Show HN: ReLaXed – High-quality PDFs using web technologies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed <comment><USER2> The examples lack hyphenation, which partly explains the too-variable interword spacing. Is this because Chrome still fails to support hyphenation, unlike, for example, Firefox?

There are other subtle defects, which make these PDFs pretty good, but not high quality.

Here is a brief discussion of some of the shortcomings of web typography, and why we still need to use TeX if we want the most beautiful and easiest to read results:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/662053/](https://lwn.net/Articles/662053/)

All that aside, this is impressive and should be useful to many people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hyphenation can be tuned via CSS but I have never been happy with it:

[https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_word- break.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_word-break.asp)

From what I remember LaTeX has better algorithms, both in how to distribute words between lines, and in knowing where in a word it is ok to cut.

<comment><USER3> For anyone that wants to have a good read, try reading the TeX-book's section on hyphenation. Tons of fun that goes over some of the difficulties.

As a fun trivia, think where to hyphenate the word record. In all forms.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.ctex.org/documents/shredder/src/texbook.pdf](http://www.ctex.org/documents/shredder/src/texbook.pdf)

Page 449

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw "... using web technologies" I was curious if it uses Puppeteer. package.json confirms that is indeed the case.

[https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer)

(I work for Chrome DevTools team, creators of Puppeteer)

<comment><USER6> I was wondering the same as it's a common use-case for the project I run (browserless.io). Seems to be a big demand for sane PDF rendering and generation.

Been pretty interesting seeing webtech handle these kinds of problems

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How would that compare to, say, an HTML template + wkhtmltopdf?

Also I feel like the biggest gripe with generating (long) PDFs from HTML are things such as page numbering, orphans and widows, semantically correct word- wrapping, page margins, etc...

Chrome does a decent job but is nowhere close to what LaTeX can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have gathered some comparisons in this wiki page:

[https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed/wiki/ReLaXed-vs- other-s...](https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed/wiki/ReLaXed-vs-other- solutions)

It is open to contributions, so any thoughts welcome. In a nutshell, all your points are valid. Chrome is one of the best browsers, but still behind LaTeX in some aspects. But which will evolve faster in the future ?

<comment><USER8> > But which will evolve faster in the future ?

Are you comparing Chrome and LaTeX? Chrome is certainly evolving faster overall, but features related to PDF printing have not changed much, or any at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh how much i would love to have good way how to generate print quality PDFs. The real problem is not hyphenation but how lines are composed. If you want even lines in type set to block then there is probably only Adobe Indesign and LaTeX anything else uses "single line composer" i dont know the algorythm but Latex and Indesign are only ones which take multiple lines into considiration. Latex is sort of Okay but the algorythm in Indesign is still highly superior. I suspect that is some Adobe secret sauce. Pity because you cant run indesign on server, you have it open and use "extendscript" their version of old ECMAScript 3 :(

<comment><USER10> Adobe's secret sauce is largely implemented in the microtype package in LaTeX world (character protrusion for optical margin alignment and font expansion for more even interword spacing and less hyphenation). Also the technology didn't originate at Adobe; Adobe purchased the technology from URW who developed the hz-program that was the real pioneer for those micro-typographic adjustments.

<comment><USER9> Microtype package is pretty great. I want latex to work for me - maybe i am missing something but it always bothered me that i have to mix content with styling. I guess it is great when you are writing something yours and you work on styling and content at the same time. Most of my uscases are unfortunately feeding some text input and spitting pdf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems kind of neat. But for my purposes I will still use Markdown to PDF using pandoc etc.

What really upsets me... the typography still looks shit compared to LaTeX... MS Word / LibreOffice can do better. Would rather stick with plaintext again.

<comment><USER12> FOP is the only TeX alternative that can get close to it on basic typography in a FOSS implementation. I had a toolchain that ran ReST -> Docbook -> XSL- FOP -> PDF but the hard drive it was on bit the dust and I haven't gotten around to recreating it. Still much more pleasant than wrestling with LaTeX's rigid predetermined layouts. The result was nice and didn't have the crusty PDF LaTeX appearance.

<comment><USER13> Well there are a bunch other engines out there, but it just so happens they all eat tex or something very close to it (context).

Five or six years or so ago I used reportlab (in Python) to generate some PDF reports (using the flowables API); it does kinda work but layout is more complicated than in tex and output quality is several notches down.

As far as appearance goes, you can make tex look like almost anything, even with fairly low effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this improve upon Pandoc?

[https://i.imgur.com/tMkMjNV.png](https://i.imgur.com/tMkMjNV.png)

In the image, ConTeXt generates PDFs. The EA box represents HTML documentation exported from Enterprise Architect, but could be any structured document that pandoc can parse. The source repository contains various themes for the final PDF.

Using ConTeXt offers several compelling features, such as: citations, cross- references, and ability to produce EBPUBs.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure I understand the image, but to my knowledge you can't just do any html -> pdf with pandoc.

<comment><USER16> I have no idea how well it works, but pandoc supports html as an input format (if I understand right, it supports most/all input->output pairs).

<comment><USER9> I believe they generate Latex fromh html and pdf from latex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is neat, but perhaps switching the final typesetting engine from chromium's PDF printer to LaTex (via Pandoc maybe) would make it more useful. You'd get more control over things like page numbering and TOCs, plus good justification/microtypography, which is important to most publishers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Related, why doesn't anyone ever mention [Apache FOP]([https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/](https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/)) for this kind of thing? I've had great success with it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Waiting to see an example with footnotes and auto references ;)

<comment><USER20> That will probably be difficult because Chrome just "prints" a PDF. Therefore headers, footers, footnotes, and page numbering is a difficult issue to solve.

<comment><USER21> FYI, Puppeteer does indeed support header and footer templates when printing to PDF:

[https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/blob/v1.3.0/docs/a...](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/blob/v1.3.0/docs/api.md#pagepdfoptions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks nice - as a regular latex user, I'd say it (latex) sits roughly between excruciating agony and the actual worst thing in the world.

So the beginnings of an alternative looks great!

</comment><comment><USER23> How do we pronounce this? Re-LACKED?

<comment><USER24> Probably. People is abusing the X letter (do they know that it is not pronounced anymore as "ki" in modern greek?).

<comment><USER25> > Do they know that it is not pronounced anymore as "ki" in modern greek?

They may know that, but it is irrelevant. English lacks the phoneme /x/ and the usual substitution in assimilating foreign words (or the letter-play that Donald Knuth started with TeX) is the closest unvoiced velar that English has: /k/. See how most English speakers pronounce the name of J. S. Bach as [bak], with only a small number of pedants saying [bax]. Or, outside of Scotland, _Loch Ness_ is usually [lɔk], not [lɔx].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All I want is a system that gets the basic right and is version-controllable in git (plain text source code). Latex is just ridiculously complex and inconsistent. Even after years of using it, I have to google how to do most things every time. I would prefer a simple PDF generator that uses pug/HTML (which I know by heart) any day.

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://github.com/bramstein/typeset](https://github.com/bramstein/typeset)

This is an implementation of the line breaking algorithm used in TeX in Javascript. It would be nice to add to obtain better typographic results with justified text.

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks like the perfect solution to my resume. The latest iteration is in HTML/CSS, because it allowed me to easily get the exact layout I wanted (so painful in LaTeX...), but getting a consistent PDF was a challenge.

</comment><comment><USER29> I produce all my PDFs with pandoc's markdown and in-line html: letters, slides and papers with citations. Depending on whether I need mathjax I use wkhtmltopdf or chromium (JS-based hypens with Hyphenopoly) or just [http://weasyprint.org/](http://weasyprint.org/) if no JS is involved.

This pug language seems to be a good alternative to intermixed markdown+html.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find Markdown most natural for writing because I do not have to worry about formatting or syntax.

Currently I deliver ~2 PDF reports per week using Ulysses or MacDown for content creation (distraction-free writing), and then typesetting everything into InDesign.

Thank you for creating this tool, I will try it next week.

The ability to render Markdown to Pug as an "Import Markdown" feature would be key for many people to adopt this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inline markdown and external markdown files are both supported. Have a look at the "Book" example. Every chapter is in its own Markdown file. Most of the other examples have parts where I simply switch to markdown.

I am also a big markdown user and I have found that for writing reports all day long markdown clearly wins over Pug, in particular with tools like

[https://atom.io/packages/markdown-preview- enhanced](https://atom.io/packages/markdown-preview-enhanced)

But the day where you need to produce a super-nice report with a bit of custom layout, Pug/SCSS is awesome.

<comment><USER30> Completely missed that. Thanks, will try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Really beautiful stuff!

I'm in the process of launching BreezyPDF.com which can generate equally as wonderful PDFs from the HTML/JS/CSS you're already using.

Here's a demo of turning a complex dashboard into a PDF: [https://ruby.demo.breezypdf.com](https://ruby.demo.breezypdf.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> How does this compare with Prince?

<comment><USER33> For one, everything here appears to be free and open source. Prince is pretty costly to run as a small endeavor and last I knew their pricing model wasn't very kind to horizontal scaling.

<comment><USER34> DocRaptor is PrinceXML as a service with reasonable pricing.

[https://docraptor.com](https://docraptor.com)

<comment><USER35> DocRaptor is great. We used it for generating invoices for several years until our volume justified buying Prince and running it locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not sure if this is related to the format of the PDF somehow, but my computer completely froze when trying to open the Alice pdf in the GitHub viewer. This is on Safari, Chrome was fine.

<comment><USER36> Upon further inspection, the GitHub renderer works fine on PDF's much larger [1], and the native Safari PDF viewer opens these PDF's fine. I suspect there is something the GitHub renderer, your pdf generator, and Safari's js engine disagree on.

[1]: [https://github.com/mynane/PDF/blob/master/Docker%20——%20从入门到...](https://github.com/mynane/PDF/blob/master/Docker%20——%20从入门到实践%20-%20v1.0.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting project! Can this be used to potentially include JavaScript in resulting PDF files and use them to animate images in the PDF?

This would be useful for some presentations I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can include Javascript in the pages, but it won't be animated in the end.

Maybe you would be interested by this project to make slideshows with Pug/SCSS/Vue.JS. There you can make plenty of animations:

[https://zulko.github.io/eaglejs-demo/#/](https://zulko.github.io/eaglejs- demo/#/)

<comment><USER37> Thank you! That is a brilliant suggestion indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Given that some of the usecases are to print books, and that this internally uses HTML and CSS< would there be an officially supported way to publish ePubs?

<comment><AUTHOR> ReLaXed really focuses on PDFs right now (to keep the initial focus small) but it produces an HTML file as a byproduct. From what I understand there is not far from an HTML file to an Epub.

This being said, the primary goal of this library is to enable to make documents with complex or fancy layouts. Epubs generally have a simple structure (chapter/section/paragraph) and can be written using for instance Markdown:

[https://pandoc.org/epub.html](https://pandoc.org/epub.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Very cool. Could standard Latex mathmode be used here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mathjax notation is supported:

[https://www.mathjax.org/](https://www.mathjax.org/)

See some basic use in ReLaXed in the "paper" or "slideshow" examples, or here for a basic documentation:

[https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed/wiki/Features#equations](https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed/wiki/Features#equations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Looks awesome. Can it use CMYK colors? That is killer feature for print centers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does it support things like mathjax? This is a really important question to me.

<comment><USER41> According to this example in their repo, it does indeed support mathjax: [https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed- examples/blob/master/ex...](https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed- examples/blob/master/examples/slides/slides.pdf)</comment></comment>


A startup's best friend? Failure - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/03/01/8401031/?postversion=2007022807 <comment><AUTHOR> When posting this I managed to create a state where the title was displayed as "A startup's best friend? FailureA startup's best friend? Failure" but if I clicked on edit in the form it was only "A startup's best friend? Failure". I am not sure how to reproduce.

<comment><USER2> Here's why that defect occurred, FTA:

"Where old-economy giants once boasted of running 'zero-defects' operations, today's successful Internet businesses embrace defects as a way to get things right."

pg knows _exactly_ what he's doing ;)

<comment><USER3> It's not a bug, it's a feature! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I dont know. It's ok for a turnaround company, or a dispassionate outsider. Not for someone who is in the grind. see my thread http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1464

</comment><comment><USER4> see my thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1464</comment>


The Big ICO Swindle - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ico-cryptocurrency-irresponsibility/ <comment><USER2> I really appreciate the authoring adding this bit at the bottom. Sounds like a person of integrity and honor:

>"Note on conflict of interests: When I helped found the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, I sold my shares in all blockchain and bitcoin related companies and have not invested in any companies engaging in cryptocurrencies as their primary activity. I do not hold any material amount of any cryptocurrency. I believe that in the current phase of our work, it is important for me to be clear of any conflicts of interest. You can see a more complete conflict of interest disclosure on my website."

<comment><AUTHOR> The list of potential conflicts of interest on his website is really clear and straightforward. I wish more people in similar positions would do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The worst part about all these scams is that they seem to be generally perpetuated by (or at least the owners are) somewhat older people, lots of baby boomers and gen Xers, and invariably the people buying in are millennials or even younger.

It's a real shame to see so many scams along the various crypto chains transferring so much wealth from the young to the old. Like millennials haven't had it bad enough already.</comment>


South Korea opens K-City, the latest fake town built for self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1121372/south-korea-opens-k-city-the-latest-fake-town-built-for-self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER2> so there would be cars just cruising around on their own without any drivers or passengers?</comment>


Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/yahoo-to-say-it-s-exploring-strategic-alternatives-person-says <comment><USER2> It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation.

YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must be positive.

So selling off Alibaba and Yahoo Japan is the best bet, except you have investors demanding that it be done tax-free, so you can't just sell them, even though the decline of the value of Alibaba during the time it takes to do this process might be larger than the taxes. If Alibaba keeps going down in value, selling it now gives you more money than selling it tax-free in the future. But that might still get you sued by the shareholders, which is stupid.

A reverse spin-off, i.e. selling the core business, has some funny implications as well. Many employees are on work visas, which are tied to a specific employer at a specific address. If this changes, all of those visas become invalid. Obviously, selling the assets and shrinking the market cap, would make it much easier for someone to buy Yahoo.

<comment><USER3> You know how I know I'll never be a CEO of a huge company like this? Because I read what you just wrote and thought, "this doesn't sound like something that 1) I could ever solve 2) it just doesn't sound remotely fun to try and figure all this stuff out"

<comment><USER4> I can see how that could be fun if you like big picture thinking.

<comment><USER5> It's only fun in theory. What's not fun is when you have to answer to investors, which give no shits about you or your employees, and only dollars, or what they perceive will increase their returns. Often, this is aligned with what management wants to do and what the employees want to do, but in a situation like this, the incentives can be heavily misaligned.

<comment><USER6> I think like most people in leadership positions at big companies, they can coast along on the success of the big company but they think it's all them. See also nfl coaches. When I was at google, she was such an ass to people. Many were glad to see her leave. I wish more leaders had humility about their success. She's got her 300 million, she'll be okay, but I doubt she will get an improved character out of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dear Yahoo,

Remove the fake ads from your home page. Remove the misleading ads from your home page.

Sponsored How To Pay Off Your Mortgage Homeowners are surprised and furious. If you owe less than $625,000 on your home, you better read this.

Remove the ads from your already terrible email service. Remove the gossip columns that you call news and burry them deep where no one can find it. Stop trying to be good at everything, because right now you can't do one thing well. Stop with the ads that take over the whole screen. Stop copying and pasting or embedding content from other sites Stop using these crazy layouts that change all the time. It's impossible to find what you are looking for and it takes forever to load.

Promote content that matters. Assume your audience is intelligent Be creative Be innovative

<comment><USER8> Yahoo's finance page is very good, better than anyone else's. With one click URL I can get quotes on all the stocks I'm interested in, with a thumbnail graph, and links to charts, news, etc.

Nobody else is even close.

<comment><USER6> google finance has all that.

<comment><USER8> I beg to differ.

1\. Google's is cookie based, meaning I can have only one portfolio. 2\. Google doesn't have the thumbnail chart of the day's performance. 3\. Google doesn't have the useful links.

Yahoo's is URL based, for example, here's a MSFT/AMZN/GOOG portfolio:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MSFT,GOOG,AMZN/view/v1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MSFT,GOOG,AMZN/view/v1)

See for yourself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We admit we have no vision for this company, or its purpose, outside of maximizing shareholder value. Literally, we have no reason to exist other than preserving capital."

<comment><USER4> They should probably be returning capital at this point, instead of preserving. Yahoo is way past its expiration date.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This reads like a classic sale script. Cut costs(hence the 15% cuts), focus on generating revenue (comments about focusing on core areas), then sell the business. Should be interesting

</comment><comment><USER10> It's strange to me that this article with such brevity is on the front page, yet the NYTimes article about the difficulties of individuals to survive in retirement age got bumped?

<comment><USER11> Reference to LA Times article and discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11022097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11022097)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I fear for Flickr.

</comment><comment><USER13> bloomberg is limiting it's articles to 140 chars now?

<comment><USER14> I had to check. 562. It would all fit in 5 tweets.

<comment><USER13> details, details. :D

but, if you take out the part that is completely irrelevant about how they reported something that did not happen about yahoo selling itself, then it is probably less than 140.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Merge with AOL!

<comment><USER16> Sure. AOL could bring back the Netscape brand, then after merging they could move to Israel: Net 'n Yahoo.

<comment><USER17> This is the best solution proposed so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The best video yahoo made, ever !

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4)

<comment><USER19> The article is about strategic decisions Yahoo! faces as a business. And you're using a five year old anti-LGBT bullying video as a sarcastic joke? That's double insulting.

<comment><USER18> Did you actually _watch_ the video ?

It's exactly the opposite of an anti-LGBT video

<comment><USER20>
        five year old anti-LGBT bullying video

five year old anti LGBT-bullying video.

<comment><USER18> you won</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just Say No to Manual CRUD - <AUTHOR> http://www.caffeinatedcoder.com/just-say-no-to-manual-crud/ <comment><USER2> True in a world where you have a 1:1 application to database mapping.

However out here in the _real_ world, it's common to have n:1, i.e. many applications all accessing and modifying a single database. The question is, then, how do you implement common or mandatory logic in a way that avoids having to re-implement it in every application, and protects the data from a misbehaving application? Why, you expose access to the underlying data through stored procedures, problem solved.</comment>


Show HN: GetMyEIDLGrant – Send Requests to the SBA for EIDL Advances - <AUTHOR> https://www.getmyeidlgrant.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackernews!

There have been a lot of small businesses who have not had great communication from the SBA in regards to the EIDL for Covid-19. Especially in terms of how the EIDL Emergency Grants work.

I put together this site to help automate sending faxes and certified U.S. mail to the SBA in order to request EIDL advances as outlined in the CARES act.

It's not pretty, but it will get the job done!

P.S. I welcome any and all feedback and suggestions.</comment>


Hiring for Lean Startups: The First Few Hires - <AUTHOR> http://startupnorth.ca/2012/01/25/hiring-for-lean-startups-the-first-few-hires/?__lsa=be3856b2 <comment><USER2> _Prioritize UX over development_

Most of the advice is pretty solid but I don't agree with this one. Most of the companies succeeding today are doing so because they are building platforms. The web is migrating to platforms and not having that core concept embedded into the DNA of a company is a sure recipe to get systems that will be coded for purpose, non-extensible and a maintenance nightmare when it is time to grow it.

There are arguments for both sides, but if I had to choose between exceptional development talent and freelancing design or exceptional design talent and freelancing architecture, I would choose the development talent every time. That being said, there are some generalist that are great at both. I agree with the hire a generalist advice, but try to get a generalist that has both design and development experience. In my experience every company that I have seen that has hired the wrong development person, has been a technology disaster. I have repaired many of them and it takes years to undo all the technical debt that is leveraged on, when the seed systems are poorly designed. Fixing poor design is much easier as it is only a front end concern. Poor development infects every aspect of the system.</comment>


Walmart Gets Into Health Care - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-25/walmart-takes-on-cvs-amazon-with-low-price-health-care-clinics <comment><USER3> I am EXCITED to see how this plays out.

It is astounding to me how locked down certain medical tests are.

Like, if I want an EKG, why can't I just walk in to a place and get it done at a reasonable price? And without a doctor's approval?

And I pay for insurance. But I just want to be able to monitor my vitals myself, whenever I feel like it.

It seems like it would drive higher utilization of equipment and lower prices if these types of diagnostic tests were readily available at a place like a CVS or a Walmart.

I would gladly even pay $50 per month for unlimited access to a place to just come in, get my blood sugar, kidney function, heart function, liver function, etc. tested once per month!

As important as health is, and as much as Americans spend on it, it is shocking to me how gated everything is.

It hurts my health and my pocketbook simultaneously!

I've always wondered why a company like Walmart doesn't just provide $20 EKGs, and $25 tooth cleanings.

Like, why is so easy to get a hamburger at any time of day, but like pulling teeth to just run somewhere and get a quick, inexpensive EKG to make sure everything is ok with your heart..?

What am I missing? Are there legitimate safety reasons these mundane diagnostics are so locked down?

Or are these services available and I just don't know about it?

Again, I pay for health insurance, but I still feel like if I want a quick EKG, it will take me 3 weeks to see a doctor, and by then I might be dead. I don't want to see a doctor, I just want an EKG done for my own peace of mind.

But health Care is not my area of expertise. So perhaps there are very legitimate reasons these diagnostics and labs are so difficult to self-request at reasonable prices.

<comment><USER4> This argument is comparable to thinking that a painting is only worth the materials it's made out of, and everything else is worthless. A doctor and their staff have trained for decades in order to handle your health, why in the world do you think you can do it after some googling?

Compare it to your own job - if I had the same tools as you, could I walk in and do the same job you do?

<comment><USER5> > A doctor and their staff have trained for decades in order to handle your > health, why in the world do you think you can do it after some googling?

Counterpoint: Doctors have an average IQ of 115, and train across a huge variety of disciplines; mostly while sleep-deprived. Many doctors' training was decades ago.

Anyone with a somewhat abnormal condition, access to Google Scholar, and able to learn how to follow citations and simultaneously weigh competing models can outdo anybody except a dedicated specialist.

The relevant job comparison isn't to a painter, it's to a programmer with a hundred clients, each of whom he talks with for 30 minutes, once a year. Sure, the programmer has much more knowledge and skill--but is he really going to be able to adequately replace the _every_ client's home-brewed solution spread across 4 excel sheets, 3 batch files, and an archived website?

Should the client really be restricted from downloading Python or Visual Studio for their own use, unless a real programmer signs off on the requirement and supervises them?

<comment><USER6> You mention the average doctor but what about the average patient? How many people out there do you think will take the time to read through papers and citations and have the understanding to weigh options vs googling symptoms and going with the first result?

<comment><USER7> Why should the behavior of "the average person" limit everyone else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very curious to see how this plays out.

There's a bunch of underinsured (or outright not insured) folk in the very locations where Walmart is opening these, so it has the potential to kill a couple of different birds with one stone. From a public benefits side, it gives a path of medical care for those that otherwise wouldn't have it (beyond say, an emergency room visit). It also lower prices by competing against insurance bloat.

In doing so, Walmart (may) be able to create a sustainable business by tapping a market (folk that aren't currently going for medical coverage anyway) that would otherwise be untapped.

<comment><USER9> This could also control costs if government managed systems (Medicare, Medicaid) partner with Walmart to provide payment. Easier to negotiate with Walmart as a single entity versus a network of vision and dental providers across the nation.

<comment><USER10> Or we could just...provide it through the government like any other sane country.

<comment><USER11> That's certainly an option, but the meta-question is: which mechanism can produce health/pharma goods and services at lower costs and higher quality, markets or government allocation?

If the answer is the latter, then why aren't we replicating that mechanism across other essential goods like food and clothing?

<comment><USER12> >then why aren't we replicating that mechanism across other essential goods like food and clothing?

maybe because the competition doesn't work as well in healthcare sector? or that there isn't a whole scheme of inflated prices that insurance companies negotiate down to, but uninsured people are forced to pay?

<comment><USER11> If that's the case, then why are we seeing Wal-Mart attempting to compete in the healthcare sector with what seem to be competitive prices?

Doesn't seem to be limited to just Wal-Mart either. An Oklahoma City Hospital began posting its prices online and started a bidding war[1]. The hospital lobby seems to be overwhelmingly opposed to price transparency out of fear that it will lower prices[2], and there are Yelp-like directories that are beginning to provide price transparency allowing for competitive rates like $79 MRI's[3].

[1] [https://kfor.com/news/okc-hospital-posting-surgery-prices- on...](https://kfor.com/news/okc-hospital-posting-surgery-prices-online/)

[2] [https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/hospitals-pledge-to- figh...](https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/hospitals-pledge-to-fight-trump- admin-price-transparency-plan-in-court/567474/)

[3] [https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health- care/article...](https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health- care/article230388494.html)

<comment><USER12> >If that's the case, then why are we seeing Wal-Mart attempting to compete in the healthcare sector with what seem to be competitive prices?

And it only took decades of skyrocketing healthcare costs (and probably margins) for walmart to enter the space. How many more decades (if ever) until prices drop down to level in line with other developed nations?

<comment><USER11> > And it only took decades of skyrocketing healthcare costs (and probably > margins) for walmart to enter the space. How many more decades (if ever) > until prices drop down to level in line with other developed nations?

Was this a natural consequence of the market, or are there other explanations for why such a delay came to pass?

<comment><USER12> Why is this question relevant? Let's say the reason was that walmart thinks their core competency is supply chain management, healthcare isn't part of that, and they only entered because the healthcare industry gravy train has reached insanely high levels that they simply could not refuse, what then? Should our response to this crisis be to wait until a megacorp comes by and saves the day?

<comment><USER11> This question is extremely relevant, because it can help us evaluate all policy options.

The current status quo in the US Healthcare system was not some crazy accident of the market, rather it was the inevitable result of a series of policies passed at state, local, and federal levels over the past half century.

The fact that health insurance isn't portable, and is rather tied to employment is a consequence of the WW2 era wage ceilings imposed on private corporations, followed by the tax benefits enjoyed by employers that provide group insurance, followed then by the mandate on employers to provide health insurance. This is in contrast with other countries that employ private insurance, like the Netherlands and Switzerland, where insurance is tied to the individual, not the employer.

The lack of price transparency logically follows from the fact that patients never really care how much their treatments cost, since employer sponsored insurance covers everything anyway. Large corporations are less price sensitive than individuals, which exacerbates the price inflation over decades.

Certificate of need laws, where local hospitals get to decide if a new, competing hospital can open, and the residency system requiring 10+ years of schooling to practice resulted in inevitable supply constraints.

Medicare, which provides healthcare for free for the elderly, removed the most engaged buyers from the market, suffocating the price discovery mechanism. Not only that, the elderly tend to be the richest people in the country - <USER2> above the age of 55 account for 73% of wealth in America. Boomers are disproportionately rich, and yet they also enjoy some of the most generous welfare on top of that.

There are number of ways to approach solving this problem. One way is to add yet another band-aid on top of the system, burn down the system entirely, or identify the root causes and disentangle them from the system. This is the political question.

<comment><USER12> >The fact that health insurance isn't portable [...]

Agreed.

>This is in contrast with other countries that employ private insurance, like the Netherlands and Switzerland, where insurance is tied to the individual, not the employer.

It's worth mentioning that in both countries, there's heavy government regulation. According to wikipeida, in the Netherlands 50% of premiums goes to some sort of government agency that redistributes money to private insurance companies depending on their claims, which makes it a quasi-public payer scheme. In Switzerland the premium is capped at a percentage of a person's income with the government making up the shortfall, and insurance companies can't make a profit.

>The lack of price transparency logically follows from the fact that patients never really care how much their treatments cost, since employer sponsored insurance covers everything anyway.

Doesn't this argument apply to insurance schemes in general, both public and private?

>Large corporations are less price sensitive than individuals, which exacerbates the price inflation over decades.

I'm skeptical about this claim. Sure, they have more money sloshing about than individuals, but insurance premiums across the entire workforce adds up.

>Certificate of need laws, where local hospitals get to decide if a new, competing hospital can open, and the residency system requiring 10+ years of schooling to practice resulted in inevitable supply constraints.

Agree, although I'm weary of assigning significant blame due to this factor. Are doctors making record wages? Are hospitals making record profits?

>Medicare, which provides healthcare for free for the elderly, removed the most engaged buyers from the market. Not only that, the elderly tend to be the richest people in the country - those above the age of 55 account for 73% of wealth in America. Boomers are rich, and they also enjoy some of the most generous welfare on top of that.

I'm skeptical how big of an effect this can be. Wikipedia has a chart that shows medicare spending as percent of GDP[1]. If you combine that with total US healthcare spending by GDP[2], you see that it accounts for less than a fifth of total US healthcare spending.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Medicare...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Medicare_Parts_A_B_C_D.png)

[2] [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2016&start=2016&view=map)

<comment><USER11> > It's worth mentioning that in both countries, there's heavy government > regulation

No disagreements that there exists regulation that can be helpful. Definitely an important part of the discussion. Even in Singapore, which is largely a market based system driven by price discovery relies on a healthy (heh) amount of regulation. In the US, the food system is largely market-based, but the FDA (as well as state and local health departments) impose important regulations.

> In Switzerland the premium is capped at a percentage of a person's income > with the government making up the shortfall, and insurance companies can't > make a profit.

Keep in mind that in the US, health insurance companies report an average profit of ~5%. Even if you eliminated that entirely, you wouldn't see any savings worth writing home about. I work at an insurance company, and the majority of claims I see are pretty asinine. $500 added to provide sign language service to a deaf patient, or $300 charged for a papoose used while giving a child a cleaning. Because of the third-party-payer model in which the care is priced and paid for AFTER the services are rendered, the patient has little skin in the game. In the best case (for the patient) the insurance company simply pays the asking price (resulting in a sort of moral hazard), and in the worst case, the insurance company doesn't cover it and the patient gets a surprise bill in the mail.

> Doesn't this argument apply to insurance schemes in general, both public and > private?

Yes, it's another reason why using insurance to pay for all care can be a sub- optimal way to allocate resources. Not having skin in the game can result in patient overconsumption.

> Agree, although I'm weary of assigning significant blame due to this factor. > Are doctors making record wages? Are hospitals making record profits?

Yes, and yes[1][2]

> I'm skeptical how big of an effect this can be. Wikipedia has a chart that > shows medicare spending as percent of GDP[1]. If you combine that with total > US healthcare spending by GDP[2], you see that it accounts for less than a > fifth of total US healthcare spending.

The effect I'm talking about is removing the largest consumers of healthcare (rich old people) from the market, which impacts how the ultimate price of goods/services is determined by the market.

[1] [https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors- sal...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-salaries-pay- disparities-000557)

[2][https://freopp.org/transcending-obamacare-why-the-health- law...](https://freopp.org/transcending-obamacare-why-the-health-laws- struggles-argue-for-a-new-approach-to-health-reform-5517bd69e0d8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hm. Wife had eye check at big box store. The guy said "Oh, you have Macular Degeneration. Nothing to do about it sorry. Just go home and go blind".

She came home in tears of course. So I said "Go to a reputable ophthalmologist and get a real opinion". So she did.

Of course nothing is wrong with her eyes (despite the power-of-suggestion effects she experienced, but miraculously cleared up once she got a reliable exam). The Dr did say "I can see how they made the mistake; you have some small adhesions to your retina, but they'll clear up by themselves"

So no, I'm not going to a big box store to get my medical care. Never mind the price. I'll get a professional, or go without. Can't be worse than our experience at the discount-home-goods place.

<comment><USER14> When you get your eyes checked for glasses you go to an optometrist. Doesn't matter if it's big box store or a local guy--they have the same credentials.

An ophthalmologist is an MD who specializes in eyes, and that's who you want to go to when you have a more serious problem. 2 completely different things, and not really anything to do with where the optometrist was located.

<comment><USER13> So what were they doing, diagnosing and then saying there was no point in getting a second opinion?

<comment><USER15> It sounds like a very incompetent optometrist (and if they weren't one, someone basically impersonating one). They're eye specialists after all who go to a 4-year post-undergraduate program, just not M.D. doctors. At a minimum, they should presumably have told your wife to book an appointment with an ophthalmologist immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm just waiting for these massive corporations to get into the automation of Pharmacy work. I know a number of highly paid (110k+) pharmacists who largely:

A) count pills

B) put pills into orders

C) do retail

D) answer questions/customer service

Meanwhile, the industry is being flooded with new graduates from dozens of schools...If this isn't a case for automation of A-C, I don't know what IS a case for automation in healthcare.

<comment><USER17> You've got it backwards. Pharmacists are hired because it's legally required. They're there to catch the dosage mistakes, look out for potential interactions, and to answer questions about medication and the proper usage. You cannot legally distribute prescription medication without a pharmacist physically present.

CVS and Walgreens would love to get rid of the pharmacists -- they hate that each store needs a couple $110k/year pharmacists just to handle the legal requirements and to be on-site for the few cases where something needs extra attention. That's why they put them to work doing the manual retail side of it to get the most for their dollar.

<comment><USER18> It's legally required because even with a prescription, an untrained person can't just walk to a hypothetical drug store with everything on the shelf and safely select what's written down. There are too many chances to make mistakes, misreading the label, self diagnoses and prescription of dangerous substances, etc. This can be addressed by automated, human-free system with tech we have today. Your doc sends a valid Rx, a box dispenses your drug. I don't know if it would be cost effective today, but we could do it and it stands to reason that one day it will be cheaper than doing it (validating substances and dose) with one highly trained human counting pills by hand at every single location.

Potentially dangerous drug interactions and instructions can be solved by automation for what can be automated and tele-pharmacists in all others.

<comment><USER19> We already have mail order pharmacies, so it's not too big of a stretch.

<comment><USER17> There's still a human pharmacist on the other end of every single order, it just gets sent in the mail instead of handed over the counter.

<comment><USER19> Of course, but my comment was in response to the claims of the comment I responded to. It was not a claim that pharmacists are not involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is great. Walmart has a reputation to protect so at the very least I can trust what they say.

I've had a hard time getting a dentist I can trust. The business reminds me of car mechanics that are always looking to sell you additional services. And as a layperson, it's hard to know when you are being sold services you don't need. They love people with insurance since they can get them to buy without much pushing.

<comment><USER21> > _This is great. Walmart has a reputation to protect so at the very least I > can trust what they say. I 've had a hard time getting a dentist I can > trust._

Do you think that dentists don't also have a reputation to protect? What makes you take polar opposite views of the two?

<comment><USER20> It's not the same. I think it's a matter of scale. Walmart, because of its size, will often have more checks and balances. They will not take a chance to mar their reputation. Walmart wants to keep people's trust. It's worth billions to the company. It's not 100% but I feel more comfortable if I'm not constantly being pushed additional services to buy.

Most dentists I've dealt with run their practice as a small business. Usually, it's a few dentists. They need to constantly sell. I understand that they need to stay in business but it's so constant that you never know where you stand.

I'm not saying that all dentists are like that it's just hard to find one that you can trust. Just like car mechanics.

<comment><USER22> How does your scale argument apply to companies like Amazon which gleefully sell counterfeits and trash on their site, or allow scammers to run rampant?

What makes you think that Walmart is different here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given the quality I've seen in American megastores (I've seen bicycles seem really dangerous to ride -- is there no institution that regulates vehicles?), my knee-jerk reaction is that this is a terrible idea.

At the same time, I'm all for accessible and good healthcare, so let's see how this plays out.

<comment><USER24> Wal-Mart sells something like 2 million bicycles a year. If they're actually selling "really dangerous" bicycles then it should be easy for you to point at some actual statistics about it. After all, in America there are regularly recalls for things like

"we manufactured 600 bicycle forks that _might_ crack and pose an fall hazard"[1]

"we made 800 bicycles where the caliper might come into contact with a broken spoke"[2]

"we manufactured 4,100 steer tubes that can become loose"[3]

[1]: [https://www.cpsc.gov/es/Recalls/2016/enve-recalls-bicycle- fo...](https://www.cpsc.gov/es/Recalls/2016/enve-recalls-bicycle-forks) [2]: [https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/Trek-Recalls-Disc- Bicycles](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/Trek-Recalls-Disc-Bicycles) [3]:[https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/Box-Components-Recalls- BMX...](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/Box-Components-Recalls-BMX-Bicycle- Forks)

So where's the evidence of the tens of thousands of "really dangerous" bicycles being sold in America?

<comment><USER23> I didn't say that Walmart sells dangerous bicycles. I said that some supermarkets sell bicycles that _seem_ dangerous to ride, so I'm wondering if the regulations are strict enough. More specifically, when I was in the USA I've seen bicycles at the K-mart, so I was referring to those. It seems I'm not the only one who think those bikes are terrible:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/8xvfv2/has_anyon...](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/8xvfv2/has_anyone_purchased_a_100150_bicycle_from_kmart/)

Still, you make a good point in showing that there actually are at least some regulations. Whether they are strict enough and focus on the right points is not entirely clear to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fantastic, if this isn't regulated out of existence.

<comment><USER26> They are following others at this point. A lot of places have "minute clinics". The pharmacy part has more legal problems in some states like ND.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Even if it's middle of the road service performed by inexperienced people starting out their careers and looked down on by professionals with more experience (i.e. basically how Walmart tire center is viewed in the automotive world) it still provides an alternative keeping the prices of higher class options in check.

<comment><USER28> As a Walmart tire tech, I'd like to recommend everyone that not every tire shop is equal, even within Walmart. Our next door Walmart acc generates a lot of horror stories that we get to fix. Also some local non-Walmart tire shops do even worse. Like forgetting to tighten lug nuts. Heard that one several times about a local (and quite respected!) tire shop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If I can walk in without an appointment, see a doctor after a reasonable wait, and then get a prescription for antibiotics that can be filled on the spot, then I'm 100% on board with this.

<comment><USER30> I live in the Ohio Valley area and the biggest problem we run into is seasonal allergies. That doesn't sound so bad as its just a stuffy nose at first, however after a couple of weeks it turns into a nasty sinus infection. Getting an antibiotic through a traditional Dr. can take many days (or even weeks). Going to the "after-care" is inconvenient and can take hours.

If I could pop into WalMart when I feel this coming on, I would do it in a heartbeat! Especially if it meant that I didn't have to do all the insurance stuff. Even better if the whole visit costs the same as my insurance co-pay ($30)!

<comment><USER31> I'm pretty sure there's been a few times in the last few years that my wife has called up a doctor on the phone and gotten a prescription for her sinus infection, and then just went to Target and filled it. She didn't have to physically see a doctor. I'm also pretty sure it was a service that her health care provided, so you should ask your health care provider if they have something similar.

<comment><USER32> At a prior large tech company, one of the coolest benefits compared to my current small startup was Teladoc[0]. I have no idea what the actual cost is or anything, but it was pretty much this.

[https://www.teladoc.com/](https://www.teladoc.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is hilarious. I'm no universal healthcare idealist, but there is something to be said about health services having the wrong incentives in doing it for-profit. What incentives do for-profit pharmaceuticals have to keep people healthy? Potentially none. What incentives do they have to keep people sick? Probably billions of dollars if not more.

The problem is you can't risk your health. When buying a product you can risk a "clever" company that sells you a subpar product, but you can't really risk a "clever" pharmaceutical that sells you a subpar medicine or service.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What incentives do for-profit pharmaceuticals have to keep people healthy?

In a competitive market when people aren't happy with a product or service they take their business elsewhere. Over time companies with bad intentions get weeded out or never get off the ground.

<comment><USER34> > I'm no universal healthcare idealist ...

I'm from Canada, so actually I am.

> In a competitive market ...

Doesn't apply to healthcare. Try shopping around for a trauma hospital after a car accident.

<comment><USER35> "Doesn't apply to healthcare."

Yes, it absolutely does. The vast majority of 'healthcare' is operationally mundane, and not hyper-specialized such as those who are in car accidents might require.

Most public systems are quite inefficient, and without any possible market pressures (Canada healthcare act makes it technically illegal to sell healthcare services that are provided by the gov.) then those inefficiencies sink in.

Because there's a weird inelastic demand for certain services, pure market- oriented solutions won't work for 'car crashes' but they definitely could for most other things.

Walmart taking on healthcare is a very meaningful event, they could feasibly operationalize the more mundane issues to the point wherein it's the cheapest in the world for such services. This is hugely positive news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have been thinking for years that the only economic entity that might be able to take this on is Wallmart.

I believed that if there was a single thing Barack Obama could do, it would have been to convince Wallmart to heavily invest in healthcare, the point of building clinics.

Walmart is quite a different beast than other companies. Walmart, by strategy, does not compete on margin, they compete on volume. Since high margins are a problem for volume, they actively try to suck out margins in a product all along the value chain.

Walmart pushes suppliers to improve their own cost metrics and has enough power to do it. They basically use their leverage to force down prices, knowing they'll make it up in the long run on volume.

This is a very, very different approach to business than basically anywhere else, and possibly has ever existed and it's one of the few magic things that makes Walmart what it is.

The 'literati' classes love to hate on Walmart, but consider how powerful this machine is: it basically sucks profits and inefficiency out of the value chain like a vacuum, handing over the surpluses to consumers. They basically enable 100 million Americans to live at a standard of living not otherwise possible.

Health Care is the most bloated sector in the entire world, and there's so much juicy fat to be cut, if there's any operational entity has the scale, operational ability, customer reach, efficiency to pull this off it's walmart.

I hope they expand into basic medicine, family medicine, all of the basic kind of testing, and insurance.

I can't say I'm otherwise a huge fan of Walmart, but if they end up raping and pillaging healthcare in the US, they could literally be creating the biggest benefit capitalism ever provided for Americans.

I'm a huge, huge fan of this. I haven't stepped into a Walmart in years, but I'm thinking I need my teeth cleaned ...

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm a graduate student in a small city. I would gladly use this dental cleaning service. I haven't been to the dentist in like 2 years because I really can't afford it. I actually get my prescriptions via Walmart already without insurance because it cheaper than using the insurance given to the grad students.

</comment><comment><USER37> I heard a podcast on this recently where they cynically concluded that Walmart is doing this primarily to have more control over the healthcare costs of its employees. Will a Walmart doctor recommend AN expensive MRI for a Walmart employee if his boss doesn't like that?

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://archive.md/5r5Q2](https://archive.md/5r5Q2)

</comment><comment><USER39> 100% guarantee you that Walmart will make you sign a waiver of your PHI rights before you bust up in there and get a $25 blood test.

</comment><comment><USER40> > talk about their anxieties with a counselor for $1 a minute

I would get more anxiety just by looking at my watch if I am being charged per minute

<comment><USER41> I understand your point, but comparatively $30 for 30 minutes isn't that expensive considering you (seemingly) don't have to worry about insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am only surprised that Walmart took this long to get into the lucrative health care market.

</comment><comment><USER43> I can't tell if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.

<comment><USER44> Ideally it would be a solid hedge against the government going nowhere with improving the cost of healthcare. If it makes people get checked up more often, it could reduce overall healthcare costs because more issues get caught early.

Combine it with an app that offers specific recommendations and reminders based on your health profile, and you'd have an interesting startup. (this probably won't happen due to HIPAA/privacy issues and not being in Walmart's general wheelhouse).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A little competition in this space is LONG over due.

</comment><comment><USER46> Walmart using their market power in one industry to charge below market rates in another, driving out competition. This is going to destroy health care options in areas that are already under served.

<comment><USER47> When called to Congress to testify about it 15 years from now, Walmart execs will exclaim "It's about competition: if we hadn't done it, Amazon would have!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Wow, let us see where this will go.

</comment><comment><USER49> a large, aggressive for-profit org with a virtually unlimited warchest providing health care? sounds perfect. absolutely nothing bad could come of it.

<comment><USER35> ? The people providing healthcare today, are as you described, except they have huge, fat, ridiculous margins. They commit what would be point blank fraud in any other country, all day, every day.

Walmart is a massive machine that operates by design on thin margins. They force out surpluses all the way down the value chain and in their own operations and instead of selling at max margin, they sell at low margin, because they know they win in the long run.

Walmart might be exactly what you'd invent if you wanted to provide healthcare at the best price to the most people. There's the possibility they could be more efficient than any system anywhere as most public systems are full of fat as well ... certainly more than the 5% or so margin Walmart might take in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is why I think Bernie Sanders won't be the next president, headlines like this.

</comment><comment><USER51> a megacorp that stiffs employees on health care gets into health care. Cool story, Walmart, hope the Walton children enjoy their slice of that $3.5 trillion pie.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is great news. Every six months I go to the dentist for a checkup and teeth cleaning, and it's always the same: they look at my teeth for a few minutes with the mirror thing, scrape off some plaque with the pointy thing, polish my teeth with the spinning thing, then I do the flouride rinse and leave. It usually takes less than half an hour, and then they bill my insurance $275 for it. It's ridiculous, and there's no way this requires a graduate medical degree, it could be done by someone who took a three-week mail-in training course. Keep dentists' offices with DDS's around for major surgeries or unusual situations, but for routine checkups this is fine.

<comment><USER53> Took my step daughter to the dentist this morning. An x-ray and impressions. Whole process took 14 minutes. And that includes having her pose for front face and side face photos. Not a dentist in sight, just an assistant.

$600.

<comment><USER54> They billed my insurance $750 for a cleaning, I had to pay $0. Healthcare really is Monopoly money.

<comment><USER55> Dental insurance, especially, is a scam. The amount of "benefit" you get really is pretty low if $bad_things happen - a few thousand at most.

It's more like a pre-payment plan that lots of people don't pick up the item the care they pre-paid for.

I was going to go without because I saw what my insurance had been paying out. I figured I'd save a bit and I could "self-insure" in case of bigger problems. Joke was on me - I got billed about 6x as much as the insurance company. So now I pay for dental insurance because it gets me access to the "real" prices, not because I really want "insurance".

<comment><USER56> I pay $119 a year for dental insurance through Costco. That's less than I used to pay for two cleanings per year without insurance.

<comment><USER57> Call your insurance and see what they'll pay when you need a $10,000 implant or $3,000 root canal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is in Bloomberg. Who themselves have announced they are Mike's propaganda. Skimmed the article and couldn't find any reason it's a story /today/. Why is it a story today? Speculate.

The US healthcare system is third world standard. Great if you're rich, horrendous if you're not. Just like say, India, for example. US is the richest country on earth. Any story about US healthcare not mentioning how much worse it is than every other industrialized nation runs the risk of impersonating propaganda.

So if this isn't propaganda they've disguised it effectively.

Remember when we used to make jokes about Pravda. Radio Moscow. Here we are in the free world. We can do better about sensible policy discussion than this. Really.</comment>


The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-astronaut-apollo11/print

<comment><USER2> It's fun when people confuse being calm and don't panicking with having no fear. You have your fears and doubts, but just don't let them cloud your judgment.

And I remember him. While it sucks he didn't walk on the Moon, I will probably never even leave Earth's atmosphere. At least he got to space. He may be the one I envy less, but I still envy him ;-)

They were all made of superhero-stuff.

I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes.

<comment><USER3> _I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes._

I'm not trying to disparage the bravery of the Apollo astronauts. But: No. Obviously not. We've still got a lot of brave people. Ask a New York firefighter.

As the astronauts themselves would probably have hastened to point out at the time, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam even as Armstrong was stepping onto the moon. Some of those troops lived with much higher stress, for much longer, than any astronaut. The same is true for many soldiers working today.

No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics and little to do with a shortage of heroes.

<comment><USER4> "No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics"

Well, politics and bureaucracy, I'd say.

<comment><USER5> that's because of gravity and economics.

<comment><USER4> Economics, in the sense of being the study of human action, sure. Gravity, only in some much weaker senses.

We've known since the Orion project how to get off the planet quickly, easily, and with a lot of cargo; the reasons we haven't done so are not primarily because of how much money it costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree that Michael Collins is forgotten.

<comment><USER7> Mike Collins has a marketing problem: his name's too boring. He should have immediately commissioned someone to name a Tom Collins derivative drink after him when he got back from the mission.

I mean, seriously, you go and do a job with two guys named Neil _Armstrong_ and _Buzz_ Aldrin. And you wonder why people forget your name.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, if _Bootsy_ Collins had orbited the moon nobody would _ever_ have forgotten it.

As it was, it took Frank Zappa to figure out the marketing angle and name his child "Moon Unit".

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the only problem with that is that Bootsy Collins has been _way_ higher than the moon. He's completely out of this galaxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since when are the Guardian's story pages so cluttered that we need to link to the print version of their articles? It's about the best designed newspaper site on the web. Is pagination really so awful?

<comment><USER9> Pagination _is_ awful, but this article isn't paginated even in the original, so your point here is well-taken. To wit:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael- collin...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins- astronaut-apollo11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I am half as remembered as Michael Collins, I will consider my life well- lived.

</comment><comment><USER11> _All three astronauts believed there was a real chance such a disaster would occur. Armstrong thought his prospects were only 50-50 of making it back to Earth. And so did Collins, the pilot of Columbia and one of the world's most experienced aviators._

Kinda puts the word "hero" in perspective.

<comment><USER12> Apparently he would disagree. :P From the article:

 _"At age 78, some things about current society irritate me, such as the adulation of celebrities and inflation of heroism," he said last week. Neither description fits him, he added. "Heroes abound, but don't count astronauts among them. We worked very hard, we did our jobs to near perfection, but that is what we had been hired to do."_

<comment><USER13> What's the joke about the Medal of Honor recipients meeting? They all think it's a mistake for them to be around all these heroes. Heroes are heroes precisely because they don't find their actions heroic. My take anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


Cookie Walls Don't Comply with GDPR (Dutch DPA) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/cookie-walls-dont-comply-with-gdpr-says-dutch-dpa/ <comment><USER2> It should be noted that this isn't a legal decision.

This is a guideline on how the Dutch DPA sees it, and although it carries some weight the issue won't be settled unless and until a court makes a formal decision.

My 2c is that the Dutch DPA's guideline is wrong and extremely restrictive.</comment>


Raru: Run as random user - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/teran-mckinney/raru <comment><USER2> Clever idea, however keep in mind that you are trusting both your file system permissions to be sane and your kernel to enforce them correctly (I.e. Not have bugs). a lot of projects have tried to do this (i.e. SeLINUx, trusted bsd) and it turns out to be surprisingly hard to build isolation policies that are useable and practical. I think one very cool solution recently has been qubes-- it runs each application in its own, temporary VM and provides secure UI magic for file opening, clipboard, etc

<comment><USER3> Thank you! This leans more towards the client side than the server side. It's certainly in the hackish and glitchy direction, and has no guarantees for success.

Qubes looks really interesting. I'd love to give it a try some time. I've just grown rather attached to my FreeBSD setup and this seemed like one of the ways I might be able to improve security on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reusing unix user ids as application ids is an excellent idea, and it has worked reasonably well in android so far. Good to see this being applied to X/desktop.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is clever. It's not running code as a random user on your system, but rather as a random non existent user id.

This has the effect of denying lots of privileges to whatever is being software is being run.

</comment><comment><USER6> I liked this idea so much that I made an improvement: Instead of running a user-specified command, it runs a randomly chosen command as a randomly chosen[0] user!

[https://github.com/nickodell/rarucmd/tree/master](https://github.com/nickodell/rarucmd/tree/master)

(Don't run this on a system you care about.)

[0] Randomness may vary.

<comment><USER3> That is hysterical. I am flattered.

Reminds me of that game that would delete your files if you couldn't shoot things fast enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alternatively: rudo?

<comment><USER3> I don't get it. Is there a reference to rudo?

<comment><USER6> Random User DO, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From looking around an Android device via ssh a long time ago (still in the "wow, linux on my phone" phase), I remember that all apps that are installed also have their own user installed. Access to various resources was then done via the groups that user is in. But of course then there is no real "main" user and multi-user wise it is back to Win95 level. I assume that has not changed much.

And back when the first commercial games for linux came out, I did not want to trust binary-only executables and added a user plus a script so I could run anything via passwordless sudo and then did and still do the same for my web- browsing. Since these have their own ~, the data is persistent, but for something you totally do not trust raru looks nice.

This of course requires root access, automatic /home/me/home2 (or /home/me_home2) generation with optional persistence and isolation might be a next step. But I have no idea what the current state of more fine-grained control via cgroups etc. is. It is probably more complex than the true and trusted method of just adding another user.

But what I _still miss_ (and never really looked at) is an ACL or so system to make the game or webuser completely transparent/subordinate to my main user, meaning I can read, write and take ownership of any files of these sub-users but they have to obey standard permissions wrt. my files.

</comment><comment><USER9> Check out Http://ccl.cse.nd.edu/research/subid/ Ctrl+f for sub-identities

Disclaimer: roughly what this project does was the topic of my (somewhat silly) masters thesis. I even did roughly the same x11 nesting, and I took it a little farther and made a kernel module that lets "parent" idebtities behave as "effectively root" to their child identities.

</comment><comment><USER10> Will this work on OSX? I have been looking for a lightweight way to sandbox apps on OSX.

<comment><USER3> I was also wondering about that. With El Capitan there was the big 'root' change. I guess they probably didn't break setuid, so this might still work.

I'm not sure about xraru working or not. If vncviewer runs on OS X, maybe? It might actually be a convenient way to run X programs in general.

Although if I add in any logic for auto-scaling, it'll likely break on OS X. But it'd be even more important because of the crazy retina resolutions.

xhyve, by the way, is an awesome hypervisor for OS X. It's pretty light. Not raru-light, but as light as you can get for proper hardware virtualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Won't this cause any files/folders created by the process to be owned by said random uid? Seems like a great way to litter your filesystem with unreadable files/folders.

<comment><USER12> Only if the underlying directory has the "other+rw" permissions set (like /tmp).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't the Chromium sandbox already effectively do this without the suid bit by using CLONE_NEWUSER to enable use of setuid and then calling it?

<comment><USER14> CLONE_NEWUSER doesn't actually change what your user is outside of that container/namespace. You get to map exactly one outside user to exactly one inside user. On systems where unprivileged users are permitted to call it, you can map your host user account to exactly one account inside the namespace, of which root is basically the only useful choice. Any interactions between the namespace and the rest of the system continue to treat you as your original UID.

The original implementation of CLONE_NEWUSER did actually convert users to vectors, or at least namespace-user tuples, which would have allowed unprivileged users to use the kernel UID mechanism for actual privilege separation. But that was dropped, I believe mostly because it was too much churn to the rest of the kernel and thus too risky. The current approach means that code that just thinks about root-namespace users continues to do the right thing.

The primary thing Chromium's sandbox seems to gets out of CLONE_NEWUSER is the ability to call chroot without shipping a setuid binary.

<comment><USER13> Oh, of course you're right. I implemented this stuff in gaol and completely forgot I had to stay as root inside the namespace because you can't setuid to unmapped users.

I stand (embarrassingly) corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does it decide which files are permitted to be accessed by the app?

<comment><USER16> Files with readable-by-all-users / writeable-by-all-users / executable-by-all users flags.</comment></comment>


Wrapping web APIs made easy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/redodo/tortilla

<comment><USER2> I've written a similar library, also in Python.

Things get interesting when you implement __iter__ for collections and __setattr__ for PUT/POST requests. At that point, you start needing a machine- readable API spec (e.g. Swagger, or straight Python with subclasses and decorators).

This looks great for one-off scripts or exploring APIs in a REPL.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be cool if you can put up some examples for Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there anything like this for ruby?

<comment><USER5> I've built a tool ([http://restunited.com](http://restunited.com)) to help generate SDKs (Ruby, Python, PHP, etc) for REST API. Would it meet your requirement?</comment></comment>


The Buttcoin Standard: The Problem with Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2019/01/31/the-buttcoin-standard-the-problem-with-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> I am genuinely interested in rebuttals of bitcoin. The second section is where I stopped reading, calling it a crime against humanity due to power use. It trots out the same piece of work from digiconomist to claim it uses a countries worth, of coal-fired power station generated, electricity to run the network. A claim that has been questioned and IMO debunked rather thoroughly [0] or more recently here [1]

[0] [http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in- beci/](http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/) [1] [https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin- environmental-...](https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin- environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7)</comment>


Stress and creation - <AUTHOR> http://germanforblack.com/articles/stress-and-creation

<comment><USER2> I'm 23 and perhaps have not created much until recently, but now I am in the early stages of authoring an HTML5 book (on top of my day job) at a publisher's request.

I feel I can already relate to this.

But there's something that to me may be worse than what the author mentions. It's with misfortune that I admit while I think I can deal with the stress of day-to-day programming while creating this book, I fear my girlfriend might go crazy (figuratively) in the meantime.

My own emotional stress I think I can handle. But how do I deal with the emotional stress of those around me? The people close to me are very dear but I'm afraid it may well end up being a third job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Work-life balance can be really difficult with partners. Don't neglect your partner, you've got plenty of time for working the rest of your life… people are not like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Such crap, endemic to tech blogging, with the end goal being more twitter followers. This is particularly insidious as the author has the arrogance to present the content as 'poetic' (philosophical?) too. I'm surprised some restraint (accidental?) was shown in referring to the practice as 'craft' and not 'art'.

Besides HN is for plebs [1], unless of course you use it for self-promotion.

[1] <http://twitter.com/#!/benschwarz/status/56899332057743361>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, actually I was just sharing my realisation of the three kinds of stress that I'd self-identified… and a lot of people seemed to relate to it.

But whatever, maybe it just wasn't for you.</comment></comment>


TechCrunch: 360 viewers for Facebook Live? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/out-of-500-million-users-looks-like-360-tuned-in-to-facebook-live/

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook mentions 3000 comments, but the ones I saw had a good portion simply asking "why?"</comment>


President Trump announces to reporters that he's banning TikTok - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1289385727180935168 <comment><USER2> Another discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016858)

</comment><comment><USER3> Left out of the discussion is whether the president actually has the authority to ban an app without due process...

Generally, most lawyers would say that his authority is limited to the use of tiktok by federal employees or members of the armed forces. Banning the app for everyone at the national level would require more than an executive order.

</comment><comment><USER4> How exactly does he plan to ban it? He may try to take it off app stores, but at least on android, users can just install an apk.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't he force all internet providers to ban connectivity to the IPs? Then only VPN users could use Tik Tok, basically making it useless

<comment><USER6> Has the US ever done this before? Force internet providers to ban certain IP's? Because this also, ironically, is how China blocks the majority of the western internet

<comment><USER7> I don't think the US has ever blocked at the IP level. ICE and DHS typically just seize naughty domains by taking over their DNS records (recent examples at [http://coronaprevention.org](http://coronaprevention.org) and [http://chinaseatbelt.com](http://chinaseatbelt.com)).

For entities with a US presence, the threat of prosecution usually does the trick (see [https://codeisfreespeech.com/](https://codeisfreespeech.com/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> poof goes the $50B valuation</comment>


How to Know You Have Found a Great Startup Lawyer - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestartuplawyer.com/representation/how-to-know-you-have-found-a-great-startup-lawyer Evaluating your startup lawyer (or any lawyer for that matter) can be a difficult task because a lawyer's work product tends to be intangible. That is, if you hired someone to build you a bookcase you could test its craftmanship in a matter of seconds. Not the case for the startup lawyer that typically deals in Word and PDF. Therefore, it's good idea to evaluate your startup lawyer in the following ways to determine if you have found a keeper. <comment><USER2> I don't agree with this guy's advice. There are more than 1,000,000 lawyers in the US,[0] a bunch that want your money, but only a few that know what their doing with tech start ups. A good heuristic when developing a good start up support team is to use whoever everyone else successful is using that also passes the gut check. Same goes for accountants, VCs, etc.

[0] <http://www.lawschool.com/wannabes.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> I found our lawyer at a party in a bar... if you can hang and split a beer together, you know you'll get along.</comment>