US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums - <AUTHOR> https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-are-highly-taxed-when-you-count-health-premiums/ <comment><USER2> I moved to the US from a country with socialised medicine. When you include premiums then taxes in both were roughly similar if not a little higher in the US (ignoring cost of living differences).

But even that doesn't include the real sting on the tail of US medicine. You pay a fairly high health insurance premium, but if you actually need health services you then pay again through the nose even with insurance "discounts."

For example my under one year old needed to go to the emergency room due to a high fever for several hours, we paid over $300 on top of paying over a thousand in combined employer/employee premiums each month. That's with insurance picking up at least that much.

<comment><USER3> Can't even find out what stuff costs beforehand either. I had to get a blood test. I had gotten burned before where my insurance said they covered a physical, but it turns out their definition of a physical didn't include the doctor's definition, which included blood tests. So before I had my blood drawn, I asked them to tell me what the tests would cost if my insurance didn't cover it. "It depends on how it's coded," they said. So I asked them to check how it was coded and tell me what the "code" cost. They looked it up. It was coded wrong, apparently. They would have to talk to the doctor and couldn't, so I would need to make a return appointment, or I could just let them draw my blood. Still don't know what the coding was or was supposed to be, or really what that even means. I just needed to get life insurance and get back to work. I found out the price once I was billed for it.

<comment><USER4> 'You should know the price before you agree to buy the product' seems like such an innocuous principle. Why isn't their broad-based support of it for medical care?

If you need emergency care then sure, there isn't time. The vast majority of interactions with the medical system aren't that type of emergency though. People have time to choose the better of two options. They can't decide on better if they don't know the price.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this has baffled me before. I remember learning in my Family & Consumer Sciences class about the importance of being an informed consumer. Then, in college I had to get a dental procedure done and I called around to try to find out the price from different dentists and no one could give me any actual numbers. I ultimately just had to pick a place based on reviews and found out the price after the fact with no knowledge of how it compared t other places.

<comment><USER6> That's odd. Dentists, unlike doctors, will in my experience just give you a price if you ask for it... Maybe this varies state to state?

<comment><USER7> They used to but it's dwindling. A friend of mine is a dentist and he said when he first graduated from dental school some 15 years ago, his father and his practice dealt directly with the patient and had a list of all of their prices on their website and in their office. As customers increasingly wanted to have their insurance cover dental they had fewer and fewer people paying out of pocket and going through insurance. So prices went up due to increased complexity of the business.

<comment><USER8> At my dental office, they can tell you the total cost without insurance which is the maximum they would charge for any procedure. If you paid in cash in full, they would do a discount (for non-insured).

For those insured, it depended on the insurance you had but they would give you a rough estimate based on the plan you had (mostly because they can't be 100% certain what the insurance will cover down to the exact dollar amount.

In my experience the estimate is often off but close enough that I am not worried I'd owe an insane amount afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like to bring this up when we talk taxes: I think it's totally crazy that we give the feds 25% or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less. I think it should be the other way around: 5% for the feds, and maybe 20% to the states. The reason is that our cities are filled with bums, and have absolutely no money to either give them jobs or make new programs. The feds don't give a shit and are busy making missiles or creating massive social programs that enrich the wrong people. I think the current strategy is broken. The other nice thing about this, is that we'd pay less in taxes AND the states/cities would be able to handle every damn thing it needs. It would be like 2x to 3x the money they are getting right now.

<comment><USER10> The whole point of allowing people to deduct their state tax payments was to solve exactly this problem. Let the states that want to tax more and provide more social services do so without harm to their citizens.

Of course that deduction is gone now, which just further solidifies government power.

<comment><USER11> My own suspicion is that we got rid of that because government _wants_ to harm the citizens of certain states. That's likely one of the benefits of having federal power, the ability structure the system to perpetuate your hold on it. In the US, our politicians do this all the time.

<comment><USER10> Well, there are actually good arguments to be made on both sides of the issue. For example, one argument is, "why should people who live in high cost states pay less federal tax for the same federal services?" The counter-argument being "they don't need as many government services since they get the same benefits from their state" and also "their incomes are higher so their total dollar contribution is still just as high".

It's a tough issue. From the Federal perspective is makes a lot of sense to get rid of the SALT deductions, and I suspect the next time the Dems are in charge they will "be unable" to restore the deduction for "reasons", since both parties want the extra revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just a quick note that health insurance premiums do not in fact get plowed directly into rents and administrative redundancies; we pay more than Europe (and Medicare) does in administrative costs, but far-and-away the largest components of health care expenditures in the US are in inpatient and outpatient procedure billings (outpatient by a factor of almost 2x inpatient, itself something like 3-4x all administrative costs).

We certainly do seem to pay far too much for health care! But the explanations aren't as simple as evil health insurers. The system appears to be structurally pretty messed up, and alterations to the payer-side alone, without radical changes to the provider side, are unlikely to solve the problem.

<comment><USER13> What I was wondering about was how much money is needed for the sheer administration of processing claims and payments in the US system?

In the UK in the NHS, there is none of the layers of beurocracy and paperwork related to call-centers and payment handling and claims inspectors (as far as I know anyway) that I assume is commonplace in the US hospitals and insurance companies. You go in, see the doctor, then leave. Usually the only "paperwork" required is booking another appointment if you need to come back - no forms, no invoices, no payment etc.

I guess it is the same argument made about universal income benefits - if we just gave _everyone_ (rich or poor) in the country a set amount of money each year we'd save billions in not having to means-test every claimant individually and actually save money by giving it away to _everyone_.

<comment><USER14> This argument does hold significant validity, unfortunately there is an irrational need to ensure that a minority are not exploiting the system, even at the cost of those who pay for the system.

For example, I think all buses in London should be free. Look around the bus and you'll see that most people aren't directly paying (under 16, over 60, on benefits) and by taking away the need to check for payment we could get people on and off the buses much faster and completely remove the need for card readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Canadian figures seem insanely low. 11.5% total? When I lived in BC making an approximately average income, my effective tax rate alone was 21% [EDIT: originally put 23%]. I paid pension, health insurance, and unemployment deductions on top of that. And that only counts the employee side of deductions.

This example is "married with two kids", so it's possible that there are massive offsets that I didn't have access to as a single person, but 11.5% still seems very low.

I would expect Canada to fare favourably in this comparison, though. The taxes are not as bad as most Americans think. Although they do ramp up very quickly for higher earners, which was an incentive for moving to the states as my income increased. Also, pay is higher in the US (by a factor of about 2 or 3) for the same job.

<comment><USER16> You might have a skewed sense of what median Canadian income is. And your job might be further above that median than you realize.

Median Canadian individual income is ~$35,000 [0].

In B.C., your average 2019 tax rate would be 13.34% not including non- refundable tax credits (and so the effective rate would likely be a point or two lower). [1]

A median tax rate of 11.5% against a median Canadian individual income seems entirely reasonable.

\----

0: [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111002...](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110023901)

1: [https://www.ey.com/ca/en/services/tax/tax- calculators-2019-p...](https://www.ey.com/ca/en/services/tax/tax- calculators-2019-personal-tax)

<comment><USER15> It seems you're right. I know I was close to the average for my region, but that's a high cost-of-living city with a much higher median income than 35k. I may have also been conflating household and individual income.

Lessons: 1) I have no concept of the median experience in my country, 2) a single number can't answer the question "does this country have high taxes".

<comment><USER16> Truthfully, the only reason I had the numbers at hand was because I'd personally fallen for your "Lesson #1" before.

I spent my 20s far below median (which I knew), and my 30s far above median (which I didn't realize, at least not at first). Very different lived experiences :)

And I know many folks around me (friends, family, colleagues) look around (confirmation bias & availability heuristic, amongst others) and believe that $60k-$80k (or more) represents a "typical" lived Canadian experience. They are, to a person, universally surprised to see the actual median income (as was I when first tracking it down).

It certainly is viewpoint-shifting. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I once considered relocating with the same company to a similar role in London. The base pay in London is lower, and the marginal tax rates are high, but overall cost of living isn't too terribly far off (compared to the SF Bay Area), and doing calculations like these it seemed that while it would be something of a step down total compensation-wise, it wasn't nearly as large of one as it at first seemed. I didn't make the jump, but actually doing the math made it seem a lot more reasonable than it did at the outset.

<comment><USER18> What fraction of SF salary did they ask you to take out of interest? I knew a googler who said London was 0.7*Mountain View total comp as an engineer

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it was about 75%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article decides to include employer-side payroll taxes in its US calculations as though this is an income tax - but this is not (appears not to be) done for other countries, where payroll taxes are often higher, so it's not a fair comparison.

The inevitable Wikipedia link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax#/media/File:Payrol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax#/media/File:Payroll_and_income_tax_by_country.png)

</comment><comment><USER20> The US healthcare system is making many people extremely rich. Someone has to pay for that.

<comment><USER21> Think of what it'd do to the insurance worker economy if we switched to a medicare for all system! It's pretty fucked up that such a large chunk of our country is now essentially parasitic.

(I say this while recognizing that runaway medical costs aren't solely the result of insurers)

<comment><USER22> Curious if there can be Amazon for healthcare..

<comment><USER23> Considering the reported working conditions of some Amazon employees, let's not.

The most sustainable choice will be neither monopolistic pricing, nor cutthroat pricing at the expense of medical staff, but somewhere in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This analysis ignores VAT taxes entirely, which can add significantly to an employee's tax burden.

<comment> munk-a VAT taxes (or sales tax in the US) will tend to more heavily effect lower income workers, which will not be the majority of people on HN. VAT taxes are heavily regressive and, outside of the luxury class of such would be nice to see phased out.

<comment><USER24> Most sales taxes in the US aren't applied to staple good like food, blunting the impact on lower income workers.

I would disagree it doesn't impact higher income works because you're still paying sales tax on luxury items and because of the high prices, the tax is very high.

In Canada it's not uncommon for the HST to be 15%.

<comment><USER25> > In Canada

And if your income is low enough, you get an HST credit to control for its regressive nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's worse if you include 401k payments to offset a more generous public pension.

<comment> munk-a Or really any public pension. I feel like if you're <40 then you should be planning for Social Security to not exist when you get old, anything else seems overly optimistic.

<comment><USER26> There's literally no analysis that shows social security completely failing at any point. That's spin you're getting from partisan media, and it's absolutely infuriating the people allow this to persist.

In a few years, given no changes, the cash flow will go negative and we'll begin spending down the trust fund. By 2035 or so (I forget the numbers, and the projections tend to vary widely anyway because of differing models and, yeah, partisan spin) the trust fund will be spent and the social security administration will need to adjust, as it will be taking in something like 80% of obligations.

A 20% shortfall is a big accounting problem. It's hardly "plan for it not to exist".

<comment><USER27> The trust fund is an accounting fiction that doesn't hold any economically productive assets. Congress spent social security's surplus in the general budget and issued special obligation bonds in return that accumulate "interest" on paper but do not ever collect from the government. They cannot be sold on the market. Taxes or debt needs to be raised or benefits need to be cut effectively now.

This is from a 1999 OMB report:

``These [trust fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures–but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds are not set up to be pension funds, like the funds of private pension plans. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury, that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.``

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So - in the UK you pay national insurance, which ostensibly pays for the NHS and retirement benefits.

If you earn £150k a year (top 2% of salaries in the UK) you pay £6,964.16 a year. That's an astounding deal. There are no deductibles, no co pays for hospital stays, GP visits are free, as are any tests and investigations.

You do pay £9 for each item on a prescription, but if you get more than 3 items a month you can pay a flat rate of £104 a year for a prepayment certificate.

Private health insurance is still a thing - it just gets you a nicer room in a private hospital and quicker treatment for non life-threatening conditions.

<comment><USER29> Except for the fact that the NHS is utter garbage and anyone here making 150k is on private health insurance.

<comment><USER13> Citation needed.

I dont think that the NHS is utter garbage - sure there is room for improvement, but it seems that it is not "garbage" at all according to recent research: [https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-06/NHS...](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-06/NHS_at_70_how_good_is_the_NHS.pdf)

That report has some very interesting charts. E.g. Figure 9 shows that almost 25% of people in USA skipped going to the doctors due to cost, or almost 20% of people in USA skipped prescription medicine due to cost. For comparison on the NHS it was 5% and 2% respectively. Mind-boggling.

I'd agree though that anyone on 150K plus (and probably anyone in a job from the 40K range upward (if not lower)) would have private medical cover. As others have noted, private cover basically just means you get seen quicker/at a more convienient time and the waiting room is nicer - the care is no better or worse than the NHS IME (although I dont have any data on that - just a personal anecdote)

<comment><USER29> A good citation can be found in the one you provided:

Under Key findings:

Its main weakness is health care outcomes. The UK appears to perform less well than similar countries on the overall rate at which people die when successful medical care could have saved their lives.

Among its strengths, the NHS does better than health systems in comparable countries at protecting people from heavy financial costs when they are ill. People in the UK are also less likely than in other countries to be put off from seeking medical help due to costs.

So: main strength - cheap, main weakness - _health care outcomes_!

It's no surprise that fewer people in the UK skip medical care due to costs when it's (close to) free. The problem is that the health care is bad when you get it (according to your own provided document)!

<comment><USER13> Nowhere in that report does it say it is "garbage", as you suggest it is.

Yes it is not as good as some other wealthy countries, but it is by no means "garbage", e.g. on page 35: "The results show that although the UK does well by global standards, it performs poorly compared with the other developed countries in our comparison group". _"..does well by global standards.."_ completely contradicts the idea that it is "garbage".

There are some interesting comments in the document suggesting that some of the health outcomes might actually be social which was news to me an quite interesting - e.g. the british "stiff upper lip"/"keep calm and carry on" might be causing people to defer medical help, or that the large income disparity could be skewing it. Interesting & worrying stuff.

<comment><USER29> Does well by global standards?! Yes, we should definitely be comparing our healthcare system to those found in places like the Congo. It has bad healthcare outcomes and costs a lot for them, that is bad, don't get hung up on the single word 'garbage', it's called hyperbole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tangential: As a non-native speaker, I find the word PREMIUM highly problematic. You need a lot of contexts to understand that the article is talking about health care costs not covered by health insurance.

<comment><USER14> It's not because you are a non-native speaker. It's not a widely used English term without the word Insurance in front of it, however it is a standard American English term.

It is also not the costs "not covered by health insurance", rather the insurance premium is the cost of the policy itself.

<comment><USER30> Interesting, thanks! But from what I know people in US often end up paying extra cash (on top of their health insurance) for procedures, checkups, and drugs. This is rather rare in EU. That should be included in whatever international comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >It's just that they pay it into a private insurance system that wastes large portions of it on rents and administrative redundancy.

Would love to see a breakdown of real estate and admin costs for private insurance systems throughout the States to understand how much could be saved by eliminating redundancy.

Not seeing this broken out in Anthem's Financials: [https://ir.antheminc.com/static- files/73562e56-886c-4ff5-a36...](https://ir.antheminc.com/static- files/73562e56-886c-4ff5-a365-d4324728524f)

<comment><USER32> Private healthcare insurance has margins well below most profitable companies, in the us. If anything I'd hazard that the poor treatment of consumers by these entities stems from being barely able to hold the line, not because of greed. Rising medical costs, I think, have the blame elsewhere, but insurance companies sure do make a good Boogeyman for politicians, because they are very poorly understood.

<comment><USER33> Somebody's gouging us. Who? Everybody cries poor and points the finger at everybody else. Nobody knows where the money is actually going.

<comment><USER34> Doctors?

Seems to be a huge reluctance for anyone in politics to place the blame on them. But I'm pretty sure they make far more in the US than anywhere else in the world.

<comment><USER35> And they pay huge amounts of their income to malpractice insurance.

Hmm. There's that word "insurance" again.

<comment><USER33> From what I've read, doctors are also substantial owners of the malpractice insurance companies. Also, their premiums are paid by their employers. In fact, salaries don't tell the entire story for doctors, since they are heavily invested in their own industry. For instance, at one point my health insurance provider advertised itself as being doctor-owned.

As mentioned above, a problem is that the system is so opaque, seemingly by design. A potential benefit of a government run system is that there could simply be fewer business entities. For instance, doctors could just work for the government, for a decent salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This does not take into account the fact that in most countries with an universal health care system, you will only contribute to it during your +/\- 40 years career while you'll benefit from it during your whole life.

<comment><USER24> You don't pay taxes once you're retired? That's certainly not true in places like Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The difference is that your taxes go up as you earn more, but your health insurance premiums don't. Lower middle class workers are getting screwed, but the top earners are doing great! It's a feature, not a bug.

</comment><comment><USER38> The international comparison is a bit eyebrow raising. It has two countries (Canada and the Netherlands), which are on the lower side in terms of overall taxation, on opposite sides of the scale. The Netherlands is listed as the highest tax jurisdiction, at 48%, despite having one of the lower tax burdens in Europe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio). Canada is listed as just 11%.

</comment><comment><USER39> This article makes some good points up until the end. It criticizes private sector waste without evaluating waste in the public sector. I see how the taxpayer impact could possibly* be a wash, and do see problems in the private sector for sure. But my experiences with just about any US federal system does not cause me to see them as a bastion of efficiency. Without a profit incentive or really any incentive beyond occasional bad press, and with strict salary and firing controls they do not innovate or improve. Look at the VA for an example. Horror stories do exist for British and Canadian systems as well as others I'm sure.

* This article also ignores the fact that many of the countries listed also still have private insurance supplementals. Those may need to be added for a fair comparison.

In the end I don't have good solution, but think the traditional arguments in both directions are generally hyperbolic and over simplified. Unless data shows conclusively otherwise, I lean toward free market solutions.

</comment><comment><USER40> Individual US tax payers pay for most of the world's security. This is one tax of being the global super power, so it's not particularly surprising that when you include all things the US tax payer pays for privately that is taxed in other countries, you arrive at a number higher than other similar countries.

In reality, there is no country with which we can fairly compare US tax rates.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced that US military intervention in the last 40 years has led to a net increase in global security.

Although the _existence_ of the US military probably helps. As long as they don't do anything.

I'm undecided on this one.

<comment><USER40> > Although the existence of the US military probably helps. As long as they > don't do anything.

But the US has one of the largest all-volunteer armies in the world, with some of the most advanced technology, so it makes sense that it costs more. My comment is not a justification for America's military power, it is simply an observation that American tax payers pay for something the rest of the world gets to enjoy for free -- the threat that if another country attempts to upset the balance of power from which many countries profit (namely many of those in Western Europe), the United States (and only or mainly the United States) will stage an intervention.

For example, regardless of Norway's foreign policy, they benefit from American warfare (or threat of warfare) in the middle east which ultimately does lower the supply of oil. Same with Saudi Arabia. None of these countries contribute, which is why it makes sense that the american tax payer pays more.

<comment> munk-a Partially yea, it may be that using the word "security" in that first post was a wording error that caused a bunch of people to misunderstand you. But then, in this follow up, you've mentioned that Norway is benefiting from the US lowering the supply of oil (I assume via setting it, and the people who extract it, on fire)... I am not Norwegian and can't speak as to their preference, but given that Norway is currently scaling back their oil exploration efforts along with the general character of Norwegians that I've met, I'll make an effort. I'm going to assume that the Norwegian ethical stance is against the US starting wars in the middle east and killing people to make their oil a bit more valuable.

<comment><USER40> > Norwegian ethical stance is against the US starting wars in the middle east > and killing people to make their oil a bit more valuable.

I mean the American ethical stance, as demonstrated numerous times by various popular votes, is also against war. However, that does not change the fact that countries benefit from it. Ultimately, while perhaps making some countries hypocritical, none of what you said changes the argument I put forth: namely that, by virtue of being the only country whose citizens are forced to pay for the status quo (which has the effect of subsidizing the economies of many of the countries to which the article attempts to compare the united states), there is no way to properly compare US tax policy to any other country.

> Partially yea, it may be that using the word "security" in that first post > was a wording error that caused a bunch of people to misunderstand you

Indeed. For some reason, many people define security as not just security of the status quo but also some cosmic fight between good and evil.

<comment> munk-a No.

Both countries do not benefit from it, otherwise they would view these wars as just and support them. The political machines in both countries support these wars and force the populace into them - in part (in the US at least) by being a two party system without any way to politically express a desire to not go to war, one party is more hawkish but both parties are full of hawks.

As an American I am happy to say, "Please, America, stop messing up the world for everyone with your endless economic wars." A bully cannot neutrally justify their own actions, they are biased in approving of the path they have chosen.

<comment><USER40> > otherwise they would view these wars as just and support them

So the claim is that it is only possible to benefit monetarily from things that are ethically sound?

<comment> munk-a No, the point is that a subset of the populace benefiting monetarily isn't equivalent to a country benefiting. People can rationally say that acquisition of wealth is not the sole goal of existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One thing he missed.

Only in the US can you be bankrupted with full coverage, a simple medivac helicopter ride would take care of most Americans.

<comment><USER42> You can't be bankrupted with full coverage (except by the cost of premiums), but very few, proportionately, Americans have anything like full coverage.

<comment><USER41> you are simply wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> My understanding is that in the US there are even companies which can be hired by hospitals and other care centers to "optimize" the codes before the final submission to the insurance. I take this to mean that they can ensure that you're using the right codes and also probably try to maximize the payout.

</comment><comment><USER44> Markets such as the US health care market, characterized by ineslastic demand and secret prices, should never, ever be tolerated under any circumstances. This arrangement is here to benefit the supply side and screw the demand side and it has to be stopped. The only pathway out of this crisis starts with the federal government replacing private insurers, relegating them to selling supplemental coverage. Such companies also should be legally compelled to run as mutual insurance companies, where any profit deriving from good risk management is sent back to policyholders. It is long past time everybody in the US admitted that markets have completely failed in US health care.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think I'm privileged to live in Australia where I do not need to pay for my visits to the hospital and for my operation when I had appendicitis. Whereas in the US I've seen it is 30-70k. It's also interesting that there is a range of prices depending on the hospital. Would this be representative of treatment quality? How much one can pay shouldn't be the determinant of the optimal treatment that one deserves to receive.

</comment><comment><USER46> I actually spoke to someone today who is hiring a guy from a FANG in SV to go and work in Denmark. He told me taxes are high enough over there it isn't all that different.

Plus like many Americans he was curious about living in Denmark. Cycling everywhere, laid back lifestyle, that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER47> Misappropriation of funds due to lobbying and regulatory capture.

The film 'Vice' on Dick Cheney outlines just how permeable American government is to such non-public interests.

It's no wonder tax avoidance is such an interesting topic for those who stand to pay the most if they do nothing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Not just that, they are also getting nothing in return.

The US voters need to realize just how much are they getting fucked over by the military-industrial complex.

I'm not against taxes, I'm against taxes that go to pay for wars as opposed to medical insurance, infrastructure and education.

<comment><USER49> That budget seems to be always nonnegotiable, despite the occasional media outrage. Realistically, how can US voters change this?

As an aside, the US is the only country I've seen give military personnel priority boarding for civilian flights. With all due respect to veterans, it seems so strange to do this sort of worshiping in what is effectively peacetime.

<comment><USER50> It's a small thing, and I consider it a bit of payback for what society did to veterans back in the days of Vietnam.

<comment><USER48> It's bullshit because the govt makes these meaningless gestures but when it's time to open the wallet, all of sudden they are out of respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> About time. As a Brit who worked in America for many years this was blindingly obvious. It is only who you pay your tax to.

</comment><comment><USER52> US workers are highly taxed if you bother to count every tax they pay from payroll, property, sales, and embedded taxes.

</comment><comment><USER53> "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"

You can't average averages in this way. You'll get easily manipulated data.

He's using a single average data for a married, single income worker, and combining that with the average for health insurance.

You can't do that. You need to calculate each individual person's income and share of healthcare costs, and only then average the results.

</comment><comment><USER54> The only problem with the 'Medicare for all' system is that it won't reduce that insanely high 'stealth' taxation - it will just add to it... However, at least with efforts like Oklahoma's Surgery Center etc one stands a chance to escape the compulsory racket through market efficiency. Potentially.

</comment><comment><USER55> only country doing worse: netherlands. no surprise there.

</comment><comment><USER56> I never understood why people are against some form of universal healthcare. The idea of "socialism" or "communism" scare many conservatives, but it just doesn't make sense here.

How universal healthcare sorta works - we all put money in a pot, and use it to pay for healthcare.

How health insurance works - we put money into a company, who uses it to pay for healthcare, while taking a significant cut as it's a private entity.

With the correct organization (which the government is notoriously terrible at) it would seem to me that it could only be cheaper to have taxpaid healthcare?

<comment><USER57> I find it ironic that you stated the answer to your own question and didn't notice.

That is, how notoriously terrible the government is at organization is a major reason for why people are against universal healthcare. Whether their concerns are overblown or not I leave to opinion. But that is a major fear for many.

<comment><USER58> > how notoriously terrible the government is at organization is a major reason

A major propaganda point, not a reason based on data. It's really hard to find a first-world country which has a medical system which doesn't compare favorably with American insurance companies on either cost or quality — the baked-in conflicts of interest are too powerful.

<comment><USER59> Insurance companies are also not exactly....paragons of good customer service themselves. I was camping with a friend when he managed to slice off the tip of his finger. The insurance company fought him tooth and..err...nail to avoid paying out for not having the ER visit "pre-approved"

<comment><USER58> That was my point: I've known a fair number of people from other countries and I've never heard any reaction other than stunned disbelief when they experienced the American private insurance system — up to and including giving up jobs here just to avoid the stress of not knowing whether you really will get treated or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> "If you include things that aren't taxes, people are taxed a lot more"

<comment><USER61> If you don't do _something_ , comparing tax rates between countries is meaningless when you get different things for those tax dollars.

I think the developed world (minus us here in the US, of course) has finally realized that access to health care is a basic human right and _should_ be included.

<comment><USER62> The primary reason that some people push back against this notion of health care as a "basic human right" is that it is an example of a "right" that can only be provided by force. And by force I mean that the only way it can be "guaranteed" by the government is for the government to forcibly collect taxes to pay for the services. Forceable redistribution is required. Perhaps even forcible job assignments (nurses, doctors, technicians, etc) if you really want to make sure the right is provided equally to everyone (ratio of patients to doctors, etc.).

In contrast rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion and so on can be guaranteed through inaction of the government. Nothing needs to be taken away from anyone to guarantee these rights. Basically this is the difference between positive rights and negative rights.

One large problem with bucketing positive and negative rights together as "basic rights" and insisting that the government must guarantee these basic rights is that it becomes difficult to identify a limiting principle. If health care is a "basic right", then why isn't "food" or "shelter" or "clothing"? How would we go about guaranteeing those things?

Please don't interpret my comments as suggesting that reasonably priced health insurance and accessible health care services aren't important. They are, but there are ways of structuring those services and socializing some of the costs that don't require that they be considered "basic rights".

It is interesting that you qualify your claim that health care is a "basic human right" to the "developed world". Does that mean that it is not a "basic human right" in other parts of the world? Why not? If it is a basic human right, shouldn't it be protected universally? And if you think it should be provided universally who should be responsible for providing that right outside the developed world? And if it there is some complex economic conditions that are pre-requisites then is it really a "basic human right"?

<comment><USER61> > It is interesting that you qualify your claim that health care is a "basic > human right" to the "developed world". Does that mean that it is not a > "basic human right" in other parts of the world?

You misunderstand. I personally believe that everyone has a right to access to healthcare. My point was that the developed world has finally decided (for the most part) to recognize and codify that into law and taxation, whereas much of the less-developed world has not (to be fair, a decent amount of it has, though).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's Patriot Act admission has the EU up in arms - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/06/microsofts-patriot-act-admission-has-the-eu-up-in-arms/

<comment><USER2> This should be interesting to watch develop. The conflict in national laws amongst the G8 is fascinating.</comment>


Building an open source Nest - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spark.io/2014/01/17/open-source-thermostat/ <comment><USER2> I've just built something very similar to this last weekend -- For around $43/sensor (Raspberry Pi Model B, DigiSpark, and 1-Wire Temperature Sensor) I made 20 of these for my home, farm, and hackerspace for temperature logging. I did this because we're getting another 'polar vortex' next week and the cows don't like it if it's colder than 20 degrees out.

This allows me to measure the temperature inside, outside, and get the relative humidity (not nearly as accurate as the $20 honeywell sensor that they're using, but, it's close enough for my needs). I then built a simple website using mrtg (for temperature trending) and a ruby script that checks the temperatures versus what the set points are and mounted the raspberry pi's in various locations around my places.

My "Controller" nodes are a beagleboard with a 4 or 8 channel relay board attached that allow me to turn on or off the individual controls on the furnace. It works well with my two stage heat pump and fan at my home, but, I need some work to get it 100% at the hackerspace and at the farm.

I mainly did this because I needed something that allowed me to cover more rooms than the Nest (and I'm adding duct dampers and fans to my heating system, so I can selectively heat and cool more rooms to better temperatures).

<comment><USER3> What is the DigiSpark for? Is the Pi's IO not enough? How are you networking them?

<comment><USER2> The biggest thing that I had against using the Pi's GPIO pins were that they're really unforgiving, and only ran on 3.3v. My One-Wire sensor ([http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS18B20.pdf](http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS18B20.pdf)) Needed 5 Volts, and that's something that the DigiSpark gave me with no issues. I literally soldered pins 1 and 3 to the +5 and Ground pins on the back of the digispark, pin 2 to the I/O5 on the digispark, and ran a 4.7K resistor across the front from +5 to Pin 5 for my pull up resistor -- stupid easy to do and a squirt of epoxy made everything electrically tight.

<comment><USER4> Beaglebone might have served you better since it sounds like you actually needed some control stuff. I've found it's got better GPIO, PWM, etc. options for projects that require them.

That, or a put together a nice board that you can plug into the RPi to interface better with it maybe :)

<comment><USER2> I'm working on building a desktop CNC machine so that I can mill out and drill the holes for my projects...I'm hoping to have this done mid-year, but we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the use of short 2-5 second videos instead of pictures. They did it tastefully and made it useful.

I never thought I'd see a good use case for auto playing videos. (It kind of reminds me of Harry Potter too)

<comment><USER6> I'd rather I it didn't auto-play and let me choose whether I want a page to swamp my bandwidth and CPU. Even over an 8Mb/s ADSL connection on a quad core Xeon workstation with 12GB or RAM and fairly decent video card this page is one of the worst behaved I've encountered in a while.

Sadly I won't be reading any of the content because even after five minutes it's killing my browser. To the spark.io blogging team, please don't assume unlimited wads of broadband. Let the reader decide whether they want to play your videos, and you know, I can only watch one video at a time on that page, so why start them all playing at once? This is no better etiquette than CNN or MSNBC or an adware farm where they start playing videos at you upon arrival. It's very rude.

<comment><USER7> Indeed; autoplay=true is stupid, but on the other hand, it's quite remarkable how it manage to bring my desktop PC to its knees.

Maybe using whatever [https://mediacru.sh/](https://mediacru.sh/) returns instead will help.

<comment><USER8> Bluekitten, you are hellbanned for no apparent reason as of 21 days ago.

<comment><USER9> This is the second time she's been hellbanned too.

For no real reason either time. I'm not sure what's going there.

<comment><USER10> Bluekitten is just the 100th or so reincarnation of recoiledsnake, which is as far as we can tell a Microsoft astroturfing campaign. Lately their sockpuppets are often female, to give people the impression we're banning women when we ban them.

<comment><USER11> Are there many accounts like that on HN?

<comment><USER10> This person or group has created lots of accounts, but there are no others like them that we know of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny-- the first Nest thermostat prototypes were also built with acrylic and wood. (I used to work there.)

I always hoped they would switch back to wood, but it's incredibly hard to do right in mass manufacturing.

<comment><USER12> > but it's incredibly hard to do right in mass manufacturing.

Any particular reason? From the outside, wood seem easier to use than plastic.

<comment><USER13> Wood is basically more expensive than plastic for mass-manufactured items. The basic raw material is more expensive. You can't source a large volume of aesthetically-identical pieces, so its harder to produce identical items. You can't injection mold wood, so higher manufacturing costs.

There are "manufactured" woods which address many of these issues, but they also tend not to be deemed as beautiful / strong as the real thing.

<comment><USER14> As a hobby woodworker, i'd love to be able to buy the parts, and make the enclosure myself. I got some scraps of walnut that would look awesome.

<comment><USER15> Well, you can buy the parts for the spark version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This makes me happy. I have a house with electric heat and eight thermostats pushing Nest costs into unreasonable territory. I'd love to be able to remotely set all my thermostats to 55 degrees or get certain zones to react based on events fired from my phone, (e.g. coming, leaving, charging with screen off aka sleeping, pending alarm)

Unfortunately, with my electric heat the thermostats sit inline with the heater's power source so I need devices that can safely handle 120v.

<comment><USER17> Why do you have 8 thermostats? Is your house very very large? If true then is the personal cost to you of 8 Nest's really prohibitive?

<comment><USER16> Not large at all. One thermostat per room. With electric heat you have to put a thermostat in line between the circuit breakers and the heating element (radiant panels in my case). Centralizing the house on a single thermostat, like you would with forced air, would actually be incredibly difficult. It would also lose the benefit of fine control; one of the few positives of electric heat.

<comment><USER18> Worth pointing out (and you touch on this above) that this is not a function of electric heat but a function specifically of the type of electric heat (radiant in this case). I have electric heat by way of a ducted electric heat pump which is not zoned and thus centralized. Zoned ducted and non-ducted electric heat pumps both offer localized control over heating.

<comment><USER19> for what its worth, people in the trades would not consider a heat pump "electric heat", even though of course the power does come from electricity.

electric heat refers specifically to heat generated by heating an element with current.

<comment><USER18> Fascinating! (coming back to this late). What would the consider an electric heat pump, or what would they call it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing I found about hardware is that the prototype is only 10% of the effort. Sourcing components for mass production, government regulatory hurdles, and then that damn enclosure are 90% _when everything goes right_.

I can build all kinds of things with my arduino and all of those awesome little one-off function boards you can snag on ebay from china theses days. I can't build 10000 of any of them.

<comment><USER21> See, hobbyists have it lucky! Well, nowadays samples are harder to get..

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >we built our own approximation of the Nest Learning Thermostat in one day — and we've open sourced everything. In this process, _we've come to respect the incredible technical challenges that Nest has solved_ while also coming to understand how much the game has changed since they first started.

I missed the technical challenges - this seems trivial, and exactly how easy that I would imagine it to be. The only challenge that I see is figuring that people would want a thermostat controlled by a phone app.

Since that's been figured out, I'm going to be very surprised if within 2 years 10 vendors don't have $50 versions sold at Wal-Mart, and there aren't 2-3 different open source software stacks competing to support a few of them.

<comment><USER23> The tricky bit is the learning; the first few weeks or so with it I was adjusting it all the time, now I don't need to do that, it knows I prefer to go to bed warm and wake up cool and just sets the right temperature.

I thought the phone app would be gimmicky, but it's nice to be able to get off the plane and un-autoaway the thing so by the time you get home it's comfortable.

<comment><USER24> My problem is that I don't really have patterns. Sometimes work from home, sometimes don't. Do a lot of traveling. Hours vary quite a bit. The only thing that would tempt me about Nest other than general coolness is that I could remotely turn down heat when traveling if I forgot before leaving. But that's not worth $250.

<comment><USER25> Totally agree with you. The down side is not only machine learning may not meet my satisfaction, it may make me annoyed. My current thermostat works pretty well for me if I need adjust not too frequently everyday. A scheduled plan should be good enough if we really want to improve this kind of devices.

The second problem is that it's lacking of systematic design. Think about we are going to have some many "Intenet of the things" in our home or office, we have to download some man apps, each of them needs cloud services which usually not free. This is how they make money after the hardware sales.

\- Eggs should not be washed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm trying to understand if you can self-host the server-side piece of this. I've wanted to have a networked thermostat for a while, but all the ones I found connect to the vendor's server, which is silly. I'd like to be able to point the device at my own server so I have full control.

EDIT: Yep, the Common Questions section of their website[1] says that they'll be releasing an open source version of their Cloud. Awesome.

[1] [https://www.spark.io/](https://www.spark.io/)

<comment><USER27> Even better than not sending your usage information offsite: not having the system stop working when spark.io goes out of business (or is purchased, or goes to version 3, or...) and stops their servers.

<comment><USER25> Strongly agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this is great but there are lessons here from desktop Linux, Facebook clones, etc, which is that retail is hard.

In order to ship a widely used operating system, you need a support infrastructure, consumer research, drivers for lots of hardware, warranties, marketing, payroll, operations, accountants, regulatory compliance. The product is almost the easiest part.

I imagine that Nest understands all this. Putting a piece of hardware in someone's house – one that's connected to a furnace or which claims to protect against fire – means a lot of liabilities, broadly defined.

I'd love to see an open source version get to that level of maturity and support. It does happen but it takes a _lot_ of people.

–

(Tangent, but when I started at Stack, a lot of people said they could (and did) build a clone in a weekend. Sure, as an approximation of the technical product. But that ain't the 'retail' product, which is actually comprised of community, goodwill, SEO, quality control, and a lot of other things.)

<comment><USER29> In that context, this is a well done promotion for their hardware platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think that this is a really cool project. But I think that the problem here is still fundamentally the same as the one faced by the nest.

The thesis of spark.io is "you can trust us with your data" not you have control of your data.

The spark is built on a cloud connected platform. even if you can see and control outputs from your board you still exist as part of their ecosystem. Which is basically the functional equivalent of using the dropbox api to build something instead of google drive.

I won't be excited about home automation until someone goes the way of an open protocol for these types of devices that doesn't require a centralized pass through.

Because if history has been any kind of teacher, it shows us that spark.io will probably get sucked up by google or somebody in the near future.

<comment><USER31> This simply isn't a big concern for the _vast_ majority of users. Nest has $3.2 Billion dollars as testimony to that.

<comment><USER30> First I would say that nest certainly has a good user base. Keep in mind 3.2 Billion is just what google was willing to pay for the company this is in no way a metric for the success of the product. Liberal estimates give the company a potential revenue of 111 million a year based the amount of units they claim to produce, but this is a maximum sales number. Also the argument that most users don't care about this issue has been clearly shown to be incorrect. [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-sync-hits-1-million- users...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-sync-hits-1-million- users-30-petabytes-transfered-131105/) Spark is still like nest a company, and THEIR argument is that their product is great because of the control it gives you over making your own solution. I am not saying that nest isn't a valid product for the market I am simply saying that sparks thesis isn't really valid because they claim to put the user fully in control when really they are still the gatekeepers.

<comment><USER29> The current messaging on the Spark.io website is that you can do everything locally.

From the "Common questions" section at the bottom of [https://www.spark.io/](https://www.spark.io/):

 _If you want the simplicity of the Cloud but you want it on your own server, we 'll be releasing an open source version of the Cloud designed for quick and easy deployment._

(They also don't seem to restrict the device very much)

<comment><USER30> yeah once the open source cloud release happens I think that my view would change. But as it stands you do currently need to use their cloud to connect to the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There is a project called GNU remotecontrol that I just discovered that could be used for this purpose. It's important that _you_ can be in control of your thermostat data instead of handing it over to Google/Nest/some other malicious vendor.

<comment><USER33> "malicious"... ohh, comeon. That's a stretch. This suggests there is an intention of doing harm. Creepy, maybe, but not malicious.

<comment><USER32> They are harming your privacy and freedoms.

<comment><USER34> can you quantify that harm?

<comment><USER35> Since the lack of transparency is part of the harm, no, we can't quantify it. It's theoretical until it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was under the impression that one of the major challenges faced by Nest was running off only the power available by safely drawing from the existing wires.

Without that constraint, it's a much easier problem.

<comment><USER37> Wait, there's power there? Where from?

<comment><USER38> Thermostats turn your heat/AC/fan on and off by connecting and disconnecting an electric circuit. Older analog thermostats did this mechanically; newer ones do it with electronic switches. That circuit has some small amount of current running through it to signal to the heating unit whether it's connected or not.

The control circuitry in the heating unit is sensitive to a range of voltage values. It has to be, because V=IR, and there's no way to know exactly how much wire (and thus R) will be strung through your house. The Nest can thus pull some current off the wire to charge its battery but keep the signal strong enough to flip the heater on and off.

My house has a new electronic "zone box", which, because it's all semiconductors, only needs to run a very small amount of current through the wires. That's not enough for the Nest to charge. Fortunately, the standard home heating wiring includes a "common" wire, with a low amount of constant voltage suitable for devices like the Nest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice, but I'd rather not be tied to a 3rd party service like Spark Cloud. Indeed thats my problem with Nest. It would be great if it would just connect to my private VPS or something.

<comment><USER39> see zedpm's comment earlier:

Yep, the Common Questions section of their website[1] says that they'll be releasing an open source version of their Cloud. Awesome. [1] [https://www.spark.io/](https://www.spark.io/)

<comment><USER25> Is it possible to have private server on the local network without building the Cloud by ourselves from the open source?

\- Eggs should not be washed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40>
       "At Spark, we're making it easier to bring connected
       devices to market with the Spark Core, our Wi-Fi
       development kit, and the Spark Cloud, our cloud service for
       connected devices."

I found SparkCore on github[0] and the C++ communication lib for Core to communicate with SparkCloud [1], but I did not find SparkCloud itself on Github. Is that component going to open-source as well?

It would be nice if you had the option to host your own cloud service. You could protect your business model at least partially by using an open source license that requires people to change the name if they decide to fork it and productize it, such as the Artistic License v2.

[0] [https://github.com/spark/core](https://github.com/spark/core)

[1] [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib](https://github.com/spark/core-communication-lib)

<comment><USER41> Yes, they have said it will be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have built a similar system, and expanding it to more devices (think: devices other than thermostats). However, I use my own custom messaging/web server for communicating with the device from anywhere in the world. Think controlling your (ex: toaster) in NYC from LA without configuring any networks, vpn, ports,...aka Nest-like. Combined with some machine learning and machine "thinking", its pretty powerful.

The Spark Thermostat is great minus the fact that you need their web api for communicating with it. But for a 1-day build, how can anyone disappointed! Great job Spark team.

In regards to my own devices, I am definitely going to have to take a look at Spark now. Cool hardware.

</comment><comment><USER43> Are there any specifics on how the underlying Spark platform handles security? On their product page it says that Spark Cloud "creates a secure environment without forcing your web browser and the Core to speak the same language, which would be taxing on a low-power, low-cost microcontroller." Which isn't reassuring.

They don't provide any specifics in the docs either, only this:

 _" Security is hard. It's especially hard on an embedded system, because encryption is resource intensive. But it's also important, because you don't want anyone turning on and off your lights, or worse, locking and unlocking your front doors.We hand-picked a set of rock-solid security protocols that are secure and efficient, so they work great on an embedded system. They're baked into the Spark Protocol, which is open source and ready to be extended to other products."_

I get that encryption may be difficult on embedded systems, but I would also argue that if a small embedded system can't handle strong encryption then it's not ready to connect devices to the web. I can't find any links to source code - anyone know what sort of encryption they use?

<comment><USER44> RSA encrypt initial handshake message to cloud: [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/...](https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/src/spark_protocol.cpp#L102)

Return message from cloud is decrypted with an RSA private key on the Core: [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/...](https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/src/handshake.cpp#L53)

An HMAC signature is verified: [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/...](https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/src/spark_protocol.cpp#L1022)

If everything checks out, AES-128-CBC session key is saved and IV is rotated with every message exchanged:

encrypt: [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/...](https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/src/spark_protocol.cpp#L989)

decrypt: [https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/...](https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib/blob/master/src/spark_protocol.cpp#L267)

Cheers, Zachary Crockett Spark CTO ;)

<comment><USER43> Thanks!! Please consider adding that some of this to the Security documentation, and more prominent links to the source code as well.

I actually found your GitHub profile and should have realized that core- communication-lib is what I wanted, but it appears new and doesn't have many stars yet, so I missed it.

<comment><USER44> Great suggestion! I just added this as a security overview section of the README.

[https://github.com/spark/core-communication- lib](https://github.com/spark/core-communication-lib)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If your next iteration includes a physical switch to put the fan in 'always on' mode, it will already be superior to the Nest.

<comment><USER46> The nest cannot be _always on_ because it is not provided with enough power. It has to use the power it has to charge an internal battery so they it can work at all. Always on would not have sufficient power.

<comment><USER45> I was talking about a switch for the HVAC fan, not the nest itself. With the nest you have to fiddle through a bunch of screens to turn the fan on and off. It is a personal pain point of mine.

<comment><USER47> Totally agree. I've been tinkering with my own project to do this. I wanted the recirc fan under programmable control as well to try and mix the house air once in a while and distribute the temperature a little better.

 _Nobody_ has ever offered this in a thermostat with the possible exception of the RadioThermostat CT30/3M50, which has a JSON API and lets you manually control the relays.

<comment><USER48> ??? My 30 dollar third-world built brazilian crappy on-off thermostat has manual fan on and off. It can be programmed to turn on automatically when over/under a given temperature and also to not run for more than a predefined ammount of minutes.

As I understand it any temperature control designed for big refrigerators or freezers has this features. Some even allow you to pre-configure fan cycles (i.e. on for x minutes, off for y, repeat) and turn the cycle on or off depending on temperature or compressor state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> you can buy the components for ~$36: [http://octopart.com/bom- lookup/x7lnOrCu](http://octopart.com/bom-lookup/x7lnOrCu)

(not including the Spark Core at $39)

</comment><comment><USER50> How does the thermostat control temperature? Am I crazy, I feel like I'm missing a section on how this device connects to the central air, Ac, heater, fan or something that can affect temperature. Under _hardware_ : "relays to control the furnace and the fan." But I don't see details on the relay.

<comment><USER51> You just wire the relays to the control wires coming out of the wall. You can turn your furnace on and off by just touching these wires together. It will depend on how your system is wired there can be a lot of variations. Of course making sure your product works with all those variations is one of the hard parts that they didn't address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If you're interested in building IoT, wearables, and externals, I'm getting an expo + hackathon together called Hackendo ([http://hackendo.techendo.co](http://hackendo.techendo.co)) for April. I would really love the community's support in helping make this awesome, so anyone with experience in this area or feedback on how I should run the event, please reach out.

Also if you're in the bay area, you should check out this meetup group run by my friend Nick Pinkston: [http://www.meetup.com/HardwareStartupSF/](http://www.meetup.com/HardwareStartupSF/)

</comment><comment><USER53> I gotta say -- the use of video in this blog post is outstanding. Best use case of HTML5 Video I've yet come across, frankly. Sorry, I'm supposed to comment on the actual comment...haha. Just saying I love the format. :)

<comment><USER54> Yea I really enjoyed that too. Now, if only I lived somewhere other than San Diego where I actually needed a thermostat ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This reminds me of the time I hacked an old hard drive to use it as a rotary encoder. Started with the idea in the morning, finished the idea the next morning: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1U83BMi7vw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1U83BMi7vw)

I've now extended the idea into a fully working DIY DJ Controller. My first big electronics project... I've been planning to open-source the build documents for quite a while now. : [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhLQzisx90](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhLQzisx90)

</comment><comment><USER56> Also have a look at ninjablocks.com; their hardware is open source.

The software is partly open sourced.

[http://ninjablocks.com/pages/open-source](http://ninjablocks.com/pages/open- source)

</comment><comment><USER57> This is pretty cool. For some time I've been interested in building a Nest clone. I like the concept of Nest however it doesn't work for me because my wife's work schedule can't be predicted with machine learning and therefore I think Nest would actually end up being less efficient for us. She keeps her work schedule in a calendar though so my plan was to have the thermostat use her work calendar to optimize our heating/cooling plan. This project looks like it could be a good starting point.

</comment><comment><USER58> this is great but with these devices and 'the internet of things', the most important part is not the devices but the data. And with this, instead of Google getting all the data, Spark is getting the data, and the data is where the money is. And once they get more data and learn to use it, they will become a more valuable company and eventually might get acquired.

I think for something to truly be open-source and beneficial for everyone, everything about it must be open, including the data. The data from all the connected devices globally could be stored on an open database that anyone can access and use. Its one thing to 'learn' with the limited data that one device might generate, but for a machine to 'learn to learn' it should be able to study ALL the data that might be useful.

This kind of organization could lead to a type of opensource corporation where anyone can be an 'employee'. Employment and compensation could be based off a public list of contributions to the project. To each according to his contribution.

This idea could be applied to anything that's used in public and generates data. Autonomous cars, home automation, drones, (NSA data, slightly more complicated but still could be open sourced). But as long as we're tricking ourselves into thinking we need 'money' to survive, the organization or company with the most of it wins.

</comment><comment><USER59> Any ideas for stuff to build with this besides a thermostat? I'm talking about for a fun side project to learn the ropes, not necessarily the next $3.2B IoT company.

<comment><USER29> A temperature logger?

There are lots of microcontroller-that-you-program-via-usb communities. Arduino is a good search word.

Also, this discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071080)

included this tumblr:

[http://bltuc.tumblr.com/](http://bltuc.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER60> Once you add networking, Arduinos don't really have much cost benefit over a full-fledged Linux SOC board. An Uno plus an Ethernet shield ends up being nearly the cost of a Raspberry Pi, which is several times more powerful.

I built out my XMPP-controlled office thermostat on a BeagleBone Black, which costs a bit more than the Pi but has way more pins, including analog inputs, which are pretty important for temperature sensors. Plus using a Linux machine meant being able to choose your language instead of being stuck with C, so I took the chance to learn some Erlang: [http://technomancy.us/171](http://technomancy.us/171)

<comment><USER29> Yeah, there are lots of options.

The $40 wifi-included board featured in this story sort of has a nice installation story though (maybe fussy setup, but one less cable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> God damn it. I've just received STM32F4 Discovery board yesterday, tried to run Espruino on it to no avail. And now this thing popped up!

Is it possible to run your software on other dev boards?

Does it have enough processing power for HTTPS POST? I see someone complain here: [https://community.sparkdevices.com/t/how-to-send-http- post-r...](https://community.sparkdevices.com/t/how-to-send-http-post-request- to-a-secure-url/740)

</comment><comment><USER62> The site is broken on mobile (Safari). An autoplay video pops up and keeps reopening when closed.

</comment><comment><USER63> Building a thermostat for a gas furnace is never worth it because someone could die:

[https://community.sparkdevices.com/t/burning-down-the- house/...](https://community.sparkdevices.com/t/burning-down-the-house/2204)

<comment><USER29> To the extent that this is a popular idea, it wouldn't be a big deal for someone to come up with a commercial 'final logic module' that sat between the user interface and the furnace. It could do a sanity check on the requested operation before carrying it out.

(Sure, it would have to have most of the functionality of a thermostat, but so what.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Probably a dumb question but it seems as if the thermostat is dumb. Ie all it is is an interface to the hardware.

If your Internet/wifi is spotty (very common)... Does your thermostat not work? Are you stuck being hot or cold?

</comment><comment><USER65> Make it run on mains or USB power, with the battery only being used if the power is disrupted.

After all, one wouldn't want to have to charge their smoke detector every day like a smartphone, right? (Not once a month either).

</comment><comment><USER66> Documenting a company hardware hackathon this way is super interesting. I think we'll have to give something like this a shot next time we do some rapid prototyping over here. Way to go Spark!

</comment><comment><USER67> Cannot view the page in Firefox because it's freezing the browser and the memory usage jumps from 155 MB to 880 MB (even with clean profile without add- ons) :(

Edit: It's doing the same in Chrome too

</comment><comment><USER68> Who knows Google will also acquire Spark some day. They have bought a bunch of robotics companies, Nest and so on. A cloud connected controller, why not?

</comment><comment><USER69> This is beautiful. Love your 'Nest'!

Looking back to 5-10 years ago you would have had a really hard time building this in a week let alone 1 day.

</comment><comment><USER70> I don't see any information about how they interfaced with the hvac system. Did they use a relay board or optoisolators?

</comment><comment><USER71> That webpage killed my laptop. Presumably the video that did it? So thoughtful of them to play it automatically.

</comment><comment><USER72> +1 that is so cool. I sometimes wish I was also a hardware person, especially when I see projects like this.

</comment><comment><USER73> You allow way new people on here? Want to built the spark thermostat. Where are schematics?

</comment><comment><USER74> This looks pretty interesting. Definitely heading over to github to look in more detail.

</comment><comment><USER75> Now Nest is part of Big Google, this is amazing. Time to add this to my projects list.

</comment><comment><USER76> Wow those HTML5 videos totally caused my browser to freeze on a very good hardware.

</comment><comment><USER77> Those videos were way distracting.

Also the firmware definition bugs me.

neat product/concept tho.

</comment><comment><USER78> Why would you want an open source Nest? Is there a market demand for something which is uglier, harder to use, takes more time to install, and works worse? Do you also build your own toasters or automobiles?

<comment><USER79> I buy connected devices so that I can, well, connect them -- I have a server running that does things like change the temperature on my Nest based on a different brand motion sensor in a different room, or based on voice input on my phone.

[http://i.imgur.com/8fFkdQ9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/8fFkdQ9.jpg)

In that dashboard of mine, you see devices from 6 different companies that I've integrated. 3 of them required reverse engineering some kind of website for remote control, even though all that website does is pass on a command from my home network back to my home network.

This would break if the website goes down, the website rate limits me, the website blocks my IP, or the website owner decides to sue me under CFAA because their TOS probably didn't authorize remote control outside of their official apps. Nest is one of those websites. There's no official public API.

I consider alternatives where I could just talk to the device directly a selling point, and it has nothing to do with privacy. I don't care about Google having my temperature history at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> What are the failure modes?

</comment><comment><USER81> very ugly, but very cool (I do like the wood finish though)

</comment><comment><USER82> Nice work guys..

</comment><comment><USER83> 3D printing comes to my mind.

<comment><USER84> When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail...

Seriously, the case was possibly the least important part of this and they had no troubles manufacturing it.</comment></comment>


The Secret Powers of Time - RSA Animate - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg Cultural and generation differences explained with individual perceptions of time. <comment><USER2> The high speed sketching complementing Zimbardo's talk made for a unique experience.</comment>


UI Anti-Pattern: Website Loading Bars - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/because-we-love-software/126cfe0fa698

<comment><USER2> This is another Medium article about cognition and user interfaces that seems to be based on speculative assertions about user behavior. And they aren't convincing.

[https://www.google.com/search?&q=cognitive+load+site:medium....](https://www.google.com/search?&q=cognitive+load+site:medium.com)

Claims about UI/UX regarding 'cognitive load' based solely on conjecture sound like pure pseudoscience. The 'Hollow Icons' article was an egregious example:

[https://medium.com/design-ux/a93647e5a44b](https://medium.com/design- ux/a93647e5a44b)

If you've accepted the premise that cognitive load theory is going to be a major part of your design/ui decisions, and you're going to invoke it, then I think some meaningful testing is necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why should my statement be speculative? Ok, one could mention it that way because I have not done any research during any university in this field, but it reflects my personal experience and the experience I do have from past projects, when user tested certain pieces of software.

<comment><USER3> But this is the very definition of speculative :(

<comment><AUTHOR> So a one man research during 4 months of university is more worth than real life experience?

<comment><USER3> If you want evidence you can trust, you need well executed scientific experiements, which in this case means well executed usability tests with controls and a decent sample size, and ideally those devices which can monitor where the eye is focused on the page as a user is interacting with it.

Unfortunately we don't usually have that luxury or that data available, and we have to make do with our own experience and the advice of other professionals. But you should really take both of those things (especially our own experience) with a healthy dose of skepticism -- one of the primary goals of the scientific method is to put our own notoriously unreliable but deeply felt instincts in check.

That doesn't mean "real life experience" is worthless, or shouldn't be considered. It just means you should draw a hard line between the truths of life experience and truths established through well conducted experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know what's worse than website loading bars? Breaking scrolling for your users.

I'm running Firefox with Vimperator and noscript. All scripts are blocked on this page. When it loads, none of the "scroll page" commands work (Arrow keys, PgDn, Spacebar, Ctrl-D, j/k, etc). Even once I click the text, Vimperator's Ctrl-D still refuses to scroll (though all the other commands work, including j/k). And if I permit scripts, arrows, PgDn and j/k all work, while Spacebar and Ctrl-D don't, regardless of what I click.

It is 2013. Twenty years ago we could serve plaintext without breaking shit. What happened?

<comment><USER5> It is 2013, you are not supposed to use noscript.

<comment><USER6> Of course I may be behind the latest fads in web development but isn't the purpose of javascript to enhance the web pages and not to substitute/break functionality which the browser is perfectly capable to deliver with pure html. Like ... scrolling.

<comment><USER7> There is one essential use case of client side script being necessary for a better browsing experience: Endless scroll instead of pagination. Pages for query results is a big reason why older web apps feel much more restricted compared to their desktop counterparts. Being able to stream data however requires JS on the client, since it doesn't fit into the classic GET requests. Having to program a fallback pagination just for people with noscript is not worth it IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the conclusion, but have different premises.

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so." -Douglas Adams

Progress bars were invented to give users an indication of how much time remains relative to how much has elapsed. This is problematic, because:

1\. Progress bars have a linear appearance mapping to a discrete value, yet they often represent progress that occurs at an erratic, non-linear pace. A progress bar telling you the minutes remaining in a video is useful. Seconds are always the same. A progress bar telling you seconds remaining until the page loads is not. HTTP/XML requests are fickle things.

2\. Even if a progress bar _does_ accurately measure the relative time of a task, the utlitity of the bar is further confounded by the fact that people tend to have a non-linear perception of time. After all, users are much more forgiving in the first 10 seconds of a wait than the last 10 seconds. If a user simply _feels_ that a task with a progress bar is taking too long, they might simply quit the task.

3\. UI researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that arbitrarily accelerating the progress bar's movement toward the end of the task alone will make it appear to complete more quickly. So to make a progress bar that _feels_ accurate and fair, lying to your users about the total relative time remaining is the right thing to do.

Much of the utility of progress bars comes from telling the user that the page is still working and has not halted. So unless the users are in for a real wait, its probably best to stick to spinners.

<comment><USER9> Progress bars driven by data transfer may indeed fail at showing how much time is remaining, but at least they actually tell me that things are progressing. All spinners usually tell me is that the client was at some point trying to get more data and that it has not finished. The former is generally much more useful when dealing with a very slow server.

<comment><USER10> <5k arcade games with download progress increasing the difficulty might be good for some sites.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately, this was patented by Namco in 1995: [http://www.google.com/patents/US5718632](http://www.google.com/patents/US5718632)

<comment><USER12> So sad, it would have expired last year if it had been filed only 6 months earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ehh show me the data and we'll talk. I'm pretty sure youtube did some serious usability testing before deploying the loading bars.

</comment><comment><USER3> This critique's central example is a straw man.

The main discussion is about interacting with a small element (such a search bar) where, the article argues, it's better to keep the ajax UI indicator closer to the point of user interaction.

While this may be true, many sites that use these loading bars (such as youtube) are using them when all (or a large portion) of the page is being entirely reloaded using ajax or pjax. So the critique given does not apply to one of the largest use cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> But even when the complete page is reloaded in an ajax/pjax manner, the loading bar is out of the visibility area. If one scrolls through the recommended videos on YouTube and pick one which is in the middle or below the list, one will not directly recognize the loading bar - why not showing the status indicator in a more prominent place?

<comment><USER3> Personally I think it's pretty noticeable. My eye went right to it the first time I saw it.

I suppose you could argue that they should have an overlay spinner (or something similar) across the entire page so it would be impossible to miss, but that's not as elegant.

Also, why wouldn't your reasoning apply to the url progress bar in many browsers that you see for an ordinary http page load? It's up their at the top of the page, why not put a nice unmissable transparent loading bar across the middle of the page?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool :) I missed it totally :D

But shouldn't come usability before design?

The progress bar within does work, because the user enters the address right there and at the moment where he presses enter, his eyes are still in this area, so he recognizes the progress bar immediately. A unmissable loading bar would solve the problem, as long as it is unmissable (from my point of view).

<comment><USER3> > But shouldn't come usability before design?

Yes. If I saw data showing that 20% of youtube users didn't see the red bar, for example, I would agree with your point. But I have 1) my own experience showing otherwise (not worth that much) and 2) the logical argument that youtube probably did some usability tests with good results before releasing this. These 2 points are not a definitive argument, but they're enough for me to be skeptical of your critique.

> The progress bar within does work, because the user enters the address right > there and at the moment where he presses enter,

But this is not the case when a user clicks a link at the bottom of the page, and a new page starts loading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being skeptical on things that get written on the internet is always a good idea ;) And I am thankful to everyone who brings constructive criticism. Unfortunately I haven't seen any information regarding research from sites that use those approach. Would be interesting to see them.

Agree on that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't say I disagree or agree with the concept of these newer loading bars yet, but I'd really like to see citations or any references for just about everything in this article. Is this all just based on your assumptions of what confuses users? Or is this an area you've done research in?

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog entry is based on my personal experience in the field of user experience. I have not done research on a university level. I do have a lot of discussions regarding the distractions of user interface with non-technical users which exactly get confused by such behaviors. That is why I can't link any citations and studies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, if the browser gave me an API to trigger the built-in spinners/loading bars on XHR I'd use it, but for those of us that need to block the UI on XHR this is kind of our only option. I think that this is less a UX issue and more of a browser API limitation issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using the existing status bar would be a better approach from my perspective, but still does not replace any status indication at the point, where the action is triggered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > duplicates existing functionality

Depends on the browser. Chrome has long removed the loading bar for an almost unnoticeable "something-is-happening" spinner.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't see how looking at the old status bar was any less of a context switch. Worse yet, now most modern browsers hide the damn status bar so it's no longer a static fixture. Chrome's status bar is a hover-popup with a delayed fade-in-and-out animation, if you want to talk about anti-patterns.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not written (or at least I have not intended to write) that using the existing status bar is a better approach to show that progress is going on. At the end of the article I stated clearly that the progress indication should happen at the point where I execute the action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, there isn't any choice. Even now mainstream frameworks like Rails are moving over to loading pages via JavaScript because it is so much faster than performing another large full page load, particularly on the growing segment of power limited mobile devices. Saying you shouldn't show a progress bar and should use the browser functionality is basically saying you have to go back to pages that take seconds to load on a mobile phone instead of milliseconds.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that a full page load is not required. Also I didn't intend to recommend to use the normal progress bar. It is just from a user perspective a duplication of the bar above. What I intended to say is, that the loading bar should not be used to show a progress is going on. Because the page stays more or less the same and the user is looking with a very high chance at a different area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I loosed my context by being forced to pay attention to typos :(

</comment><comment><USER20> Another linkbaity title - calling something new and trendy a bad thing will always get a lot of people rustled - from the fine elitists blogging on Medium. The UI anti pattern described is not the loading bar (as the alternative in the conclusion IS a loading bar) but the placement of the loading bar. Then again, it is pure speculation with no further data or research to back the "cognitive load" theory up.

<comment><USER21> I stopped visiting medium.com. It is always perfect "HN bait" with fluff. I realised it was wasting my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Finally somebody pay attention on the stupid idea. It duplicates existing functionality - agree! Combined with cognitive distraction - agree!!

</comment><comment><USER23> The real anti-pattern is building sites that get to the point of needing loading bar indicators.

I loved web, when it was, you know, documents. With links to related and other relevant documents.

There is a need for online forms, to replace the paper bound versions, and one day we may even develop an appropriate technology to achieve this. Until then, the layers of fresh sticky tape are sitting uneasily upon the aged, yellowing earlier layers of sticky tape, and the turtles-all-way-down "web app" continues to bloat.

There is always talk of game changers, disrupting things here on HN, but the massive, obvious challenge goes missed every time. It is easier, maybe more fun, to punt yet another JS framework, bork the HTTP standards a bit more, increase the attack vector in the already humungous browser, than to think outside the box.

Maybe instead of thinking outside the box, we should think outside the browser.</comment>