Before Food Trucks, Americans Ate 'Night Lunch' from Beautiful Wagons - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/night-lunch-wagon <comment><USER2> This is a gold standard for what a platform should be. An individual sells a product at a one-off price to a entrepreneur who then is able to make a living off of it. There is no 30% take in perpetuity with regulations that slowly chip away at margins. It's just one person selling another an honest opportunity to make money. And as they scale, everyone in the consumption chain benefits -- more sales, more businesses and more places to eat easily for the end customer.

<comment><USER3> This is nonsense. By what criteria, besides "I like it" is "An individual sells a product at a one-off price to a entrepreneur who then is able to make a living off of it." the ideal form of business?

Adobe went from this model to SaaS, and their user growth has taken off, because it turns out paying the full cost of the software in a front-loaded fashion is really expensive.

I remember pirating visual studio when I was a child, because it cost thousands of dollars that I could not afford, but these days it is free because platform providers have realised that increasing developer share is more important, and now finance their platform via the 30% take.

<comment> Digit-Al You are very much mistaken in two ways.

Firstly, Visual Studio is not free. There is a free version that can only be used by learners, hobbyists, and those creating free software. This is a cut- down version from the commercial product, which offers more features and is required if creating commercial software.

Secondly, Microsoft do not finance VS from a 30% take. As I said above, if you want to develop commercial software you have to buy the commercial version. Instead, the free version is a "hearts and minds" exercise. Get people used to the free version when they are learning and when they are creating free software. If they then want to create commercial software their first instinct will be to plump for paying for the commercial version.

On the other hand, some of those replying to you are also mistaken as VS is also available on subscription as well as standalone.

<comment><USER3> You can use the community product to make commercial software: [https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual- Stud...](https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-Studio- Community-for-development-of-commercial-applications)

The windows app store store does take a cut, though it seems to be reduced to 15%: [https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new- micr...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft- store-revenue-share-is-coming/)

But even if it was just a hearts and minds exercise - why do you want hearts and minds? As a strategic play to support other parts of your business, i.e. Windows, even if it's not the Windows store.

In any case, it doesn't really matter the specifics are at MS now, you could look at Android or iOS instead, where the dev tools are free and they are definitely taking a 30% cut, and contrast that to a few decades ago where you had to shell out a few thousand dollars if you wanted MS' dev tools at all. Or take a look at Unity which has a subscription, which people are pretty happy with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth checking out Haven Bros. in Providence, RI for an example of this still in operation. Open from ~16:30 to ~27:00. It is driven in to down city every evening.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_Brothers_Diner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_Brothers_Diner)

<comment><USER5> 27:00?

<comment><USER6> A weird way of writing 3AM, I presume.

<comment><USER7> Fairly common in the UK and Asia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock#Times_after_24:0...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock#Times_after_24:00)

<comment><USER8> "used occasionally in some special contexts such as broadcast TV" is not what I'd call fairly common!

Never encountered it in half a century here, just military time "0 3 hundred" as used on the shipping forecast, or simply 3am.

<comment><USER9> It's extremely common in Japan. Literally everywhere.

Never seen it in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The use of "Night Lunch" as opposed to "Dinner" reminds me of the Randall Munroe's "Thing Explainer."

<comment><USER11> "Dinner" might imply that the restaurant is open earlier?

<comment><USER12> I suspect in those days "dinner" implied a large meal while "lunch" is something smaller and simpler, like the sandwiches mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER13> My reading of it is also that many of these were used for what a lot of food trucks are still used for (depending on the city of course): late night food cravings (especially for the "afterparty" crowds). "Night Lunch" seems such a decent descriptor for a "Midnight Snack", that I might adopt it for that purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> swingline-747 Hey zeitgeist, bring this back. There's barely anything open past 9 pm and almost nothing with power-plugs. How is one supposed to work afterhours? At home? (yeash)

There's a 24 hour cafe called Happy Donuts however it's anything but: unheated, decrepit and must've been remodeled last in 1967.

<comment><USER14> I smell an untapped business opportunity around you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A version of these will likely come back. Autonomous vehicles tech will enable on-demand, self-driving restaurants that park in front of your door.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's one of these in Portsmouth, NH: Gilley's.

<comment><USER17> And they also serve the best poutine I've had outside of Canada!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks amazing inside, I'm sure many has tried to replicate such decor

</comment><comment><USER19> Really nice, good find ! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Was this submission inspired by yesterday's comment?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972163)

It sure feels like it. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> What's more American than the entrepreneurial spirit which drives self-owned & operated businesses like this? You have individuals who are self-responsible for their product/service. It's neat to see the historical precedent.

Yet across America police are shutting down lemonaide stands. Even ones run by kids. Food trucks and stalls are ticketed and confiscated in other cases.

Developers might be wise to speak up before you need an expensive license or medallion or charter in order to sell apps or other tech services. It's no less likely to happen, it just hasn't had time to yet.

<comment><USER22> I mean, to be snarky -

> What's more American than the entrepreneurial spirit which drives self-owned > & operated businesses like this?

Clearly, lobbying the government to make your competitors illegal.

/snark

It's super cool that a guy with a basket turned into night lunch wagons turned into diners.

It's also then pretty interesting that it took nearly a century for a comeback. (Not that roach coaches haven't been a thing, but, food trucks took it to another level).

Any indications for the intervening slump?

<comment><USER23> I think the broadening palette and recovering from WWII and processed food had a lot to do with it. You can only make so many things in a truck, but if you're able to draw from worldwide traditions it represents real variety. Everything from ramen to falafel is doable and delicious in a car or truck, but for a long time Americans weren't interested in it. Americans seemed to be satisfied with dirty water hot dogs, re-warmed pizza, and things like pretzels. They also weren't about to spend a serious wad of money for more upscale versions.

Braden tastes, the foodie culture, the idea that even if you just want a hot dog there are good ones to be had for a bit more money changed things, but it took decades. You can chart a similar peak-trough-peak in bread in America actually. It used to be nice stuff, then post-war it was mass produced, pre- sliced crap for decades, and now... it's back to some version of fresh. WWII didn't have quite the impact on the American palette that it did on the Brits, but it did have an impact, as did modern "convenience" food.

<comment><USER24> IMO the bigger issue was the massive, government-funded suburbanization of America. Food trucks work best in a scenario where people need to walk to get food, and driving to another food establishment; when everyone with money is leaving the big city and spreading out over miles and miles, this business model with small/no seating doesn't really work. This business model never really died in, say, New York, where there has always been enough constant foot traffic.

Postwar, people were also much more about modernity and convenience. The drive thru is new, modern and sanitary, and you can drive right up; the food truck is for the poors, is in the dirty city, and you need to find a parking space. But today suburbs are culturally deadening and cities are the hip place to be. We've had a flight back to the cities for a while; this coincides with more food truck uptake.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Game Art without an Artist - <AUTHOR> http://beminnovations.com/2015/04/09/app-art-without-artists/

<comment><USER2> Lessons learned seem solid, would love to see an example of turning the pictures into a finished asset.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will add that once it's finished!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see some samples or screenshots to see the final results. Without that it's difficult to evaluate the outcome of the homemade method.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will add that. The transformation process is in the works currently!</comment></comment>


Iran-Backed Hackers Target Airports, Carriers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-02/iran-backed-hackers-target-airports-carriers-report.html <comment><AUTHOR> The full report can be found here: [http://cylance.com/operation- cleaver/](http://cylance.com/operation-cleaver/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Forbes report on it: 'Bone-Chilling' Research Suggests Iran Gearing Up To Avenge Stuxnet Hacks</comment>


The Ingredients for a Great Product Roadmap - <AUTHOR> http://berlinvc.com/2014/01/08/the-ingredients-for-a-great-product-roadmap/ <comment><USER2> hmm, I follow a different model which was explained here recently by Des Traynor in a brilliant, short talk: [http://vimeo.com/81544164](http://vimeo.com/81544164)

map any feature in a graph that has people on the x axis and time on the y axis. farther to the right means more users, farther up means more often. concentrate on what most/all users would use most/all of the time. a lot of the other things are noise, added on by other entities, which over time dilutes and destroys your product.

you should map existing features as well and kill them off if they do maintain or increase reach and or frequency.

of course this is simplified, there is still a lot of balancing and reality wrangling to do, but as a guiding principle it really works. especially when you're getting the "oh come on, let's add this, just a few lines of code" type requests. any add has a long tail, from bugs, to documentation, etc.

my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deciding to go for low-hanging high impact features is the obvious choice, and it's not the choice that makes developing product roadmaps complex. The trouble is always around technical debt.

Every company has technical debt. Stuff that:

a) Is architectural. Changing it impacts code all over. Think "preparing a database schema for sharding".

b) Is a looming ceiling on growth.

c) Is not in the immediate present nor is in the far too distant future.

When to tackle these is the usual war in my product roadmap meetings. My default rule is the classical 80/20\. 80% of the time reserved for new features, 20% for technical debt. If no technical debt is evident, use the time for load testing and optimization.

</comment><comment><USER4> So .. low effort & high impact features first .. Got it.

Am I the only one who found that article a bit light on substance?</comment>


Dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste <comment><USER2> To save everyone a google search, here's the wikipedia article on the subject:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island)</comment>


Challenging LR Parsing - <AUTHOR> https://rust-analyzer.github.io/blog/2020/09/16/challeging-LR-parsing.html <comment><USER3> > There's a lot of literature about error recovery for LR parsers, how come > academics haven't figured this out already? I have a bold claim to make: > error-recovery research in academia is focusing on a problem irrelevant for > IDEs. Specifically, the research is focused on finding "minimal cost repair > sequence"

The parsing literature can be a bit difficult to navigate because the field is effectively dead for research purposes. However, other models of errors have been considered. Tim Wagner's PhD thesis is the best discussion of the application of LR parsing techniques in IDEs, and this paper extracted from it discusses error recovery in particular:

[http://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/twagner- er.pdf](http://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/twagner-er.pdf)

In the non-interactive context, Richter's work on error recovery by substring parsing is also very interesting, in that it doesn't cause spurious errors when attempting to recover from errors, and it only depends on the language and not the grammar or parsing technique used:

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3916.4019](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3916.4019)

For LR grammars (and many other grammars), the necessary substring parsing can be done in linear time using variations of the GLR algorithm.

<comment><USER4> In the open source world, both Tree-sitter and Lezer are based on GLR, and cite Tim Wagner's thesis. So, while it might be possible to do better even staying in the GLR world, I think the comparison based on Tree-sitter is fair.

I think these projects show that GLR is viable (there's a good set of grammars written for Tree-sitter), but I am also very willing to believe that the parser in rust-analyzer is more finely tuned for the specific needs of a Rust IDE.

<comment><USER5> While Tree-sitter is heavily influenced by Wagner's thesis, our error recovery strategy actually uses a novel approach, so it is fair to question whether Wagner's would have different properties.

For error recovery, Tree-sitter is currently optimized for some goals that are a bit different from the goals of a single-language IDE like Rust-Analyzer:

      * Like RA, we want to minimize the impact of syntax errors on basic features like syntax highlighting and symbol name extraction (which are important to GitHub, and in lightweight text editors like Neovim and Atom).
      * Unlike RA, I wanted to avoid requiring grammar authors to think about error recovery at all.
      * We needed to tightly control the performance cost of pathological error recovery cases, like parsing a large Ruby file as Go (either accidentally or adversarially).

My understanding is that Wagner's thesis is mostly concerned with "history- sensitive" error recovery in an IDE: using _earlier_ syntax trees as an additional input to the error recovery process in order to better understand the user's intent when editing.

I think this idea makes a lot of sense, but it doesn't address cases like Matklad has prevented here, where the IDE is presented with already-invalid file.

<comment><USER6> > My understanding is that Wagner's thesis is mostly concerned with "history- > sensitive" error recovery in an IDE: using earlier syntax trees as an > additional input to the error recovery process in order to better understand > the user's intent when editing.

That matches my understanding (note that Wagner's error recovery algorithm is probably best supplemented with Lukas Diekmann's thesis, which corrects and expands it a bit [https://diekmann.co.uk/diekmann_phd.pdf](https://diekmann.co.uk/diekmann_phd.pdf)).

Because Wagner's algorithm relies on history and context, it does sometimes do some unexpected (and not always useful things). However, I don't see any fundamental reason why it couldn't be paired with a "traditional" error recovery approach (I have one to sell!) to try and get the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I agree. To really demonstrate the best possible IDE error recovery that LR/GLR can provide, pairing a robust batch error recovery strategy with Wagner's (and your and Lukas's) history-sensitive approach is probably the way to go.

At the time that I was implementing error recovery for Tree-sitter, that felt beyond my "complexity budget", since batch error recovery was already not trivial, and the batch approach was good enough for the features I was building on GitHub/Atom. Someday, I could imagine augmenting it with history- sensitive behavior. I am thankful that Lukas has helped to "pave that path" so thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh ... so that is what a Pratt parser is. Thanks for the nice clear writeup.

But methinks it should be called a Wirth parser. Nicholas Wirth invented the same thing in the 1970's. He initially used it to parse his first language, Pascal. He drew them as Syntax diagrams: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_diagram) The loops that characterise Pratt are evident in those diagrams.

You can read his book on Pascal here: [https://www.research- collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20....](https://www.research- collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/68910/eth-3059-01.pdf) At the end you will find the syntax diagrams for the entire language. The compiler was derived from those diagrams in the straight forward way described in the article.

And everything the article says is true, if you are going to manually write a parser, they are by far the easiest starting point. And I don't doubt error messages and error recovery are much easier too. Parser generators don't give you the same flexibility to play with a parsers guts.

But you do lose some things. A parser generator checks for ambiguities, something you can easily miss in a hand written parser. A parser generator also enforces a clean split between the parser and whatever you are doing with the syntax tree, whereas hand written parsers lead you toward a ball of mud where one lump of code has all the tasks intermixed.

And there are LR parsers out there that support the loops and priorities that raw BNF productions make so hard. Like mine :D [http://lrparsing.sourceforge.net/doc/html/](http://lrparsing.sourceforge.net/doc/html/)

</comment><comment><USER8> You know --- more and more --- I kinda like the REBOL approach --- forget precedence.

Rather, just go L to R except where superceded by parens. Explicit and easy to understand.

(Though I say that not having lived it in production, lol - so take with a grain of salt)

Over time, readability/grokability tends to trump other factors...

<comment><USER9> Because parsing "a += b * c" as "(a += b) * c" is a wonderful, intuitive program.

(This does assume that op= is an expression in your language.)

<comment><USER8> Edit: Realized what I was tring to say: Intuitive might be the wrong thing to chase.

Intuitive to who? :) Trivial programs are trivial. We might be stuck in the BCPL derived syntax that trade a false notion of intuitive for complexity of implentation and maintenance. (And I do mean _might_ \--- it's not hard not to think incrementally from the languages we know) --- but "inituitive" is EXACTLY the problem: I guess I was arguing we might consider searching for simple and predictable (even if that comes at the cost of slightly higher initial learning?)

<comment><USER8> e.g. maybe write it as "b * c += a" ? ... lol full on LR - no ambiguiity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somehow F# manages to do a pretty good job (although maybe I've just gotten used to any quirks re: error recovery and messages). Anybody know if they're doing anything differently?

[https://github.com/fsprojects/FsLexYacc](https://github.com/fsprojects/FsLexYacc)

[https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/blob/main/src/fsharp/lex.fs...](https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/blob/main/src/fsharp/lex.fsl)

</comment><comment><USER11> Well said, there certainly is a chasm between the theory and what practically works

As a sidenote, if like myself you like to dabble first before jumping in to theory, I would recommend starting with Jisson -- it's so much fun and you'll learn a lot quickly!:

[https://zaa.ch/jison/try/](https://zaa.ch/jison/try/)

[https://nolanlawson.github.io/jison- debugger/](https://nolanlawson.github.io/jison-debugger/)

</comment><comment><USER12> The chart parsing (CYK and friends) will produce exactly what is needed - <USER2> little contiguous completely parsed parts of program as it is possible. The syntax tree from example above will be different, but not much - parts "fn f(" and "struct { ... }" will be adjacent, not included in partial tree.

There's a paper [1] about efficient _parallel_ implementation possible.

[1] [https://jyp.github.io/pdf/PP.pdf](https://jyp.github.io/pdf/PP.pdf)

Enjoy. ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> relevant:

parser recovery in codemirror6 (inspired by tree-sitter but adapted for IDEs):

[https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/lezer.html](https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/lezer.html)

a standalone incremental JS parser with error recovery:

[https://github.com/escaya/escaya](https://github.com/escaya/escaya)

</comment><comment><USER14> This post is a next-level look at parsing interactively in an editor or IDE. Not only do you want it to be fast, but you want it to be resilient enough to provide useful output given incomplete input.

Most of my poor attempts at parsing have been in the context of an offline tool. I find error handling hard enough using Yacc or Bison.

I missed the post that this one responds to, so I'm going back and reading that discussion too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24480504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24480504)

</comment><comment><USER15> He suggests pratt parsing as a production parser which, while unbelievably elegant, is recursive. Correctly recovering from a stack overflow (without leaking memory or resources) is, at best, a very hard problem worth researching in academia. Recursion is generally not production code, its usefulness does not extend much further than confusing university students.

That's the hidden benefit of parsers that use DFAs: they generally don't use recursion. They will parse something until you run out of memory, not stack space (which is at least 3 orders of magnitude smaller than the heap).

<comment><USER16> It's trivial to replace the stack usage with a data structure. I've written a number of extended-Pratt parsers that don't use the stack.

Also, a significant number of successful parsers have used recursion. As long as you successfully handle stack overflow and only hit it on pathological inputs, it works reasonably well.

<comment><USER15> > It's trivial to replace the stack usage with a data structure.

Interesting. Do you have any examples of that, reading the article actually had me thinking how that would be achieved.

<comment><USER17> You could trivially (or rather, mechanically) emulate HW bounded stack with a heap-based stack collection (like std::stack).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Talk of an Internet Fast Lane Is Already Hurting Some Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527006/talk-of-an-internet-fast-lane-is-already-hurting-some-startups/ <comment><USER3> > Gillis Cashman, a managing partner at MC Partners in Boston, says it makes > sense to charge extra to big content providers like Netflix, whose services > at peak hours can sometimes consume more than 30 percent of total Internet > traffic. Video is "significantly congesting these networks, and causing real > issues for carriers where they have to spend a lot of money upgrading > networks, and pushing fiber deeper into their networks," he says. "There is > currently no model for monetizing that required investment."

This argument doesn't make sense to me. The ISP's customers are using the ISP's network by downloading Internet content. The nature of the content should be irrelevant to the discussion. The ISP's customers are purely responsible for that usage, and it is part of - from what I understand - <USER2> service they are already paying for. The ISP's network is only "congested" if it is incapable of delivering on the service that was advertised (assuming for the sake of argument, some particular speed of access).

Thus, how can Cashman argue that "there is no model for monetizing the required investment?" Isn't that exactly what ISP customers are buying when they pay for access to the Internet through the ISP? The onus should morally be on the ISP to make a good-faith attempt to build sufficient connections to any content that's popular enough to saturate the links providing it.

Furthermore, why isn't it naturally the ISP's responsibility to price their access sufficient to cover current usage and expected growth in usage? New use-cases for the Internet are constantly going to appear. It is the ISP's responsibility to provide Internet access with sufficient throughput that it is not congested for any reasons under the ISP's control; and to price their access sufficient for investment to achieve the throughput.

"The latest BigMac hamburger caused hungry residents to swarm McDonalds and caused drive-through lines to be congested today in Cloudville. Gillis Cashman, managing partner at McPartners, Inc. says that, despite selling happy meals in record numbers, delays in drive-through lines will continue, since since there is "currently no model for McDonalds to monetize the required investment" to upgrade its drive-throughs.

<comment><USER4> How's this for an analogy;

"Electricity supply companies have found that almost 30% of the total electricity capacity in their networks is being consumed by customer's light bulbs. In order to support future demand, the electricity supply companies will begin charging light bulb manufacturers for light bulb users electricity usage."

Completely bonkers.

<comment><USER5> But there is one giant difference between how electricity and internet is sold . Electricity is a metered service.

It would probably be much better if internet service was metered but it would not go over well after we all have been used to the unlimited pipe.

<comment><USER6> Landlines phones generally aren't metered but it works...

<comment><USER7> For phones the demand is very different: a subscribers connection is either in use or not. When it is in use, it typically consumes no more than 64kbps at most. And it is easy to model expected peak demands in normal (non-disaster) scenarios because everyone that people might be _calling_ tends to have a fairly low number of inbound connections, so the total peak bandwidth usage is still quite small - miniscule by todays standards.

When you're paid per subscription, and you at most carry 64kbps through a small local area before long distance fees kick in, it works.

Even so, in Europe (and I believe _most of the world_ ) landline usage _is_ metered. It is the US model of free local calls that is unusual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every one of these articles should be mentioning the fact that in the 90's, the ISPs got $200 billion dollars to build a fast internet infrastructure that they never delivered.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)

<comment><USER9> Not only did they not deliver, but they intentionally sabotaged US efforts to stay up to par with other countries. US infrastructure is woefully behind compared to other nations (we're only recently starting to see fiber optics as a serious competitor to DSL). Even still, as old and outdated as US infrastructure is, the idea of a bandwidth limit or speed restrictions are imposed by the ISP, not actually a physical constraint. Sure, there are limits to the loads a node can handle in an area; But with each node typically serving 200 customers, at a conservative $30/mo... That's a $72,000 annual budget upgrade and/or expand THAT SINGLE NODE. A typical ISP will handle hundreds, if not thousands, of nodes depending upon a location.

We don't need fast lanes or bandwidth caps on the internet. We need an ISP that isn't ran by greedy tyrants.

<comment><USER10> > US infrastructure is woefully behind compared to other nations

Reconcile your claim with Akamai's State of the Internet, which shows the U.S. ranked #10 globally, at 10 mbps average connection speed: [http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai- soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_i...](http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai- soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q413) (page 23). That number would put at about at #6 in Europe (see page 29), ahead of the U.K., Germany, and France, and not far behind Sweden and Ireland.

<comment><USER11> I was curious, so I pulled their appendix (p39) to actually look:

Top Twenty Percent above 10 Mbps:

      irb(main):057:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_10].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_10].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20]
      => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong", "Belgium", "United States", "Denmark", "Sweden", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Canada", "Ireland", "Norway", "Austria", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Russia", "Singapore", "Poland"]

Top Twenty Percent above 4 Mbps:

      irb(main):058:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_4].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_4].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20]
      => ["South Korea", "Switzerland", "Netherlands", "Czech Republic", "Japan", "Israel", "Denmark", "Canada", "Austria", "Hong Kong", "United Kingdom", "Belgium", "Romania", "Luxembourg", "United States", "Germany", "Russia", "Sweden", "Poland", "Finland", "Spain"]

Top Twenty Average Speed:

      irb(main):059:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:avg_speed].to_f <=> b[:avg_speed].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20]
      => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Hong Kong", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Sweden", "Ireland", "United States", "Belgium", "Denmark", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Austria", "Canada", "Norway", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Singapore", "Germany", "Poland"]

If you intersect all three for "higher than United States", you get:

      irb(main):080:0> (ary_one[0...ary_one.index('United States')] & ary_two[0...ary_two.index('United States')]) & ary_three[0...ary_three.index('United States')]
      => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong"]

What bothers me about the data is the implicit distribution skews in the Peak and Avg numbers, but that's a problem with every line, so not material to the subject here. It _may_ signal a methodology weirdness, but it's lunchtime and I don't feel like paging back to see if I can find something showing that Akamai is counting things it shouldn't be.

<comment><USER12> I always find it fascinating when people take the data and proclaim that America should be stacked up against nations with single digit millions of people living there, much less postage stamp size areas like Hong Kong or Luxembourg.

Most of the comparisons are hilariously ridiculous. The proper comparisons are: China, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, UK, Russia, India, Germany, France, Turkey, Italy, Mexico - large scale industrialized nations.

Comparing Norway or Luxembourg or Hong Kong with the US, as though they can possibly be compared in any sane respect what-so-ever is absurdity to the ultimate degree.

The fact that we compete at all against tiny nations with 5 or 8 million people is a stunning accomplishment.

<comment><USER10> Half the population of South Korea lives in the Seoul metro area, which has the same population density as the city of San Francisco. The whole of Hong Kong is a single city, again about as dense as San Francisco. The whole country of Japan is about as dense as the state of Massachusetts, the 2nd densest U.S. state. It's about twice as dense as New York, the 7th densest U.S. state.

Dense U.S. states outperform the overall U.S. average significantly (and comparably to Japan): [http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2014/04/rep...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2014/04/reportmass- had-third-highest-internet-connection.html?s=image_gallery).

Out of the 10 U.S. states with the fastest internet, 8 are just the densest states (+D.C.) in a different order.

<comment><USER8> The thing is that the internet speeds even in the dense areas are disproportionately slower.

<comment><USER10> How do you get that? Massachusetts's average is 13.5 Mbps. Japan is 12.8. New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware are 12 and up, above Switzerland, Sweden, Czech Republic, etc. The dense U.S. states compare very favorably to the top-5.

South Korea is the outlier because half the country lives in a single megacity with the density of San Francisco. The U.S. can't compete with that geographic advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish those articles referred to this by its proper name: it's not about creating an internet "fast lane", it's about creating "slow lanes" for people not willing to pay extra for the "normal lane".

On the good side, all this will mean in the long run is that the VPN industry will be booming. No bandwidth throttling via VPN, after all.

<comment><USER14> While they can't discriminate between types of traffic on a VPN, they can throttle all VPN traffic, and react to higher VPN bandwidth use. And probably will, if allowed to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Last I checked Wheeler said "if the ISPs abuse these new rules and put sites on the "slow lanes", I'll bring in the _real rules_ (referring to Title 2 reclassification)".

So I wonder what's his reaction when he found out that the ISPs are _already_ abusing the new rules, before the rules to allow fast lanes are even passed:

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/05/level-...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/05/level-3-claims-six-isps-dropping-packets-every-day-over- money-disputes/)

[http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this- hilarious...](http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious- graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/?tid=rssfeed)

</comment><comment><USER16> Non-USA internet users should be helping protest this in the USA. If its allowed to happen there, it'll set a precedent for the rest of the world. "Say no to double-dipping!"

<comment><USER5> Another interesting thing which is only now starting to go away for these unlimited plans is cell phone service in the US.

In most countries you only pay for outgoing calls (unless you are roaming).

In the US you pay for incoming calls as well (your minutes are deducted) and in addition the person calling you is also paying for that call.

So there is double dipping going on there as well. At some point I was even paying for incoming SMS.

<comment><USER17> Yep. I pay for every spam text I receive. (Thankfully it's rare.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fortunately, many countries in the EU (Germany, Ireland, France, not so much the UK) are happy to give you permission to build your startup here and fall under EU net neutrality legislation.

</comment><comment><USER19> This entire problem comes down to the fact that internet isn't priced the way other utilities are.

You don't pay your water company a fixed rate based on the size of the pipe to your house. You pay based on water actually delivered. You don't pay your electricity company based on the maximum number of amps that can flow down the wire, you pay for the electricity consumed.

Internet should be paid in bytes delivered. Then all the incentives will be aligned for all parties.

High usage end users pay for more of the network than low usage end users, which they should because they are the ones putting strain on it.

The ISPs would then prefer to transport the larger content that users demand because they will be paid more for it. Thus they are also incentivised to create more and better infrastructure to deliver it.

<comment><USER5> I agree but unlike electricity or water where quality of service is regulated (water quality etc) internet service is not.

We would need some sort of regulation to force ISPs to provide a pipe that doesn't suffer random packet loss or connection problems. In addition you would need some way to make ISP upgrade to better pipes or you will be stuck with 56k for ever.

I believe all new homes in the US are now equipped with a minimum if a 200A circuit by law which would equate to your internet speed minimum being regulated.

<comment><USER20> > I agree but unlike electricity or water where quality of service is > regulated (water quality etc) internet service is not.

It is very regulated. Starting a new utility that relies on public property (easements for landlines or spectrum for over the air) requires cutting an epic amount of red tape. In fact, it is such a messing process that only the very politically well connected companies can even consider entering the market.

It's definitely regulated. It just isn't regulated in the way that you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What would the FCC/Comcast do if they didn't have a 900 lb gorilla to go after? What if consumers were using the exact same amount of high bandwidth services, except instead of it being mostly Netflix and Youtube, it were 50 or 100 similar services?

<comment><USER22> This might be something that is not just beneficial to ISPs. Probably the major content services want it too, because they can strangle upcoming competition at the expense of a few dollars.

So the 900lb gorilla might not be actually running away.

<comment><USER17> They're increasing barriers to entry, as they do in every maturing industry.

<comment><USER23> Netflix doesn't want this to go through, their market saturation is not nearly high enough.

76% of american's have some form of extended television service, cable/satellite.

Netflix covers around 10% of US households.

They see them selves as being in competition with these other providers. It is in their best interest to keep the cost of providing Netflix as low as possible until their % of households is significantly higher.

So when you talk about protectionism you probably need to back out a level. Because remember the big business of the companies pushing the "internet fast lane" is also television. They have layers of conflicting interests in their wish to constrain Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pro tip for those unhappy with their ISPs: You get what you pay for.

If you pay for a consumer, price-oriented package, expect price-oriented service in return. There is a reason your office doesn't use consumer Internet, and that a 1.4 Mbps T1 costs $400/month, while low-end 6 Mbps DSL costs $30/month -- 4x bandwidth for <10% of the cost, what a deal!

I shouldn't have to say this on Hacker News, but what you pay ISPs for is quality of service and support. If you want that at home, pay for a business- class service. Comcast offers business-class to residences, for example; we've used it many times and the services and support have been excellent.

<comment><USER25> Is there really a reason that a crummy T1 still costs $400/month? Other than all the existing places that have a 10-year-old T1 where that used to be the fastest option, and the phone company doesn't want to drop prices.

<comment><USER26> Don't those contracts usually come with certain service and uptime guarantees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is classic price discrimination. As television channel packages become less of a moneymaker for cable companies, they need to find new forms of revenue and methods to segment the market. In separating certain content from other, especially internet data which is all the same to them, the ISPs are able to better maximize prices. Truly a tragedy, and all the more reason net neutrality is vital to the future of internet freedom.

</comment><comment><USER28> >It will also avoid investing in payment systems or in mobile wallets, which require ultrafast transaction times to make sense.

WTF?

<comment><USER29> Someone doesn't understand the concept of consistency and transactions in distributed systems.

Regardless, I think we can all agree that slow payment processing is a Bad Thing.

<comment><USER30> Who is that someone? Distributed systems don't need any particular speed of interconnect to work. In fact, it's one of the benefits of distributed system designs.

<comment><USER29> Yes, that's what I was trying to say. The "someone" is whoever was quoted in the article; that person does not understand your point.

But it remains true that I, as a consumer, want my payments to be processed quickly. So do most other consumers, I imagine. But this has nothing to do with "making sense". I just want it to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> All this happened here in the UK as well with iPlayer back in 2008: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm)

(Earlier reference in 2007: [http://www.out-law.com/page-8384](http://www.out- law.com/page-8384))

"Simon Gunter, from ISP Tiscali, said the BBC should contribute to the cost. He said the BBC did not understand the issues involved."

Can't find how it was settled, not at all IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you look at the history of the phone, which this is very similar too, initially the phone companies charged you for everything. Long distance call, oh that will cost you. Anything at all that will cost you.

Then eventually a player comes in that disrupts the model. What free long distance on weekends and evenings. How is that even possible.

Then one day competition takes over, et I mean logic ;) and suddenly the phone prices make sense. Long distance calls are something of the past.

I believe ISP are going through the same thing. However since they can't easily start charging by the call what they are trying to do is charge not only the person who is paying to have a phone line but also the caller. Except that now the caller has to pay for their own phone line and a fee to connect to the end line, which is already being paid for by the end customer. Aka the last mile is double dipping in fees cause they can because there is no competition. Just like the long distance calls from before. Amazing how quickly the phone companies went from recovering costs to can make profits from no fee long distance calling when competition finally came...

<comment><USER32> This comment reflects a deep misunderstanding of the history of the PSTN and its regulatory and deregulatory cycles. Telephone service is also vastly easier to predict and model than Internet usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a terrible article. It's just VCs talking their books. I hate the FCC's slow/fast lane proposal but you can't write about it only from the perspective of those with financial interests in the outcome (especially without making clear the importance of those financial interests).

</comment><comment><USER34> Actually, this gives a great opportunity for startups in Europe because of Net Neutrality and investors in video and high speed delivery.

I'd hope that Europe realizes that, but we don't get anything done fast because of the obsessive administration :(

</comment><comment><USER24> I know ISPs attract little sympathy and HN readers naturally do sympathize with startups and smaller organizations (as do I), but consider:

In open markets a seller charges what the market will bear in order to maximize profit. And of course it benefits society because resources are allocated efficiently, i.e. to those with the greatest demand for them (those willing to pay the most). Why should this market be any different? I'd expect that any business, discovering they had an asset someone would pay for, would charge as much as they could for it. There is nothing dirty or underhanded about it, even if it challenges the status quo we all are accustomed to (or the notion that everything on the Internet is free). And it's not like big ISPs are stomping widows and orphan children -- Netflix, for all its victimhood, can stand up for itself and I'm sure maximizes its profit wherever possible. (It may be different for startups.)

I don't want to be absolutist about it, but what I said is a factor. Other factors are that the ISPs benefit from public goods such as local monopolies, and benefit from all the innovation that created the Internet and the services that their customers are paying them for, so they do owe something to maintaining that ecosystem.

And the clear solution, as has been said before here, is customers paying for metered bandwidth, and also for latency or other SLAs if they want them (which long has been common for businesses ISPs) -- why should someone who mostly uses email want to pay for the same latency that a Netflix customer or gamer needs?

<comment><USER35> Not only do they benefit from public goods, but it's a market where the barrier to entry is so high that competition cannot happen efficiently. Now before our american libertarian friends come frothing at the mouth, the barriers to entry are absurdly high _before_ any sort of government interference, especially in North America, and with a captive customer base, it's just inherently a bad market to showcase capitalism.

So with inefficiencies due to a lack of competition comparable to a government agency AND a profit motive rather than the public service motive that government agencies have, you've got the worst of both worlds. Companies that barely compete to offer good service with the explicit intention of sucking as much of your dollars as they can for a service you can't really go without.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So, if ISPs are free to charge extra for bandwidth used by premium content providers, are they also free to charge extra based on other factors?

In other words, could the Koch Brothers start an ISP that gave a break to conservative information providers and charged extra to competing political views?

<comment><USER37> I don't see why not. Heck, one faction may start paying the ISPs a bribe to throttle its competitors.

Businesses with money could do this too. Imagine WM paying Comcast to throttle Amazon traffic or make 1 in 5 page loads fail.

That could be where we're headed, if we don't fix this problem now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> seems like someone really wants to destroy the US economy further, with all the NSA spying fiasco, and now this. seems like the US government has an unlimited amount of bullets to fire on its own foot.

</comment><comment><USER39> seems that some networking startup will solve this as its peer problem with too many video downloads but not enough upload traffic

that is the problem with net fairness via speeds,etc is that underlying network ecosystem is not static it will change and with that change comes new problems in being fair with speeds. etc

</comment><comment><USER30> I know this argument doesn't make sense at first blush, but it does at second:

1\. People don't like metered Internet (which is odd given we don't mind metered water and metered electricity).

2\. ISPs want to keep advertising unmetered Internet.

3\. Some % of the customers use a lot more traffic, and most of that is Netflix.

4\. The ISP want to charge Netflix, which will in turn pass the costs to their customers, and so these customers who use more traffic will indirectly pay more to the ISPs for their traffic.

I wish they'd just lay it out simple like that. At least then we won't have to nitpick their statements for logical inconsistencies.

Or... maybe they can just switch to metered Internet. And this whole net neutrality issue will vanish in a puff of smoke.

<comment><USER40> The reason I would disagree with metered Internet is because based on the past behavior of the major ISPs it would result in even worse pricing schemes. I simply do not trust them.

To me the only way metered would work is if all these government sanctioned monopolies in communities are lifted so that any company can offer service to any customer.

Or, I suppose, the service is a utility governed by representatives of the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Harsh reality time: 2 choices. Either Netflix ponies up, or everyone has to pay per GB to their ISPs. I honestly don't think the average consumer wants to be constantly tracking how much BW they're using per website. That might work for a single person cell phone, but doesn't work for a family.

<comment><USER42> That's fine. Since the problem isn't last-mile, but interconnection, the per- GB cost is miniscule. I'll estimate $0.025/GB, but that's way too high, just to avoid getting to the point where one might realistically quibble over the real cost.

I could stream 10mbps video 24 hours/day for 30 days and my bill at $0.025/GB will be about $80 for bandwidth, on top of the ~$40 I pay for my existing connection, which we'll just assume we'll let the cable companies continue to gouge me on.

If I'm streaming high-quality HD video 24/7, I can live with a $120 Internet bill.

I'm not actually doing that, of course. In reality, even I (combined with 4 other family members on the same connection who aren't power users, but do watch some streaming video and otherwise make fairly active use of my connection) rarely use more than ~500GB/month. Even if I used a terabyte every month, it'd be about $25 extra. Meh.

In the end, it's not consumers that don't want this. It's the cable companies. They hate the idea, because it puts front and center the fact that they are and should be just a dumb pipe. They don't provide content, they provide a conduit. This is exactly the public perception that they fear.

<comment><USER43> > That's fine. Since the problem isn't last-mile, but interconnection, the > per-GB cost is miniscule. I'll estimate $0.025/GB, but that's way too high, > just to avoid getting to the point where one might realistically quibble > over the real cost.

That's half the per-GB cost that Amazon and Microsoft charge for S3 and Azure transfers to the internet for those customers using the highest volume below the "call for pricing" level, and so get the lowest published rate. I don't offhand see any reason to expect Amazon and S3 to be paying more for bandwidth than last-mile providers do, nor for them to be marking it up to their customers more. Are you sure $0.025/GB is too high?

<comment><USER42> Very, very sure. I can pay far, far less than AWS and Microsoft charge for bandwidth in any US datacenter managing my own equipment.

Meanwhile, HN-darling Digital Ocean charges their VPS customers just $0.02/GB on overage. That's right, for _overage_ above the 1-9TB they include with their plans, DO charges _less_ than I'm estimating the cost to be for massive providers to exchange traffic at far larger and more cost-effective scales.

Linode charges $0.10/GB, and that's _still_ less than AWS charges for the first 10TB. And again, that's _after_ the 3-20(!)TB Linode's plans include in the base cost.

Bandwidth is cheap. The US has all the fiber capacity between POPs that it needs. Adding or upgrading interconnects between Comcast and Cogent/Level3/whoever is _not_ laying fiber across the countryside, it's buying switches or turning on ports and running cables from one cage in a datacenter to another cage in the _same friggin ' datacenter_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Etsy have so many items titled "DO Not PURCHASE"? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are a few reasons:

1\. Trying to game relevance. They have stated that sales contribute to this. Take your custom order and funnel it through a listing of something you trying to push.

2\. Some of these are coupons and discount promotions, etsy doesn't give sellers a good way to promote this so they abuse listings to do it

<comment><AUTHOR> I still don't understand. Also I don't understand why Etsy allow it, it degrades confidence in the site.</comment></comment>


Discourse - <AUTHOR> https://www.discourse.org/faq/ <comment><USER2> [insert obligatory "This is old. Is something new?"]

That said, I hadn't checked Discourse's FAQ page in awhile, and I was wondering where it's been deployed as I couldn't think of many examples myself, other than Middleman's forum [1], but I don't actively check out sites' discussion boards. So it was cool to see that pretty well-known sites, such as BoingBoing and New Relic, are using it.

[1] [https://forum.middlemanapp.com/](https://forum.middlemanapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Their open source repository is full of interesting things to learn: [https://github.com/discourse/discourse](https://github.com/discourse/discourse)

</comment><comment><USER4> The Atom editor has been using Discourse from the beginning. It works very (extremely?) well as a discussion forum but I turned off all mailing. I had problems controlling the topics sent.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Discourse implementation of a mailing list is subpar. Many emails are delivered out-of-order or not delivered at all, the sender's email is not set in the from field, so you cannot glance at your inbox and see who replied to a thread and so many other issues. Google Groups is a far better alternative if you do not need open-source and need a mailing list that just works.

<comment><USER6> Mozilla recently donated $25,000 to Discourse to improve mailing list support[1]. Hopefully it will pay off!

[1]: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open- source...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source- support-first-awards-made/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"There's only one version of Discourse--the super-awesome-open-source one" >in the upper right there is a "Try It" button and a "Buy It" button

Well? Which is it?

<comment><USER8> There is no conflict in a "buy" button and having an open source app. Discourse offers paid hosting services if you don't want to run the app on your own server.

The version on their hosted service is the exact same as what you can run on your own server. This is similar to the model of other businesses like Ghost: [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)</comment></comment>


MacBook Air 11" – Matt Gemmell (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://mattgemmell.com/macbook-air-11/ <comment><AUTHOR> In memoriam as Apple just discontinued it which I feel a little sad about. Still using my one. A friend switched to the 12 inch Macbook and regrets it due to having only one port and having to use dongles which he loses. Such is progress I guess.</comment>


Where are You on the Financial Food Chain - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/05/02/where-are-you-on-the-financial-food-chain/ <comment><USER2> It would be neat if this also included the percentage of the population that at each stage. I think it's something like 30-40% are at stage 1, another 40-50% are at stage 2. By the time you get to stage 3, you're at around the 90-95th percentile in income. Then it seems to increase logarithmically, such that stage 8 is at about the 99.99999th percentile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. Any idea where I can get that kinda data?

Here's some initial charts: (from wikipedia for the US) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income-curve-$10k.png>

Here's a global chart: <http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/population-by-income- level>

and here's a distribution of wealth chart: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_distributionofwealth...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_distributionofwealth_GDP_and_population_by_region.gif)

<comment><USER2> I would imagine census.gov would have pretty detailed income distribution statistics.</comment></comment></comment>


Taxi, Uber, and Lyft Usage in New York City - <AUTHOR> http://toddwschneider.com/posts/taxi-uber-lyft-usage-new-york-city/ <comment><USER2> Most of the people I've talked to in my age group (mid twenties to early thirties) adamantly avoid taking a taxi whenever possible. The reasons why have been beaten to death by now, but they include:

\- Uber's show up on time, and I can track them using an app. Before Uber, I had to call a cab company, hope someone would answer, be told I'd have to wait 45 minutes to an hour, then hope the taxi would actually show up.

\- For almost all of the Uber's I've taken, if the car wasn't on the newer end, it was at least clean. I've never been in a taxi and thought "Wow! They really take care of these things." I usually get out feeling like I need a shower.

\- The rating system (which goes both ways, your driver rates you as well) helps ensure that they want to provide a good experience for you. Taxi drivers have no motivation - most people won't call a hotline to report and issue vs just choosing a star rating on their phone.

\- The price is reasonable, and I get an estimate before leaving. I hate how taxies just go without any idea of what you'll be paying. It's even worse when you're in a city you don't know, and you're unsure if they're taking the best route.

\- Most taxi drivers I've met have been incredibly rude and impatient, and then expect a 20% tip. On top of that, I've had a bunch of them lie and say they don't accept credit cards after the trip is complete, even though there is a sign that says they are legally required to. "The machine is broken" isn't a valid excuse.

\- With Uber, I don't have to worry about them awkwardly watching me decide how much to tip, it's included in the price. I don't even have to worry about figuring out how to pay! I just get out and go and it's automatically charged to my card.

I'm surprised when I hear that people are in favor of saving taxies. Yes, Uber and Lyft should probably be a bit more regulated. But taxies were doing so many things almost comically wrong for so long, it's not surprising a competitor has come along and been successful.

<comment><USER3> There's another reason I've wondered about. It's not politically correct. All the Ubers I've used had white or sometimes Hispanic-American drivers. But taxis have all (except for Portland) been either African (esp ~ethiopian), Palestinian, some region of India I can't place, etc. They're dominated by recent immigrants.

So I wonder if average young white couple on their way to dinner or whatever, simply likes the white-driver experience.

<comment><USER4> I have noticed a definite racial tinge to the conversation when people talk about preferring their Uber drivers. Even if it's not overt racism, there is unconscious bias at play.

I have also noticed that when I get matched with a black Uber or Lyft driver they tend to have a low-ish rating (4.6-4.8 whereas most white drivers I get are 4.8-5.0) but I have not personally found drivers of any race to be any less skilled or courteous.

<comment><USER5> At some point a government agency will collect driver racial data from Uber and the results won't be pretty.

<comment><USER6> Messy for Uber? Unless they've been discriminating against drivers by race themselves they're in the clear.

If driver race-rating data was ever publicized it'll be most damning against society in general, I think. I'd wager that Uber's passenger base is substantially more discriminatory than the company can hope to be on its most evil day.

The 5-star rating system is cover for a _lot_ of things that I think everyone knows to some extent but doesn't enjoy thinking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been in NYC for a week, and I've used all three services to get around when needed. Taxi is actually by far the easiest to get a ride on. The reason is being on the correct side of the street and for the car to be traveling in the direction you're headed is crucial.

Grabbing a Lyft or Uber may commit a driver to having to turn around the block, which can take several minutes, and in that time, you could have hailed half a dozen taxis.

<comment><USER8> I do wish Lyft and Uber would just tell me to cross the street for a faster pickup. In many cases, I could even walk a couple of blocks, and from the route on the map I even know exactly where to walk. But I cannot, because the driver would still go to the original location.

<comment><USER9> Or if the GPS guiding the driver to the location would take into account side- of-street so they come in on the right side in the first place. In jurisdictions where U-turns are legal (California) it's less of a problem, but often them taking a slightly later turn before they 'arrive' would get them to me faster than the fastest direct route and then finding a parking lot to turn around in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I knew Lyft was the underdog in NYC (compared to Uber), but they seem to be in real trouble according to this data. In my personal experience, my Uber drivers have seemed better trained than my Lyft drivers in NY, so for the most part I only take Lyft if they are offering me a special promotion. For example, I've had Lyft drivers who seemed confused with how to use their own app.

</comment><comment><USER11> I haven't tried Lyft yet because my credit card gives me %20 back for taking Uber. Also, average type people don't even know about Lyft. They hear about Uber from all the news coverage, but they don't mention Lyft. Uber is winning the marketing war with Lyft so effectively that it doesn't matter who is better. Now, the only reason I could ever see taking an analog taxi is if my phone was dead.

<comment><USER2> That's a crazy good cash back percentage - what card is giving you that?

<comment><USER12> Capital One has had this program for about 18 months, but sadly it's about to expire (unless they renew it last minute): [https://get.uber.com/cl/capitalone/?type=qs](https://get.uber.com/cl/capitalone/?type=qs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested to see how successful way2ride has been (as in, how has the percentage of taxi trips originating from way2ride changed over time?)

way2ride has been advertised heavily in NYC and offers most of the same features that the Uber app does: seeing nearby cabs, hailing, seeing the cab's location, paying through the app. On the occasional trip where public transportation isn't sufficient, I've used it as an alternative to Uber and had good experiences. In particular, it's useful to dodge surge pricing and in finding a ride in places where Uber drivers don't hang around.

* [https://www.way2ride.com/user/login.form](https://www.way2ride.com/user/login.form)

<comment><USER14> There are so many cabs that I don't really see the need for this, and most cabs take Apple Pay now, so I've never really seen the point of this and the other one (is there another one? I think there is?).

If I was somewhere where there aren't a lot of cabs I'd probably just use Uber, it's cheaper and cleaner anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't have any data to back up my anecdote, but here in Austin, Lyft seems to be much more popular than Uber, and both are more popular than taxis.

My friends and I all prefer Lyft as riders. This is due to equal if not higher availability, and limited surge pricing compared to Uber. Drivers have been pretty friendly as well.

I always ask the driver if they drive for both, and which they prefer. Every driver I've had has preferred Lyft due to it giving more back money back to the driver, a strong driver community, and simpler onboarding process.

Some of this could be due to city culture, where Austin seems to line up much more with Lyft's character than New York.

<comment><USER16> Here in Minneapolis, Lyft seems more popular among my crowd, but people still use "Uber" for the verb a lot. Like at least once a week I hear some variation on:

Person 1: "Are we ubering to the game tonight?" Person 2: "Yeah, I'll call a lyft in like 10 minutes"

Which to me is really interesting from a linguistic standpoint. (Both that Uber became a verb so quick, and that it is becoming a generic term already). Incidentally, I've heard people say "lyfting" as well, but that always has referred to getting an actual Lyft, whereas "ubering" seems to refer to both just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Taxis are beyond dead as millennials grow up and further generations vomit at the thought of a taxi

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting there is no mention of the Boro (Green) taxis. 6,000 medallions were released in 2013 (with plans to release another 6,000 a year for a total of 18,000.) That's a large swing on the supply side compared to the ~13K yellow taxis that I think would also have an impact on the 2010 onwards trips graph. [http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/taxi_uber_lyft_trips_per...](http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/taxi_uber_lyft_trips_per_day.png)

</comment><comment><USER19> To offer some points in favor of taxis:

1) taxis can be more convenient for older people who are less tech-savvy and can't fully utilize smartphones (think seniors);

2) I'm not sure if you can request this on Uber, but some taxis are wheelchair accessible and they have the proper equipment for loading/unloading. You can try it with a minivan Uber but a taxi would be preferable in this case.

</comment><comment><USER20> In NYC (or at least in Manhattan), when taxis are readily available (non- extreme weather), Uber is 2x to 3x less convenient than taxi. When taxis aren't readily available i.e. extreme weather, Uber is 3x - 5x more expensive than taxi and still takes forever to get one.

I believe that Uber in NYC will remain a niche player. But I do appreciate some competition against the taxis.

<comment><USER21> Did you read the article? This is not 'niche':

[http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/taxi_uber_lyft_trips_per...](http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/taxi_uber_lyft_trips_per_day.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I like about taxis is the meter itself: If you're stuck in a traffic jam you can check the current price and decide if it's worth staying in the taxi or hopping out (after paying).

Is there any technical reason why Uber can't present a meter in the app that you can look at intermittently?

</comment><comment><USER23> > the graphs on this page will continue to update as the TLC releases more > data.

Interesting use of Highcharts to this effect, especially with the theming to match your other designs. Is it a good idea in the context of this article to have dynamic data though, as the conclusion might change over time?

</comment><comment><USER24> My friend who lives in NYC now was telling me about this The taxi drivers themselves also have a medallion system which has severely been devalued for decades and since Uber is taking a piece of their cake, slowly and slowly they'll be phased out

</comment><comment><USER25> Once Uber dominates the market everyone is going to learn, the hard way, why taxis used to be a regulated industry.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Taxi, Uber, and Lyft Usage

I wish we had access to such numbers for apps on the App store.</comment>


What Makes a Good Conversation? - <AUTHOR> http://www.abigailsee.com/2019/08/13/what-makes-a-good-conversation.html <comment><USER2> Co-author of the original paper, if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> Hi Stephen. What was your motivation behind authoring this paper?

<comment><USER2> We originally set out to see whether we could use conditional generation to sort of adjust the behavior of these neural generative dialogue systems. Much of the original idea was about sort of "planning" our response to improve the quality and diversity of neural generation.

As we studied though, we became more aware of how much nuance there was in each of these methods, especially when we started having humans chat with the models. In the end, the paper ended up being more of a thorough analysis into what behaviors are more preferred in dialogue agents. For example, we found that you should spend about ~60-70% of your turns asking questions to maximize engagement: enough to convey interest in your partner without coming off as super nosy.

<comment><USER4> That's amazing. Do you have any hobbies?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's a great response for one of the models to have. :)

<comment><USER5> How is the weather?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm wondering if more elaborate personas might result in more interesting conversations? For example, impersonating a famous person from history, or perhaps a character in a novel based on their dialog.</comment>


Do you know of anyone that is making money with a google extension - <AUTHOR>

Can a monthly subscription business be build on a Google extension plugin. I have an idea for a google extension i wanted to know if you have seen any one charging a monthly service fee for extension. <comment><USER2> Not a monthly subscription, but generating plenty of buzz anyway:

<http://rapportive.com/> <http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/02/rapportive- funding/>

Maybe something more like xobni but for gmail?

<http://www.xobni.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> yes rapportive is great, i use them. they have a lot of buzz but are at the mercy of Google. Google can kill them any day. As long as they are small, google will let them be, if they become big, i think google will complain because they are removing there ads.

<comment><USER3> Google won't complain: the users are actively installing a browser plugin on their own computers by choice to remove the ads, but more importantly get a great beneficial service.

It's no different than installing noscript or adblock on Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is very different, it is targeting one specific application, gmail. Once rapportive is installed google cant monetize there user

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, absolutely, but do make addons for Firefox/IE too. See videos of the Add- on-Con conference, lots of people talk about their experiences building business on top of browser extensions. <http://addoncon.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Google Search I assume? What kind of extension (browser plug-in)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes browser plugin.</comment></comment>


Watsi launches universal health coverage, funded by YC Research - <AUTHOR> http://blog.watsi.org/watsi-coverage/ <comment><USER2> When I first read this article, I thought I'd missed something. Watsi isn't funding the coverage--they primarily provided a way to efficiently administer it. That seems a lot more sustainable than what I initially assumed.

Cost savings and scalability seem to come from:

* Easy to ensure treatment guidelines are being followed (so it's catch and eliminate non-administrative waste).

* Avoiding more expensive interventions by providing cheaper, early intervention.

* Easy to track who's enrolled (which also kills the free-rider problem).

* Overall less time (=money) spent on administration in general.

I'm curious if these can be teased apart. What percentage of savings is from early intervention vs. unnecessary treatments?

I'm also curious why 98% of people signed up. Was it good outreach/marketing, increased trust that the system would be beneficial to them (as opposed to bureaucratic delays), or free-riders no longer getting a free ride? Did it get cheaper? More reliable? Why didn't the other 2% sign up?

I'm sure these variables will all be fairly different when they go on to the next community, but they'd be interesting to look at.

I'm also eager to see what this does for the medical infrastructure (and economic growth) down the line. This should make it easier for places offering medical care to get their funding efficiently and quickly, so I would expect them to scale as need grows better than they would otherwise. I hope this means also much more stable school attendance and economic stability for families and communities. Is this more cost-effective and sustainable than just buying people bed nets? Track this and find out. A lot of funding will flow to whatever can be demonstrated to be maximally effective, and it's important for us to find those interventions.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome!

Is there something in the works that would make it possible for 'donors' to cover the annual enrollment costs for others? Or would that defeat the purpose?

And this is off-topic but that's brilliant photography - kudos to the photographer(s)!

<comment><AUTHOR> There's not a way to donate online to cover enrollment costs at the moment. The best way to support us is to sign up to fund a surgery for a patient every month: [https://watsi.org/universal-fund](https://watsi.org/universal-fund)

If you'd rather help cover enrollment costs for Watsi Coverage, please email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll respond right away. Thank you!

<comment><USER4> I just wanted to echo that I'd be interested in an automatic recurring donation system. I'm sure you guys have thought about this way more than I have, but my understanding is that those kinds of donations are a significant portion of funding for other non-profits like NPR

By the way, the link to "learn more" on the FAQ for "can I donate monthly?" links to [http://wwww.https//watsi.org/universal- fund](http://wwww.https//watsi.org/universal-fund) which confuses my browser so I get a connection error

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that having recurring payments gives a sense of "stable income" for the non profits, and while having massive donation campaigns is obviously helpful, it's much harder to forecast.

<comment><USER6> I'd like Watsi to have an investment account where donations can be received but they operate off of the investment returns (similar to how Standford, Yale, etc operate financially).

This would mean a gift provides for operating returns perpetually (or as long as the financial markets continue to exist).

For example, a one time donation of $300 (invested) would provide for a health insurance member (at 78 cents/month) in perpetuity.

<comment><USER7> The perpetuity aspect is a good point, but the fundamental pitch of Watsi is "100% of your donation goes to a specific patient in need", not "100% of your donation goes into an investment account that will be invested in anything from oil to cryptocurrency (and things you might not necessarily agree with) whose returns will then go to a patient in need". The vast majority of donors donate to Watsi for precisely this pitch. Also if Watsi made this change, who would manage the investments? Wouldn't it fundamentally change the company from a small, lean, product-driven global health nonprofit to a socially responsible investment (SRI) company (which there already are many of)?

<comment><USER6> Vanguard has a non-profit foundational division that manages this for an org: [https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutio...](https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutional/clientsolutions/endowmentfoundation) There is no need for Watsi to handle the management of these investments/funds.

> Wouldn't it fundamentally change the company from a small, lean, product- > driven global health nonprofit to a socially responsible investment (SRI) > company (which there already are many of)?

Nothing would change except Watsi having more consistent funding and the ability to have a longer term strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It feels like there aren't a lot of people in this thread that have spent any time in this space, specifically health care in East Africa or the wild wild world of NGOs / aid there.

This has the same breathless and "six weeks of hacking to save babies" feel to it that every other project starts out with. What exactly is different? There are a zillion mini-EMRs operating in East Africa, especially Uganda, what most lack is real integration and cooperation with the government to make them sustainable and scale. What is the story there for Watsi? Why will Watsi avoid the complexity of a real EMR like OpenMRS? Are you integrating with them?

There's a slide somewhere that I think UNICEF put together of all the NGO (as in non-UG-government, not just non profit) health projects active in Uganda. It is this hilarious demonstration of the crazy amounts of bootstrapped projects exactly like this and just how much they overlap.

To the founders, have you read The White Man's Burden? If not, please bump it to the top of your list.

Source: I lived in neighboring Rwanda for 5 years and work in this space, including projects in Uganda. It is a fascinating space with lots of opportunity for good, but also one that requires real introspection on why you are pursuing particular strategies and whether that is being driven by ego or truly because you think it is the best for the people. Almost always the answer is that no, a new thing isn't required, but rather you should be pitching in with someone else or building upon an imperfect system to better it, because that system is government owned and managed and thus will be sustainable and gives the country and people agency. This is why aid is hard work, because most good organizations have moved past the "hey, look what we built you stage" to instead trying to build capacity and institutionalize changes. That is so much more difficult but much better tack, though my beliefs are still more in the camp of direct cash transfers these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts. I've worked in the nonprofit space for a long time and agree that there are way too many fragmented projects. We did the pilot in Uganda because we were invited by the community. They wanted to implement a community health insurance system (similar to the mutuelle system in Rwanda) but they didn't have the capacity to administer it. The community and the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau designed the insurance system and are currently running it with our technology.

The government (both the Ministry of Health and the district health office) were involved in the project and even drove out to speak at the launch. They are interested in national health insurance, and we've been invited to participate in their technical working group to share our learnings. At request of the government, our system will integrate with DHIS2 and EMR's like OpenMRS, however, we've found that very few providers actually have an EMR in use. Our system isn't an EMR - it's health insurance administration (enrollment, claims, etc.) which is very different and we haven't found anything like it for LMI countries, beyond CarePay which is mostly focused on payments.

Another government in East Africa has already approached us about using our software to administer their public health insurance system, but the Rwandan government would be an ideal next partner. I'd love to talk more if you're interested and we're always open to feedback, especially from people like you with lots of experience in the space. Please reach out at email@example.com if you have a few minutes. Thanks again.

<comment><USER8> Sent you a note, thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Incredible work. So many times you hear people working on this that will "Change the world", but these guys are actually doing it!

<comment><USER10> It helps that Watsi is not a traditional start-up in the sense that their investors expect a return so they are much more free to actually do stuff that matters.

Way too many start-ups believe their own BS when it comes to sentences like 'changing the world' when in fact all they want to do is make their own stash of FY money. Most of these are a net negative when it comes to the change they impart on the world.

If you really want to change the world in a positive way a non-profit is a much better structure. Unless you plan on using your FY money to change the world afterwards, Bill Gates style.

<comment><USER11> So which is it, they believe their own BS, or all they want to do is make FY money?

<comment><USER12> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A feel like I'm hearing the middle of a conversatoin

The language used to describe this program seems to land it in the US' medical system debate. EG _enrolling in health coverage._ A lot of the comments here are focusing on that debate.

I imagine the situation is different enough (industry, patients, funding, etc.) to make the comparison something of an analogy.

In any case, I'd like to hear a bit more about watsi's role and goals. Is this a medical insurance/bureaucracy infrastructure governments can adopt? An alternative way to raise/use donor aid, funding insurance instead of clinics? Are "crowdfunding" and "coverage" separate initiatives?

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow.

With my admittedly limited knowledge, it appears to me that this is one of the best efforts in our industry, changing the world for the better and directly making a dramatic difference in the lives of the most vulnerable.

Watsi, and the people behind it, give me hope for our species, despite the state of politics (both in where I live, the US, and in the world in general) or whatever other cynical reason one could come up with.

When we come together, we really can do great things... don't give up hope.

Of course, many thanks to the Watsi team. I hope that I will have the opportunity to join you someday.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, agreed. I'm sending them my resume.

My last company (RIP) had a similar idea: ruthlessly cut costs typical for the industry (banking) and pass the savings along to create a product that works for the disadvantaged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fingerprint based system seems like an interesting choice. Don't these people do a lot of manual labor that scratches fingers? I sometimes have identifying trouble myself due to finger damage and I sit in an office.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're testing a few identification methods in addition to fingerprints, including cards with QR codes, name lookup, and family lookup. For fingerprints, we're using an algorithm created by Simprints out of Cambridge that's specifically for low-income settings where there's a lot of manual labor. Glancing at our data, it seems like so far we're getting good reads on more than 75% of scans. Hopefully we can improve that with some optimization. Another challenge with fingerprints is they don't work for kids under six, so regardless you need a backup identification method like a card.

<comment><USER17> Why not iris identification then? It's non-invasive and has considerably more entropy than fingerprints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations Chase and the team, it's incredible to see such a complex product built in such a quick time period. How many folks from the dev team were in Uganda? And is this tool open source?

</comment><comment><USER19> My universal fund donation is the best money I spend every month. I love Watsi!

<comment><USER20> Same feeling here. I like the personalize touch. I think this model could make a lot of good in the future.

I want to take this chance to encourage people here to give Watsi a try. For the price of two or three beers you can help somebody every month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What exactly can be provided for $0.78 per month?

<comment><AUTHOR> A comprehensive package of primary care benefits that includes all outpatient care at the clinic (e.g. preventive care, malaria treatment, etc.), limited in-patient care (but no surgeries), and deliveries.

<comment><USER22> Does the coverage premium fully pay for the cost of care, or are there additional subsidies?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some additional subsidies in the form of in-kind donations that help cover immunizations, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and antenatal care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> FTA:"193 of the world's governments share a goal to achieve universal health coverage by 2030." What does this mean? Aren't governments always paying lip service to some form of "universal coverage"? Isn't that one of the goals of any good government?

<comment><USER24> It has never been the stated goal of the USA government and is not the goal of the party in power now, in the Obamacare repeal process they have repeatedly argued that letting people choose how much or how much not to pay (either no insurance or emergency only type healthplans that are not available in most healthcare markets now) and to whom to pay for healthcare is more important, if one is not wealthy enough to pay, their argument is one needs to get more money. The GOP was in favor of Obamacare when Mitt Romney implemented it as governor and when it was initially proposed by a conservative thinktank.

<comment><USER25> > if one is not wealthy enough to pay, their argument is one needs to get more > money

Please cite the proposal introduced by any conservative senator or congressman that contains this argument.

<comment><USER24> The most famous example from memory is the congressman who said people need to stop buying iphones so they can buy insurance instead. As if one - two months of insurance is more than a temporary salve.

[http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/03/07/jason- chaffetz...](http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/03/07/jason-chaffetz- invest-in-healthcare-instead-of-phones-sot-newday.cnn)

The other famous quote is people will choose to not buy insurance because it's not important enough.

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/gops-cornyn-defends-americans- fre...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/gops-cornyn-defends-americans-freedom-skip- health-insurance-165433159.html)

If I had time to watch CSPAN I could probably come up with an example from every GOP congressman/White House spokesman/conservative think tank to match these with video, since they all use the same talking points they use in public for the Obamacare repeal.

I guess you could interpret what they are saying to not mean what I think they mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow thats cheap! That's awesome work Watsi team! What are some scaling issues you think you will face over the next few years?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot - limited internet, different languages, technical literacy, and eventually government adoption. It feels like a lot of what we're doing is on the cusp of what's currently possible, but so far it's working, in large part because of the amazing work our team has done.

<comment><USER26> Those are some very big challenges. But bigger the challenges, the more fun it is to solve them. And more of a headstart you get over competition. Best wishes with the challenges. Your mission is amazing to say the least

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Watsi has been doing tremendous work in this area. Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle-patient- privacy](https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle-patient-privacy)

"how do you handle privacy?" "yes"

<comment><USER29> Here's what it says right now,

"We take patient privacy very seriously. It's important to us that every patient posted on Watsi understands what Watsi is and how it works. Our medical partners are responsible for ensuring that every patient understands Watsi and explicitly wishes to participate in the program. If a Watsi Crowdfunding patient doesn't wish to be featured on the website, we give them the option to have their healthcare funded via our General Fund without ever appearing on the website."

Is that different from when you looked at it?

<comment><USER30> I think his point is that this only addresses patient consent and website publicity, and nothing about what they do to actually keep patient data secure and private.

<comment><USER31> I think prettymuch anything they could do would be better than paper files sitting in unsecured rooms protected only by people's sense of individual decency; or worse, no files at all.

<comment><USER32> No. I argue paper files are more secure, at least they wouldnt be target of digital breach where millions' data could be "hacked"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A true step to equality, in a truly global sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is awesome to hear! First saw/heard about you guys at the ELEO conference in San Jose a few years back.

Great work!

</comment><comment><USER35> What's the brand and model of the fingerprint reader featured in the Watsi animated gif?

</comment><comment><USER36> This makes my heart happy to hear!

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know what is the model of the fingerprint scanner used in the article?

<comment><USER38> Looks like [https://www.simprints.com/](https://www.simprints.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is an incredible accomplishment. Congratz guys.

</comment><comment><USER40> Where do you apply to be funded by YC Research?

</comment><comment><USER41> State-sponsored universal coverage: "that's for commies! Not acceptable!"

Silicon Valley VC-based universal coverage sponsored with crowdfunding: "wooooho that's super great! I love technology"

I would laugh if It wasn't for the milions not being able to afford basic healthcare.

<comment><USER11> I don't agree with it, be the counter-argument would be that state-sponsored coverage involves taking money from people without their consent (taxes), whereas charity doesn't. You should always address the strongest version of the argument you're refuting.

<comment><USER42> All laws are coercive. Why are you picking out specific ones, what are the criteria?

For example public parks have bipartisan support and are funded by taxes. So why will the US tax people to care for wildlife, but not its own citizens?

At one time the US instituted a military draft, requiring citizens to carry out military service. Citizens are required to obey the law, pay taxes and serve the interests of society, as determined by the government. I believe that this places a responsibility on that government to care for and protect citizens. It must offer them the protection of the law, defend them in times of war and, I believe, provide basic health care. It should do so not just for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of society.

There's no point drafting people into the military if the health of the population isnt up to it. This was a major issue for the UK in WWI and a key factor in getting cross-party support for a national health service, because a shocking number of young men were unfit for duty. Currently not being in a time of war doesn't change the relationship though. The duties and responsibilities are still there.

<comment><USER43> >All laws are coercive

Locke would disagree with your premise. You're an individual with the freedom to move to any society that you agree with the most. Unless your freedom has been alienated, you are tacitly consenting to a government's laws by remaining where you are.

<comment><USER44> So why does the typical American live within 18 miles of home? [0]

Do they just happen to agree with the society they're born into, or is it possible there are stronger forces than political preference that constrain their movement?

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up- family.html)

<comment><USER43> Choosing to live close to family isn't alienation of freedom. Those are economic choices, not coercive constraints.

<comment><USER44> Sure, but I don't think that amounts to a tacit agreement with a government's laws. Sometimes people are just stuck where they are.

<comment><USER43> That's definitively what tacit agreement is, especially when someone claims that all laws are coercive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What I don't get about USA mentality is that Americans collectively pay >600B/year to fund military[0], trillions worth of pointless wars[1] via taxes and are happy about that, but when it comes to paying some extra to fund their _own_ and fellow citizens healthcare (which costs nearly _twice less_ than military spending[2]), suddenly it's somehow against free market and "American spirit". Is it a paramount of government brainwashing, lobbying or something else?

0\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/how-us-defense-spending- stac...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/how-us-defense-spending-stacks-up- against-the-rest-of-the-world.html)

1\. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding/u-s- cbo-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding/u-s-cbo- estimates-2-4-trillion-long-term-war-costs-idUSN2450753720071024)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER46> Bang on. Across the globe, citizens of every other nation cannot fathom why the US prioritizes military spending above all else. It just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER47> because we're subsidizing europe, which is a huge free rider on the US military. If Putin for whatever reason decided to become an expansionist power and the US had an european level military, no one could stop him.

Europe in general has been massively subsidized in different ways by the USA from the end of WW2. They turn around and love to show off their moral superiority while someone else picks up the bill.

<comment><USER45> I agree with that (though things are slowly getting better in Europe), but then why average Joe from USA is OK with government subsidizing Europe with his tax money, but freaks out on the idea of paying for his own healthcare from the _same tax money_?

<comment><USER48> > why average Joe from USA is OK with government subsidizing Europe with his > tax money

Where do you get the idea that "average Joe" is okay with that? It's been a huge talking point for Trump and his supporters for the past two years.

<comment><USER49> Also, the majority of American's are actually in favor of having some kind of sane medical system, like other first world countries. That's well supported by polling (though interestingly they don't like "Obamacare" but do like all the policies that make up the Affordable Care Act)

This was also a talking point for Trump and his supporters for the past two years. ("we're going to have insurance for everyone", "No cuts to medicaid", "No one will lose coverage", "Nobody will be worse off financially", "I am going to take care of everybody … Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now.")

Of course, in that case as well, he took them for the rubes they are and likely had no plan for delivering on his promises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This isn't going to work.

It looks like they are just appifying the missionariy/charity elements already going on in african nations, not providing universal healthcare. To have real universal health care would involve a lot of infrastructure building and education which would be way beyond what a small start up could do.

<comment><USER50> Indeed, nothing really about the supply side. If they don't take care of that, spending more money on health care will just raise prices. Don't tell Americans that though. They believe, as a matter of ideology, that spending more money is the only effective solution to all problems

<comment><USER2> They increased the customer base (by increasing healthcare enrollment to 98%) and made it quicker and easier to get paid for treatment provided, while also preventing unnecessary treatments.

What deficiencies do you see in the supply side right now, and why don't you think this addresses them?

<comment><USER50> Number of available doctors. Drug production. Consumable medical supply production.

I guess if you can import this stuff from China and India with minimal quality checking things are good. I am not being sarcastic about the China importing. In the U.S we have $500 bags of saline that the minimally checked bag from China would cost $5. Really you don't even need universal health care, just adequate supply and that means imports, cheaper schooling and deregulation to solve health care.

<comment><USER2> We're trying to solve healthcare in Uganda. It does look like supply of doctors is an issue[0], but it also seems that delayed paychecks are a big part of that, and this seems like at least a partial solution.

I'm not sure what to do about there being higher salaries for doctors in the US. Subsidizing education for medical students who promise to stay in Uganda for several years might be a good option. But it seems silly to complain that Watsi has only _partially_ fixed healthcare in Uganda. I _certainly_ don't see any basis for the blanket claim that "This isn't going to work." This is already working--it's just not a panacea.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2015/feb/10/u...](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2015/feb/10/uganda-crippled-medical-brain-drain-doctors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Healthcare is complicated and expensive. This startup comes out with an app, a fingerprint scanner, and some compelling images, and now people are willing to hand over their money to some brand new company claiming they will bring universal healthcare to the masses.

Rather than develop a long-term set of healthcare provider alternatives, they're depending on selling a story and getting funding from people sensitive to heart-warming stories on the internet to "change the world". If any link in their public relations chain is broken, there goes the project.

I really like the idea. But copying a Sally Struthers late-80s TV commercial probably isn't going to solve healthcare.

<comment><USER52> >>brand new company

Watsi has been around since 2011.

>>Healthcare is complicated and expensive

Overall? Yes. Compartmentalized and decentralized, it does not have to be. That's the whole point of these types of initiatives.

<comment><USER51> > Compartmentalized and decentralized, it does not have to be.

Being compartmentalized and decentralized is what the story claims is inefficient and expensive.</comment></comment></comment>