Map Lets You Report Landlords Using Tech to Screw over Tenants - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wxqkqb/this-map-lets-you-report-landlords-using-tech-to-screw-over-tenants <comment><USER2> Pretty sure a lot of these landlords are deploying technology in a bid to compete for tenants, not screw them over. For example, an app-based (or even biometric) entry system reduces the number of times I get locked out after forgetting my keys. Smart locks let me open the door remotely for a housekeeper or maintenance person. Tenant screening technology is really no different from the credit report that landlords run already.

Tenants have substantial legal protections, which have been extended further during COVID-19. As such, it does feel like the balance of power is shifting toward tenants, not away from them.

There are definitely crappy landlords out there, but IMO identifying them from their crappy behavior, rather than their investment into technology, is a better mechanism.

Has anyone built a Yelp for apartment buildings?

<comment><USER3> Why not both? Digital-only locks mean that the landlord can lock you out of your own apartment without having to send a maintenance person around and hope you're not at home to argue with.

<comment><USER2> That sounds like an illegal eviction to me. Even in the event of a court- ordered eviction, the landlord is required to give you access to your possessions.

<comment><USER4> _That sounds like an illegal eviction to me_

Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There's a reason why housing courts are backed up for months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned recently that until 1973, a woman in France had to get written permission from her husband before taking a job. Now, one might argue that maybe she should have picked a nicer husband if that's a problem. But in hindsight it's clear that whether her husband is a _nice guy_ is beside the point; he shouldn't have that power over his wife. The power is the problem.

By the same token, most landlords are totally decent people, but that is not the point- the _power relationship_ of having a landlord in a position to exploit their tenants is still a problem. The landlord accumulates profit and real estate value every year; the tenants stay poor and every year they pay more and more of their wages just to have a roof over their heads. But it's not the fault of any individual. It's the nature of the relationship.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very one sided discourse that paints landlords as some kind of evil monsters. In reality a landlord is like nay other businessman who has taken substantial risk to provide roof over your head, obviously for a profit. No landlord is interested in screwing you, they are interested in having some profit margin. One bad tenant can wipe out years of profits.</comment>


This Is Fake – Help stop the spread of fabricated news - <AUTHOR> https://www.thisisfake.org/ <comment><USER2> I don't think I want a journalism site (Slate.com) running a service to determine what is and isn't "fake" news.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I want media with an open and blatant political bias [0] in charge of running what is and isn't "fake news". Because it isn't surprising what is going to be labeled as "fake".

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/6OJIYBV.png](http://i.imgur.com/6OJIYBV.png)</comment></comment>


Why is proving P!=NP an important result?  Most believe it is true anyway. - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/proofs-proofs-who-needs-proofs/

<comment><USER2> The implications of P=NP being true are much greater for modern computing. Proving P!=NP would therefore result in many researchers whose life's work is in trying to prove P=NP moving on to something else.</comment>


I started my own T-shirt company in 24 hours and made $0 - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/i-started-my-own-t-shirt-company-in-24-hours-and-made-0-1330b16e9470?source=linkShare-829d5c865a60-1502916895 <comment><USER2> who was actually making the physical shirt and sending it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Printful is the drop shipping company</comment></comment>


Defense Dept. hires 6 research orgs for cyborg project - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/defense-dept-hires-6-research-orgs-for-cyborg-project-2457898369.html <comment><USER2> wonder when the X-project for grey goo is starting.</comment>


If this were a pill, you'd do anything to get it - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/28/if-this-was-a-pill-youd-do-anything-to-get-it/ <comment><USER2> One big problem with medicine in this country is that bad hospitals can't just go out of business and be replaced by better ones. If you want to open a new hospital today, there are hearings in which all the crappy existing other hospitals have to say it's okay before you can get a "Certificate Of Need".

So if you had an idea for a new hospital _structure_ that would dramatically improve patient health and cut costs, you wouldn't be _allowed_ to just build it and try it - the existing providers all get a veto.

So we have hospitals that hide all the prices and make MORE money if they screw up and introduce complications, and it's ILLEGAL to drive those idiots out of business with a more customer-responsive system.

It's like if you couldn't open a new coffee shop without permission from Starbucks or a new restaurant without permission from McDonald's. In anything even vaguely resembling a free market, reforms like this wouldn't need to be pushed by a monolithic central bureaucracy - they'd just spread on their own, with old providers rushing to adopt the modern changes for fear of becoming obsolete.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need>

<comment><USER3> The free market offers no incentive to give health services to people who cannot pay for it, or don't know that these services will reduce hospitalization by 33% and costs by 22%.

Basic health care is not McDonald's because your mother does not die prematurely (and miserably, and expensively) for the lack of McDonald's. The core issue is not about some private business being 'customer-responsive' in the vein of Starbucks. You can, today, start private clinics which are more "customer-responsive" (leave a mint on your pillow, etc.) but how are you going to recoup the costs and in particular, how does that benefit the populace in aggregate?

<comment><USER4> > The free market offers no incentive to give health services to people who > cannot pay for it, or don't know that these services will reduce > hospitalization by 33% and costs by 22%

Amen to that. The major killers at the turn of the last century were tuberculosis and waterborne diseases, and the free market did nothing to improve living conditions or supply clean water to the urban population then. I am in Portugal right now, where Dr Sousa Martins, a physician who spearheaded the fight against tuberculosis, is considered a saint. Public health is always political issue. It is as true 100 years ago as it is now.

<comment><USER5> Free market didn't improve living conditions? The supply and demand for more spacious housing and fuel to boil water didn't help things?

<comment><USER6> For the upper 50%, sure, but the free market failed and generally fails to give the lower 50% of earners access to sufficient resources to do proper sanitation. Treating clean water as a commodity rather than a public utility is a public health disaster. Each household needing expertise and equipment for water purification does not scale.

<comment><USER7> Define failure in this case. Yes the poor have less than the rich, but so what? What is the cost of clean water today? How much for a fridge?

As it turns out, 99.9% of us households have a fridge (<http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/appliances/appliances.html>). Those weren't really available in 1900, yet I don't remember any huge government subsidy for those (and by keeping your food fresh they prevent diarrhea and improve hygine). I do remember huge, private, factories making them, however.

But even then soap is likely also one of those things that really help prevent deceases through proper sanitation -- yet how poor do you have to be to not be able to afford soap?

<comment><USER6> > What is the cost of clean water today? How much for a fridge?

A fridge is much more expensive, but it's also much more a luxury. You don't need to refrigerator to avoid diarrhea, it just helps. Pure running water on the other hand is extraordinarily cheap and makes avoiding waterborne illness easy. (Due to the fact that running water is provided by public utilities, not free markets.)

I'm not saying the free market doesn't have a part to play in good hygiene, but trying to rely on the free market for a water supply and food handling regulations has been an unmitigated disaster everywhere it's been tried.

<comment><USER5> "unmitigated disaster everywhere it's been tried".

England is served by private water companies. Is this a disaster?

<comment><USER6> Public utilities aren't necessarily public companies. Private companies own and manage the lines, yes, but prices are fixed by the government, and companies are required to supply water to residents, often even in cases of non-payment. Hardly a free market, and definitely what I would call regulated public utilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of the health care cost paradox that Atul Gawande wrote about in 2011. In Camden, NJ, one percent of the patients accounted for as much as a third of the city's medical costs. A doctor proposed in a small study that giving these lost causes _better_ care actually reduced costs overall. But good luck convincing politicians to devote more money to cocaine addicts and extremely obese patients.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER7> Why more money? It seems that even more money could be saved by _excluding_ drug adicts and those who are so fat that their fatness interfere with their treatment.

<comment> brown9-2 Most of us don't want to live in a society where making bad choices in life (or having bad luck) excludes you from live-saving care.

<comment><USER9> And since HN tends to lean anti-social: for the objectivists: most of us would don't want to get denied care because we look like a junkie during an emergency.

<comment><USER10> I think you meant anti-socialist. While HN might or might not lean anti- social, I'm not sure it would have a clear effect on political arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a good approach to health care, and I don't want to be snarky guy, but... Health Quality Partners is about to lose their funding and they get an 8-page glowing article on washingtonpost.com about how great their program is and why it should be continued. It looks like some PR agency is really earning their money.

See, of course, Paul Graham's article on PR agencies: <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

Going back to the subject of the article, I wonder how much this visit program actually costs, and whether it could be direct-marketed to wealthy people with elderly parents. "For $10,000(e.g.) a year, we can reduce your parents' hospitalizations by 33% and help them live independently." Sort of like concierge medicine.

<comment><USER12> > Going back to the subject of the article, I wonder how much this visit > program actually costs, and whether it could be direct-marketed to wealthy > people with elderly parents. "For $10,000(e.g.) a year, we can reduce your > parents' hospitalizations by 33% and help them live independently." Sort of > like concierge medicine.

Better yet, maybe health insurance companies could offer lower rates to chronic patients who enroll in a visit-program. They are the organizations with the most financial incentive to implement these programs.

<comment><USER7> They absolutely would (and I still don't see why they don't the cost/benefit ratio of paying for that should make sense) but in this case they are talking about the people who have no insurance or whoes bills are paid by the federal tax payers.

And while there are a fair amount of positive things to say about the federal government, prudent financial planning isn't exactly one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The money quote for me was this: "If we scaled what Ken is doing," Brenner says, "you would probably shut down a third of the hospitals in the country. It's a disruptive innovation. It just guts the current business model."

Wouldn't it be better if people never had to go into the hospital in the first place? Aside from the supplemental costs - "surgical complications increase the margin the hospital makes on the patient by 330 percent for the privately insured and 190 percent for Medicare patients." - consider the quality of life issues.

If Medicare is concerned with scaling this program up from a couple thousand people, instead of completely cutting a program which has proven its ability to cut costs AND improve quality of life, why not try it with five or ten thousand people first? If that works, then try it with 20 thousand people, then 50 thousand. If it doesn't scale at that point, then cut it.

Another possible solution is to find a way to eliminate the for-profit hospitals. But Medicare's solution - "It's pushing providers to band together into accountable care organizations, or ACO, that get a flat fee for all care related to a patient." - sounds destined to fail from the outset to this layman.

<comment><USER14> Yes. For illnesses like diabetes it's best if you can prevent people getting it, but if they have it it's best if you can help them to avoid getting the complications.

"Diabetic foot" sounds funny, until you realise that it kills people and is a reason for leg amputation. (Prognosis after such amputation wasn't great last time I looked, in about 2004.)

Sending a real person in a car to visit someone at their home sounds intensive, and sounds expensive. Compare it to a tele-medicine device that takes measurements and sends those to a centre somewhere, with people calling over the phone. It's a shame that the evidence base appears to be being ignored. __EDIT (after adestefan and ajtaylor commented) -- it _feels_ expensive, but the evidence base is clear that it's not expensive because it works, where as the thing that feels cheap is wasted money because evidence shows it doesn't work. And it's a shame that people in charge appear to be ignoring evidence, and going by 'gut feeling', because it means effective interventions are not happening. __

I hope that mentioning the research that a decision is based on becomes more widespread. Even organisations that claim to be evidence based can make odd decisions.

<comment><USER15> There is something special about having that physical person with you, in your home, talking to you one on one. Yes it's somewhat expensive up front, but the human contact is a major component of what makes this a success.

There is one extra photo in the print edition of this story. It's the nurse, Ms. Graefe, hugging Mr. Bradfield in his kitchen.

<comment><USER9> Because much of our health needs are mental, and much of mental health is social. Living alone is a chronic debilating condition, akin to diabetes.

Live with your parents, and later live with your kids. Or outsource to home aides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do people like to use average life expectancy? "Average life expectancy was 45 years old at the turn of the century."

That provides very little information about the distribution of lifetimes and provides a biased view when compared to the 85-year-olds mentioned in the next sentence. Infant/child mortality skews the average a lot. You could have everyone living to 90, if they survive to 5, and still have an average of 45. War and other disasters can also change the average in ways that have little meaning for the medical programs in question.

<comment><USER17> It also bugs me when people say "at the turn of the century," since we just recently had one of those but the person is talking about the one previous.

/nitpick

<comment><USER9> Fin de Ceicle

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Medicare is referring to the newly created Center for Medicare and Medicaid > Innovation, which gives the program power to create and expand projects > without congressional authorization. This authority could also be used to > create projects based on HQP's lessons. It's not. Instead, Medicare has > created a raft of projects and experiments meant to move the system from > fee-for-service toward pay-for-quality — with the hope that if they can get > the payment incentives right, then the market will have reason to support > programs like HQP.

Yep. As long as the government bureaucrats develop perfect payment incentives, the market will do its job. It's the same story in education. And programming - if you can find the perfect metric for code production (SLOC? function points? story points?) you don't need to do anything else.

But with an imperfect metric, Cambell's Law (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law>) kicks in.

Want to reduce waiting times? Kick out patients so they die at home. Increase successful surgeries? Tell the doctors to fix a lot of ingrown toenails. Increased lifespan? Make decisions which increase life expectancy, at the expense of quality of life. Or just try to get rid of patients who have poor prospects.

The greatest strength of markets is also their greatest weakness - they are much smarter and more agile than government departments. They can become a malicious literal genie, which optimises whatever the incentives are.

<comment><USER19> Well there needs to be some sort of artificial incentive if you're going to keep medicine profit-based. The best way to generate profit without those incentives is to keep as many people as sick as possible, because sick people are more profitable than healthy people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My grandfather, a physician, made house calls 7 days a week. It was just assumed in those days. When he couldn't drive during WW2 (German refugee = enemy alien) he couldn't be in private practice.

Replacing doctors with nurses in that story is a perfectly sensible modern adaptation. But the house calls are a really good idea.

Not coincidentally, they're a central aspect of the exploding trend toward assisted living.

<comment><USER21> Please forgive me for going off-topic and for asking a personal question (and please don't answer if it's too personal), but how did the government inform your grandfather that his movement was restricted during WWII? Did he receive some sort of notice from the FBI?

I'm sorry that our government chose to restrict the civil liberties of a very important member of his community during WWII on the basis of his ethnicity.

A cautionary tale for today's America.

<comment><USER15> Note that the OP's grandfather was not a US citizen, but a refugee from a declared enemy during a time of war. There's a huge difference between the two. That fact that he was even allowed to practice medicine is amazing.

<comment><USER9> The atomic bomb was built in large part by refugees from a declared enemy during time of war.

<comment><USER15> Most of the US based scientists were either US citizens (some natural born; others naturalized) or came to the US in the 20s or early 30s. Even then very, very few of these men were German citizens. Fuchs, who was one of the few German refugees, was part of a contingent from the UK. The only reason why Fuchs was even allowed to be a part of the project was because of political pressure outside the project.

This is all documented in exrutiating detail in Rhodes' series on the making if both the atomic and hydrogen bombs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _According to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, surgical complications increase the margin the hospital makes on the patient by 330 percent for the privately insured and 190 percent for Medicare patients._

This is scary when you consider how good people are at the subconscious mental gymnastics that allow them to justify pursuing their own interests at the expense of others. Either human beings are perfect angels -- inhumanly good, too good for much of human history to have actually happened -- or many people have been tortured and killed for those margins.

<comment><USER23> How many doctors actually stand to gain by mistreating patients, though? I don't know about the USA, but in my country, most medical care is provided by salaried doctors who are paid the same regardless of the hospital's profit margin.

Now, obviously we do want the hospital to be profitable enough that they don't start firing us, but there's certainly no immediate benefit along the lines of "Well, I don't this guy to get an infection, but I'd make an extra $ 1000 if he did," which I agree would certainly provide skewed incentives. The only thing that happens when my patients get complications is I get to pull more unpaid overtime.

<comment><USER22> Complication rates are affected by hospital procedures and policies, staffing levels, training, and presumably the pressures that are or aren't put on doctors. All of those are under the control of the administrators who look out for the bottom line. Whether complications make money or cost money surely affects administrators' eagerness to revamp and/or enforce handwashing policies, update training for nurses, keep staffing levels high enough that inexperienced nurses are properly supervised, and put pressure on doctors with high complication rates.

To make it more concrete, there was an article on HN a few years ago suggesting that post-surgical complication rates could be reduced by creating surgery checklists where very basic surgical steps would be checked off as the surgery proceeded: patient identity verified, everything properly sanitized, materials accounted for afterwards, things like that. You would expect a hospital administrator to make a cost-benefit analysis taking into account the cost of researching this idea, creating a trial program, and monitoring compliance and effectiveness. The cost-benefit analysis looks like this: If the program is ineffective, we lose money. If it's effective, we lose even more money. If it's really, really effective, it could screw up the bottom line so much that I lose my bonus or even my job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My Taiwanese friends frequently remind me of the historic Chinese practice of a doctor visiting the family regularly to keep health well. The doctor would receive weekly pay only while the family was well; once someone got sick, they stopped getting paid until the doctor helped them recover. This preventative practice reminds me a lot of what my Taiwanese friends speak about.

It seems the age-old cliche "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies here.

<comment><USER24> That sounds like it could go very badly if you have a mercenary doctor and you come down with an incurable but manageable condition.

<comment><USER25> By the time you've spent years caring for a family, you probably care about their health for more than just the cash. Not to mention the reputation effects of abandoning sick patients...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I repeatedly post this chart that shows life expectancy stratified by age to HN:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

I learned about this article from another participant's submission to Hacker News.

I happen to be part of a "journal club" with a researcher who studies, among other things, demography of aging, and from him I've learned some startling facts about increases in life expectancy around the world. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,

[http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."

[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

A comparison of period life expectancy tables and cohort life expectancy tables for men and women in Britain

[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and- cohort-l...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and-cohort-life- expectancy-tables/2010-based/p-and-c-le.html)

helps make the picture more clear. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1963392_1963367,00.html)

and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.

<comment><USER27> That chart doesn't support the claim of centenarians becoming the norm, though. It shows that in the last 50 years in the US we've increased the life expectancy of an 80 year old by two years, from 86 to 88. extrapolating that linearly it suggests that children being born today will, if they live to 80 in the 2090s, have a life expectancy then of about 91, so while they may well expect to see the 22nd century dawn they won't generally get to see their hundredth birthday. This is backed up by the UK cohort life expectancy you gave which shows the current cohort life expectancy is still around 91-95, and doesn't extrapolate to predicting hundred-year lifespans even for children born 20 years in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Atul Gawande wrote about a similar initiative in Camden, NJ, two years ago:

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_gawande)

</comment><comment><USER29> _Average life expectancy was 45 years old at the turn of the century. You didn't have 85-year-olds with chronic diseases._

Yes you did. That's like saying there weren't old people a hundred years ago. The reason the average was 45 years is because of the astounding rate of infant mortality (much improved now).

<comment><USER30> Thank you, I was hoping somebody would have already made this point. Funny thing is, both statements are true; you really didn't have 85-year-olds with chronic diseases. There were 85-year-olds, they just didn't have chronic diseases. The idea that we have them now is due to improved treatment of other diseases ignores tons of epidemiological evidence that says otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The challenge with health care in the US is that nobody has incentives for reducing health care expenditures. Hospitals get paid when you get sick. Insurance companies see higher margin from reducing administrative costs. Patients are largely uninformed and there are few services out there to help them make lifestyle changes... not to mention that they expect somebody else to pay for it. Employers actually bear most of the non-medicare/medicaid financial risk, but they aren't health experts and have been burned in the past by tele-medicine programs that don't work.

Preventive care programs like the one at HQP are proving that preventive care is effective, but sending a nurse to your home regularly is expensive and I'd question the ROI from doing so, absent some focus on a particular disease. With a solid ROI and some good hard evidence, HQP shouldn't have to rely on CMS to keep them afloat... with some work they would be able to sell their program to payers.

HQP also isn't addressing the systemic issues I mentioned above, so what's especially frustrating about the article is that they bash on ACOs, which is one of the first attempts by CMS to actually align incentives and mend those issues. And frankly, those changes aren't going to be good for hospitals... I'm sure a lot will go out of business as people get healthier and don't need them. This piece of the article in particular makes me question HQP's motives.

</comment><comment><USER32> In the UK the NHS has district nurses one whose roles is exactly this sort of work and it can make big difference especially where the GP is underperforming. These patients can be unwilling to change GP to a better one (which you can do in the NHS).

</comment><comment><USER33> Three points were interesting to me:

1) The chart with the blip for the 1918 flu. If we reduce costs by closing facilities, how we cope with the next blip?

2) This is an area ripe for disruption, but regulatory capture seems to prevent this.

3) We should all be spending more time with our elders and noticing these sorts of issues, if for no other reason than it will improve their health.

<comment><USER34> 1) It's not like those facilities are sitting around empty right now. If we close them only by the amount that we reduce the need for them, we'll have about the same reserve capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me an awful lot of the role of village witch in Terry Pratchette's books. I think we've lost that caretaker role in society because we always assumed it was their children's responsibility. It seems like if capitalism can get something for free, it is assumed to be worthless.

</comment><comment><USER20> As for going into hospitals making you worse -- I agree from experience. One of my parents went into the hospital for a back procedure, and came back with her mind significantly diminished. She died 8 months later.

The other, in and out of the hospital, eventually died the same week, and one of his complications was MRSA.

Both were at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, OH, which I gather is a perfectly solid institution.

</comment><comment><USER35> _"The largest group in the top one percent of income in America are physicians."_

It is going to be _very_ challenging to introduce changes that negatively impact a profession with the social respect and the deep pockets physicians have.

It could probably succeed in a countries like Canada, Sweden or Germany, but overcoming entrenched interests in the US and not getting labelled "socialized medicine"[1] in the process is unlikely.

1\. Of course it's no more socialized medicine than Medicare, but it's a good way to discredit your opponents.

<comment><USER36> As of 2008, nearly 59% of US physicians supported national health insurance [1]. Doctors are not the culprit.

1 = <http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=740467>

<comment><USER37> What do that "national health insurance" look like for physicians? Does it include pay cuts? I'm pretty sure in those 59% of physician's eyes it doesn't.

<comment><USER36> The answer to that question depends on whether you think physicians lack insight.

I think that most physicians are smart enough to look at the national insurance that already exists (Medicaid & Medicare) and to recognize that their reimbursements would be cut. I think they can balance that against the complexities of the current system and some might be willing to trade somewhat lower pay for the ability to focus on providing care.

20% of health care costs come from physician pay, of which about half goes to the cost of running a practice. Most reformers know that cutting physician pay, while part of almost any plan, is not going to be the most important way to save money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If this is as cost-effective as it claims, what's to stop private insurance companies from pushing and covering it? It should theoretically cut their own costs in the long run, right?

<comment><USER39> I wish some insurance companies could figure out that.

In reality, if they are something like the one I work for, politicking and manager infighting will prevent it - everyone wants the OTHER divisions to lose power, but not their own. My own manager created his own personal software factory (for a freaking country branch), in spite of my belief that it's extremely inefficient for the company as a whole. The shareholders don't care as long as the company makes money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems to me that health insurers are already aligned with the goal of keeping patients from receiving care for acute conditions, so perhaps some of them, being private companies, unencumbered by special interests or government bureaucracy, will adopt systems like the one outlined in this article. Maybe that's a cynical outlook, but since it has been demonstrated that hospitals, being for-profit, are tragically misaligned with maintaining patients' wellness.

</comment><comment><USER41> The tendency among physicians to be dismissive towards remedies that are procedural in nature reminds me of the tendency of programmers to show disinterest in non-technical solutions to problems.

But as Jeff Atwood reminds us, "The Best Code is No Code At All," and I imagine that physicians could use a similar reminder: "The Best Treatment is No Treatment at All."

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow. If we can't maintain ways for the cream to rise to the top in the US, we'll continue to become increasingly mediocre.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, now we're fighting mental illness at an alarming rate due to many factors - that we could manage better.

I'd like to see the graph of rate of mental illness from the past, to now - and yes, I realize there's a strong argument for that we're better at diagnosing people now, however it just doesn't add up IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER44> "if this were a pill"

</comment><comment><USER45> It is about job description. Just put into law that all government money should ensure the best outcomes for the patients and then a lot of things become possible. Give simple and powerful mandate to all health related businesses.

<comment> brown9-2 A part of the issue is that it's hard to define "best outcome", you'd have to make sure to not accidentally incentivize drastic short-term procedures like open heart surgery, where the immediate affect is positive (patient hasn't died) but a longer term view would have questioned the care that led the patient to that state in the first place.</comment></comment>


Functional programming in C - <AUTHOR> http://rcrowley.org/2008/03/03/functional-programming-in-c <comment><USER3> Of course, I can't help thinking of Greenspun's Tenth Rule when I see this sort of thing.

That said, my day job is C programming, and I am of course a heavy user of function pointers (how else can you get anything interesting done in C?). But C's type system does tend to get in the way, so you end up casting all pointers to void*, and things like that, just to shut the compiler up. Some Lisp-style macros would certainly help with this!

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be kinda missing the point. Yes, you can do functional programming in almost anything that supports recursion and function indirection. But the essence of functional programming is _not_ simply using a function pointer for everything. Those "if and switch statements" are perfectly functional concepts. It's the avoidance of side effects that generally distinguishes "functional" idioms from imperative ones.

</comment><comment><USER5> Functional? If anything this is a poor man's OO, simulating a vtable. Even if it is using higher-order functions, that seems like a more accurate analogy.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not functional programming if you don't have nested functions and/or closures, is it?

<comment><USER7> This might be a bit off topic, but since we're talking about functional languages...

I've done a very small amount of functional programming (I did the first 5 or so problems from project Euler in Haskell, for example, just to see what Haskell was like), and there's one specific thing I was wondering about. First, let me give you some example psuedo-code just to describe the situation:

if function_call(value) == some_value_I_want_or_something ? return function_call(value); else return 0;

Ok, that's not any particular language or anything, but I think it'll serve to get my query across.

So in the above code, I want to do something like check the result of a function call, and then if that value is the one I want, return the result of that function call. Otherwise, return 0 (you could do whatever here, but I just made it simple...).

My question is this: do most functional languages do some sort of optimization to avoid basically calling the function twice, since in a purely functional language, functions shouldn't have side affects, so calling a function multiple times with the same input should yield the same output? In other words, does the runtime/compiler/whatever say "I just ran function_call(value) and got a result, and since I don't allow side affects, anytime from here on out that I see function_call(value), I'm just going to assume the result is the same."?

Maybe it's because I'm very inexperienced with functional languages, but I find that I run into that kind of situation often enough, and I always think "Is this going to be really slow because I'm basically calling this function twice even though the result is going to be the same?".

I'm guessing that this may vary language to language; as I understand it, for example, Lisp is "functional", but not purely so, and doesn't really enforce the whole "no side-effects" thing, so it would have to run the function twice, but I could be mistaken.

<comment><USER6> Your pseudo-code is a little weird (it recurses infinitely?) but I _think_ that what you're referring to is _memoization_ , or basically caching your function calls' results for equivalent arguments. I don't know if any languages support it out the box, but I do know that any language with first- class functions and closures will allow you to make a simple "wrapper" construct so that you get this feature anyway.

<comment><USER7> Nah, it doesn't actually recurse infinitely, it just looks weird. Here's an example in c:

<http://codepad.org/Xysob1jS>

Obviously this is a totally contrived example but you get the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Invoking functional pointers (call eax) is very very slow. If you're using C chances are you're using it because you need the extra performance.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this essentially what a virtual function call does in C++? It can be slow if the code isn't in cache yet, but otherwise it's not that bad.

<comment> loup-vaillant This is not about the instruction cache. This is about branch prediction. Calling a function pointer (almost?) guarantees that the branch prediction will fail, unlike a switch statement. Not cool in inner loops.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure? AFAIK the prediction will usually assume that the called address will be the same as the last one, so in an inner loop (eg. mapping a function over an array), only the first call would take a long time, and then only by 20-25 cycles. If a loop is so tight that 5 or so cycles per iteration matters, there shouldn't be a function call in it in the first place.

(I've googled earlier and someone measured a virtual call in a tight loop to take about twice the time of a direct one. Intel doc says a call is about 5 cycles. That would mean an extra 5 cycles or so for the indirection.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.newty.de/fpt/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Lots of the plan9 code is written in a style like this but with enums

A bit tricky to find the best example on my phone while on the bus but here's a flavour, the in-memory file system

<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/ramfs.c>

Edit : can anyone see how to add a comment to the article, I wanted to share the above info with him but comments don't seem open to me now I'm at my desk.

The plan9 way uses an interface style, the sort that is made explicit in Go :

from [http://plan9.bell- labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/nntpfs....](http://plan9.bell- labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/nntpfs.c)

        Srv nntpsrv = {
        .destroyfid=	fsdestroyfid,
        .attach=	fsattach,
        .clone=	fsclone,
        .walk1=	fswalk1,
        .open=	fsopen,
        .read=	fsread,
        .write=	fswrite,
        .stat=	fsstat,
        };

These file systems all run in user mode btw (as can all the disk based ones). Mycrotiv has even done a kernel with a built in rc shell that you attach your file systems after booting as yourself - a disk failure will not take down your system!

<comment><USER12> Offtopic. That pipe(3) function I saw in ramfx.c is cool (<http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man3/pipe.html>). Bidirectional - <USER2> *nix. I think life would be easier if it were more straightforward to build applications as chains of little utilities with one-to-one protocols of integer exchange, rather than having to go to socket (more complex, and port management overhead) or file (ugly). I have a things-might-have-been-very- different feeling.

When is Team Plan9 going to produce a distribution that we can get into using as easily as Linux or the BSD kernels? :) (Or would inferno be a better focus? Same issue though - it's not as easy as ubuntu or even small projects like haiku)

Also offtopic - I like doing switch statements in python like this:

        def fn_a(input_tokens): pass

        def fn_b(input_tokens): pass

        user_cmd = raw_input().split()

        # look mum, no hands
        { 'a': fn_a
        , 'b': fn_b
        }[user_cmd[0]](usr_cmd)

<comment><USER11> The notion you talk of with your integer exchange is called "channels" which are typed pipes. see <http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/2/thread> for the C library

On Inferno the Limbo language has channels as a type with their own operators

Send an integer down chan <\- = 5; and read it out i = <\- chan

I don't understand what you mean by "get into as easily". The distribution CD is also a Live CD so you can boot right into it. The kernel code can be understood by one person. There are commentaries such as <http://lsub.org/who/nemo/papers.html>

It runs in qemu, vmware player, Xen, Lguest

We are thinking of doing a qemu image release but not worked out an auto installation system quite yet (the distribution cd is rebuilt every night with the new commits).

We have irc://irc.freenode.org/#plan9 for unofficial chat (though with the usual caveats)

And a mailing list where you might get your question answered by Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie, Russ Cox or one of the many knowledgable people involved in or using the project (plan9 runs on IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer for instance and is used at LANL, Sandanista, NASA JPL, MIT).

There's also Russ' usermode projects :

9vx - <http://swtch.com/9vx/> a plan9 that runs in the vx32 x86 sandboxing environment

and

plan9port - <http://swtch.com/plan9port/> \- which is the plan9 user tools ported to Lunix

I'd say that was a quite comprehensive set of "get into" tools :></comment></comment></comment>


A cryptocurrency written in PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/c-darwin/dcoin

<comment><USER2> anybody knows what are those URLs, in the DBInfo section area? like..

[http://220.127.116.11/dc/](http://22.214.171.124/dc/)

[http://220.127.116.11/dcoin/](http://126.96.36.199/dcoin/)

they all are nginx, saying 403/404.</comment>


NYT_diff Twitter bot tracks NYT headline, slant changes - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nyt_diff <comment><AUTHOR> This one in particular really stood out to me: [https://i.imgur.com/SekhqyN.png](https://i.imgur.com/SekhqyN.png)</comment>


Major University Dumps Gmail Over Security Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/uc-davis-gmail/ <comment><USER2> Your email may be less secure in the hands of a local sysadmin than with a company like Google, which has a valuable reputation to defend and sophisticated systems in place to guard your data.

A legitimate reason to not use Google is their history of less than perfect customer service; they excel in technology, not in customer service.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. My university required you to change your password every 90 days. Not such a bad idea, however, they compare your new password against all previous passwords to make sure they are significantly different (e.g. you can't change your password from abcdefg to abcdeff). I'm assuming this means they save your passwords in clear text somewhere. Not exactly the type of people I'd trust with sensitive information.

EDIT: meastham makes a good point and he/she could definitely be right about generating hashes of all slight variations of each password. In response to what fname said, I'm wondering if there are any security concerns about being able to find similarities in hashes for similar passwords.

<comment><USER4> Why are you assuming that? You can compare hashes ("does the encrypted version of what they entered as a new password equal any of the encrypted previous passwords").

<comment><USER5> If by hash you mean a one-way hashing system, then he did say _significantly different_ and not just different. You couldn't do that with any common one- way hash.

<comment><USER4> You're correct, I didn't understand what he meant by significantly different until you pointed out because I have never encountered a system that didn't allow me to have a "similar password". However, I have encountered ones where my new password could not contain previous passwords, so unless they are hashing each component of my password and comparing this probably does indicate clear-text storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That article is fairly info-lite, even after visiting the source article (linked from OP). So "members of the faculty were concerned that it wouldn't keep their correspondence private enough" but they don't say _why_ they feel that way or suggest there's any actual _evidence_ of lax security. The Google Buzz thing is a red herring since UCD weren't using that anyway, and as an apps administrator you can say which services your users are allowed to use.

I do have an interest in this: I'm about to move a campus to Gmail. I have no evidence it's less secure than the Exchange/Postfix systems it will be replacing, and I suspect in many ways it is more secure. I would welcome evidence to the contrary but the OP doesn't have any. This sounds like a bunch of people who don't understand "hacking" making loud about how the cloud just _has_ to be less secure than their in-house systems.

<comment><USER7> Part of it may be the association of Google with web search--people may think that if Google is processing email, it can become part of search results.

My employer uses a hosted Exchange service, and I've not heard anyone raise a peep about privacy concerns. I suspect, however, that if we decided to move to Google Mail, people would raise the same sort of concerns.

<comment><USER6> Well, my current strategy is to migrate users when we give them new PCs this summer, then only tell them about the change later. Much later. Initially they'll be using Outlook to access email; they can use the web interface later if they want to. Why would they be interested in which email backend we're using? The trouble with asking them, or informing them in a way which suggest I want their opinion, is that it very quickly just becomes a beauty contest, where I have sound technical and financial reasons to make the move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are privacy issues, certainly, but as with the recent Yale rejection of Google Apps, I'd suggest we're not getting the full picture in this article.

Keep in mind that, as with any IT department in a large organization, there are vested interests to protect and outsourcing infrastructure can often be seen as a threat.

Holding up privacy as the showstopper is bit of a straw man. I could easily list a bunch of reasons why keeping mail service local has major downsides and security concerns.

I'm not assuming that the IT dept in question had covert motives in this, just noting that we certainly aren't getting all the information in this situation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Actually the problem is too much privacy. University staff have access to your email without any problem if you store it on their system. However, on Google's system, they can't access it at all. They probably don't like this very much.

</comment><comment><USER10> After having to endure my university's switch to Live@Edu (Outlook Webaccess in cloud) I can only envy those that would be so lucky to have Gmail for their uni email service.

<comment><USER11> Yes! My university uses Live, or whatever it's called this year and it sucks in a majestic fashion. Different versions open in different browsers, the mobile site just doesn't work at all, there's an enormous redirection song and dance when logging in. Loads of _basic usability flaws_. Want to archive an email and create a new folder at the same time? Not possible. Oh and it's down far too often.

The only reason I don't pump it through my Gmail account is the level of crap that gets sent on mailing lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have this thought in my mind that google is looking at and using my email for it's own purposes. I have a google apps account for my business (free).

While I understand they do use my information for advertising purposes, is that the extent of it? Am I just misguided? I don't really think there is anything to worry about, but I don't _trust_ them. Should I?

<comment><USER13> Personally, I do not. The data will be there for when (not if) someone - Google or other - decides to use it for worse purposes.

There are several options, so there is no need to subject yourself to those concerns.</comment></comment>


Unbabel (YC W14) Launches A Human-Edited Machine Translation Service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/unbabel-launches-a-human-edited-machine-translation-service-to-help-businesses-go-global-and-localize-customer-support/

<comment><USER2> Being able to try it for free is pretty cool. I just took a snippet from a foreign news article to try it out and the process was easy.

Have you thought at all about making a more B2C product? Obviously there's less money there, but I often come across articles in Korean that I can read but have a hard time understanding that I'd love translated (and not by Google translate). I could imagine having a few bucks in my Unbabel account, and any time I come across an article I really want to read, clicking a Chrome extension/bookmarklet that sends the article to Unbabel and deducts my account balance. Then I can just read at a later time. I guess this could be used for B2B as well but not sure how useful it'd be in this context.

Also, any timeline for other languages?

edit: Just realized you have an API, maybe I'll build it :)

<comment><USER3> Hello,

We thought about having such a widget, its on our roadmap. But not really sure when we will do it. There are a lot of cool integrations we want to make. Meanwhile if you decide to build it using the API let me know, I will super happy to help you with the API.

Joao (I'm the CTO)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The grammatical error on their infographic does not bode well for the quality of their translations

[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/screen-s...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/screen- shot-2014-03-23-at-2-48-44-pm.png)

<comment><USER5> I can see two errors:

* "2. Its made into micro-tasks" that should read "2. It's made into micro-tasks" Wouldn't that mistake be so common and commonly decried on-line, it could be more excusable.

* Not sure what language is "Olá!" but if it's Spanish it needs to be "¡Olá!"

Not sure about the over-all tone, either.

<comment><USER6> "Olá" is "Hello" in portuguese, in Spanish it's "Hola"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am curious which part is translated automatically, and which is human- edited: current translations algorithms have approximation of how likely the outcome is, but I doubt it can translate to a quality metric that allows to filter efficiently a translated text between proper and improper translation. Maybe there are layers in the AmTurk treatment.

In the same vein, but further along: the Amazon Turk part of the service isn't visible on the website. I'm assuming if one wants to make money, they would have to connect to the Amazon service directly -- but then: why would TechCrunch mention that this is the innovation? Same question: AmzTurk doesn't have great language coverage, will they need to develop their own to cover Finnish and Polish? I wonder if a competitor can expect to extract confidential information that way, or more simply disrupt a service.

<comment><USER3> You can think about our process as a chain. A text is original machine translated, then passed to an editor. When the editor is done we pass its output to another editor. The process continues until we are confident the quality is good.

We don't use Amazon Turk. We have our own community which works on our site or on our mobile apps. This gives our editors a much better experience. We are dedicated to improve our edition interface to simplify the work of the editors.

João

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that!

Out of curiosity: let's say I'd like to join (I have free time, lack of motivation to do something significant, and I speak four languages fluently) how would I do that?

<comment><USER3> Just go to our website and join as an editor www.unbabel.com/editor

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first startup I ever worked for was something similar. We connected websites directly to a service that created automatic translations for language versions within a minute from posting new content on the page, and then it would schedule a machine-aided translation by an experienced translator. Unfortunately, none of the translators nor computational linguistics geeks knew how to sell it well.

I was able to dig up remains of our website [http://web.archive.org/web/20100225094103/http://globalizato...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100225094103/http://globalizator.pl/page.php?\[en\]184)

</comment><comment><USER8> This isn't mentioned in the description but do they feedback edited text into the machine translator?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I am Joao the CTO of Unbabel. That is definitely something that is on our roadmap while we improve our mt systems. We have very useful data to build better mt systems and hence improve the overall system.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many active users are on HN nowadays? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You could query the live api:

[https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/updates.json?print=pre...](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/updates.json?print=pretty)

Do this periodically and you can have user activity stats

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been a user for many years - would love to know how large this awesome and vibrant community is. Is there a way we can estimate it via the API etc?

</comment><comment><USER3> Also a breakdown by country would be nice. I heard that most aren't in USA, but that's all I know.</comment>


The Success of OOP - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2015/07/31/the-success-of-oop/

<comment> kuni-toko-tachi OOP is a naive and limiting approach and I avoid hiring anyone who advocates it. Very few problem domains are effectively modeled through the lens of inheritance.

Today's event driven programs are much more suited to functional programming.

All programs are data transformation pipelines.</comment>


Days since GitHub hired someone - <AUTHOR> http://www.dayssincegithubhiredsomeone.com/

<comment><USER2> "Whoops, all the things went wrong!"

Definitely not going to space today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, it should work slightly more reliably now.

<comment><USER3> 1:22 PM UTC - Currently saying "It's been n days since GitHub hired someone"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It's been zero days since GitHub hired someone." \-- I was expecting an unexpectedly large number. Not this.

</comment><comment><USER5> is this open sourced somewhere ? "Github hired X today" would be so much better :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Days since GitHub hired not-me

</comment><comment><USER7> Soooooooooooooooo interesting...</comment>


The First App Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.makegameswith.us/gamernews/276/the-first-app-store <comment><USER2> Really the most annoying conclusion possible in the article: "The free market wins again."

The free market gets to win after sufficient government handouts gets something up and running. Then private businesses can swoop in and take the networks (or in this case, the concept) and claim that they won.

If your mother gives you a lollipop, you didn't win an epic battle for the lollipop. Just saying...

<comment><USER3> While I definitely agree with you on the whole, there are some specifics that are ignored by your comment.

The French Minitel system allowed for _semi-_ free market activities, by allowing companies to use the system.

The German Bildschirmtext failed because it apparently kept too much control: the decoder boxes were expensive and only able to be purchased at one location, and I don't think they allowed for others to use the service.

<comment><USER2> Completely agree with you.

If it's time to capitalize something, bring in the free market.

However if you need to build something that's never been built before, you tend to need a government, a tyrant, or a Rockefeller.

<comment><USER4> Minitel was not something that had "never been built before", there were Videotex systems developed before. Of course, it's hard for a private company to use tax money to offer free terminals to everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _This was perhaps the Minitel 's greatest failure as well - because it was state run... The free market wins again._

If the Minitel launched in the eighties, how could have this article been written in the fifties?

Seriously, are Americans still fighting commies? What is this sick obsession with "the gobment"? Today we know we need both the private market and the government to build an economy that is both prosperous and beneficial to the people. Could you cut this fifties crap already?

And this wasn't a case of the "free market" winning again. This was just America winning again. And given that the US median income is steadily dropping while in France it's steadily rising, I don't know if there's much to be proud of.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      And this wasn't a case of the "free market" winning again. This was just America winning again.

Could you propose alternative explanations at to why the Minitel failed despite the fact it had such a head start? Do you think the internet would have prospered as it did if the only way to access it through the present day was through terminals developed, built, and lent to you by the American Gov't?

      Today we know we need both the private market and the government to build an economy that is both prosperous and beneficial to the people.

Elaborate? I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

I think the fact that managed to call out the 22 year old French author (me) as a 50s era frenzied McCarthyist betrays a stronger, far more irrational ideology in you than is present in my writing. I'm extremely proud of the Minitel and its amazing run (a sentiment shared by other commenters) and simply shared what I believe to be the most plausible and strongest explanation as to why it didn't make it's way out of France and eventually failed.

<comment><USER5> I don't know why the Minitel failed while the Internet didn't. But the internet started out as a government project, too[1]. Maybe it was because the American government-led effort incorporated the private market better, although, according to your description in the article, the French adopted what was to become Apple's model, and Apple is doing alright so far. And maybe it was due to other reasons, like being ahead of its time, or lack of an international marketing effort (why did the Apple Newton fail?) But in your article you give no compelling evidence to suggest that the Minitel's eventual failure was just a result of it being "state run". Both the internet and the Minitel were state run, and both had a strong private market participation.

If anything, the internet had a very long incubation period in the education system, while the Minitel immediately reached out to businesses. Governments usually don't shine in running businesses, but they do know how to build infrastructure; both the internet and the Minitel are infrastructure, so there's no reason to assume it would fail because it's state-run.

Whatever the reasons, they were more complex than this simplistic explanation (actually, it seems like the main reason is that the internet was already pretty big when Minitel launched – just not in homes – and couldn't be stopped at that stage).

> I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

The measure at which government should regulate the market is debated and varies across countries, but history has proven again and again that neither completely government controlled economies, nor completely free market economies work. We do know that.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet)

<comment><AUTHOR> Working backwards, the Minitel failed because in 2012 when it was discontinued it was hardly different from its 1983 incarnation. I agree it isn't likely to be a single-cause explanation, but when you examine the history of the Minitel and the ways it failed to adapt, it becomes evident that a huge factor at play was that the Minitel didn't have to respond to market pressures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _In the early 1990s US West (previously Qwest now CenturyLink) launched a Minitel service in the Minneapolis and Omaha markets called "CommunityLink"... The service was fairly short-lived as competing offerings from providers like AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe provided more services targeted at American users for a lower price. Many of US West's Minitel offerings were charged à la carte or hourly while competitors offered monthly all-inclusive pricing._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel#Minitel_in_other_countr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel#Minitel_in_other_countries)

<comment><USER7> Errm.. _cough_ .. The American BBS Revolution.

MiniTel 'failed' because at the time, in the American market, it was competing with, well .. seriously better technology. If you even _thought_ about some service like miniTel, in the US, and then went looking .. you got straight to the BBS section of CompuMag, &etc. The French had miniTel, hosted services, whereas in BBS-land, if you had a modem, you could serve. And .. serve you did.

However, in true -retro spect, MiniTel was brilliant. A Walled Garden, if not the first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article does not mention that the Minitel was a rip-off. All services were extremely expensive (3617 being the most expensive, at around 1€/minute). It was also investing on people's credulity at the time: for example, expensive Minitel services avdertised in video games magasines targeting teenagers.

And for information, Free is not the largest ISP in France, Orange is.

[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9%29](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_%28soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9%29)

<comment><USER7> .. and thus, the analog with the modern App Store is complete.

<comment><USER9> Explain? The Appstore is the cheapest way outside open source I can get polished software and games at the moment. For a lot of great products in there i'm not even sure how the creators of that software can survive considering their pricing. Of course there are exceptions, but you can _use_ most of those exceptions for free or less than the cost of 1 cup of coffee in a coffeeshop. So what do you mean by analog? E1 per minute to use (use!) or free/almost free to use?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps he was referring to the games which convince credulous kids to spend hundreds on in-app purchases?

<comment><USER7> Yup. The modern App Store highlights the exploitative nature of this business - just as MiniTel did, too, in the 80's .. Microsoft in the 90's, perhaps .. and so on. Sobering truth: there is a lot of crud software being made in these markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes me proud to be French.

Xavier Niel is launching a tuition-free developer school:

[http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed- xavie...](http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavier-niel- launches-tuition-free-developer-school-baptised-42/)

The FT also recently had lunch with him:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/22167134-b24a-11e2-8540-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/22167134-b24a-11e2-8540-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2iOwwym00)

</comment><comment><USER12>
      History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

(misattributed to) Mark Twain

<comment><USER13> "History repeats itself, heaven knows I'll know it in the next world", End of Green, Kerbdog, Cormac Battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      Online dating has just started going mainstream in America.
      The Minitel might explain a cultural difference or two between
      the French and the rest of the world...

Ironically, in my experience online dating carries much less stigma in the US than in France. I'm not sure I agree with the implications of the article on the impact of the Minitel in France as a whole either, but then I'm too young to have witnessed it firsthand (I always saw one sitting in a corner at my grand parents', but that's about it).

</comment><comment><USER15> I grew up in France, and was completely surprised when I learned that Minitel was something only in France. This was really the first internet, and the Minitel was really present EVERYWHERE. My parents had one, my friends' parents had one, we had a few at my elementary school.

I still remember the billboards, 3615 ULLA, funny memories. We still use the "3615" number as jokes with friends.

</comment><comment><USER16> It was hugely expensive for the consumer: 3615 was a phone number, and it was surtaxed at 0,34€/min if I remember well, even as early as 1995. No wonder the market was a billion dollars, it was a rip off.

Internet killed the milking cow, and everyone wondered how Yellow Pages could survive when they couldn't charge per minute anymore...

</comment><comment><USER7> As an owner of a collection of old Minitel-compatible 8-bit machines (my 'nicest': an Oric Telestrat), I yearn for a return of Minitel. I imagine actually that the "Internet 2.0" movement would do well to make it feasible for anyone to create a node, and participate in, a MiniTel-like local area transmission network, with cheap .. like ultra-cheap .. parts and technologies.

If I collect two months of electronic trash from the local garbage-collector, I'm fairly sure I could reconstruct a miniTel'ish network, or 10, in short order.

Perhaps I should stop thinking about it on HN and just go do it, but see .. this is just another reason why the French are great!

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Oh yes, I remember reading about the Minitel many years ago. Thanks for bringing it back to attention.

The fall of these old technologies leave behind a somewhat somber mood in me. Kind of like the decline of UUCP.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is amazing and thank you for sharing; As API said in another comment. I wish i was alive during those days and also alive today. I hope I'll be saying it about our future, but there is something about the nostalgia, I just fixed desperately needed box with ribbons and remembered how much I loved it when i was younger..(fixed it btw.)

[edit] There was zero credit to government persons, which I kinda feel lacking.. Someone was thinking here.

<comment><USER7> Old computers don't die, their users do. If you look, you will discover that all the old machines of the 80's are indeed still alive and well, and actually .. getting new software written for them. Yes, kids, its a fact: the c64 is a thriving platform. The Oric-1/Atmos? Also! /r/retrobattlestations much, I do!?

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a child, I spent hours on the minitel, (disconnected - I never got the permission to use it online as it was very expensive) just to type ascii art...

<comment><USER18> That's funny, as far as I remember the keyboard on the model I had, was 'A B C D...' and not azerty as pictured in the above article.

I'm sure a 'A B C D' keyboard lowered dramatically the barrier of entry for the intended market (If I remember it right).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How did I not know about this?!?

<comment><USER20> I've heard about it plenty before. But never that the machines and basic service was free!

<comment><USER21> I don't think the machine were free. You could either rent it for cheap, or buy it. There was a few revision of the hard too, but most people had a semi- old revision like v2 or v3 (don't remember exactly). Maybe in the 2000 the old Minitels were given to those who rented it previously, that way the government (well, the now public telecom company France Telecom) did not have to recycle them all...

The only free service was the Yellow and White pages IIRC. And only for 3 minutes. Well, you could always disconnect when approaching the 3 minutes limit, then reconnect. Nobody spends whole days on the Yellow and White Pages anyway :)

<comment><USER22> There was a free one, I'm pretty sure.

Not remember exactly which years but I remember my parents having to wait to get one (vs. paying and getting it immediately).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We had Viditel in the Netherlands which was like this (modelled after it I guess). I used it very briefly in the early 80s; after that I discovered ways to use Pascal and assembler to write BBS software and opened my first BBS on my MSX computer. That gave so much freedom that I never considered Viditel again.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very cool, shame I wasn't aware of this, even though I live near France (.nl) and visted there for years...

</comment><comment><USER24> I think "Bildschirmtext" was a similar service that launched around the same time in Germany and also foreshadowed a lot of what the internet is now. Online shopping, forums, real time messaging, online dating, etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> The UK had a similar thing run by the BBC called Ceefax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax)

<comment><USER26> Ceefax was a teletext service, it ran on your TV, you couldn't actually send data over it. Prestel was the UK's videotex service, similar to Minitel.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestel)

<comment><USER27> Sadly Prestel just never had the penetration of Minitel. As an Englishman who came-of-age in the 1980's I wasn't aware of anyone with Prestel, it was too expensive. I remember my dad, who was pretty keen on technology (we had a sonic remote control for our TV I'll have you know) saying that they needed to make it's use free, even if you have to rent the kit. Charging for calls meant you had to think before you did and in the early 80's had any idea what you would do with it. They needed to be allowed to play for free first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> great story, but now what do you think apple allow this all stuff?</comment>


New Design Delivers Round-the-Clock Solar Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-design-delivers-round-the-clock-solar-power-17391

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't mention it but energy is stored in a "molten salt storage tank".</comment>


Today I sold my $278,987 worth of Apple Stock - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/51oi3w/today_i_sold_my_278987_worth_of_apple_stock/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one more annoyed that it feels like they're ignoring professional users. To draw on Bernie, "We're tired of hearing about your damned headphone jack!" No updates to Mac Pro, Macbook Pro, or new Thunderbolt display (aside from rumor mill about MBP)

<comment><USER3> I'm a longtime Apple watcher. Apple is pretty predictable in some things-- and they have a rhythm.

If they had minor Mac introductions they would have just appeared on the store a week ago (they wait until event time to decide what makes the cut in case something has production delays, then they push out the stuff that didn't make the cut the week before the event.)

That they made no mention of the Mac means that they will have another event in early October (they need to be on the market by November and December so early October gives enough breathing room from this event and enough timing to have another event.)

I think if they _just_ had the new Macbook it would have been mentioned today.

That they didn't makes me think that at least three major product announcements will be made in October.

\-- Macbook Pro new model I expect. \-- Display with built in GPU I think is a distinct possibility \-- New Mac of some other kind if they have something significant (eg: not just a revision with the latest intel processor) \-- They might have something genuinely new (it still happens.)

I'm certain enough about this that if I could predict Apple's stock movement based on an event, I would be buying options with an early October expiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forget about the jack. The real issue here is breaking the tick-tock release cycle.

I believe that a lot of iPhone6 users, that would have otherwise upgraded today, will now wait for iPhone 8 next year.

What we saw today was not iPhone 7, it was something more like iPhone 6s^2

<comment><USER5> The 7 has completely redesigned internals and a significant performance and battery improvement over my 6 Plus. The fact that the design from the front is very similar doesn't bother me in the slightest.

What were you expecting that would have made it more compelling for iPhone 6 users?

<comment><USER6> The iPhone 6 is already an awesome phone. There isn't any compelling reason to get the 7 and if you use headphone jack there are some pretty compelling reasons not to upgrade.

And some of the supposed improvements are total BS. "Less visible antenna" Its not exactly visible on ANY smart phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to agree. Today may be the day Apple jumped the shark. The use case for a headphone jack is just so broad. And the wireless headset just seems so...useless.

Spent the last hour looking at android phones. There are so many it is overwhelming

<comment><USER3> Apple jumped the shark in 2001 with the iPod. People have been saying that for decades.

There is no use case for the headphone jack that can't be better handled by the lightening connector or bluetooth. Seriously. Want to integrate something from sparkfun? Bluetooth is what you want.

I think it's kinda funny how Apple haters / android zealots always talk about how Apple has lost its way, every time they do something new and significant.

iPod: complaints iPhone: complaints Mac Pro: complaints iPad: complaints and jokes Apple Watch: complaints. All of these have been hugely successful products.

But the day of their announcement people complained about how much they obviously sucked.

<comment><USER8> > There is no use case for the headphone jack that can't be better handled by > the lightening connector or bluetooth. Seriously. Want to integrate > something from sparkfun? Bluetooth is what you want.

Using your existing 250€ wired headphones while the phone is charging. Doesn't seem that outlandish to me.

<comment><USER3> Since you're charging, by definition you're not mobile.

Easy: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/08/belkin- announces-s...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/08/belkin-announces- simultaneous-lightning-headphone-and-charging-adapter-for-iphone-7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Investments are not about personal emotional references.

<comment><USER10> Investments are whatever you want them to be. It's your money to do with as you please. Some people find meaning in the actual ownership of a company.

<comment><USER9> Then it's just expensive toy and not an investment. Point of investment is to make profit. You know, there is a ROI term.

And when somebody thinks that staying on powerpc is courage but removing most widely adopted port isn't courage, I think it's just personal grievance

<comment><USER10> OK, who cares? Maybe the guy is so rich he can afford to spend $300,000 on his personal grievances. Hell I _wish_ I could afford to do something like that. Who are you to tell somebody what they can and can't do with their assets?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really this is a rant about the headphone jack. I get it.

I use the headphone jack in three different use cases everyday. Very displeased they are doing away with it, a dongle or $160 5 hour headphones is not a solution.

</comment><comment><USER12> It somehow bothers me a lot that he's referring to his broker as his investment banker.</comment>