skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reason it is cheaper through your employer than individually is simple (or complex) math. Increasing the risk pool allows for premiums to be reduced. I am not sure that employers and insurance companies are married; you can (for a price and acceptable risk) get insurance without an employer.
Great presentation John. You made your points very clearly, and it seems very helpful for the non-experts watching.
It's so frustrating to have to click 10 times to see the list. I thought "Hey, there's a printer-friendly version - I'll click that button!". Of course, it only prints the page you're currently on.

Thanks for the amazing user experience, Business Insider.
Seems to me the services facebook provides would be better provided on the operating system. It would have to be built in though - people don't want to download anything.

If Apple got into the business of social networking, they could fracture the community.

I stopped using facebook much when it got bloated and slow. This tends to be what always kills these massive sites. Someone will figure out a way to do better than them and the internet elite will jump shit and eventually there will be more than one facebook.
The root cause is that only your employer can afford to buy you coverage and also has less risk of getting dropped if they provide coverage for enough people. As an individual, the coverage costs more and your chances of getting dropped is over 50% if you do need care exceeding your premium.
Bing - A note about today’s outage
I can only tell you what the average of the two C sections we were billed for cost. Uninsured cost of a C section without a prolonged stay in the hospital appears to be under $10k, anecdotally from G searches on "uninsured C sectio cost". Our son stayed in the NICU ($$$$$$$) for a week; your wife can also wind up in the hospital for an extra day or two.
Fair enough. I suppose the suits might not have had anything to do with this.

But I still feel a twinge of regret when I read these articles. I'm skeptical about the value of these activities. I don't think they contribute much to the general wealth (the contributions may even be negative) and I definitely share in the resentment many people feel these days toward the banking industry.

A lot of folks try to equate this with a resentment of wealth or capitalism, but I think that's incorrect. Americans still greatly admire people who become wealthy, and generally don't view the economy as a zero sum game. For instance, nobody (almost) resents the millionaires and billionaires at google. While I'm not sure if your average American has thought it through this carefully, I think it comes down to the perception that startups create wealth, whereas wall street takes wealth.

That's too simplistic, I know. But I don't think it's entirely incorrect, either.

I guess I'm just a little sorry to see geeks displaying the behavior I always associated with suits - involving themselves in activities of dubious economic value for the sole purpose of enriching themselves. Especially when geeks have so many ways of becoming wealthy that also add tremendously to the general wealth.
I'm looking forward to Iron Man 2. Teaser: http://mahoski.s3.amazonaws.com/ironman-big.jpg
Just having money doesn't mean he has to blow it.
Thank you, Derek. One of my all time favorite hn posts. So many good quotes, I won't cite any of them. Just read the whole thing.

We spend so much time pushing our customers to answer the question, "What's most important to you?" that we tend to forget to ask it to ourselves. OP's answer might not be my answer, but it's an awfully good one. Working hard is so much easier when you're working toward such an important outcome.

Respect.
No, I'm not shocked either. Mathematicians and scientists have no formal training in programming (at least in the UK). They're expected just to pick it up and get on with it.

They don't generally put in the necessary hours like the "self taught programmer" does, because they're generally not interested in programming itself. It's just a calculational annoyance that gets in the way.
Why not use the money for music education now and be actively involved (or not) instead of in x number of years (40?) from now?
Previous discussion on this matter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=544755
Apple App Store Surprise: Giving credit where credit is due
This is why I'm saying that healthcare isn't a necessity. I might not need any medical care for years, but if I needed to spend 4 nights in a hospital it would bankrupt me. This makes not having health insurance risky, but starting a company has its risks. I would say that most of them are probably not as serious as this, but it's still just a risk.
Fair point. However, if that's the case, why not leave more of it in the trust - he's automatically "blowing" 35% of that 5% (350k+) in taxes every year.

EDIT: Here's the real answer - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976759
I haven't been able to find many; most of what I use I've had to develop on my own and extract from the biographies of well known autodidacts.

One of my current projects is to start writing up on my process and the intellectual tools I've developed for it, but, it is waiting on the completion of my web app before that gets going...

If you check out my Delicious bookmarks, you can find all of the web related resources I have and use. http://delicious.com/ixmatus
He's required to receive at least 5% of the trust's value as his annuity each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_remainder_unitrust
Banks and information technology: Silo but deadly
Intentionally lost my ability to do something stupid with more than 5% the principal while I'm alive. :-)
That kind of salary still lets him build substantial personal wealth, so if he manages it wisely there will likely still be quite a large sum to pass to his heirs.
Your argument is that health care is the same as food/accomodation, and therefore should be treated the same way. It definitely isn't. Food and rent are a fixed cost that are identical each week. By being frugal and possibly living at home or relying on a spouse, one can keep it at a very low rate, for example $100 a week. The cost of health care can quickly reach several hundred thousand dollars in a matter of days.
Google specifically avoids changing the user experience.

Facebook-today is, for my uses, much worse than Facebook-of-years-past.

In the past it was simplistic, elegant, and did one job and did it well. Now it is trying to be everything and is bloated, slow, and spammy. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible and I can't find a way to turn off "Mafia Wars" spam.
I once heard the word "Charitable Remainder Trust" - it was by a guy who wanted to make sure his money could never be taken from him...

http://www.investorwords.com/830/charitable_remainder_trust....

So no cap gains + a tax deduction for making money? Doesn't seem so charitable to me...

(someone, please correct me if I am wrong)
Horrible tips for employees during their annual performance review
This is probably the only way you'd risk bankruptcy starting a company. There are lots of risks that you'll drain your bank account, but when it looks like you're going to lose your lease, you go get a job.
ridiculous as in technically absurd. I don't think he meant the design was ridiculous. at least that's my interpretation.
> the stack-trace will no longer be accurate

...as indeed it isn't in Erlang...
Funny: "Matasano" in Chile is a slang term for doctors, and not a particularly nice one.

It translates to something like "Healthy-person killer".
Oh. Wow. That might effect my decision later, thanks.
Hmmmh...
I would like to have a proactive patient such as your self. As a student, I am always put off when a physician prescribes an on-patent medication when there is an equivalent that is off-patent (assuming that the research supporting both is equivalent).
Co-incidentally a very good friend of mine actually worked on the Faberge project at IBM, I saw a sneak preview about a month ago and it was very well implemented. I have sent him a link to your post.

It is unlikely that he will be able to share any significant details of IBM's side of the story with me because of client confidentiality, especially anything he would be willing to say publicly, but if he does I'll post here.
It's certainly very altruistic, but not entirely, since he has saved himself a whole lot in taxes and guaranteed himself an income for life.
Lehrer: Dopamine and Market Bubbles
My only point is that your comment can be made about ANY expense. Yes, the US wage system, health care system, office space system, minimum business tax system, credit card processing system, etc, all retard startups.

Most of these have economies of scale, so they will hit startups harder than big business. I don't see any particular reason to focus on health care rather than wages, office space or accounting services.
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There's absolutely nothing charitable about paying taxes.
I know you were looking for beta testers and comments on the product, but I was so impressed with the page layout on the about page and use of color that I had to weigh in on that subject.

Very talented use of color on the about page. I really liked the layout of the page from an artistic standpoint.

The blue overcast on the main snow photo combined with the blue and grey effects applied to your personal photos really seems to work.

Most of all I like the color bar at the top. On my big monitor it comes out as teal and light purple.

I think that the color bar at the top alone would make a great brand logo for your company. Especially if you ever physically ship software to retail outlets. The color bar in my opinion is a 10--don’t lose it when you iterate.

With your target market little details like that might make a big difference in sales.

Hope your beta goes smoothly.
Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks!
I think as programmers we have a tendency to err on the side of taking shipping too seriously, this is a lesson I have been burnt by and probably wont get sick of hearing.

another important point I think that is part of the same, design your product in a way that allows you to ship early. forget about all the bells and whistles before you launch, think of the simplest possible thing that is useful.

this is a concious process and a bit different from just losing the fear of launching 'bad' stuff.
The source article, in one page: http://247wallst.com/2009/12/02/the-ten-brands-that-will-dis...
Yup. We found that out a month after we picked the name, when we hired a friend from Argentina. We liked the name even more afterward. It suits our particular corner of the industry.
Part of this is just diplomacy. Don't say "No," just figure out what results they want, not just what actions they've asked you to take;

http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/how-not-to-say-no-to-a-clien...
It may not be that simple to pull it off. If you are the smaller fish in competition with IBM and IBM offers to do a pitch without charging for it (which they can afford), it's unlikely you would get paid for it.

Having some sort of agreement about IP, on the other hand, is possible but enforcing it would be costly any way. There's no easy solution.
I feel the same way, but I also know it's an institution unto itself. Think about it. Employer provided healthcare has been around since WW2. And you would have to convince the big dogs MS, IBM, KBR, GM,etc. to dismantle a system that they helped create.

Even if the legislation did exist to dismantle the system it would still continue through sheer bulk. ie Microsoft will always be able to negotiate a better price for MS employees due to the fact that they have thousands of employees.
This doesn't make much practical sense. However, implementing Erlang on top of the JVM seems like an awesome way to learn Erlang and JVM internals at the same time.
Which app is that?
Now if only there was a way to do this in real time for street parking.
Ask HN: Where to promote a product to non-programmers?
I'm developing a product aimed at people who run websites but don't have programming skills. I have a small marketing budget but am not sure about a good place to use it? Any ideas?
Really? Which state are you in?

I used to work for a private health insurer (in the US) and our "group" coverage was offered to businesses of 2 people (i.e., a founder and one employee). At that time, at least, sole proprietors were in the "individual" coverage category, but there was talk about changing that.
Actually, that would make a good choice for a start up, no? The population is generally low risk for costly procedures and mostly need basic, no-frills care and if their business succeeds, they could be converted to a more corporate friendly policy. To be honest, I'm not sure why this hasn't been done yet.
Admin access, or a working Firewire port.
I had trouble installing it, actually.. I couldn't seem to get the plugin to load the keybindings (LocalLeader never seemed to have got bound and the functions which were to get called werent defined..) :-(

Its a pity, because VimClojure looks damned sweet. Thankfully I did get VimClojures syntax highlighting to work.
I open the about page only to see a screenshot of the beautiful Rideau Canal and the Chateau Laurier.

Although this post has nothing to do with the product, I give you props since you're probably one of my neighbors and you definitely support http://www.startupottawa.com/

P.S. Will you be attending Demo Night in Canada?
They're different because there isn't a huge amount of uncertainty in office space, taxes, credit card processing, or even wages if you don't leave your day job until you have cash flows. There is nothing but uncertainty with health insurance.

But what's your point? Yes, Chris, it would definitely accelerate startups if the government gave everyone a $50,000 refundable tax credit for starting a tech company. Also free offices would be great. The question posed was, "would you be more likely to start if". If better wages: yes. If health care: yes. If free office space: yes. If no transaction fees: yes.

Why are you singling out one of the riskiest problems with starting up and implying that it's dumb to address it?
Sorry - my point was that the title connotes he's already completed some charitable action, when, in actuality, he's just taken steps to preserve his wealth until he passes - at which point a charitable action will be taken (on his behalf).

edit: no one here likes the truth, I guess.
No tumour link to mobile phones, says study
"should" yes, but it doesn't take intelligence to want to encrypt your data, just paranoia.

Microsoft is selling Windows 7 Ultimate to people who are computer illiterate with the sales pitch that it will secure their data. These people would never hear about TrueCrypt. They only hear about computer solutions with hundred-million-dollar marketing campaigns.

Some of my customers are the totally computer illiterate types who only use Microsoft products. I had been selling these people Ultimate as a way to encrypt their shit. Now I can't really recommend it as protecting against industrial espionage. And they'll never use TrueCrypt, it's too user unfriendly.
Personally, Michigan and Illinois (at the time). Companywide, add New York.

We tried to get insurance ourselves, and then worked with a family friend broker, and failed both times. We could get coverage for three of us (although my daughter would have exceptions in the contract), but not for my wife. I was 28 at the time.
Speaking of cool places on google maps, check out Tristan Da Cunha, one of the most remote, inhabited places on Earth.

Link:

http://tinyurl.com/y88rku4
That was my first thought as well, but in reality, there's more available for whatever charity eventually gets the money. Granted, he could have donated it all outright, but there's something to be said for having some income so you can work on things you love, including giving back. I'm guessing that for someone like Derek, his time and expertise is more valuable than his money :)
Linear Algebra... perhaps not used quite as often by non-scientists/non-engineers but in those domains it's used quite a bit.

An example: Control Systems. You have a device that takes some inputs and has some outputs. This device is usually modeled by a nxm matrix because it has n inputs and m outputs. From there, you want to build some other device to make sure that your original device does what you want it to do. Doing all this stuff requires linear algebra.

In general, linear algebra comes into play once the number of variables you're dealing with is greater than one. You mentioned that you've discovered that probability and statistics are important. Well, you'll need linear algebra to deal with that once the number of variables exceeds one.

Well, perhaps 'need' is too strong a word for it, but in the presence of multiple variables linear algebra is necessary as much as, say, integration for calculating the area underneath a curve. You can get by without it, but it has many advantages and brings more to the table.

Outside science/engineering domains? I can't think of anything it would be really useful for.
webmasterworld
Does the benefactor have to pay tax on that 5%? If not, this is an amazing deal for the benefactor!
I had trouble reading this URL. At first I thought it was "a hat here it is"!
They are married through price controls and tax deductions. If the choice was 10000$ additional pay or 10000$ annual insurance premium. From a payroll and tax view that insurance premium is much cheaper.

Not to mention in many states, once you reach a certain number of employees you are required to offer a HMO.
‘Its fate as a standalone company is however looking more and more like an inevitable fate.’

It sounds like a 1980s videogame localization team wrote this bit of copy...
Someday Bray will understand what TCO really is. But he's been such an outspoken opponent that it would be embarrassing to publicly admit he was wrong. I think he'll probably say, TCO can be useful for some programming styles, but most programmers don't notice it's absence so let's just move on to more important topics. I'm looking forward to watching him whitewash his earlier position.
Derek, you did great work in creating that wealth and everyone here is happy to see you enjoying some of it. But please consider re-writing this to something more truthful - fewer words emphasizing your altruism and spartan lifestyle (?) and more words talking about the tax advantages and forced spending discipline that this smart plan gives you.

The title, for example, shouldn't be "Why I gave away my company to charity". You didn't do that. (Which is good! That would be crazy.) How about, "Why I willed my estate to charity."
Can we just say that advanced smartphone manufacturers who attempt to compete with the iPhone will suffer massively for it?
The reason the market is so unfriendly to individual purchasers (high cost, possibility of getting dropped, etc) is that the entire industry is built around and optimized for selling to large corporations.
slimv is a more complete Vim+SLIME plugin that doesn't require screen:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2531

There is a Vim+screen plugin as well for interacting with shells:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2711
Yeah I am glad we dodged that bullet. The insurance was odd they wouldn't cover the pregnancy but they would cover the kid after birth so any NICU costs would have been covered.
Because then you couldn't live off the interest in the mean time.
Well, it could be true. Maybe someone should do the math?

And yes I'm talking liquidity, not paper worth.
You're excluding the cost of inpatient care, which is not the same as Daniel Markham's anti-apnea sleep mask.
When you say no to some things, you obviously have to think about what to say no to. It helps you prioritize and focus on the most important stuff first. Only when you've stripped down an idea to it's bare minimum can you really say that you understand it.

"Yes, there's a way to do that. No one has ever done that before, so now is the time for someone to be first..."

This sounds dangerous. What one really wants is to add stuff that will be useful to the user and will help him get things done easier. If the client proposes a feature and you say yes because "it's the time for someone to be first", then you are wasting time and effort on something that maybe isn't really necessary.
Exercise Boosts Telomerase, Reduces Erosion of Telomeres
Are you suggesting that novel-idea-density is the average HN reader's sole metric for measuring content? You might be right. I certainly fall into that rut more often than I'd like. I suspect it gives me a dopamine rush.

I liked this piece for the interesting historical miscellany that it pulled together, and for the narrative and visualization on scales of complexity. It got bonus points for including A Humument, which I bought back when I was going through a Douglas Hofstadter phase. (He mentioned it in Metamagical Themas.)
eh, I use CORBA; meaning every 3 years or so I have to go get a w2 job for a while. pain in the ass, but not insurmountable.
Why Scientific Fraud is on the Rise
100 Phone Calls
I'd agree. They definitely screwed up here, but I can imagine exactly what happened is all. They should just bite the bullet- or at least reopen and extend.
So, the thing is that devs put their neck out for your stupid contest, and you screwed them because there wasn't enough interest. The reason there wasn't enough interest is that you failed to create it.

You could have easily made it viral by making it part of the game that at least, say, 1000 people had to enter, and that for everyone you refer to the contest who enters, you get something, or you get a small purse if one of your referrals actually wins or something.

They didn't think it through, they weren't smart about it, and they screwed people over.
Good encyclopedias are compiled by experienced... oh wait.

No idea if this specific effort is any good, but Google have done a lot of interesting things with language already.
And the strange thing is, they only put 4 adds per page, so it's not like they are breaking up the article to increase ad space. They do pimp their own content alot though.
Starting a company is as much about managing risks as embracing them. You want to take risks with little downside and enormous upside. Not having health insurance is a risk with enormous downside and little upside.
Overall, great idea. However, it's kind of annoying to use with Python, since when you copy in a function definition, you need to go to the interpreter and hit enter an extra time to get it to work. I was going to try and fix this myself, but I'm not sure if there's any easy way to add a special case for this, since the Vim script has no way of knowing what kind of interpreter is running in the other screen session....
Rules for growing your blog
Is braintree willing to negotiate on these costs?
No. In fact HTC came out of nowhere post-iPhone.
Fake profiles can be quite elaborate.

In social networking terms, "fake profile" usually refers to profiles that claim to be some celebrity. Friendster/orkut etc. are full of them.

You are referring to profiles where someone builds an elaborate fake character. I don't think those were ever that common.

Lastly, facebook always reports active users. I have a couple accounts with fake names that I haven't logged in for at least a year. I created them to test out something.
We didn't need a new research report to tell us this.
Which won't happen to the brands he listed.

The only brands that have actually become net liabilities are a small handful of corrupt ones - Enron, WorldCom, stuff like that.

But Newsweek "disappearing in 2010"? Impossible.
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