Anthony Bourdain on not having debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/money-diary-anthony-bourdain-3 <comment><USER2> > Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don't mind.

How refreshing.

I agree with him.

Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

<comment><USER3> Not sure if you're living in the US, but I do and I have the exact opposite viewpoint. The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't makes me feel like I'm throwing money away. I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact.

I think if the gov't was a bit more efficient and could be shown to be good stewards of money I'd probably hate paying taxes a lot less.

<comment><USER4> People always say this, but nobody can ever point to a solid example. Do you have hard numbers that government social programs are less efficient than charity?

<comment><USER5> Ask yourself this: is the government efficient with its defense spending? If the answer is no, why would it be any different with its social programs?

<comment><USER6> Just because one branch/department is wasteful doesn't mean others are. Trim that military budget and you'll start seeing efficiencies simply because they don't have that extra trillion to spunk up the wall.

<comment><USER7> A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was a point where financing the government was a patriotic act. People would give other people War Bonds as presents. But now the patriotic thing is to trash talk which ever party is in the administration and wax poetic about governmental corruption. You can't have it both ways. You can't say no to financing your government and scorn corruption. Either you're okay paying for your government, you're okay with someone else paying for your government (to possibly include other governments!), or you're okay with your government paying for itself with printed money. (That last option, seignorage, leads to hyperinflation.)

<comment><USER9> The government needs better PR frankly, instead of allowing itself to be a punching bag all day. Nobody can even imagine how many things the government and your tax dollars provide.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes.

Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

<comment><USER11> Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.

<comment><USER12> Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget:

[https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- bud...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- budget-101/spending/)

Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending.

New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.

<comment><USER13> There is something off with the charts on the site you refer to (they don't provide the actual numbers in the charts).

Simple calculation:

With $20T of debt, at 3% interest rate (30Y bond), the interest on the debt is adding 600 billion dollars to the deficit per year (and it compounds).

600 billion with respect to the 3.8 billion federal budget is almost 16%.

And the interest rate is so low only because debt rates have been artificially suppressed by central banks using financial tricks such QE, the Fed buying its own's governments' debt, etc.

With interest rates bound to rise sooner or later, we are sitting on a financial time bomb.

<comment><USER12> The US pays (on average) less than 3%. The debt is also just a bit less than $19 trillion.

So we save $30 billion by using the slightly smaller debt and $120 billion by using the interest rate of 2.4%.

$450 billion is still a huge budget item and it is a problem that interest rates will rise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have always viewed debt as a promise of future labor.

i.e. if I have debt now, I must go to work in the future to pay it back.

Because I have no debt, I don't have to go to work, and can spend the next two years driving around Africa.

I'm so passionate about saving money I even wrote an e-book on how to do it: [http://theroadchoseme.com/work-less-to-live-your- dreams](http://theroadchoseme.com/work-less-to-live-your-dreams)

<comment><USER15> Now turn it around. What is money? Money is someone else's debt. Money is a promise that someone else will go to work for you in the future to pay it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish more people thought this way. Debt _can_ be be used effectively, but as Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility." It seems that too much of America is wooed into a false sense of security by their ability to obtain debt without judging their ability to _pay_ that debt off.

<comment><USER17> I agree with your sentiment, but it strikes me that there is safety and opportunity in behaving badly when the bulk of your peers are swept away in an orgy of debt fuelled spending.

Ten years ago I bought a small flat in London to live in. I paid a respectable deposit and didn't over-leverage. We were at the end of decade long property boom, there were huge concerns about the level of borrowing and ability to repay, predictions of mass repossessions if the BoE raised rates by even a quarter percent, the BoE would regularly "jaw-bone" the fact that the rate must rise[1].

The bank wanted to lend me 5x the amount I borrowed. I could have bought an entire 3 bedroom house rather than just a 1 bed flat situated in the same property. I borrowed within my bounds, priced the debt relative to an upward BoE rate, played it sensible.

What a missed opportunity! In retrospect I should have taken all the cash the bank wanted to throw at me and bought the whole house. I would have been able to manage the repayments fine, and financially I would be light-years ahead of where I am now.

All because the government will literally burn anyone to keep those vested in the housing market safe (particularly I reference the U.K/NZ/AU, I assume the U.S.A is similar).

Behave badly in droves and the government will never raise that BoE rate. They will burn savers, they will continue to inflate the housing bubble, they will set fire to the hopes of anyone under the age of 30 buying a house to live in. Literally anything to save the retirement nest-egg of a generation of baby- boomers, aided and abetted by a generation of baby-boomer politicians.

Only external factors will bring an end. In the U.K that may be Brexit (as external as that is), in AU that may be Chinese capital controls.

Until those external factors are applied you're fine misbehaving. For me, behaving respectably was a mistake.

[1] The rate today is 0.25%, an all-time historic low. The rate when I bought was 0.5%, at the time an all-time historic low.

Saving in the U.K the last decade? Sucks to be you: [https://qz.com/750443/the-bank-of-england-just-cut- interest-...](https://qz.com/750443/the-bank-of-england-just-cut-interest- rates-after-seven-years-of-preparing-for-a-hike/)

<comment><USER18> Just because you got unlucky by being responsible doesn't mean everyone does or will.

I've known people in places where the property market collapsed and its ugly. And I know people think it can't happen in London, but 'it can't happen here' is about as myopic as it gets.

<comment><USER19> The property market collapsing (locally, not nationally) is only an issue when you want to sell. If you buy a house with an FHA mortgage (3.5% down), you will be underwater for many years no matter what. But it's a 30-year loan, why would you buy a house if you wanted to move in 3 years?

<comment><USER7> Plenty of people did this in the US (and I assume other countries) during the Great Housing Debacle of the early 2000's, it's called "flipping." The problem is when the music stops, and nobody wants to buy houses, you are stuck with it, and either need to default on the mortgage or suck it up and live there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Debt is a manifestation of risk. As general financial advice, "don't take on debt" is akin to "don't take risks."

It depends. On a lot of things.

<comment><USER21> Risk is one of the things that debt can represent, sometimes, but there can be debt that doesn't involve any risk, and there are risks that don't involve debt.

What's risky about using a credit card to buy a kayak?

And how does investing money you already have in small cap equities represent a debt?

I think for the vast majority of individuals just trying to make good personal finance decisions, "don't take on debt" is (on average) great advice.

<comment><USER22> (I don't really agree with the simplification of debt = risk. Despite that...)

> What's risky about using a credit card to buy a kayak? If you unexpectedly > lose your job or are otherwise unable to pay off the card on the schedule > you expected, you'll incur significant interest on the debt and end up > having to pay far more than you originally planned. Compared with saving up > money and paying in cash, there are clearly additional risks incurred when > using the card.

(If you had the money to pay off the card already and are just using the CC as a convenient method of payment, the risk is obviously far lower.)

<comment><USER23> >If you had the money to pay off the card already and are just using the CC as a convenient method of payment, the risk is obviously far lower

Right, but you're still taking on debt for the month and then paying it in full. What is the risk?

<comment><USER24> As with risks, so with debts. There are large ones and small ones. Paying down a balance on a credit card every month is pretty low risk, but not as low as paying with a debit card in the first place.

Also, a credit card you're paying down monthly isn't really 'debt', isn't it usually something you do for the air miles or cashback?

<comment><USER23> >Paying down a balance on a credit card every month is pretty low risk, but not as low as paying with a debit card in the first place.

Not when you account for the stolen card scenario. When someone steals your debit card and racks up charges, it locks up real money (your bank account balance) that you can't use until it's resolved. A stolen credit card just locks up a credit-line.

However, even if you ignore that, I'm still missing what risk you see with a credit card that results in it being higher risk than a debit card. What is the risk I'm missing?

>Also, a credit card you're paying down monthly isn't really 'debt', isn't it usually something you do for the air miles or cashback?

It's very short term debt. I do it for two reasons, air miles/cashback, and for better protection when things go south. In addition to the stolen card scenario above, some credit cards (e.g. an amex I have) will provide additional protection for things like rental cars (additional insurance) or even stolen goods (refunds for electronics stolen from your vehicle).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is fantastic advice for 95% of people. If you one of the few that can manage debt responsibly, however, you'd be missing out on the opportunity for leverage. In many cases a person can effectively trade their good credit for additional returns.

Of course, you need to fully understand the risk/return profile of any leveraged investment you make AND be careful not to be overleveraged at any point. It's a fine line to walk, but it can be a valuable part of your investment portfolio.

<comment><USER26> I think the important thing to consider is what you are taking on debt for - are you using it for investment in something or for an expense? A house or an education is an investment - it can be a good or bad one, of course, but the idea of going into debt to obtain either of those should not be dismissed out of hand. Both can provide a return on those investments greater than the interest cost.

However, if you are taking on debt for an expense (a vacation, a new car when you have a working one already, a new toy), then you are gaining nothing in return for the interest. You could easily wait until you have the money saved up, since those expenses have no extra return for purchasing early.

The worst debt, of course, is when you are taking it on because you simply have more expenses than you do income. This is often the source of credit card debt. If you are growing in debt but not growing in investments, you need to take a hard look at your lifestyle.

<comment><USER21> One caveat to this kind of thinking is that money is fungible.

One can easily pay for a vacation or years of eating at nice restaurants every day all in cash, and also go into debt for an education.

Also, one individual taking out an auto loan and a loan from Sallie Mae isn't 1 good loan and 1 bad loan. You could've foregone the high-interest loan on the big depreciating asset and used the savings to fund the education instead of the loan from Sallie Mae. In that scenario both loans were probably a bad idea, regardless of the return the education nets you.

I think another key metric beyond interest rate and rate of return, is degree of necessity. That's harder to measure though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Debt conversations always have these weird grandpa rules of thumb and words of wisdom, as you can see in the other comments.

The proper use of debt is to match the debt with the asset. If you are buying a house, a 25-year mortgage matches the value of the house. If you are buying a car, a 5-year loan matches the value of the car. If you are buying a sandwich with a credit card, well... you should pay off your credit card at the end of the month because that sandwich is long gone.

<comment><USER28> The general rule, really, is more like borrow only for appreciating assets (often real estate, financing a new business) and not for consumables or depreciating assets.

But both your idea and mine are still rules of thumb, notwithstanding how much you wish to elevate yours to a different status.

<comment><USER29> > The general rule, really, is more like borrow only for appreciating assets > (often real estate, financing a new business) and not for consumables or > depreciating assets.

Note the gotcha: if enough people borrow money and buy something because they think it will appreciate, it will. In other words, according to your rule, speculation can make itself appear worthwhile.

<comment><USER28> That's not really true. If everyone buys golf trips or ice cream cones the chance they will turn into appreciatirng assets is zero.

That's still basically true for most things that look sort of vaguely like assets, such as new cars, appliances, and whatnot.

Very few of the things the average person chooses to incur debt to acquire are even remotely plausible as appreciating assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem is that debt starts modifying your behavior.

If you are in debt you are more likely to tolerate conditions you don't enjoy, e.g: if you live paycheck to paycheck, being happy at your job is not your top priority.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _" Once I did that risky thing, leaving the only profession I knew to become a professional writer and TV guy, I was, and continue to be, very careful about the decisions I make every day."_

Sage advice. Here's the link to the book publishing mentioned ~ [http://www.eater.com/2012/2/22/6611779/the-lineup-for- anthon...](http://www.eater.com/2012/2/22/6611779/the-lineup-for-anthony- bourdains-ecco-imprint-roy-choi-texas-barbecue) / [http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry- news/pu...](http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry- news/publisher-news/article/48650-anthony-bourdain-gets-his-own-book-line-at- ecco.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is an interesting story and all that, but honestly, he only got to the "debt free nirvana" after becoming rich and famous.

I pay my credit card, pay my taxes and my mortgage, but that takes almost all my money away. So if I look at it my net worth it is basically negative.

Only way I'll get to the debt free nirvana is if I get rich somehow. It's not a real choice. So the entire premise of the article is pretty weak.

<comment><USER32> > Only way I'll get to the debt free nirvana is if I get rich somehow. It's > not a real choice. So the entire premise of the article is pretty weak.

No, that certainly is not the case. Slow and steady saving and investing is the way to become wealthy. Check out www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance or www.mrmoneymustache.com as examples of this.

<comment><USER31> I've seen the Mustache site before, but let's be honest here: this only works if you live a frugal life style.

It might work if you are alone with no attachments or your SO has the same views, but not for anyone else.

I'm trying to become less attached to things and have gone a long way, but telling your wife and kid to not want to eat out, for instance, is almost impossible...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Bourdain is an OG. I've always admired his candor and ability to reflect on the things most important in life (and he knows it first-hand, having traveled nearly every where) -- time, lack of stress, and the enjoyment of good food with good people. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER34> If your return on capital is higher than the interest rate, you should take on debt. If it's not (and for most it's not), then you shouldn't. Pretty simple.

Anyhow, the article is an interesting anecdote about Bourdains life, but has little to do with money. He makes money from TV and books, can live comfortably because he makes quite a bit, but he's no financial savant.

<comment><USER35> The return on capital includes a risk factor, there is no risk that you won't have to repay the debt (other than death or bankruptcy).

<comment><USER36> Death won't automatically void the debt, though of course it's only the beneficiaries of your estate that will feel the effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Off topic, but why did the creator of this site make the top bar move when scrolling? That makes it 100% impossible to read for people who use the top of the screen as a line to read along. Also, is their a chrome extension to cancel that functionality?

<comment><USER37> My question is serious. I cannot track text very well and rely on the top of screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don't mind.

It's actually amazing how little most Americans pay in taxes yet we complain. This year my effective tax rate was ~8%. Of course this is by using every legal tax shelter available.

Considering what I get from the Federal government here in the US, I think 8% is actually fair. If it spent more of my money doing thing like taking care of home and quit with the empire building I'd be happy to pay more.

<comment><USER39> 8%? You either live very close to (or under) the poverty line or are fabulously wealthy. I'm assuming that you're rich since you mentioned tax shelters.

TurboTax put my effective tax rate this year at 26%.

<comment><USER38> Nope. 2 income, low 6 figures. There are pretty significant shelters for us middle class folks. $36k available in 401k contributions alone.another $6.5 k for HSA. $5k for childcare spending along with credits and deductions for the same thing. The key is to have a cost of living where u can afford to take advantage of them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been to a couple of his tour stops, where he gives talks about various topics (usually food and travel and his TV shows are the main things discussed). If you find Bourdain interesting, you'll probably find his talks quite entertaining.

Anyways, at one of his shows he straight up said that each of his stops pays for a year of private schooling in NYC for one of his kids. Thought it was an interesting way of looking at things.

</comment><comment><USER41> My response to the article: [https://medium.com/@2color/my-response-to- anthony-bourdain-d...](https://medium.com/@2color/my-response-to-anthony- bourdain-does-not-want-to-owe-anybody-even-a-single-dollar- bc6d5b3db40e#.kao1e5c62)

</comment><comment><USER42> You obviously didn't read the article. Bourdain did not reach the magical 'no- debt' world of wonder until after he got famous.

If anything it's a fake-cautionary tale. "Don't do what I did kids, even though I'm rich and did more blow and had way more fun than you'll ever have in your whole life!"

Ugh.

<comment><USER43> I didn't read anywhere in there where he says don't do what he did.

He lived his life the way he wanted to, there were some rough times. Now he has a family, different priorities and resources, so is taking those into account but still generally living the same way.

My tl;dr would be "I was always in debt when I was young. Now I have a bit of money and prioritize those I care about, but after that's funded I'd rather have great experiences than a larger bank account."

<comment><USER44> As a long-time fan of his, his early life IMO (I've read and loved Kitchen Confidential) was shortsighted hedonism that came to a crashing halt when he became famous.

He has since settled for dating/marrying beautiful women, noticing that chain smoking would probably kill him and started doing Krav Maga instead, and becoming smart about money.

His dayjob's not so bad either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > I didn't put anything aside, ever. Money came in, money went out. I was > always a paycheck behind, at least. I usually owed my chef my paycheck: > again, cocaine. Like I said, until I was 44, I never even had a savings > account.

Anyone who has ever spent any of their money on class 'A' drugs is not in any position to dispense any type of wise financial advice.

<comment><USER46> I mean... there's even a note to that effect at the top of the article. Bourdain says like five times that he makes decisions for convenience and security over efficiency.

This isn't advice on how to maximize your wealth, it's a personal account of how he lived and how debt and wealth influence him on an emotional level.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone send mi invite to lobste.rs? - <AUTHOR> Any lobste.rs users here on HN? Could anyone send me an invite to lobste.rs on tomek [at] graphqleditor [dot] com , please? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> The tree of invitations to Lobsters is tracked. If A invites B, and subsequently B behaves badly, that in turn reflects badly on person A.

So before A invites B, A would naturally want to know who B is, and have some confidence that B will bring value, and will _not_ behave badly.

So if you want an invitation you need to provide some information about who you are, and some indication that you will behave well and provide value. But your profile is empty, every submission here on HN is to the same web site. You've made only two comments, both of which are on the discussions of your own submissions.

What value do you bring?

Please note, this isn't a value judgement of you or your work, it's an attempt to explain some of the context and aspects of the situation of which you might not have been aware. And having said all that, someone might offer you an invitation anyway.

Regardless, good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." \- Groucho Marx

I had been pressured to join several clubs that just wanted "bums on seats' by my ex-wife. I didn't join. If that supposedly upper-crust club wouldn't have invited my dad, I didn't need to give them any of my money.</comment>


Apple Supercycle, It's Happening - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4140406 <comment><USER2> What is a super cycle</comment>


The High Tide Rule (for dealing w/ VCs) - <AUTHOR> http://vcrules.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/hightide/

<comment><USER2> Is there some deep subtle meaning I'm missing here, or did he just write an article that says "VC's like markets with huge growth opportunities"?</comment>


TeXmacs 1.99.12 released. (Not based on TeX/LaTeX. Not based on Emacs.) - <AUTHOR> https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html <comment><USER2> Discussed 6 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312259)

A little bit from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103012)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like the worst possible name for a potentially nice tool.

Quoting: GNU TeXmacs is a free scientific editing platform designed to create beautiful technical documents.

It provides a unified and user friendly framework for editing structured documents with different types of content: text, mathematics, graphics, interactive content, slides, etc.

TeXmacs can be used as a graphical front-end for many systems in computer algebra, numerical analysis, statistics, etc.

Documents can be saved in TeXmacs, Xml or Scheme format and printed as Pdf or Postscript files. Converters exist for TeX/LaTeX and Html/Mathml. Notice that TeXmacs is not based on TeX/LaTeX.

Its rendering engine uses high-quality typesetting algorithms so as to produce professionally looking documents, which can either be printed out or presented from a laptop.

New styles can be written by the user and new features can be added to the editor using the Scheme extension language.

Runs on all major Unix platforms, MacOS, and Windows.

<comment><USER4> > This seems like the worst possible name for a potentially nice tool.

Exactly, a unanimous decision from all search engine results show that this is indeed the worst naming of a TeX-related tool I've seen and it is easy to get confused with MacTeX and TeXmacs even though the latter isn't even based on using a TeX distribution.

I've downloaded and for it being a WYSIWYG it has great potential for making TeX easier to user rather than remembering the arcane language of TeX for just typesetting documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always thought TeXmacs was underrated, due to its name sort of implying that it's an emacs plugin for doing LaTeX.

TeXmacs is one of the very few WYSIWYG editors that has a passable equation editor. I bit the bullet six years ago and learned LaTeX because I absolutely despise MS Word's and OpenOffice's equation editing features, but if I had known about TeXmacs at the time, there's a chance I would be using that instead.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used \LaTeX before switching to Texmacs completely. It is the best WYSIWYG editor I have ever used. Beside the ability to see the result instantly, I really like the memorizable shortcut combinations (just fancy ligatures basically; sometimes you can just drop to LaTex) and the ability to interact with other programs with no setup at all.

</comment><comment><USER7> Kinda offtopic but are there anything for Windows like the MacTex basic package? It's only 90mb and has everything that you need for a minimal install [http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html](http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html)

<comment><USER8> You might took into Yihui Xie's TinyTex. It is a stripped-down install of critical packages from TexLive. One can install whatever you really need. See [https://yihui.org/tinytex/](https://yihui.org/tinytex/)</comment></comment>


Watch what a 6-magnitude earthquake does in China vs. the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/26/6069921/watch-what-a-6-magnitude-earthquake-does-in-china-vs-the-us

<comment><USER2> There's a lot more to an earthquake than its magnitude on the Richter scale.

Their destructiveness can be increased by many factors, such as the type of ground that buildings are on and the depth of the earthquake.</comment>


This indian battery is 4x greater than traditional Tesla's lithium batteries - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You forgot the URL.

[Why does this has an upvote anyway?]</comment>


BMW are sending their software updates unencrypted - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/02/bmw-are-sending-their-software-updates-unencrypted/ <comment><USER3> Not as alarming as it might look at first glance: data is unencrypted but apparently signed.

This is essentially the same way that most Linux distros update: the data is not protected in transit (although with modern SSL being cheap both on servers and money, it ought to be), but integrity is preserved (assuming a trusted key distribution channel plus assuming the signatures are checked before install, and an update would only install with a valid signature).

<comment><USER4> Does anyone actually believe that key wasn't already stolen by the NSA, or even the Russian spy agency, though?

<comment><USER3> If it was, it doesn't matter whether the update goes over HTTPS or not: if Mallory The Evil Empire has Alice The Carmaker's secret key, neither Bob The Driver nor Charlie The Car have a way of telling them apart.

In other words, if a malicious payload is signed with Alice's legitimate key, transit security is irrelevant: you're getting a malicious payload anyway. Proving that the private key is only in the hands of legitimate user is hard, and proving it's being _used_ legitimately borders on the impossible (scenario: Alice signs a malicious update while Mallory holds a gun to her head; how do you find out from the signature? I don't think this signature scheme has duress codes). The only thing you can do is revoke the key - <USER2> how do you distribute the revocation to the vehicles?

However, this still prevents J. Random Crook from walking by your car with a USB stick and an unsigned malicious update (or serving you an unsigned malicious update while you're downloading it via his MITMed connection).</comment></comment></comment>


"The real problems are with the back end of the software" - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/10/from-the-comments-dan-hanson-on-aca.html <comment><USER3> "The front end technology is not the problem here."

Let me fix that statement: "The front end technology is not the _worst_ problem here."

Looking at the resources loaded for the sign-in page, I counted 58 separate Javascript files. Including one that implied by name was minified, which on inspection clearly was not. I didn't bother counting CSS or image resources. I returned to the page two days ago, which indicated it is down for scheduled maintenance. It remains in this state.

CGI obviously borked this project. The government deserves its own special classification of criticism, but poor planning, change management, etc. from the government is no excuse for CGI not building an architecturally sound web site.

The contract was $350 million? Good grief, they overpaid. Nonetheless, if we could go back in time AND assuming we needed to spend this budget, here's what I would have done:

1\. We make investments of $15 million in 20 different startups, and tell them to implement the initial phase -- let's say we call it the "minimum viable product" or MVP. Each startup has the same deadline for delivery.

2\. On the delivery date, all companies meet with us to review their MVP. We call it a "demo day" and view all 20 demos.

3\. Through some set of criteria, we create a short list of five companies from the 20 demos. Those five companies receive an additional $5 million investment, and another delivery deadline.

4\. The companies iterate on their MVP and come back for another demo, this time with a deep dive.

5\. We pick a winner from those five. The winner gets another $25 million investment and is responsible for any additional work to be completed.

TechStars for government, essentially.

<comment><USER4> I don't see how giving 20 startups $15 million each would have led to success instead of failure. Even if you found a better company to do the implementation than CGI Federal, there were several enormous problems that no company would have had any control over.

1\. Requirements were delayed so much that development didn't start until March of this year. That spells doom for a system with this kind of complexity, regardless of who the implementor is. You need several months of functional, load, and integration testing so that effectively means you would only have had 4 to 5 months to code healthcare.gov. And that's assuming there weren't any big requirements changes.

2\. The people responsible for integration (Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services) had no large IT project integration experience. These are people that thought 1 week of full integration testing would be enough.

3\. Healthcare.gov had to integrate with legacy systems from the IRS, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, in addition to the various state exchanges. Any number of those systems could have serious flaws that would make it extremely difficult to interface with. On any project a poorly implemented legacy system can dramatically affect the effort needed to be successful. Again, even the best companies would've had a sizable challenge dealing with that.

4\. One of the biggest challenges in government IT is the customer. The government decision makers often don't know enough about software engineering to make sensible decisions on requirements, timelines, testing, you name it. In this case there was the added political pressure of, "This cannot fail," even though it should've been clear at least a year ago that there's no way they were going to make the deadline. But you get people who think that you can just deploy and fix it as you go along. Or you get people that think you can just add developers to make up for lost time.

5\. And what does being a "startup" have to do with it anyway? Either a software company can do the work, or they can't. Whether they are a startup or an established entity really has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER5> It looks like you and jroseattle are demonstrating the main two competing views about how to approach new software projects: 1) deterministic, controlled, strong planning, avoidance of failure vs 2) nondeterministic, flexible, embracing uncertainty, expect and handle failure gracefully. There are many different versions of this in technology: one big expensive server vs many commodity servers, waterfall vs agile, ACID vs BASE, BigCorp in-house R&D vs distributing risk across startups.

Large parts of the technology world operate according to the latter model, and they do so for a variety of very valid reasons. Obviously, the government and government contractors do not.

jroseattle's comment presents a speculative model for how to apply a distributed, fault-tolerant model to this kind of technology project.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't distribute risk across many small projects, I'm saying that in this case doing so would not have helped you at all. If you had a competition to build a MVP of healthcare.gov where the requirements didn't get delivered until 48 hours before it was due, then the requirements changed substantially 30 minutes before the cutoff time, none of the teams would have succeeded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hyperbole aside ("... an act which would border on criminal negligence if it was done in the private sector and someone was harmed ..." \- what does that even mean? So all of us who have shipped buggy software for our customers are borderline criminals?) - this doesn't surprise me in having dealt with the VA. They have legacy upon legacy upon legacy, with all sorts of fun limitations like not being able to have a "\t" in your content because that'll screw up their backend which relies on tab-delimited data. Health care in the US is playing catch up technology wise to almost every industry. And not for lack of technology, but for lack of political will power.

My favourite example of this was trying to deploy an app within the VA that was written in Django. I was told "Python is not on the list of acceptable languages." So we came back to them and said, "Good news everyone, we ported it to Java." Of course, it was just Jython, but that's the sort of stuff you encounter.

Multiply this by the complexity involved in trying to herd all these cats into one backend like healthcare.gov and it was doomed to fail.

<comment><USER7> Such projects are doomed to fail because Big.corp, as well as USA.gov doesn't get that they're not using the right _people_.

High profile project? Want it to work? Hire the right people. Want the right people? Pay whatever it takes.

I've been involved in more such projects than I care to remember, and the problem is _always_ the same. A project manager with rudimentary delivery process knowledge owns a large technology project. What's needed is a technically astute lead that knows how to abstract away from delicate backend dependencies, knows that some projects _need_ big design up front, and knows people that have the specializations he or she doesn't.

.Gov projects unfortunately are turf wars, where people scramble for a piece of the cake because money smells good, and success is someone else's problem

<comment><USER8> Even without being cynical about the motivation of the players: it's the unknown unknowns that eat them alive, even if they have the best of intentions.

It's also a tough problem to solve because very competent people don't want to work on a boondoggle, and any large government IT project has boondoggle written all over it before it even goes out for bid.

I wonder if Obama asked for any advice from some of his campaign people. If he didn't before I'm sure he is now.

<comment><USER7> I don't buy the unknown unknowns. Big system integration problems follow patterns, and an experienced tech will recognise them. The problem with any half-assed strategy is that people gloss over the knowns, which is fatal. First thing anyone should do on a large (actually any) project is to assess the current situation[1]. When you discover a big nasty piece of legacy you need to integrate with, you look at how it works. The rabbit hole must be followed to it's end, or something will bite you. Blaming unknown unknowns in IT is the same as telling the teacher that the dog ate your homework.

[https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=46870dcd-70cb-4ef...](https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=46870dcd-70cb-4ef8-98ed-91c94714fe03)

<comment><USER8> It was a poor choice of words on my part. I meant to suggest that they were knowable unknowns, but just that the people involved didn't have a clue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slow, legacy backend systems are not an intractable problem. You can do things such as copy the data to a faster cache, or you use some kind of queuing system so that queries are processed only as fast as the backend can handle (of course the frontend needs to be able to "check back later" for the results).

This does support the widely held disbelief that this system will be fixed anytime soon. Clearly the management of the project and the design of the architecture are/were fundamentally flawed, and its very unlikely that it can be fixed in 30 days or whatever at this point.

<comment><USER10> Regardless of how hard it was to make a functioning "data hub", they should have, at the very least, built a functioning registration system that is independent of all other fail points. This way, at the very least, they could have the names and contact information of everyone who wanted to fill out a form. Then they can go back and process the forms at a later date.

<comment><USER11> Supposedly the problem there was a very late change from somewhere in the White House to CMS, in August or September, to preclude the possibility of window shopping and require registration with a lot of verification up front.

E.g. we know Experian is part of that process, said to be for identification and income verification. It's been reported that people who don't have credit records (e.g. those sufficiently ill they've stayed under the care of their families) get told by Healthcare.gov to contact Experian, who then upon discovering they don't have a record of them tells them they have to get the Healthcare.gov people to create a "Manual Process Identity Proof" ... which few if any of them know how to do, or whom to send someone to.

<comment><USER12> That's what I hated most about healthcare.gov. Other sites I could get a quote quite easily and decide to go with them or not. healthcare.gov had a bunch of forms that didn't work so I couldn't get a quote after hours of trying. Even if I let long loading pages sit there for long periods of time, some failed out and other times my data was lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've worked in and out of the public sector for the last 10 years and unfortunately, this actually _PAR FOR THE COURSE_.

This is not the contractors fault. Its the government. Before I left to work with a startup, I was abhorred by the lack of ownership on the client's side. Everybody is looking to shuffle responsibility, keep the lowest profile, and do the least amount of work.

It doesnt matter who's writing the code, unless they find somebody competent and passionate on the government side, large projects are destined to fail and better left off to be written by the public sector. This is government waste at its best.

I'm neither republican or democrat but just to add, if my rinky dink app I was working on for the Dept. Of Commerce gets shown to the president when its in 'ALPHA' state, there is no way the most informed person in the world didnt know that the site was going to fail from the get-go.

<comment><USER14> It's the contractors' fault, too. Both parties are playing the same game, here: corporate welfare for the contractors, who usually are owned or operated by people with connections to the government, and long-term job security for the government project management officials who oversee these things.

I don't know if you've ever worked for a contractor, but I have, and I guarantee you the same responsibility shuffling, profile munging, least- amount-of-work attitude exists there. Without it, these contractors wouldn't be able to keep feeding at the trough with the rest of their corporate welfare recipient friends (while they bitch to each other about how evil liberals are, how disgusting entitlements are, etc.).

<comment><USER13> The argument i'm making is that no matter who comes in, so long as they dont have a dedicated and passionate lead, it will be all for nothing.

I dont argue that the contractors are/can be part of the problem but from my experience, the government _IS_ the limiting factor, especially when they say that they're the systems integrator, not the contractor as is in this case.

I did my damnest to write/architect/design the best system that I could but if the government forces you to use RH JBoss 2 versions behind the latest, just because they have a support license then refuses to buy JRebel because it was too expensive after paying tens of thousands of dollars on said JBoss, and then changes the system requirements every 6 months you're doomed. Worst of all we were _NOT_ allowed to talk to end users. We can only talk through our Task Order Managers and supposed Technical Leads (that have little or extremely dated technical experience).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> " _There are no easy fixes for the fact that a 30 year old mainframe can not handle thousands of simultaneous queries. And upgrading all the back-end systems is a bigger job than the web site itself. Some of those systems are still there because attempts to upgrade them failed in the past. Too much legacy software, too many other co-reliant systems, etc._ "

30 year old (1983) mainframes and databases were designed to handle large transaction loads. For example, airline reservation systems and banking systems were built on them.

And upgrading a mainframe (at least an IBM mainframe) to a faster mainframe isn't such a daunting task, since all the code from 30 years ago (or even from the 1960s) is still object-code compatible with the new machines - you can make it run even if you've lost your source code. There's still lots of 30 year old (and older) Cobol code running on mainframes today.

I agree that re-writing the 30 year old software would be hard, but simply getting it to run faster could probably be done just by spending money on the latest mainframes and disk drives. But if nobody ever did a load test on the site, they wouldn't have known that they had to do this. They probably just thought: "Oh, we have to write a web site that talks to a bunch of databases, how hard could that be?" (By the way, they could have written test code to do a load test on those legacy systems without even having a web site running. In retrospect, that's the _first_ thing they should have done, and it would have shown them that their critical path wasn't the user interface.)

<comment><USER4> In theory you could at least improve the hardware the legacy systems is running on. In practice that may not have been anywhere near enough to ensure success.

1\. In this case you would've had to start benchmarking the performance of the legacy systems early, far earlier than when they started development in March. If you determine that hardware upgrades are needed, then you'd need to initiate procurement and upgrade projects at one or more of these other agencies. Projects like that may not necessarily be quick to implement.

Maybe the physical space can't accommodate new hardware. Maybe there isn't enough budget to do an upgrade like that. Maybe there aren't enough personnel resources to plan and implement an upgrade of that scale quickly. Maybe those organizations are just barely keeping their heads above water with the way those systems are currently functioning. Maybe they don't even have a handle on what their hardware configuration is. I know someone who worked at an agency where they had to start unplugging stuff to figure out what server did what.

2\. This is all making the assumption that the data in those systems is correct and well-formed, and the business logic in those systems is free of bugs. Maybe you get the database schema and find out that A. It's out of date, B. There's no data dictionary, and C. There's 250k lines of business logic tied up in undocumented triggers. Good luck.

Load testing might just be the tip of the iceberg in situations like this. But bottom line is, if the people leading your project don't even think to start looking into this kind of stuff very early on, you might be screwed before you even started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Failure isn't rare for government IT projects – it's the norm. Over 90% of them fail to deliver on time" Is this really much different than the success rate of startup culture where VC's count themselves successful if 10% of their investments yield a return? The startup environment has the "success rate advantage" that if the venture really isn't getting traction, you can walk away from it, or change directions a do something related, but not your original objective.

Government projects like the healthcare exchange don't have that degree of freedom - if they go down the wrong track, the only choice is put in more resources until it's back on track. Giving up or changing objectives isn't a decision under the control of the project - it's a legislative or budgetary question.

</comment><comment><USER17> The answer is that you can't structure the transaction as a realtime query. You have to structure it as something that's sent and gives you a ticket, and the reply associated with that ticket will come back in its own time.

Stick the processing pipeline in Twitter Storm (which can retry any step until the whole pipeline is done) and structure the requests as nearly-idempotent (so a repeated reply is harmless, and the first arrival associated with the ticket wins). Finally, you have an "inbox" where people can wait for and see their answer, with optional SMS and email notification.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, but at some point people have to be shown a selection of offerings. That selection must allow seeing if your doctors are in the network.

Your suggestion would allow for that, but not I sense in the "instant gratification" way we're used to dealing with web sites. I.e. "thanks for your input, wait for SMS/email/N hours till you log in again for the next step".

BTW, I've read it's a 30 step process. Not all will require "take a ticket and wait to be called", but more than 1 or 2 I suspect.

<comment><USER17> Well, they aren't getting instant gratification now, are they?

I suspect a lot could be cached - that is you take a list of questions up front, what comes back from the "ticket reply" contains any further questions you'd need to answer and enough canned data to process the replies immediately. So you wouldn't need to take a ticket more than once.

But even if you did need to, at least it would be something people could fill in and walk away from. They wouldn't be kept around, drumming their fingers and worrying about being late to work.

<comment><USER11> " _Well, they aren 't getting instant gratification now, are they?_"

Indeed!

But I was referring to the initial architecture of the site. E.g. the March objective, " _Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience._ " expressed by Henry Chao, CMS CIO, who in theory should have been in the front lines. Sigh, I bet he was, knew what was coming but didn't have the authority to make it work, or as you implicitly suggest, down-grade the architecture/expectations into something that might possibly work in the time left.

And then there's the last minute (well, month) change to requiring a heavy duty, validated up the wazoo registration before doing anything. Doubt they could have made that work in less than 2 months ... maybe. This was needed, but at lower transaction rates, e.g. otherwise window shopping would allow a lot of people to see they couldn't get a better deal through the exchange (e.g. no subsidies for you, which only the federal system is allowed to calculate).

Suppose prior to that they arranged for "X rate of idempotent reads" with e.g. the IRS, and now they need a 10/100/1000X rate, meaning they should have cached everything that doesn't change quickly. Almost certainly too late to do it by then.

My, my, years from now this is going to be one of the most significant case studies in project development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have not followed the development of this news closely, but skimming these updates has been amusing. I do have a couple very basic questions. If these are stupid, I apologize ahead of time.

My understanding from previous coverage is that some of the state exchange sites, such as California's, are performing acceptably. If that is true, do those state sites also connect to and query the same legacy systems as the federal site? If so, why doesn't the federal government simply ask for or take that code? Surely it's been made available to them? If not, are the legal requirements for the states' exchanges somehow different than the federal site? That seems unlikely since my understanding is the federal site is simply standing in for states that elected to not create exchange sites. I don't see why it would be subject to extra requirements.

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> First thing is only 4 state sites are reliably reported to be working well, and California's isn't one of them, although their's might be fixed by now. I haven't heard of any that didn't really do integration testing, and Hawaii and Oregon declined to launch their not ready sites Oct 1st.

The obvious answer is that until late last week, the grossly incompetent CMS (and some people in the White House and perhaps others in HHS) were running the show. Now that it's under new management, maybe that possibility will be investigated. On the other hand, with a 7 week deadline for those who _must_ get new insurance for 2014, like the 16 million with now outlawed, not grandfathered individual policies ... there's not much time to do something that disruptive. But an idea worth checking out in the next week or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Amazingly, none of this was tested until a week or two before the rollout, > and the tests failed.

This is absolutely incredible.... two weeks?! Dealing with these legacy systems should have been the absolute first thing tested, is it not the most likely point of failure/bottleneck? Someone on the team had to have been screaming about this and ignored, all the while shitting their pants waiting for go live for the whole thing to crumble.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm wondering why states were allowed to build their own systems and opt out of the federal site. From the Washington state site we get passwords emailed in clear text, a failure to even allow people to enter all components of their income (resulting in inflated tax credit decisions), using monthly income figures where annual ones should be used (again, more incorrectly inflated tax credits). In Oregon they say they can't even log in or get through the application. Each of these state-specific sites cost tens of millions, each resulting in their own unique set of defects on launch, to implement a federal program.

The press seems very focused on the obvious availability and performance problems as well as the errors that come up within the sites that prevent someone from completing their application. There are a whole slew of second- order defects that make it appear your application was successful and correct but were based on incorrect calculations, incomplete data, or other bugs that are not obvious to the user at the time they complete the process.

<comment><USER21> The original intention was for all the states to build their own exchanges. The more liberal democrats wanted a single federal exchange, but compromised to state-level exchanges to get enough votes for passage. Then the conservative states declined to make their own exchanges so the federal government had to do it anyway, because the American political system makes no sense.

<comment><USER11> Minor correction that proves the rule: "Then all conservative states except Idaho declined to make their own exchanges...."

I'd correct your latter statement to "most recently, the American political system makes no sense". Prior to Obamacare, _every_ major entitlement program, from FDR's Social Security to G. W. Bush's Medicare Part D prescription program was passed with large bipartisan majorities, strongly suggesting they had wide majority support.

Obamacare famously did not, heck, it only passed within the Democrats by a whisker, and a lot of them found themselves spending more time with their families after their next election.

So any sane plan by Team Obama to implement it should have factored in very strong resistance in a lot of places. Heck, I along with 71% of the people in my _Purple_ , very much not Red, home state of Missouri voted in 2010 to outlaw mandates ([http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Missouri_Health_Care_F...](http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Missouri_Health_Care_Freedom,_Proposition_C_\(August_2010\)) ) and then in 2012 62% voted to outlaw the creation of a state exchange unless authorized by the people or the legislature ([http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Missouri_Health_Care_E...](http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Missouri_Health_Care_Exchange_Question,_Proposition_E_\(2012\)) ).

<comment><USER22> Curious why you voted against the mandate. System-wise, a vote against a mandate is basically a vote for allowing rejection of pre-existing conditions.

<comment><USER11> Note, you're having labeled me as dishonest, that ... frees me a bit from my usual constraints (not that that's costing you upvotes from me for posts like this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6623010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6623010)):

How about, "Because I have a fucking clue and could see that the ACA would make things at net a lot worse, and very possibly result in my premature death?"

Did you even note the vote was almost certainly symbolic? Not that making the most firmest statement (almost 2/3rds of Missouri voters) was pointless.

Anyway, you're focusing way too much on the micro-details of political promises. I prefer macro reality.

ADDED: ah hah, I now see the ACA is in theory going to save you 20% over your previous costs. No wonder you're defending it. I just hope for your sake you don't e.g. experience a shift from access to healthcare to access to a waiting line, or as Obama himself said, Liverpool Care Pathway style, you don't get a pain pill instead of treatment that will save your life.

<comment><USER22> You're asserting that my defense of the ACA is _because_ my premium went down. That's a pretty uncharitable interpretation of my views. In that same comment I wrote that the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower our premiums. To make it explicit, I would also support the ACA if my premiums had gone up.

It sounds like the rest of your views are based off of your beliefs of how things will play out, which is of course difficult to argue about.

<comment><USER11> In the context of your labeling me as dishonest, I think it's a fair counter jab. More seriously, not that you can be bought for so few pieces of silver, but let's suppose your costs tripled as have so many others?

These particular long term views are relevant in the context of my likely (at the time) symbolic Proposition C vote; it's indeed difficult to impossible to argue about them, but I hope I've at least demonstrated a basis for my "Obamacare belongs in the ash heap of history" mid-2010 opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Focusing on the performance or scalability of these ancient backend systems is beside the point. It's simply not a great idea to connect a significant number of backend systems run by different organizations in one synchronous online transaction. The overall probability of failure may simply be too high, irrespective of any scalability issues.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the easiest fix at this point is to simply design around the known delay in synchronizing all the 3rd party data calls.

Have people enter their info, then show them a screen that says "your quote will be emailed to you in 24 hours." Then the integration system has 24 hours to retry any failed data pulls, match up all the data, and generate a quote.

<comment><USER11> Problems:

An insistence on a heavy (throughtly validated) registration process.

People want to have choices. Maybe they don't want to get insurance from company A. There are also monthly payment vs. deductible tradeoffs in the Bronze vs. Silver etc. plans. And some demand cost sharing after you've used up your deductible (I wouldn't really care if the plan had a 10 million dollar limit if I was expected to pay 20-30% of that...).

ADDED: plus you must be able to see if your doctors are in a plan's network.

Despite the "one size fits all" new minimum gold plated plan, there's still a lot of tradeoffs ... and then email isn't necessarily reliable enough for the response. I can't see them avoiding a "or check back on the site tomorrow..." option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know how much of this is true, but I bet the truth is no less hilarious. It wouldn't surprise me if this system has no concept of usability and offline processing queues. No matter how complex it is to process an application it's common sense to just give the user immediate feedback "Thank you for your order. We'll contact you by email within N days to followup and report your application status." Do these people expect Amazon to process orders in realtime and fling physical goods at their door in minutes? Should buying health coverage be zero conf one click instantaneous?

<comment><USER11> Well, I've heard there was a "7 second" response time metric that was part of the plan.

But, yes, Amazon's "eventually consistent" system takes its time, e.g. while it's never happened to me, I know that somewhat delayed confirmation email is only made when the whole system has reserved a book for me, even if there's only one copy in stock and someone else made an order for it at about the same time. Etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The frontend assumed the backend was fast enough. That's the problem. If the frontend was made to handle really slow responses from the backend it would look different. It would not make people wait while transactions occurred. Or if might have a page that that displayed your progress: in other to do this for you we need to contact 10 databases - here is the progress of each:

        Database One:   [</comment><comment>=</comment><comment>----]
        Database Two:   [</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----]
        Database Three: [==</comment><comment></comment><comment>---]

<comment><USER11> Heh.

But I would half joke that that would result in a bunch of angry people with torches and pitchforks showing up at sites of the owners of Database Two....

Which might be totally unfair if it's not really their fault.

<comment><USER26> My ASCII graphics were trying to show Database Two as fast and Database Three as slow. That's where the pitchfork toting mobs should be.

<comment><USER11> Oh, yeah, progress toward completion, which would obvious to most everyone using the site.

But I'm sure _some_ would get it wrong even then!

Visions of a family gathered around the monitor:

"Go IRS!"

"Social Security, we KNOW you can do it!"

Etc.

(I do _really_ like your idea, it just seems to be inevitably politically impossible.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't believe in this anymore

"Everyone outsources large portions of their IT, and they should. It's called specialization and division of labor. If FedEx's core competence is not in IT, they should outsource their IT to people who know what they are doing."

These days I believe each department of government that needs an iPhone application would do better to hire an iOS developer full time to maintain and polish the fuck out of it, continually.

<comment><USER28> It's interesting that a core competence of government isn't IT. How much does the government depend on IT to run its day-to-day business?

If the answer is 'not much,' I can understand the opinion that work should be outsourced.

If the answer is 'a lot,' then IT should be a core competence and the government should invest in acquiring in-house IT expertise.

I'd guess the answer is 'a lot'.

<comment><USER4> Currently government IT is operating under this idiotic idea that almost all IT should contracted out because :

"We can fire contractors if they don't do a good job"

"Contractors stay up to date on technology"

"Contractors are cheaper because we don't have to pay for their government benefits"

So for one, contracting companies that do a bad job may lose out on future work. But the reputation of the big companies is never hurt enough by this to get forced to improve. Even then, the fundamental problem is that government employees are very difficult to fire or even hold accountable so people think it's easier to hire contractors. When really the problem that needs to be solved is accountability in government.

Secondly, even if developers who work for contractors stay more up to date, it's really irrelevant because the government is extremely slow to upgrade on anything. We're still running Windows XP in a lot of places.

Third, if the bill rate for a developer is about 3-6 times what you'd pay a full time government developer, you're not really saving money on benefits. The thinking is that you only pay a contractor for a few years while they develop something for you, but IT is a continuing need. If your operation relies on software (which almost all of them do), you're going to be paying 3-5 times the cost per developer for the foreseeable future. Over time that certainly costs more than government employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Strangely, based on the title I thought this was going to be about future startup trends. i.e. For the last 6 years or so we've seen a revolution in interface design as a competitive advantage when creating a new startup, but as the low hanging fruit opportunities are used up, as lot of the really meaty opportunities are going to be in software where there is a significant backend component performing a lot of heavy lifting and magic.

I'm not in the least bit surprised to see that a lot of the work and resulting problems with healthcare.gov are on the backend.

I just wish the government realized that we have all these amazing developers over in the Bay Area that can do a better job than the majority of those developers currently writing software for government contracts. I'm shocked no one in government has said to themselves "What do we have to do to make our software problems accessible to the types of engineers working at the Googles and Dropboxes of the world.

<comment><USER4> Having the best developers in the world is useless if you have incompetent management.

In this case, requirements were delivered extremely late, and they were still in flux up to a week before deployment. The system integrator went forward with only ONE WEEK of integration testing. There were 55 companies involved in this, not to mention all the state exchanges and other federal software systems that had to be integrated.

Better developers would have made a positive impact, but nowhere near enough to make this project a success.

<comment><USER29> If the managers are not developers then they are by definition incompetent to manage a software project like this. I have met a lot of competent managers that were not technical, but I have not met one that was competent enough to manage a project involving legacy systems with poorly written code and little to no testing or automation. If you are not a developer, you simply cannot understand these types of problems enough to manage it.

<comment><USER11> We can infer from their mistakes, which GVIrish succinctly lists, that the managers in CMS on up to the White House weren't developers, otherwise they would have instinctively known that e.g. requirements had to be frozen for some time to give the developers time to finish implementing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Unless it is enjoyable or educational in and of itself, interaction is an essentially negative aspect of information software. There is a net positive benefit if it significantly expands the range of questions the user can ask, or improves the ease of locating answers, but there may be other roads to that benefit. As suggested by the above redesigns of the train timetable, bookstore, and movie listings, many questions can be answered simply through clever, information-rich graphic design. Interaction should be used judiciously and sparingly, only when the environment and history provide insufficient context to construct an acceptable graphic."

"Interaction considered harmful", by Bret Victor [http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/)

</comment><comment><USER31> The issue I see here is the author of this article has marginal experience with federal contracting. "The people who wrote the code for these systems are long gone...they are prone to transaction timeouts" ... wrong, wrong and wrong. There are plenty of coders still around maintaining these systems, even with the obscure technologies like MUMPS and all and they are running on rather robust hardware in huge datacenters.

Second of all, the government should NEVER outsource integration - the systems integrator requires an authority to manage other contractors that only the government is capable of holding.

<comment><USER11> Are you really sure about your first point? I have a state government counterexample here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6622223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6622223)

As for the second, whatever might be right, we've been told that only the Pentagon has retained that ability for "medium sized" weapons projects. Anyone know anything to the contrary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As an aside, when I hear about the problems they're having understanding the legacy data formats, it makes me wonder how far you could get with a high- powered, big data NLP system to "parse" the data. Sort of like how Google translate works.

There _are_ rules, after all, they're just not written down. Why not let the computer figure them out, with continuous training from people until the computer's accuracy is high enough?

I suspect instead they tried to write parsers and trusted "the spec", which was never even right the day it was written down. :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone verify this info? I was a bit surprised to see it wasn't better sourced than the comments of a previous Marginal Revolution post. (Nothing against MR, but this seems like huge news if true.)

<comment><USER11> Well, it's been established all these external data sources are being used.

So its either on-line, maybe with caching (maybe someday), or using a periodically run off off-line copy inside of Healthcare.gov, right?

I'll bet the House hearings made clear which is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Or IBM, which has become little more than an IT service provider to other companies?" Come now, that's absurd. Incredible things happen at IBM research.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yes, and the problems are probably still worse than this.

Because integration means integrating _requirements_, leading to determination and priority of requirements. The current organizational structure doesn't seem to have anyone responsible for even coordinating that. But even if there were, they would need terrific knowledge of each agency's internal systems and legal requirements to determine what is and isn't necessary. And enormous authority, meaning both credibility and power to dictate, to get their determinations to stick.

Absent someone looking over the process, each agency will just "require" everything they might need or want. Leaving something out is risky, unless you know a lot about what you are doing and what will happen next and trust your management. Even if they had all those latter characteristics, bureaucracies don't do risk.

We all know how complexity grows exponentially. I bet the requirements document for this thing doesn't exist, and if it did it would be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Here is my wild theory: The possibility this could succeed died the day Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination for Secretary of HHS. Not that Daschle himself is special, though he is pretty bright. But he was slated for an unusual joint role, running HHS and a White House appointment running the health care effort. A position like that might have had access to the specialized knowledge to know what needed doing and the Presidential delegation of power to get it done. If IRS says "we must have X" and Daschle KNOWS they don't because a real expert knows they don't, he can get them in line or they can explain the problem to the President's chief of staff.

Here is the wild part. Daschle was canned, inexplicably, over a truly stupid tax issue (didn't declare a car service as income), while others had far more serious issues waived (Geithner lied about CASH income despite instruction to declare it). Why? I speculate, precisely because the role he designed for himself was remarkably powerful, and effectively outside any review because of the complexity and specialization of its task. Wouldn't the President want someone with the power and knowledge to implement his most important policy? Yes, but not someone beyond his control. Politicians are about power. JFK didn't use the legislative skill of Johnson because he feared Johnson would serve Johnson's interest, not Kennedy's. Once Obama and his people realized that Daschle could become effective President, and Obama something of a titular head of state, they shivved him.

It's all speculation. But it is all plausible enough to suggest why government doesn't work. Massively complicated projects like Google work because its people are, by and large, working for a common purpose on tasks that are commonly understood under common accountability. Government and bureaucracy are fundamentally divided in purpose and understanding. The components can be united by power and knowledge, but by its very nature the system resists establishment of such power and knowledge.

<comment><USER11> " _I bet the requirements document for this thing doesn 't exist...._"

The NYT reported that in the last 10 months CMS on up made 7 major requirements changes. We've heard that the one requiring up front thoroughly verified registration was made rather late, August or September. And we've heard from multiple sources changes were made *through the week before launch".

Someone in CMS probably drafted one ... well, maybe, they aren't experienced in their former role as integrator. I'll bet it has less of a relation to reality than any requirements document I read in my quarter century career as a programmer....

Very interesting theory about Daschle. At the time, I thought it was "one scandal too many for an appointee" ... but as you note, the administration did allow others through, with Geithner as the head of the department that collects taxes being intergalacticly beyond the pale. So, yeah, why drop Daschle? And I can't think of anyone on the Cabinet with as much juice as he, excepting perhaps Holder, an old Clinton Justice Department hand, and the special case of holding over Gates for the DoD, which is not unheard of when you're in the middle of a war (while it was intraparty, Truman and LBJ did it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "... for some inexplicable reason the administration decided to make the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services the integration lead for a massive IT project despite the fact that CMS has no experience managing large IT projects"

Time Magazine's "Bitter Pill" article stated Medicare had an IT system that made them more efficient than private health insurance providers. Isn't such a system large enough?

<comment><USER11> Doesn't mean CMS was the integrator for any of the systems it uses, or any really big ones.

E.g. I don't rag on CGI Federal as much as some others, because they're responsible for CMS.gov and Medicare.gov, and the latter is more than "good enough for government work" ^_^.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just hope that when this whole mess of a project goes online, and is hacked to death, NSA & friends won't be using this an opportunity to tell us that "see, this is why you need to give us bigger funds and spy on everyon - <USER2> protect you against those hackers (offensively)!" \- even though the whole issue would be the bad programming and security of the system.

</comment><comment><USER38> ...and the website is not the worst part of the ACA ride we are now on.

Part of me has been ignoring a lot of the chatter around the ACA as potential right wing fabricated drama. Too much noise and bilateral bullshit being thrown about these days.

That was until a few days ago, when I would learn our insurance has both more than doubled in cost and is also scheduled for cancellation. Doubled and cancelled. All as a direct result of the ACA. Brilliant! To say this was shocking is an understatement. Our annual cost will go well past $15K.

There's a tragedy of unintended consequences, side effects and direct effects, being played out in the background that hasn't completely come to the surface yet. We certainly can't be the last family to get news of this kind. That means in the coming months it is likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional individuals and families are going to receive these dreaded letters. Apparently hundreds of thousands already have. Last week was our turn.

At one point this and other issues will be difficult to ignore. And they will dwarf the IT issues. The website, as much of a disaster as it is, is likely to pale in comparison to all of the other, non IT, issues.

Some of what's happening is related to the incredible disconnect between Washington and technology. All you need to do is listen to some of these folks talk about the website issue to see how little they understand. I heard one senator say something akin to "they just have to re-enter a list of five million codes". In other words, the term "code" to some of these guys means "numbers" and that someone made a data entry error in copying "codes" into the website.

BSS (Balaji Srinivasan) covered some of this in his excellent Startup School talk:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)

A talk which, he comments, has been mutated into something far different from what he said by the modern equivalent of the "broken telephone" game.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068)

I agree very much with his suggestion that an "exit" is required. Not meaning that we ought to pull-up roots and go, but rather that the tech community ought to almost ignore the dinosaurs and go ahead and evolve a society more aligned to modern realities. In his talk he gives examples of various US cities that have been "exited" to some extent through technologies developed in the free market.

To some extent, it's an Innovator's Dilemma kind of a problem.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma- Revolutionary-B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma- Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244)

The only way to make step changes is to do it well outside of the organization looking after the status quo, because that's all they know and that's all they can focus on.

<comment><USER22> This is a huge story that is really difficult to get a handle on, because the premiums changes are affecting everyone very differently, and the patterns behind them are very tough to tease out. I myself saw my premium go down by over 20%, with better benefits. I've also seen a lot of accusations of lying on either side, which isn't helpful either.

Some factors to keep in mind:

Health insurance plans have to be ACA-compliant. Plans that aren't have to be canceled and replaced.

Just because your new plan is ACA-compliant doesn't mean it's on the exchange. Check the exchange, too, as the price differences could be extreme.

Some companies (Humana in particular) have been sending out inaccurate cancellation letters, with inaccurate "new premium" amounts. They got in trouble a few weeks ago in Kentucky for implying that people _had_ to switch to the replacement plan even before the Kentucky exchange was up. Humana also recently got in trouble in Colorado and had to send out a second letter retracting their first one.

It's possible that some companies may be sending out inflated premium amounts to lower risk, while knowing they will have to send out refunds in a year.

Your old plan may not have been ACA-compliant. Specifically, it may have had annual or lifetime maximums (where the insurance company says, "Sorry, we have spent enough money on you; you are on your own now.") These are now prohibited. Even though this raises premiums, this is a _good_ thing.

Some states have crappy competition - Wyoming for example. There's no one else there to encourage an expensive hospital to lower prices, which means expensive premiums. That's a failure of the free market, not a failure of the ACA. (I say that because if the solution to an ACA's woes would mean MORE ACA instead of less - say a public plan - then it doesn't really fit the narrative of the ACA causing these problems.)

And most importantly, the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium! It was to lower health care costs over time (not compared to now, but compared to what they would otherwise be). It was to raise society's health over time (compared to now). And it was to protect people from going bankrupt from health care costs. (This is already successful thanks to the elimination of pre-existing condition rejections, and the elimination of annual/lifetime maximums.)

<comment><USER39> _It was to lower health care costs over time_

I'm not sure how this is possible. The other goals you mention are feasible, but only to the extent that they prevent cost saving.

 _the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium_

Well, it was intended to lower some, and raise others. People with preexisting conditions cannot be insured. They can only be subsidized with something falsely called "insurance". The losers in ACA are pretty much the same as with single payer: The young, healthy, and productive. Call it fair or unfair, the situation is much different than with single payer in that ACA is going to let people see just how much _they themselves_ are getting boned.

<comment><USER22> I think the CBO has already projected a lowering of the future "cost curve". I guess we'll have to see how it actually plays out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Only supports 200 simultaneous transactions ay? Well just put a big ol' queue on the front of it with a hard thread limit and tell people they'll get an email when it's ready.

<comment><USER11> But it crashed at 200 in the testing the week before launch....

For all we know it crashed at 2 "truly simultaneous" attempts. I've watched more than one project run beautifully until they attempted a second simultaneous logged in user, which is not quite the same thing, but....

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The real problem is with the weird indirection of the US government providing payment to doctors/hospitals/pharma through subsidies, tax breaks, and tax penalties granted to or extracted from citizens that can only be spent at private insurance companies or mitigated by spending at private insurance companies who then, in turn, pay for your healthcare.

The sheer complexity of this rent-seeking indirection makes keeping track of the millions of distinct participant-instances that can play out in hundreds of different ways, involving integrating tens of massive legacy systems with new, flexible business logic (for a law in flux), impractical.

With single-payer, they could have scrapped the vast majority of this complexity.

</comment><comment><USER42> The problem is government contracting. CGI will continue to get contracts.

The problem is a system where if you don't deliver you get paid millions of dollars and still get jobs.

</comment><comment><USER43> Since when have they even been good enough at this to critique?

They're going to continue to suck royally, as royalty does.</comment>


The Rise of the Homepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1707431/the-rise-of-the-homepreneurs <comment><USER2> I say the more people employing themselves (+1 or 2 others, perhaps contracting out further work, as well) the better, as we'll then be less dependent on multinational corporations for domestic hiring. We already see what's going on in Japan with Zombie corporations and and the salaryman culture sapping their entrepreneurial spirit.

The more dispersed our workforce is amongst small shops, the better we can weather future economic downturns at least on a psychological level. It'll also go a long way toward Small Business having a much larger say in governance, perhaps even culminating in a Singapore- or Taiwan-style healthcare system with compulsory coverage but price controls and subsidies at the gov't level. It would remove one huge con of owning a small business, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to declare a moratorium on all new word coinages obtained by combining "entrepreneur" with something else.

That means you, femtrempreneur, homepreneur, kidpreneur, wantrepreneur (though I do like this one) and mompreneur.

<comment><USER4> "Wantrepreneur" is justified by virtue of being a true witticism rather than a mechanical combination of a demographic + "preneur" — it's actually funny, or at least meant to be. "Kidpreneur" and "femtrepreneur" are in the same vein as "Bennifer" or "Brangelina."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original Source: [http://www.contactme.com/blog/trends/the-homepreneurs- growin...](http://www.contactme.com/blog/trends/the-homepreneurs-growing-by- leaps-and-bounds/?display=wide)

Edit to put source at top. Also, looks like they fixed the site. They are apparently running Drupal, which was throwing an error earlier.

</comment><comment><USER6> 7 out of 10 home businesses succeed? I thought that 98% of small businesses fail? How can that be of 53% of small businesses are home businesses?

{edit} Well I guess the saying is that 'most' small businesses fail...

<comment><USER7> That depends on what it means for a business to fail. My dad had a small consulting business at one point, it gave him some income, but it has been shutdown now. Is that a failure? Would a small business which never made money, but which the owners learned a lot running a failure? Is a business that took full-time work, but which the owners never made more than minimum wage running a failure? What they were unemployed at the time and closed it because they had found a job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a problem with the math (from the graphic):

\- Homepreneur based businesses have revenues of 427,000,000,000

\- There are 18,300,000 home businesses of which 35% (6,405,000) make more than $125,000

But 6,405,000 * 125,000 = 800,625,000,000

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always had the feeling that working 'literally' from home is a recipe for heavy procrastination. I think I'd rather spend a little bit of money and get some office space somewhere, so I can somehow force myself a routine, interact with other human beings and so on. But maybe this is just me.

</comment><comment><USER10> what a garbage blog post. It doesn't even go into detail as to what these home businesses do. Is the point of this post to make me feel better about myself. To give me some hope that I too can start a business just like these people since the stats are going up!

</comment><comment><USER11> @jeremyjarvis What are you talking about??

<comment><USER12> Just a "tongue-in-cheek" play on words :)</comment></comment>


Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.manrs.org/ <comment><USER2> Great article that shows just how fragile and exploitable the global routing infrastructure is: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/12/how-3...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/12/how-3ves-bgp-hijackers-eluded-the-internet-and-made-29m/)

Note that MANRS would not have stopped this.

</comment><comment><USER3> To a certain extent, it is based on trust and what if the trusting model is broken. Is there a need of new design so one can route only to your people you trust. That, well, may break the internet.</comment>


Intelligence is so overrated, knowledge and persistence are so underrated. - <AUTHOR>

If there are two people with the same inherent intelligence, wouldn't the person with more knowledge APPEAR to be more intelligent?
Wouldn't the one with more knowledge be better at solving problems, because he has more knowledge that he can use intelligently to solve a problem?
If one were to agree with that, applying the same rule, wouldn't it be possible that a person with lesser inherent intelligence but enough of more knowledge out do a person of greater intelligence but with lesser knowledge, if the positive delta of intelligence is enough to overcome the negative delta of intelligence?
And how much influence does persistence have on the breadth or/and depth of knowledge one gains in one or many domains, as compared to intelligence? <comment><USER2> Should the intelligence and knowledge be treated differently? A person to be acknowledged as 'intelligent' in certain field must have a deep knowledge about that topic and vice-versa. Nobody comes into existence already knowing about Dijkstra's algorithm, s/he has to learn it actively.

<comment><AUTHOR> From some hard learnt life lessons, this is what I realized

Its best to differentiate between:

1) inherent intelligence 2) knowledge 3) apparent intelligence (which I define as a product of inherent intelligence and one's accumulated knowledge)

It benefited me the most when I focused more or less solely on knowledge accumulation and its usage than the other two.

While evlauating others too, like prospective employees, I found it best to evaluate one's hunger to accumulate knowledge and readiness to apply it.

Those, who focus mostly on their 'intelligence' I found it a pain to deal with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually, the market forces I see right now value experience and knowledge over intelligence. I can hire people who are vastly more intelligent (but also vastly less experienced) than I am to work for me for a very small fraction of what I can charge for my own time.

However, people who are as experienced as I am, even if they are clearly less intelligent, can usually command wages similar to mine.</comment>


What are the main reasons why Unix/Mac does not get viruses? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-reasons-why-UNIX-Mac-does-not-get-viruses

<comment><USER2> Great, the ol' "Argument from Market Share", an essentially un-falsifiable hypothesis. I mean, it would take Saruman, Gandalf and Dumbldore to reverse the proportions of machines with Windows vs Macs, vs machines running Linux. That argument basically excuses Windows and the surrounding culture from examination.

Perhaps Windows is the "Dragon King" of malware, and the Linux or Mac experience is more typical. After all, undocumented systems calls, using part of the file name (".exe") as execute permission, magic file names like "AUX", "LP" and "CON", and not documenting the entire list of file types that can execute might really contribute.

Untrue analogies like "The biggest beast in the jungle has the most parasites" don't help either, they're just more of the same excuse for Windows. Does the biggest beast have the most parasites? Maybe the most visible parasites, but I doubt the most. I personally would expect the most ancient clades of animals to have the most parasites: long-lasting clades of animals would have the most time for parasites to evolve. Some recent paleontological work suggests that some disease we see in birds today may have originally evolved as diseases of the bird's theropod dinosaur ancestors. Since Windows preserves at least a measure of backwards compatibility to MS-DOS, maybe it has the most parasites as the most unchanged clade of operating system.</comment>


Quartz: "How the Internet is making us poor." - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/67323/how-the-internet-made-us-poor/

<comment><AUTHOR> This quote from Marc Andreessen says it all "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories," said Andreessen. "People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do." It's a glib remark—but increasingly true.

<comment><USER2> What about when we start needing fewer people to tell the computers what to do? This is already happening with automated testing and QA, self-reproducing code, etc. Someone mused in response to the XKCD StackSort comic that you could probably build anything just by putting together random code on StackOverflow and integration testing the results. What happens to the 'tell the computers' jobs then?

I ask myself: As technologists, do we have an obligation to understand the ramifications - macroeconomic, sociological and personal - of our work's disruption?</comment></comment>


How He built a $10,000/mo flash game in his spare time. - <AUTHOR> http://partners.adobe.acrobat.com/p71527903/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

<comment><USER2> This is a really interesting game, I got to watch Chris producing and growing it over time and then I got to watch him talk about it at FGS the other day. It's been great watching his revenue climb and the game grow, when it first started it was tiny.

If you're making multiplayer Flash stuff you really should talk to him - <http://playerio.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was a much more interesting video than I thought it would be. I'd never thought the payment models he uses in the game would have brought the revenues they have for him. $50 for a smiley face just seems ridiculous and yet people were happy to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well I would expect nothing less from Him!</comment>


Edw519 blog in archive.org - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20130614101151/http://edweissman.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This blog is full of gems, sadly the website is currently down. Fortunately, I found this in web archive.</comment>