monograph even logging into a non-password-protected wifi network which doesn't belong to you has been treated as a case of theft in Hungary:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=ZjBvpN0zZNkC&lpg=PA33&ots=Uq...

Not exactly the same situation, but it suggests that the law is fairly strict.
so you're linking to a letter with TWELVE different cases of NSA employees spying on people for "romantic" reasons and that doesn't answer your question? are you playing some kind of semantic game where you narrowly select the meanings of words to exclude the piles and piles of evidence and so "win" some pointless argument?

because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander?
If you get away with that, you would actually be a disrupter, except not a particularly nice one.

Currently the most successful people doing that are child psychiatrists and big pharma, but they convince the parents to buy the drugs for the kids instead. Government seems to be fine with this though, as well as most of society.
No, you need a degree for most CS jobs. CS is too complicated. You need to know how the computer works on a theoretical level which requires a degree.

The CS equivalent to an electrician would be people who do basic IT support (i.e. tell someone to reboot their Windows machine) and easy programming like creating a blog.
I'm bored; lets go deeper.

Why think the man who does not exist exists? why not assume pando made him up, and made the whole story up? The story isn't so implausible that people would doubt it. If anything,the story is toogood - count the number of times the man comes across as a bad guy. Randian of the worst kind? tick. Used to work in wall street? tick. In HFT? tick. Why did he grant an interview if he was trying to keep his business secret? I don't know if the story is made up, but its ringing bells in my head...
The Post conveniently left out that the Pharm company found that "Avastin patients had a 30% higher risk of serious systemic side effects than Lucentis patients did". Why didn't they include the Pharm company's side?

http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/novartis-digs-safety-data-...
hmm, hmm give me the idea for a simple programming language that you can code only with toch gestures. thinking of something like http://snappyturtle.meteor.com/
swipe right .... GO x (length of swipe)
swipe right (but curved) .... JUMP (length of swipe)
swipe down .... REPEAT X
swite rigth .... MAKE

should be possible
He is doing great..lets wish him all the best
Right, if he really thinks this then he's not a very good Ayn Rand disciple.
Corruption is the main reason keeping India from being a developed country. Hope this guy brings the change India needs.
Maybe it's time to start thinking global, move to other countries where we're needed. That would be one solution (though not for many)...
> He co-founded a political organization named Aam Aadmi Party (Translation: Common Man Party) that won 27 of Delhi's 70 seats in its electoral debut, just 6 shy of BJP (an established National Party), and almost three times the no. of seats won by Indian National Congress (the incumbent party in Delhi).

AAP won 38 seats and BJP won 30 [0]

[0] http://eciresults.nic.in/PartyWiseResult.htm
But while drug laws are primarily intended to restrict access to one resource (drugs), hotel regulations are intended to ensure that a resource (living space) is available and only as a side effect restrict another resource (hotel rooms).

The analogy also fails because while drug laws are motivated by health/moral concerns, hotel regulations are to a large extend motivated by the fact that the common resource required by both tenants and hotels is limited simply by the amount of available space in NYC,. This restraint on the available space would effect the outcome of a perfectly free market to be rather bad™, since it would turn the whole of the city (and most other popular cities) into one large hotel without any permanent residents.
Nutritional supplements are widely sold at grocery stores. I listed multiple organisations for a reason.
>Aluminium is ... just too flimsy for coinage.

Nonsense. The Japanese one yen coin is aluminum, and it holds up just fine.
Impressive turnout at Scala eXchange, both in terms of registrants (400 or so attendees) and speakers (Simon Peyton Jones, Jonas Boner, Victor Klang, David Pollack, etc.), not to mention the venue, a big time conference (for Scala) on all fronts.

Scala.io in Paris was quite small in comparison; however, the after party in Paris (free drinks all night long, woo hoo ;-)) blew away the staid affair in London (single round of drinks on the house, some inane blah, blah question/answer session re: the same old, why is Scala so complex, followed by most everyone leaving).

Anyway, the conference itself was well worth its weight in pounds, hope to make the trip again next year, this time with Scala 2.11 in full swing, good times ahead.
Except there is a debate now, because hotel law was not created to regulate people renting out their places. So now people on both sides need to agree on a solution, given it's not clear whether hotel laws apply directly to people on Airbnb or not.

This is a similar (if not the same) issue that Uber/Lyft and similar companies are facing with current regulation all over the world.

Slavery was legal in the US for a long time, and a lot of people were fine with it. Does that mean it should have stayed that way?
Pgbson: BSON support for PostgreSQL
When I see arguments like this one, I always remember the little known fact that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before he wrote about economics. A fundamental principle for capitalism is that people will behave morally and be compassionate. Without a moral society, no matter what system you're talking about, that society will always collapse.

I think David Simon, and many other modern critics of capitalism, have forgotten this and/or are too afraid of sounding "preachy" if they were to advocate for a more moral society.

I'd also like to point out that Simon seems to be making an emotional argument when he says there's a whole portion of people in our society who are useless when it comes to making the economy work. Perhaps it's because their skills don't match the needs of the workforce today. It's simply supply and demand.
Sounds like I should not have closed the link when I saw the family pictures in chapter one, of his wife, of his son and his wife, of his 2 dogs ..
Yeah, and a system like that could be worse in some ways. Likely what would happen is that what are currently the CA's would be the highest trusted parties in the system, and that trust would largely be derived from them trusting each other.

This is largely a matter of the game theory dynamics behind this, but if one of them does something bad are the other parties more or less likely to revoke trust? If they easily revoke trust they're creating a dynamic where if they mess up in "minor" ways their whole business could get destroyed. The penalty for not revoking trust soon enough might be much too small to create a system better than what we have now.

I don't know, and I wonder if there's been any research on the various aspects of replacing the CA system with a trust-based system.
This is more than a loaded question. HN has its own views, but they also have an information set perhaps not widely available. The better framing is that, given a(n equal) technical understanding of what NSA is doing, where would the majority stand? I don't think they would stand with the government's over-reach. The red-states don't really go for that, and the blue states don't really go for it either: it's anti-liberal in a different sense. What the NSA is really doing here is protecting the 1%, in the sense that those in power are merely seeking to stay in power at all costs. Ideology, constitution, and every other consideration be damned.
That doesn't preclude an open discussion of the options.

"I'd like antibiotics."

"Sorry, but we don't prescribe them for colds. Here's why."
Capitalism as we know it is unsustainable.
Sounds good, great even.

all we need are browsers to support it

So why isn't it already? Does it need public support? If so, is there a coordinated way we can encourage the vendors to acknowledge it?
Why is is that some people have such a hard-on for other people's misery? It seems that every news story about a minor infraction is met with snivelling cretins vomiting sadistic fantasies of prison life for the subject of the story.
This is a remarkably sensible speech.

The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all in this together or are we all not?

I see a lot of libertarian and anti-government sentiments expressed on HN. People like to construct arguments like "more government vs. less", "higher taxes vs. lower", "less regulation vs. more", but those debates are missing the forest for the trees. The question - and only question - should be what David Simon asks: are we all in this together or are we not?

To me, the answer is blindingly obvious. It's demonstrated by what societies are flourishing - with high economic and social equality, healthy democratic government, protected personal liberties, well-cared-for populaces, and resilient economies - and what societies aren't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
The claim that his business is zero sum is tremendously more narrow than the one that was made. Even so, it's probably false. Very much criminal activity has a negative sum (eg, smash a window to steal a laptop). It's also perfectly possible for an illegal activity to nonetheless have a positive sum (legislators are imperfect, laws are necessarily generalizations, etc); though we shouldn't expect it in any individual case, I think it's most likely to be the case in a situation like this with a willing exchange of goods (where there clearly is a surplus for two parties).
I am surpised to see "AAP" Aam Admi Parties name in CIA's website : https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... (Check out India)
You can see its clearly mentioned in the note that "India has dozens of national and regional political parties; only parties with four or more seats in the People's Assembly are listed" then how cam AAP is already there ?
How so? If anything, we've seen how people can corrupt and ruin any system/society. When many people say "capitalism has failed us" they really mean our politicians have failed us by allowing corporations to run the government. That's not a failure of capitalism, that's our failure because we've let our elected representatives do this to us.
The hardest thing for me is that I'm super aware of how fucked up things are, but not totally sure what can done so just say "this sucks" and go back to work and whining about healthcare and listening to Slate podcasts. If I learned anything from the Wire, it's that these problems Simon brings up are so institutionalized that there's almost no way to fix them without some massive change, but I'm too small and irrelevant to make that change and our society is set up to resist change anyway.

So I'll probably just share this on Facebook, get some likes, and be proud of myself for "building awareness".
"used to improve new yorkers' quality of life at little/no expense to local residents"

Well, except for the losses from non-visitors who avoid cities with outrageously high "let's rip off our guests" taxes.

Those people may not be directly visible, but I assure you they are real.
Complicated topic on a global scale.

The rest of the world is very grateful for the US pharmaceutical market. Its unregulated and "free" nature, like consumer advertising for prescription drugs - something completely unheard of in civilized countries - allows for massive profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

those profits do not happen anywhere else. european agencies control and negotiate prices centrally, emerging markets seems to follow the european model (brazil, china, etc.).

those profits do get invested back into r&d, the patent system forces pharma companies to move forward. the recent patent cliff is a great indicator for the system working.

pharma r&d would be severly constrainted if not for the profits generated in the US market. on a global scale it looks like a subsidiy by the US people, paying high markups and taking way more drugs than needed - for the good of the rest of the planet.

thank you. and keep swallowing pills.
Good point. Typically journalists would do something like "We will refer to him as Joe, not his real name."
"it’s the same damn molecule with a few cosmetic changes" pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this article.

As any chemist worth their salt will tell you, small differences to molecules doesn't necessarily make them just as easily produced. And similarly any biochemist worth their salt will be able to tell you that small differences can indeed matter a lot!

Reading the wikipedia article for the more expensive drug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranibizumab), it does appear that there are therapeutic differences between the two drugs in terms of associated infections.

The real thing, however, to check when talking about medicines is the Specific Product Characteristics sheet. This is, in essence, what doctors refer to when looking up medicines. http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/19409/SPC/Lucentis+... and http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/15748/SPC/Avastin+2... . Avastin is used for a lot more than just eye conditions, it seems, and has shall we say a number of issues.

Something most people fail to realise is exactly how expensive new drug development actually is. You've got experimental labs doing in-vivo tests of thousands of molecules (at least), animal studies to ensure the human trials will be safe, multiple stages of clinical trials in humans with associated insurance, etc. The sole means of recuperating the cost of all of this is through product sales. There are very few actual grants awarded for developing medicines all the way through to production. No tie-in marketing of lunch boxes. No crowdfunding from patient groups.

I do wholeheartedly agree, however, that there are perverse incentives on doctors to prescribe more expensive medication, and the modern pharmaceutical industry is messed up in so many ways. Most doctors too don't even understand properly what it is they are prescribing[1], and the 21st century medical representative system has more in common with jingles and home appliance sales than the clinical educators of the 20th century.

Disclosure: I have family and friends working in this field

[1] Reasons why people become doctors: money, power and helping people. Good doctors get to chose two of out of three. And to be fair to doctors, they have to remember a hell of a lot of academic material in a constantly changing field, and /then/ have social skills and physical skills to master
Why does AirBnb even allow more than one listing per user? How many people have multiple residences which they can legitimately rent out legally? It seems like it would stem a lot of criticism if they only allowed one residence per user, along with real-name and address verification (which they already use for renters).
An alternative to the hand would be a more distinctive finger (by adding a fingernail?)
which will in turn reduce the supply of apartments
available for residents

If the cities allow new construction the supply should expand to match the increased demand, creating jobs in the process.